municable differences, that cannot be caught by mimicries, that cannot be reflected in the mirror of copies, that cannot become ponderable in the scales of vulgar comparison. (Ibid, pp. 7—9.)

IMMORTALITY OF GREAT BOOKS.—At this hour, five hundred years since their creation, the tales of Chaucer, never equalled on this earth for their tenderness, and for life of picturesqueness, are read familiarly by many in the charming language of their natal day, and by others in the modernisations of Dryden, of Pope, and Wordsworth. At this hour, one thousand eight hundred years since their creation, the Pagan tales of Ovid, never equalled on this earth for the gaiety of their movement and the capricious graces of their narrative, are read by all Christendom. This man's people and their monuments are dust; but he is alive: he has survived them, as he told us that he had it in his commission to do, by a thousand years; "and shall a thousand more." (Ibid, pp. 9 and 10).

66

LORD BYRON.

[Born, 1788. "Hours of Idleness," published, 1807. English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," 1809. "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," 1812-18. Tales, beginning with "The Giaour," from 1813. "Don Juan," 1818-23. Sailed for Greece, 1823. Died, 1824.]

BOOKS HAVE MADE THE CHIEF SPELL OF VENICE.

But unto us she hath a spell beyond

Her name in story, and her long array

Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond
Above the dogeless city's vanished sway;
Ours is a trophy which will not decay
With the Rialto; Shylock and the Moor,

And Pierre, cannot be swept or worn away—
The keystones of the arch! though all were o'er,
For us repeopled were the solitary shore.

The beings of the mind are not of clay;
Essentially immortal, they create

And multiply in us a brighter ray

And more beloved existence that which Fate

Prohibits to dull life, in this our state
Of mortal bondage, by these spirits supplied,
First exiles, then replaces what we hate;
Watering the heart whose early flowers have died,
And with a fresher growth replenishing the void.
(Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto IV., Stanzas iv., v.)

THE FAME GIVEN BY POETS PERENNIAL.

Thus Venice, if no stronger claim were thine,
Were all thy proud historic deeds forgot,
Thy choral memory of the Bard divine,
Thy love of Tasso, should have cut the knot
Which ties thee to thy tyrants; and thy lot
Is shameful to the nations,-most of all,
Albion to thee: the Ocean queen should not
Abandon Ocean's children; in the fall

Of Venice think of thine, despite thy watery wall.

I loved her from my boyhood; she to me
Was as a fairy city of the heart,

Rising like water-columns from the sea,

Of joy the sojourn, and of wealth the mart;

And Otway, Radcliffe, Schiller, Shakespeare's art, Had stamp'd her image in me, and even so, Although I found her thus, we did not part; Perchance even dearer in her day of woe

Than when she was a boast, a marvel, and a show.

(Ibid, Stanzas xvii., xviii.)

THE POWER OF GENIUS.

There is a tomb in Arqua ;-rear'd in air,
Pillar'd in their sarcophagus, repose
The bones of Laura's lover; here repair
Many familiar with his well-sung woes,
The pilgrims of his genius. He arose
To raise a language, and his land reclaim
From the dull yoke of her barbaric foes:

Watering the tree which bears his lady's name
With his melodious tears, he gave himself to fame.

They keep his dust in Arqua, where he died;
The mountain-village where his latter days
Went down the vale of years; and 'tis their pride—
An honest pride—and let it be their praise,

To offer to the passing stranger's gaze
His mansion and his sepulchre, both plain
And venerably simple, such as raise

A feeling more accordant with his strain

Than if a pyramid form'd his monumental fane. (Ibid, Stanzas xxx., xxxi.)

THE CREATIVE POWER OF GENIUS.

In Santa Croce's holy precincts lie

Ashes which make it holier, dust which is

Even in itself an immortality,

Though there were nothing save the past, and this,

The particle of those sublimities

Which have relapsed to chaos: here repose

Angelo's, Alfieri's bones, and his,

The starry Galileo, with his woes;

Here Machiavelli's earth returned to whence it rose.

These are four minds, which, like the elements,
Might furnish forth creation :-Italy !

Time, which hath wronged thee with ten thousand

rents

Of thine imperial garments, shall deny,