that of a man who has been condemned to die, but who has received his pardon, and whom the surgeon is compelled to bleed, to prevent the dangers of the shock which the joy of his deliverance would produce. The comparison of the ancient poet awakens in the mind the divine idea of joy; that of the modern romancer, represents material sensation.

De Foe is again inspired by Homer in describing his Robinson after the first emotion of joy which he experiences after his deliverance. The march of ideas and sentiments is the same: In Homer, "Ulysses, after having kissed the ground which saved him, thinks of his destitution and his misery. What is to become of him? Where shall he lie down?-On the side of the river? But the vapor which arises only from the waters will chill his body; and exhausted as he is, he will die from weakness and cold. Shall he go to find shelter in the neighboring forest? But he fears he may become a prey to wild beasts. He determines however to take refuge in the forest. He finds two olive trees, one wild and the other grafted on the same stock; and which, intertwining their branches, could shelter him from the wind and rain, and even from the rays of the sun. It is there that he reposes, and Minerva sends him sweet sleep to refresh him after his fatigues." In De Foe, Robinson, after the first emotion of joy, turns his eyes around him, and is frightened at his desolate condition. Like Ulysses, he fears to become the prey of wild beasts; and like Ulysses, he reposes under a tree, where he sleeps a sleep as pleasant as that which Minerva sends to Ulysses.

The struggle which Ulysses sustains with nature, constitutes the interest of the tempest in the Odyssey. The interest of the tempest in Robinson Crusoe, as well as his whole history, proceed from the same source. We love to see Rob. inson, left to his own strength, struggling against the dangers which surround him, and recover by degrees, through patience and industry, all the arts of human life. Robinson in his

isle is alone and always on the stage, and yet he is never monotonous. Each effort which he makes, interests us; for each one of his efforts represents, if we may so speak, one of the phases of human society, which has suffered and worked to invent the arts; and the history of human inventions, collected in the history of a single individual, pleases us so much the more, since in the history of Robinson we see better than in

general history, the emotions and ideas which each invention must excite. It is these emotions which give an infinite charm to the experiments of Robinson. He makes himself a potter, joiner, laborer, bricklayer, architect, and what not; but the man is always appearing; the invention occupies us less than the inventor. It is the inventor whom we observe with indefatigable curiosity. We follow the struggle which Robinson sustains against the wants of humanity; we enjoy his successes, we applaud his triumphs, and enter into all his feelings; we take part in his disquietudes, in his hopes, in his disappointments; happy when he is delighted, and discouraged when he falls into despondency; but like Ulysses, he is also sustained by the love of life. He has besides a feeling which sustains him effectually against despair, viz. the religious sentiment. In solitude he recovers his religion as he recovers the arts, so that his history may represent precisely the history of humanity. Robinson could, if he were compelled, live without the religious sentiment, for the material man can do without God; but the mind and the heart cannot do without God, and De Foe has wished to represent man an entire. Thus we see in Robinson, after the first moments given to satisfy the wants of the body, his mind wakes up and becomes uneasy; and then he thinks of the Bible, the only book which he has saved from the shipwreck. For we may remark that De Foe wished that Robinson should be assisted in all his inventions by some outward help. He has to make his movables in the image of the movables which he has seen, and the tools which he took with him from the vessel; to return to God, he has also the Bible. He recovers rather than invents, and it is in that perhaps that he best resembles humanity. As soon as Robinson has found his God, he is no longer alone on his island; his Bible, once forgotten and mute, now spoke to him a language which fills and enlivens his solitude. From this moment the man has become, in Robinson, all that he could become when he is alone. There is wanting to him of the ideas and emotions natural to man, only those which society gives, and these will come to him as soon as he will have Friday for his servant and companion.

The romance of Robinson delineates in an admirable manner the interest which man takes in describing the emotions of man, and proves that we do not require a great tu

mult of events to affect us. The adventures of Robinson, before and after his abode on the island, are a thousand times more varied than those of his solitude, and yet these adventures affect us but little. It is not then in the diversity of events that we must expect to find interest, nor is it in the description of material nature. De Foe had a fine opportunity to describe the island of Robinson, and to paint its solitude and its melancholy beauty. A descriptive and elegiac poet would have made Robinson a visionary or a misanthrope. De Foe has made him a man: it is this which has made his romance immortal.

We have drawn a parallel between the Odyssey of Homer and the romance of De Foe, because these two narratives, although different in time, manner, and merit, have, notwithstanding, the same kind of interest. They affect us by representing the struggle which man sustains against nature. But there is also, in the struggles which man sustains with nature, another kind of courage, less stirring and less dramatic, which does not combat danger, but which disdains it: it is the courage of the Christian who, prepared to die, awaits with calmness whatever it may please God to send him. When art paints this kind of courage, it gains in dignity what it loses in action, and man becomes by resignation as great as he was by struggle. We may add, that, in Christianity, this resignation never degenerates into a proud insensibility. Faith gives to the heart of man a strength which, coming from God, elevates him without puffing him up, and makes him firm and steadfast without ceasing to humble him.

The narrative of the storm in The Acts of the Apostles, affords the best example of the interest which this kind of courage excites. St. Paul was sent prisoner to Rome. For several days the vessel kept its regular course; but suddenly a storm arose, mingled with whirlwinds:

"But not long after there arose against it a tempestuous wind, called Euroclydon. And when the ship was caught, and could not bear up into the wind, we let her drive. But after long abstinence, Paul stood forth in the midst of them and said, Sirs, you should have hearkened unto me, and not have loosed from Crete, and to have gained this harm and loss. And now I exhort you to be of good cheer, for there shall be no loss of any man's life among you, but of the ship. For there stood by me this night the angel of God, whose I

am, and whom I serve, saying, Fear not, Paul, thou must be brought before Cæsar: and lo, God hath given thee all them that sail with thee. Wherefore, sirs, be of good cheer; for I believe God, that it shall be even as it was told me. And while the day was coming on, Paul besought them all to take meat, saying, This day is the fourteenth day that ye have tarried and continued fasting, having taken nothing. Wherefore I pray you to take some meat; for this is for your health: for there shall not a hair fall from the head of any of you. And when he had thus said, he took bread, and gave thanks to God in presence of them all; and when he had broken it, he began to eat. Then were they all of good cheer, and they also took some meat."

We observe that in this tempest, as in that of Ulysses, man is always in the scene. But between Ulysses and St. Paul what a difference! The one never despairs, although he is never inspired, but is sustained in his struggle with danger by the love of life, a feeling which gives more patience than dignity; the other, who is in a vessel beaten by the waves, is occupied with the storm only for the purpose of consoling his friends, and who tells them, with a confident tone, that they will never lose a hair of their head: the angel of the Lord has told him so, and his God is no deceiver. Ulysses hesitates when Leucothöe advises him to quit his vessel, and to cast himself into the waves: perhaps it is a trick of some hostile deity! But the God whom St. Paul serves is not a God of tricks, and his words do not inspire hesitation; they strengthen the heart of man; they enable him to forget the ragings of the storm. St. Paul is no longer a shipwrecked mariner who courageously struggles with death; he is an inspired prophet and apostle. The tempest almost ceases to become dangerous; it only affords an opportunity for the grandeur of God to manifest itself-of the God whom he serves, and whose he is; for it is to God, and not to the angry waves which are ready to ingulf him—not to this battered vessel which is about to sink, that he trusts; it is in God, who has saved him and his companions from a watery grave; and in pledge of the life which he promises them, he distributes in the midst of the storm the bread of Christian communion.

An admirable lesson, which should teach to man all the nobility of his nature! In the midst of the most terrible catastrophes,-in the midst of fire and tempest,-if we take

any one of the sentiments of the human heart, be it courage which proceeds from the love of life, or trust in God, or honor, or respect of the law, and compare it with the material effects of the catastrophes which you relate, these effects, however terrible and extraordinary they may be, no longer attract our attention; the human sentiment which is the subject of them, instantly eclipses them, and material nature loses its grandeur as soon as moral nature appears.

We will relate a story which beautifully illustrates what we have just said. In 1825, a terrible fire broke out at sea on board of the Kent, a ship belonging to the East India Company. The Captain, seeing that there was no hope of being able to extinguish the fire, which had almost reached a powder deposit, gave orders to let the water on the first and second decks. The water entered into all parts of the ship, and was about to arrest the fury of the flames; but this caused a still greater danger, and the vessel seemed about to sink into the sea. Then commenced a scene of horror which beggars all description. The deck was covered with six or seven hundred human creatures, many of whom had been confined to their beds by sea-sickness, who were compelled to fly without their clothes, and ran here and there seeking their fathers, husbands, or children. While some awaited their death with silent resignation or stupid insensibility, others abandoned themselves to all the wildness of despair.

The wives and children of the soldiers had come to seek refuge in the chambers of the upper decks, and there they prayed and read the Bible with the wives of the officers and passengers. Among them were two sisters, who, with admirable presence of mind, selected at this moment from the Psalms that one which best suited their danger, and commenced to read with a loud voice, alternately, the following

verses:

"God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will we not fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea. Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. The Lord of Hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our high reward."

The voice of the Lord is upon the waters; yes, there is at this moment upon the waters only the voice of the Lord, and that of man which faith unites to God. This voice of