error in employing the marvellous in his picture. In dramatic scenes, when the passions are agitated and all the wonders ought to emanate from the soul, the intervention of a divinity imparts coldness to the action, gives to the sentiment the air of fable, and discloses the falsehood of the poet where we expected to meet with nothing but truth. Ulysses, making himself known in hist rags by some natural mark, would have been much more pathetic. Of this Homer was himself aware, since the king of Ithica was revealed to Euryclea, his nurse, by an ancient scar, and to Laertes by the little circumstance of the pear-trees which the good old man had given him when a child. We love to find that the heart of the destroyer of cities is formed like those of other men, and that the simple affections constitute its principal element.

The discovery is much more ably conducted in Genesis. By an artifice of the most harmless revenge, a cup is put into the sack of the young and innocent Benjamin. The guilty brethren are overwhelmed with grief when they figure to themselves the affliction of their aged father; and the image of Jacob's sorrow, taking the heart of Joseph by surprise, obliges him to discover. himself sooner than he had intended. As to the pathetic words, I am Joseph, everybody knows that they drew tears of admiration from Voltaire himself. Ulysses found in Telemachus a dutiful and affectionate son. Joseph is speaking to his brethren who had sold him. He does not say to them, I am your brother, but merely, I am Joseph; and this name awakens all their feelings. Like Telemachus, they are deeply agitated; but it is not the majesty of Pharao's minister; 'tis something within their own consciences that occasions their consternation. He desires them to come near to him; for he raised his voice to such a pitch as to be heard by the whole house of Pharao when he said, I am Joseph. His brethren alone are to hear the explanation, which he adds in a low tone; I am Joseph, YOUR BROTHER, WHOM YE SOLD INTO EGYPT. Here are delicacy, simplicity, and generosity, carried to the highest degree.

Let us not fail to remark with what kindness Joseph cheers his brethren, and the excuses which he makes for them when he says that, so far from having injured him, they are, on the contrary, the cause of his elevation. The Scripture never fails to introduce Providence in the perspective of its pictures. The great

counsel of God, which governs all human affairs at the moment when they seem to be most subservient to the passions of men and the laws of chance, wonderfully surprises the mind. We love the idea of that hand concealed in the cloud which is incessantly engaged with men. We love to imagine ourselves something in the plans of Infinite Wisdom, and to feel that this transitory life is a pattern of eternity.

With God every thing is great; without God every thing is little and this remark applies even to the sentiments. Suppose all the circumstances in Joseph's story to happen as they are recorded in Genesis, suppose the son of Jacob to be as kind, as tender, as he is represented, but, at the same time, to be a philosopher, and, instead of telling his brethren, I am here by the will of the Lord, let him say, fortune has favored me. The objects are instantly diminished; the circle becomes contracted, and the pathos vanishes together with the tears.

Finally, Joseph kisses his brethren as Ulysses embraces Telemachus; but he begins with Benjamin. A modern author would not have failed to represent him falling in preference upon the neck of the most guilty of the brothers, that his hero might be a genuine tragedy character. The Bible, more intimately acquainted with the human heart, knew better how to appreciate that exaggeration of sentiment by which a man always appears to be striving to perform or to say what he considers something extraordinary. Homer's comparison of the sobs of Telemachus and Ulysses with the cries of an eagle and her young, had, in our opinion, been better omitted in this place. "And he fell upon Benjamin's neck, and kissed him, and wept; and Benjamin wept also, as he held him in his embrace." Such is the only magnificence of style adapted to such occasions.

We might select from Scripture other narratives equally excellent with the history of Joseph; but the reader himself may easily compare them with passages in Homer. Let him take, for instance, the story of Ruth, and the reception of Ulysses by Eumæus. The book of Tobias displays a striking resemblance to several scenes of the Iliad and Odyssey. Priam is conducted by Mercury in the form of a handsome youth, as Tobias is accompanied by an angel in the like disguise.

The Bible is particularly remarkable for certain modes of ex

pression-far more pathetic, we think, than all the poetry of Homer. When the latter would delineate old age he says:

Slow from his seat arose the Pylean sage,-
Experienced Nestor, in persuasion skilled;
Words sweet as honey from his lips distilled.
Two generations now had passed away,
Wise by his rules, and happy by his sway;
Two ages o'er his native realm he reigned,
And now the example of the third remained.1

This passage possesses the highest charms of antiquity, as well as the softest melody. The second verse, with the repetitions of the letter L, imitates the sweetness of honey and the pathetic eloquence of an old man:

Το καὶ ἀπὸ γλώσσης μέλιτος γλυκίων ρυεν αὐδή.

Pharao having asked Jacob his age, the patriarch replies:"The days of my pilgrimage are one hundred and thirty years, few and evil; and they are not come up to the days of the pilgrimage of my fathers."2

Here are two very different kinds of antiquity. The one lies in the image, the other in the sentiments; the one excites pleasing ideas, the other melancholy; the one, representing the chief of the nation, exhibits the old man only in relation to a certain condition of life, the other considers him individually and exclusively. Homer leads us to reflect rather upon men in general, and the Bible upon the particular person.

Homer has frequently touched upon connubial joys, but has he produced any thing like the following?

"Isaac brought Rebecca into the tent of Sarah, his mother, and took her to wife, and he loved her so much that it moderated the sorrow which was occasioned by his mother's death."s

We shall conclude this parallel, and the whole subject of Christian poetics, with an illustration which will show at once the difference that exists between the style of the Bible and that of Homer; we shall take a passage from the former and present it in colors borrowed from the latter. Ruth thus addresses Noemi:

1 Iliad, b. i.

2 Gen. xlvii. 9.

3 Gen. xxiv. 67.

"Be not against me to desire that I should leave thee and depart; for whithersoever thou shalt go I will go, and where thou shalt dwell I also will dwell. Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. The law that shall receive thee dying, in the same will I die."1

Let us endeavor to render this passage in the language of Homer.

The fair Ruth thus replies to the wise Noemi, honored by the people as a goddess: "Cease to oppose the determination with which a divinity inspires me. I will tell thee the truth, just as it is, and without disguise. I will remain with thee, whether thou shalt continue to reside among the Moabites, so dexterous in throwing the javelin, or shalt return to Judea, so fertile in olives. With thee I will demand hospitality of the nations who respect the suppliant. Our ashes shall be mingled in the same urn, and I will offer agreeable sacrifices to the God who incessantly accompanies thee.

"She said; and as, when a vehement wind brings a cool refreshing rain from the western sky, the husbandmen prepare the wheat and the barley, and make baskets of rushes nicely interwoven, for they foresee that the falling shower will soften the soil and render it fit for receiving the precious gifts of Ceres, so the words of Ruth, like the fertilizing drops, melted the whole heart of Noemi."

Something like this, perhaps,—so far as our feeble talents allow us to imitate Homer, would be the style of that immortal genius. But has not the verse of Ruth, thus amplified, lost the original charm which it possesses in the Scripture? What poetry can ever be equivalent to that single stroke of eloquence, Populus tuus populus meus, Deus tuus Deus meus. It will now be easy to take a passage of Homer, to efface the colors, and to leave nothing but the groundwork, after the manner of the Bible.

We have thus endeavored, to the best of our limited abilities, to make our readers acquainted with some of the innumerable beauties of the sacred Scriptures. Truly happy shall we be, if

1 Ruth i. 16.

we have succeeded in exciting within them an admiration of that grand and sublime corner-stone which supports the church of Jesus Christ!

"If the Scripture," says St. Gregory the Great, "comprehends mysteries capable of perplexing the most enlightened understandings, it also contains simple truths fit for the nourishment of the humble and the illiterate; it carries externally wherewith to suckle infants, and in its most secret recesses wherewith to fill the most sublime geniuses with admiration; like a river whose current is so shallow in certain parts that a lamb may cross it, and deep enough in others for an elephant to swim there."

Y