MONTHLY REVIK.W OF LITERATURE. 309 



exhibited two years ago at Somerset House, attracted the attention of the 

 best judges of the art. It is said, but whether on sufficient authority we 

 are unable to state, that Asiatic prejudices had been so far remitted as to 

 allow this gentleman access to the royal zenana, for the purpose of taking 

 the portrait of the favourite wife. Such an innovation cannot fail to pro- 

 duce very important results ; and there are too many indications of a similar 

 nature occurring all over British India, to render it all doubtful that, at no 

 very distant period, the whole fabric of jealous restriction will give way, and 

 that the women of Hindostan will receive the full enjoyment of liberty so 

 long denied. 



" The Christian community of Lucknow is rather considerable when com- 

 pared to that of other native cities ; a great many of the shopkeepers and 

 persons holding offices about the court are half-castes ; and there are a mul- 

 titude of hangers-on, of the same religion, who, attracted by the hope of en- 

 riching themselves under a monarch whose splendour and liberality have 

 been of course exaggerated by report, pick up a subsistence, where they had 

 expected to find an easy path to wealth. The military cantonments, in 

 which the company's battalions are garrisoned, are situated at some distance 

 from the city, where their neighbourhood acts as a salutary check, without 

 creating the annoyance a more close association would naturally produce. 

 There are turbulent spirits amongst the population of Lucknow, that can ill 

 brook the military superiority of their British rulers, and, however hopeless 

 the attempt, would gladly measure swords with them ; but this hostility is not 

 so general as some persons have asserted, and it is rarely manifested except 

 upon some strong provocation." 



The World, a Poem, in Six Books. London, Hurst. 8vo., pp. 276. 



RELIGIOUS didactic poetry has long been a favourite style of composition 

 in this country, and appeared first among us early in the seventeenth century. 

 An interesting compilation might be made from the works of this class that 

 were published in the days of James the First and his unfortunate son, but 

 the productions of this description which principally find their way to the 

 libraries of moral and religious people in the present day comprise the Night 

 Thoughts of Young, the Task of Cowper, the Excursion of Wordsworth, and 

 the Course of Time of Pollok. Perhaps it would not be wrong to name the 

 Paradise Regained of Milton as a connecting link between this description of 

 poetry and the epic ; at the head of which, if regard be had to the sublimity 

 of the matter, his own higher and inestimable production must be placed. 

 The prevailing characteristic of all these poems is pious sentiment, but the 

 colouring is different in each. Over every page of the Night Thoughts there 

 rests an awful gloom : the sublimity, with which it must be confessed that 

 composition abounds, overwhelms the reader ; his mind sinks beneath the 

 mightiness of the mysterious being of whose presence he is made perpetually 

 conscious, but to whose divinity he dare not look up, so degraded does he 

 feel by the sins and sufferings of mortality. No person rises from the perusal 

 of Young with a sustained or elevated spirit : his thoughts are indeed hum- 

 bled, but he hears not the cheering voice of consolation in his humility. Many 

 passages are truly magnificent, and yet there is an occasional quaintness and 

 abruptness in the style that generally injures the strength of the impression, 

 and sounds to the half-penitent heart like a mockery. This is the fault of 

 the satires of the same author : he breaks upon you in his most serious 

 passages with a kind of awkward familiarity, which makes you frequently 

 doubt whether you are to regard him as actually in earnest. Cowper's exqui- 

 site poem is a beautiful delineation of the pious man enjoying the blessings of 

 domestic and rural life, under the influence of divine grace. Nature is not 

 M.M. No. 9. 2R 



