able character, he needs only to be a man of common honesty, well advised. There is nothing meritorious but virtue and friendship; and indeed friendship itself is but a part of virtue. FROM LAVATER. He who is open, without levity; generous, without waste; secret, without craft; humble, without meanness; cautious, without anxiety; regular, yet not formal; mild, yet not timid; firm, yet not tyrannical: is made to pass the ordeal of honour, friendship, virtue. He who begins with severity in judging of another, ends commonly with falsehood. A sneer is often the sign of heartless malignity. There is a manner of forgiving so divine, that you are ready to embrace the offender for having called it forth. He who is master of the fittest moment to crush his enemy, and magnanimously neglects it, is born to be a conqueror. Everything may be mimicked by hypocrisy, but humility and love united. The humblest star twinkles most in the darkest night. The more rare humility and love unite, the more radiant when they meet. The wrath that on conviction subsides into mildness, is the wrath of a generous mind. If you ask me which is the real hereditary sin of human nature, do you imagine I shall answer pride, or luxury, or ambition, or egotism? No; I shall say indolence: who conquers indolence will conquer all the rest. Avoid the eye that discovers with rapidity the bad, and is slow to see the good. Sagacity in selecting the good, and courage to honour it, according to its degree, determines your own degree of goodness. Who cuts is easily wounded. The readier you are to offend, the sooner you are offended. He who is respectable when thinking himself alone and free from observation, will be so before the eye of all the world. The manner of giving shows the character of the giver more than the gift itself: there is a princely manner of giving and a royal manner of accepting. He who affects useless singularity, has a little mind. The more honesty a man has, the less he affects the air of a saint: the affectation of sanctity is a blotch on the face of piety. The wrangler, the puzzler, the word-hunter, are incapable of great actions. Who, at the relation of some unmerited misfortune smiles, is either a fool, a fiend, or a villain. Know, that the great art to love your enemy consists in never losing sight of man in him: humanity has power over all that is human; the most inhuman man still remains man, and never can throw off all taste for what belongs to man-but you must learn to wait. The most abhorred thing in nature is the face that smiles abroad, and flashes fury when it returns to the lap of a tender, helpless family. Between passion and lie there is not a finger's breadth. Then talk of patience, when you have borne him who has none, without repining. Trust not him with your secrets, who, when left alone in your room, turns over your papers. It is possible that a wise and good man may be prevailed on to game; but it is impossible that a professed gamester should be a wise and great man. He who believes not in virtue, must be vicious; all faith is only the reminiscence of the good that once arose and the omen of the good that may arise within us. If you mean to know yourself, interline such of these aphorisms as affected you, and set a mark to such as left a sense of uneasiness with you, and then show your copy to whom you please. PLEASURES OF PROMISE. Things may be well to seem that are not well to be, Is hope then ever so?-or is it as a tree, Yet hope the storm can quell with a soft and happy tune, Or hang December's cell with figures caught from June: When summer shadows break, and gentle winds rejoice, Though illusion aids no more the poetry of youth, S. LAMAN BLANCHARD, THE VISION OF THE MAID OF ORLEANS.1 [Robert Southey, LL.D., born at Bristol, 2th August, 1774; died at Keswick, Cumberland, 21st March, 1843. Poet, historian, biographer, and miscellaneous writer. For some time he was uncertain what profession to adopt: his friends advised the church; he flirted with law, and at length devoted himself to literature. In 1807 he received a pension of £144 a year for literary services; in 1813 he was appointed poet laureate; in 1835 he was placed on the civil list for £300 a year, and Sir Robert Peel offered him a baronetcy, which he declined. Of his numerous works we may mention, amongst his poems: Joan of Arc; Thalaba the Destroyer; Madoc: Metrical Tales and other Poems; Roderick, the Last of the Goths; Wat Tyler; The Curse of Kehama; The Poet's Pilgrimage to Waterloo, &c. Amongst his prose writings-The Life of Nelson-which Macaulay said was, "beyond all doubt, the most perfect of his works"-Life of John Wesley: History of the Peninsular War: Lives of Uneducated Poets; Essays, Moral and Political, &c. In his Poetic Literature, D. M. Moir observed: "Southey shone in the paths of gentle meditation and philosophic reflection; but his chief strength lay in description, where he had few equals. capacious mind may be likened to a variegated continent, one region of which is damp with fogs, rough with rocks, barren and unprofitable; the other bright with glorious sunshine, valleys of rich luxuriance, and forests of perpetual verdure." Joan of Arc was his first publication of any importance, and appeared in 1795. In his later years the poet carefully revised the poem for the complete edition of his works published by Longmans and Co. The Maid of Orleans-so-called on account of her heroic defence of that city-was born in the hamlet of Domremy, near the Meuse, in 1410 or 1411, and her marvellous career closed in May, 1431, in the market-place of Rouen, where she was burned as a sorceress. Southey in his preface to the poem wrote: "That she believed herself inspired, few will deny; that she was inspired, few will venture to assert; and it is difficult to believe that she was herself imposed upon by Charles and Dunois. That she discovered the king when he disguised himself, among the courtiers, to deceive her, and that, as a proof of her mission, she demanded a sword from the tomb of St. Catherine, are facts in which His all historians agree.... The Maid was not knowingly an impostor."] Instructing best the passive faculty; Along a moor, Barren, and wide, and drear, and demolate, Black clouds, driven fast before the stormy wind, She stands, amid whose stagnate waters, hoarse The plumeless bats with short shrill note flit by, And the night-raven's scream came fitfully, Borne on the hollow blast. Eager the Maid Look'd to the shore, and now upon the bank Leapt, joyful to escape, yet trembling still In recollection. There, a mouldering pile Stretch'd its wide ruins, o'er the plain below Casting a gloomy shade, save where the moon Shone through its fretted windows: the dark yew, Withering with age, branch'd there its naked roots, And there the melancholy cypress rear'd Its head; the earth was heaved with many a mound, And here and there a half-demolish'd tomb. And now, amid the ruin's darkest shade, The virgin's eye beheld where pale blue flames Rose wavering, now just gleaming from the earth, And now in darkness drown'd. An aged man Sate near, seated on what in long-past days Had been some sculptured monument, now fallen And half-obscured by moss, and gather'd heaps Of wither'd yew-leaves and earth-mouldering bones. His eye was large and rayless, and fix'd full Upon the maid; the tomb-fires on his face Shed a blue light; his face was of the hue Of death; his limbs were mantled in a shroud, Then with a deep heart-terrifying voice, Exclaim'd the spectre, "Welcome to these realms, Where never morning darts the enlivening ray, So saying, he arose, and drawing on, Resisting not his guidance. Through the roof Roar'd the loud blast, and from the tower the owl He dragg'd her on Is no return. Gaze here; behold this skull, Must moulder. Child of grief! shrinks not thy soul, Is none of suffering here; here all is peace; So spake Despair. Replaced the murderous steel, and drew the maid Along the downward vault. The damp earth gave A dim sound as they pass'd: the tainted air Moulders to clay!" then fixing his broad eye Lay livid; she beheld with horrent look, The spectacle abhorr d by living man. "Look here!" Despair pursued, "this loathsome mass Was once as lovely, and as full of life As, damsel, thou art now. Those deep-sunk eyes Fearfully The maid look'd down, and saw the well-known face "Gaze on!" and unrelentingly he grasp'd Her quivering arm: "this lifeless mouldering clay, This slanghter'd youth; slaughter'd for thee! for thou |