the comprehension of Bacon, the wit of Butler, the supreme and universal excellence of Shakspere !

All the triumphs of truth and genius over prejudice and power, in every country and in every age, have been 5 the triumphs of Athens. Wherever a few great minds have made a stand against violence and fraud, in the cause of liberty and reason, there has been her spirit in the midst of them, inspiring, encouraging, consoling,— by the lonely lamp of Erasmus, by the restless bed of Pascal, 10 in the tribune of Mirabeau, in the cell of Galileo, on the scaffold of Sidney.

But who shall estimate her influence on private happiness? Who shall say how many thousands have been made wiser, happier, and better, by those pursuits in 15 which she has taught mankind to engage; to how many the studies which took their rise from her have been wealth in poverty, liberty in bondage, health in sickness, society in solitude? Her power is, indeed, manifested at the bar, in the senate, in the field of battle, in the 20 schools of philosophy. But these are not her glory. Wherever literature consoles sorrow or assuages pain, wherever it brings gladness to eyes which fail with wakefulness and tears and ache for the dark house and the long sleep, there is exhibited, in its noblest form, 25 the immortal influence of Athens.

The dervish, in the Arabian tale, did not hesitate to abandon to his comrade the camels, with their load of jewels and gold, while he retained the casket of that mysterious juice which enabled him to behold at one 30 glance all the hidden riches of the universe.

Surely it is no exaggeration to say, that no external

advantage is to be compared with that purification of the intellectual eye which gives us to contemplate the infinite wealth of the mental world, all the hoarded treasures of its primeval dynasties, all the shapeless ore of its yet 5 unexplored mines. This is the gift of Athens to man. Her freedom and her power have for more than twenty centuries been annihilated, her people have degenerated into timid slaves, her language into a barbarous jargon, her temples have been given up to the successive depre10 dations of Romans, Turks, and Scotchmen; but her intellectual empire is imperishable.

And when those who have rivaled her greatness shall have shared her fate; when civilization and knowledge shall have fixed their abode in distant continents; when 15 the scepter shall have passed away from England; when, perhaps, travelers from distant regions shall in vain labor to decipher on some moldering pedestal the name of our proudest chief; shall hear savage hymns chanted to some misshapen idol, over the ruined dome of our proudest 20 temple; and shall see a single naked fisherman wash his nets in the river of the ten thousand masts, her influence and her glory will still survive, fresh in eternal youth, exempt from mutability and decay, immortal as the intellectual principle from which they derived their 25 origin, and over which they exercised their control.

Marcus Tullius Çiç'ë rō (106 B.C.-43 B.C.): a Roman orator. Decimus Julius Jū'vė nal (38-120): a Roman poet. Plăs'tic: having the power to give form to; forming; molding. Dän'te (tà) deg' (dag) lï Ä li ghï e'rï (1265-1321): the greatest of Italian poets, the author of the "Divina Commedia." Miguel de Cer

văn'tĕş Saavedra (1547-1616): a Spanish writer, author of "Don Quixote." See page 178. Desiderius E răṣ'mus (1467-1536): a Dutch scholar. Blaise Păs'cal (1623-1662): a French philosopher and mathematician. Gabriel Honoré Riquetti, Count of Mïrä beau' (bō) (1749-1791): a French orator and revolutionist. Găl i lē'ō (1564-1642): an Italian astronomer. See page 197. Algernon Sid než (1622?-1683): an English patriot, unjustly executed on a charge of treason. As suag' (swāj) ĕs: relieves; Dy'nas ties: races or successions of kings. Děp rẻ dā'tions (shunṣ): plunderings; laying waste. River of the ten thousand masts: Thames. Mū tả bility: change.

eases.

Greece and her foundations are

Built below the tide of war,
Based on the crystalline sea

Of thought and its eternity.
Her citizens, imperial spirits,

Rule the present from the past;

On all this world of men inherits

Their seal is set.

- From "Hellas," by PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

The Destruction of Sennacherib

BY GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

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Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen;
Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strewn.

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved and forever grew still.

And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,

But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
As cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

And there lay the rider, distorted and pale,

With the dew on his brow and the rust on his mail;
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.

And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail, And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal ; And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword, 20 Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

Cō'hôrts: bands of soldiers. Ash'ur. Ba'al: the chief god of certain Eastern peoples. Sen nǎch'è rib (681 B.C.): a king of Assyria who invaded Judea in the reign of Hezekiah. His army besieged Jerusalem, but was overthrown, and Sennacherib returned in haste to his own country. See 2 Kings xix. 6-36