Which are we bound most to admire--John Bell's pen or John Bell's
needle? It is a difficulty. "The Devil's Webbe" is admirable in both.
What a spider-like wretch is he, watching the toils that he has spread!

"This webbe our passions be, and eke the flies
Be we poor mortals: in the centre coyles
Old Nick, a spider grimme, who doth devyse
Ever to catch us in his cunning toyles.
Look at his claws--how long they are, and hooked!
Look at his eyes--and mark how grimme and greedie!
Look at his horrid fangs--how sharp and crooked!
Then keep thy distance so, I this arreede ye,
Oh sillie Flie! an thou wouldst keep thee whole;
For an he catch thee, he will eate thy soul."

And there they are! the winged insect lovers of pleasure, and of gain
and strife--in one word, of sin--entangled in the ladder webb; while
such a monster is in the centre, watching his larder. John Bell is
instinctively a moral weaver. Fine-spun are his philosophical threads;
we stop not to enquire if they will bear the tug of life. He is trying
them, however, on the "tug of war." Pen and needle are set to work
philosophically, methodically, benignly. In this he is but a unit out of
many thousands. His opinions are not singular. Amiable moralist!--
delightful is the dream, sweetly sounding the wisdom; but is it
practicable? John Bell's warfare, "The Assault," is, without a doubt,
"confusion worse confounded;" it is not easy, at a view, to find legs
and arms and heads in their anatomical order. We must trace the human
figure as through its map. Perhaps this is purposely done to resemble a
battle the more truly, where limbs are apt to fly out of their places.
But John Bell thinks--