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Beauty. Who hath not proved how feebly words essay
To fix one spark of BEAUTY's heavenly ray?
Who doth not feel, until his failing sight
Faints into dimness with its own delight,
His changing cheek, his sinking heart confess
The might-the majesty of loveliness?

Bed. He that will to BED go sober,

BYRON, Bride of Abydos.

Falls with the leaf still in October.-ROLLO, Duke of Normandy.

He who goes to BED, and goes to BED sober,

Falls as the leaves do, and dies in October;

But he who goes to bed, and goes to bed mellow,

Lives as he ought to do, and dies an honest fellow.-Anon.

Hush, my dear, lie still and slumber!

Holy angels guard thy BED!

Heavenly blessings without number

Gently falling on thy head.--WATTS, Cradle Hymn.

Bee. How doth the little busy BEE

Improve each shining hour,

And gather honey all the day,

From every opening flower.-Ibid., Song xx.

Beef.-Oh! the roast BEEF of Old England,

And oh! the old English roast beef.-FIELDING.

Beer. What two ideas are more inseparable than BEER and Britannia? What event more awfully important to an English colony than the erection of its first brewhouse?-Sydney Smith.

Begging the Question. This is a common logical fallacy, petitio principii; and the first explanation of the phrase is to be found in Aristotle's Topica, viii. 13, where the five ways of BEGGING the QUESTION are set forth. The earliest English work in which the expression is found is "The Arte of Logike planlie set forth in our English Tongue, &c., 1584."

Behaviour.-BEHAVIOUR is a mirror, in which everyone shows his image.-GOETHE.

Belief. 'Tis good to doubt the worst,

We may in our BELIEF be too secure. -WEBSTER AND ROWLEY. Bell. The BELL strikes one. We take no note of time,

But from its loss.-YOUNG, Night Thoughts.

Bells.-Ring out wild BELLS to the wild sky.

TENNYSON, In Memoriam.

Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.—Ibid.

Bells.--Ring out old shapes of foul disease,

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,

The eager heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.-Ibid.

Those evening BELLS; those evening bells!
How many a tale their music tells !
Of youth, and home, and that sweet time
When last I heard their soothing chime.

MOORE, Those Evening Bells.

Bench.-A little BENCH of heedless bishops here,
And there a chancellor in embryo.-SHIENSTONE.
Bevy.-A BEVY of fair women. -MILTON, Paradise Lost.
Bezonian.--Under which king, BEZONIAN? speak or die.

SHAKESPERE, Henry IV.

Bible. Just knows, and knows no more, her BIBLE true,
A ruth the brilliant Frenchman never knew.--CowPER, Truth.
Bigotry.-BIGOTRY murders religion, to frighten fools with her
ghost.--COTTON.

Biography.-BIOGRAPHY is the most universally pleasant, universally profitable of all reading.--CARLYLE.

Bird. And, as a BIRD each fond endearment tries
To tempt its new-fledg'd offspring to the skies,
He tried each art, reprov'd each dull delay,
Allur'd to brighter worlds, and led the way.

GOLDSMITH, Deserted Village.

Birth. Our BIRTHI is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,

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At length the man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

WORDSWORTH, Intimations of Immortality.

While man is growing, life is in decrease;
And cradles rock us nearer to the tomb.
Our BIRTH is nothing but our death begun.

YOUNG, Night Thoughts.

Black. And finds, with keen, discriminating sight,
BLACK's not so black;--nor white so very white.

G. CANNING, New Morality.

Black Assize, The.-A common designation of the sitting of the courts held at Oxford in 1577, during which judges, jurymen, and counsel were swept away by a violent epidemic.

Black Death, The.-A name given to the celebrated Oriental plague that devastated Europe during the 14th century.

Black Monday.--A memorable Easter Monday in 1351, very dark and misty. A great deal of hail fell, and the cold was so extreme that many died from its effects. The name afterwards came to be applied to the Monday after Easter of each year.

My nose fell a bleeding on BLACK MONDAY last.—SHAKESPERE.

Blasphemy. That in the captain's but a choleric word,
Which in the soldier is flat BLASPHEMY.

SHAKESPERE, Measure for Measure.

Blessedness.-BLESSEDNESS is a whole eternity older than damnation.-JEAN PAUL RICHTER.

Blessings.-How BLESSINGS brighten as they take their flight!

YOUNG, Night Thoughts.

Blind.--A BLIND man is a poor man, and blind a poor man is;
For the former seeth no man, and the latter no man sees.
LONGFELLOW, Poverty and Blindness.

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He that is stricken BLIND, cannot forget

The precious treasure of his eyesight lost.--SHAKESPERE, Romeo. Bloody Assizes, The.-A common designation of the horrid judicial massacre perpetrated, in 1685, by George Jeffreys, Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench, while on a circuit through the western counties of England. About three hundred persons were executed after short trials; very many were whipped, imprisoned, and fined; and nearly one thousand were sent as slaves to the American plantations.

Blue-Stocking.-A literary lady. The Society de la Calza (Stocking) was formed at Venice in 1500,--the members being distinguished by the prevailing colour of their STOCKINGS, BLUE. The society lasted till 1590, when some other symbol came into fashion.

Bliss. The hues of BLISS more brightly glow,

Chastis'd by sabler tints of woe.-GRAY, Ode on Vicissitude. Body. Here in the BODY pent,

Absent from him I roam;

Yet nightly pitch my moving tent

A day's march nearer home.

J. MONTGOMERY, For ever with the Lord.

Bondman's Key.-

In a BONDMAN'S KEY,

With 'bated breath, and whisp'ring humbleness.

SHAKESPERE, Merchant of Venice.

Bɔne and Skin.-BONE AND SKIN, two millers thin,
Would starve us all, or near it;

But be it known to Skin and Bone

That Flesh and Blood can't bear it.-J. BYROM.

Bone to Pick, A.-A difficult undertaking.

It was an old marriage custom in Sicily for the bride's father to give the bridegroom a bone, saying, "Pick this in order to show that you can manage a wife, which is more difficult than picking a bone." This is a common explanation; but the practice of throwing bones to dogs is a more natural method of accounting for the saying.

Bookful. The BOOKFUL blockhead, ignorantly read,
With loads of learned lumber in his head.

Book of Nature.-Boughs are daily rifled

By the gusty thieves,

POPE, Essay on Criticism.

And the BOOK OF NATURE

Getteth short of leaves.--HOOD, The Seasons.

Books.--Books cannot always please, however good;
Minds are not ever craving for their food.

CRABBE, The Borough.

Books, we know,

Are a substantial world, both pure and good;

Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Our pastime and our happiness will grow.-WORDSWORTH.

Books which are no books. --CHARLES LAMB.

Books that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your

hand, are the most useful after all.--JOHNSONIANA.

Deep vers'd in BOOKS, and shallow in himself.

MILTON, Paradise Regained.

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Learning hath gained most by those BOOKS by which the printers have lost.-J. FULLER, Of Books.

Often have I sighed to measure

By myself a lonely pleasure,

Sighed to think I read a BOOK,

Only read, perhaps, by me.--WORDSWORTH.

Up! up! my friend, and quit your BOOKS,
Or surely you'll grow double:

Up! up! my friend, and clear your looks;

Why all this toil and trouble?—Ibid., The Tables Turned.

Books. He hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a BOOK.— SHAKESPERE, Love's Labour's Lost.

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As good almost kill a man as kill a good BOOK; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself.-MILTON, Areopagitica.

A good BOOK is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.—Ibid. Books are men of higher stature,

And the only men who speak aloud for future times to hear.
E. B. BROWNING.

If the secret history of BOOKS could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!-THACKERAY.

A novel was a BOOK

Three-volumed, and once read, and oft cramm'd full
Of poisonous error, blackening every page;
And oftener still, of trifling, second-hand
Remark, and old, diseased, putrid thought,
And miserable incident, at war

With nature, with itself and truth at war;
Yet charming still the greedy reader on,
Till done, he tried to recollect his thoughts,

And nothing found but dreaming emptiness. -POLLOK.

Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some BOOKS are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly and with diligence and attention.

Bores. Society is now one polished horde,

Formed of two mighty tribes, the BORES and bored.

Borrower. Neither a BORROWER nor a lender be,
For loan oft loses both itself and friend;
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all,-to thine own self be true;

And it must follow, as the night the day,

BACON, Essays.

BYRON, Don Juan.

Thou canst not then be false to any man.-SHAKESPERE, Hamlet. Bounty.-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 gain'd from Heaven ('twas all he wish'd) a friend.

GRAY, Elegy.

Bow. Two strings to his BOW.-HOOKER'S Polity. BUTLER, Hudibras. CHURCHILL, The Ghost. FIELDING, Love in Several Masques.

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