profess to give specimens from all the poets with whom our country has been so richly

dowered

It simply offers, in accordance with its

title—"gleams" from the divine light which

has shone on our race now for twelve cen

turies—waxing and waning with the passing years, but never extinct; and though differing in glory in its several manifestations, always a light in which we rejoice.

The selections, though kept together in centuries, are not arranged in strict chronological order, as greater variety was