of the streets, and in the stagnation of ordinary business, the deep interest which at that moment was possessing the heart of man,-if all at once he should hear the deathlike stillness broken up by the sound of wheels rattling away from the scene, and making known that the transitory vision was dissolved, he will be aware that at no moment was his sense of the complete suspension and pause in ordinary human concerns so full and affecting, as at that moment when the suspension ceases and the goings-on of human life are suddenly resumed. 6. All action in any direction is best expounded, measured, and made apprehensible by reaction. Now apply this to the case in Macbeth. Here, as I have said, the retiring of the human heart and the entrance of the fiendish heart was to be expressed and made sensible. Another world has stepped in, and the murderers are taken out of the region of human things, human purposes, human desires. They are transfigured: Lady Macbeth is "unsexed;" Macbeth has forgot that he was born of woman: both are conformed to the image of devils; and the world of devils is suddenly revealed. But how shall this be conveyed and made palpable? 7. In order that a new world may step in, this world must for a time disappear. The murderers and the murder must be insulated-cut off by an immeasurable gulf from the ordinary tide and succession of human affairs-locked up and sequestered in some deep recess'; we must be made sensible that the world of ordinary life is suddenly arrested-laid asleep-tranced-racked into a dread armistice: time must be annihilated; relation to things without abolished; and all must pass self-withdrawn into a deep syncope' and suspension of earthly passion. Hence it is, that when the deed is done, when the work of darkness is perfect, then the world of darkness passes away like a pageantry in the clouds: the knocking at the gate is heard, and it makes known audibly that the reäction has commenced: the human has made its reflux upon the fiendish; the pulses of life are beginning to beat again, and the reëstablishment of the goingson of the world in which we live, first makes us profoundly sensible of the awful parenthesis that had suspended them. 1 Syncope, (sing' ko pe), a fainting or swooning; a diminution, decrease, or interruption of the motion of the heart, and of respiration, accompanied with a suspension of the action of the brain, and a temporary loss of sensation, volition, and other faculties. 8. O mighty poet! Thy works are not as those of other men, simply and merely great works of art, but are also like the phenomena of nature-like the sun and the sea, the stars and the flowers, like frost and snow, rain and dew, hail-storm and thunder,—which are to be studied with entire submission of our own faculties, and in the perfect faith that in them there can be no too much or too little, nothing useless or inert; but that, the further we press in our discoveries, the mōre we shall see proofs of design and self-supporting arrangement where the careless eye had seen nothing but accident. DE QUINCEY. SECTION XXXIX. I. 192. MESSIAH. E nymphs of Solyma!' begin the song YE To heavenly themes sublimer strains belong. 1 Sŏly ma, another name for Jerusalem. called, because they frequented Mt. Helicon and the fountain Aganippe, 'Pin' dus, a lofty range of moun- which were in Aonia, one of the Peace o'er the world her olive wand extend, And white-robed Innocence from heaven descend. 4. Swift fly the years, and rise the expected morn! purge 6. The Saviour comes! by ancient bards foretōld— 7. As the good shepherd tends his fleecy care, Feeds from His hand, and in His bosom warms: 8. No more shall nation against nation rise, Sees lilies spring, and sudden verdure rise; To leafless shrubs the flowery palms succeed, 10. The lambs with wolves shall graze the verdant mead, The crested basilisk and speckled snake- See thy bright altars thronged with prostrate kings, And heaped with products of Sabean' springs! 'Sa bē' an, pertaining to Saba, in Arabia, celebrated for producing aromatic planta For Thee Idūme's' spicy forests blow, 12. No more the rising sun shall gild the morn, One tide of glory, one unclouded blaze, The seas shall waste, the skies in smoke decay, Thy realm for ever lasts, thy own MESSIAH reigns! POPE. II. 193. OMNIPRESENCE AND OMNISCIENCE OF GOD. WAS yesterday about sunset walking in the open fields, until the night insensibly fell upon me. I at first ămused myself with all the richness and variety of colors which appeared in the western parts of heaven: in proportion as they faded away and went out, several stars and planets appeared, one after another, until the whōle firmament was in a glow. The blueness of the ether was exceedingly heightened and enlivened by the season of the year, and by the rays of all those luminaries that passed through it. The galaxy appeared in its most beautiful white. To complete the scene, the full moon rose at length in that clouded majesty which Milton takes notice of, and opened to the eye a new picture of nature, which was mōre finely shaded and disposed among softer lights than that which the sun had before discovered to us. 'I du' me, or Id u'mæ a, an ancient country of Western Asia, comprising the mountainous tract on the east side of the great valleys of ElGhor and El-Arabah, and west and southwest of the Dead Sea, with a portion of Arabia. 2 Ophir, an ancient country mentioned in the Scriptures, and renown 4 ed from the earliest times for its gold. Some suppose it to be the same as the modern Sofala; and others conjecture it was situated in the East Indies. 3 Cyn' thi a, the moon, a name given to Diana, derived from Mount Cynthus, her birthplace. 'Gǎl'ax y, the Milky Way. |