ical thought and imagery laid up in it. Examine it, and it will be found to rest on some deep analogy of things natural and things spiritual, bringing those to illustrate and to give an abiding form and body to these.

2. The image may have grown trite and ordinary now-perhaps, through the help of this very word, may have become so entirely the heritage of all, as to seem little better than a commonplace; yet not the less he who first discerned the relation, and devised the new word which should express it, or gave to an old word, never before but literally used, this new figurative sense, this man was, in his degree, a poet—a maker, that is, of things which were not before; which could not have existed but for him, or for some other gifted with equal powers.

3. He who spake first of a dilapidated" fortune, what an image must have risen up before his mind's eye of some falling house or palace-stone detaching itself from stone, till all had gradually sunk into desolation and ruin!

4. He who to that Greek word which signified “that which will endure to be held up to and judged by the light," gave first its ethical signification of "sincere," "truthful," or, as we sometimes say, "transparent "can we deny to him the poet's feeling and eye?

5. Many a man had gazed, we are sure, at the jagged and indented mountain ridges of Spain before one called them "sierras," or 66 saws "-the name by which now they are known, as Sierra Morena, Sierra Nevada; but that name coined his imagination into a word which will endure as long as the everlasting hills which he named.

6. "Iliads without a Homer," some one has called, with a little exaggeration, the beautiful but anonymous

ballad poetry of Spain. One may be permitted, perhaps, to push the exaggeration a little farther in the same direction, and to apply the phrase not merely to a ballad, but to a word.

7. Let me illustrate that which I have been here saying somewhat more at length by the word "tribulation." We all know, in a general way, that this word—which occurs not seldom in Scripture-means affliction, sorrow, anguish; but it is quite worth our while to know how it means this, and to question the word a little closer. It is derived from the Latin tribulum, which was the threshing instrument or roller whereby the Roman husbandman separated the corn from the husks; and tribulatio, in its primary signification, was the act of this separation.

8. But some Latin writer of the Christian Church appropriated the word and image for the setting forth of a higher truth; and sorrow, distress, and adversity being the appointed means for the separating in men of their chaff from their wheat-of whatever in them was light, and trivial, and poor, from the solid and the true—therefore he called these sorrows and griefs "tribulations ". threshings, that is, of the inner spiritual man, without which there could be no fitting him for the heavenly garner.

Richard Chenevix Trench.

FOR PREPARATION.-I. What are "fossils"? (Fossil is from the Latin word fodere, to dig, and means something found by digging.) Animal or vegetable organisms that have been turned into stone; or rather, whose tissues have been replaced by stone, leaving their shapes perfectly preserved. Impressions of such organisms made in a substance originally soft, and afterward hardened and thus preserved, are also called fossils.

II. Be-liefs', il-lus'-trate, děs-o-la'-tion, trans-pâr'-ent, ex-ågger-a'-tion, a-non'-y-moŭs, Sï-ĕr'-rà, Mo-re'-nå, Ne-vä'-dä.

=

III. Dilapidated (di asunder, lapid time-stones made (to fall) asunder).

=

stones, ate ==

make, ed = past

IV. Ethical, anonymous, garner, chaff, trite, devised, trivial.

V. "He who first discerned the relation " (i. e., saw the correspondence of things natural and things spiritual). "Never before but literally used" ("before" applied only to natural things). "To that Greek word " (4) (the Greek word referred to is eilikrines = tested-by-the-sun).

CXXXVIII.-L'ALLEGRO.

I.- -MORNING GLADNESS IN THE COUNTRY.

1. Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee
Jest, and youthful jollity,

Quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles,
Nods, and becks, and wreathéd smiles,
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek—
Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.

2. Come, and trip it, as ye go,
On the light fantastic toe;

And in thy right hand lead with thee
The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty:
And if I give thee honor due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew,
To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreprovéd pleasures free;

3. To hear the lark begin his flight,

And, singing, startle the dull Night
From his watchtower in the skies,
Till the dappled dawn doth rise;
Then to come in spite of sorrow,
And at my window bid good morrow
Through the sweetbrier, or the vine,
Or the twisted eglantine;

While the cock with lively din
Scatters the rear of darkness thin,
And to the stack, or the barn door,
Stoutly struts his dames before;

4. Oft listening how the hounds and horn
Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn,
From the side of some hoar hill,
Through the high wood echoing shrill;
Sometime walking, not unseen,
By hedgerow elms, on hillocks green,
Right against the eastern gate,
Where the great Sun begins his state,
Robed in flames and amber light,
The clouds in thousand liveries dight,
While the plowman near at hand
Whistles o'er the furrowed land,
And the milkmaid singeth blithe,
And the mower whets his scythe,
And every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale.

II. EVENING GLADNESS IN THE CITY.

5. Towered cities please us then,
And the busy hum of men,

Where throngs of knights and barons bold
In weeds of peace high triumphs hold,
With store of ladies, whose bright eyes
Rain influence, and judge the prize
Of wit or arms, while both contend
To win her grace whom all commend.

6. There let Hymen oft appear

In saffron robe, with taper clear,

And pomp and feast and revelry,
With mask and antique pageantry-
Such sights as youthful poets dream
On summer eves by haunted stream.
Then to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonson's learnéd sock be on,

Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild.

7. And ever, against eating cares,
Lap me in soft Lydian airs,
Married to immortal verse,

Such as the meeting soul may pierce
In notes, with many a winding bout
Of linked sweetness long drawn out,
With wanton heed and giddy cunning,
The melting voice through mazes running,
Untwisting all the chains that tie

The hidden soul of harmony;

8. That Orpheus' self may heave his head
From golden slumber on a bed

Of heap'd Elysian flowers, and hear
Such strains as would have won the ear
Of Pluto, to have quite set free
His half-regained Eurydice.

These delights if thou canst give,

Mirth, with thee I mean to live.

John Milton.

FOR PREPARATION.-I. What have you read of Milton? Rank of Milton as a poet? (Next after Shakespeare, who is the greatest, or perhaps after Chaucer, who is placed by some, with good reason, next to Shakespeare. After Milton, Spenser comes next. What have you read of these other great writers?) “L'Allegro" (läl-lā'gro) (means the merry, hence “Mirth”). A long passage is omitted at the close of the first part, and a few lines also at the beginning.