Brak. Awaked you not with this sore agony? Clar. No, no! my dream was lengthen'd after life; I pass'd, methought, the melancholy flood The first that there did greet my stranger soul Clar. Ah! Brakenbury, I have done these things, For Edward's sake; and, see how he requites me! Yět execute thy wrath on me alone: Oh, spare my guiltless wife, and my poor children!— I prithee, Brakenbury, stay by me; My soul is heavy, and I fain would sleep. 'CHARON, Son of EREDUS, who, according to ancient mythology, con veyed in his boat the shades of the dead across the rivers of the lower world. For this service he was paid with an obolus or danace, which coin was placed in the mouth of every corpse previous to its burial. He is represented as an aged man, with a dirty beard and a mean dress. Brak. I will, my lord; God give your grace good rest!— [CLARENCE reposing himself on a chair Sorrow breaks seasons, and reposing hours, Makes the night morning, and the noon-tide night. An outward honor for an inward toil; They often feel a world of restless cares: SHAKSPEARE.' 164. SELECT PASSAGES IN PROSE. I. THE STREAM OF LIFE. HEBER.' LIFE bears us on like the stream of a mighty river. Our boat at first glides down the narrow channel, through the playful murmuring of the little brook and the winding of its grassy border. The trees shed their blossoms over our young heads, the flowers on the brink seem to offer themselves to our young hands; we are happy in hope, and we grasp eagerly at the beat. ties around us-but the stream hurries on, and still our hands are empty. Our course in youth and manhood is along a wider and deeper flood, amid objects more striking and magnificent. We are animated by the moving picture of enjoyment and in'dustry passing before us; we are excited by some short-lived disappointment. The stream bears us on, and our joys and our 'See Biographical Sketch, p. 348.- REGINALD HEBER, Son of the Rev. REGINALD HEBER, was born at Malpas, Cheshire, England, on the 21st of April, 1783. He entered the University of Oxford in 1800, where his career was brilliant from its commencement to its close. In the first year he gained the university prize for Latin verse; he wrote his poem of Palestine in 1803; and in 1804 took his degree, and won the prize for the best English prose essay. In 1807 he "took orders," and was settled in Hodnet, in Shropshire. After being advanced to two or three ecclesiastical preferments, in 1822 he was appointed bishop of Calcutta, and embarked for India in 1823, where he performed his duties with great earnestness till his death, on the 3d of April, 1826. His numerous prose works, and his poetry, are noted for the purity of their style, and elevation of sentiment. griefs are alike left behind us. We may be shipwrecked, but we can not be delayed; whether rough or smooth, the river hastens toward its home, till the roar of the ocean is in our ears, and the tossing of its waves is beneath our feet, and the land lessens from our eyes, and the floods are lifted up around us, and we take our leave of earth and its inhabitants, until of our further voyage there is no witness save the Infinite and Eternal. II. LIFE COMPARED TO A RIVER.-DAVY.' A FULL and clear river is, in my opinion, the most poëtical object in nature. Pliny has, as well as I recollect, compared a river to human life. I have never read the passage in his works, but I have been a hundred times struck with the analogy, particularly amidst mountain scenery. The river, small and clear in its origin, gushes fōrth from rocks, falls into deep glens, and wantons and meänders through a wild and picturesque country, nourishing only the uncultivated tree or flower by its dew or spray. In this, its state of infancy and youth, it may be compared to the human mind in which fancy and strength of imagination are predominant-it is more beautiful than useful. When the different rills or torrents join, and descend into the plain, it becomes slow and stately in its motions; it is applied to move machinery, to irrigate meadows, and to bear upon its bosom the stately barge;-in this mature state, it is deep, strong, and useful. As it flows on toward the sea, it loses its force and its motion, and at last, as it were, becomes lost and mingled with the mighty abyss of waters. III. IDEAL CHARACTER OF LIFE.-R. H. DANA. A TRUE life, in all its connections and concerns, has an ideal and spiritual character, which, while it loses nothing of the definiteness of reality, is forever suggesting thoughts, taking new re 1 Sir HUMPHREY DAVY, who ranks, as a man of science, second to none in the nineteenth century, was born at Penzance, in Cornwall, England, December, 1778. Of his numerous discoveries, that of the safety-lamp was, perhaps, most useful. Though not an extended, he was an able prose writer, and possessed a fine poetical imagination, which, had he not been the first chemist, would have placed him among the first poets of his age. He died at Geneva, on the 80th of May, 1829.- PLINY, see p. 76, note 4.-'Nothing (noth' ing). lations, and peopling and giving action to the imagination. All that the eye falls upon and all that touches the heart, run off into airy distance, and the regions into which the sight stretches are alive, and bright, and beautiful with countless shapings and fair hues of the gladdened fancy. From kind acts, and gentle words, and fond looks there spring hosts, many and glorious as Milton's' angels; and heavenly deeds are done, and unearthly voices heard, and forms and faces, graceful and lovely as Uriel's, are seen in the noonday sun. What would only have given pleasure for the time to another, or, at most, be now and then called up in his memory, in the man of feeling and imagination, lays by its particular, and short-lived, and irregular nature, and puts on the garments of spiritual beings, and takes the everlasting nature of the soul. The ordinary acts which spring from the good-will of social life, take up their dwelling within him. and mingle with his sentiment, forming a little society in his mind, going on in harmony with its generous enterprises, its friendly labors, and tasteful pursuits. They undergo a change, becoming a portion of him, making a part of his secret joy and melancholy, and wandering at large among his far-off thoughts. All that his mind falls in with, it sweeps along in its deep, and swift, and continuous flow, and bears onward with the multitude that fills its shoreless and living sea. IV. MAN'S GLORY PASSETH AWAY.-WATSON. MARK the glory of collective man. United, he puts on the appearance of strength. He founds empires; he builds cities; he guards by his armies; he cements' by his policy. Ah! vain attempt! Still, "all flesh is grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass." Trace the track of civilized and powerful man through the world, and you will find it covered with the 'MILTON, see p. 582.- RICHARD WATSON, bishop of Llandaff, was born at Heversham, near Kendal, England, in 1737. He was appointed professor of chemistry at Cambridge, in 1764, and became professor of divinity in 1771. His theological works are, "An Apology for Christianity," in answer to Gibbon's chapter on the rise and progress of Christianity, "An Apology for the Bible," in answer to "Paine's Age of Reason," and many tracts and sermons. His philosophical works are chiefly on chemistry. Died in 1816. wreck of his hopes; and the věry monuments of his power have been converted into the mockery of his weakness. His eternal cities molder in their ruins; the serpent hisses in the cabinet where he planned his empires. Echo itself is startled by the foot which breaks the silence that has reigned for ages in his hall of feast and song. Columns stand in the untrodden desert; and the hut of the shepherd, or the den of the robber, shelters the only residence of his palaces. And the glory which now exists, is crumbling everywhere, where it has not the cem'ent of Christianity, and where it takes not something of perpetuity from the everlasting word. All heathen glory, all Mohammedan pride, creak in the blast, and nod to their fall. The withering wind or the raging tempest shall pass over them in turn; and men shall sit upon the ruins of their proudest grandeur. V. EVIDENCE OF A CREATOR IN THE STRUCTURE OF THE WORLD.-TILLOTSON.' How often might a man, after he had jumbled a set of letters in a bag, fling them out upon the ground before they would fall into an exact poëm, yea, or so much as make a good discōurse in prose! And may not a little book be as easily made by chance, as this great volume of the world?-How lõng might a man be in sprinkling colors upon a canvas with a careless hand, before they could happen to make the exact picture of a man! And is a man easier made by chance than this picture?-How long might twenty thousand blind men, which should be sent out from the several remote parts of England, wander up and down before they would all meet upon Salisbury Plains, and fall into rank and file in the exact order of an army! And yet this is much more easy to be imagined, than how the innumerable blind parts of matter should rendezvous themselves into a work. 'JOHN TILLOTSON, a distinguished prelate of the English Church, was born in Sowerby, Yorkshire, in 1630. He was educated at Clare Hall College, Cambridge. Soon after leaving that institution, he rose to distinction as a preacher, and preferments flowed upon him in rapid suecession, till in 1690 he became Archbishop of Canterbury. Died in 1694 His sermons, his principal compositions, were, for half a century, more read than any in our language.-' Rendezvous (rên' de vỏ), to unite or come together in a particular place. |