8. "And now, that bold and hardy few And danger and doubt I have led them through, And over their bright and glancing arms, With an eye that fires, and a spell that charms, I guide them to victory!" LESSON CCXXVII. ROME. 1. THE +Niobe of nations! there she stands, Of their heroic dwellers; dost thou flow, Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress? 2. The +Goth, the Christian, Time, War, Flood, and Fire, She saw her glories, star by star, expire, And say, "here was, or is," where all is doubly night? 3. The double night of ages, and of her, Night's daughter, ignorance, hath wrapt and wrapt The ocean hath his chart, the stars their map, 4. Alas! the lofty city! and alas! The trebly hundred triumphs! and the day PERCIVAL. Alas, for earth! for never shall we see That brightness in her eye she bore, when Rome was free. 5. There is a moral of all human tales; 'T is but the same rehearsal of the past: First, freedom, and then, glory; when that fails, Heart, soul could seek, tongue ask-away with words! draw near; 6. Admire, exult, despise, laugh, weep; for here, There is much matter for all feeling. Man! Thou +pendulum betwixt a smile and tear! Ages and realms are crowded in this span, This mountain, whose tobliterated plan The pyramid of empires +pinnacled, Of glory's gew-gaws shining in the van, Till the sun's rays with added flame were filled! Where are its golden roofs? Where those who dared to build? 7. Tully was not so eloquent as thou, Thou nameless column, with the buried base! To crush the timperial urn,* whose ashes slept sublime. BYRON. LESSON CCXXVIII. WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 1. WHEN I am in a serious humor, I very often walk by myself in Westminster Abbey, where the gloominess of the place, and the use to which it is applied, with the solemnity of the building, and the condition of the people who lie in it, are apt to fill the mind with a kind of melancholy, or rather thoughtfulness, that is not disagreeable. I yesterday passed the whole afternoon in the church-yard, the cloisters, and the church, amusing myself with the tomb-stones and inscriptions that I met with in those several regions of the dead. Most of them recorded nothing else of the *Trajan's. buried person, but that he was born upon one day, and died upon another; the whole history of his life being comprehended in these two circumstances, that are common to all mankind. I could not but look upon these registers of existence, whether of brass or marble, as a kind of satire upon the departed persons, who had left no other memorial of them, but that they were born, and that they died. 2. Upon my going into the church, I entertained myself with the digging of a grave, and saw in every shovelfull of it that was thrown up, the fragment of a bone or skull, intermixed with a kind of fresh, moldering earth, that, sometime or other, had a place in the composition of a human body. Upon this, I began to consider with myself, what innumerable multitudes of people lay confused together under the pavement of that ancient cathedral; how men and women, friends and enemies, priests and soldiers, monks and prebendaries, were crumbled among one another, and blended together in the same common mass; how beauty, strength, and youth, with old age, weakness, and deformity, lay undistinguished in the same promiscuous heap of matter. 3. After having thus surveyed this magazine of mortality, as it were in the lump, I examined it more particularly, by the accounts which I found on several of the monuments, which are raised in every quarter of that ancient +fabric. Some of them were covered with such extravagant epitaphs, that if it were possible for the dead person to be acquainted with them, he would blush at the praises which his friends have bestowed upon him. There are others so excessively modest, that they deliver the character of the person departed, in Greek or Hebrew, and, by that means, are not understood once in a twelvemonth. In the poetical quarter I found there were poets who had no monuments, and monuments which had no poets. I observed, indeed, that the present war had filled the church with many of those uninhabited monuments, which had been erected to the memory of persons, whose bodies were, perhaps, buried in the plains of Blenheim, or in the bosom of the ocean. 4. I know, that entertainments of this nature are apt to raise dark and dismal thoughts in timorous minds and gloomy imaginations; but, for my own part, though I am always serious, I do not know what it is to be melancholy; and can, therefore, take a view of nature in her deep and solemn scenes, with the same pleasure, as in her most gay and delightful ones. By this means, I can improve myself with those objects, which others consider with terror. 5. When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every + + inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for them, whom we must quickly follow; when I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I see rival wits lying side by side, or holy men that divided the world by their contests and disputes, I reflect, with sorrow and astonishment, on the little competitions, + factions, and debates of mankind. When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, some, six hundred years ago, I consider that great day when we shall all of us be cotemporaries, and make our appearance together. ADDISON. LESSON CCXXIX. THE THREE WARNINGS. 1. THE tree of deepest root is found This great affection to believe, 2. When sports went round, and all were gay, And looking grave, "You must," says he, 66 3. What more he urged, I have not heard; Yet calling up a serious look, His hour-glass trembled, while he spoke; And further, to avoid all blame To give you time for preparation, 4. What next the hero of our tale befell, His friends not false, his wife no shrew, But, while he viewed his wealth increase, Brought on his eightieth year. 5. And now, one night, in musing mood The unwelcome messenger of Fate Half killed with wonder and surprise, 'Tis six and thirty years at least, And you are now four-score." "So much the worse!" the clown rejoined; "To spare the aged would be kind: Besides, you promised me three warnings, Which I have looked for, nights and mornings!" 6. "I know," cries Death, "that at the best, But do n't be captious, friend; at least, |