can scarcely be perceived, except by the nicest ear. King Lear, driven to madness by the ingratitude and cruelty of his two elder daughters, is found by the youngest, Cordelia, asleep upon a bed in a tent in the French camp, after having passed the night in the open air, exposed to the fury of the elements during a tremendous thunder-storm. A physician and attendants are watching over the sufferer. While the dutiful daughter is pouring out her heart in tenderness over him, recounting his wrongs, his afflictions, and the horrors of the storm, the king awakes · but we will take the scene itself. After some inquiries concerning his royal patient, the physician asks: "So please your majesty, That we may wake the king? He hath slept long. Gentleman.-Ay, madam; in the heaviness of his sleep Physician.-Be by, good madam, when we do awake him; Cordelia.-Very well. Physician.-Please you, draw near. Louder the music there! Kent.-Kind and dear princess! Cordelia.-Had you not been their father, these white flakes To stand against the deep dread-bolted thunder? Of quick, cross lightning? * * * * * * * Mine enemy's dog, Though he had bit me, should have stood that night "Tis wonder that thy life and wits at once Had not concluded all. He wakes; speak to him. Physician.-Madam, do you; 'tis fittest. Cordelia.-How does my royal lord? How fares your majesty? Thou art a soul in bliss, but I am bound Upon a wheel of fire. Cordelia.-Sir, do you know me? Lear. You are a spirit, I know; when did you die? Cordelia. Still, still far wide. Physician.-He's scarce awake: let him alone awhile. Lear.-Where have I been? Where am I? Fair daylight?— I will not swear these are my hands:-let's see; Cordelia.-Oh, look upon me, sir! And hold your hands in benediction o'er me:- Lear.-Pray, do not mock me; I am a very foolish, fond old man, Fourscore and upward; and, to deal plainly, I fear I am not in my perfect mind. Methinks I should know you, and know this man; To be my child Cordelia! Cordelia.-And so I am; I am." It cannot be doubted that the whole of this scene is poetry of the highest proof; and yet, except in the passage referring to the storm (in which those wonderful lines descriptive of the lightning might have been struck out by the flash itself), there is scarcely a phrase which could not have been employed in the humblest prose record of this conversation. Try the experiment; break up the rhythm, the only thing that constitutes the lines verse, and mark the issue; the same sentiments will remain, in nearly the same words; yet the latter being differently collocated, and wanting the inimitable cadence of such verse as none but Shakspeare has been able to construct, the charm will be broken, and the pathos subdued, though no mutilation could destroy it. How much the power of poetry depends upon the nice inflections of rhythm alone, may be proved by taking the finest passages of Milton or Shakspeare, and merely putting them into prose, with the least possible variation of the words themselves. The attempt would be like gathering up dew-drops, which appear jewels and pearls on the grass, but run into water in the hand: the essence and the elements remain, but the grace, the sparkle, and the form are gone.-Lecture Third. THE PERMANENCE OF WORDS. An eloquent but extravagant writer has hazarded the assertion that "words are the only things that last forever."1 Nor is this merely a splendid saying, or a startling paradox, that may be 1 The late Mr. William Hazlitt. qualified by explanation into commonplace; but with respect to man, and his works on earth, it is literally true. Temples and palaces, amphitheatres and catacombs,-monuments of power, and magnificence, and skill, to perpetuate the memory, and preserve even the ashes, of those who lived in past ages,-must, in the revolutions of mundane events, not only perish themselves by violence or decay, but the very dust in which they perish be so scattered as to leave no trace of their material existence behind. There is no security beyond the passing moment for the most permanent or the most precious of these; they are as much in jeopardy as ever, after having escaped the changes and chances of thousands of years. An earthquake may suddenly engulf the pyramids of Egypt, and leave the sand of the desert as blank as the tide would have left it on the sea-shore. A hammer in the hand of an idiot may break to pieces the Apollo Belvedere, or the Venus de Medici, which are scarcely less worshipped as miracles of art in our day, than they were by idolaters of old as representatives of deities. Looking abroad over the whole world, after the lapse of nearly six thousand years, what have we of the past but the words in which its history is recorded? What, besides a few mouldering and brittle ruins, which time is imperceptibly touching down into dust, what, besides these, remains of the glory, the grandeur, the intelligence, the supremacy, of the Grecian republics, or the empire of Rome? Nothing but the words of poets, historians, philosophers, and orators, who, being dead, yet speak, and in their immortal works still maintain their dominion over inferior minds through all posterity. And these intellectual sovereigns not only govern our spirits from the tomb by the power of their thoughts, but their very voices are heard by our living ears in the accents of their mother-tongues. The beauty, the eloquence and art of these collocations of sounds and syllables, the learned alone can appreciate, and that only (in some cases) after long, intense, and laborious investigation; but, as thought can be made to transmigrate from one body of words into another, even through all the languages of the earth, without losing what may be called its personal identity, the great minds of antiquity continue to hold their ascendency over the opinions, manners, characters, institutions, and events of all ages and nations through which their posthumous compositions have found way, and been made the earliest subjects of study, the highest standards of morals, and the most perfect examples of taste, to the master-minds in every state of civilized society. In this respect the "words" of inspired prophets and apostles among the Jews, and those of gifted writers among the ancient Gentiles, may truly be said to "last forever." -Retrospect of Literature. THE BROTHERS HARE, 1794-1855. Few books contain more gems of instructive and suggestive thought than the two volumes of Guesses at Truth, first and second series, by the two brothers, Augustus William and Charles Julius Hare, clergymen of the Church of England. Augustus William, the elder, was born in 1794; became rector of Alton Barnes, Wiltshire, and died at Rome, February 18, 1834. The younger was born 1796; educated at Trinity College, Cambridge; instituted to the rectory of Hurst Monceaux, Sussex, in 1832; appointed Archdeacon of Lewes in 1840; and died at Hurst Monceaux, January 27, 1855.1 The duty of editing their joint productions devolved, of course, upon the latter, whose contributions are marked by the letter U, while those with other marks were written either by his brother, or by some congenial friends. In the original preface the editor says, "If I am addressing one of that numerous class who need to be told what to think, let me advise you to meddle with the book no further. You wish to buy a house ready furnished; do not come to look for it in a stone-quarry. But, if you are building up your own opinions for yourself, and only want to be provided with materials, you may meet with many things in these pages to suit you." Besides his contributions to the Guesses at Truth, the archdeacon published a number of Sermons; translated, 1828, in conjunction with Rev. C. Thirlwall, Niebuhr's History of Rome; and edited the Works of John Sterling, with a Memoir, in 1848. He was an ecclesiastical leader of what is called the "broad Church," as distinct from "high" or "low," and was highly respected as an earnest thinker on social and philosophic subjects. WHAT YOUTH SHOULD LEARN. The teachers of youth, in a free country, should select those books for their chief study7-so far, I mean, as this world is concerned-which are best adapted to foster a spirit of manly freedom. The duty of preserving the liberty which our ancestors, through God's blessing, won, established, and handed down to us, is no less imperative than any commandment in the second table, if it be not the concentration of the whole. And is this duty to be learned from the investigations of science? Is it to be picked up in the crucible? or extracted from the properties of lines and numbers? I fear there is a moment of broken lights in the intellectual day of civilized countries, when, among the manifold. refractions of Knowledge, Wisdom is almost lost sight of. PHYSICAL AND MORAL POWER CONTRASTED. Let us cast our thoughts backward. Of all the works of all the men who were living eighteen hundred years ago, what is 1" Archdeacon Hare is a man of encyclo- English theologians, at once accurate and wide paedic knowledge, a profound classical scholar, in his acquaintance with European history the most learned and philosophical of modern | and literature."-GEORGE BRIMLEY'S Essays. remaining now? One man was then lord of half the known earth. In power none could vie with him; in the wisdom of this world, few. He had sagacious ministers and able generals. Of all his works, of all theirs, of all the works of the other princes and rulers in those ages, what is left now? Here and there a name, and here and there a ruin! Of the works of those who wielded a mightier weapon than the sword,—a weapon that the rust cannot eat away so rapidly, a weapon drawn from the armory of thought, -some still live and act, and are cherished and revered by the learned. The range of their influence, however, is narrow: it is confined to few, and, even in them, mostly to a few of their meditative, not of their active, hours. But, at the same time, there issued from a nation among the most despised of the earth twelve poor men, with no sword in their hands, scantily supplied with the stores of human learning or thought. They went forth East, and West, and North, and South, into all quarters of the world. They were reviled; they were spit upon; they were trampled under foot; every engine of torture, every mode of death, was employed to crush them. And where is their work now? It is set as a diadem on the brows of the nations. Their voice sounds at this day in all parts of the earth. High and low hear it; kings on their thrones bow down to it; senates acknowledge it as their law; the poor and afflicted rejoice in it; and as it has triumphed over all those powers which destroy the works of man, -as, instead of falling before them, it has gone on, age after age, increasing in power and in glory, so is it the only voice which can triumph over Death, and turn the king of terrors into an angel of light. Therefore, even if princes and statesmen had no higher motive than the desire of producing works which are to last and to bear their names over the waves of time, they should aim at becoming the fellow-laborers, not of Tiberius and Sejanus, nor even of Augustus and Agrippa, but of Peter and Paul. Their object should be, not to build monuments which crumble away and are forgotten, but to work among the builders of that which is truly the Eternal City. For so, too, will it be eighteen hundred years hence, if the world lasts so long. Of the works of our generals and statesmen, eminent as several of them have been, all traces will have vanished. Indeed, of him who was the mightiest among them, all traces have well-nigh vanished already. For they who deal in death are mostly given up soon to death,—they and their works. Of our poets and philosophers, some may still survive; and many a thoughtful youth in distant regions may still repair for wisdom to the fountains of Burke and Wordsworth. But the works which assuredly will live, and be great and glorious, are the works of those poor unregarded men who have gone forth in the spirit of the twelve from Judea, whether to India, to Africa, |