ruary occurred the calamitous earthquakes in Calabria and Sicily* by which solemn catastrophe the city of Messina was overthrown, and the greater portion of its population, consisting of thirty thousand souls, wholly destroyed. This awful event was preceded by an horizon full of black intense fog, the earthquake next followed, with two succesive shocks, and subsequently a whirlpool of fire

places at no great distance, nor so violent. Yesterday morning however, at seven o'clock, two fire-balls burst either on the steeple or close to it. William Andrews saw them meet at that point, and immediately after saw such a smoke issue from the apertures in the steeple, as soon rendered it invisible; the noise of the explosion surpassed all the noises I ever heard; you would have thought that a thousand sledge hammers were batter-issued from the earth, which completed the ing great stones to powder, all in the same instant. The weather is still as hot, and the air is full of vapor, as if there had been neither rain nor thunder all the summer.

entire destruction of the noble and great edifices that still remained. We refer the reader for the terrible details of this afflicting calamity to the narrative of Sir William There was once a periodical paper pub- Hamilton, which cannot be read without lished, called Mist's Journal: a name well alarm and terror. Nor can we omit the foladapted to the sheet before you. Misty how-lowing just and impressive moral from the ever as I am, I do not mean to be mystical, pen of Cowper. but to be understood, like an almanac-maker, according to the letter. As a poet nevertheless, I claim, if any wonderful event should follow, a right to apply all and every such post-prognostic to the purposes of the tragic

What then! were they the wicked above all,
And we the righteous, whose fast anchor'd isle
Mov'd not, while theirs was rock'd, like a ligh:

skiff.

The sport of every wave? No: none are clear,
And none than we more guilty. But, where all
Stand chargeable with guilt, and to the shafts
Of wrath obnoxious God may choose his mark;
May punish, if he please, the less to warn
If he spar'd not them,
The more malignant.
Tremble and be amaz'd at thine escape,
Far guiltier England, lest he spare not thee.
Tack, book ii.

It is worthy of being recorded that these singular appearances presented by the atmosphere and heavens, with accompanying thunder-storms, were prevalent in many parts of England. At Dover, the fog was of such long continuance, that the opposite shore could not be discerned for three weeks. In other places the storms of thunder and lightning were awful, and destructive both to life and property. But this phenomenon was not confined to England only; it extended to France, Italy, Germany, Hungary, Spain, and even to some parts of Africa. In Paris, the appearances were so portentous, and the alarm so considerable, that the great astronomer Lalande addressed a letter to one of the journals, in order to compose the public mind. We subjoin it in a note for the gratification of the reader, and as illustrating his * Cowper has selected this awful catastrophe for the views on the subject.* In the preceding Feb-exercise of his poetic powers. His mind seems to have been impregnated with the grandeur of the theme, which he has presented to the imagination of the reader with all the accuracy of historic detail. We quote the following extracts.

It is known to you that for some days past people have been incessantly inquiring what is the occasion of the thick dry fog which almost constantly covers the heavens? And, as this question is particularly put to astronomers, I think myself obliged to say a few words on the subject, more especially since a kind of terror be cens to spread in society. It is said by some, that the di-esters in Calabria were preceded by similar weather; and by others, that a dangerous comet reigns at present. In 17731 experienced how fast conjectures of this kind, which begin amongst the ignorant, even in the most enlightened ages, proceed from mouth to mouth, till they reach the best societies, and find their way even to the pubic prints. The multitude, therefore, may easily be *apposed to draw strange conclusions, when they see the str of a blood color, shed a melancholy light, and cause ametry heat.

**This, however, is nothing more than a very natural effert from a hot sun. after a long succession of heavy rain The first impression of heat has necessarily and Jenly rarefied a superabundance of watery particles with which the earth was deeply impregnated, and given them, as they rose, a dimness and rarefaction not usual t common fogs, "DE LA LANDE."

The danger to which men of philosophical minds seem

to be peculiarly exposed is the habit of accounting for the phenomena of nature too exclusively by the operation of mere secondary causes; while the supreme agency of a first Great Cause is too much overlooked. The universality of these appearances occurring at the same time in England, France, Italy, and so many other countries, awakens reflections of a more solemn cast, in a mind imbued with Christian principles. He who reads Professor Barruel's work, and the concurring testimony adduced by Robinson, as to the extent of infidelity and even atheism, gathering at that time in the different states of Europe, might, we think, see in these signs in the moon, and in the stars, and in the heavens, some intimations of impending judgments, which followed so shortly after; and evidences of the power and existence of that God, which many so impiously questioned and

defied.

"Alas for Sicily! rude fragments now

Lie scatter'd, where the shapely column stood.
Her palaces are dust. In all her streets
The voice of singing and the sprightly chord
Are silent.

The rocks fall headlong, and the valleys rise—
The sylvan scene

Migrates uplifted; and with all its soil
Alighting in far distant fields, finds out
A new possessor, and survives the change.
Ocean has caught the frenzy, and, upwrought
To an enormous and o'erbearing height,
Not by a mighty wind, but by that voice
Which winds and waves obey, invades the shore
Resistless. Never such a sudden flood,
Upridg'd so high, and sent on such a charge,
Possessed an inland scene. Where now the throng
That press'd the beach, and, hasty to depart,
Look'd to the sea for safety ?-They are gone,
Gone with the refluent wave into the deep-
A prince with half his people !"

Task, book ii.

S

TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON,

Olney, June 17, 1783.

My dear Friend,-Your letter reached Mr. - while Mr. was with him; whether it wrought any change in his opinion of that gentleman, as a preacher, I know not; but for my own part I give you full credit for the soundness and rectitude of yours. No man was ever scolded out of his sins. The heart, corrupt as it is, and because it is so, grows angry if it be not treated with some management and good manners, and scolds again. A surly mastiff will bear perhaps to be stroked, though he will grow even under that operation, but, if you touch him roughly, he will bite. There is no grace that the spirit of self can counterfeit with more success than a religious zeal. A man thinks he is fighting for Christ, and he is fighting for his own notions. He thinks that he is skilfully searching the hearts of others, when he is only gratifying the malignity of his own, and charitably supposes his hearers destitute of all grace, that he may shine the more in his own eyes by comparison. When he has performed this notable task, he wonders that they are not converted, "he has given it them soundly," and if they do not tremble and confess that God is in him of a truth, he gives them up as reprobate, incorrigible, and lost forever. But a man that loves me, if he sees me in an error, will pity me, and endeavor calmly to convince me of it, and persuade me to forsake it. If he has great and good news to tell me, he will not do it angrily, and in much heat and discomposure of spirit. It is not therefore easy to conceive on what ground a minister can justify a conduct which only proves that he does not understand his errand. The absurdity of it would certainly strike him, if he were not himself deluded.

A people will always love a minister, if a minister seems to love his people. The old maxim, Simile agit in simile, is in no case more exactly verified; therefore you were beloved at Olney, and, if you preached to the Chicksaws and Chactaws, would be equally beloved by them.

W. C.

unmoved by our reproof may perhaps yield to the persuasiveness of our appeal. We fully admit that it is divine grace alone that can subdue the power of sin in the soul; but in the whole economy of grace, as well as of Providence, there is always perceptible a wise adaptation of means to the end. Who is not impressed by the tenderness and earnest solicitations of St. Paul? Who can contemplate the Saviour weeping over Jerusalem, without emotions of the profoundest admiration? And who does not know that the spectacle of man's misery and guilt first suggested the great plan of redemption, and that the scheme of mercy which divine love devised in heaven dying love accomplished on earth?

TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.

Olney, June 19, 1783. My dear Friend,-The translation of your letters* into Dutch was news that pleased me much. I intended plain prose, but a rhyme obtruded itself, and I became poetical when I least expected it. When you wrote those letters, you did not dream that you were designed for an apostle to the Dutch. Yet, so it proves, and such among many others are the advantages we derive from the art of printing-an art in which indisputably man was instructed by the same great Teacher, who taught him to embroider for the service of the sanctuary, and which amounts almost to as great a blessing as the gift of tongues.

The summer is passing away, and hitherto has hardly been either seen or felt. Perpetual clouds intercept the influence of the sun, and for the most part there is an autumnal coldness in the weather, though we are almost upon the eve of the longest day.

We are well, and always mindful of you: be mindful of us, and assured that we love

Olney, July 27, 1783. My dear Friend.-You cannot have more Tenderness in a minister is a very impor-pleasure in receiving a letter from me than I tant qualification, and indispensable to his should find in writing it, were it not almost success. The duty of it is enjoined in an impossible in such a place to find a subject. apostolical precept, and the wisdom of it in- I live in a world abounding with incidents, culcated in another passage of scripture. upon which many grave and perhaps some "Speaking the truth in love." "He that profitable observations might be made; but, winneth souls is wise." We have often those incidents never reaching my unfortuthought that one reason why a larger portion nate ears, both the entertaining narrative, and of divine blessing fails to accompany the the reflection it might suggest, are to me anministrations of the sanctuary, is the want nihilated and lost. I look back to the past of more affectionate expostulation, more week and say, what did it produce? I ask earnest entreaty, and more tenderness and * Newton's "Cardiphonia," a work of great merit and sympathy in the preacher. The heart that is interest, and full of edification.

You

more than my real opinion will warrant, I
will tell you why. In your style I see no
affectation, in every line of theirs I see noth-
ing else. They disgust me always; Robert-
son with his pomp and his strut, and Gibbon
with his finical and French manners.
are as correct as they. You express your-
self with as much precision. Your words
are ranged with as much propriety, but you
do not set your periods to a tune. They dis-
cover a perpetual desire to exhibit themselves
to advantage, whereas your subject engrosses
you. They sing, and you say; which, as his-
tory is a thing to be said and not sung, is in
my judgment very much to your advantage.
A writer that despises their tricks, and is yet
neither inelegant nor inharmonious, proves
himself, by that single circumstance, a man
of superior judgment and ability to them
both. You have my reasons. I honor a
manly character, in which good sense and a
desire of doing good are the predominant
features-but affectation is an emetic.
W. C.

the same question of the week preceding,
and duly receive the same answer from both
-nothing! A situation like this, in which I
am as unknown to the world as I am igno-
rant of all that passes in it, in which I have
nothing to do but to think, would exactly suit
me, were my subject of meditation as agree-
able as my leisure is uninterrupted: my pas-
sion for retirement is not at all abated, after
so many years spent in the most sequestered
state, but rather increased. A circumstance
I should esteem wonderful to a degree not to
be accounted for, considering the condition of
my mind, did I not know that we think as we
are made to think, and of course approve and
preter as Providence, who appoints the bounds
of our habitation, chooses for us. Thus I
am both free and a prisoner at the same time.
The world is before me; I am not shut up
in the Bastile; there are no moats about my
castle, no locks upon my gates, of which I
have not the key-but an invisible, uncon-
trollable agency, a local attachment, an incli-
nation more forcible than I ever felt, even to
the place of my birth, serves me for prison-
walls, and for bounds which I cannot pass.
In former years I have known sorrow, and
before I had ever tasted of spiritual trouble.
The effect was an abhorrence of the scene in
which I had suffered so much, and a weari-lections to the mind?
ness of those objects which I had so long
looked at with an eye of despondency and
dejection. But it is otherwise with me now.
The same cause subsisting, and in a much
more powerful degree, fails to produce its
natural effect. The very stones in the gar-
den-walls are my intimate acquaintance. I
should miss almost the minutest object, and
be disagreeably affected by its removal, and
am persuaded that, were it possible I could
leave this incommodious nook for a twelve-
month, I should return to it again with rap-
ture, and be transported with the sight of ob-
jects, which to all the world beside would be
at least indifferent; some of them, perhaps,
such as the ragged thatch and the tottering
walls of the neighboring cottages, disgusting.
But so it is, and it is so, because here is to be
my abode, and because such is the appoint-
ment of Him that placed me in it.

Iste terrarum mihi præter omnes
Angulus ridet.

It is impossible to read the former part of the preceding letter without emotion. Who has not felt the force of local associations, and their power of presenting affecting recol

"I could not bear," says Pope, in one of his letters, "to have even an old post removed out of the way with which my eyes had been familiar from my youth."

Among the Swiss, the force of association is so strong, that it is known by the appellation of the "maladie du pays;" and it is recorded that on hearing one of their national airs in a foreign land, so overpowering was the effect that, though engaged in warfare at the time, they threw down their arms and returned to their own country. The emotions awakened by some of the Swiss airs, such as the " Rantz des Vaches," and the affecting pathos of "La Suissesse au bord du lac," when heard on their native lakes, are always remembered by the traveller with delight. The feelings of a still higher kind connected with local associations are expressed with so much grace and eloquence in Dr. Johnson's celebrated allusion to this subject, that we close our remarks by inserting the pas sage,

"We were now treading that illustrious island, which was once the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and

It is the place of all the world I love the most, not for any happiness it affords me, but because here I can be miserable with most convenience to myself, and with the least dis-roving barbarians derived the benefits of

turbance to others.

You wonder, and (I dare say) unfeignedly, because you do not think yourself entitled to such praise, that I prefer your style, as an historian, to that of the two most renowned writers of history the present day has seen. That you may not suspect me of having said

knowledge and the blessings of religion. To abstract the mind from all local emotion would be impossible, if it were endeavored, and would be foolish if it were possible. Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses, whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future, predominate over the

present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me and far from my friends be such frigid philosophy, as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. That man is little to be envied, whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona."*

far more touching and pathetic, than the tenderest strokes of either.

my father, who succeeded well in it himself, and who lived at a time when the best pieces in that way were produced. What can be prettier than Gay's ballad, or rather Swift's, Arbuthnot's, Pope's, and Gay's, in the What do ye call it "Twas when the seas were roaring." I have been well informed that they all contributed, and that the most celebrated association of clever fellows this country ever saw, did not think it beneath them to unite their strength and abilities in the composition of a song. The success, howTO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. ever, answered their wishes. The ballads Olney, Aug. 4, 1783. that Bourne has translated, beautiful in themMy dear William,-I feel myself sensibly selves, are still more beautiful in his version obliged by the interest you take in the suc- of them, infinitely surpassing in my judg cess of my productions. Your feelings upon ment all that Ovid or Tibullus have left bethe subject are such as I should have my-hind them. They are quite as elegant, and self, had I an opportunity of calling Johnson aside to make the inquiry you propose. But I am pretty well prepared for the worst, and so long as I have the opinion of a few capable judges in my favor, and am thereby convinced that I have neither disgraced myself nor my subject, shall not feel myself disposed to any extreme anxiety about the sale. To aim, with success, at the spiritual good of mankind, and to become popular by writing on scriptural subjects, were an unreasonable ambition, even for a poet to entertain in days like these. Verse may have many charms, but has none powerful enough to conquer the aversion of a dissipated age to such instruction. Ask the question therefore boldly, and be not mortified, even though he should shake his head, and drop his chin; for it is no more than we have reason to expect. We will lay the fault upon the vice of the times, and we will acquit the poet.

I am glad you were pleased with my Latin ode, and indeed with my English dirge as much as I was myself. The tune laid me under a disadvantage, obliging me to write in Alexandrines; which, I suppose, would suit no ear but a French one; neither did I intend anything more than that the subject and the words should be sufficiently accommodated to the music. The ballad is a species of poetry, I believe, peculiar to this country, equally adapted to the drollest and the most tragical subjects. Simplicity and ease are its proper characteristics. Our forefathers excelled in it; but we moderns have lost the art. It is observed, that we have few good English odes. But, to make amends, we have many excellent ballads, not inferior, perhaps, in true poetical merit to some of the very best odes that the Greek or Latin languages have to boast of. It is a sort of composition I was ever fond of, and, if graver matters had not called me another way, should have addicted myself to it more than to any other. I inherit a taste for it from

* See his journey to the Western Islands.

So much for ballads and ballad-writers."A worthy subject," you will say, "for a man whose head might be filled with better things;"-and it is filled with better things, but to so ill a purpose, that I thrust into it all manner of topics that may prove more amusing; as, for instance, I have two goldfinches, which in the summer occupy the greenhouse. A few days since, being employed in cleaning out their cages, I placed that which I had in hand upon the table, while the other hung against the wall: the windows and the doors stood wide open. I went to fill the fountain at the pump, and, on my return, was not a little surprised to find a goldfinch sitting on the top of the cage I had been cleaning, and singing to and kissing the goldfinch within. I approached him, and he discovered no fear; still nearer, and he discovered none. I advanced my hand towards him, and he took no notice of it. I seized him, and supposed I had caught a new bird, but, casting my eye upon the other cage, perceived my mistake. Its inhabitant, during my absence, had contrived to find an opening, where the wire had been a little bent, and made no other use of the escape it afforded him than to salute his friend, and to converse with him more intimately than he had done before. I returned him to his proper mansion, but in vain. In less than a minute, he had thrust his little person through the aperture again, and again perched upon his neighbor's cage, kissing him, as at the first, and singing, as if transported with the fortunate adventure. I could not but respect such friendship, as for the sake of its gratification, had twice declined an opportunity to be free, and consenting to their union, resolved that for the future one cage should hold them both. I am glad of such incidents. For at a pinch, and when I Leed entertainment, the versification of them erves to divert me.