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LESSON CCXXX. -DIALOGUE FROM HENRY IV.- -Shakspeare.

[Northumberland, Worcester, and Hotspur.]
Hot. Speak of Mortimer ?
Zounds, I will speak of him ; and let my

soul
Want mercy, if I do not join with him :

Yea, on his part, I'll empty all these veins,
5 And shed my dear blood drop by drop in the dust,

But I will lift the down-trod Mortimer
As high in the air as this unthankful king,
As this ingrate and cankered Bolingbroke. [To Worcester.

North. Brother, the king hath made your nephew mad.
Wor. Who struck this heat up, after I was gone ?

Hot. He will, forsooth, have all my prisoners ;
And when I urged the ransom once again
my

wife's brother, then his cheek looked pale ;
And on my face he turned an eye of death,
15 Trembling even at the name of Mortimer.

Wor. I cannot blame him: Was he not proclaimed,
By Richard that dead is, the next of blood ?

North. He was: I heard the proclamation :

And then it was, when the unhappy king
20 (Whose wrongs in us God pardon !) did set forth

Upon his Irish expedition;
From whence he, intercepted, did return
To be deposed, and shortly murdered.

Wor. And for whose death, we in the world's wide mouth
25 Live scandalized, and foully spoken of.

Hot. But, soft, I pray you ; Did king Richard then
Proclaim my brother Edmund Mortimer
Heir to the crown?

North. He did; myself did hear it.

Hot. Nay, then I cannot blame his cousin king,
That wished him on the barren mountains starved.
But shall it be, that you,--that set the crown
Upon the head of this forgetful man;

And, for his sake, wear the detested blot
35 Of murderous subornation,-shall it be,

That you a world of curses undergo;
Being the agents, or base second means,
The cords, the ladder, or the hangman rather ?

Oh! pardon me, that I descend so low,
40 To show the line, and the predicament,
Wherein you range under this subtle king.

30

Shall it, for shame, be spoken in these days,
Or fill up chronicles in time to come,
That men of your nobility and power,

Did 'gage them both in an unjust behalf,-
5 As both of you, God pardon it! have done,-

To put down Richard, that sweet lovely rose,
And plant this thorn, this canker, Bolingbroke ?
And shall it, in more shame, be further spoken,

That you are fooled, discarded, and shook off
10 By him, for whom these shames ye underwent ?

No; yet time serves, wherein you may redeem
Your banished honors, and restore yourselves
Into the good thoughts of the world again :

Revenge the jeering and disdained contempt
15 of this proud king, who studies, day and night,

To answer all the debt he owes to you,
Even with the bloody payment of your deaths.
Therefore, I say,

Wor. Peace, cousin, say no more: 20 And now I will unclasp a secret book,

And to your quick-conceiving discontents
I'll read you matter deep and dangerous ;
As full of peril, and advent'rous spirit,

As to o'er-walk a current, roaring loud, 25 On the unsteadfast footing of a spear.

Hot. If he fall in, good night :-or sink or swim :-
Send danger from the east unto the west,
So honor cross it from the north to south,

And let them grapple ;-Oh! the blood more stirs, 30 To rouse a lion, than to start a hare.

North. Imagination of some great exploit
Drives him beyond the bounds of patience.

Hot. By heaven, methinks, it were an easy leap To pluck bright honor from the pale-faced moon; 35 Or dive into the bottom of the deep,

Where fathom-line could never touch the ground,
And pluck up drowned honor by the locks ;
So he, that doth redeem her thence, might wear,

Without corrival, all her dignities:
40 But out upon this half-faced fellowship!

Wor. He apprehends a world of figures here,
But not the form of what he should attend.-
Good cousin, give me audience for a while.

Hot. I cry you mercy.

PART 11.)

READER AND SPEAKER.

423

Wor. Those same noble Scots,
That are your prisoners,

Hot. I'll keep them all;
By heaven, he shall not have a Scot of them;
5 No, if a Scot would save his soul, he shall not:
I'll keep them, by this hand.

Wor. You start away,
And lend no ear unto my purposes.-

Those prisoners you shall keep.
10 Hot. Nay, I will; that's flat:-

He said, he would not ransom Mortimer;
Forbad my tongue to speak of Mortimer;
But I will find him, when he lies asleep,

And in his ear I'll holla-Mortimer! 16 Nay,

I'll have a starling shall be taught to speak
Nothing but Mortimer, and give it him,
To keep his anger stili in motion.

Wor. Hear you, 20 Cousin; a word.

Hot. All studies here I solemnly defy,
Save how to gall and pinch this Bolingbroke:
And that same sword-and-buckler prince of Wales,-

But that I think his father loves him not,
25 And would be glad he met with some mischance,
I'd have him poisoned with a pot of ale.

Wor. Farewell, kinsman! I will talk to you, When you are better tempered to attend.

North. Why, what a wasp-stung and impatient fool 30 Art thou, to break into this woman's mood; Tying thine ear to no tongue but thine own?

Hot. Why, look you, I am whipped and scourged with rods, Nettled, and stung with pismires,* when I hear

Of this vile politician, Bolingbroke.
35 In Richard's time,—What do you call the place ?-

A plague upon 't Sit is in Gloucestershire;-
'Twas where the mad-cap duke his uncle kept;
His uncle York ;-where I first bowed my

knee
Unto this king of smiles, this Bolingbroke,
40 When you and he came back from Ravenspurg.

North. At Berkley castle.

Hot. You say true :
Why, what a candy deal of courtesy

This fawning greyhound then did proffer me !
Look-when his infant fortune came to age,
And,-gentle Harry Percy,--and kind cousin,-

Oh, the devil take such cozeners !—God forgive me! 6 Good uncle, tell your tale, for I have done.

LESSON CCXXXI.-THE LOVE OF TRUTH.-GEORGE PUTNAM.

Truth is the one legitimate object of all intellectual endeavor. To discover and apprehend truth, to clear up and adorn it, to establish, and present, and commend it,

these are the processes and the ends of study and litera5 ture. To discern the things that really are, and how they

are, to distinguish reality from appearance and sham, to know and declare the true in outward nature, in past time, in the results of speculation, in consciousness and

sentiment,—this is the busines: of educated mind. Logic 10 and the mathematics are instruments for this purpose,

and so is the imagination just as : trictly. A poem, a play, a novel, though a work of fiction, must be true, or it is a failure. Its machinery may be unknown to the actual

world; the scene may be laid in Elysian fields, or infernal 15 shades, or fairy land; but the law of truth must preside

over the work; it must be the vehicle of truth, or it is nought, and is disallowed. The 'Tempest, the Odyssey, and Paradise Lost, derive their value from their truth;

and I say this, not upon utilitarian principles, but accord20 ing to the verdict which every true soul passes upon them,

consciously or unconsciously. Lofty, holy truth, made beautiful and dear and winning to the responsive heart,this is their charm, their wealth, their immortality. There

is no permanent intellectual success but in truth attained 25 and brought home to the eye, the understanding, or the heart.

And for the best success in the pursuit of any object, there must be a love of the object itself

. The student, the thinker, the author, who is true to his vocation, loves the 30 truth which he would develop and embody. Not for

bread, not for fame, primarily, he works. These things may come, and are welcome; but truth is higher and dearer than these. Great things have been done for bread

and fame, but not the greatest. Plato, pacing the silent 35 groves of the academy, and Newton, sitting half a day on

his bedside, undressed, and his fast unbroken, rapt in a
problem of fluxions; Dante solacing the bitterness of exile
with the meditations that live in the Commedia, and Bacon

taking his death chill in an experiment to test the pre-
5 serving qualities of snow; Cuvier, a lordlier Adam than

he of Eden, naming the whole animal world in his
museum, and reading the very thoughts of God after him
in their wondrous mechanism ; Franklin and Davy wrest-

ing the secrets of nature from their inmost hiding-place;
10 Linnæus studying the flora of the arctic circle in loco;

and that fresh old man who startles the clefts of the Rocky
Mountains with his rifle, to catch precisely the lustrous
tints of beauty in the plumage of a bird ;—these men, and

such as they, love truth, and are consecrate, hand and
15 heart, to her service. The truth, as she stands in God's

doings, or in man's doings, or in those thoughts and affec-
tions that have neither form nor speech, but which answer
from the deep places of the soul, -truth, as seen in her

sublimities or her beauties, in her world-poising might or
20 her seeming trivialities,-truth, as she walks the earth

embodied in visible facts, or moves among the spheres in
the mysterious laws that combine a universe and spell it
to harmony, or as she sings in the upper heavens the inar-

ticulate wisdom which only a profound religion in the soul
25 can interpret-truth, in whichsoever of her myriad mani-

festations, she has laid hold of their noble affinities, and
brought their being into holy captivity ;-such men have
loved her greatly and fondly; the soul of genius is always

pledged to her in a single-hearted and sweet affiance, or
30 else it is genius baffled, blasted, and discrowned.

LESSON CCXXXII.-ENERGY OF THE WILL.-THOMAS C. UPHAM.

A higher degree of voluntary power, than is allotted to the great mass of mankind, seems to be requisite in those, who are destined take a leading part in those great

moral, religious, and political revolutions, which have from
5 time to time agitated the face of the world. It is no easy

task to change the opinions of men, to check and subdue
vices which have become prevalent, or

to give a new aspect
and impulse to religion and liberty. The men who take a
lead in these movements, are in general men of decision