With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked, 21. Their name, their years, spelt by the unlettered Muse, The place of fame and elegy supply, And many a holy text around she strews, 22. For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey, This pleasing, anxious being e'er resigned, 23. On some fond breast the parting soul relies, 24. For thee, who, mindful of the unhonored dead, 25. Haply some hoary-headed swain may say, To meet the sun upon the upland lawn. 26. "There, at the foot of yonder nodding beech 27. "Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love. 28. "One morn I missed him on the accustomed hill, Along the heath, and near his favorite tree : Another came, nor yet beside the rill, Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood, was he: 29. The next, with dirges due, in sad array, Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne: Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay Graved on the stone beneath yon agèd thorn." THE EPITAPH. 30. Here rests his head upon the lap of carth 31. Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere ; Heaven did a recompense as largely send; He gave to misery (all he had), a tear, He gained from heaven ('twas all he wished) a friend. 32. No further seek his merits to disclose, Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, (There they alike in trembling hope repose,) The bosom of his Father and his God. The following characterization of Gray and his writings is from the pen of the distinguished Scotch historian and critic, SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH :— 1. Of all English poets, Gray was the most finished artist. He attained the highest degree of splendor of which poetical style seems to be capable. If Virgil and his scholar Racine may be allowed to have united somewhat more ease with their elegance, no other poet approaches Gray in this kind of excellence. The degree of poetical invention diffused over such a style, the balance of taste and of fancy necessary to produce it, and the art with which an offensive boldness of imagery is polished away, are not indeed always perceptible to the common reader, nor do they convey to any mind the same species of gratification which is felt from the perusal of those poems which seem to be the unpremeditated effusions of enthusiasm: but to the eye of the critic, and more especially to the artist, they afford a new kind of pleasure, not incompatible with a distinct perception of the art employed, and somewhat similar to the grand emotions excited by the reflection on the skill and toil exerted in the construction of a magnificent palace. 2. They can only be classed among the secondary pleasures of poetry, but they never can exist without a great degree of its higher excellences. Almost all his poetry was lyrical-that species which, issuing from a mind in the highest state of excitement, requires an intensity of feeling which for a long composition the genius of no poet could support. Those who complained of its brevity and rapidity only confessed their own inability to follow the movements of poetical inspiration. Of the two grand attributes of the Ode, Dryden had displayed the enthusiasm, Gray exhibited the magnificence. He is also the only modern English writer whose Latin verses deserve general notice; but we must lament that such difficult trifles had diverted his genius from its natural objects. In his letters he has shown the descriptive powers of a poet, and in new combinations of generally familiar words, which he seems to have caught from Madame de Sévigné (though it must be owned he was somewhat quaint), he was eminently happy. It may be added, that he deserves the comparatively trifling praise of having been the most learned poet since Milton. I. Verse 1.-"The Lake Country," see chapter xxix.-V. 2, "Odes." The ode was, originally, mostly in narrative form, consisting of unequal verses in stanzas or strophes, and was intended to be sung, accompanied by some musical instrument. It is now a more stately composition, confined to the expression of sentiment, or of imaginative thought. II. Why do " Ambition" and "Grandeur," in 8th verse, "Memory," in 10th, "Honor,' ," "Flattery," and "Death,” in 11th, etc., begin with capitals? III. Verse 1.-Virgil, the author of the Ene'id.-Ra-cine' (15seen'), a French dramatist, born in 1639.-V. 2. Sévigné (Să-veen'yā), a French epistolary writer, born in 1626. CHAPTER XVIII.-MISCELLANEOUS. I.-Christ's Sermon on the Mount. 1. We think of the delivery of the Law on Sinai, as the delivery of a "fiery law," whose promulgation is surrounded by the imagery of thunders, and lightnings, and the voice of the trumpet sounding long and roaring louder and louder. We think of the delivery of the Sermon on the Mount, as flowing forth in divinest music amid all the calm and loneliness of the clear and quiet dawn. The former came dreadfully to the startled conscience from an Unseen Presence, shrouded by wreathing clouds, and destroying fire, and eddying smoke; the latter was uttered by a sweet human voice that moved the heart most gently, in words of peace. The former was delivered on the desolate and snow-rent hill, which seems, with its red granite crags, to threaten the scorching wilderness; the latter on the flowery grass of the green hill-side which slopes down to the silver lake. The former shook with agitation and terror; the latter soothed with peace and love. 2. The former was the old Law of threatening; the latter the new Law of Mercy. The old was transitory, this permanent; the old was a type and shadow, the new a fulfilment and completion; the old demanded obedience and outward action, the new was to permeate the thoughts; the old contained the rule of conduct, the new the secret of obedience. The command, "Thou shalt not murder," was henceforth extended to angry words and feelings of hatred. The prohibition of perjury was extended to every vain and unnecessary oath. The law of equivalent revenge was superseded by a law of absolute self-abnegation. The love due to our neighbor was extended to our enemy also. 3. Alms were to be given, not with noisy ostentation, but in modest secrecy. Prayers were to be uttered, not with hypocritic publicity, but in holy solitude. Fasting was to be exercised, not as a belauded virtue, but as a private selfdenial. And all these acts of devotion were to be offered with sole reference to the love of God, in a simplicity which sought no earthly reward, but which stored up for itself a heavenly and incorruptible treasure. 4. The gate was strait, the path narrow, but it led to life by the lives and actions of those who professed to live by it, and point it out, they were to judge whether their doctrine was true or false: without this, neither words of orthodoxy would prevail, nor works of power. Lastly, Jesus warned them that he who heard these sayings, and did them, was like a wise man who built a house with foundations dug deeply into the living rock, whose house, because it was founded upon a rock, stood unshaken amid the vehement beating of storm and surge; but he who heard and did them not was likened "unto a foolish man that built his house upon the sand; and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the wind blew, and beat upon that house, and it fell, and great was the fall thereof.”—F. W. Farrar, D.D., Canon of Westminster. The foregoing beautiful extract contains fine examples of opposition and contrast (antithesis), in which the application of the principle of the rising inflection—or suspension of voice-when the sense |