Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean; This is not Solitude; 'tis but to hold Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unroll'd. But 'midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men, To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess, And roam along, the world's tired denizen, Childe Harold, Canto II. АH! wretched and too solitary he, To help to bear't away. COWLEY. On Solitude. LIVING a good deal alone will, I believe, correct me of my faults; for a man can do without his own approbation in much society, but he must make great exertions to gain it when he lives alone. Without it I am convinced solitude is not to be endured. SYDNEY SMITH. Letters. To be exempt from the passions with which others are tormented, is the only pleasing Solitude. O SOLITUDE! If I must with thee dwell, Spectator, No. 4. Of murky buildings: climb with me the steep,— Its flowery slopes, its river's crystal swell, May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep 'Mongst boughs pavilion'd, where the deer's swift leap Startles the wild bee from the foxglove bell. But little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extends. For a crowd is no company: men's faces are but like pictures in a gallery, and talk but a tinkling cymbal where there is no love. BACON. Essays. But though I'll gladly trace these scenes with thee, Society not exclusive. KEATS. Sonnets. As among men large fortunes are most commonly made by dealing in articles for which the poor (that is the multitude) are consumers, so in the traffic with society, a man should take into account not the rich and great only, but the many. H. TAYLOR. O NANCY, Wilt thou go with me, No longer drest in silken sheen, No longer deck'd with jewels rare, O Nancy, when thou'rt far away, Wilt thou not cast a wish behind? Extremes of hardship learn to bear; O Nancy, canst thou love so true, Through perils keen with me to go, Wilt thou assume the nurse's care, And when at last thy love shall die, Wilt thou receive his parting breath? Statesman. Wilt thou repress each struggling sigh, Where thou wert fairest of the fair? DR. PERCY. HISTORY. IN history a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind. It may in the perversion serve for a magazine, furnishing offensive and defensive weapons for parties in church and state, and supplying the means of keeping alive, or reviving, dissensions and animosities, and adding fuel to civil fury. History consists, for the greater part, of the miseries brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train of disorderly appetites which shake the public with the same"troublous storms that toss The private state, and render life unsweet."* These vices are the causes of those storms; religion, morals, law, prerogatives, privileges, liberties, rights of men are the pretexts. The pretexts are always found in some specious appearance of a real good. You would not secure men from tyranny and sedition, by rooting out of the mind the principles to which these fraudulent pretexts apply. If you did you would root out everything that is valuable in the human breast. Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to names; to the causes of evil which are permanent, not the occasional organs by which they act, and the transitory modes in which they appear. BURKE. LARGE and comprehensive views, the connection of causes and effects, the steady though often slow and at the time unperceived influence of general principles; habits of calm specu * Gibbon observes "that the reign of Antoninus is marked by the rare advantage of furnishing very few materials for history, which is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind." Decline and Fall, Chap. III. lation, of foresight, of deliberative and providing wisdom; these are the lessons of instruction, and these the best advantages to be gained by the contemplation of history, and it is to these that the ambition of an historical student should be at all events directed. SMYTH. Lectures on Modern History. MUSIC. Ferdinand. WHERE should this musick be? i' the air, or the earth? It sounds no more, and sure it waits upon The Tempest, Act I. NOR had they waited For many moments, ere their ears were sated With a faint breath of music, which even then Its airy swellings, with a gentle wave, To light hung leaves, in smoothest echoes breaking,* KEATS. Endymion, Book I. AND as I wake, sweet music, breathe Duke. IF musick be the food of love, play on; Il Penseroso. Thee, shepherd, thee the woods, and desert caves, The willows, and the hazel copses green, Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays. MILTON. Lycidas. The appetite may sicken, and so die. Oh! it came o'er my ear like the sweet south, Twelfth Night, Act I. O MUSIC, sphere-descended maid, COLLINS. Ode: The Passions. AND ever against eating cares, Such as the meeting soul may pierce The sweetness of the violet's deep blue eyes Kiss'd by the breath of heaven seems colour'd by its skies. Childe Harold. |