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For thou exist'st on many a thousand grains,
That issue out of dust. Happy thou art not;
For what thou hast not, still thou striv'st to get,
And what thou hast, forget'st. Thou art not certain ;
For thy complexion shifts to strange effects,

After the moon.

If thou art rich thou'rt poor ;

For like an ass, whose back with ingots bows,

Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey;
And death unloads thee. Friend thou hast none;
For thy own bowels, which do call thee sire;
The mere effusion of thy proper loins,

Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum,

For ending thee no sooner. Thou hast nor youth nor age,

But as it were an after dinner's sleep,

Dreaming on both for all thy blessed youth
Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms

Of palsied eld; and when thou'rt old and rich,
Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty,
To make thy riches pleasant. What's yet in this,
That bears the name of life? Yet in this life
Lie hid more thousand deaths; yet death we fear,
That makes these odds all even.

Isabella. Oh, I do fear thee, Claudio; and I quake,
Lest thou a feverous life shouldst entertain,
And six or seven winters more respect
Than a perpetual honour. Dar'st thou die?
The sense of death is most in apprehension;
And the poor beetle, that we tread upon,
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great,
As when a giant dies.

Claud.-Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;

To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot:

This sensible warm motion to become

A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit

To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice;

To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world: or to be worse than worst
Of those, that lawless and uncertain thoughts
Imagine howling! 'tis too horrible!

The weariest and most loathed worldly life,
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment,
Can lay on nature, is a paradise

To what we fear of death.

VII.-MARIE ANTOINETTE.

Ir is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in,-glittering like the morning-star, full of life, and splendour, and joy. Oh! what a revolution! and what a heart must I have. to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom ; little did

I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. Never, never more shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap

defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.

VIII. LIVING to one's self.

WHAT I mean by living to one's self is, living in the world, as in it, not of it; it is as if no one knew there was such a person, and you wished no one to know it: it is to be a silent spectator of the mighty scene of things, not an object of attention or curiosity in it; to take a thoughtful, anxious interest in what is passing in the world, but not to feel the slightest inclination to make or meddle with it. It is such a life as a pure spirit might be supposed to lead, and such an interest as it might take in the affairs of mencalm, contemplative, passive, distant, touched with pity for their sorrows, smiling at their follies without bitterness, sharing their affections, but not troubled by their passions, not seeking their notice, nor once dreamed of by them. He who lives wisely to himself and to his own heart, looks at the busy world through the loopholes of retreat, and does not want to mingle in the fray. "He hears the tumult and is still." He is not able to mend it, nor willing to mar it. He sees enough in the universe to interest him, without putting himself forward to try what he can do to fix the eyes of the universe upon him. Vain the attempt! He reads the clouds, he looks at the stars, he watches the return of the seasons, the falling leaves of autumn, the perfumed breath of spring, starts with delight at the note of a thrush in a copse near him, sits by the fire, listens to the moaning of the wind, pores upon a book, or discourses the freezing hours away, or melts down hours to minutes in pleasing thought. All this while he is taken up with other things,

forgetting himself. He relishes an author's style, without thinking of turning author. He is fond of looking at a print from an old picture in the room, without teasing himself to copy it. He does not fret himself to death with trying to be what he is not, or to do what he cannot. He hardly knows what he is capable of, and is not in the least concerned, whether he shall ever make a figure in the world. He looks out of himself at the wide extended prospect of nature, and takes an interest beyond his narrow pretensions in general humanity. He is free as air, and independent as the wind. Woe be to him when he first begins to think what others say of him. While a man is contented with himself and his own resources, all is well. When he undertakes to play a part on the stage, and to persuade the world to think more about him than they do about themselves, he is got into a track where he will find nothing but briers and thorns, vexation and disappointment.

IX.-MERCY.

THE quality of mercy is not strain'd;
It droppeth, as the gentle rain from heav'n
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed;
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes.
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown:
His sceptre shows the force of temporal pow'r,
The attribute to awe, and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway,

It is enthroned in the hearts of kings;

It is an attribute to God himself;

And earthly power doth then show likest God's,

When mercy seasons justice. We do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all
To render the deeds of mercy.

X. DESCRIPTION OF QUEEN MAB.

Он, then I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies' midwife; and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn by a team of little atomies,
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep:

Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners' legs;
The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;
The traces, of the smallest spider's web;
The collars, of the moonshine's wat'ry beams;
Her whip of cricket's bone; the lash of film :
Her waggoner a small gray-coated gnat,
Not half so big as a round little worm,
Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid.
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut,
Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub,
Time out of mind the fairies' coachmakers.
And in this state she gallops, night by night,

Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love:
On courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight:
O'er doctors' fingers, who straight dream on fees:
O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream.
Sometimes she gallops o'er a lawyer's nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit:
And sometimes comes she with a tithe-pig's tail,
Tickling the parson as he lies asleep,
Then dreams he of another benefice.
Sometimes she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,
And then he dreams of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
Of healths five fathoms deep; and then anon
Drums in his ears, at which he starts and wakes;
And being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two,
And sleeps again.

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