Whom do we dub as gentlemen? The knave, the fool, the brute

courtly suit!

The parchment scroll of titled line, the riband at

the knee,

Can still suffice to ratify and grant a high degree! Eliza Cook's Poems. But nature, with a matchless hand, sends forth her nobly born,

And laughs the paltry attributes of wealth and rank to scorn;

Shaks. Hamlet

What may this mean,

That thou, dead corse, again, in complete steel,
Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous; and we fools of nature,
So horridly to shake our disposition,
With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?
Shaks. Hamlet.

I am thy father's spirit;

man like mine?"

Eliza Cook's Poems.

Shaks. Hamlet

Save me and hover o'er me with your wings, You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?

Shaks. Hamlet. Blood hath been shed ere now, i' the olden time, Fre human statute purg'd the gentle weal; Ay, and since too, murders have been perform'd Too terrible for the ear: the times have been, That when the brains were out, the man would die,

And there an end: but now they rise again, With twenty mortal murders on their crowns, And push us from our stools: this is more strange Than such a murder is.

Shaks. Macbeth.

The marshal and myself had cast
To stop him as he outward past;
But lighter than the whirl-wind's blast,
He vanish'd from our eyes,

Like sunbeam on the billow cast,
That glances but, and dies.

Scott's Marmion.

O speak, if voice thou hast! Tell me what sacrifice can soothe your spirits; Can still the unquiet sleepers of the grave: For this most horrid visitation is Beyond endurance of the noblest mind, In flesh and blood enrob'd.

Joanna Baillie's Ethwald. Part II

A horrid spectre rises to my sight,
Close by my side, and plain, and palpable,
In all good seeming and close circumstance,
As man meets man.

Joanna Baillie's Ethwald. Part II.
What form is that-

Why have they laid him there?
Plain in the gloomy depth he lies before me:
The cold blue wound whence blood hath ceas'd to

Thomson's Sophonisba

you did;

And with them, words of so sweet breath compos'd
As made the things more rich: their perfume lost,
Take these again; for to the noble mind
Rich gifts wax poor, when givers prove unkind.
Shaks. Hamlet.

They are the noblest benefits, and sink
Deepest in man; of which when he doth think,
The memory delights him more, from whom,
Than what he hath receiv'd.

Jonson's Underwood.

Our glories float between the earth and heaven
Like clouds that seem pavilions of the sun,
And are the playthings of the casual wind.
Bulwer's Richelieu.

Before I knew thee, Mary,

Ambition was my angel. I did hear
For ever its witch'd voices in mine car;

My days were visionary

My nights were like the slumbers of the mad-
And every dream swept o'er me glory-clad.
Willis's Poems.

Would I were in some lonely desert born,
And 'neath the sordid roof my being drew;
Were nurs'd by poverty the most forlorn,

And ne'er one ray of hope or pleasure knew; Then had my soul been never taught to rise,

Then had I never dream'd of power or fame; No pictur'd scene of bliss deceiv'd my eyes, Nor glory lighted in my breast its flame.

GLUTTONY.

Percival.

And by his side rode loathsome gluttony,
Deformed creature, on a filthy swine;
His belly was up-blown with luxury,
And eke with fatness swollen were his eyne.
Spenser's Fairy Queen.

Whose life's the table and the stage,
He doth not spend, but lose his age.

Killegrew's Conspiracy. Fat paunches have lean pates; and dainty bits Make rich the ribs, but bankrupt quite the wits. Shaks. Love's Labour. Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace: Leave gormandizing.

Shaks. Henry IV. Part II. For swinish gluttony Ne'er looks to heaven amidst his gorgeous feast; But with besotted, base ingratitude Crams, and blasphemes his feeder.

Milton's Comus. Sone, as thou saw'st, by violent stroke shall die, By fire, flood, famine, by intemp'rance more In meats and drinks, which on the earth shall bring Diseases dire.

Milton's Paradise Lost.

The tankards foam; and the strong table groans
Beneath the smoking sirloin, stretch'd immense
From side to side, in which with desperate knife
They deep incisions make.
Thomson

Prompted by instinct's never-erring power,
Each creature knows its proper aliment;
But man, th' inhabitant of every clime,
With all the commoners of nature feeds.
Directed, bounded, by this power within,
Their cravings are well aim'd: voluptuous man
Is by superior faculties misled;

Misled from pleasure even in quest of joy:
Sated with nature's boons, what thousands seek,
With dishes tortur'd from their native taste,
And mad variety, to spur beyond
Its wiser will the jaded appetite!
Is this for pleasure? learn a juster taste!
And know that temperance is true luxury.

Armstrong's Art of Preserving Healin
Beyond the sense

Of light reflection, at the genial board
Indulge not often; nor protract the feast
To dull satiety; till soft and slow

A drowsy death creeps on th' expansive soul,
Oppress'd and smother'd the celestial fire.
Armstrong's Art of Preserving Health.
Some men are born to feast, and not to fight;
Whose sluggish minds, e'en in fair honour's field,
Still on their dinner turn-

Let such pot-boiling varlets stay at home,
And wield a flesh-hook rather than a sword.

Joanna Baillie's Basil.

GOD.

Mrs. Hemans's Poems.