“ Our own labor goes on successfully, till, in school-boy phrase, the pen begins to splutter. A bold effort must be made. We leave the form, and timidly address the writing-master with—“Please, sir, mend my pen.” A slight frown subsides as he sees that the quill is very bad—too soft or too hard—used to the stump. He dashes it away, and snatching a feather from a bundle—a poor thin feather, such as green geese drop on a common—shapes it into a pen. This mending and making process occupies all his leisure—occupies, indeed, many of the minutes that ought to be devoted to instruction. ”

“ Comparing him with other humorists of a similar class, we might say, that while Swift's ridicule resembles something between a sneer and a spasm (half a sneer of mirth, half a spasm of misery) —while Cobbett's is a grin—Fonblanque's a light but deep and most significant smile—Jeffrey's a sneer, just perceptible on his fastidious lip—Wilson's a strong, healthy, hearty laugh—Carlyle's a wild unearthly sound, like the neighing of a homeless steed—Sidney Smith's is a genuine guffaw, given forth with his whole heart, and soul, and mind, and strength. ”

“ The materialist looks upon it as the great and only reality. It is a vast solid fact, for ever burning and rolling around, below and above him. The idealist, on the contrary, regards it as a shadow—a mode of mind—the infinite projection of his own thought. The man who stands between the two extremes, looks on nature as a great, but not ultimate or everlasting scheme of mediation, or compromise, between pure and absolute spirit and humanity—adumbrating God to man, and bringing man near to God. To the materialist, there is an altar, star-lighted heaven-high, but no God. ”

“ And yet, as of some men and women, the very dress, by its simplicity, elegance, and unity, seems fitted rather to garb the soul than the body—seems the soul made visible—so is it with the style and manner of many great poets. Their speech and music without are as inevitable as their genius, or as the song forever sounding within their souls. And why? The whole ever tends to beget a whole—the large substance to cast its deep, yet delicate shadow—the divine to be like itself in the human, on which its seal is set. So it is with Wordsworth. ”

“ Sir, did your stomach never suggest to you that doctored elder-berry of a recent brew had been uncorked with veneration at some dinner-table as a bottle of old port? Have you experience of any festive friend, who can commit himself to doubt about the age and genuineness of his wine? The cellar is the social relic-chamber; every bin rejoices in a most veracious legend; and, whether it be over wine or over relics that we wonder, equal difficulties start up to obstruct our faith. ”

“ The glory of something far beyond association—that of a divine and perpetual presence—is shed over the landscape, and its golden-drops are spilled upon the stars. Objects the most diverse—the cradle of the child, the wet hole of the centipede, the bed of the corpse, and the lair of the earthquake, the nest of the lark, and the crag on which sits, half asleep, the dark vulture, digesting blood—are all clothed in a light the same in kind, though varying in degree—
“A light which never was on sea or shore.” ”

“ Ever and anon, he crouches close among the little clods as a tiger would crouch for his prey. He seems to be listening, or smelling down into the earth, as if to discover his prey by every sense which he possesses, He goes round every stalk, and descends into every hollow about them. When he finds the spider, he dispatches him in a moment, and seizing him by the centre of his chest, commences dragging him off backward.
He conveys his prey to a place of safety. Frequently he carries it up some inches into a plant, and lodges it among the green leaves. ”

“ In the poetry of the Hebrews, accordingly, the locusts are God's “great army;”—the winds are his messengers, the thunder his voice, the lightning a “fiery stream going before him,” the moon his witness in the heavens, the sun a strong man rejoicing to run his race—all creation is roused and startled into life through him—its every beautiful, or dire, or strange shape in the earth or the sky, is God's movable tent; the place where, for a season, his honor, his beauty, his strength, and his justice dwell—the tenant not degraded, and inconceivable dignity being added to the abode. ”

“ The true son of genius ought to rush before the public as the warrior into battle, resolved to hack and hew his way to eminence and power, not to whimper like a schoolboy at every scratch—to acknowledge only home thrusts—large, life-letting-out blows—determined either to conquer or to die, and, feeling that battles should be lost in the same spirit in which they are won. If Wordsworth did not fully answer this ideal, others have sunk far more disgracefully and habitually below it. ”

“ It wanted now but a month of Lady Alice's confinement, and even Mardyn and Clara were perplexed and indecisive as to the effect their stratagem had upon Sir John. No word or sign escaped him to betray what passed within—he seemed stricken with sudden age, so stern and hard had his countenance become, so fixed his icy calmness. They knew not the volcanoes that burned beneath their undisturbed surface. A sudden fear fell upon them; they were but wicked—they were not great in wickedness. Much of what they had done appeared to them clumsy and ill-contrived ”

“ And no more is Wordsworth's pale and lofty front shaded into divine twilight, as he plunges at noon-day amidst the quiet woods. A stiller, sterner power than poetry has folded into its strict, yet tender and yearning embrace, those
“Serene creators of immortal things.” Alas! for the pride and the glory even of the purest products of this strange world! Sin and science, pleasure and poetry, the lowest vices, and the highest aspirations, are equally unable to rescue their votaries from the swift ruin which is in chase of us all. ”

“ The uproar was resumed with tenfold energy. However much my heart might revolt from it, there was no other course open than to go into the room where the dead body lay. In the condition of one who is driven to the last stage of desperation, I walked, with as much fortitude as I could command, into that chamber. God of Heaven! I had no sooner reached the threshold than I started back with affright. I will not dwell upon that horrible scene; I will not minutely detail the agony I endured. The corpse sat upright! I drew the chamber-door quickly after me and staggered into the next apartment. ”

“ The mere circumstance of being watched and most carefully tended by those we love, the kindness with which they bear our peevishness, and the desire they display to do every thing they can either to alleviate our pain or to conduce to our convalescence, are pleasures such as illness alone can afford, and must ever merit the highest appreciation, not only because we either are or ought to be duly impressed with them at the time, but for the farther and more substantial reason that they become delightful reminiscences and bonds of affection forever after. ”

“ Respiration, or breathing, uncle, is a perpetual combustion.”
“But if my system,” said Mr. Bagges, “is burning throughout, what keeps up the fire in my little finger—putting gout out of the question?”
“You burn all over, because you breathe all over, to the very tips of your fingers' ends,” replied Harry.
“Oh, don't talk nonsense to your uncle!” exclaimed Mrs. Wilkinson.
“It isn't nonsense,” said Harry. “The air that you draw into the lungs goes more or less over all the body, and penetrates into every fibre of it, which is breathing. ”

“ God gave not fancy to the child that men should stamp its blossoms down into the loose soil of intellect. The child's heart was not made full to the brim of love, that men should pour its love away, and bruise instead of kiss the trusting innocent. Love and fancy are the stems on which we may graft knowledge readily. What is called by some dry folks a solid foundation may be a thing not desirable. ”

“ Water rains from heaven, and leaps out of the earth; it rolls about the land in rivers, it accumulates in lakes; three-fourths of the whole surface of the globe is water; yet there are men unable to be clean. “God loveth the clean,” said Mahomet. He was a sanitary reformer; he was a notorious impostor; and it is our duty to resist any insidious attempt to introduce his doctrines.
There are in London districts of filth which speak to us—through the nose—in an emphatic manner. Their foul air is an atmosphere of charity; for we pass through it pitying the poor. ”

“ Having thus secured his spider, he selects a particular spot of earth, the most sunny and warm, and begins to dig a pit. He works with all his might, digging up the earth with his formidable mandibles, and throwing it out with his feet, as a dog throws out the earth when scratching after a rabbit. Every few seconds he ascends, tail first, out of his hole, clears away the earth about its mouth with his legs, and spreads it to a distance on the surface. ”

“ The contrast in age, in manner, and appearance, was too marked, not to allow of the suspicion that his superiority in wealth and position had turned the scale in his favor—a suspicion which, cherished, had grown to be the demon that allowed him no peace of mind, and built up a fabric fraught with wretchedness on this slight foundation. All this period Lady Alice's demeanor to Mardyn was but too well calculated to deepen these suspicions. ”

“ At length, even the bottle stimulates our worn-out company no more; and then we separate. Good-night, dear sir; we have spent a Very Pleasant Evening under your roof.
To-morrow, when you depart from a late breakfast, having seen your daughter's face, and her boiled-mackerel eye, knowing that your wife is bilious, and that your son has just gone out for soda-water, you will feel yourself to be a Briton who has done his duty, a man who has paid something on account of his great debt to civilized society. ”

“ From each poem, however rounded, there streams off a long train of thought: like the tail of a comet, which, while testifying its power, mars its aspect of oneness. The “Excursion,” avowedly a fragment, seems the splinter of a larger splinter; like a piece of Pallas, itself a piece of some split planet. Of all his poems, perhaps, his sonnets, his “Laodamia,” his “Intimations of Immortality,” and his verses on the “Eclipse in Italy,” are the most complete in execution, as certainly they are the most classical in design. Dramatic power he has none, nor does he regret the want. ”

“ Parson.—“Come hither, Lenny. You know the benefit of school, I see: it can teach you nothing better than to be a support to your mother.”
Lenny, looking down sheepishly, and with a heightened glow over his face.—“Please, sir, that may come one of these days.”
Parson—“That's right Lenny. Let me see! why, you must be nearly a man. How old are you?”
Lenny looks up inquiringly at his mother.
Parson.—“You ought to know, Lenny; speak for yourself. ”