I hope the master of the house
Enjoys those bursts of merriment ;
And thinks the while his guests carouse
His time and money wisely spent.
Mary, press onward through the throng,
And try if we can gain the stairs;
And so escape this threatening song,
And Barent Mope'em's dandy airs.
He deems himself the phantom ship
Careering over Fashion's sea,
Whose glorious speed must long outstrip
Pursuing barks, like you and me.

Thank you, not me; but Alice, look!
This cupboard's vastly nice and sly;
Placed in an unsuspected nook,

And stored with scraps of cheese and pie :
And thirteen custards, I declare,

For fourteen children--that's the way
The harmless babes must starve and spare
To furnish forth this grand display.

Why Jane, you have not danced at all?
Oh, yes I have, till I was tired;
And now I'm flowering by the wall
To let my bandeau be admired;
But that young lumpkin's self-conceit
Possess'd him with the strangest whim,
He thought I only kept my seat

In order not to dance with him.

And turning all to compliment-
For so a dandy genius can--

He begs his claims may not prevent
My dancing with some happier man:
Some less attractive man, that is,

Whose eyes may lack, though still divine
That dangerous fire that lurks in his
For hearts so sensible as mine.

Look, there, at yonder nodding head,
I'ts Jack Fitz Ferrers fast asleep,
Amidst a din might rouse the dead,
And Morpheus' self in vigil keep.
It's affectation I suspect.

Ah, no-it's real, sound repose;
Why, one might just as well affect

To tweak one's entertainer's nose.
But which is Mrs. Megrim? There
She stands, beside the scarlet screen;
Has she not something in her air

Too good for such a vapid scene?
Why, she is handsome still. In truth,

She has been "spared and blest by time,"
But then, you know, she past her youth
Far out of fashion's deadly clime.

She could not waste her bloom away
In balls, by feverish candle light,
Turning the peaceful night to day,
And, vice versa, day to night.
The "ton," that calls such evil good,
Was then beyond her reach, and why
She wishes that her daughter should

Acquire it now-heaven knows, not I.
But let's be off--it's half-past one-
Your watch is slow-it's nearer two:

I see they've stopped their clock. They've done
As civil hosts should always do.

Where is your coach-sing out for Gray?
And those we've left we'll now discuss,
As, at their second supper, they

Will very likely do by us.

STUDIES OF LANGUAGE, NO. IV.

Hebrew.-No. II.

In taking David as an index of the choir of sacred poets, who were contributors to the Psalms, we may say that a richer vein of lyric poetry has not been opened on the world. There is a moving lifelike energy in the march of his verse that seems the very presence of divinity. The holy attributes of God and the wonderful frame of man lay open before him; and when his harp was tuned for devotion there went forth from it such strains as bear the soul onward and upward to the very throne of God. How strikingly true is this in the whole of the xix. Psalm. What can exceed the beauty of its opening-

"The heavens declare the glory of God;

The firmament showeth forth the work of his hands.
Day uttereth instruction to day,

And night showeth knowledge to night."

There is a surpassing grandeur in the xxxix Psalm, where God is acknowledged amid the convulsions of nature, and is represented as sitting above the storm, and at his terrible thunder the affrighted mountains seem to leap with their waving cedars. He scatters lightnings from his hand, and the forests are laid bare.

David had been a shepherd in his youth, and knew the kind care of a good shepherd for his flock. Thinking of Jehovah under this relation, he breaks forth in the xxiii. Psalm, thus,

"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me lie down in green pastures;

He leadeth me beside the still waters.

He reviveth my spirit;

He leadeth me in the right paths,

For his name's sake."

When the "Lord had delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul," he opens his song of gratitude (xviii. Ps.) as such a pious warrior might, by declaring Jehovah to be his strength and his rock, his fortress and his shield; his high tower and his deliverer. His representation of what followed after Jehovah heard his prayer, is a strain of descriptive poetry unequalled by any thing on the records of human history. Read to 20th verse. When his piety led him to prepare a tabernacle for the ark of the covenant, he composes on the occasion of its removal the xxiv. Psalm, which breathes the purest spirit of devotion. It is constructed in parallelistic lines, so as to be sung responsively by the priests and

people as they bring the ark to its resting-place. And what thrilling exultation must have filled the hearts of the vast multitude, as they approached mount Zion, when thousands of voices in measured melody shouted forth the command,

"Lift up your heads, O ye gates!

Lift yourselves up, ye everlasting doors,
That the glorious King may enter in !"

Thus it will be found, that David was as successful in leading Israel's choir with his harp, as Israel's army with his sword. The great diversity of circumstance in the life of the royal Psalmist gave unusual expansion both to the tenderest sympathies and the sternest virtues of our nature. He had shaken hands with danger in his youth. When he fled before the javelin of Saul, with his harp in his hand, should we wonder if its first notes should be those of complaining and resentment? We do not commend all his poetry any more than all his life. But we think it must be refreshing to the spiritual taste of any one to go with him when he seems to breathe the upper atmosphere of poetic inspiration. Look at him as he contemplates the majesty of the grace of God, and calls on all animate and inanimate creation to adore and praise! He invests every thing with the attributes of intelligence; and putting into every mouth a song of thanksgiving, universal nature seems to join with exultation in chanting the votive hymn. It is true of David, at such times, that he finds poetry every where and in every thing. If he ascends to heaven, it meets him there; if he fathoms the deep, he finds it there; he hears its voice in the rushing tempest, and marks it in the vesture of the lilies of the field. He finds it especially as it lives deep-woven in the texture of his inmost spirit: and how is it seen in his bursts of religious joy! At such times, with a soul full of gratitude, and a harp full of song, he seems to make the whole firmament but one rainbow, and the wide earth but one Eden. At such times, every thing is vocal in his ear; he looks on the universe only as a harp touched by its mighty maker, and considers himself the appointed one to strike the same key note, and repeat, as in echo, the melodies of heaven.

Descending 300 years, we come to Amos, the shepherd prophet, who, with an inexpressible ardor, which Amaziah, the idolatrous high-priest of Bethel, could not control, uttered his direct prediction against revolting Israel, and with true poetic power draws his imagery from the beasts of the field and the magnificence of na ture, because with such objects he was particularly conversant.

After him, and within the golden age of Hebrew literature, Isaiah, the first of the four great prophets, flourished. He seemed, if we may so speak, the favorite prophet of the Most High. He has always been regarded as the brightest luminary of the Jewish church.

The author of Ecclesiasticus says of him, that "he was great and faithful in his vision, and he saw by an excellent spirit what should come to pass at the last." No Christian preacher ever called men to repentance with a bolder tone than this prophet. The prophecies and warnings uttered under the reign of Ahaz, are filled with his moving power; and in the lii. chapter, after speaking of the recovery from the Assyrian oppression, he suddenly breaks forth into a rapturous description of a still higher deliverance. He who can read this, and not have his soul glow with admiration of the Hebrew language, must want the common attributes of our nature. His style is a model of the true sublime. It is a style made magnicent by its metaphors, yet it continues sublime without ever losing its perspicuity. However wide the circumference from which he selects his images, he gathers them all at last upon the blazing centre. illustrating, he has those apt and well-known comparisons which give a kind of transparency to his subject. In amplification, he rises to great power by putting forth allusions which enable the reader to surprise a coincidence. When variety is his object, he exerts his whole strength, he becomes moved by strong passion, and lifted up by concentration of thought, and then follows a group of the most splendid and exciting comparisons. In narrative he is clear and simple; in persuasion he is earnest and courteous; in threatening he is just and terrible. His chief excellence is in prophecy, for he touches the sacred harp so in accordance with the dictates of God, that none but celestial accents vibrate from its chords.

In

It will be doing but partial justice to this first of poets to limit our extracts as we must. We give only a few sentences.—When he warns Judah of approaching danger, how vivid and strong are his images! "The noise of a multitude in the mountains, like as of a great people, a tumultuous noise of the kingdoms of nations gathered together: Jehovah of hosts mustereth the hosts of the battle."When he depicts the desolation and wo of a kingdom forsaken by Providence, his language has a graphic terror. "And the streams thereof shall be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone, and the land thereof shall become burning pitch. It shall not be quenched day nor night: the smoke thereof shall go up forever: from generation to generation it shall lie waste: none shall pass through it for ever and ever. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch his tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there. But wild beasts of the descit shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there."-From such scenes of measureless sterility and forsaken greatness, he turns to those of joy, prosperity, and protection. "Look upon Zion, the city of our solem

nities thine eyes shall see Jerusalem a quiet habitation. There the glorious Lord will be unto us a place of broad rivers and streams. The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing; for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert. And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion, with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness; and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. Oh, thou afflicted, tossed with tempests, and not comforted, behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colors, and thy foundations with sapphires. And I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant stones. Violence shall be no more heard in thy land, wasting nor desolation within thy borders; but thou shalt call thy walls Salvation, and thy gates Praise. The sun shall be no more thy light by day; neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee; but the Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory. Thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall thy moon withdraw itself: for the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended. For the Lord shall comfort Zion; he will comfort all her waste places, and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving and the voice of melody." We think the reader will agree with us that this is powerful writing. We find the same sublimity throughout his book, the "same rich economy of words that are halo'd with thought;" and considering how constantly he sustains himself, we think every classic scholar will admit, that for majesty of diction, range of fancy, accumulation of epithet, grandeur of conception, and concentration of mind, Isaiah has no equal on the lists of literature.

One hundred and thirty years after this prophet, came Jeremiah, the elegiac poet. He prophesied under the reigns of Josiah, Jehoakim, Zedekiah, and Gedaliah, The frequent incursions of the Chaldeans and Assyrians, after the death of Hezekiah, did no more good to the Hebrew language than they did to the state. But though vitiated by Chaldee mixtures, the language in the twice-written record of Baruch shows its ancient nerve, simplicity, and grandeur. This prophet has not the equal majesty and sustained power of Isaiah and Habakkuk; and with Jerome we find a certain rusticity of expression. Nevertheless, there are passages, which happily combine the great constituent principles of a sententious, figurative, and sublime style. He was faithful as an admonitory prophet. His description of coming calamities has the dreadful freshness of present suffering. With what well-timed and fervid eloquence did he