And half reluctantly the minstrel pair,
Seated amidst the gay alluring train,

Were borne triumphant to the Isle of
Love."

The Fortunate Youth sit down to a sumptuous banquet, and feast

"On grateful viands, fitted to increase At once, and gratify, the appetite With rich enjoyment, and supply the frame With rich nutrition; then the pilgrim guests

Quaff the brisk nectar, sparkling in gay cups Of polished jacinth, angel workmanship, And by attendant angels served around."

Isradell, "sweet angel of the lyre," sweeps the gold strings, and sings a song of his own composition, in praise of "lovely woman." The whole party, a little elevated, repair to the sward, and get up a country dance - cross hands, down the middle, boulangez, set corners, and reel-to antediluvian tunes, corresponding to our Honeymoon and the Devil among the Tailors.

"The joyous dance upon the flowery sward, In evening's luscious hour, succeeded

And gave to jocund frolic all their souls. The angels also mingled in the scene Of joyance, with the inspirers of their love:

And heavenly natures from terrestrial sports, Which woman's loveliness had dignified, Drew pleasure; for in every gesture, they

Beheld new fascination, and adored."

The minstrels remain in the Isle of Love precisely one week. We hear little of Irad, but of Japhet and Ulsannah perhaps rather more than enough. The Doctor, at the commencement of Book V., exclaims

"What man e'er felt life's current in his veins,

And did not feel the power of woman's charms?

Ah! no, though virtue's ardent votary,
And resolute to keep in duty's path,
Hath not been tempted by the blandish-

ments

Of smiling beauty into pleasure's arms, Though conscience blamed and piety forbade."

So much the more merit in Japhet's rejection of the proffered love of Ulsannah. " By every token fondness could devise, the beauteous queen betrayed the new-born flame," and we fear to follow the impassioned Doctor

in his enumeration of all her allure

ments. Japhet was far from insensible to the lavish display of her charms. "But piety, habitual in his heart, Preserved true reverence for the will of Heaven,

And made the consciousness of doing
right
More dear to him than all the enrapturing
Of love and beauty in that blessed isle."

charms

The Queen, being urgent, the Prince resolves to be off-and com

municates to her his mission to Shalmazar's court.

"A sudden faintness o'er Ulsannah came; It pass'd; but left her all confused and

grieved

To find the man she loved, already tired

Of her endearments, and so little moved By all her lavished favours on him heaped, In the fond hope of gaining love for love.'

But the moment she is told by Japhet that he is a "heaven-commissioned" messenger, she consents to his departure; for she is represented as a most pious lady, and though her heart is breaking, she exclaims

"Oh! let it, rather than a wilful crime I should commit against the King of hea

ven."

All this time the angel Orpheal either keeps in the back-ground, or, if in attendance, winks at the amournay, he encourages it, and appears delighted that his dear Ulsannah, whose slave he is, should have found a man so entirely to her liking-young, fresh, warm, human flesh and blood, so superior in her fancy to a seraph's! He is almost as unhappy as his wife, at the thought of Japhet leaving the Isle of Love; and, since the Flood, we venture to say, there has been no such accommodating husband. For the seraph is uxorious in the extremeand would only be too happy to assist the interesting stranger to partake in his marital rights. We cannot doubt that there is a profound moral in all this; for Dr M'Henry is a most pious poet, and, "with respect to the incidents, characters, sentiments, and scenery of this poem," says, "that he has endeavoured to preserve them in due consistency, not only with themselves,

but with the ideas generally entertained in Christendom of the rich regions and the momentous period to which they relate."

The " pilgrim minstrels," led by Orpheal, at the command of the chaste and pious Ulsannah, from the Zarian Isle, traverse an immense waste, ne'er trod before by human foot, till they come to the margin of a lake full of breakers and whirlpools, unsailed as yet by "bark of human fabric." How are they to get across? The angel wrenches a towering cedar from its site, and flings it into the foaming flood. The trunk expands into a spa

cious hull-the root becomes the stern, "where moves the guiding rudder" -the top the sharpened prow-the firmer branches the masts-the pliant twigs the ropes and cordage - the gay garniture of rustling leaves the sails. It becomes a noble ship-the p-the three embark-Orpheal takes the tiller,

and, after a pleasant voyage of a few minutes' duration, her Majesty's ship the Cedar, comes to anchor in an opposite bay.

"Upon a flowery bank, beneath the shade Of a fair spreading tree, the pilgrims rest, And take refreshment, by the angel served, Choice and abundant."

The Doctor attends carefully to their dietetics on all their journeys; and we happen to be aware, though he does not mention it, that the pilgrims had in their pockets each a box of pills and a paper of aperient powders, besides a supply-condensed into cakes of the size of a crown-piece-of portable soup. After lunch, Orpheal discourses at large

"On various topics to instruct their minds, And gratify their high desire express'd,

For information on mysterious things. Japhet cross-questions him, more particularly on the loves of the angels, and his confessions are explicit and minute. Orpheal admits the guilt of connexion with woman, and that the loss of Heaven is dreadful to the thoughts of those who once inherited

its bliss.

"To me 'twere sorrow not to be appeased, But that I hope by penitence, and proof

Of virtue, to regain an entrance there." He then returns his most grateful

thanks to Japhet for his visit, and assures him that it has served his poor Angelship much-by affording him proof of the firmness, even while most he feared the feebleness, of his own virtue.

"I knew Ulsannah loved thee, yet my breast Repelled the approach of every jealous thought, Nor aught but kindness for a rival felt, Who had deprived me of espoused love. Nor was Ulsannah's love for thee a crime:

Accordant with creation's law, and More genial than an angel could awake. For male and female God had made

Her pious struggle to obey its will.
To me it was, in that same hour, reveal'd
That we were both accepted, and that
death

Would soon release her from this earthly thrall,

When, with her spirit, I should re-ascend And find admission to my native heaven." Comment would be thrown away on such a revelation as this yet we cannot but refer, in a single word, to Orpheal's delicate, judicious, and just compliment to Ulsannah's chastity

his victorious vindication of her preference and passion for a human being, and his profound reflections on the mutual influence and reaction of sex on sex-which must have had all the

charm of novelty to Japhet-innocent, as he was, as a a sucking-dove.

a

Japhet, however, had remarked singular deficiency in the domestic life of the tenants of the Isle of Love, and summons up courage to say to Orpheal

"Thy question I will answer," Orpheal said,

"All, freely-for it is a theme I love." The answer is unambiguous, but verbose, and may be thus abridged, without insertion of the more affecting sentiments :-"We angels were guiltless of all offence, except in loving that dear sex which God created for the bless of man." Exile from heaven, and "servitude to woman's wish on earth," atoned for that offence. As for "those fair ones," they sinned not in joining their fate with ours"ours was the fall, the exaltation theirs." Our offspring are numerous, and sinless; for neither the penalty of their sins, nor their mother's stain of earth applies to them: therefore, the great Sire of all

"Still at their birth, ere from their mother's breast

They draw pollution, calls them to himself."

The Doctor informed us, in his Preface, that "those very records, from the sacred nature of their character, increased the difficulty ('of bringing before the public the affairs of our world, concerning which so few records remain'), by obliging the details to be in strict conformity with their testimony; and, consequently, limiting the creations of fancy to a rigid consistency with the particulars of Scripture history."

We cannot say that this scriptural explanation is as satisfactory to us as it would seem to have been to Japhet. Orpheal, that is, Dr James M'Henry, does not make out a good case for either angel or Zarie; and there is something here peculiarly revolting in his theology.

The angels, in our opinion, were exceedingly culpable "in loving that dear sex which God created for the bliss of man." What right, pray, had they to come sailing down the sky like so many vultures, and to carry off honest men's daughters, and honest men's sweethearts at that rate, thereby necessitating swarms of old bachelors? We boldly declare, that exile from heaven was but a secondary punishment for a primary crime-and that they should have been all sent to hell. Servitude to woman's will on earth was exactly what they desired; and though Orpheal says he sorrowed for the loss of celestial bliss, we say he

was a thousand times happier than he deserved to be, eating off crystal, and drinking out of gold, and voyaging in a balloon-pic-nic-ing by sunlight in groves, and caterwauling by moonlight on roofs with that pretty puss Ulsannah.

On "the daughters of men" who eloped with angels and became Zaries, nobody who knows us would deem us capable of being ungentlemanly severe; but we entreat the Doctor to reconsider his judgment acquitting them of all sin in absconding for ever, without notice, from the houses of their parents, and entering upon that very questionable and quis-quis kind of life. It would have been most ungrateful and far worse, most ungallant in Orpheal to have so much as hinted to Japhet his real opinion of the fair run-a-ways; but it was the duty of the Doctor to put into a parenthesis a saving clause to that effect for sake of fathers of families in the World after the Flood. For what Postdiluvian male creature does not seem an angel in the eyes of some one woman or another? And did not

the late Mr Colquhoun calculate the number of Zaries in a single city of ours at fifty thousand ?

Orpheal, with all his ingenuity, fails to make out, that neither the frailty of their sires, nor the earthly stain of their mothers, applies to the piccaninnies-the issue of those peccadilloes -because they were still withdrawn "ere from their mother's breast they drew pollution." Orpheal might have spared himself and others the pain of that expression. "Pollution" is a strong word-and comes with a bad grace from his lips. But, alas! for Ulsannah! For were they not bone of her bone, flesh of her flesh, and blood of her blood? Dismal, indeed, must have been the accouchements in the Isle of Love! No preparation of baby-linen! No experimental creaking of cradle! No gossip! No ta! ta! ta! No little footsteps lightly printing the ground! Phaugh! a breeding-place to supply heaven with halfand-half cherubs! And shuddered not the Doctor to think how the milkfever must have been perpetually raging there-in every other house, a Zarie mother, furious as a tigress, robbed of her cubs and in her brain's distraction giving vent to the most horrid curses?

wo,

For thy loved presence to assuage her While her grieved soul continues chain'd to earth; And when released it takes its flight to heaven,

To attend it there, and usher it to bliss." [Loud cries of oh, oh, oh!]

Continuing their journey, the pilgrims come within view of the walls of Paradise, the splendour of which, and the flaming weapons of the angelic guards that encircle the sacred place, overpower their vision, and they are unable to proceed until relieved by an unfallen angel, who conducts them in safety to the dominion of Shalmazar.

"The angel ceased, and from a figtree near,

He pluck'd two branches, bright in leafy bloom, And one to each presented. As they caught

The verdant bough, the coalescing leaves Spread forth, uniting into one, and form'd For each, a veil compact and large, which screen'd

Their vision from the fervid light pour'd forth By the bright guards and watch of Para

dise."

The same angel gives to Japhet two potent presents-a phial containing a liquor drawn from the tree of knowledge, with which he is enjoined every morning to rub his eyes, and "all that day to thee the gift of seeing spirits shall belong;" and a "weapon in a wand" from the tree of life, able "to bend to fear and feebleness the strongest fiends that from perdition's dungeons e'er broke loose."

At gloaming, the pilgrims come among the mountains, to the house of one Jotham, an extensive sheep-farmer, and worthy man, but an idolater; and they are grieved to see the whole family kneel before an image of Baal, the patron god of the Cainites. Jotham's pretty daughter, Isamell, in the middle of worship suddenly screams out, and with frantic gestures seems to be frightened with some dread shadow, till she swoons away on the floor. On coming to herself again, she tells her father that a horrid spirit had been addressing her with seducing words, and attempting to force her to his loathsome arms, and beseeches him to abjure idolatry, and worship the only living and true God. Japhet, "touched with holy zeal," enforces his prayer, bids Jotham dismiss all fears of Shalmazar, who has no power to harm his soul; and forthwith

" With holy fervour Jotham's spirit glow'd;

The images he cast into the flames,

And cleansed his house of all idolatry."

"The tuneful Irad, with poetic zeal," celebrates the heroic deed with lyre and song-fair Isamell joins in with "her melodious voice :

"And, as he gazed upon her youthful charms,

Within his heart a pulse of fondness beat,

Which sent a sweet sensation through his frame,

Dearer than aught he e'er had felt before."

In a few days he proposes, and is accepted, affording another example

of those instant unions, with which

this poem abounds, of love and religion springing up together from the reciprocating fountains that well up One serene evening, when straying through the dewy shades, Isamell is suddenly torn from Irad's arms by "some foul demon," who hurries her with frightful rapidity along the vale. To Irad's eyes the demon is invisible, and Isamell must have presented a singular spectacle, flung across unseen shoulders, and transported, without any apparent prop, through the air. But

in every innocent heart.

Japhet, who was walking "in a neighbouring grove in holy meditation," darts forth at her screams, and having that morning used the phial, sees a giant fiend"drag by the waist the struggling fair along." Fortunately, too, he has our Crutch-his wand we mean, in his fist-and gives chase to the demon. Both are in prime condition— bang-up to the mark. Japhet, indeed, may be said to have been in regular running training for some monthshis wind is sound as a roach-Fugy's touched by the foul air of his subterranean crib-and the odds at starting are three to one on Methuselah's great-grandson. They were, in truth, the Bank of England to a China orange; for Isamell probably rode some nine-stone, and jockeyed the demon, so as to make it a sure thing that he should lose the race.

"The fiend beheld the dreaded wand, and wing'd

His flight o'er hills and dales with force,

fear-driven,

Firm-bearing in his grasp his beauteous prize,

But, aided by an impulse from above, Japhet gain'd on him in the eager chase. A few bounds more upon the sounding plain,

And the dread wand the demon would have fix'd

A powerless statue on the spot. Just then He reach'd a horrid precipice, and plun

ged

Into a gulf of awful depth, and dark
With pitchy vapours, rolling like a sea
Of clammy smoke, where sulphurous
sparkles gleam'd

To show more horribly the dismal place."

This pit, we presume, was not always open-only on occasions of emergency, like the present; but in perusing this poem the reader soon learns the folly of trepidation on account of any impending calamitous event, for an effectual prevention or remedy is sure to be provided for every evil, and Japhet, either from his own skill or angelic aid, always holds the game in his own hand. Accordingly,

"The prince a moment paused on the dread brink,

Call'd on his God for aid, and fearless leap'd

Into the asphaltic pit."

The Crutch-beg pardon again-the wand, that instant, spread out "living leaves immense, resembling eagles'