With sudden adoration and blank awe?
So dear to heaven is saintly chastity,
That when a soul is found sincerely so,
A thousand liveried angels lackey her,
Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt;
And, in clear dream and solemn vision,
Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear;
Till oft converse with heavenly habitants
Begin to cast a beam on the outward shape,
The unpolluted temple of the mind.

And turn it by degrees to the soul's essence,
Till all be made immortal: but when lust,
By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk,
But most by lewd and lavish act of sin,
Lets in defilement to the inward parts,
The soul grows clotted by contagion,*
Imbodies, and imbrutes, till she quite lose
The divine property of her first being.
Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp,
Oft seen in charnel vaults and sepulchres,
Lingering and sitting by a new-made grave,
As loth to leave the body that it loved,
And link'd itself by carnal sensuality

To a degenerate and degraded state.

Second Brother. How charming is divine philosophy!
Not harsh and crabbèd, as dull fools suppose,

But musical as is Apollo's lute,

And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets,

Where no crude surfeit reigns.

Isabella.

AUTHORITY.

OH! 'tis excellent

MILTON. Comus.

To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant.

* There is not, in my opinion, a consideration more effectual to extinguish inordinate desires in the soul of man, than the notions of Plato and his followers upon that subject. They tell us that every passion which has been contracted by the soul during her residence in the body, remains with her in a separate state, and that the soul in the body and out of the body differs no more than the man does from himself when he is in his house or in open air.

Spectator.

happiness, learns to rely with confidence on its own exertions, and gains with greater certainty the power of being happy.

ZIMMERMAN.

THAT all who are happy are equally happy, is not true. A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not equally happy. Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness. A peasant has not capacity for having equal happiness with a philosopher. This question was very happily illustrated by the Rev. Mr. Robert Brown, at Utrecht: "A small drinking-glass and a large one," said he, "may be equally full, but a large one holds more than the small.”

JOHNSON.

THE haunts of happiness are varied and rather unaccountable, but I have more often* seen her among little children, and home firesides, and in country houses, than any where else,―at least I think so.

SYDNEY SMITH.

How distant oft the thing we dote on most,
Than that for which we dote-felicity!

YOUNG. Night Thoughts.

*

THE FALLACY OF RELYING UPON GENERAL OPINION.

HE that rests upon established consent, as the judgment approved by time, trusts to a very fallacious and weak foundation for we have but an imperfect knowledge of the discoveries in arts and sciences made public in different ages and countries. Nor is consent, or the continuance thereof, a thing of any great account: for however governments may vary, there is but one state of the sciences: and that will for ever be democratic or popular. But the doctrines of greatest vogue among the people, are either the contentious and quarrelsome, or the showy and empty; that is, such as may either entrap the assent or lull the mind to rest: whence of course the greatest

*

If solid happiness we prize,

Within our breast this jewel lies,

And they are fools who roam:

The world has nothing to bestow;

From our own selves our joys must flow,

And that dear hut, our home.

COTTON. The Fireside.

geniuses in all ages have suffered violence, whilst, out of regard to their own character, they submitted to the judgment of the times and the populace. And thus, when any more sublime speculations happened to appear, they were commonly tossed and extinguished by the breath of popular opinion. Whence time, like a river, has brought down to us what is light and tumid, but sunk what was ponderous and solid.

And the night shall be fill'd with music,

And the cares that infest the day
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,

And as silently steal away.

CARE, mad to see a man sae happy,

LONGFELLOW.

E'en drown'd himsel' amang the nappy ;*

Cares have commonly very little jurisdiction over the time that is spent

in eating and drinking.

Don Quixote,

U

As bees flee hame wi' lades o' treasure,
The minutes wing'd their way wi' pleasure;
Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious,
O'er a' the ills o' life victorious!

BURNS. Tam O'Shanter.

ROME.

HE that hath seen a great oak dry and dead,
Yet clad with reliques of some trophies old,
Lifting to heaven her aged hoary head;
Whose foot on ground hath left but feeble hold,
But half-disbowel'd lies above the ground,
Showing her wreathed roots, and naked arms,
And on her trunk all rotten and unsound
Only supports herself for meat for worms;
And though she owe her fall to the first wind,
Yet of the devout people is adored,
And many young plants spring out of her rind;
Who such an oak hath seen, let him record
That such this city's honour was of yore,
And 'mongst all cities flourishèd much more.

All that which Egypt whilom did devise,
All that which Greece their temples to embrave,
After the Ionic, Doric, Attic guise,

Or Corinth skill'd in curious works to grave;
All that Lysippus' practic art could form,
Apelles' wit, or Phidias his skill,

Was wont this ancient city to adorn,

And heaven itself with her wide wonders fill;
All that which Athens ever brought forth wise,
All that which Afric ever brought forth strange,
All that which Asia ever had of prise,
Was here to see: a marvellous great change:
Rome living was the world's sole ornament,
And dead is now the world's sole monument.
SPENSER. The Ruines of Rome.

THE COLISEUM.

ARCHES on arches! as it were that Rome,
Collecting the chief trophies of her line,
Would build up all her triumphs in one dome,
Her Coliseum stands; the moonbeams shine

As 't were its natural torches, for divine

Should be the light which streams here to illume
This long-explored, but still exhaustless, mine
Of contemplation; and the azure gloom

Of an Italian night, where the deep skies assume

Hues which have words, and speak to ye of heaven,
Floats o'er this vast and wond'rous monument,
And shadows forth its glory. There is given
Unto the things of earth, which Time hath bent,
A spirit's feeling, and where he hath leant
His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power
And magic in the ruin'd battlement,

For which the palace of the present hour

Must yield its pomp, and wait till ages are its dower.

But when the rising moon begins to climb
Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there;
When the stars twinkle through the loops of time,
And the low night-breeze waves along the air
The garland-forest, which the gray walls wear,
Like laurels on the bald first Cæsar's head;
When the light shines serene but does not glare,
Then in the magic circle raise the dead:

Heroes have trod this spot-'tis on their dust ye tread. Childe Harold, Canto IV.

ATHENS.

WESTWARD, much nearer by south-west, behold!

Where on the Ægean shore a city stands,

Built nobly, pure the air, and light the soil;
Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts
And eloquence, native to famous wits,
Or hospitable, in her sweet recess,

City or suburban, studious walks and shades.
See there the olive grove of Academe,

Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird

Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long;
There flowery hill Hymettus, with the sound

Of bees' industrious murmur oft invites

To studious musing; there Ilissus rolls

His whispering stream: within the walls then view The school of ancient sages; his who bred