This term

a fancy and style far more beautiful than any prose writer before his time, and perhaps since. It has been called "unmeasured poetry." The Edinburgh Review and Coleridge (critics wide apart) have joined in pronouncing his writings more truly poetic than most of the odes and epics that have been produced in Europe since his day. And Hazlitt (surest critic of all) quotes a fine passage from Beaumont, which is apparently a translation of Taylor's prose into verse, and made, too, merely by occasional transposition of the words from the order in which they originally stood. Taylor is, therefore, confessedly a master of poetical prose. is sometimes used by way of dubious praise, since most writing of the kind is a wretched farrago of such tinsel and faded ornament as would disgrace Rag Fair. Taylor's composition is of quite a different grain. His style is naturally poetic, from the character of his mind; he had that poetic sensibility of feeling that saw beauty and deep meaning in everything. His imagination colored the commonest object on which it lighted, as the bow of promise throws its tints over all creation; through this, as a veil, every object appeared bright and blooming, like the flowers of spring, or dark and terrible, like the thunder-cloud of summer. Its general hue was mild and gentle; he had a more genial feeling for beauty than for grandeur, though his awful description of the Last Judgment is stamped with the sublime force of Michael Angelo, or rather, like Rembrandt's shadows, terrible with excess of gloom. In this grand picture are collected all the images of terror and dismay, fused into a powerful whole by his so potent art. It is first a solemn anthem--a version of the monkish canticle : then you hear (in imagination) the deep bass note of the last thunder that shall ever peal through the sky. You are almost blinded by the lightenings that gleam in his style.

Presently, a horrid shriek of despair (the accumulated wailing of millions of evil spirits) rises on the affrighted ear. And anon, the trumpet with a silver sound is blown several times, and all is still. With what a subtle power this master plays on the conscience of his readers! He makes the boldest tremble: he magnifies, he reiterates, until the best of men shall think himself a fellow of the vilest!

Such, however, is not a scene congenial to Taylor's temper. In his description he most affects the tender and pathetic notes of humanity. He plays admirably on every chord of passion, but on some much oftener and more artfully than on others. He is both " a son of thunder and a son of consolation." With all his powers of terrifying the soul, he most loves to entreat its gratitude to God and the practice of religion. He takes delight in painting the innocence of childhood, the purity of virgins, the sacred mystery of marriage, the gentle voice of pity, the mercy of our Father, the love of his Son.

His landscape is oftener quiet and in repose, than savage or deserted. His favorite breezes are rather zephyrs, than

The wind Euroclydon-

The storm wind.

His florid genius, like his sweet disposition, delighted in heavenly lays, and doubtless his piety was not a little the offspring of his temperament and genius.

Taylor, in his pictures, further resembled Spenser in the prolixity of his style-dwelling on minute points and carefully finishing every trait. He had none of Milton's concise force, that painted a picture by an epithet or a line. If Taylor had the building of Pandemonium, he would have occupied six times the space Milton took for its construction.

Milton made it to "rise like an exhalation;" Taylor would have expanded the line into a page, where each member of the sentence would have formed a series of steps leading from the foundation to the dome of the Infernal Hall.

It may be proper here to notice a peculiarity of Taylor's illustrations-they are almost always for ornament; he does not employ a simile to clench his argument; he does not make his fancy logical; but describes and paints for the pleasure of the picture. His similes, so delightful in the reading, must have been intolerably long for delivery. Public speaking requires greater compactness of mind than Taylor possessed, and yet we hear of his wonderful success, which was not slightly heightened by a beautiful person, a face "like an angel," and an elocution that ravished all hearers with its swelling cadences and sweet intonations.

Taylor, in his frequent and curious quotations, is almost a Burton. A reason for this deference to foreign testimony may be gathered from the fact of the respect for authority cherished by the early divines. Just loosed from the Church of Rome, it was but natural they should cling to the first vouchers of the truth, the primitive defenders of the faith. Modern free-thinking and the fashionable doctrine of independency of opinion had not yet made those morning stars of the church to rely too completely on their own internal light-they rather reflected and gave back the light from above.

X.

CHURCH MUSIC.

"I think he hath not a mind well-tempered, whose zeal is not inflamed by a heavenly anthem."-Owen Feltham.

THERE is no music like church music, nor any songs of equal excellence with the songs of Zion. Light, airy strains delight the ear and enervate the sense, but reach not the soul; dull, mournful tones induce melancholy and sadness; but the songs of praise and thanksgiving, of exultant hope and religious joy, of repentance and gratitude, touch the heart more nearly, affect the soul in her inmost recesses, and descend into the very depths of a troubled and contrite spirit. The hopeful Christian, too, is cheered by devout music, breathing peace and rest. And he must be a most indifferent auditor who can listen, unmoved, to any species of church music, of whatever sect, or to whatever degree of refinement it attains. For my own part, I love all, from the simplest Methodist hymn to the richest cathedral vespers of the Roman Catholic Church and I believe there is a species of pure, devotional feeling that cannot fitly be told in language, nor manifested in any other way, that is exhibited in music. Prayer and preaching have their fit place, and are of essential importance in divine worship; but praise must not be absent. Psalmody is prayer set to music; and the majestic anthem is no less than a more elevated form of address to the Almighty Father. External harmony is but the exponent of a finer internal sense of order and design; and that, we are taught, is "Heaven's first law." Without organ music, and the vocal accompaniment of a choir, the services of the church. appear shorn of a large portion of their dignity and beauty,

and wanting in an important feature. This feeling we are happy to share with the master spirits of our church, the testimonials of some of whom, to the efficacy and fascination of this Christian Art, we shall presently enumerate.

We call this a Christian Art, and such it certainly is. In the middle age, and just before the revival of learning, when the modern arts first took their rise and origin, all of the arts at present styled the fine arts, were consecrated wholly to the service of the Church. The architecture of that period was the Gothic, especially adapted to churches, though afterwards employed in other buildings, the castellated mansion of the noble, and the palace of the king. The first modern paintings were of our Saviour, and the Virgin Mary, and the Apostles, and the scenes and incidents of the Old and New Testaments. The music was choral and religious; the orisons of the monk, the matins of the friar, the mass and vespers of the chapel. The eloquence was purely and almost restrictedly Episcopal, or Missionary. Even the Drama had its first beginning in the representation of Mysteries and Moralities. And to bring down the illustrations to our own day, we find Christianity the prominent symbol of the Arts; or rather the Arts, the peculiar ministers of Religion. Thus we still see no nobler edifices than those consecrated to the worship of the true God; St. Peter's, St. Paul's, Notre Dame, the Madelaine, York Minster, and the noble churches. of Germany. The finest paintings of Raphael, of Guido, of Corregio, of Titian, of Murillo, of Rubens, of Rembrandt, and of Leonardo di Vinci, are from Scripture subjects, and themes sacred to the Christian. Sacred music, in the hands of Handel, Mozart, and Beethoven, is beyond all other music; and it should be our peculiar pride, that much of our noble church music came fresh from the glowing hand and