SHEFFIELD has been poetically fortunate. It has had the honour, not to give birth to two eminent poets-a mere accident, but to produce them. Neither Montgomery nor Elliott was born in Sheffield; but there their minds, tastes, and reputations grew. In both poets are strongly recognisable the intellectual features of a manufacturing town. They are both of a popular and liberal tendency of mind. They, or rather their spirits and characters, grew amid the physical sufferings and the political struggles of a busy and high-spirited population, and by these circumstances all the elements of freedom and patriotism were strengthened to full growth in their bosoms. Montgomery came upon the public stage, both as a poet and a political writer, long before Elliott, though the difference of their ages was not so great as might be supposed from this fact, being only about ten years.

It is not my object in this article to compare or to contrast the intellectual characters of these two genuine poets. They are widely different. In both, the spirit of freedom, of progress, of sympathy with the multitude, and of steady antagonism to oppression, manifest themselves, but with much difference of manner. Both possess great vigour, and fervour of feeling; but in James Montgomery the decorums of style are more strictly preserved. We feel that he received his education in a very different school to that of Ebenezer

Elliott. In the still halls and gardens of the Moravian brethren, Montgomery imbibed the softness of bearing, and that peculiarly religious tone, which distinguish him. Amidst the roughest and often most hostile crowd of struggling life, Elliott acquired a more fiery and battling aspect, and he learned involuntarily to thunder against evils, where Montgomery would reason and lament. Yet it would be difficult to say in which all that characterises real patriotism, and real religion, most truly resides. In very different walks they both did gloriously and well, and we will leave to others to decide which is the greater poet of the two. Elliott, by both circumstance and temperament, was led to make his poetry bear more directly and at once upon the actual condition of the working classes; Montgomery displayed more uniform grace, and in lyrical beauty far surpassed his townsman, though not in the exquisite harmony of many portions of his versification. But they are not now to be compared, but to be admired; and nothing is more beautiful than to find in what tone and manner they spoke of each other. Montgomery gave Ebenezer Elliott the highest praise for his genius, and was for years, in the Iris, the only one who could or would see the merit of the great but unacknowledged bard; while Elliott modestly dedicated his poem of "Spirits and Men to the author of The World before the Flood, "as an evidence of his presumption and his despair."

James Montgomery had a strictly religious education; he was the son of religious parents, and belonged to a preeminently religious body, the Moravian brethren; and the spirit of that parentage, education, and association, is deeply diffused through all that he has written. He was essentially a religious poet. Perhaps there are no lyrics in the language which are so truly Christian; that is, which breathe the same glowing love to God and man, without one tinge of the bigotry that too commonly eats into zeal as rust into the finest steel. We have no dogmas, but a pure and heavenly atmosphere of holy faith, filial and fraternal affection, and reverence of the great Architect of the universe, and of the destinies of man. There is often a tone of melancholy, but it is never that of doubt. It is the sighing of a sensitive heart over the evils of life; but ever and anon this tone rises into the more animated one of conscious strength and well-placed confidence; and terminates in that paan of happy triumph to which the Christian only can ascend. There is no "dealing damnation round the land” in the religious poetry of James Montgomery; we feel that he has peculiarly caught the genuine spirit of Christ; and a sense of beauty and goodness, and of the glorious blessedness of an immortal nature, accompanies us through all his works. That is the spirit which, more than all other, distinguishes his lyrical compositions; and how many, and how beautiful are they! as, The Grave, The Joy of Grief, Verses on the Death of Joseph Brown, a prisoner for conscience' sake in York Castle, commencing, "Spirit, leave thine house of clay;" The Common Lot, Prayer, The Harp of Sorrow, The Dial, The Mole-hill, The Peak Mountains, A Mother's Love, those noble Stanzas to the Memory of

the Rev. Thomas Spencer, The Alps, Friends, Night, and many others in the same volume with the Pelican Island, perhaps some of them the most beautiful and spiritual things he ever wrote. The poetry of Montgomery is too familiar to most readers, and especially religiously intellectual readers, to need much quotation here; but a few stanzas may be ventured upon, and will of themselves more forcibly indicate the peculiar features of his poetical character, than much prose description.

The opening stanzas on the death of Thomas Spencer embody his very creed and doctrine as a poet.

"I worship not the Sun at noon,

The wandering Stars, the changing Moon,
The Wind, the Flood, the Flame;

I will not bow the votive knee
To Wisdom, Virtue, Liberty:

There is no GoD but GoD,' for me:
-Jehovah is his name.

"Him through all nature I explore,
Him in His creatures I adore,

Around, beneath, above;

But clearest in the human mind,
His bright resemblance when I find,
Grandeur with purity combined,
I most admire and love."

I cannot resist transcribing one more specimen. It is one in which the quaint but adoring spirit of Quarll, Withers, or Herrick, seems to speak; nor shall I ever forget the thrilling tone in which I have heard it repeated by a sainted friend, in whom the love of her Saviour was the very life-blood of her heart, and who resembled him in his beneficent walk on earth as much, perhaps, as it is possible for mortal to do.

THE STRANGER AND HIS FRIEND.

"Ye have done it unto me."-Matt. xxv. 40.

"A poor wayfaring man of grief
Hath often crossed me on my way,
Who sued so humbly for relief,
That I could never answer, Nay: '
I had not power to ask his name,
Whither he went or whence he came;
Yet was there something in his eye
That won my love, I knew not why.
"Once when my scanty meal was spread,
He entered;-not a word he spake;-
Just perishing for want of bread,
I gave him all; he blessed it, brake,
And ate, but gave me part again:
Mine was an angel's portion then,
For while I fed with eager haste,
That crust was manna to my taste.
"I spied him where a fountain burst
Clear from the rock; his strength was
gone;

The heedless water mocked his thirst,
He heard it, saw it hurrying on.

I ran to raise the sufferer up;

Thrice from the stream he drained my cup,
Dipt, and returned it running o'er;

I drank, and never thirsted more.

"'Twas night; the floods were out; it blew
A winter hurricane aloof;

I heard his voice abroad, and flew
To bid him welcome to my roof;
I warmed, I clothed, I cheered my guest,
Laid him on my own couch to rest;
Then made the hearth my bed, and seemed
In Eden's garden while I dreamed.
"Stript, wounded, beaten, nigh to death.
I found him by the highway side;
1 roused his pulse, brought back his breath
Revived his spirit, and supplied
Wine, oil, refreshment: he was healed:
I had myself a wound concealed;
But from that hour forgot the smart,
And Peace bound up my broken heart.
"In prison I saw him next, condemned
To meet a traitor's doom at morn;
The tide of lying tongues I stemmed,
And honoured him 'midst shame and

scorn:

My friendship's utmost zeal to try.
He asked if I for him would die;
The flesh was weak, my blood ran chil
But the free spirit cried, I will

"Then in a moment to my view,
The stranger darted from disguise;
The tokens in his hands I knew,
My Saviour stood before mine eyes:
He spake; and my poor name He named:
Of me thou hast not been ashamed:
These deeds shall thy memorial be:
Fear not, thou didst them unto Me.''

But it is not merely in the lyrical productions of his muse that Montgomery has indicated the deep feeling of piety that lives as a higher life in him; in every one of those larger and very beautiful poems, in which we might have rather supposed him bent on indulging his literary ambition, and sitting down to a long and systematic piece of labour, which should remain a monument of the more continuous if not higher flights of his genius, we perceive the same still higher object of a sacred duty towards God and man. In no instance has he been content merely to develop his poetical powers, merely to aim at amusing and delighting. Song has been to him a holy vocation, an art practised to make men wiser and better, a gift held like that of the preacher and the prophet, for the purposes of heaven and eternity. In every one of those productions are still recognised the zealous and devoted spirit of one of that indefatigable and self-renouncing people, who from the earliest ages of the Christian Church have trod the path of persecution, and won the burning crown of martyrdom; and in the present age continue to send out from their still retreats in Europe an increasing and untiring succession of labourers, male and female, to the frozen regions of the north, and to the southern wilds of Africa, to civilize and Christianize those rude tribes, which others, bearing the Christian name, have visited only to enslave or extirpate. The Wanderer of Switzerland, the poem which first won him a reputation, was a glowing lyric of liberty, and denunciation of the diabolical war-spirit of the revolutionary French. It was animated by the most sacred love of country, and of the hallowed ground and hallowed feelings of the domestic hearth. The West Indies was a heroic poem, on one of the most heroic acts which ever did honour to the decrees of a great nation-the abolition of the slave trade. But it was a work not merely of triumph over what was done, but of incentive to what yet remained to do-to the abolition of slavery itself. Time has shown what a stupendous mustering of national powers that achievement has demanded. What a combination of all the eloquence, and wisdom, and exertions, of all the wisest, noblest, and best men of, perhaps, the most glorious period of our history, was needed! Time has shown that the very slave trade was only abolished on paper. That, like a giant monster, that hideous traffic laughed at our enactments, and laughs at them still, having nearly quadrupled the number of its annual victims since the great contest against it was begun. But amongst those whose voices and spirit have been in fixed and perpetual operation against this vile cannibal commerce, none more effectually exercised their influence than James Montgomery. His poem, arrayed in all the charms and graces of his noble art, has been read by every genuine lover of genuine poetry.

It has sunk into the generous heart of youth; and who shall say in how many it has been in after years the unconscious yet actual spring of that manly demand for the extinction of the wrongs of the African, which all good men in England, and wherever the English language is read, still make, and will make till it be finally accom plished? What fame of genius can be put in competition with the profound satisfaction of a mind conscious of the godlike privilege of aiding in the happiness of man in all ages and regions of the earth and feeling that it has done that by giving to its thoughts the power and privileges of a spirit, able to enter all houses at all hours, and stimulate brave souls to the bravest deeds of the heroism of humanity?

There are great charms of verse displayed in the poem of The West Indies. One would scarcely have believed the subject of the slave trade capable of them. But the genial, glowing description of the West Indian islands, of the torrid magnificence of the interior of Africa

"Regions immense, unsearchable, unknown-
Bask in the splendour of the solar zone;

A world of wonders,-where creation seems
No more the works of Nature, but her dreams,-
Great, wild, and wonderful."

The white villains of Europe, desecrating the name of ChristianSpaniards, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Dutchmen, Danes, and Portuguese-all engaged in the brutal traffic, are sketched with the same vigorous pencil; but the portraiture of the Creole is a master-piece, and I quote it because it still is not a mere picture, but a dreadful reality.

"Lives there a reptile baser than the slave?
-Loathsome as death, corrupted as the grave;
See the dull Creole, at his pompous board,
Attendant vassals cringing round their lord;
Satiate with food, his heavy eye-lids close,
Voluptuous minions fan him to repose;
Prone on the noonday couch he lolls in vain,
Delirious slumbers rock his maudlin brain;
He starts in horror from bewildering dreams;
His bloodshot eye with fire and frenzy gleams;
He stalks abroad; through all his wonted rounds,
The negro trembles, and the lash resounds,
And cries of anguish, shrilling through the air,
To distant fields his dread approach declare.
Mark, as he passes, every head declined;
Then slowly raised-to curse him from behind.
This is the veriest wretch on nature's face,
Owned by no country, spurned by every race;
The tethered tyrant of one narrow span ;
The bloated vampire of a living man:

His frame, a fungus form of dunghill birth,
That taints the air, and rots above the earth;
His soul;-has he a soul, whose sensual breast

Of selfish passions is a serpent's nest?

Who follows headlong, ignorant and blind,

The vague, brute-instinct of an idiot mind;

Whose heart 'mid scenes of suffering senseless grown,
Even from his mother's lap was chilled to stone;

Whose torpid pulse no social feelings move;

A stranger to the tenderness of love;
His motley harem charms his gloating eye,
Where ebon, brown, and olive beauties vie :