If He, which is the top of judgment, should
But judge you as you are? Oh, think on that;
And mercy then will breathe within your lips,
Like man new made.

Ang.

Be you content, fair maid; It is the law, not I, condemns your brother.

Were he my kinsman, brother, or my son,

It should be thus with him; he dies to-morrōw.

Isab. To-morrow? oh! that's sudden. Spare him, spare him. Good, good my lord, bethink you:

Who is it that hath died for this offense?

There's many have committed it.

Ang. The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept;

Those many had not dared to do that evil,
If the first man that did the edict infringe,2
Had answer'd for his deed. Now, 'tis awake;
Takes note of what is done; and, like a prophet,
Looks in a glass, that shows what future evils,
Or new, or by remissness new-conceived,
And so in progress to be hatch'd and born,
Are now to have no successive degrees;
But ere they live, to end.

Isab.

Yet show some pity.

Ang. I show it most of all, when I show justice; For then I pity those I do not know,

Which a dismiss'd offense would after gall;

And do him right, that, answering one foul wrong,

Lives not to act another. Be satisfied;

Your brother dies to-morrow; be content.

Isab. So you must be the first that gives this sentence:

And he, that suffers: oh! 'tis excellent

To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous

To use it like a giant.- -Merciful Heaven!

Thou rather, with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt,
Splittest the unwedgeable and gnarlèd oak,

Than the soft myrtle: Oh, but man, proud man,

1

E' dict, proclamation; law.-' In fringe', break; encroach upon.8 Tyr'an nous, cruel; unjustly severe.

Dress'd in a little brief authority,

Most ignorant of what he's most assured,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high Heaven,
As make the angels weep.

We can not weigh our brother with yourself:
Great men may jest with saints,-'tis wit in them;
But, in the less, foul profanation.'

That in the captain's but a choleric2 word,
Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.3

Ang. Why do you put these sayings upon me?
Isab. Because authority, though it err like others,
Hath yet a kind of medicine in itself,

That skins the vice o' the top: go to your bosom;
Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know
That's like my brother's fault: if it confess
A natural guiltiness, such as is his,

Let it not sound a thought upon your tongue
Against my brother's life.

Ang. She speaks, 'tis such sense,

That my sense bleeds with it. Fare you well.

Isab. Gentle my lord, turn back.

Ang. I will bethink me; come again to-morrow.

Isab. Hark, how I'll bribe you; good my lord, turn back.

Ang. How! bribe me?

Isab. Ay, with such gifts, that Heaven shall share with you.

Not with fond shekels' of the tested' gold,

Or stones, whose rate is either rich or poor,
As fancy values them; but with true prayers,
That shall be up at Heaven, and enter there,
Ere sunrise; prayers from preserved souls,
From fasting maids, whose minds are dedicate
To nothing temporal.

Ang. Well, come to-morrow.

Isab. Heaven keep your honor safe.

SHAKSPEARE.

1 Prof a nå' tion, a violation of something sacred; treating with abuse or disrespect. Choleric (kol' er ik), angry; passionate. Blås' phemy, irreverent or contemptuous words uttered wickedly against God.— 'Shekel (shek' kl), a Jewish coin of the value of about half a dollar, or sixty cents.-Test' ed, tried; purified.

1.

WITHI

169. THE TRAVELER.

[ITHDRAW yon curtain, look within that room,
Where all is splendor, yet where all is gloom:
Why weeps that mother? why, in pensive mood,
Group noiseless round, that little, lovely brood?
The battle-door is still, laid by each book,
And the harp slumbers in its custom'd nook.
Who hath done this? what cold, unpitying foe
Hath made this house the dwelling-place of woe?

2. 'Tis he, the husband, father, lost in care,
O'er that sweet fellow in his cradle there:
The gallant bark that rides by yonder strand
Bears him to-morrow from his native land.
Why turns he, half unwilling, from his home,
To tempt the ocean, and the earth to roam?
Wealth he can boast a miser's sigh would hush,
And health is laughing in that ruddy blush;
Friends spring to greet him, and he has no foe-
So honor'd and so bless'd, what bids him go?—

3. His eye must see, his foot each spot must tread,
Where sleeps the dust of earth's recorded dead;
Where rise the monuments of ancient time,
Pillar and pyramid in age sublime;

The Pagan's temple and the Churchman's tower,
War's bloodiest plain and Wisdom's greenest bower;
All that his wonder woke in school-boy themes,
All that his fancy fired in youthful dreams:
Where Socrates' once taught he thirsts to stray,
Where Homer pour'd his everlasting lay;

1 Socrates, an illustrious Grecian philosopher and teacher of youth, was born at Athens, in the year 468 B. c. Though the best of all the men of his time, and one of the wisest and most just of all men, he unjustly suffered the punishment of death for impiety at the age of seventy. Homer, the most distinguished of poets, called the "Father of Song." He is supposed to have been an Asiatic Greek, though his birth-place, and the period in which he lived, are not known.

-

From Virgil's' tomb he longs to pluck one flower,
By Avon's stream to live one moonlight hour;
To pause where England "garners up" her great,
And drop a patriot's tear to Milton's3 fate;
Fame's living masters, too, he must behold,
Whose deeds shall blazon with the best of old;
Nations compare, their laws and customs scan,
And read, wherever spread, the book of Man :
For these he goes, self-banish'd from his hearth,
And wrings the hearts of all he loves on earth.
4. Yět say, shall not new joy those hearts inspire,
When, grouping round the future winter fire,
To hear the wonders of the world they burn,
And lose his absence in his glad return?—
Return?-alas! he shall return no more,

To bless his own sweet home, his own proud shore.
Look once again—cold in his cabin now,
Death's finger-mark is on his pallid brow ;
No wife stood by, her patient watch to keep,
To smile on him, then turn away to weep;
Kind woman's place rough mariners supplied,
And shared the wanderer's blessing when he died.

5. Wrapp'd in the raiment that it long must wear,
His body to the deck they slowly bear;

Even there the spirit that I sing is true,
The crew look on with sad, but curious view;
The setting sun flings round his farewell rays,
O'er the broad ocean not a ripple plays;
How eloquent, how awful, in its power,
The silent lecture of death's sabbath hour!

1 Virgil, the most distinguished of the Roman poets, was born at Andes, a small village of Mantua, on the 15th of October, B. c. 70. He died on the 22d of September, B. c. 19, before completing his fiftyfirst year. His body lies buried at the distance of two miles from the city of Naples.--2 Avon, a river in England, on the bank of which Shakspeare was born.- John Milton, the most illustrious English poet, was born in London, on the 9th of December, 1608. He died on Sunday, the 8th of November, 1675.

One voice that silence breaks-the prayer is said,
And the last rite man pays to man is paid;
The plashing waters mark his resting-place,
And fold him round in one lõng, cold embrace;
Bright bubbles for a moment sparkle o'er,
Then break, to be, like him, beheld no more;
Down, countless fathoms down, he sinks to sleep,
With all the nameless shapes that haunt the deep.

CHARLES SPRAGUE.

НЕ

170. DISCOVERY OF AMERICA.

THE discovery itself of the American continent may, I think,

fairly be considered the most extraordinary event in the history of the world. In this, as in other cases, familiarity blunts the edge of our perceptions; but much as I have meditated, and often as I have treated this theme, its magnitude grows upon mø with each successive contemplation.

2. That a continent nearly as large as Europe and Afric. united, spread out on both sides of the equator, lying between the western shores of Europe and Africa and the eastern shore of Asia,' with groups of islands in either ocean, as it were stopping-places on the march of discovery,—a continent, not inhabited indeed by civilized races, but still occupied by one of the families of rational man,-that this great hemisphere, I say, should have lain undiscovered for five thousand years upon the bosom of the deep,—a mystery so vast, within so short a distance, and yet not found out,-is indeed a marvel.

3. Mute nature, if I may so express myself, had made the discovery to the philosopher, for the preponderance of land in the eastern hemisphere demanded a counterpoise3 in the west. Dark-wooded trees, unknown to the European naturalist, had from age to age drifted over the sea and told of the tropical forests where they grew. Stupendous ocean currents, driven

1 Asia (a' she a).—2 Pre pỏn' der ance, greater weight.- Coun' ter poise, a weight to balance another; a force or power sufficient to balance another.