leagues against the shore:

'That to the height of this great argument
I may assert eternal Providence.'--

Hear what a motion, what a tumult, is given by the dactylic close to each
of the introductory lines! And how massily is the whole locked up into the
peace of heaven, as the aerial arch of a viaduct is locked up into
tranquil stability by its key-stone, through the deep spondaic close,

'And justify the ways of God to man.'

That is the moral of the Miltonic epos; and as much grander than any other
moral _formally_ illustrated by poets, as heaven is higher than earth.

But the most singular moral, which Mr. Landor anywhere discovers, is in
his own poem of '_Gebir_.' Whether he still adheres to it, does not
appear from the present edition. But I remember distinctly, in the
original edition, a Preface (now withdrawn) in which he made his
acknowledgments to some book read at a Welsh Inn for the outline of the
story; and as to the moral, he declared it to be an exposition of that
most mysterious offence, _Over-Colonization_. Much I mused, in my
youthful simplicity, upon this criminal novelty. What might it be? Could
I, by mistake, have committed it myself? Was it a felony, or a
misdemeanor?--liable to transportation, or only to fine and imprisonment?
Neither in the Decemviral Tables, nor in the Code of Justinian, nor the
maritime Code of Oleron, nor in the Canon Law, nor the Code Napoleon, nor
our own Statutes at large, nor in Jeremy Bentham, had I read of such a
crime as a possibility. Undoubtedly the vermin, locally called
_Squatters_, [1] both in the wilds of America and Australia, who pre-