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Then flushed his cheek, but not with pride,
And grieved and gloomily spake he :
"My cabin stands where blithely glide
Proud Danube's waters to the sea:
I have a young and blooming bride,
And I have children three ;-
No Roman wealth or rank can give
Such joy as in their arms to live."—Byron.

Then none was for a party;

Then all were for the state;

Then the great man helped the poor,
And the poor man loved the great;
Then lands were fairly portioned;
Then spoils were fairly sold :
The Romans were like brothers,
In the brave days of old !

-Macaulay.

Winding away at break of day,
And armed with helm and spears,
Along the martyr's rocky way,

A king comes with his peers :
Unto the eye a splendid sight,
Making the air all richly bright,

Seen flashing through the trees;
But to the heart a sense of blight,

Sadder than death were these.

-Miss Jewsbury.

In his latter days, Napoleon had the weakness of wishing to add to his crowns and badges the prescription of aristocracy; but he knew his debt to his austere education, and made no secret of his contempt for the born kings, and for the "hereditary donkeys," as he coarsely styled the Bourbons.-Emerson.

In peace, there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility;

But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger,-
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favoured rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;

Let it pry through the portage of the head,
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it,
As fearfully as doth a galled rock

O'erhang and jutly his confounded base,
Swelled with the wild and wasteful ocean.

-Shakspeare.

The shades of eve come slowly down,
The woods are wrapt in deeper brown,
The owl awakens from her dell,
The fox is heard upon the fell;
Enough remains of glimmering light
To guide the wanderer's steps aright,
Yet not enough from far to show
His figure to the watchful foe.

-Scott.

The striking peculiarity of Shakspeare's mind was its generic quality, its power of communication with all other minds; so that it contained a universe of thought and feeling within itself, and no one peculiar bias or exclusive excellence more than another.-Hazlitt.

Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,
Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee,
And for thy maintenance commits his body
To painful labour both by sea and land;
To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,
While thou liest warm at home secure and safe;

And craves no other tribute at thy hands
But love, fair looks, and true obedience,
Too little payment for so great a debt.

-Shakspeare.

The Poles were bound to their country by the pecu liarities of its institutions and usages; perhaps, also, by the very defects of their government, which at last contributed to its fall, by those dangerous privileges and by that tumultuary independence, which rendered their condition as much above that of the slaves of absolute monarchy, as it was below the lot of those who inherit the blessings of legal and moral freedom.

-Sir James Macintosh.

When God said,

"Be gathered now ye waters under heaven,
Into one place, and let dry land appear,"
Immediately the mountains huge appear
Emergent, and their broad bare backs upheave
Into the clouds; their tops ascend the sky :
So high as heaved the tumid hills, so low
Down sank a hollow bottom, broad and deep,
Capacious bed of waters.-Milton.

You must note beside,

That we have tried the utmost of our friends,

Our legions are brimful, our cause is rife ;
The enemy increaseth every day;

We, at the height, are ready to decline:
There is a tide in the affairs of man,

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune ;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

-Shakspeare.

With stammering lips and insufficient sound
I strive and struggle to deliver right
That music of my nature, day and night
With dream, and thought, and feeling interwound,
And inly answering all the senses round
With octaves of a mystic depth and height,
Which step out grandly to the infinite
From the dark edges of a sensual ground.

-Mrs Browning.

PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND COMPANY
EDINBURGH AND LONDON

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