Oright-bird's lovelier melody, They were such sounds as Shakspeare' heard, 4. Great Plato' saw the vernal year 5. We will not dwell amid the graves, Or plinths and columns overthrown; Through painted window's cobwebb'd o'er, Nor know the beauty of the night Save by the moonbeam on the floor: But in the presence of the sun, Or moon, or stars, our hearts shall glow; We'll look at nature face to face, And we shall LOVE because we KNOW. 1. The present needs us. Every age But strenuous labor for the right; 'WIAM SHAKSPEARE, the distinguished poet and dramatist, waż born in 1564, and died in 1616.- GEOFFREY CHAUCER, called the daystar and father of English poetry, born about 1328, and died in 1400. His great work is "The Canterbury Tales."-- Bird (bård).—' PLATO, & very celebrated philosopher of ancient Greece, was born about 430 B. C., and died in his eightieth year.-- Architrave (årk' i tråv), the part of a roof which rests on the top of a column, designed to represent the beam which supports the roof.-"luth, a flat, round, or square base or foundation for a column. 7. For Now, the child and sire of Time, To make it better than the past, And stretch the circle of its ken. Time, nor Eternity, hath seen In all its phases: ne'er hath been And that which is hath ceased to be But Now is ever good and fair, And we of it. So let us live That from the Past we may receive 53 Jendy, 43. STUDY, C. MACKAY. THE favorite idea of a genius among us, is of one who never studies, or who studies, nobody can tell when-at midnight, or at odd times and intervals-and now and then strikes out, at a heat, as the phrase is, some wonderful production. This is a character that has figured largely in the history of our literature, in the persons of our Fieldings, our Savages, and our Steeles3"loose fellows about town," or loungers in the country, who 'De månd'. See Biographical Sketch, p. 91.-FIELDING, see Biographical Sketch, p. 95.-SAVAGE, a poet of considerable merit, born 1698, in London, died 1743. He was intimate with Johnson, who wrote an admirable Life of him.- STEELE, the principal author of the "Tattler," the " 'Spectator," the "Guardian," and other periodical papers, an Irishman by birth, born in 1671, and died in 1729. slept in aie-houses and wrote in bar-rooms, who took up the pen as a magician's' wand to supply their wants, and when the pressure of necessity was relieved, resorted again to their carousals. 2. Your real genius is an idle, irregular, vagabond sort of personage, who muses in the fields or dreams by the fireside; whose strong impulses-that is the cant of it-must needs hurry him into wild irregularities or foolish eccentricity; who abhors order, and can bear no restraint, and eschews all labor: such a one, for instance, as Newton or Milton! What! they must have been irregular, else they were no geniuses! 3. "The young man," it is often said, "has genius enough, if he would only study." Now the truth is, as I shall take the liberty to state it, that genius will study, it is that in the mind which does study; that is the very nature of it. I care not to say that it will always use books. All study is not reading, any more than all reading is study. Study, says Cicero,' is the voluntary and vigorous application of the mind to any subject. 4. Such study, such intense mental action, and nothing else, is genius. And so far as there is any native predisposition about this enviable character of mind, it is a predisposition to that action. That is the only test of the original bias; and he who does not come to that point, though he may have shrewdness, and readiness, and parts, never had a genius. 5. No need to waste regrets upon him, as that he never could be induced to give his attention or study to any thing; he never had that which he is supposed to have lost. For attention it is though other qualities belong to this transcendent 'Magician (maj'sh' an), one who is skilled in the art and science of putting into action the power of spirits or the secret operation of natural causes. SIR ISAAC NEWTON, the greatest of philosophers and mathematicians, was born in Lincolnshire, England, December 25, 1642. His investigations have completely revolutionized modern science. His three great discoveries, of fluxions, the nature of light and colors, and the laws of gravitation, have given him a name which will last as long as civilization exists. His "Principia" unfolds the theory of the uuiverse. He died in 1727.- MILTON, see Index of Authors.- CICERO, see p. 143, note 4.- Nothing (nůth' ing).- Trans cend' ent, surpass ing; very excellent. power-attention it is, that is the very soul of genius: not the fixed eye, not the poring over a book, but the fixed thought. It is, in fact, an action of the mind which is steadily concentrated upon one idea or one series of ideas,-which collects in one point the rays of the soul till they search, penetrate, and fire the whole train of its thoughts. 6. And while the fire burns within, the outward man may indeed be cold, indifferent, and negligent,-absent in appear ance; he may be an idler, or a wanderer, apparently without aim or intent; but still the fire burns within. And what though "it Lursts forth" at length, as has been said, "like volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force?" It only shows the intenser action of the elements beneath. What though it breaks like lightning from the cloud? The electric fire had been collecting in the firmament through many a silent, calm, and clear day. 7. What though the might of genius appears in one decisive blow, struck in some moment of high debate, or at the crisis of a nation's peril? That mighty energy, though it may have heaved in the breast of a Demosthenes,' was once a feeble infant's thought. A mother's eye watched over its dawning. A father's care guarded its early growth. It soon trod with youthful steps the halls of learning, and found other fathers to wake and to watch for it,-even as it finds them here. 8. It went on; but silence was upon its path, and the deep strugglings of the inward soul marked its progress, and the cherishing powers of nature silently ministered to it. The clements around breathed upon it and "touched it to finer issues." The golden ray of heaven fell upon it, and ripened its expanding faculties. The slow revolutions of years slowly added to its collected treasures and energies; till in its hour of glory, it stood forth embodied in the form of living, commanding, irresistible eloquence! 9. The world wonders at the manifestation, and says, "Strange, strange, that it should come thus unsought, unpremeditated, un 'DEMOSTHENES, the greatest of Greek orators, was born at Athens, B. C. 982, and died B. C. about 322. His orations present to us the models which approach the nearest to perfection of all human productions. 198 prepared!" But the truth is, there is no more a miracle in it, than there is in the towering of the preeminent forest-tree, or in the flowing of the mighty and irresistible river, or in the wealth. and the waving of the boundless harvest. ORVILLE DEWEY. DEWEY. ORVILLE DEWEY, D. D., was born in Sheffield, Berkshire county, Massachu setts, March 28th, 1794. His father was a farmer, occupying a highly respectable position as a citizen. He entered Williams College, in his native county, at the age of seventeen, where he gained a high position. He was thorough in all his studies. Rhetoric he cultivated with uncommon perseverance. He was critical and severe upon his own literary productions, revising and pruning with a fidelity which gained him preeminence in his class, as already attaining a style of classic strength and purity. He was graduated in 1814, with the highest honors of the institution, having received the appointment of Valedictorian. He pursued his professional studies at Andover Theological Seminary. In 1823 he received and accepted a call to become pastor of a Unitarian church in New Bedford, where he remained ten years. During this period he lectured frequently, and wrote for the press. He first visited Europe for the improvement of his health in June, 1833, where he spent a year. After his return, he published some results of his travels in a volume entitled, "The Old World and the New." This book contains some of the best criticisms on painting, on music, on sculpture, on men, things, and places; and more than all, views of society, of government, of the tendency of monarchical institutions, and of the condition of the European people, which are sound, comprehensive, and deeply interesting. On his return from Europe he was settled over "The Second Congregational Unitarian Society" of New York. In 1842 he again went abroad for his health, taking his family with him. He passed two years in France, Italy, Switzerland, and England. In 1848, his health again failing, he dissolved his connection with his church. Since that time he has occasionally preached and lectured in nearly all the large cities of the Union. All, except his late writings, are bound in one volume, published at London in 1844. His productions since that period are published in New York, in three volumes. Dr. Dewey has great depth of thought. His imagination is rich, but not superfluous; ready, but not obtrusive. His style is artistic and scholarly. His periods are perfectly complete and rounded, yet filled by the thought; the variety is great, yet a symmetry prevails; and in general we find that harmony between the thoughts and their form which should always obtain. 1. 50 44. THE POWER OF ART. THEN, from the sacred garden driven, An angel left her place in heaven, And cross'd the wanderer's sunless path. Where her light foot flew o'er the ground; |