Now, Peter, who was not discouraged at all 'T was here that the lovers, intent upon love, Near a mulberry-tree in a neighboring grove; For the plan was all laid by the youth and the maid, While waiting alone by the trysting tree, Now Peter arriving, and seeing the veil Now Thisbe returning, and viewing her beau, Lying dead by her vail, (which she happened to know,) She guessed in a moment the cause of his erring ; And seizing the knife that had taken his life, In less than a jiffy was dead as a herring. MORAL. Young gentleman! -pray recollect if you please, From kissing young fellows through holes in the wall! XLV. THE FIREMAN. F. S. HILL. a Hark! that alarm-bell, 'mid the wintry storm! d See how the timbers crash beneath his feet! e Now, quick, brave youth, retrace your path; —but, lo! A fiery gulf yawns fearfully below! a Aspirate; long pauses. b Bold; high pitched; rapid. c Pure; moderate pitch; quick ' d High pitch; rapid; with much feeling. e High; bold; quick. H One desperate leap!-f lost! lost! the flames arise, And paint their triumph on the o'erarching skies! Not lost! again his tottering form appears! The applauding shouts of rapturous friends he hears! And deep emotions thrill his generous soul. He nerves his faltering frame for one last bound, h And his reward you ask; -reward he spurns; For him the father's generous bosom burns, XLVI. THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. RICHARD GRANT WHITE. In his introduction to The Merchant of Venice, Mr. White, after showing "that the story of this comedy, even to its episodic part and its minutest incidents, had been told again and again long before Shakespeare was born," vindicates him from the charge of plagiarism in the following matchless paragraph: What then remains to Shakespeare? and what is there to show that he is not a plagiarist? Every thing that makes The Merchant of Venice what it is. The people are puppets, and the incidents are all in these old stories. They are mere bundles of barren sticks that the poet's touch causes to bloom like Aaron's rod: they are heaps of dry bones till he clothes them with human flesh and breathes into f High; aspirate; long pauses-Imagine the scene, and adopt such expression and gesture as will portray it to the listener. g With much feeling, and as a personation. h After a pause, give the closing in pure, narrative style, slow time. them the breath of life. Antonio, grave, pensive, prudent, save in his devotion to his young kinsman, as a Christian hating the Jew, as a loyal merchant despising the usurer; Bassanio, lavish yet provident, a generous gentleman although a fortune seeker, wise although a gay gallant, and manly though dependent; Gratiano, who unites the not too common virtues of thorough good nature and unselfishness with the sometimes not unserviceable fault of talking for talk's sake; Shylock, crafty and cruel, whose revenge is as mean as it is fierce and furious, whose abuse never rises to invective, or his anger into wrath, and who has yet some dignity of port as the avenger of a nation's wrongs, some claim upon our sympathy as a father outraged by his only child; and Portia, matchless impersonation of that rare woman who is gifted even more in intellect than in loveliness, and yet who stops gracefully short of the offence of intellectuality;—these, not to notice minor characters no less perfectly arranged or completely developed after their kind,―these, and the poetry which is their atmosphere, and through which they beam upon us, all radiant in its golden light, are Shakespeare's only; and these it is, and not the incidents of old, and, but for these, forgotten tales, that make The Merchant of Venice a priceless and imperishable dower to the queenly city that sits enthroned upon the sea;—a dower of romance more bewitching than that of her moonlit waters and beauty-laden balconies, of adornment more splendid than that of her pictured palaces, of human interest more enduring than that of her blood-stained annals, more touching even than the sight of her faded grandeur. XLVII. IN MEMORIAM. A. LINCOLN. BY. MRS EMILY J. BUGBEE, APRIL 30, 1865. There's a pall on the sunshine and over the flowers, A heart that we knew had been true to our weal, And the true hand lies nerveless and cold on his breast; Yet the tears of a nation fall over the dead, Not gathered, like Washington, home to his rest, Yet there on the mountain, our Leader must die, Will stand as a monument under the sun; And his name, reaching down through the ages of time, Will still through the years of eternity shine— |