direction, even to the putting in abeyance of that from which song takes its rise,—­namely, feeling itself.  As to the former, amongst the verse of the period I have given, there is hardly anything to be called song but Sir Philip Sidney’s Psalms, and for them we are more indebted to King David than to Sir Philip.  As to the latter, even in the case of that most mournful poem of the Countess of Pembroke, it is, to quite an unhealthy degree, occupied with the attempt to work upon her own feelings by the contemplation of them, instead of with the utterance of those aroused by the contemplation of truth.  In her case the metaphysics have begun to prey upon and consume the emotions.  Besides, that age was essentially a dramatic age, as even its command of language, especially as shown in the pranks it plays with it, would almost indicate; and the dramatic impulse is less favourable, though not at all opposed, to lyrical utterance.  In the cases of Sir Fulk Grevill and Sir John Davies, the feeling is assuredly profound; but in form and expression the philosophy has quite the upper hand.

We must not therefore suppose, however, that the cause of religious poetry has been a losing one.  The last wave must sink that the next may rise, and the whole tide flow shorewards.  The man must awake through all his soul, all his strength, all his mind, that he may worship God in unity, in the one harmonious utterance of his being:  his heart must be united to fear his name.  And for this final perfection of the individual the race must awake.  At this season and that season, this power or that power must be chiefly developed in her elect; and for its sake the growth of others must for a season be delayed.  But the next generation will inherit all that has gone before; and its elect, if they be themselves pure in heart, and individual, that is original, in mind, will, more or less thoroughly, embody the result, in subservience to some new development, essential in its turn to further progress.  Even the fallow times, which we are so ready to call barren, must have their share in working the one needful work.  They may be to the nation that which sickness so often is to the man—­a time of refreshing from the Lord.  A nation’s life does not lie in its utterance any more than in the things which it possesses:  it lies in its action.  The utterance is a result, and therefore a sign, of life; but there may be life without any such sign.  To do justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly with God, is the highest life of a nation as of an individual; and when the time for speech comes, it will be such life alone that causes the speech to be strong at once and harmonious.  When at last there are not ten righteous men in Sodom, Sodom can neither think, act, nor say, and her destruction is at hand.