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 Yea, on his part, I'll empty all these veins, 10 As high in the air as this unthankful king, As this ingrate and cankered Bolingbroke. [To Worcester. And when I urged the ransom once again Of 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, 20 (Whose wrongs in us God pardon !) did set forth 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. 30 Hot. But, soft, I pray you; Did king Richard then 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. And, for his sake, wear the detested blot 40 To show the line, and the predicament, Shall it, for shame, be spoken in these days, Did 'gage them both in an unjust behalf,- Even with the bloody payment of your deaths. Wor. Peace, cousin, say no more: 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 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, 40 But out upon this half-faced fellowship! Wor. He apprehends a world of figures here, 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. 10 Wor. You start away, And lend no ear unto my purposes.― Hot. Nay, I will; that's flat : He said, he would not ransom Mortimer; I'll have a starling shall be taught to speak Wor. Hear you, 20 Cousin; a word. Hot. All studies here I solemnly defy, And that same sword-and-buckler prince of Wales,— 25 And would be glad he met with some mischance, 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, 35 In Richard's time,-What do you call the place ?— 40 When you and he came back from Ravenspurg. Hot. You say true: Why, what a candy deal of courtesy * Pronounced pizmire This fawning greyhound then did proffer me! 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 business 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 pre5 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 wresting 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 affections 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 inarticulate wisdom which only a profound religion in the soul 25 can interpret,-truth, in whichsoever of her myriad manifestations, 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 to 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 |