The extracts we have made give, we think, a tolerably correct idea of Bryant's genius. The volume contains much rich description and moral poetry, which we have not been able to refer to, and a considerable number of translations from the Spanish. The fame of Mr. Bryant will not be increased by these versions, though they are done with consummate elegance of style. Mr. Bryant's manner is individual and original, and does not easily adapt itself to foreign turns of thought, and particularly to the grave simplicity, the unadorned naturalness of Spanish ballads. Neither do we think his humorous pieces among his most successful_performances. His "Address to a Musquito," and his "Poem on Rhode Island Coal," are wrought up with a careful elaboration of style, which makes the pleasantry rather too stately. We feel the want of point, and pith, and sparkling expression, and easy, idiomatic turns, and happy humor.

The general excellencies of Mr. Bryant's style are purity, grace, and harmony. His language is chosen with a nice perception of the delicate shades of meaning in words, and is constructed with studious correctness. It is pure English, and yet American-two qualities not always united. His sentences are always graceful, that is, they are formed in such a manner as to be agreeable to a cultivated reader. The turn of expression never borders on vulgarity, but is always in good taste, according to its strictest requirements. The harmony of the verse is full and rich. The sound of a gentle breeze through a pine forest, is one of the most delightful in nature, and affects the mind just like the melody. of Bryant's lines. They unite sameness and variety-the sameness and variety of nature herself. A single stanza of Bryant's can never be mistaken for another man's; but he never tires the reader, any more than the green fields, the stars, the deep-toned ocean, tire him. In his hands, language loses all its harshness. This sometimes becomes a defect, for we read page after page of smoothly flowing verse, until it fills the mind with repose, like the murmurs of an unobstructed stream. The beautiful harmony sometimes prevents us from feeling the whole strength of the thought. Hence we are led to accuse the poet of indistinctness in his conceptions, when the enticements of verse have taken the ear, and "in pleasing slumber lulled the sense." Bryant's style is not marked by strong expressions of concentrated passion, which fix themselves in the memory at once and for

ever. His power is not to be judged by single passages, taken unconnected with their context. It consists essentially, in the completeness of his conceptions, the finished manner in which they are chiseled as it were, into exquisite shapes, the unerring justness of proportion between the parts, their graceful repose, and majestic ideality. His genius is not dramatic. Its sphere is not action. His thoughts never assume the liveliness and pith of the epigram. To enjoy his writings perfectly, the reader's mind must be brought beforehand to a state of sobered meditation. He must forget the littleness of vulgar life, look abroad on nature, recall the faded impressions of purity and beauty and grandeur, which have been stamped on his soul in happier hours; rekindle the enthusiasm of early life, and then sit down to the poet's page, in trusting simplicity of heart.

Bryant is emphatically an American poet. The cast of his mind is republican, and his sentiments are all for human freedom. The scenery he describes is American scenery. His eye ranges over the prairies, and his heart

-swells, while the dilated light Takes in the encircling vastness.

His mind wanders over the centuries during which our forests have raised their tall heads to the sky, and he thinks sadly of the mighty race, who formerly roved uncontrolled through their sunless thickets. He describes a landscape on the banks of a mighty river-that river is the Hudson. He celebrates the seasons, and we know them for American seasons. He revisits the country-it is a village in New England to which his muse returns with the familiar recollections of youthful love. His verse glows with a "Sunset" -it is no Claude Lorraine, no Italian scene, no Grecian sky-but it is a sun that "o'er the western mountains" of America "goes down in glory." The Americanism of sentiment, which Mr. Bryant occasionally expresses in allusion to the political condition of Europe, has been censured by a late English Reviewer. To a European taste, formed under aristocratic institutions, it may appear offensive; but for ourselves, we would cherish the poet, whose genius, like an undimmed and unbroken mirror, reflects the thoughts, feelings, principles, character and scenery of his own, his "native land."

ARTICLE VIII.

DR. PORTER'S LECTURES ON PREACHING.

Lectures on Homiletics and Preaching, and on Public Prayer, together with Sermons and Letters. By Ebenezer Porter, D. D., President of the Theological Seminary, Andover. 1834.

THE art of preaching has hitherto received a very small share of the attention which its vast importance demands. The history of the church records many examples of great power in the pulpit; but, if we except some cold, technical treatises in German, nothing has ever been published that deserves to be called a system of sacred eloquence. While preaching forms the mainspring of all the instrumentalities employed for the salvation of mankind; while it confessedly exerts on their character and immortal interests an influence more powerful than all other causes combined; while it is a work not only more important, but far more delicate and arduous than any in which men can be engaged; the preacher has, after all, been left either to imitate such examples as accident may have brought before him, to cull from secular oratory a few rules more or less applicable to his peculiar art, or to follow his own genius and judgment without any foreign aid.

The few fragments that have appeared in different ages and countries on the art of preaching, cannot justly be considered as exceptions to this remark. More than three centuries of the Christian dispensation passed away before any thing was written on the subject that has come down to us; and even the work of Chrysostom De Sacerdotio, and that of Augustin De Doctrina Christiana, serve rather to show what views were entertained by those luminaries of the Greek and Latin church respecting the importance of sacred eloquence, than to exhibit its principles and rules in such a way as would materially assist young preachers.

From the time of Augustin to the dawn of the Reformation in the sixteenth century, nothing worthy of preservation was published on the subject; and, during that long and dreary night of the human mind, the pulpit sank into such

shameful degeneracy, that preachers of the everlasting gospel discussed questions nearly as frivolous and absurd as any that ever occupied the hair-splitting schoolmen of the dark ages. "Whether Abel was slain with a club, and of what species of wood it was? From what sort of tree was Moses' rod taken? Was the gold offered by the Magi to Christ, coined or in mass?" In a collection of sermons composed by the theologians of Vienna early in the fifteenth century, a minute history is given of the thirty pieces of money received by Judas for betraying our Saviour. "These pieces were said to have been coined by Terah, the father of Abraham; and, having passed through a succession of hands too ridiculous to be named, they came into possession of the Virgin Mary as a present from the Magi, and went into the temple as an offering for her purification."

We should suppose that the Reformation would have called forth treatises on the art of preaching. So it did; but none of them can claim to be regarded as a system of sacred rhetoric. The first and most respectable was that of Erasmus De Ratione Concionandi, stamped with the impress of his genius, taste, and good judgment, but altogether insufficient for its purpose.

The same is true of succeeding authors. Even the Dialogues of Fenelon, though called by Doddridge himself incomparable, and "mentioned by many writers of eminence with a sort of respect bordering on veneration," are in fact little more than a series of desultory remarks on a few important points connected with the business of preaching. They are admirable in their place, but do not profess to teach the whole art. The views exhibited in them are very correct; but only a small part of the subjects that ought to be embraced in a system of pulpit eloquence, are there taken up at all, and not one discussed with the fullness necessary for a student of sacred rhetoric.

Claude's Essay on the Composition of a Sermon, is more systematic, but far too artificial for any man of genius, taste, or sense to follow. It is an elaborate piece, perhaps the ne plus ultra of a Frenchman's powers on such a subject; but however worthy of being carefully read, we see not how any preacher of ordinary talents could consent to trammel himself with such a set of rules, and force his mind, like a car on a railway, to run forever in the same track.

The work of Abbe Maury on Pulpit Eloquence, is in

sore respects more defective than either of the preceding. It is not so much a system of rhetoric, or a collection of rules for the composition and delivery of sermons, as a string of fine and florid declamations. It contains some excellent remarks, but would be a poor guide to the young preacher. Reybaz on the Art of Preaching, gives in a small compass a variety of useful hints; but a short letter, with whatever beauty and force it may touch on many topics of importance to the preacher, cannot teach a system of sacred eloquence.

In German works we have still less confidence. The literary enterprise of Germany would of course intermeddle with a subject like this; but its writers have handled it with fingers of ice. Its degenerate theology, a body without a soul, has paralyzed the energies of its pulpit; and its systems of sacred eloquence sufficiently numerous, are extremely dry and technical. Its histories of the pulpit are worthy of a perusal, if not of a translation, and some of its treatises on preaching would furnish valuable materials, though imbedded in ice, for a professor of sacred rhetoric; but wo to the churches of America when our candidates for the Christian ministry shall study the divine art of prophets and apostles in such systems of pulpit eloquence as we have happened to meet from Germany. Reinhard, the best preacher she has produced since the days of Luther, sought not their aid, but drew his skill in the pulpit from his own genius and the masterpieces of ancient eloquence.

Our own language contains its full share of fragments on this subject. Beside translations of Fenelon, Claude, Maury, and other foreign writers, a large number of essays, such as they are, have been written by English and American divines, on topics connected with the business of preaching. We find hints, or hortatory appeals, in almost every evangelical writer of any eminence. The subject has been in one form or another, discussed by bishops in their charges to the clergy, and by dissenting ministers in discourses delivered at their meetings for mutual improvement, and the consecration of their brethren to the pastoral office. In some of these ways the most eminent preachers of England and America have been led to touch upon a variety of topics belonging to their sacred work; but not one of them has ever sketched a full system of pulpit eloquence, nor would all their essays and hints put together, form a sufficient guide to