7. Now all is changed ; and here, as in the wild, The day is silent, dreary as the night; ROGERS. CXLVI. — SELECT PASSAGES IN VERSE. 1. The PLEASURES OF HOPE. — Campbell. 2. Fame. — Pope. 3. DEATH. — Young. The knell, the shroud, the mattock, and the grave, 4. KosciusKO.El — Campbell. 5. THE CAPTIVE'S DREAMS. – Mrs. Hemans. I dream of all things free ! of a gallant, gallant bark, That sweeps through storm and sea like an arrow to its mark. Of a stag that o'er the hills goes bounding in its gleo ; Of a thousand flashing rills, -of all things glad and free. I dream of some proud bird, a bright-eyed mountain king! In my visions I have heard the rushing of his wing. I follow some wild river, on whose breast no sail may be ; Dark woods around it shiver, - I dream of all things free ; Of a happy forest child, with the fawns and flowers at play, Of an Indian midst the wild, with the stars to guide his way ; Of a chief his warriors leading, of an archer's greenwood trce : My heart in chains is bleeding, and I dream of all things free! 6. ON ANCIENT GREECE. — Byron. Will add to theirs a name of fear, 7. THE BANYAN-TREE. — Moore. Which, howsoe'er the sun and sky And shoot and blossom wide and high, Downward again to that dear earth, Its grateful being first had birth. And fed with fame,- if fame it be, - 8. GAYETY. -Cowper. CXLVII. — SHAKSPEARE'S POWER OF EXPRESSION. 1. To say that he was the greatest man that ever lived is to provoke a useless controversy, and comparisons that lead to noth. ing, between Shakspeare and Cæsar, Shakspeare and Charle. magne, El Shakspeare and Cromwell ;e to say that he was the greatest intellect that ever lived is to bring the shades of Aristotle, and Plāto, and Bacon, and Newton, and all your other systematic thinkers, grumbling about us, with demands for a definition of intellect, which we are by no means in a position to give; nay, finally, to say that he is the greatest poet that the world has produced (a thing which we would certainly say, were we provoked to it) would be unnecessarily to hurt the feelings of Homer, and Soph'oclēs, and Dantë, and Milton. What we will bay, then, and what we will challenge the world to gainsay, is that he was the greatest expresser that ever lived. This is glory enough, and it leaves the other question open, 2. Other men may have led, on the whole, greater and more impressive lives than he; other men, acting on their fellows through the same medium of speech that he used, may have expended a greater power of thought, and achieved a greater intellectual effect, in one consistent direction; other men, too (though this is very questionable), may have contrived to issue the matter which they did address to the world in more compact and perfect artistic shapes. But no man that ever lived said such splendid extem'porë ka things on all subjects universally; no man that ever lived had the faculty of pouring out on all occasions such a Rood of the richest and deepest language. He niay have had rivals in the art of imagining situations; he had no rival in the power of sending a gush of the appropriate intellectual effusion over the image and body of a situation once conceived. 3. From the jewelled ring on an alderman's finger to the most mountainous thought or deed of man or dēmon, nothing suggested itself that his speech could not envelop and enfold with ease. That excessive fluency which astonishede Ben Jonson when he listened to Shakspeare in person astonishes the world yet. Abundance, ease, redundance, El a plenitude of word, sound, and im'agery, which, were the intellect at work only a little less magnificent, would sometimes end in sheer braggardism and bombast, EI are the characteristics of Shakspeare's style. Nothing is suppressed, nothing omitted, nothing cancelled. On and on the poet flows, words, thoughts, and fancies, crowding on him as fast as he can write, all related to the matter on hand, and all poured forth together, to rise and fall on the waves of an established ca'dence. 4. Such lightness and ease in the manner, and such prodigious wealth and depth in the matter, are combined in no other writer. flow the matter was first accumulated — what proportion of it was the acquired capital of former efforts, and what proportion of it welled up in the poet's mind during and in virtue of the very act of speech - it is impossible to say; but this, at least, may be affirmed without fear of contradiction, that there never was a mind in the world from which, when it was pricked by any occasion whatever, there poured forth on the instant such a stream of precious substance intellectually related to it. By his powers of expression, in fact, Shakspeare has beggared all his posterity, and left mere practitioners of expression nothing possible to do. 5. There is, perhaps, not a thought, or feeling, or situation, really common and gener'ic to human life, on which he has not exercised his prerogative; and wherever he has once been, woe to the man that comes after him! He has overgrown the whole system and face of things, like a universal ivy, which has left no wall uncovered, no pinnacle unclimbed, no chink unpenetrated. Since he lived, the concrete world has worn a richer surface. He found it great and beautiful, with stripes here and there of the rough old coat seen through the leafy labors of his predecessors; he left it clothed throughout with the wealth and autumnal luxuriance of his own unparalleled language. QUARTERLY REVIEW. CXLVIII. — MORAL AND RELIGIOUS ELOQUENCE. 1. RELIGION ESSENTIAL TO MORALITY. – Of all the disposi tions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. · A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked, where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of pecu. liar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles. - Geo. Washington. 2. UNAPPRECIATED OBLIGATIONS. — We live in the midst of blessings till we are utterly insensible of their greatness, and of the source from whence they flow. We speak of our civilization, our arts, cur freedom, our laws, and forget entirely how large a share is due tu Christianity. Blot Christianity out of man's history, and what would his iaws have been, what his civilization ? Christianity is mixed up with our very being and our very life |