of God, where, in immortal youth and beauty, grows the tree of life, whose tree never withers, and which bears its fruit through the unnumbered ages of eternity.  Earthly cities and palaces cause him to remember thee, O thou holy city, heavenly Jerusalem, whose walls are salvation, and thy gates praise, and the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple in the midst of thee!  He who sees the world in this light will draw its sting, and disarm it of its power to hurt; he will so use it as not to abuse it, because the fashion of it passes away; he will so enjoy it, as to be always ready to leave it for a better; he will not think of settling at his inn, because it is pleasantly situated.  He remembers that he is a traveller; he forgets not that he is a stranger in the earth.”

What will the scoffers and scorners, the haters of good works, say to the sacred truths—­the soft-breathing simplicity—­of this extract.  How painful then is it to turn to the idle speculations and feverish fancies of their philosophical unbelief.

Dr. Dibdin has supplied the sketches of the Reverend Authors and the Notes.  One of the latter on a passage in the Sermon, Scripture Difficulties Vindicated, by the Rev. C. Benson, relates to a noble, but lamentably sceptical, poet.

We have looked through the second volume, which contains twenty-three Sermons, and notice this beautiful passage from a Sermon by Dr. Townson: 

“And, to take up once more the comparison of life to a voyage, in like manner it fares with those, who have steadily and religiously pursued the course which heaven pointed out to them.  We shall sometimes find, by their conversation towards the end of their days, that they are filled with hope, and peace, and joy; which, like those refreshing gales and reviving odours to the seaman, are breathed forth from Paradise upon their souls; and give them to understand with certainty, that God is bringing them unto their desired haven.”

(Note by the Editor.) The poetical spirit of this paragraph is not less remarkable, than its discriminative piety.  It seems probable, that Dr. Townson had in view the fine passage of Milton: 

And of pure, now purer air,
Meets his approach; and to the heart inspires
Vernal delight and joy: 
now gentle gales,
Fanning their odoriferous wings dispense
Native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole
Those balmy spoils.  As when to them who sail
Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past
Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow
Sabean odours, from the spicy shore
Of Araby the bless’d; with such delay
Well pleas’d, they slack their course; and many a league
Cheer’d with the grateful smell old Ocean smiles: 
So entertain’d those odorous sweets

  Paradise Lost, iv. 152.

Another passage, scarcely less poetical, and, in moral beauty, far superior, affords a still more striking coincidence: