and

would insure your eager attention. If I proceeded to say, "The portions already decyphered, contain notices of habits, manners, individuals, and even nations, the very name and remembrance of which are extinct also inform us of events antecedent to the date of any other known records ;-they supply several points in history and chronology, which the learned have vainly sought elsewhere; and enable us to disprove a thousand fables which we must otherwise have been content to receive as truth; added to which, they exhibit specimens of the higher branches of composition, unparalleled in any other productions, ancient or modern; and some monarch's library, or some national museum, is destined to become the sole possessor of this literary treasure; "-at this point of my address, you would certainly begin to lament the impossibility of your ever obtaining a glimpse of these inestimable writings; you would sigh to be rich and learned, that before you died. you might travel to examine this world's wonder. But if I were to say instead, "These writings are all that I have represented, only with us they are so cheap and common, that

you, and I, and every one we know, possess a copy of them," you would interrupt me, and reply with a look and tone of disappoint"You mean the BIBLE!" Yes, my

I

ment, dear I do mean the Bible; and it is no slight proof of the perverseness of our nature, that we so little study and so lightly regard, in the sacred volume, the very beauties which, when discovered in the works of our fellowmortals, we reverence even to idolatry. speak now of the Bible as a book; and I speak of it as such, to you a young person. Tell me then, why the beautiful composition therein contained, should excite less interest, merely from its connection with pure and solemn truth? Why easiness of access, and facility of comprehension, should derogate from literary merit? Why figures, and epithets, and harmony of language,—why narrative, and poetry, and history, and allegory, should delight you less than similar, or perhaps as regards the structure, the self-same things elsewhere? I am not afraid to speak decidedly, because in another letter I shall faithfully press upon you the devotional study of the Bible; that, for which it was primarily

given; that, in fact, for which it was given at all. I will say then the intellectual study of the Bible is also most important, and to young persons enthusiastic in their estimation of talent, absolutely indispensable; as affording a salutary check to high-minded opinions of human intellect, by showing that "wherein men have dealt proudly, God is above them." Have they poured forth strains, which at the close of tens of centuries, are fresh and vigorous as the sun that rose this morning in his strength, or the dews that last night refreshed the flowers? Such has HE inspired—

"The lasting Iliads have not lived so long."

Have they opened the fountain of the heart, unlocked the source of tears, or called forth

* Waller, in his second canto "On Divine Poesy," has the following lines on the song of Deborah.

"Heaven to the pious did this art reveal,
And from their store succeeding poets steal;
Homer's Scamander for the Trojans fought,
And, swelled so high, by her old Kishon taught;
The host of heaven, his Phoebus and his Mars,
He arms, instructed by her fighting stars.
Truth she relates in a sublimer strain,

Than all the tales the boldest Greeks could feign;
For what she sung that spirit did indite,
Which gave her courage and success in fight."

So

feelings that lie yet deeper? Have they elevated the imagination, enriched the understanding, strengthened the judgment? Have they portrayed heroism, alike in the power of valor, and the tenderness of affection? Have they illustrated character, developed the springs of action, revealed to man the little world within his bosom? has HE. But comparison implies equality, and how much more has HE done! In some of the most admired human compositions, these graces of style and structure have formed the ultimate and only triumph; they have been accounted sufficient, though but adjuncts to fiction and imposture. It is not so with the Scriptures. Literary enjoyment is there combined with a sense of safety; with a confidence, that intellectually, no less than religiously, we are not following "cunningly devised fables;" that the heroes actually existed; that the saints were indeed what they are described; that the sages spoke the wisdom recorded as their words; that even the oriental hyperboles are rather the ornaments than the exaggerations of truth.

This imparts peculiar solemnity to the

imaginative parts of the Bible, and reminds me of Cowley's remark, that "there is not so great a falsehood in any poet, as the vulgar conceit of men, that lying is essential to good poetry." This great writer had a fine sense of the literary value of the Scriptures, and though I shall never ask you to read his "Davideis," I beg your attention to the following extract from his preface.

"What can we imagine more proper for the ornaments of wit or learning in the story of Deucalion, than in that of Noah? Why will not the actions of Samson afford as plentiful matter as the labors of Hercules ? Why is not Jeptha's daughter as good a woman as Iphigenia ? And the friendship of David and Jonathan, more worthy celebration than that of Theseus and Besethous? Does not the passage of Moses and the Israelites into the Holy Land, yield incomparably more poetical variety than the voyages of Ulysses or Eneas? Are the obsolete thread-bare tales of Thebes and Troy, half so stored with great, historical, and supernatural actions, as the wars of Joshua, of the Judges, and of divers others? Can all the