Christian Ballads (Classic Reprint), Coxe Arthur Cleveland

This happy combination, if on the one hand it allows of less magnificence in the Cathedral, prevents on the other a poverty of tawdry pretension in the rustic Church: and produces every where a uniform pro priety of beauty which captivates the imagination Without repelling the reason.

Such is the essential poetry of that religion, which the christian ballads aspire to illustrate, and humbly to subserve. To those who love not the Church, they will seem as idle words, but they tell of things which in the heart and life of the Catholic are dear realities; realities which are felt though they cannot be un derstood by the world: for there is a charm in the religious character Which they help to form, which at tracts very many who are incapable of discovering the secret of what affects them. Thus when we name, in a breath, the rural Walton, the scholastic Hooker, the saintly Herbert, the courtly Evelyn, the classic Wot ton, the earnest Laud, the gorgeous Taylor, the magnifi cent Strafford, and the royal Charles - men of the same times, but of widely differing circumstances thedull est perception feels that there is something belonging to them in common, which invests them with no ordinaryglory. It is that beauty of holiness which they drew from the breasts of the Church in which they lived and died, and which, through many sorrows, satisfied every spiritual want, and retained the unrovin g loyalty of their pure affections. They were lovely and pleas ant in their lives, and in death they were not divided exhibiting, in both, the power of their religion to adorn every thing they enjoyed or suffered, from the May-day ramble of the fisherman, to the fiery trial of the Martyr.

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