Or race of youthful and unhandled colts,

Fetching mad bounds, bellowing and neighing loud,
Which is the hot condition of their blood:

If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound,
air of music touch their ears,

Or any

You shall perceive them make a mutual stand,
Their savage eyes turned to a modest gaze

By the sweet power of music: therefore the poet
Did feign that Orpheus1 drew trees, stones, and floods:
Since naught so stockish, hard, and full of rage,
But music for the time doth change his nature.
The man that hath no music in himself,

Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus: 2

Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.
Portia. That light we see is burning in my hall.

How far that little candle throws its beams!

So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

Nerica. When the moon shone we did not see the candle. Por. So doth the greater glory dim the less;

A substitute shines brightly as a king,

Until a king be by; and then his state
Empties itself, as doth an inland brook
Into the main of waters.

Music! hark!

Ner. It is your music, madam, of the house.
Por. Nothing is good, I see, without respect:
Methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day.
Ner. Silence bestows that virtue on it, madam.
Por. The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark
When neither is attended; and, I think,
The nightingale, if she should sing by day,
When every goose is cackling, would be thought
No better a musician than the wren.

How many things by season seasoned are
To their right praise and true perfection!
Peace ho! the moon sleeps with Endymion, 3
And would not be awaked.

NOTES.-I. Or'pheus (-füs), a mythical person of the ancient Greeks who charmed rocks, trees, and animals with his song.

2. Er'e bus, according to the ancient poets, the dark and gloomy cavern under the earth, passed through by those going to Hades.

3. En dym'ion, a beautiful shepherd-youth who spent his life in perpetual sleep.

60. DR. FRANKLIN AND ISRAEL POTTER.

I.

I. THE chamber itself bore evident marks of antiquity. One part of the rough-finished wall was sadly cracked; and, covered with dust, looked dim and dark. But the aged inmate, though wrinkled as well, looked neat and hale. Both wall and sage were compounded of like materials,-lime and dust; both, too, were old; but while the rude earth of the wall had no painted luster to shed off all fadings and tarnish, and still keep fresh without, though with long eld its core decayed, the living lime and dust of the sage was frescoed with defensive bloom of his soul.

2. The weather was warm; like some old West India hogshead on the wharf, the whole chamber buzzed with flies. But the sapient inmate sat still and cool in the midst. Absorbed in some other world of his occupations and thoughts, these insects, like daily cark and care, did not seem one whit to annoy him. There he sat, quite motionless among those restless flies, and with a sound like the low noon

murmur of foliage in the woods, turning over the leaves of some ancient and tattered folio, with a binding dark and shaggy as the bark of any old oak.

3. It seemed as if supernatural lore must needs pertain to this gravely ruddy personage; at least far foresight, pleasant wit, and working wisdom. Old age seemed in nowise to have dulled him, but to have sharpened; just as old dinner-knives-so they be of good steel-wax keen, spearpointed, and elastic as whale-bone with long usage.

4. Yet though he was thus lively and vigorous to behold, spite of his seventy-two years (his exact date at the time) somehow the incredible seniority of an antediluvian seemed his. Not the years of the calendar wholly, but also the years of sapience. His white hairs and mild brow spoke of the future as well as the past. He seemed to be seven score years old; that is, three score and ten of prescience added to three score and ten of remembrance, makes just seven score years in all.

5. But when Israel stepped within the chamber, he lost the complete effect of all this; for the sage's back, not his face, was turned to him. So, intent on his errand, hurried and heated with his recent run, our courier entered the room, inadequately impressed for the time by either it or its occupant.

6. "Bon jour, bon jour, monsieur," said the man of wisdom, in a cheerful voice, but too busy to turn round just then. "How do you do, Doctor Franklin," said Israel. "Ah! I smell Indian corn," said the Doctor, turning round quickly on his chair. “A countryman; sit down, my good sir. Well, what news? Special?" "Wait a minute, sir," said Israel, stepping across the room towards a chair.

7. Now there was no carpet on the floor, which was of dark-colored wood, set in lozenges, and slippery with wax, after the usual French style. As Israel walked this slippery floor, his unaccustomed feet slid about very strangely, as if walking on ice, so that he came very near falling.

8. "Pears to me you have rather high heels to your boots," said the grave man of utility, looking sharply down through his spectacles; "Don't you know that it's both wasting leather and endangering your limbs to wear such high heels? I have thought at my first leisure to write a little pamphlet against that very abuse. But pray, what are you doing now? Do your boots pinch you, my friend, that you lift one foot from the floor that way?"

9, At this moment, Israel, having seated himself, was just putting his right foot across his left knee. "How foolish," continued the wise man, "for a rational creature to wear tight boots. Had nature intended rational creatures should so do, she would have made the foot of solid bone, or perhaps of solid iron, instead of bone, muscle, and flesh. I see! Hold!

But

10. And springing to his own slippered feet, the venerable sage hurried to the door and shot-to the bolt. Then drawing the curtain carefully across the window looking out across the court to various windows on the opposite side, bade Israel proceed with his operations. "I was mistaken this time," added the Doctor, smiling, as Israel produced his documents from their curious recesses-"your high heels, instead of being idle vanities, seem to be full of meaning."

II. "Pretty full, Doctor," said Israel, now handing over the papers. "I had a narrow escape with them just now." "How? How's that?" said the sage, fumbling the papers eagerly. "Why, crossing the stone bridge there over the Seen

66

Seine," interrupted the Doctor, giving the French pronunciation. "Always get a new word right in the first place, my friend, and you will never get it wrong afterwards."

12. "Well, I was crossing the bridge there, and who should hail me but a suspicious-looking man, who, under

pretense of seeking to polish my boots, wanted slyly to unscrew their heels, and so steal all these precious papers I've brought you." "My good friend,” said the man of gravity, glancing scrutinizingly upon his guest, "have you not in your time, undergone what they call hard times? Been set upon, and persecuted, and very illy entreated by some of your fellow-creatures ? " "That I have, Doctor; yes, in

deed."

13. "I thought so. Sad usage has made you sadly suspicious, my honest friend. An indiscriminate distrust of human nature is the worst consequence of a miserable condition, whether brought about by innocence or guilt. And though want of suspicion more than want of sense sometimes leads a man into harm, yet too much suspicion is as bad as too little sense. The man you met, my friend, most probably had no artful intention; he knew just nothing about you or your heels; he simply wanted to earn two sous by brushing your boots. Those blacking-men regularly station themselves on the bridge."

14. "How sorry I am then that I knocked over his box, and then ran away. But he didn't catch me." "How? Surely, my honest friend, you, -appointed to the conveyance of important secret despatches-did not act so imprudently as to kick over an innocent man's box in the public streets of the capital, to which you had been especially sent?" "Yes, I did, Doctor."

15. "Never act so unwisely again. If the police had got hold of you, think of what might have ensued." “Well, it was not very wise of me, that's a fact, Doctor. But, you see, I thought he meant mischief." "And because you only thought he meant mischief, you must straightway proceed to do mischief. That's poor logic. But think over what I have told you now, while I look over these papers.'

16. In half an hour's time the Doctor, laying down the documents, again turned towards Israel, and removing his