our common version of the Bible--"The Lord _garnished_ the heavens." We
have noticed a stronger objection to a line in this otherwise perfect
stanza. It is this--

"All that the mountain's sheltering bosom shields."

Here is unquestionably a tautology, since to shield and to shelter
convey precisely the same idea.

The charm of the "Minstrel" greatly lies in its blending of the moral
elements with the material imagery of the poem. The mind, the growth of
which he describes, is not forced into activity, or hatched prematurely
by electric heat; it developes sweetly, gradually, and in finest harmony
with the beautiful and the great around it--like a fir amidst the
plantations of Woodmyre, or a planetree on the far-seen heights of
Esslie. The second canto has beautiful passages, but is, on the whole,
more vague and fantastic than the first. We regret exceedingly that
Beattie never found leisure for writing a third canto, and leading
Edwin, whom he had brought to the threshold, within the sanctuary of
song, and consecrating him the "High Priest of the Nine," by baptizing
him into the Christian faith. The poem is a dream as well as a
fragment--no poetic mind was perhaps ever so thoroughly insulated as
that of his hero--but the "dream is one," it is consistent with itself,
and is painted with trembling truth of touch and delicate tenderness of
feeling. We feel it to be destitute of profound suggestiveness and
massive thought, but its verse is solemnly dignified, its imagery is
chastely grand, and a rich chiaroscuro rests like a tropical night upon
the whole. Besides the stanzas we have already alluded to, it has some
of those brief touches which show the master's hand: such as--