In the book of Proverbs are examples of Antithesis:— Better is a dry morsel, and quietness therewith, than an house full of sacrifices with strife.

Whoso mocketh the poor reproacheth his Maker: and he that is glad at calamities shall not be unpunished.

Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us;
The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in,
The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us,
We bargain for the graves we lie in.

At the devil's booth all things are sold,
Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold;
For a cap
and bells our lives we pay,
Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's tasking;
'Tis heaven alone that is given away,
Tis only God may be had for the asking.
No price is set on the lavish summer

June may be had by the poorest comer.
Vision of Sir Launfal. "

Lowell.

Suppose that you are the best part of England; that you who have become the slayes ought to have been the masters, and that those who are the masters ought to have been the slaves! If it is a noble and whole-hearted England whose bidding you are bound to do, it is well; but if you are yourselves the best of her heart, and the England you have left be but a half-hearted England, how say you of your obedience? You were too proud to become shop-keepers; are you satisfied then to become the servants of shop-keepers? You were too proud to become merchants or farmers; will you have merchants or farmers for your field-marshals? You imagine yourselves to be the army of England: how, if you should find yourselves at last only the police of her manufacturing towns, and the beadles of her little Bethels? Address at Royal Military Academy.

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Ruskin.

In rendering the Simile, hold up the idea that is being likened to another or to several others with greater prominence than anything else with which it is likened or compared. It is a fault to reverse this order and allow the mind to be so taken with the elaborate notions used in the comparison as to lose sight of the prime idea. This chief idea, as it is put in the balances and weighed with one idea after another, should be held in the mind throughout the entire process, even if a paragraph long, as of more value than anything, or all things with which it is compared.

They came, and Eudora stood robed and crowned,
The bride of the morn, with her train around.
Jewels flashed out from her braided hair,

Like starry dews midst the roses there;
Pearls on her bosom quivering shone,
Heaved by her heart through its golden zone;
But a brow, as those gems of the ocean pale,
Gleamed from beneath her transparent veil;
Changeful and faint was her fair cheek's hue,
Tho' clear as a flower which the light looks through.
Bride of the Greek Isle.
Mrs. Hemans.

The tent was unlooped; I pulled up the spear that obstructed, and under 1 stooped. I groped my way on. "Here is David, thy servant!" And no voice replied. At the first I saw naught but the blackness; but soon I descried a something more black than the blackness-the vast, the upright main prop which sustains the pavilion: and slow into sight grew a figure against it, gigantic and blackest of all. Then a sunbeam, that burst through the tent-roof, showed Saul. He stood as erect as that tent-prop, both arms stretched out wide on the great cross-support in the centre, that goes to each side; he relaxed not a muscle but hung there as, caught in his pangs and waiting his

change, the king serpent all heavily hangs, far away from his kind, in the pine, till deliverance come with the springtime, so agonized Saul, drear and stark, blind and dumb. Saul. " Robert Browning.

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There is sweet music here that softer falls

Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
Or night-dews on still waters between walls
Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass;
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies,
Than tir'd eyelids upon tir'd eyes.

The Lotos-Eaters."

Tennyson.

In metaphor hold the thought all through the compar ison on the real idea thus contrasted:—

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies : thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely Goodness and Mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.- A Song of Trust." Twenty-third Psalm.

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I, writing thus, am still what men call young;
I have not so far left the coasts of life

To travel inland, that I cannot hear
That murmur of the water infinite

Which unweaned babies smile at in their sleep,
When wondered at for smiling.- Mrs. Browning.

All that I know

Of a certain star

Is, it can throw

(Like the angled spar)

Now a dart of red,

Now a dart of blue;

Till my friends have said

They would fain see, too,

My star that dartles the red and the blue! Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled :

They must solace themselves with the

Saturn above it.

What matter to me if their star is a world?
Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore

I love it.

"My Star. "

Robert Browning.

Make positive ideas heavier than negative ideas.—

"Your words have been stout against me, " saith the Lord. "Yet ye say, 'What have we spoken so much against thee?' Ye have said, 'It is vain to serve God : and what profit is it that we have kept his ordinance, and that we have walked mournfully before the Lord of hosts? And now we call the proud happy; yea, they that work wickedness are set up; yea, they that tempt God are even delivered. '"

Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another and the Lord hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon his name

"And they shall be mine," saith the Lord of hosts, "in that day when I make up my jewels; and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him. Then shall ye return, and discern between the righteous

and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not. "

Reflected in the lake, I love

To see the stars of evening glow,
So tranquil in the heavens above,
So restless in the wave below.
Thus heavenly hope is all serene,
But earthly hope, how bright soe'er,
Still fluctuates o'er this changing scene,

As false and fleeting as 'tis fair.

Malachi.

Heber.

In the tempest of life, when the wave and the gale
Are around and above, if thy footing should fail-
If thine eyes should grow dim, and thy caution depart―
Look aloft, and be firm, and be fearless of heart.
If the friend who embraced in prosperity's glow,
With a smile for each joy and a tear for each woe,
Should betray thee when sorrows, like clouds, are arrayed,
Look aloft to the friendship which never shall fade.

Should the visions which hope spreads in light to thine eye,
Like the tints of the rainbow, but brighten to fly,
Then turn, and, through tears of repentant regret,
Look aloft to the sun that is never to set.

Should they who are nearest and dearest thy heart —
Thy friends and companions-in sorrow depart,
Look aloft from the darkness and dust of the tomb,
To that soil where "affection is ever in bloom. "

And oh, when Death comes in his terrors, to cast
His fears on the future, his pall on the past,
In that moment of darkness, with hope in thy heart,
And a smile in thine eye, Look aloft, and depart.
"Look Aloft.
J. Lawrence.