BALAAM BLESSING ISRAEL. ON Nebo's lofty brow And gaz'd on Jacob's hosts below, "How goodly are thy tents," "Like blooming vales, like gardens spread Along the river's side! "Like aloes which the Lord THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM. No worldly pomp, or Eastern pride, That spark Divine illumed the way, REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. Remains of the late Rev. Charles Wolfe, A. B., Curate of Donoughmore, Diocese of Armagh. With a brief Memoir of his Life. By the Rev. JOHN A. RUSSELL, M. A. Second Edition. 1826. London. 12s. AMONG the mysterious plans of Divine Providence, none more powerfully arrest the attention and awaken the sympathies, not only of the true Christian, but of the giddy and thoughtless world, than those dispensations which sever from the embraces of friends, and the expectations of society, a youthful Christian of bright hope and promise. It is a severe stroke when the individual removed is only a private member of the church of Christ: but when a youthful minister, just entered on his Master's work, and with a large measure of his Master's spirit; strengthened and adorned with all that human learning can afford, yet counting all these honours less than nothing when weighed with the greater glory of receiving his ministry of the Lord Jesus; and permitted to testify the Gospel of the grace of God long enough warmly to excite the affections of his flock, for whose best welfare his life seems essential; when, with a wide sphere of useful exertion opening before him, and with talents and energies of the highest order engaged in his sacred work, he is addressed by the word of recal, his strength is dried up, and his life cut off from the earth; the impression will be powerful in proportion to the admiration and affection which he had excited. Often such events occur under circumstances which, for a long period, preclude the return of the cherished hopes which preceded them, and leave the heart to the fruitless endeavour of tracing a path described to be" in the mighty waters," on whose wave no vestige is seen to remain. These remarks might have been more in place as the exordium of an address over the early grave of our author, than in a review of his works; yet they cannot be much at variance with the feelings which the publication before us is calculated to produce. The volume consists of a brief memoir of the life of Mr. Wolfe, various academical exercises, and poetical effusions, and, what we consider the most valuable portion of the work, fifteen of the author's discourses. There are also some Miscellaneous Thoughts, in an Appendix, which evince considerable originality of mind in the writer, with a species of genius not uncommon in his countrymen, and though, unhappily, too seldom the case, under the influence of the holy and constraining motives of the Gospel of Christ. Mr. Wolfe was the youngest son of an Irish gentleman, who traced his descent from the illustrious hero of Quebec. He was also connected with Lord Kilwarden, a bright ornament of the Irish bar. father died when he was young; and he received his education first at a school in Bath, afterwards at Salisbury, and then at Winchester. His In 1809 he entered the university of his native city, Dublin. His friendship for his excellent biographer seems to have been one among the many delightful advantages which he reaped from college life. At the university his fine talents appear to have commanded great admiration, but without exciting that envy which his constitutional sweetness of temper and gentleness of mind would have either repelled or commuted into good will. The highest honours were sought for and attained by him, particularly the office of addressing from the chair the students of the Historical Society; and in the fragments of that address which have been preserved in the present volume there is a power of conception and an energy of reasoning which afforded the best omens of future intellectual greatness. His occasional poems also evince great brilliancy of imagination and felicity of diction. To one in particular, his Ode on the Burial of Sir John Moore, a meed of distinguished praise was awarded by the late Lord Byron, which could have derived no part of its eulogy from the family or person of the author, as his modesty had induced him to conceal his name; and it was not till long after that the applauded ode was claimed for him by his friends, and then not without some difficulty rescued from the unjust pretensions of those who, in adopting it, were deforming its beauties. It is to the celebrity of this ode, and the controversy respecting its author, that we indebted for the present publication, the materials of which would otherwise have probably been left to slumber in oblivion. As it has not appeared in our pages, and our notice of the author would be incomplete without it, we copy it; though its popularity seems scarcely to render this office necessary. are "Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, As his corse to the rampart we hurried; Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot O'er the grave where our hero we buried. We buried him darkly at dead of night, The sods with our bayonets turning; By the struggling moonbeam's misty light, And the lantern dimly burning. No useless coffin enclosed his breast, Not in sheet or in shroud we wound him; But he lay like a warrior taking his rest, With his martial cloak around him. Few and short were the prayers we said, And we spoke not a word of sorrow; But we stedfastly gazed on the face that was dead, And we bitterly thought of the morrow. We thought, as we hallow'd his narrow bed, And smooth'd down his lonely pillow, That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head, And we far away on the billow! Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone, And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him,But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on In the grave where a Briton has laid him. But half of our heavy task was done, When the clock struck the hour for retiring; And we heard the distant and random gun That the foe was suddenly firing. Slowly and sadly we laid him down, From the field of his fame fresh and gory; We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone But we left him alone with his glory!" pp. 29-31. Some of the author's remarks on the spirit and character of poetry, in the address which he was chosen to deliver to his fellow-students, are just and very forcible. He notices, that, when Voltaire attempted to write poetry, he found the creed of infidelity too cold for his purpose; that no feeling could be awakened, no effect produced; and all fertile as his fancy was in devising expedients of evil, he was obliged to resort to the source of all that is good to create the interest and emotions which he sought. We might ad duce the passage as a specimen of our author's early prose writing; but we select rather a finely wrought eulogium on the character of Milton, which we would fain hope was as true when applied to the heart as to the imagination of that incomparable poet. "Nor will the muse leave her son comfortless in that more dreary solitude into which he may be drifted by shipwreck upon an ungrateful world, where the poet stands isolated in the midst of mankind. "There lived a divine old man, whose everlasting remains we have all admired, whose memory is the pride of England and of Nature. His youth was distinguished by a happier lot than, perhaps, genius has often enjoyed at the commencement of its career: he was enabled, by the liberality of fortune, to dedicate his soul to the cultivation of those classical accomplishments in which almost his infancy delighted: he had attracted admiration at the period when it is most exquisitely felt he stood forth the literary and political champion of Republican England;-and Europe acknowledged him the conqueror. But the storm arose; his fortune sank with the Republic which he had defended; the name which future ages have consecrated was forgotten; and neglect was embittered by remembered celebrity. Age was advancing - Health was retreating-Nature hid her face from him for ever; for never more to him returned Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, Or flocks or herds, or human face divine.' "What was the refuge of the deserted veteran from penury-from neglectfrom infamy-from darkness?-Not in a querulous and peevish despondency; not in an unmanly recantation of principleserroneous, but unchanged; not in the tremendous renunciation of what Heaven has given, and Heaven alone should take away;-but he turned from a distracted country and a voluptuous court,-he turned from triumphant enemies and inefficient friends,-he turned from a world that to him was a universal blank, to the and she caught him into heaven!-The muse that sits among the cherubim,— clouds that obscured his vision upon earth instantaneously vanished before the blaze of celestial effulgence, and his eyes opened at once upon all the glories and terrors of the Almighty,-the seats of eternal beatitude and bottomless perdition. What, though to look upon the face of this earth was still denied-what was it to him, that one of the outcast atoms of creation was concealed from his viewwhen the Deity permitted the muse to unlock his mysteries, and disclose to the poet the recesses of the universe-when sity, and enjoy as well its horrors as its she bade his soul expand into its immenmagnificence what was it to him that he had fallen upon evil days and evil tongues, for the muse could transplant his spirit into the bowers of Eden, where the frown of fortune was disregarded, and the weight of incumbent infirmity But these were not, as it has sometimes lamentably happened, the gilded fetters in which the soul of Mr. Wolfe was to be long entangled. After receiving ordination, which he did in November 1817, his whole soul seems to have been absorbed in the responsible work to which he was called. Probably the serious impressions which he felt at this period had been not a little augmented by some afflictive dispensations in his own family and connexions, and in the spirit of a man, who, when he looked at his vows, saw he had a solemn work to accomplish, and when he remembered his lately beloved fellow-student whom death had just separated from him, and felt that the period for labour was fleeting and most uncertain, he must have gone forth girded to the undertaking with a preparation than which we can conceive nothing more solemn or efficacious. His first sphere of pastoral labour appears to have been a small and obscure curacy at Ballyclog, near Auchnacloy, in the north of Ireland. He afterwards removed to Castle Caulfield, not far distant from it and the first view we obtain of him is when seated with his Bible in his hand, by the side of his turf fire in the only furnished room of a large glebe-house, surrounded by mountains of frost and snow, and a class of people with whom he was totally unacquainted, except a disbanded artilleryman, his wife, and two children, who attended upon him, his churchwarden, and his parish clerk. But with the full confidence of a true Christian, knowing that the scene of life which God had by his providence marked out for him, was by far the best that could be selected for him, he declares that he repined not at his situation. Some of the periodical critics, in commenting on the work before us, speak of this young mi nister of promise as cast away on so barren a spot, "like a pearl before swine, who would only know how to trample him under foot," and pour forth bitter lamentations on the occasion. But it is the privilege of the true Christian to behold, or at least to believe he shall behold at last, in the most apparently untoward and inauspicious of outward arrangements, the manifested wisdom of God; and whether he sees a Henry Martyn in the fatal climate of Persia, or a Charles Wolfe amidst the mountains of Tyrone, he yet believes, and knows that they also now fully believe, that these very appointments are the result of the wisdom and the love of that Being to whom they had, in self-renouncing dependence, said, "Thou shalt choose our inheritance for us." Nor is it always necessary to wait till the veil of eternity shall be lifted up to discover this wisdom of purpose. The fruits of it sometimes break from beneath their outward covering even now; and we shall be able, in the course of our remarks, to point to such a scene as will convince any unprejudiced mind, that not only a few bodily comforts, but even life, even a valuable life, was not too dear to be given up in exchange. It is too much in the spirit of an unhallowed philosophy that such lamentations over the misplacement of a man of genius have been poured forth; and with a forgetfulness, that probably that which rendered Mr. Wolfe most approved before his God was not that which would be most highly esteemed among men. Perhaps also it is forgotten that the plebeian vulgar, the Irish herd, the swine of Ballyclog thus contemptuously cast out beyond the pale of Protestant pity, might, nay, it is certain, did, contain among them souls for whose light and peace, and redemption, a far more valuable Life was once sacrificed. At the same time, the allotment of suitable persons for particular of He back from the vulgar dissipation and I might say blameless, in his moral conusual vices of youth. He was exemplary, duty and though naturally impetuous duct, and scrupulous in the discharge of in his feelings, habitually lively and even playful in his temper and manners; yet there was manifestly an influence in his heart and a guard upon his tongue, which never permitted him to violate the rules of strictest chastity or decorum. was devout and regular in his habits of private prayer and in attendance upon public worship; and I have often seen him affected even to tears in reading the sacred word of inspiration. But when he came to preach the doctrines and duties of Christianity to others, they burst upon his mind in their full mag. nitude, and in all their awful extent: he felt that he himself had not given up his whole heart to God,-that the Gospel of his soul; and he looked back upon his Christ had held but a divided empire in earlier years with self-reproach and selfdistrust, when he recalled to mind the subordinate place which the love of God had possessed in his heart.-If such a man could feel reason to contemplate the days of his youth with emotions of this kind, what should be the feelings of him who has lived altogether without God known what it was to control a passion, in the world?'-who has scarcely ever or regulate a desire, or perform a single What-action, with an exclusive reference to the Divine will ?" pp. 125–127. fices is among the arrangements of Divine providence; and it is probable, that had Mr. Wolfe lived a few years longer he might have been placed in some station more calculated to elicit his talents, and to render them serviceable in the cause of God and of his fellow-creatures. All we mean to say is, that where he was he was not "thrown away." But we cannot longer detain our readers from the sequel of Mr. Wolfe's history, which we shall briefly describe, before we enter on the examination of his sermons. There was one peculiarity in his frame of mind, which, when it occurs in many persons, marks them at once as of that" bird-witted" species of intellect which flits from one pursuit to another, without usefully resting on any one. He was seldom or never known to have read any book throughout, not even those works in which he appeared most to delight. The cause of this habit was however perhaps to be traced rather to the solidity than the flightiness of his intellect. ever he read he thoroughly digested, and accurately retained; and his own reasonings were so constantly leading him beyond the positions advanced in the works under his consideration, that the examination of a single metaphysical speculation of Locke, or moral argument of Butler, usually cost him more time and thought than would have carried ordinary minds through the whole volume. But on the word of God and his works, all his powers of thought and energies of action were concentrated. His impressions of a religious nature appear to have been acquired in early life; and though they were but faint, compared with what they after wards became, yet they were sufficiently strong to preserve him from the snares of youthful passion and excess. The following passage is well worth the serious observation of our junior readers. "Religion had evidently a restraining influence on him at all times: it kept him His ministerial situation gave him peculiar opportunities for displaying a sound judgment and a conciliatory temper, in the effects of which he found reason to rejoice. His parish contained many persons both of the Calvinistic and Wesleyan Methodist persuasions. Many points of collision, which Mr. Wolfe himself would gladly have avoided, were presented in his intercourse with them; but his uniform patience of contradiction, accompanied by a studied and constant reference to the great doctrines on which they all agreed, soon had the effect of subduing prejudice, and forced from them the acknowledgment that all he said, both in the pulpit and the cottage, was indeed "the Gospel," although they could not call it Calvinism on the one hand, nor Methodism on the other. There is something very pleasing in the slight sketch which his biographer gives of the affec |