The Sun.
London, England, 1848-07-17 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

TEE CLOSING SC ENE. By the Author of " The
Bishop's Daughter," 6-c.
The lives of eminent men may always be read with
profit, but never more so than when they are brought
in strong contrast to each other, as they are in the
volume before us. Here we have the lights and sha-
dows of human life—the holy aspirations of the
Christian contra,Aed with the gloomy forebodings of
the Infidel : and so faithfully are the portraits drawn,
and by so masterly a hand, that they cannot fail to
arrest attention. The author laments, that " among
the acute, and the gifted, and the highly educated,
are arrayed the antagonists of Revelation and the
enemies of the Redeemer." It ever was and always
will be so. What says the Scripture ? "Not many
wise men after the flesh, rot many mighty, not many
noble are called." And Cowper, who always de-
lighted to drink from the Fountain of Life, thus
enforces the same truth :
" Not many wise, rich, noble, or profound
In science, win one inch of heavenly ground."
" Not many wise are called." And why? Clearly
because they are so puffed up with their own (often
vain) attainments, that they think it derogatory to
ask for aid of Him to whom they are indebted for
all the talents they possess. The inconsistency of
these urea is most remarkable. For instance, Shelley,
a sketch of whose unhappy life is given in the work
under consideration, once declared to a literary friend
that of all the books he had ever read he valued the
Bible the most. His friend, somewhat startled at
this remark, asked hitn how he could, with the least
consistency, make this assertion after the sceptical
opinions he had published in his various works ? " lf,"
replied " I have written anything in opposi-
tion to the'Bible, it has been done from very scorn
for the hypocrisy of those who call themselves
Christians, but whose walk in life is as opposed
to that of Christ as light to darkness." This is ex-
ceedingly cutting, and is well calculated to lead men
of reflection to consider the springs of their actions,
and w hat their " closing scene ' is likely to be.
Shelley was an extraordinary man ; highly gifted
unquestionably, with a keen perception of the beauti-
ful. His " Hymn to intellectual Beauty "is proof
sufficient of this. At every object in nature he
looked with the eye of a poet. In watching the
graceful motion of the clouds he once said—
" They blindly on their errands go."
Not thinking, perhaps, at the moment, that he him-
self was equally blind in all matters relating to
eternity. Shelley at one period of his life endured
great privations; but when his circumstances im-
proved, we have heard from a gentleman who was in-
timate with him, that to a necessitous author, though
no relation, he presented a thousand pounds. This
was at any rate acting the part of the good Samari-
tan. And after such conduct, who can refrain from
looking with tenderness on the man whose feelings could*.
prompt him to such princely liberality ? When
Shelley drew the cheque for this amount, he might
have said to a mere professor, " Show me thy faith
without thy works, and I will show thee my faith by
my works." The " mighty, the noble, and the rich,"
are included in our quotation ; but we have not space
at present to pass any remarks on these. From the
narrative of every character included in " The
Closing Scene" we might select passages of great
interest, but in doing so we should be robbing the
book too much of its valuable contents. We will
therefore close our notice by strongly recommending
the reader to get a copy of the work, which, to our
taste, is the most interesting of any which the author
has yet published.

* 1 Cor. i. 26.