were grateful; you tread upon it, and it only sends up richer perfume. Spring comes, and it rejoices with all the earth,-glowing with variegated flame of flowers,—waving in soft depth of fruitful strength. Winter comes, and though it will not mock its fellow plants by growing then, it will not pine and mourn, and turn colourless or leafless as they. It is always green; and is only the brighter and gayer for the hoar-frost. Ruskin.

Ex. 59.

Abou Ben Adhem and the Angel.
Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel, writing in a book of gold :-
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the presence in the room he said,

'What writest thou?' The vision raised its head,
And, with a look made of all sweet accord,

Answered, 'The names of those who love the Lord.'
'And is mine one?' said Abou. Nay, not so,'
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerly still; and said, 'I pray thee then,
Write me as one who loves his fellow-men.'

The angel wrote and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,

And showed the names whom love of God had bless'd,
And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.

Ex. 60.

Leigh Hunt.

The Wife's Duty to her Husband.

Fie, fie! unknit that threatening, unkind brow;
And dart not scornful glances from those eyes,
To wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor :
It blots thy beauty, as frost bites the meads;
Confounds thy fame, as whirlwinds shake fair buds;
And in no sense is meet, or amiable.

A woman moved is like a fountain troubled,
Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty;
And, while it is so, none so dry or thirsty
Will deign to sip or touch one drop of it.
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.
Such duty as the subject owes the prince,
Even such a woman oweth to her husband;
And when she's froward, peevish, sullen, sour,
And not obedient to his honest will,
What is she but a foul contending rebel,
And graceless traitor to her loving lord ?—
I am ashamed that women are so simple
To offer war where they should kneel for peace;
Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway,

When they are bound to serve, love, and obey.
Why are our bodies soft, and weak, and smooth,
Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,
But that our soft conditions and our hearts
Should well agree with our external parts?

Ex. 61.

Description of the Queen of France.

Shakspeare.

It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in, glittering like the morning star, full of life, and splendour, and joy. Oh, what a revolution! What a heart I must have to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream that, when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is ex

tinguished for ever. Never, never more shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone. It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like. a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.

Burke.

Ex. 62.

A Mother's Love.

A Mother's Love!-how sweet the name!
What is a Mother's Love ?—

A noble, pure, and tender flame,
Enkindled from above,

To bless a heart of earthly mould-
The warmest love that can grow cold;-
This is a Mother's Love.

To bring a helpless babe to light,
Then while it lies forlorn,
To gaze upon that dearest sight,
And feel herself new-born;
In its existence lose her own,
And live and breathe in it alone;-
This is a Mother's Love.

In weakness in her arms to bear,
To cherish on her breast,

Feed it from Love's own fountain there,
And lull it there to rest;

Then while it slumbers watch its breath,

As if to guard from instant death ;-
This is a Mother's Love.

To mark its growth from day to day,
Its opening charms admire,
Catch from its eye the earliest ray
Of intellectual fire;

To smile and listen while it talks,
And lend a finger when it walks
This is a Mother's Love.

And can a Mother's Love grow cold—
Can she forget her boy?
His pleading innocence behold,
Nor weep for grief-for joy?
A mother may forget her child,
While wolves devour it on the wild;-
Is this a Mother's Love?

Ten thousand voices answer, 'No!'
Ye clasp your babes and kiss;
Your bosoms yearn, your eyes o'erflow;
Yet, ah! remember this ;-
The infant reared alone for earth,

May live, may die-to curse his birth ;-
Is this a Mother's Love?

A parent's heart may prove a snare :
The child she loves so well,

Her hand may lead, with gentlest care,
Down the smooth road to hell!
Nourish its frame-destroy its mind ;-
Thus do the blind mislead the blind,
Even with a Mother's Love.

Blest infant! whom his mother taught
Early to seek the Lord,

And poured upon his dawning thought
The dayspring of the word;
This was the lesson to her son,

Time is Eternity begun ;

Behold that Mother's Love!

Blest mother! who in Wisdom's path,
By her own parent trod,

Thus taught her son to flee the wrath,
And know the fear of God:

Ah, youth! like him enjoy your prime,—
Begin eternity in time,

Taught by that Mother's Love.

That Mother's Love !-how sweet the name !
What was that Mother's Love?

The noblest, purest, tenderest flame,
That kindles from above,

Within a heart of earthly mould,

As much of heaven as heart can hold,

Nor through eternity grows old ;—

This was that Mother's Love.

Montgomery.

Ex. 63.

Death of Marie-Antoinette.

On Monday, the 14th of October, 1793, a cause is pending in the Palais de Justice, in the new Revolutionary Court, such as these old stone walls never witnessed, -the trial of Marie-Antoinette. The once brightest of queens, now tarnished, defaced, forsaken, stands here at Fouquier-Tinville's judgment-bar, answering for her life. The indictment was delivered her last night. To such changes of human fortune what words are adequate? Silence alone is adequate.

Marie-Antoinette, in this her utter abandonment and hour of extreme need, is not wanting to herself, the imperial woman. Her look, they say, as that hideous indictment was reading, continued calm; 'she was sometimes observed moving her fingers as when one plays on the piano.' You discern, not without interest, across that dim revolutionary bulletin itself, how she bears herself queen-like. answers are prompt, clear, often of laconic brevity; resolution, which has grown contemptuous, without ceasing to be dignified, veils itself in calm words. 'You persist then in denial?' 'My plan is not denial; it is the truth I have said, and I persist in that.'

Her

At four o'clock on Wednesday morning, after two days and two nights of interrogating, jury-charging, and other darkening of counsel, the result comes out-sentence of death! 'Have you anything to say?' The accused shook her head without speech. Night's candles are burning out; and with her too time is finishing, and it will be eternity and -day. This hall of Tinville's is dark, ill-lighted except where she stands. Silently she withdraws from it, to die.

Is there a man's heart that thinks without pity of those long months and years of slow, wasting ignominy; of thy birth, soft cradled in imperial Schönbrunn, the winds of heaven not to visit thy face too roughly, thy foot to light on softness, thy eye on splendour; and then of thy death, or hundred deaths, to which the guillotine and Fouquier-Tinville's judgment-bar were but the merciful end? Look there, O man born of woman! The bloom of that fair face

is wasted, the hair is grey with care; the brightness of those eyes is quenched, their lids hang drooping; the face is stony pale, as of one living in death. Mean weeds, which her own hand has mended, attire the queen of the world. The death-hurdle where thou sittest pale, motionless, which only curses environ, has to stop; a people, drunk with vengeance, will drink it again in full draught, looking at thee there. Far as the eye reaches, a multitudinous sea of maniac heads,