Ν

And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.

AS YOU LIKE IT ii. 7.

IN this also is the little world of man compared,

and made more like the Universal (man being the measure of all things) that the four Complexions resemble the four Elements, and the seven Ages of man the seven Planets; whereof our infancy is compared to the Moon, in which we seem only to live and grow, as Plants; the second Age to Mercury, wherein we are taught and instructed; our third age to Venus, the days of Love, Desire, and Vanity; the fourth to the Sun, the strong, flourishing, and beautiful Age of man's life; the fifth to Mars, in which we seek honour and victory, and in which our thoughts travel to ambitious ends; the sixth Age is ascribed to Jupiter, in which we begin to take account of our time, judge of ourselves, and grow to the perfection of our understanding; the last and seventh Age to Saturn, wherein our days are sad and overcast, and in which we find by dear and lamentable experience, and by the loss which can never be repaired, that of all our vain passions and affections past, the sorrow only abideth.

NOTHING hath got so far

RALEIGH.

But Man hath caught and kept it as his prey.
His eyes dismount the highest star;
He is in little all the sphere.

Herbs gladly cure our flesh, because that they
Find their acquaintance there.

GEORGE HERBERT.

Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

SONN. LXXIII.

The

THERE is surely nothing better in Rome; nothing perhaps exactly so good. grounds and gardens are immense, and the great rusty-red city wall stretches away behind them, and makes Rome seem vast without making them seem small. There is everything-dusky avenues, trimmed by the clippings of centuries, groves and dells, and glades and glowing pastures, and reedy fountains and great flowering meadows studded with enormous slanting pines. The day was delicious, the trees were all one melody, the whole place seemed a revelation of what Italy and hereditary grandeur can do together.

HENRY JAMES.

THE weary poet, thy sad son,
Upon thy soil, under thy skies,
Saw all Italian things save one—

Italia; this thing missed his eyes;
The old mother-might, the breast, the face,
That reared, that lit the Roman race;
This not Leopardi saw; but we,

What is it, mother, that we see,

What, if not thee?

SWINBURNE.

Nay, it is ten times true; for truth is truth
To the end of reckoning.

MEASURE FOR MEASURE V. I.

OUR Trimmer adores the goddess Truth, though

in all ages she has been scurvily used, as

well as those that worshipped her. 'Tis of late become such a ruining virtue, that mankind seems to be agreed to commend and avoid it; yet the want of practice, which repeals the other laws, has no influence upon the law of truth, because it has root in Heaven, and an intrinsic value in itself that can never be impaired: She shows her greatness in this, that her enemies, even when they are successful, are ashamed to own it.

HALIFAX.

FOR want of me the world's course will not fail :

When all its work is done, the lie shall rot;

The truth is great, and shall prevail,

When none cares whether it prevail or not.

COVENTRY PATMORE.

Servile to all the skyey influences.

MEASURE FOR MEASURE iii. I.

HE

ERE the surface of things is certainly hum drum, the streets dingy, the green places, where the child goes a-maying, tame enough. But nowhere are things more apt to respond to the brighter weather, nowhere is there so much difference between rain and sunshine, nowhere do the clouds roll together more grandly; those quaint suburban pastorals gathering a certain quality of grandeur from the background of the great city, with its weighty atmosphere, and portent of storm in the rapid light on dome and bleached stone steeples.

WALTER PATER.

In this huge world, which roars hard by,
Be others happy if they can!

But in my helpless cradle I

Was breathed on by the rural Pan.

I on men's impious uproar hurled
Think often as I hear them rave
That peace has left the upper world
And only keeps now in the grave.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

There sleeps Titania, some time of the night, Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight. MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM ii. I.

THERE grew the four sorts of Violets, Cowslops, Melilots, Rose-parsley or Passeflower, Bluebottles, Gyth, Ladies' Seal, Vatrachium, Aquilegia, Lily Convally, Amaranth, Flower-gentle, Idessmus, all sorts of sweet pinks, and small flowering herbs of odoriferous fragrance and smell, Roses of Persia, having the smell of musk and amber, and innumerable sorts of others without setting, but naturally growing in a wonderful distribution, peeping out from between their green leaves, and barbs very delightful to behold.

Ir was a chosen plot of fertile land,
Amongst wide waves set, like a little nest,
As if it had by Nature's cunning hand
Been choicely picked out from all the rest,
And laid forth for ensample of the best:
No dainty flower or herb that grows on ground,
No arboret with painted blossoms drest

And smelling sweet, but there it might be found
To bud out fair, and throw her sweet smells all

around.

SPENSER,