succumbing to supposed authority, may labor to accept it. This fact, which no one who critically studies the religious poets can fail to recognize, will explain why, in this "Testimony of the Poets," contributions from Milton, Young, Montgomery, and even Watts, may be found.

Much that will be new to American readers is presented in this volume. In the "Sermons in Sonnets," by the Rev. Chauncey Hare Townshend, an esteemed clergyman of the established Church of England, the doctrine of Universal Salvation is set forth with the learning of the profound theologian, and the fervid eloquence of the true poet. The poems of Hartley Coleridge, Horace Smith, Leigh Hunt, Thomas Hood, John Sterling, P. J. Bailey, Charles Mackay, Mrs. Browning, and Mary Howitt, are no less decided in their tone in reference to this subject; and it will be found that Wordsworth, Southey, Keble, Bernard Barton, Bowring, Wilson, and other poets of hardly inferior note, including several of American origin, have given utterance to sentiments which admit of but one construction, and that opposed to the theological interpretation of God and Scripture which would consign more than nine-tenths of every generation of men to everlasting anguish in another life.

It will require but a casual glance to see that this is no sectarian book. It will have fulfilled its mission if it help to indicate that the highest human conceptions of the Beautiful and the True are in accordance with the faith which, in the spirit of Christ's teaching, can sincerely and consistently address the Omnipotent as "our Father," and which can look through death in the serene assurance that He "doeth all things well," and that justice will, in this and every future stage of being, be ever tempered with mercy.