Page images
PDF
EPUB

THERE is something in real sorrow that tends to exalt and enlarge the soul: but the imaginary evils of our own creating can only serve to contract and depress it.

WHEN desperate ills demand a speedy cure,
Distrust is cowardice, and prudence folly.

THERE is, perhaps, no time at which we are disposed to think so highly of a friend, as when we find him standing higher than we expected in the esteem of others.

WALTER SCOTT.

COUNT thy specious gifts, no gifts, but guiles.

MILTON.

THE truly strong, and sound mind is the mind that can embrace equally great things and small. I would have a man great in great things, and elegant in little things.

IT is the same together or apart,

JOHNSON.

From life's commencement to its slow decline
We are entwin'd-let death come slow or fast,
The tie which bound the first, endures the last!

BYRON.

In whatever light we examine the triumphs and achievements of our species over the creation submitted to its power, we explore new sources of wonder. But if Science has called into real existence the vision of the Poet-if the accumulating knowledge of ages has blunted the sharpest, and distanced the loftiest of the shafts of the satirist, the philosopher has conferred on the moralist an obligation of surpassing weight. In unveiling to him the living miracles which teem in rich exuberance around the minutest atom, as well as throughout the largest masses of ever-active matter, he has placed before him resistless evidence of immeasurable design. Surrounded by every form of animate and inanimate existence, the sun of Science has yet penetrated but through the outer fold of Nature's majestic robe; but if the philosopher were required to separate, from amongst those countless evidences of creative power, one being, the masterpiece of its skill; and from that being to select one gift, the choicest of all the attributes of life ;-turning within his own breast, and conscious of those powers which have subjugated to his race the external world, and of those higher powers by which he has subjugated to himself that creative faculty which aids his faltering conceptions of a deity, the humble worshipper at the altar of truth would pronounce that being, Man-that endowment, Human Reason.

BABBAGE.

FAREWELL, thou busy world, and may
We never meet again;

Here I can eat, and sleep, and pray,
And do more good in one short day
Than he who his whole age out-wears
Upon thy most conspicuous theatres,
Where nought but vanity and vice appears.

Good God! how sweet are all things here!
How beautiful the fields appear!

How cleanly do we feed and lie!
Lord! what good hours do we keep !
How quietly we sleep!

What peace! what unanimity!

How innocent from the lewd fashion Is all our business, all our recreation!

Oh how happy here's our leisure !
Oh how innocent our pleasure!
Oh ye vallies, Oh ye mountains!
Oh ye groves and crystal fountains,
How I love at liberty,

By turn to come and visit ye!

Dear solitude, the soul's best friend, That man acquainted with himself dost make, And all his Maker's wonders to intend:

With thee I here converse at will,

And would be glad to do so still,

For it is thou alone that keep'st the soul awake.

How calm and quiet a delight

It is alone

To read, and meditate, and write,

By none offended, and offending none!

To walk, ride, sit, or sleep at one's own ease, And pleasing a man's self, none other to displease!

Oh my beloved nymph! fair Dove!
Princess of rivers, how I love
Upon thy flowery banks to lie ;

And view thy silver stream,

When gilded by a summer's beam,
And in it all thy wanton fry
Playing at liberty,

And with my angle upon them
The all of treachery

I ever learnt, industriously to try.

Such streams as Rome's yellow Tyber cannot show,
Th' Iberian Tagus, nor Ligurian Po;

The Meuse, the Danube, and the Rhine
Are puddle-water all compared with thine;
And Loire's pure streams yet too polluted are
With thine, much purer to compare ;
The rapid Garonne, and the winding Seine,
Are both too mean,

Beloved Dove, with thee

To vie priority;

Nay, Tame and Isis, when conjoin'd, submit,

And lay their trophies at thy silver feet.

Oh my beloved rocks; that rise
To awe the earth, and brave the skies,
From some aspiring mountain's crown,
How dearly do I love,

Giddy with pleasure, to look down;

And, from the vales to view the noble heights above!

Oh my beloved caves! from dog-star's heat
And all anxieties, my safe retreat :
What safety, privacy, what true delight,
In the artificial night,

Your gloomy entrails make,

Have I taken, do I take!

How oft when grief has made me fly,

To hide me from society

Even of my dearest friends, have I,

In your recesses' friendly shade,

All my sorrows open laid,

And my most secret woes, intrusted to your privacy!

Lord! would men let me alone,

What an over-happy one

Should I think myself to be;

Might I in this desert place,

(Which most men in discourse disgrace,)
Live but undisturb'd and free;
Here, in this despis'd recess,

Would I, maugre winter's cold,
And the summer's worst excess,

Try to live-out to sixty full years old;

« PreviousContinue »