like pieces of a golden pavement into the sea-blue, chased, as we stoop nearer to them with bossy beaten work of mountain chains, and glowing softly with terraced gardens, and flowers heavy with frankincense, mixed among masses of laurel, and orange, and plumy palm, that abate with their grey-green shadows the burning of the marble rocks, and of the ledges of porphyry sloping under lucent sand. Then let us pass further towards the north, until we see the orient colours change gradually into a vast belt of rainy green, where the pastures of Switzerland, and poplar valleys of France, and dark forests of the Danube and Carpathians stretch from the mouths of the Loire to those of the Volga, seen through clefts in grey swirls of rain-cloud and flaky veils of the mist of the brooks, spreading low along the pasture lands: and then, farther north still, to see the earth heave into mighty masses of leaden rock and heathy moor, bordering with a broad waste of gloomy purple that belt of field and wood, and splintering into irregular and grisly islands amid the northern seas, beaten by storm, and chilled by ice-drift, and tormented by furious pulses of contending tide, until the roots of the last forests fail from among the hill ravines, and the hunger of the north wind bites their peaks into barrenness; and, at last, the wall of ice, durable like iron, sets, deathlike, its white teeth against us out of the polar twilight. And, having once traversed in thought this gradation of the zoned iris of the earth in all its material vastness, let us go down nearer to it, and watch the parallel change in the belt of animal life: the multitudes of swift and brilliant creatures that glance in the air and sea, or tread the sands of the southern zone; striped zebras and spotted leopards, glistening serpents, and birds arrayed in purple and scarlet. Let us contrast their delicacy and brilliancy of colour, and swiftness of motion, with the frost-cramped strength, and shaggy covering, and dusky plumage of the northern tribes; contrast the Arabian horse with the Shetland, the tiger and leopard with the wolf and bear, the antelope with the elk, the bird of paradise with the ospray; and then submissively acknowledging the great laws by which the earth and all that it bears are ruled throughout their being, let us not condemn, but rejoice in the expression by man of his own rest in the statutes of the land that gave him birth. Let us watch him with reverence as he sets side by side the burning gems, and smooths with soft sculpture the jaspar pillars, that are to reflect a ceaseless sunshine, and rise into a cloudless sky: but not with less reverence let us stand by him, when with rough strength and hurried stroke he smites an uncouth ani

mation out of the rocks which he has torn from among the moss of the moorland, and heaves into the darkened air the pile of iron buttress and rugged wall, instinct with work of an imagination as wild and wayward as the northern sea; creations of ungainly shape and rigid limb, but full of wolfish life; fierce as the winds that beat, and changeful as the clouds that shade them.

3. ST. MARK'S AT VENICE.

(FROM THE SAME WORK.)

BEYOND those troops of ordered arches there rises a vision out of the earth, and all the great square seems to have opened from it in a kind of awe, that we may see it far away; a multitude of pillars and white domes, clustered into a long low pyramid of coloured light; a treasure heap, it seems, partly of gold, and partly of opal and mother of pearl, hollowed beneath into five great vaulted porches, ceiled with fair mosaic, and beset with sculpture of alabaster, clear as amber and delicate as ivory -sculpture fantastic and involved of palm leaves and lilies, and grapes, and pomegranates, and birds clinging and fluttering among the branches, all twined together into an endless network of buds and plumes; and in the midst of it, the solemn forms of angels, sceptred, and robed to the feet, and leaning to each other across the gates, their figures indistinct among the gleaming of the golden ground through the leaves beside them, interrupted and dim like the morning light as it faded back among the branches of Eden, when first its gates were angel-guarded long ago; but round the walls of the porches there are set pillars of variegated stones, jasper and porphyry, and deep-green serpentine spotted with flakes of snow, and marbles that half refuse and half yield to the sunshine, Cleopatra-like," their bluest veins to kiss "-the shadow as it steals back from them, revealing line after line of azure undulation, as a receding tide leaves the waved sand: their capitals rich with interwoven tracery, rooted knots of herbage and drifting leaves of acanthus and vine, and mystical signs all beginning and ending in the cross; and above them in the broad archivolts, a continuous chain of language and of life-angels and the signs of heaven, and the labours of men, each in its appointed season upon the earth; and above these another range of glittering pinnacles, mixed into white arches edged with scarlet flowers, —a confusion of delight, amidst which the breasts of the Greek

horses are seen blazing in their breadth of golden strength, and the St. Mark's lion, lifted on a blue field covered with stars; until at last, as if in ecstasy, the crests of the arches break into a marble foam, and toss themselves far into the blue sky in flashes and wreaths of sculptured spray, as if the breakers on the Lido shore had been frost-bound before they fell, and the sea-nymphs had inlaid them with coral and amethyst.'

GEMS OF EXPRESSION.2

ALL things strive to ascend, and ascend in their striving.— Coleridge.

The enthusiasm of the present age becomes the common sense of the next.-Id.

When we meet an apparent error in a good author, we are to presume ourselves ignorant of his understanding, until we are certain that we understand his ignorance.—Id.

In peace, children bury their parents; in war, parents bury their children.

If you wish to enrich a person, study not to increase his stores, but to diminish his desires.

Words are the counters of wise men, and the money of fools. He should consider often, who can choose but once.

No man was ever cast down by the injuries of fortune, unless he had before suffered himself to be deceived by her favours. To endeavour all one's days to fortify our minds with learning and philosophy, is to spend so much in armour, that one has nothing left to defend.

(1) It would be difficult-nay, more than difficult-impossible-to match the above passage by any other of a similar kind in the English language. To call it "poetical prose" is to degrade it to the level of much that is simply intolerable to read, and of which it is easy-too easy-to find specimens everywhere. When this wonderful passage has been read over half a dozen times, it will be more admired than at first. As a description of the actual building-open to the observation of all, on the Piazza at Venice-it is difficult to call it true; but it is more difficult to call it false. It is the idealised t. Mark's, as seen through the mist of time in the clear light of its first creation—and, indeed, further back still, in the artist's mind that conceived it-that the writer has placed before us; but we must yield ourselves up to the magic of his inspiration, before we can see what he shows us. The sacrifice, however, if it be one, is well worth making.

(2) These passages have been selected specially on account of the beauty or fitness of the language-the apt confluence of the manner with the matter. No attempt has been made at chronological arrangement.

A liar begins by making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood.

A proverb is one man's wit, and all men's wisdom.-Lord Russell.

Humour is fancy merry, poetry is fancy sad.

Whatever the poets pretend, it is plain they give immortality to none but themselves: it is Homer and Virgil we reverence and admire, not Achilles or Æneas. With historians it is quite the contrary; our thoughts are taken up with the actions, persons, and events we read, and we little regard the author.Swift or Pope.

It is unwise to punish cowards with ignominy; for if they had regarded that, they would not have been cowards: death is their proper punishment, because they fear it most.-Id.

I have known some men possessed of good qualities which were serviceable to others, but useless to themselves; like a sun-dial on the front of a house, to inform the neighbours and passengers, but not the owner within.-Id.

Complaint is the largest tribute heaven receives, and the sincerest part of our devotion.-Id.

The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable; for the happy impute all their success to prudence and merit.—Id. When we desire or solicit anything, our minds run wholly on the good side or circumstances of it; when it is obtained, our minds run wholly on the bad ones.-Id.

A little thing gives perfection, although perfection is not a little thing.

The truths about which we are disputing cannot partake of the passing stir; they do not change even with the greater revolutions of human things. They are in eternity; and the image of them on earth is not the movement on the surface of the waters, but the depths of the silent sea.-Jowett.

A juggler is a wit in things, and a wit a juggler in words. An infirm character practically confesses itself made for subjection, and the man so constituted passes like a slave from owner to owner.-Foster.

It is wonderful how even the apparent casualties of life seem to bow to a spirit that will not bow to them, and yield to assist a design, after having in vain attempted to frustrate it.-Id.

He that would make real progress in knowledge, must dedicate his age as well as his youth, the latter growth as well as the first-fruits, at the altar of Truth.-Berkeley.

Clear writers, like clear fountains, do not seem so deep as they are the turbid look more profound.—Landor.

1

Those who are quite satisfied sit still and do nothing; those who are not quite satisfied are the sole benefactors of the world. -Id.

Society is froth above and dregs below.—Id.

A solitude is the audience-chamber of God.-Id.

Goodness does more certainly make men happy than happiness makes them good.-Id.

We are contented because we are happy, and not happy because we are contented.-Id.

Recollect that your happiness [addressing the poor] depends not on the station in life which you occupy, but on the manner in which you perform its duties. A small circle is not less complete than a large one.-Robert Hall.

Many in this world run after felicity; like an absent man hunting for his hat, while all the time it is on his head or in his hand.-Sydney Smith.

One must look downwards as well as upwards in human life. Though many have passed you in the race, there are many you have left behind.-Id.

Remember that every person, however low, has rights and feelings. In all contentions let peace be rather your object than triumph; value triumph only as the means of peace. -Id.

Do not attempt to frighten children and inferiors by passion; it does more harm to your own character than it does good to them; the same thing is better done by firmness and persuasion.-Id.

Our happiness depends not upon torpor, not upon sentimentality, but upon the due exercise of our various faculties: it is not acquired by sighing for wretchedness and shunning the wretched, but by vigorously discharging our duty to society.— Mackintosh.

It is right to be content with what we have, but never with what we are; though the exact reverse is the case with most men.-Id.

Talent is the union of invention with execution.-Id.

Knowledge cannot be truly ours till we have appropriated it by some operation of our own minds. The best writers on property in land attribute that right to the first proprietor's having blended his own labour with the soil.-Id.

Perhaps there are few less happy than those who are ambitious without industry; who pant for the prize, but will not run the race; who thirst for truth, but are too slothful to draw it up from the well.-Id.