"In what departments do your writers excel?"

"Your Majesty, we have many writers in various departments. We have poets" (I thought of asking if he had ever heard of Longfellow), "we have historians, &c."

"Are the sciences much cultivated?"

"They are,

especially the natural sciences. Since Professor Agassiz has resided in the United States, he has given an extraordinary impulse to the department, and excited an ardent scientific spirit."

7. Some things more were said; his Majesty bowed, saying, "I am delighted to know you." I bowed my thanks, and, backing carefully toward the door, bowed every two or three steps; their Majesties receded bowing; then I, peeping over my shoulder and seeing that I was near the door, bowed very low and vanished from the presence. It is not so difficult to get into the royal presence, but to get out again is a matter of no small delicacy. However, I got out without any catastrophe, and, to tell the truth, a good deal pleased with the amiable manners of their Hellenic Majesties. The queen is a little past her beautiful prime, being now about thirty-six years old; but she is a very fine woman, and in her port and attitude every inch a queen.

CIX. THE PILGRIM FATHERS.

JOHN PIERPONT.

1. The Pilgrim Fathers-where are they? The waves that brought them o’er

Still roll in the bay and throw their spray,

As they break along the shore;

Still roll in the bay as they rolled that day, When the Mayflower moored below,

When the sea around was black with storms, And white the shore with snow.

2. The mists that wrapped the Pilgrim's sleep Still brood upon the tide;

And the rocks yet keep their watch by the deep, To stay its waves of pride.

But the snow-white sail that he gave to the gale, When the heavens looked dark, is gone;·

As an angel's wing, through an opening cloud, Is seen and then withdrawn.

3. The Pilgrim exile-sainted name! The hill, whose icy brow

Rejoiced when he came, in the morning's flame, In the morning's fiame burns now;

And the moon's cold light, as it lay that night On the hill-side and the sea,

Still lies where he laid his houseless head;But the Pilgrim-where is he?

4. The Pilgrim Fathers are at rest;

When summer's throned on high,

And the world's warm breast is in verdure dressed,

Go stand on the hill where they lie.

The earliest ray of the golden day

On that hallowed spot is cast;

And the evening sun, as he leaves the world,

Looks kindly on that spot last.

5. The Pilgrim spirit has not fled:

It walks in noon's broad light;

And it watches the bed of the glorious dead,

With the holy stars, by night.

It watches the bed of the brave who have bled,

And shall guard this ice-bound shore

Till the waves of the bay where the Mayflower lay Shall foam and freeze no more.

CX.-APOSTROPHE TO THE OCEAN.

LORD BYRON.

1. There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar.

I love not man the less but nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal

From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle with the universe, and feel

What I can ne'er express, yet can not all conceal. 2. Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean - roll! Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain.

Man marks the earth with ruin-his control
Stops with the shore;-upon the watery plain
The wreeks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage,
save his

own,

When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,

He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan

Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown,

3. The armaments which thunderstrike the walls

Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake

And monarchs tremble in their capitals;
The oak leviathan, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war,-

These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar

Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.

4. Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee ;— Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters wasted them while they were free,

And many a tyrant since; their shores obey

The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay
Has dried up realms to deserts: not so thou;

Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play,
Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow:
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

5. Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,

Calm or convulsed-in breeze, or gale, or stormIcing the pole, or in the torrid clime

Dark heaving; boundless, endless, and sublime,The image of eternity, -the throne

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime

The monsters of the deep are made; each zone

Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

6. And I have loved thee, ocean! and my joy Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be

Borne, like thy bubbles, onward; from a boy
I wantoned with thy breakers,—they to me
Were a delight; and, if the freshening sea
Made them a terror, 't was a pleasing fear;
For I was, as it were, a child of thee,
And trusted to thy billows far and near,

upon thy mane as I do here.

CXI. THE TWO RACES.

CHARLES LAMB.

This selection is a genial and humorous piece of irony. Let the pupil point out the true state of things at different points in the story.

1. The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who

borrow, and the men who lend. To these two original diversities may be reduced all those impertinent classifications of Gothic and Celtic tribes, white men, black men, red men. All the dwellers upon earth, "Parthians and Medes and Elamites," flock hither, and do naturally fall in with one or other of these primary distinctions. The infinite superiority of the former, which I choose to designate as the great race, is discernible in their figure, port, and a certain instinctive sovereignty. The latter are born degraded. "He shall serve his brethren." There is something in the air of one of this cast, lean and suspicious; contrasting with the open, trusting, generous manners of the other.

2. Observe who have been the greatest borrowers of all ages-Alcibiades-Falstaff-Sir Richard Steele-our late incomparable Brinsley; what a family likeness in all four! What a careless, even deportment hath your borrower! what rosy gills! What a beautiful reliance on Providence doth he manifest,-taking no more thought than lilies! What contempt for money,-accounting it (yours and mine especially) no better than dross! What a liberal confounding of those pedantic distinctions of meum and tuum! or rather what a noble simplification of language (beyond Tooke), resolving these supposed opposites into one clear, intelligible pronoun adjective! What near approaches doth he make to the primitive community —to the extent of one half of the principle, at least.

3. He is the true taxer, who "calleth all the world up to be taxed"; and the distance is as vast between him and one of us, as subsisted between the Augustan majesty and the poorest obolary Jew that paid it tribute-pittance at Jerusalem! His exactions, too, have a cheerful, voluntary air! So far removed from your sour parochials or state-gatherers,those inkhorn varlets, who carry their want of welcome in