Sat fair-proportioned on her polished limbs, III. Thoughtless of beauty, she was beauty's self, And breathes its balmy fragrance o'er the wild; IV. He then, his fancy with autumnal scenes Amusing, chanced beside his reaper-train To walk, when poor Lavinia drew his eye; Unconscious of her power, and turning quick With unaffected blushes from his gaze: He saw her charming, but he saw not half The charms her downcast modesty concealed. And thus in secret to his soul he sighed : V. "She looks, methinks, Of old Acasto's line; and to my mind Now to the dust gone down; his houses, lands, 'Tis said that, in some lone obscure retreat, Whom yet my fruitless search could never find. VI. When, strict inquiring, from herself he found The mingled passions that surprised his heart, VII. "Oh, let me now into a richer soil Transplant thee safe! where vernal suns and showers Diffuse their warmest, largest influence; And of my garden be the pride and joy! The father of a country, thus to pick The very refuse of those harvest-fields, EXERCISE CLIX. APOSTROPHE, literally, a turning away from (APO, from, and STROPHE, a turning), is the name applied to a digression in discourse, where the speaker suddenly addresses some one who is dead or absent, as if alive or present; or some inanimate object, as though having the qualities that belong to intelligent beings. APOSTROPHE TO THE OCEAN. I. TORD BYRON.* Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean-roll! He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan- II. His steps are not upon thy paths,―thy fields Are not a sport for him,-thou dost arise And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields * See next Exercise. Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies, His petty hope in some near port or bay, And dashest him again to earth: there let him lay. III. The armaments which thunderstrike the walls IV. Thy shores are empires, changed in all save theeAssyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters wasted them while they were free, And many a tyrant since; their shores obey The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay Has dried up realms to deserts: not so thou; Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play. Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow: Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now. V. Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form Calm or convulsed-in breeze, or gale, or storm, Dark-heaving: boundless, endless, and sublime- Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are made; each zone Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone VI. And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy And trusted to thy billows far and near, EXERCISE CLX. George Gordon BYRON (Lord Byron) was born in London, January 22d, 1788, and died at Missolonghi, in Greece, April 19th, 1824. In his nineteenth year, on leaving Cambridge University, where his course had been marked by an intractable disposition, he commenced his career as an author by publishing the "Hours of Idleness." It was criticized with great severity by the Edinburgh Review, to which attack he replied with still greater severity in a caustic satire, entitled "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." His life, after this, was marked by great misfortunes, occasioned chiefly by his own wild and wanton conduct; but it was distinguished by a series of political productions which have been more admired and more condemned than those, perhaps, of any other writer, whether living or dead. His strange lot, and his stranger career, are admirably sketched in the present Exercise. SKETCH OF LORD BYRON. MACAULAY. 1. The pretty fable by which the Duchess of Orleans illustrates the character of her son the regent, might, with little change, be applied to Byron. All the fairies, save one, had been bidden to his cradle. All the gossips had been profuse of their gifts. One had bestowed nobility, another genius, a third beauty. The malignant elf who had been uninvited, came last, and, unable to reverse what her sisters had done for their favor ite, had mixed up a curse with every blessing. 2. In the rank of Lord Byron, in his understanding, in his character, in his very person, there was a strange union of oppo |