HE. SHE. Speak, mine own daughter, with the sun-bright locks, Let's seek that country of all countries-Home ! HE. See'st thou these orange flowers! this palm that rears SHE. My heart is wandering round our ancient home. Farewell, kind land! Now, father, now for Home! READING. READING furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge : it is thinking makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections; unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength and nourishment. There are indeed in some writers visible instances of deep thought, close and acute reasoning, and ideas well pursued. The light these would give would be of great use, if their readers would observe and imitate them; all the rest at best are but particulars fit to be turned into knowledge; but that can be done only by our own meditation, and examining the reach, force and coherence of what is said; and then, as far as we apprehend and see the connection of ideas, so far it is ours; without that, it is but so much loose matter floating in our brain. The memory may be stored, but the judgment is little better, and the stock of knowledge not increased, by being able to repeat what others have said, or produce the arguments we have found in them. Such a knowledge as this is but a knowledge by hearsay, the ostentation of it is at best but talking by rote, and very often upon weak and wrong principles. For all that is to be found in books is not built upon true foundations, nor always rightly deduced from the principles it is pretended to be built on. and Such an examen as is requisite to discover that, every reader's mind is not forward to make, especially in those who have given themselves up to a party, and only hunt for what they can scrape together that may favor and support the tenets of it. Such men wilfully exclude themselves from truth, and from all true benefit to be received by reading. Others, of more indifferency, often want attention and industry. The mind is backward in itself to be at the pains to trace every argument to its original, and to see upon what basis it stands, and how firmly; but yet it is this that gives so much the advantage to one man more than another in reading. * The mind should, by severe rules, be tied down to this, at first uneasy, task; use and exercise will give it facility. So that those who are accustomed to it, readily, as it were with one cast of the eye, take a view of the argument, and presently, in most cases, see where it bottoms. Those who have got this faculty, one may say, have got the true key of books, and the clue to lead them through the mizmaze of variety of opinions and authors to truth and certainty. This, young beginners should be entered in and shown the use of, that they might profit by their reading. Those who are strangers to it will be apt to think it too great a clog in the way of men's studies; and they will suspect they shall make but small progress, if, in the books they read, they must stand to examine and unravel every argument, and follow it step by step up to its original. I answer, this is a good objection, and ought to weigh with those whose reading is designed for much talk and little knowledge, and I have nothing to say to it. But I am here inquiring into the conduct of the understanding in its progress towards knowledge; and to those who aim at that, I may say, -that he who fair and softly goes steadily forward in a course that points right, will sooner be at his journey's end, than he that runs after every one he meets, though he gallop all day full speed. To which let me add, that this way of thinking on, and profiting by, what we read, will be a clog and rub to any one only in the beginning; when custom and exercise have made it familiar, it will be dispatched, in most occasions, without resting or interruption in the course of our reading. The motions and views of a mind exercised that way are wonderfully quick; and a man used to such sort of reflections sees as much at one glimpse as would require a long discourse to lay before another, and make out an entire and gradual deduction. Besides that, when the first difficulties are over, the delight and sensible advantage it brings mightily encourages and enlivens the mind in reading, which, without this, is very improperly called study. -LOCKE. Ir was the time when lilies blow, I trow they did not part in scorn: He does not love me for my birth, In there came old Alice, the nurse, Said, "Who was this that went from thee "Oh! God be thanked!" said Alice, the nurse, "That all comes round so just and fair: Lord Ronald is heir of all your lands, And you are not the Lady Clare." "Are ye out of your mind, my nurse, my nurse?" "The old Earl's daughter died at my breast- I buried her like my own sweet child, "Falsely, falsely have you done, Oh! mother," she said, "if this be true, To keep the best man under the sun 66 So many years from his due." 'Nay, now, my child," said Alice, the nurse, And all you have will be Lord Ronald's, "If I'm a beggar born," she said, "I will speak out, for I dare not lie; Pull off, pull off the brooch of gold, "Nay, now, my child," said Alice, the nurse, She said, "Not so: but I will know "Nay, now, what faith?" said Alice, the nurse, 66 Though I should die to night." "Yet give one kiss to your mother dear! "Yet here's a kiss for my mother dear, She clad herself in a russet gown, The lily-white doe Lord Ronald had brought Dropt her head in the maiden's hand, Down stept Lord Ronald from his tower : "If I come drest like a village maid, "Play me no tricks," said Lord Ronald, 66 Oh! and proudly stood she up! Her heart within her did not fail! She looked into Lord Ronald's eyes, And told him all her nurse's tale. He laughed a laugh of merry scorn; He turned and kissed her where she stood: "If you are not the heiress born, And I," said he, "the next in blood "If you are not the heiress born, And I," said he, " the lawful heir, We two will wed to-morrow morn, And you shall still be Lady Clare." -TENNYSON. 288 THE CONQUEROR'S GRAVE. JUSTICE. JUSTICE is not a halt and miserable object; it is not the ineffective bauble of an Indian pagod; it is not the portentous phantom of despair; it is not like any fabled monster formed in the eclipse of reason, and found in some unhallowed grove of superstitious darkness and political dismay! No, my lords. In the happy reverse of all these, I turn from this disgusting caricature, to the real image―Justice! I have now before me august and pure, the abstract idea of all that would be perfect in the spirits and the aspirings of men ;-where the mind rises; where the heart expands; where the countenance is ever placid and benign; where her favorite attitude is to stoop to the unfortunate; to hear their cry, and to help them; to rescue and relieve; to succour and save! Majestic from its mercy; venerable from its utility; uplifted, without pride; firm, without obduracy; beneficent in each preference; lovely, though in her frown! On that justice I rely, deliberate and sure; abstracted from all party purposes and political speculation; not in words, but in facts. You, my lords, who hear me, I conjure, by those rights it is your best privilege to preserve; by that fame it is your best pleasure to inherit; by all those feelings, which refer to the first term in the series of existence, the original compact of our nature, our controlling rank in the creation! This is the call on all to administer to truth and equity, as they would satisfy the laws and satisfy themselves, with the most exalted bliss possible or conceivable for our nature—the selfapproving consciousness of virtue, when the condemnation we look for will be one of the most ample mercies accomplished for mankind since the creation of the world. -SHERIDAN. THE CONQUEROR'S GRAVE. WITHIN this lowly grave a conqueror lies; And yet the monument proclaims it not, Nor round the sleeper's name hath chisel wrought Ivy and amaranth in a graceful sheaf Twined with the laurel's fair, imperial leaf. To the great world unknown, Is graven here, and wild flowers rising round, |