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I believe few persons have ever been present at the celebrating a mass in a good choir, but have been extremely affected with awe, if not with devotion, which ought to put us on our guard against the insinuating nature of so pompous and alluring a religion. Lord Bolingbroke being one day present at this solemnity, in the chapel ato Versailles, and seeing the archbishop of Paris elevate the host, whispered his companion, the Marquis de *****, “If I were king of France, I would always perform this ceremony myself."

Eloisa now acknowledges the weakness of her religious efforts, and gives herself up to the prevalence of her passion.

Come, with once glance of those deluding eyes,*
Blot out each bright idea of the skies;

Take back that grace, that sorrow, and these tears;
Take back my fruitless penitence and pray'rs ;
Snatch me, just mounting, from the blest abode;
Assist the fiends, and tear me from my God!

A

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No; fly me, fly me! far as pole to pole!-
Ah, come not, write not, think not once of me,
Nor share one pang of all I felt for thee.
Thy oaths I quit, thy memory resign;

Forget, renounce me, hate whate'er was mine.

This change is judicious and moving. And the following invocation to hope, faith, and Christian grace, to come and take full possession of her soul, is solemn, and suited to the condition of her mind; for it seems to be the poet's intention, to shew the force of religion over passion at last, and to represent her as a little calm and resigned to her destiny and way of life: to fix her in which holy temper, the circumstance that follows may be supposed to contribute. For she relates an incident to Abelard, which had made a very deep impression on her mind, and cannot fail of making an equal one on the mind of those readers who can relish true poetry, and strong imagery. The scene she paints is awful: she represents herself lying on a tomb, and thinking she heard some † spirit calling to her in every low wind:

* V. 289.

t V. 307.

Here

Here as I watch'd the dying lamps around,*
From yonder shrine I heard a hollow sound;
Come, sister, come, (it said, or seem'd to say ;)
Thy place is here, sad sister, come away!

Once, like thyself, I trembled, wept, and pray'd:t
Love's victim then, but now a sainted maid.

He

This scene would make a fine subject for the pencil, and is worthy a capital painter. might place Eloisa in the long aisle of a great Gothic church; a lamp should hang over her head, whose dim and dismal ray should afford only light enough to make darkness visible. She herself should be represented in the instant when she first hears this aerial voice, and in the attitude of starting round with astonishment and fear. And this was the method a very great master took to paint a sound, if I may be allowed the expression. This subject was the baptism of Jesus Christ; and, in order to bring into the piece the remarkable incident of the voice from heaven,

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*Virgil, however, gave the hint.-Hinc exaudiri voces, & verba vocantis visa viri-L. iv. 460.

It is well contrived, that this invisible speaker should be a person that had been under the very same kind of misfortunes with Eloisa,

heaven, which cried aloud, "This is my beloved son,” he represented all the assembly that attended on the banks of Jordan, gazing up into heaven with the utmost ardor of amazement.

At this call of a sister in misfortune, who had been visited with a sad similitude of griefs with her own, Eloisa breaks out in a religious transport

I came, I come!' prepare your roseate bow'rs,
Cœlestu," palms, and ever-blooming flow'rs;
Thaher where suners may have rest I go!

She then calls on Abelard to pay her the last sad offices, and to be present with her in the article of death:

See my 1gs membie, and my eyeballs roll

And then a circumstance of personal fondnessintervenes:

Suck my last breath, and catch my dying seal!

But

But she instantly corrects herself, and would have her Abelard attend her at these last solemn moments, only as a devout priest, and not as a fond lover. The image, in which she represents him coming to administer extreme unction, is striking and picturesque :

Ah, no-in sacred vestments mayst thou stand,

*

The hallow'd taper trembling in thy hand;

Present the cross before my lifted eye;

Teach me at once, and learn of me, to die!

She adds, that it will be some consolation to behold him once more, though even in the agonies of death:

Ah then! thy once-lov'd Eloisa see!
It will be then no crime to gaze on me!

Which last line I could never read without great emotion; it is at once so pathetic, and so artfully points back to the whole train and nature of their misfortunes. The circumstances she wishes may attend the death of Abelard, are poetically

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*The words printed in Italics ought to be looked on as particularly beautiful.