CHARACTER OF LADY CARBERRY.

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her arts of secrecy and hiding her worthy things, was but "like one that hideth the wind, and covers the ointment of her right hand."

If we consider her person, she was in the flower of her age; of a temperate, plain, and natural diet, without curiosity or an intemperate palate; she spent less time in dressing than many servants; her recreations were little and seldom, her prayers often, her reading much. She was of a most noble and charitable soul; a great lover of honourable actions, and as great a despiser of base things; hugely loving to oblige others, and very unwilling to be in arrear to any upon the stock of courtesies and liberality; so free in all acts of favour, that she would not stay to hear herself thanked, as being unwilling that what good went from her to a needy or an obliged person should ever return to her again. She was an excellent friend, and hugely dear to very many, especially to the best and most discerning persons; to all that conversed with her, and could understand her great worth and sweetness. She was of an honourable, a nice, and tender reputation; and of the pleasures of this world, which were laid before her in heaps, she took a very small and inconsiderable share, as not loving to glut herself with vanity, or take her portion of the good things here below.

If we look to her as a wife, she was loving and discreet, humble and pleasant, witty and compliant, rich and fair; and wanted nothing to the making her a principal and precedent to the best wives of the world, but a long life and a full age.

If we remember her as a mother, she was kind and severe, careful and prudent, very tender, not at all fond, a greater lover of her children's souls than of their bodies, and one that would value them more by the strict rules of honour and proper worth than by their relation to herself.

Her servants found her prudent, and fit to govern, and yet openhanded, and apt to reward; a just exactor of their duty, and a great rewarder of their diligence.

She lived as we all should live, and she died as I would fain die. I pray God I may feel those mercies on my death-bed that she felt, and that I may feel the same effect of my repentance which she feels of the many degrees of her innocence. Such was her death,

8 Principal and precedent for pattern and example. Old usage.

that she did not die too soon; and her life was so useful and so excellent, that she could not have lived too long. And as now in the grave it shall not be inquired concerning her how long she lived, but how well; so to us who live after her, to suffer a longer calamity, it may be some ease to our sorrows, and some guide to our lives, and some security to our conditions, to consider that God hath brought the piety of a young lady to the early rewards of a never-ceasing and never-dying eternity of glory.

JEREMY TAYLOR: 1613-1667.

ASPIRATIONS OF GREECE.

1 THE isles of Greece, the isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,
Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung:
Eternal Summer gilds them yet,
But all except their Sun is set.

2 The Scian and the Teian Muse,1

The hero's harp, the lover's lute,
Have found the fame your shores refuse :
Their place of birth alone is mute

To sounds which echo further west
Than your sires' "Islands of the Blest."

I dream'd that Greece might still be free;
For, standing on the Persians' grave,

I could not deem myself a slave.

The

4 The Scian is Homer, who is often designated as "the Bard of Scio's rocky isle.' Teian is Anacreon, so called because born at Teos. His lyrics were indeed steeped in jollity, but had nothing effeminate or slavish in them.

6 These are supposed to have been the Cape-de-Verd Islands or the Canaries. They are much celebrated in Greek poetry.

• Marathon is the famous battle-ground where the Greeks, under Miltiades, gained their great victory over the huge army of Darius the Persian. This victory saved Greece from Asiatic slavery and barbarism. It was 490 years before Christ.

ASPIRATIONS OF GREECE.

4 A king sate on the rocky brow

Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis ;
And ships, by thousands, lay below,

7

And men and nations: all were his !
He counted them at break of day,
And when the Sun set where were they?

5 And where are they? and where art thou,
My country? On thy voiceless shore

Th' heroic lay is tuneless now,

Th' heroic bosom beats no more!
And must thy lyre, so long divine,
Degenerate into hands like mine?

6 'Tis something, in the dearth of fame,
Though link'd among a fetter'd race,
To feel at least a patriot's shame,
Even as I sing, suffuse my face:
For what is left the poet here?

For Greeks, a blush, for Greece, a tear!

7 Must we but weep o'er days more blest?
Must we but blush? Our fathers bled!

Earth, render back from out thy breast
A remnant of our Spartan dead!
Of the three hundred grant but three,
To make a new Thermopyla!

8

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▾ Salamis was the name of an island separated by a narrow channel from the mainland of Greece. Memorable for the great naval battle fought near it, in which the huge fleet of Xerxes was defeated by the Greeks under Themistocles; 480, ten years after the battle of Marathon.

8 Thermopyla was a narrow and difficult pass on the eastern coast of Thessaly, through which the Persians under Xerxes had to march in their invasion of Greece. Leonidas, King of Sparta, occupied the pass, with 300 Spartans. Nearly all of them fell, together with their leader; but the delay thence caused was, indirectly, the saving of Greece. This also was B. C. 480.

10 You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet;
Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx1 gone?
Of two such lessons, why forget

The nobler and the manlier one?
You have the letters Cadmus gave,
Think ye he meant them for a slave?

11 Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
We will not think of themes like these!
It made Anacreon's song divine :

12 The tyrant of the Chersonese

Was freedom's best and bravest friend :
That tyrant was Miltiades!

O, that the present hour would lend
Another despot of the kind!

Such chains as his were sure to bind.

• Bacchanal was an epithet for a boisterous revelling toper; from Bacchus, the name of the old god of wine.

1 So called from Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, and one of the greatest generals of antiquity. A phalanx was a peculiar arrangement of troops introduced by him. He was born in the year B. C. 318. Pyrrhic was also the name of a military dance, the step being very light and quick.

2 Polycrates was one of the most ambitious and most fortunate of the Greek tyrants. He lived in great pomp and luxury, but was a liberal patron of literature and the arts. His friendship for Anacreon was particularly celebrated. He died B. C. 522.

3 Doris was a small and mountainous country in Greece. The people were distinguished for strictness of manners, and for simplicity and strength of character.

THE DEATH OF HOTSPUR.

And there, perhaps, some seed is sown,
The Heracleidan blood might own.

14 Trust not for freedom to the Franks,

They have a king who buys and sells :
In native swords and native ranks

The only hope of courage dwells :
But Turkish force and Latin fraud
Would break your shield, however broad.

15 Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
Our virgins dance beneath the shade;
I see their glorious black eyes shine:
But, gazing on each glowing maid,
My own the burning tear-drop laves,
To think such breasts must suckle slaves.

16 Place me on Sunium's marbled steep,

Where nothing, save the waves and I,
May hear our mutual murmurs sweep;
There, swan-like, let me sing and die :
A land of slaves shall ne'er be mine;
Dash down yon cup of Samian wine!

LORD BYRON: 1788-1824.

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Enter, severally, Prince HENRY and HOTSPUR.

Hot. If I mistake not, thou art Harry Monmouth.®
Prince. Thou speak'st as if I would deny my name.
Hot. My name is Harry Percy.

Prince.

Why, then I see
A very valiant rebel of that name.

I am the Prince of Wales; and think not, Percy,

4 That is, the race sprung from Hercules, or resembling him in heroic valour and hardi

ness.

5 "My own eyes" is the meaning. To lave is to wash or to wet. This is, to me, one of his Lordship's very noblest strains, and is enough of itself to immortalize the author.

• The Prince was surnamed Monmouth, from the place of his birth, in Wales.