"Her locks, apparent tufts of wiry gold,

Lay on her lily temples, fairly dazzling,
And on each hair, so harmless to behold,
A soul's soul hung mercilessly strangling;
The piping, silly zephyrs vied t' unfold

The tresses in their arms so slim and tangling,
And thrid in sport these lover-noosing snares,
And played at hide-and-seek amid the golden hairs."

Dr. Johnson gives us a good example as follows:

"Hermit hoar, in solemn cell,

Wearing out life's evening gray,

Strike thy bosom, sage, and tell
What is bliss, and which the way.

"Thus I spoke, and speaking sighed,
Scarce repress'd the starting tear,
When the hoary sage replied―

'Come, my lad, and drink some beer.'"

Occurs a clever instance of this figure in Longfellow's "Hyperion," a book worth perusal, though it takes, after all, no sufficiently strong grasp of the great questions it touches upon:

"I had a friend who is now no more. He was taken away in the bloom of life, by a very rapid-widow."

In the same style, John Hookham Frere, in 1817, in his "Mock-heroic," by Whistlecraft Brothers, after telling how certain ladies were rescued from a party of giants, thus goes on:

"The ladies? They were tolerably well;

At least as well as I could have expected.
Many a sad detail I shall not tell-

Their toilet had been very much neglected;
But by supreme good luck it so befell,

That when the castle's capture was effected,
When those vile cannibals were overpower'd.
Only two fat duennas were devour'd."

It has too often happened that this figure has been used to mock at lofty feeling; to insinuate with the sneer of a fiend or of a callous man of the world that there is no reality in disinterested emotion. Byron is especially open to this condemnation. These writers. really felt the beauty of the ideas they ridicule; but they wished to seem more callous and skeptical than they actually were. Unblest hypocrisy, and most perverted -to desire to seem worse than we are! What hardened mental suicide; what a perverted employment of our noblest susceptibilities, to exclaim to the world, "You deem a certain feeling noble; behold how easily I can ape it, and how thoroughly I despise it!" This is a kind of mimicry of God himself.

Sudden transition may be so used, as in a way full of meaning, to suggest far more than is written down, as in the Doric poem on a baby:

"Her een, sae like her mither's een

Twa gentle liquid things;

Her face, sae like an angel's face

We're glad she has nae wings!"

The closing line suggests how often a baby flies away from us to heaven, and makes our embrace of one, who is so sweet and so evanescent, more intense from the fear of soon losing it.

CLXXXVI. Allusion is one of the most interesting usages of speech; very wide in the range it can take. Here, various reading of many an author triumphs, and extensive knowledge; as Milton's great epic proves. A writer can thus avail himself of all his information; he can ennoble a common subject, or insinuate what he may not wish to declare in plain words; he can electrify our flagging attention by a delicate reference to some renowned event or great person or beautiful idea, embalmed in the deepest memory of all educated minds. In sermons, particularly, an allusion to some Bible inci

dent has often a winning charm. A sermon by Dr. Sherlock gives us this:

"How disrespectfully do we treat the Gospel of Christ, to which we owe that clear light both of reason and nature which we now enjoy, when we endeavor to set up reason and nature in opposition to it. Ought the withered hand which Christ has restored and made whole, to be lifted up against Him?"

Men such as Darwin and Mill; such as Herbert Spencer and Dr. Tyndall, are the very sort who ought so to be branded.

In the sermons of Dr. Seed you will find many such eloquent references. Green, also, says very happily, alluding to David's slaying of Goliath with a stone, how important exercise is, were it but the lifting of a stone and the throwing of it, as a cure for the spleen:

"Fling but a stone, the giant dies."

As references to Greek and Roman mythology are frequent, inwrought into the very texture of modern literature, an intimate knowledge of that mythology is a valuable part of a good education; yet the allusion must be widely known, else it can not be widely enjoyed; consequently the most telling allusions are those that make reference to God's Word, on account of the wide familiarity of Scripture. Yet not to Scripture alone are we restricted. In the address of R. C. Winthrop to the Boston Mercantile Library Association, 1845, we encounter a very original allusion to a well-known custom of the American Indians:

"Commerce has in all ages been the most formidable antagonist of war. In the smoke-pipe of every steamer which brings the merchandise of Britain to our ports we see a calumet of peace which her war-chiefs dare not extinguish."

Observe what a sublime allusion in the subjoined couplet of Pope's:

"Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:

God said, 'Let Newton be!' and all was light."

Sir Walter Scott treats us to the following apt yet unexpected allusion to Shakespeare:

"Give to the world one half of the Sunday, and you will find that religion has no strong hold of the other. Pass the morning at church, and the evening, according to your taste or rank, in the cricket-field or at the opera, and you will soon find that thoughts of the evening's hazards and bets intrude themselves on the sermon, and that recollections of the popular melodies interfere with the Psalms. Religion is thus treated like Lear, to whom his ungrateful daughters first denied one half of his stipulated attendance, and then made it a question whether they should grant him any share of what remained."

Let us now precisely contrast the common and the Scriptural allusion. In one of the wild stories of the Greek mythology, Medea had an aged animal chopped to pieces, boiled the parts in a caldron, and brought out the animal restored to life and to youth. Accordingly, Prescott, our justly far-famed historian, in his criticism of Chateaubriand's " English Literature," thus speaks of the obligation lying on the historian to consult old chronicles, and to new-mould their matter into new forms of elegance:

"In short, a sort of Medea-like process is to be gone through; and many an old bone is to be boiled over in the caldron, before it can come out again clothed in the elements of beauty."

This allusion thousands would not understand; what could a caldron, or immense kettle, have to do with it? But in the following, Webster, lauding Alexander Hamilton as a great financier, makes an allusion that no one can miss; for it is to the Bible he alludes-the common classic of Christendom:

"He smote the rock of the national resources, and the abundant stream of revenue gushed forth; he touched the dead corpse of the public credit, and it sprang to its feet."

In like manner, in the following familiar dictum aimed against the mimicking of great masters, lies a reference which no one mistakes:

"He who has really caught the mantle of the prophet, is the last man to imitate his walk."

The chief book for the orator to get thoroughly familiar with, for the purposes of his art, and to go to for weapons, is the Bible. Master the Bible, if you would master the heart.

In a homelier direction did Chatham travel for an allusion, in his amusing reply to George Grenville. The latter, in the British House of Commons, was contending against Chatham, then Mr. Pitt, that a certain tax was unavoidable:

"The right honorable gentleman complains," said Grenville, "of the hardness of the tax; why does he not tell us where he can lay another in its place? Tell me, tell me where you can lay another tax-tell me where?"

Mr. Pitt, from his seat, broke out in a musical tone, quoting from a very popular song of the day:

"Gentle Shepherd, tell me where!"

The House burst into a fit of laughter. It was lucky for Mr. Grenville that he was not nicknamed "Gentle Shepherd" for the rest of his life. You will be reminded of General Butler's "Shoo-fly."

Be it permitted to have recourse to the sublime; from Curran's speech for Rowan let us quote:

"If, which Heaven forbid, it hath been still unfortunately determined that, because he has not bent to power and authority, because he would not bow down before the golden calf and worship it, he is to be bound and cast into the furnace, I do