How fleet is a glance of the mind!
Compared with the speed of its flight
The tempest itself lags behind,

And the swift-winged arrows of light.
When I think of my own native land,
In a moment I seem to be there;
But, alas! recollection at hand

Soon hurries me back to despair.

But the sea-fowl is gone to her nest;
The beast is laid down in his lair;
Even here is a season of rest,

And I to my cabin repair.
There's mercy in every place;
And mercy, encouraging thought!
Gives even affliction a grace,

And reconciles man to his lot.

APOSTROPHE TO ENGLAND

ENGLAND, with all thy faults I love thee still,
My country and, while yet a nook is left
Where English minds and manners may be found,
Shall be constrained to love thee. Though thy clime
Be fickle, and thy year, most part, deformed
With dripping rains, or withered by a frost,
I would not yet exchange thy sullen skies,
And fields without a flower, for warmer France
With all her vines; nor for Ausonia's groves
Of golden fruitage, and her myrtle-bowers.

To shake thy senate, and from heights sublime
Of patriot eloquence to flash down fire

Upon thy foes, was never meant my task;
But I can feel thy fortunes, and partake

Thy joys and sorrows with as true a heart
As any thunderer there. And I can feel
Thy follies, too, and with a just disdain
Frown at effeminates, whose very looks
Reflect dishonor on the land I love.

Time was when it was praise and boast enough
In every clime, and travel where we might,
That we were born her children; praise enough
To fill the ambition of a private man

That Chatham's language was his mother-tongue,
And Wolfe's great name compatriot with his own.
Farewell, those honors! and farewell with them
The hope of such hereafter! They have fallen
Each in his field of glory, one in arms,

And one in council; Wolfe upon the lap
Of smiling victory that moment won,

And Chatham heart-sick of his country's shame.

They made us many soldiers.

Chatham, still

Consulting England's happiness at home,

Secured it by an unforgiving frown

If any wronged her. Wolfe, where'er he fought,
Put so much of his heart into his act

That his example had a magnet's force;

And all were swift to follow whom all loved.
Those suns are set. O! rise some other such,

Or all that we have left is empty talk

Of old achievements, and despair of new.

ON MERCY

I WOULD not enter on my list of friends

(Though graced with polished manners and fine sense, Yet wanting sensibility) the man

Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.

An inadvertent step may crush the snail
That crawls at evening in the public path;
But he that has humanity, forewarned,
Will tread aside, and let the reptile live.

The creeping vermin, loathsome to the sight,
And charged, perhaps, with venom, that intrudes,
A visitor unwelcome into scenes

Sacred to neatness and repose, the alcove,

The chamber, or refectory, may die :

A necessary act incurs no blame.

Not so, when, held within their proper bounds,
And guiltless of offense, they range the air,
Or take their pastime in the spacious field.
There they are privileged; and he that hunts.
Or harms them there is guilty of a wrong,
Disturbs the economy of Nature's realm,
Who, when she formed, designed them an abode.
The sum is this: If man's convenience, health,
Or safety interfere, his rights and claims.
Are paramount, and must extinguish theirs.
Else they are all — the meanest things that are
As free to live, and to enjoy that life,

As God was free to form them at the first,
Who in His sovereign wisdom made them all.
Ye, therefore, who love mercy, teach your sons
To love it too.

THERE is a Book

By seraphs writ with beams of heavenly light,
On which the eyes of God not rarely look,
A chronicle of actions just and bright-

There all thy deeds, my faithful Mary, shine;

And since thou own'st that praise, I spare thee mine.

Lines to Mary Unwin

GIBBON

1737-1794

EDWARD GIBBON, the historian, was born in Surrey, England, in 1737, and died in 1794. He entered Magdalen College, Oxford, but remained only a short time. At an early age he became deeply interested in religion, and devoted himself to study, relieving the tedium of his labors by assiduous courtship of Mademoiselle Curchod, whose acquaintance he made in

Switzerland. The lady loved him, but his own inclination changed, and she finally married M. Necker, and became the mother of Madame de Staël. In 1759 he returned to England and was admitted into the most cultivated society. Two years later he published in French an Essay on the "Study of Literature," which attracted but little attention in England. In 1763 he went to France, and became the intimate friend of Helvétius, D'Alembert, Diderot,

and other eminent men. The next year he visited Rome, and there conceived the project of writing the history of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire."

In 1776 the first volume of this great work was published, and at once made him famous. His attacks on Christianity called out many severe rebukes, which enhanced the popular interest in his book. The concluding volumes of the History appeared in 1787. The author's last literary work was his Autobiography, which has been pronounced the finest specimen of that kind of composition in the English language. The graces of

Gibbon's style have always been the subject of admiration. In his History he is stately and magnificent; in his Autobiography he is easy, spirited, and charming. The style of his History has been censured by some critics for its excessive elaboration and its opulence of French phrases, Porson going so far as to say that "there could not be a better exercise for a school-boy than to turn a page of it into English; " but the general verdict of literary authorities of his own and later times awards him the highest rank among English historians as a master of our language.

ARABIA

I

IN the dreary waste of Arabia, a boundless level of sand is intersected by sharp and naked mountains; and the face of the desert, without shade or shelter, is scorched by the direct and intense rays of a tropical sun. Instead of refreshing breezes, the winds, particularly from the southwest, diffuse a noxious and even deadly vapor; the hillocks of sand which they alternately raise and scatter are compared to the billows of the ocean, and whole caravans, whole armies, have been lost and buried in the whirlwind. The common benefits of water are an object of desire and contest; and such is the scarcity of wood, that some art is requisite to preserve and propagate the element of fire. Arabia is destitute of navigable rivers, which fertilize the soil, and convey its produce to the adjacent regions; the torrents that fall from the hills are imbibed by the thirsty earth; the rare and hardy plants, the tamarind or the acacia, that strike