it; and, good Lieutenant, I think you think I love you?

Cassio. I have well approved it, Sir.—I drunk!

Iago. You, or any man living, may be drunk some time, man! I'll tell you what you shall do. Our General's wife is now the General; confess yourself freely to her importune her; she'll help to put you in your place again. She is of so free, so kind, so apt, so blessed a disposition, she holds it a vice in her goodness not to do more than she is requested. This broken joint between you and her husband entreat her to splinter; and, my fortunes against any lay* worth naming, this break of your love shall grow stronger than it was before.

Cassio. You advise me well.

Iago. I protest, in the sincerity of love and honest kindness.

Cassio. I think it freely; and, betimes in the morning, I will besecch the virtuous Desdemona to undertake for me.

Iago. You are in the right. Good night, Lieutenant. I must to watch.

Cassio. Good night, honest Iago.

See in Index, EUREKA, MIRAGE, SEPULCHRE or SEPULCHER, LIVY, NI'O-BE, SCIPIO, TULLY, VIRGIL, BYRON.

Delivery. This requires an orotund quality of voice, middle pitch, medium time inclining to slow, and expressive pauses.

I.

O ROME! my country! city of the soul!
The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,

*One of the old meanings of this word is a bet or wager.

Lone mother of dead empires! and control,
In their shut breasts, their petty misery.
What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see
The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way
O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, ye!
Whose agonies are evils of a day:

A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay.

II.

The Niobe of nations! there she stands,
Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe;
An empty urn within her withered hands,
Whose holy dust was scattered long ago;
The Scipio's tomb contains no ashes now,
The very sepulchres lie tenantless

Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow,
Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness?

Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress !

III.

The Goth, the Christian, time, war, flood, and fire,
Have dealt upon the seven-hilled city's pride;
She saw her glories star by star expire,

And, up the steep, barbarian monarchs ride,
Where the car climbed the Capitol: far and wide
Temple and tower went down, nor left a site:
Chaos of ruins! who shall trace the void,

O'er the dim fragments cast a lunar light, And say, "here was, or is," where all is doubly night?

IV.

The double night of ages, and of her,

Night's daughter, Ignorance, hath wrapt and wrap All round us; we but feel our way to err: The Ocean hath his chart, the stars their map, And Knowledge spreads them on her ample lap; But Rome is as the desert, where we steer Stumbling o'er recollections; now we clap Our hands, and cry "Eureka! it is clear," When but some false mirage of ruin rises near.

V.

Alas the lofty city! and alas

The trebly hundred triumphs! and the day
When Brutus made the dagger's edge surpass
The conqueror's sword in bearing fame away!
Alas for Tully's voice, and Virgil's lay,

And Livy's pictured page! - but these shall be
Her resurrection; all beside - decay.

Alas for earth! for never shall we see

That brightness in her eye she bore when Rome was free!

LVIII. THE HIGH OFFICES OF POETRY.

CHANNING.

The following noble defense of poetry is from Channing's "Remarks on the Character and Writings of John Milton." Let it be remembered that mere verse must not be regarded as poetry, any more than mere prose must be regarded as eloquence. True poetry cannot exist except in alliance with the good, the true, and the beautiful. The unadorned grace

and simple vigor of the style of the following remarks require a corresponding delivery. See § 51.

See in Index, FULLNESS or FULNESS, THRALLDOM or THRALDOM, CHAN

NING.

Milton.

1. By those who are accustomed to speak of poetry as light reading, Milton's eminence in this sphere may be considered only as giving him a high rank among the contributors to public amusement. Not so thought Of all God's gifts of intellect, he esteemed poetical genius the most transcendent. He esteemed it in himself as a kind of inspiration, and wrote his great works with something of the conscious dignity of a prophet.

2. We agree with Milton in his estimate of poetry. It seems to us the divinest of all arts; for it is the breathing or expression of that principle or sentiment, which is deepest and sublimest in human nature; we

mean, of that thirst or aspiration, to which no mind is wholly a stranger, for something purer and lovelier, something more powerful, lofty, and thrilling, than ordinary and real life affords.

3. No doctrine is more common among Christians than that of man's immortality; but it is not so generally understood, that the germs or principles of his whole future being are now wrapped up in his soul, as the rudiments of the future plant in the seed. As a necessary result of this constitution, the soul, possessed and moved by these mighty though infant energies, is perpetually stretching beyond what is present and visible, struggling against the bounds of its earthly prisonhouse, and seeking relief and joy in imaginings of unseen and ideal being.

4. This view of our nature, which has never been fully developed, and which goes farther toward explaining the contradictions of human life than all others, carries us to the very foundations and sources of poetry. He, who cannot interpret by his own consciousness what we now have said, wants the true key to works of genius. He has not penetrated those secret recesses of the soul, where poetry is born and nourished, and inhales immortal vigor, and wings herself for her heavenward flight.

5. In an intellectual nature, framed for progress and for higher modes of being, there must be creative energies, power of original and evergrowing thought; and poetry is the form in which these energies are chiefly manifested. It is the glorious prerogative of this art, that it makes all things new" for the gratification of a divine instinct.

6. It indeed finds its elements in what it actually sees and experiences in the worlds of matter and mind; but it combines and blends these into new forms, and according to new affinities; breaks down, if we may so say, the distinctions and bounds of nature; imparts to

material objects life, and sentiment, and emotion, and invests the mind with the powers and splendors of the outward creation; describes the surrounding universe in the colors which the passions throw over it, and depicts the mind in those moods of repose or agitation, of tenderness or sublime emotion, which manifest its thirst for a more powerful and joyful existence.

7. To a man of a literal and prosaic character, the mind may seem lawless in these workings; but it observes higher laws than it transgresses, the laws of the immortal intellect; it is trying and developing its best faculties; and, in the objects which it describes, or in the emotions which it awakens, anticipates those states of progressive power, splendor, beauty, and happiness, for which it was created.

8. We accordingly believe that poetry, far from injuring society, is one of the great instruments of its refinement and exaltation. It lifts the mind above ordinary life, gives it a respite from depressing cares, and awakens the consciousness of its affinity with what is pure and noble. In its legitimate and highest efforts, it has the same tendency and aim with Christianity; that is, to spiritualize our nature.

9. True, poetry has been made the instrument of vice, the pander of bad passions; but when genius thus stoops, it dims its fires, and parts with much of its power; and even when poetry is enslaved to licentiousness and misanthropy, she cannot wholly forget her true vocation. Strains of true feeling, touches of tenderness, images of innocent happiness, sympathies with suffering virtue, bursts of scorn or indignation at the hollowness of the world, passages true to our moral nature, often escape in an immoral work, and show us how hard it is for a gifted spirit to divorce itself wholly from what is good.

10. Poetry has a natural alliance with our best affections. It delights in the beauty and sublimity of