ILLUSTRATIONS

Loud Force.

"Blow wind, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!

You cataracts, and hurricanoes, spout

Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks!

You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,

Vaunt couriers to oak-clearing thunderbolts,

Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder

Strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world!

Crack nature's moulds, all germens spill at once,
That make ingrateful man!"— King Lear.

"Ruin seize thee, ruthless King!
Confusion on thy banners wait;

Though fann'd by Conquest's crimson wing,
They mock the air with idle state.
Helm, nor hauberk's twisted mail,

Nor e'en thy virtues, Tyrant, shall avail
To save thy secret soul from nightly fears,
From Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears!'
Such were the sounds that o'er the crested pride
Of the first Edward scatter'd wild dismay,

As down the steep of Snowdon's shaggy side

He wound with toilsome march his long array.
Stout Glo'ster stood aghast in speechless trance:
To arms! cried Mortimer, and couch'd his quivering lance.'"
THE BARD. Gray.

"There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable; and let it come! I repeat it, Sir, let it come!

"It is in vain, Sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, peace, peace! but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the North will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? wish?

What would they have?

What is it that the Gentlemen Is life so dear, or peace so sweet,

as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!"-Patrick Henry.

"Who brands me on the forehead, breaks my sword,
Or lays the bloody scourge upon my back,
Wrongs me not half so much as he who shuts
The gates of honor on me,-turning out
The Roman from his birthright; and, for what?

To fling your offices to every slave!

(Looking round him.)

Vipers, that creep where man disdains to climb,
And, having wound their loathsome track to the top
Of this huge, mouldering monument of Rome,

Hang hissing at the nobler man below!"

Moderate Force.

CATILINE.- Croly.

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Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart;

Thou had'st a voice, whose sound was like the sea;
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So did'st thou travel on like's common way
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowest duties on herself did lay."

SONNET TO MILTON.- Wordsworth.

"Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned,
Mindless of its just honors; with this key
Shakespeare unlocked his heart; the melody
Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound;
A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound;
With it Camoëns soothed an exile's grief;
The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf
Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned

His visionary brow; a glow worm lamp,

It cheered mild Spenser, called from Fairy-land

To struggle through dark ways; and when a damp
Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand
The Thing became a trumpet; whence he blew
Soul-animating strains-alas, too few!”

THE SONNET.-- Ibid.

"Beauty, Good, and Knowledge are three sisters That doat upon each other, friends to man, Living together under the same roof,

And never can be sundered without tears,

-He that shuts Love out, in turn shall be
Shut out from Love, and on her threshold lie
Howling in outer darkness. Not for this
Was common clay ta'en from the common earth,
Moulded by God, and temper'd with the tears
Of angels, to the perfect shape of man.'

THE PALACE OF ART.- Tennyson.

"Think of him [Goldsmith] reckless, thriftless, vain if you like — but merciful, gentle, generous, full of love and pity. He passes out of our life, and goes to render his account beyond it. Think of the poor pensioners weeping at his grave; think of the noble spirits that admired and deplored him; think of the righteous pen that wrote his epitaph-and of the wonderful and unanimous response of affection with which the world has paid back the love he gave it. His humor delighting us still; his song fresh and beautiful as when first he charmed with it: his words in all our mouths: his very weakness beloved and familiar,—his benevolent spirit seems still to smile upon us: to do gentle kindnesses: to succour with sweet charity to soothe, to caress, and forgive: to plead with the fortunate for the unhappy and the poor.”—Thackeray.

"The quality of mercy is not strained;

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blessed;
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,

Wherein doeth set the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway,

It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,

It is an attribute to God himself;

And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this-
That in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation; we do pray for mercy;

And that same prayer doth teach us all to render

The deeds of mercy.'
."-- Portia.- MERCHANT OF VENICE.

"The flowers may fade away, the woods may fall,
The sea may waste the land, the land the sea,

And men may feed the worms beneath the pall,
And time may vanish in Eternity;
Still, ocean-like, the tides of Being lie,

Filled from exhaustless urns;
The flame of life still burns,

And God still sits on high,

And watches Earth below, with his unsleeping eye!"
CARMEN NATURÆ TRIUMPHALE.-R. H. Stoddard.

"Each in his own way; each in his own profession; each through that little spot in the universe given to him. For not only is God everywhere, but all of God is in every point. Not his wisdom here, and His goodness there; the whole truth may be read, if we had eyes, and heart, and time enough, in the laws of a daisy's growth. God's Beauty, His Love, His Unity; nay, if you observe how each atom exists, not for itself alone, but for the sake of every other atom in the universe, in that atom or daisy, you may read the law of the Cross itself. The crawling of a beetle before now has taught perseverance, and led to a crown. The little moss, brought close to a traveller's eye in an African desert, who had lain down to die, roused him to faith in that Love which had so curiously arranged the minute fibres of a thing so small, to be seen once, and but once by a human eye, and carried him, like Elijah of old, in the strength of that heavenly repast, a journey of forty days and forty nights to the sources of the Nile; yet who could have suspected divinity in a beetle, or theology in a moss?"- Robertson.

"We hold the keys of Heaven in our hands,
The gift and heirloom of a former state,
And lie in infancy at Heaven's gate,

Transfigured in the light that streams along the lands!
Around our pillars golden ladders rise,

And up and down the skies,

With winged sandals shod,

The angels come and go, the Messengers of God!

Nor do they, fading from us, e'er depart,—

It is the childish heart;

We walk as heretofore,

Not Heaven is gone, but we are blind with tears, Groping our way along the downward slope of Years!" CARMEN NATURE TRIUMPHALE. Stoddard.

"Not only around our infancy

Doth heaven with all its splendors lie;
Daily, with souls that cringe and plot,
We Sinais climb and know it not;
Over our manhood bend the skies;

Against our fallen and traitor lives
The great winds utter prophecies;

With our faint hearts the mountain strives;
Its arms outstretched, the druid wood

Waits with its benedicite;

And to our age's drowsy blood

Still shouts the inspiring sea."

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VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL.-J. R. Lowell.

Soft Force.

"Look how the floor of heaven

Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold!
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st

But in his motion like an angel sings,

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubim.
Such harmony is in immortal souls:

But while this muddy vesture of decay

Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it."-Shakespeare

"How beautiful this night! the balmiest sigh,

Which vernal zephyrs breathe in evening's ear,

Were discord to the speaking quietude

That wraps this moveless scene. Heaven's ebon vault,
Studded with stars unutterably bright,

Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls,
Seems like a canopy which love has spread

To curtain her sleeping world. Yon gentle hills,
Robed in a garment of untrodden snow;
Yon darksome rocks, whence icicles depend,
So stainless that their white and glittering spires
Tinge not the moon's pure beam; yon castled steep,
Whose banner hangeth o'er the time-worn tower
So idly, that rapt fancy deemeth it

A metaphor of peace: - all form a scene
Where musing solitude might love to lift
Her soul above this sphere of earthliness;
Where silence undisturbed might watch alone,
So cold, so bright, so still " -Shelley.