leaves them massed together in one midnight of common destruction.

Ezekiel was a priest as well as a prophet, and alludes more frequently than any of the prophets to the ceremonial institutes of the temple. He was every inch a Jew; and none of the prophets possessed more attachment to their country, more zeal for their law, and more hatred to its foes. It is not enough for him to predict the ruin of Zion's present enemies; he must spring forward into the future, organize and bring up from the far north a shadowy army of enemies, Gog and Magog, against the mountains of Israel, and please his insatiate spirit of patriotism, by whelming them also in a vaster and a final doom. And leaving them to their " seven months' burial," he hurries away, in the hand of God, to the very high mountain, where, in place of the fallen temple and deserted streets of Jerusalem, the new city, the new temple, and the new country of the prince appear before his view, and comfort him under the darkness of the present, by the transcendent glories of the future hovering over the history of his beloved people.

Such a being was Ezekiel—among men, but not of them— detained in the company of flesh, his feet on earth, his soul floating amid the cherubim. We have tried to describe him ; but perhaps it had been our wisdom to have said only, as he heard it said to an object representing well the swiftness, strength, and impetuosity of his own spirit-"O wheel!"

Amplification is asserted, by Eichhorn and others, to be the peculiarity of Ezekiel. It was as truly asserted by Hall, to be the differentia of Burke. He no doubt describes minutely the objects before him; but this because, more than other prophets, he had objects visually presented, complicated and minute to describe. But his description of them is always terse and succinct; indeed, the stern literality with which he paints ideal and spiritual figures is one cause of his obscurity. He never deals with his visions artistically or by selection, but seems simply to turn his soul out before us, to daguerreotype the dimmest of his dreams. Thus, too, Burke, from the vividness of his imagina

tion, seems often to be rhetorically expanding and exaggerating, while, in fact, he is but severely copying from the large pictures which have arisen before his view.

We know little of this prophet's history: it is marked chiefly by the procession of his predictions, as during twenty-one years they marched onward to the mountain-top, where they were abruptly closed. But we can not successfully check our fancy, as she seeks to represent to us the face and figure of this our favorite prophet. We see him young, slender, long-locked, stooping, as if under the burden of the Lord-with a visible fire in his eye and cheek, and an invisible fire about his motions and gestures, earnest purpose pursuing him like a ghost, a wild beauty hanging around him, like the blossom on the thorn tree, and the air of early death adding a supernatural age and dignity to his youthful aspect. We see him, as he moved through the land, a sun-gilded storm, followed by looks of admiration, wonder, and fear; and, like the hero of "Excelsior," untouched by the love of maidens, unterrified by the counsel of elders, undismayed by danger or by death, climbing straight to his object. We see him at last, on the Mount of Vision-the Pisgah of prophecy-first, with rapturous wonder, saluting the spectacle of that mystic city and those holy waters -then crying out, "Lord, now let thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation"—and at last, behold, the burning soul exhales through the burning eyes, and the wearied body falls down in his own solitary chamber-for it had been indeed a "dream," but a dream as true as are the future reign of Jesus and the future glory of the city and church of God.

DANIEL.

We require almost to apologize for introducing Daniel into the same cluster of prophets with Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. And this not because it is rich enough without him, still less that he is not worthy of the conjunction, but that he seems at

first to belong to a different order of men. They were prophets, and little else. He was a chief counselor in a great empire. They seem to have been poor, solitary, and wandering men, despised and rejected; he was the favorite of monarchs. Their predictions exposed them to danger and shame; his "dreams" drew him aloft to riches and honor. They were admitted now and then among princes, because they were prophets; but his power of prophecy made him a prince. Their predictions came generally naked to their waking eyes—they were day-dreams; but his were often softened and shaded by the mist of sleep. And yet we do feel justified in putting the well-conditioned and gold-hung Daniel beside the gaunt, hungry, and wild-eyed sons of the prophets we have just been picturing. Souls, and dark piercing eyes expressing similar souls, are kindred, whether they burn 'neath the brows of beggars or of kings.

"Sleep on," said an unhappy literary man, over the dust of Bunyan, in Bunhillfields, "thou prince of dreamers." Prince the third he was; for, while Joseph is the first, Daniel is the second monarch in this dim dynasty. His pillow was at times a throne-the throne of his genius, the throne of empires, and of all future ages. His imagination, fettered during the day by the cares of state, lanched out at night into the sea of futurity, and brought home, from its remotest shores, spoils of which we are only yet learning the value and the meaning. It was by understanding the cipher of his own dreams, that he learned to expound that of others. As the poet is the best, nay, only true critic of poetry-as the painter can best understand pictures-and the orator best appreciate, whoever else may feel, eloquence-the dreamer alone can expound dreams.

Ovag 80Ti 4105-"a dream is from God," is one of the earliest, shortest, and truest of sentences. Strange, stuttering, imperfect, but real and direct messengers from the Infinite, are our dreams. Like worn-out couriers, dying with their news at the threshold of the door, dreams seem sometimes unable to

utter their tidings. Or is it rather that we do not yet understand their language, and must often thus lay missives aside, which contain at once our duty and our destiny? No theory of dreams as yet seems entirely satisfactory; but most imperfect are those theories which deny in them any preternatural and prophetic element. What man for years watches his dreams— ranges them each morning round his couch-compares them with each other, "spiritual things with spiritual"-compares them with events-without the profound conviction that a superhuman power is "floating, mingling, interweaving," with those shapeless shades-that in dreams he often converses with the dead, meets with the loosened spirits of the sleeping upon common ground, exerts powers unknown to his waking moments, recalls the past though perished, sees the present though distant, and descries many a clear spot through the mist of the future? The dreaming world—as the region where all elements are mingled, all contradictions reconciled, all tenses lost in one -supplies us with the only faint conception we have of that awful Now, in which the Eternal dwells. In every dream does not the soul, like a stream, sink transiently into the deep abyss, whence it came, and where it is to merge at death, and are not the confusion and incoherence of dreams just the hubbub, the foam, and the struggle, with which the river weds the ocean?

But all dreams, which ever waved rapture over the brow of youthful genius, dreaming of love or heaven, or which ever distilled poison on the drugged and desperate repose of unhappy bard or philosopher, who has experienced the "pains of sleep," or cried aloud, as he awoke in struggles-"I shall sleep no more," must yield in magnitude, grandeur, and comprehensiveness, to the dreams which Daniel expounded or saw. They are all colossal in size, as befitted dreams dreamed in the palaces of Babylon. No ears of corn, blasted or flourishing-no kine, fat or lean-appear to Daniel; but here stands up a great image, with head of gold, breast of silver, belly of brass, and feet of iron, mingled with mire clay; and there waves a tree,

tall as heaven, and broad as earth. Here, again, as the four winds are striving upon the ocean, four monstrous forms emerge, and there appears the throne of the Ancient of Days, with all its appurtenances of majesty and insignia of justice. Empires, religions, the history of time, the opening gateways of eternity, are all spanned by those dreams. No wonder that monarchs sprang up trembling and troubled from their sight, and that one 迪 of them changed the countenance of the prophet, as years of anguish could not have done.

They are recounted in language grave, solemn, serene. The poetry of Daniel lies rather in the objects presented than in the figures or the language of the description. The vehemence, pathos, or fury, which, in various measures, characterized his brethren, are not found in him. A calm, uniform dignity distinguishes all his actions and words. It forsakes not his brow even while he is astonished for one hour in the presence of the monarch. It enters with him as he enters, awful in holiness, into the hall of Belshazzar's feast. It sits over him in the lion's den, like a canopy of state; and it sustains his style to its usual even exalted pitch in describing the session of the Ancient of Days, and the fiery stream which goes forth before him.

Besides those dreams, there are interspersed incidents of the most romantic and poetical character. Indeed, Daniel is the most romantic book of Scripture. There is the burning, fiery furnace, with the fourth Man walking through it, where three only had been cast in; there is the story of Nebuchadnezzar, driven from men, but restored again to his kingdom, and becoming an humble worshiper of the God of heaven; there is the hall of Belshazzar, with the armless hand and unread letters burning from the wall; and there is the figure of Daniel in the den, swaying the lions by his eye, and his holiness--emblem of a divine philosophy-soothing the savage passions of clay.

Perhaps, after all, the great grandeur of Daniel's prophecy arises from its frequent, glimpses of the coming One. Over all

H