BY JAMES GRAHAME. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. CONTAINING THE SABBATH, SABBATH WALKS, LONDON: PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, HURST, REES, AND 1807. PREFACE. In the first of the following Poems, I have endeavoured to describe some of the pleasures and duties peculiar to the seventh day. The appropriation of so considerable a portion of human life to religious services, to domestic enjoyment, and to meditative leisure, is a most important branch of the divine dispensation. The extent of the boon appears in its most striking light, when we consider the days of rest in any given period as accumulated into one sum.-He who has seen threescore and ten years, has lived ten years of Sabbaths. a It is this beneficent institution that forms the grand bulwark of poverty against the encroachments of capital. The labouring classes sell their time. The rich are the buyers, at least they are the chief buyers; for it is obvious, that more than the half of the waking hours of those who earn their bread by the sweat of their brow, is consumed in the manufacture of articles, that cannot be deemed either necessaries or comforts. Six days of the week are thus disposed of already: if the seventh were in the market, it would find purchasers too. The abolition of the Sabbath would, in truth, be equivalent to a sentence, adjudging to the rich the services of the poor for life. In The Biblical Pictures, I have attempted to delineate some of those scenes which painters have so successfully presented to the eye. I need hardly say, however, that, by the adoption of this title, I meant not to |