body, of which thought is the soul: the former rises into being together with the latter, and the graces of the one are shadowed forth in the movements of the other. Goethe's language, even to a foreigner, is full of character and secondary-meanings; polished, yet vernacular and cordial, it sounds like the dialect of wise, ancient, and true-hearted men in poetry, brief, sharp, simple, and expressive; in prose, perhaps still more pleasing for it is [at once] concise and full, rich, clear, unpretending and melodious; and the sense, not presented in alternating flashes, piece after piece revealed and withdrawn, rises before us as in continuous dawning, and stands at last simultaneously complete, [and] bathed in the mellowest and ruddiest sunshine.

THOMAS CARLYLE.

94. THE HOLY GRAIL.

'FOR on a day she sent to speak with me.
And when she came to speak, behold her eyes,
Beyond my knowing of them, beautiful,
Beyond all knowing of them, wonderful,
Beautiful in the light of holiness.
And "O [my] brother Percivale,” she said,
"Sweet brother, I have seen the Holy Grail.
For, waked at dead of night, I heard a sound
As of a silver horn from o'er the hills

Blown, and I thought, 'It is not Arthur's use
To hunt by moonlight'; and the slender sound
As from a distance beyond distance grew,
Coming upon me. O, never harp nor horn,

Nor aught we blow with breath, or touch with hand,
Was like that music as it came; and then
Streamed through my cell a cold and silver beam,
And down the long beam stole the Holy Grail,
Rose-red with beatings [in it], as if alive,
Till all the white walls of my cell were dyed
With rosy colours leaping on the wall;

And then the music faded, and the Grail
Past, and the beam decay'd, and from the wall
The rosy quiverings died into the night.
So now the holy thing is [here] again

Among us; brother, fast thou too and pray,
And tell thy brother knights to fast and pray,
That so perchance the vision may be seen
By thee and those, and all the world be heal'd."'

TENNYSON.

95. GOETHE (continued).

VIEWED in his merely external relations, Goethe exhibits an appearance such as seldom occurs in the history of letters, and, indeed, from the nature of the case, can seldom occur. A man who, in early life, rising almost at a single bound into the highest reputation over all Europe; by gradual advances, fixing himself more and more firmly in the reverence of his countrymen, ascends silently through many vicissitudes to the supreme intellectual place among them; and now, after half a century, distinguished by convulsions, political, moral, and poetical, still reigns, full of years and honours, with a soft, undisputed sway; still labouring in his vocation, still forwarding, as with kingly benignity, whatever can profit the culture of his nation; such a man might justly attract our notice, were it only by the singularity of his fortune. Supremacies of this sort are rare in modern times; so universal, and of such continuance, they are almost unexampled. For the age of the Prophets and Theologic Doctors has long [since] passed away; and now it is by much slighter, by transient and mere earthly ties, that bodies-of-men connect themselves with a The wisest, most melodious voice cannot in these days pass for a divine one ; the word inspiration still lingers, but only in [the] shape of a poetic figure from which the once earnest, awful, and soul-subduing sense has vanished without return. The polity-of-Literature is called a Republic; oftener it is an Anarchy, where, by strength or fortune, favourite after favourite rises

man.

into splendour and authority, but, like Masaniello, while judging the people, is on the third day deposed and shot. Nay, few such adventurers can attain even this painful pre-eminence: for, at most, it is clear, any given age can have but one first man; many ages have only a crowd of secondary men, each of whom is first in his own eyes; and seldom, at best, can the 'Single Person' long keep his station at the head of this wild commonwealth; most sovereigns are never universally acknowledged, least of all in their lifetime; few of the acknowledged can reign peaceably to the end.-THOMAS CARLYLE.

96. THE QUALITY OF MERCY.

THE quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes :
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;

It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;

And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider [this],
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
[The deeds of] mercy. I have spoke thus much
To mitigate the justice of thy plea ;

Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice
Must needs give sentence 'gainst the merchant there.
SHAKESPEARE.

97. THE AFGHAN WAR.

ON the sixth of January the march commenced, under circumstances of depression unparalleled in the annals of mankind. Deep snow covered every inch [of] mountain and plain with one unspotted sheet of dazzling white; and so intensely bitter was the cold, as to penetrate and defy the defence[s] of the warmest clothing. Sad and suffering issued from the British cantonments a confused mass of Europeans and Asiatics, a mingled crowd of combatants and non-combatants, of men of various climes and complexion and habits—part of them peculiarly unfitted to endure the hardship[s] of a rigorous climate, and many of them of a sex and tender age which in general exempts them from such scenes-of-horror. The number of the crowd was large-4,500 fighting men, of whom 700 were Europeans, with six guns and three mountain-train-pieces, and upwards of 12,000 camp-followers. The advance began [to issue] from the cantonments at nine in the morning, and from that time till dark the huge and motley crowd continued to pour out of the gates, which were immediately occupied by a crowd of fanatical Afghans, who rent the air with their exulting cries, and fired without scruple on the retiring troops, by which fifty men were killed. When the cantonments were cleared, all order was lost, and troops and camp-followers, [and] horse and foot-soldiers, baggage public and private, became involved in one inextricable confusion. The shades of night overtook the huge multitude while still pushing their weary course; but the cold surface of the snow reflected the glow of light from the flames of the British residency and other buildings to which the Afghans had applied the torch the moment they were evacuated by our troops. Weary and desperate the men lay down in the snow without [either] food, fire, or covering; and great numbers were frozen to death before the first rays-of-the-sun gilded the summits of the mountains.-ALISON.

98. THE BEAUTY OF THE RHINE SCENERY.

He who ascends to mountains-tops, shall find
The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow;
He who surpasses or subdues mankind,

Must look [down] on the hate of those below.
Though high above the sun of glory glow,
And far beneath [the] earth and ocean spread,
Round him are icy-rocks, and loudly blow
Contending tempests on his naked head,

And thus reward the toils which to those summits led.

Away with these! true wisdom's world will be

Within its own creation, or in thine,

Maternal Nature! for who teems like thee,
Thus on the banks of thy majestic Rhine?
There Harold gazes on a work divine,

A blending of all beauties: streams and dells,
Fruit, foliage, crag, wood, cornfield, mountain, vine,
And chiefless castles breathing stern farewells
From grey but leafy walls, where Ruin greenly dwells.

And there they stand, as stands a lofty mind,
Worn, but unstooping to the baser crowd.
All tenantless, save to the crannying wind,
Or holding dark communion with the cloud.
There was a day when they were young and proud,
Banners on high, and battles passed below;

But they who fought are in a bloody shroud,
And those which waved are shredless dust ere now,
And the bleak battlements shall bear no future blow.
LORD BYRON.