conspicuously this is the case with Young, Thomson, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey. The fire-flashes of that torch which, when waved in the hand of genius, could so light up the Night Thoughts, was kindled at the New Testament; the easy magnificence and lavish ornament in the Seasons betrays the ardent admirer of the Eastern pastorals; the daring imagination which penned Cain, a Mystery, must have gazed—would it had been with a holier eye-upon the awful mysteries of the inspired muse; the calm, contemplative soul of Wordsworth looked out on Nature and read her hidden hieroglyphs with an eye which evidently had been trained by the perusal of the poetic symbolism in the Bible; the solemn, seer-like, though unstable genius of Coleridge, which could pour itself in such a glorious hymn before sunrise in the Valley of Chamouni, was steeped till, like a saturated sponge, it dripped again with the poetry of ancient seers; and while Southey's Thalaba has somewhat too much "the arabesque ornament of an Arabian tale," and his Curse of Kehama overabounds in Hindoo mythology, yet one can not fail to perceive that the poet's eye, which ranged Araby and Ind, had also gazed on Palestine, whose bards, ages before he essayed his epics, had with Eastern imagery woven their own nobler specimens of Eastern song.

With a pardonable pride we boast our national poetry that England has produced the greatest epoist and the greatest dramatist of any age, and

of modern times. confess, that if it

Scotland the finest lyrist and the finest song-writer But why not at the same time is not to the Bible but to the accident of birth that England is indebted for her Milton and her Shakspeare, and Scotland for her Campbell and her Burns, it is to the Bible we owe it that among much which is of the earth earthy, there are in these, our nation's greatest poets, sentiments more refined, thoughts more lofty, subjects of a higher range, scintillations of a purer spark, strains of a truer human sympathy, images of a sublimer illustration, and the gold of genius assayed in a more searching crucible, than are to be found. in the poets of pagan antiquity-the bards of those classic lands which were without the Bible?

CHAPTER IV.

THE BIBLE THE PROMOTER OF LITERATURE AND THE ARTS-MODERN PAINTING.

THE Bible might, indeed, be called the painter's book; for the picture galleries of Europe are hung with innumerable proofs that beyond all others it has furnished subjects for the pencil of the artist. The chef-d'œuvres of Raphael, of Angelo, of Titian, Correggio, Murillo, Leonardi, Rubens, Rembrandt, Poussin, indeed of all the great masters, are Biblical subjects. Though of diverse schools, and in different countries, with singular unanimity, as if drawn by one common impulse, our great painters have turned to the Scriptures for those subjects which were most to immortalize their own fames and ennoble their art.

Under the hand of genius the canvas has been made to express tenderness the most melting, and passion of the fiercest flame; sublimity in its grandest forms; the fortitude of martyrs; the love and constancy of woman; the heroic deeds of the most renowned in arms; the sweetest pictures of domestic life; the most appalling images of desolation and woe. But where did the great painters go for those incidents, those characters, and those groups,

which were to enable them to represent these by their imitative art? Did they go for them to Greek or Roman story, full as this is with the chivalry of war, with the fortitude of patriotism, with the triumphs of eloquence, the passion of love, the romance of adventure, and the grand vicissitudes of nations? No; not so often to these great histories, though the classic pens of a Herodotus and a Thucydides, of a Livy and a Tacitus, had memorialized them; but to the Hebrew historians did the painters go for their subjects. Only there could they find their high ideal of the sublime, the pathetic, the tender, or the terrible. Only there was realized their full conception of the warrior, the patriot, the prophet, and the saint. Rapt into the past of Jewish history, the Genius of Painting confessed herself supplied with themes worthy of her immortal labors.

Yet we find the
Scriptures, as if

As I shall have occasion to remark, ere the close of this chapter, the younger masters go less frequently to the Bible for their subjects than the elder masters were wont to do. former occasionally drawn to the the Genius of Painting in no age could altogether abstain from this great repertory of loftiest subjects. Among our English artists we have several fine specimens of sacred painting. I would instance "Christ Lamenting over Jerusalem," by Sir Charles Eastlake. In this charming work the touching sensibilities of the theme are brought out with a matchless power, pathos, and poetry. I would also

276 LITERARY AC

ture

TURAKI ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE BIBLE.

Friends," by Poole. Here religious art which is strik

Biblical subject can be made, when, as this artist incr original, affording proof how impressive a of conventionality. I would also instance the Scriplandscapes of Martin, which may be said to terrible of the Old Testament scenes. A competent form a class by themselves, and to realize the most critic has pronounced that "the supernatural splendor of the 'Handwriting on the Wall,' and 'Joshua

differently from the current tone

Commanding the Sun to stand Still,' can never pass
from the mind of any one with either imagination
or feeling."

There is a living painter, not the least bright luminary of the Northern Academy, who has given us the results of his pencil in a walk of art, which, if not strictly Biblical, yet is of that religious cast which is clearly traceable to the Bible. Mr. Harvey has illustrated, with the power of a master, the theological history of Scotland. Throwing his sympathies backward into the struggles for conscience' sake which were maintained by his countrymen in by-gone times, he has reared a pictorial monument to men who had received the still higher fame of martyrdom as the heroes of the Covenant. Drawn by a like sympathy to the corresponding struggles in England, he has memorialized the heroic deeds. and martyr endurances of the Puritans. Such noble pictures as "Covenanters Preaching," "Covenanters'