_Blanco White's Sonnet_ (Vol. vii., pp. 404. 486.; Vol. ix., p.
469.).--This sonnet is so beautiful, that I hope it will suffer no
disparagement in the eyes of any of your admiring readers, if I remind them
of a passage in Sir Thomas Browne's _Quincunx_, which I conceive may have
inspired the brilliant genius of Blanco White on this occasion. I regret
that I have not the precise reference to the passage:
"_Light_" (says Browne) "_that makes things seen, makes some things
invisible_. Were it not for darkness, and the shadow of the earth, _the
noblest part of creation had remained unseen_, and _the stars in heaven
as invisible_ as on the fourth day, when they were created above the
horizon _with the sun_, or there was not an eye to behold them. The
greatest mystery of religion is expressed by adumbration; and, in the
noblest part of the Jewish types, we find the cherubim shadowing the
{553} mercy-seat. _Life itself is but the shadow of death_, and souls
departed but the shadows of the living: all things fall under this
name. _The sun itself is but the dark simulacrum_, and _light but the
shadow of God_!"