Of his dark, lofty eye, and bended brow,

Might quell the lion. He led on; but thoughts

Seemed gathering round which troubled him. The veins Grew visible upon his swarthy brow;

And his proud lip was pressed as if with pain.

He trod less firmly; and his restless eye

Glanced forward frequently, as if some ill

He dared not meet, were there. His home was near;
And men were thronging, with that strange delight
They have in human passions, to observe
The struggle of his feelings with his pride.
He gazed intensely forward. The tall firs
Before his tent were motionless. The leaves
Of the sweet aloe, and the clustering vines,
Which half concealed his threshold, met his eye, —
Unchanged and beautiful; and one by one,
The balsam, with its sweet-distilling stems,
And the Circassian rose, and all the crowd
Of silent and familiar things, stole up
Like the recovered passages of dreams.
He strode on rapidly. A moment more,

And he had reached his home; when, lo! there sprang
One with a bounding footstep, and a brow
Of light, to meet him.-Oh! how beautiful!
Her dark eye flashing like a sun-lit gem,
And her luxuriant hair!-'twas like the sweep
Of a swift wing in visions. He stood still,

he heeded not.

As if the sight had withered him. She threw
Her arms about his neck,
She called him “Father;

- but he answered not.

She stood and gazed upon him. — Was he wroth?
There was no anger in that blood-shot eye.

Had sickness seized him? She unclasped his helm,
And laid her white hand gently on his brow,

And the large veins felt stiff and hard, like chords. -
The touch aroused him. He raised up his hands,
And spoke the name of God, in agony.

She knew that he was stricken, then; and rushed
Again into his arms; and, with a flood

Of tears she could not bridle, sobbed a prayer
That he would tell her of his wretchedness.
He told her; and a momentary flush

Shot o'er her countenance; and then the soul
Of Jephthah's daughter wakened; and she stood

Calmly and nobly up, and said 'twas well

And she would die.

*

*

The sun had well-nigh set.

The fire was on the altar; and the priest

Of the High God was there. A wasted man
Was stretching out his withered hands to Heaven,
As if he would have prayed, but had no words;
And she who was to die,
the calmest one

In Israel at that hour, stood up alone,
And waited for the sun to set. Her face
Was pale, but very beautiful; her lip
Had a more delicate outline, and the tint
Was deeper; but her countenance was like
The majesty of angels!

The sun set;

And she was dead, — but not by violence.

EXERCISE CXC.

SUBLIMITY OF WORDSWORTH.

Talfourd.

To the consideration of Wordsworth's sublimities we come with trembling steps, and feel, as we approach, that we are entering upon holy ground. At first, indeed, he seems only to win and to allure us, to resign the most astonishing trophies of the poet, and humbly to indulge, among the beauties of the creation, the sweetest and the lowliest of human affections.

We soon, however, feel how faint an idea of his capacities we have entertained by classing him with the loveliest of descriptive poets, and how subservient the sweetest of his domestic pictures are to the grandeur of his lofty conceptions. He has enlarged the resources of the mind, and discovered new dignities in our species. The most searching eyes observe in his productions a depth of thought which they are unable to fathom,-eminences rising far into an imaginative glory which they cannot penetrate.

Above all others he has discerned and traced out the line by which the high qualities of intellectual greatness are intimately united with the most generous exertions, and the holiest principles of moral goodness. His perceptions of

truth, derived as they are from the intuitive feelings of his heart, are clear and unclouded, except by the shadows which are thrown from the vast creations of his fancy.

- sweeps

Set before him the meanest and most disgusting of all earthly objects, and he immediately traces the chain by which it is linked to the great harmonies of nature, through the most beautiful and touching of all human feelings, in order to show their mysterious connection, and at last enables us to perceive the union of all orders of animated being, and the universal workings of the Spirit that lives and breathes in them all.

His theories may rather be regarded as prophetic of what we may be in a loftier state of being, than as descriptive of what we are on earth. No man of feeling ever perused his nobler poems, for the first time, without finding that he breathed in a purer and more elevated region of poetical delight, than any which he had before explored. To feel, for the first time, a communion with his mind, is to discover loftier faculties in our own.

EXERCISE CXCI.

ODE.

Wordsworth.

[Immortality intimated by Recollections of Childhood.]

THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,

To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;
Turn wheresoe'er I may,

By night or day,

The things which I have seen, I now can see no more.

The rainbow comes and goes,

And lovely is the rose,

The Moon doth with delight

Look round her when the heavens are bare;

Waters on a starry night

Are beautiful and fair;

The sunshine is a glorious birth;

But yet I know, where'er I go,

That there hath passed away a glory from the earth.

Now, while the birds thus síng a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound

As to the tabor's sound,

To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief;
And I again am strong.

The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep,
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong:
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng;
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep;
And all the earth is gay.
Land and sea

Give themselves up to jollity;
And with the heart of May
Doth every beast keep holiday;
Thou child of joy,

Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy shepherd boy!

Ye blessed creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see

The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,

My head hath its coronal,

The fulness of your bliss, I feel I feel it all.
Oh! evil day! if I were sullen,
While the Earth herself is adorning,

This sweet May-morning;

And the children are pulling,

On every side,

In a thousand valleys far and wide,

Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm;
And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm:
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!

-But there's a tree, of many one,

A single field which I have looked upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The pansy at my feet

Doth the same tale repeat:

Not for these I raise

The song of thanks and praise;
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;

Blank misgivings of a creature

Moving about in worlds not realized,
High instincts, before which our mortal nature
Did tremble, like a guilty thing surprised!"
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,

Which, be they what they may,

Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
Are yet a master light of all our seeing;

Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal silence: truths that wake,
To perish never;

Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor man nor boy,

Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!
Hence, in a season of calm weather,

Though inland far we be,

Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither;

Can in a moment travel thither,

And see the children sport upon

the shore,

And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound

As to the tabor's sound!

We, in thought, will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,

Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!

What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now forever taken from my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find

Strength in what remains behind,
In the primal sympathy