Then o'er the strings his fingers gently move, But, when Thou joinest with the Nine, The dying tones that fill the air, And charm the ear of evening fair, From thee, great God of Bards, receive their heavenly birth. ST. PETER'S CHURCH AT ROME. LORD BYRON. BUT lo! the dome, the vast and wondrous dome, To which Diana's marvel was a cell, Christ's mighty shrine above His martyr's tomb! Its columns strew the wilderness, and dwell I have beheld Sophia's bright roofs swell Their glittering mass i' the sun, and have survey'd Its sanctuary the while th' usurping Moslem pray'd: But thou, of temples old, or altars new, Power, Glory, Strength, and Beauty, all are aisled In this eternal ark of worship undefiled. Enter its grandeur overwhelms thee not; A fit abode wherein appear enshrined Thou movest, but increasing with th' advance, Vastness which grows, but grows to harmonize, Rich marbles, richer paintings, shrines where flame In air with Earth's chief structures, though their frame Sits on the firm-set ground, and this the cloud must claim. Thou seest not all; but piecemeal thou must break, To separate contemplation, the great whole; And as the ocean many bays will make, In mighty graduations, part by part, The glory which at once upon thee did not dart, Not by its fault, but thine. Our outward sense That what we have of feeling most intense Fools our fond gaze, and, greatest of the great, Till, growing with its growth, we thus dilate GOD IN NATURE. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. AND what are things eternal? - Powers depart, But, by the storms of circumstance unshaken, For our support, the measures and the forms ·Thou, dread source, Prime, self-existing cause and end of all That in the scale of being fill their place, Set and sustain'd; Thou, who didst wrap the cloud Therein, with our simplicity awhile Mightst hold, on Earth, communion undisturb'd; Thou, Thou alone Art everlasting, and the blessèd Spirits For consciousness the motions of Thy will; a work Glorious, because the shadow of Thy might, In youth were mine; when, station'd on the top The Sun rise up, from distant climes return'd The measure of my soul was fill'd with bliss, VI. PATRIOTIC, SENATORIAL, ORATORICAL. THE SEVEN GREAT ORATORS OF THE WORLD.* FORTUNE OF SCHINES. DEMOSTHENES. FOR my part, I regard any one, who reproaches his fellow-man with fortune, as devoid of sense. He that is best satisfied with his condition, he that deems his fortune excellent, cannot be sure that it will remain so until the evening: how then can it be right to bring it forward, or upbraid another man with it? As Eschines, however, has on this subject (besides many others) expressed himself with insolence, look, men of *We here give a representative selection from each of these orators. The following extract from the Rev. Henry N. Hudson's Discourse delivered in Boston on the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Daniel Webster will explain why we do so: "Sage and venerable Harvard, on mature consideration no doubt, has spoken Webster for one of the seven great orators of the world. At the theatre end of her Memorial Hall. which has the form of a semicircular polygon, in as many gablets or niches rising above the cornice, the seven heads, of gigantic size, stand forth to public view. First, of course, is Demosthenes the Greek; second, also of course, Cicero the Roman; third, Saint John Chrysostom, an Asiatic Greek, born about the middle of the fourth century; fourth, Jaques Benigne Bossuet, the great French divine and author, contemporary with Louis the Fourteenth; fifth, William Pitt the elder, Earl of Chatham, an Englishman; sixth, Edmund Burke, an Irishman, probably the greatest genius of them all, though not the greatest orator; seventh, Daniel Webster. How authentic the likenesses may be, I cannot say, except in the case of Webster: here the likeness is true; and, to my sense, Webster's head is the finest of the seven, unless that of Bossuet may be set down as its peer." |