course, will have a different series of mnemonics of this kind, which he will find himself continually associating with the scenes of great events in the world's records and traditions. James Montgomery, Lectures.

AURORA BOREALIS.

OFT in this season, silent from the North
A blaze of meteors shoots : ensweeping first
The lower skies, they all at once converge
High to the crown of heaven, and all at once
Relapsing quick, as quickly reascend,
And mix and thwart, extinguish and renew,
All ether coursing in a maze of light.

Thomson, Autumn.

AURORA BOREALIS.

THE Heaven was one blue vault, inlaid with gems,
Thick as the concave of a diamond mine;

But from the North now shoot quick phosphor beams
That o'er the mount their purple net entwine.
The smallest stars through that sweet lustre shine;
It shakes, it spreads, its glorious streamers die :
Again light quivers on the horizon's line,

A surge of violet lustre fills the sky,

Then sinks, still flashing, dancing everlastingly.

Rev. G. Croly, The Angel of the World

AURORA BOREALIS.

HERE too the elements for ever veer,
Ranging around with endless interchanging;
Pursued in love, and so in love pursuing,
In endless revolutions here they roll;

For ever their mysterious work renewing;
The parts all shifting, still unchanged the whole.

Even we on earth at intervals descry

Gleams of the glory, streaks of flowing light,

Openings of heaven, and streams that flash at night
In fitful splendour, through the northern sky.
Southey, Curse of Kehama, vii. 10.

AURORA BOREALIS.

A CHANGEFUL light the azure vault illumes:
Less varying hues beneath the Pole adorn
The streamy glories of the Boreal morn,
That wavering to and fro their radiance shed
On Bothnia's Gulf with glassy ice o'erspread,
Where the lone native, as he homeward glides,
On polished sandals o'er the imprisoned tides,
And still the balance of his frame preserves,
Wheeled on alternate foot in lengthening curves,
Sees at a glance, above him and below,
Two rival heavens with equal splendour glow.
Sphered in the centre of the world he seems ;
For all around with soft effulgence gleams;
Stars, moons, and meteors, ray oppose to ray,
And solemn midnight pours the blaze of day.

Rev. Joseph Sympson, Vision of Alfred, 1810.

AURORA BOREALIS.

THE Monk gazed long on the lovely moon,
Then into the night he looked forth ;
And red and bright the streamers light
Were dancing in the glowing north.

He knew, by the streamers that shot so bright,
That spirits were riding the northern light.

Scott, Lay of the Last Minstrel, canto ii.

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AUTHORS.

THERE are authors in approaching whom we are conscious of an excess of intellectual strength. A 'virtue goes out' from them. Sometimes a single word, spoken by the voice of genius, goes far into the heart. A hint, a suggestion, an undefined delicacy of expression, teaches more than we can gather from volumes of less gifted men. The works which we should chiefly study are not those which contain the greatest fund of knowledge, but which raise us into sympathy with the intellectual energy of the author, and through which a great mind multiplies itself, as it were, in the reader. Channing.

AUTHORS.

MILLIONS of thoughts and images, fixed in the palpable forms of words, and put into perpetual motion by these benefactors or scourges of their species, are passing down in the track of time, upon the length and breadth of the whole earth, blessing or cursing the people of one age after another; --and, let authors tremble at the annunciation, perpetuating the righteousness or aggravating the guilt of men, whose bones are in the sepulchre and their souls in eternity.

Jas. Montgomery Lectures.

AUTHORS.

LET a writer in his first performances neglect the idea of profit, and the vulgar's applause entirely. Let him address him to the judicious few, and then profit and the mob will follow. His first appearance on the stage of letters will engross the politer compliments, and his latter will partake of the irrational huzza.

Shenstone, Essays

AUTHORS.

I HAVE observed, that a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure, till he knows whether the writer of it be a black or a fair man, of a mild or choleric disposition, married or a bachelor, with other particulars of the like nature, that conduce very much to the right understanding of an author. Addison, Spectator, No. 1

AUTHORS.

A TRANSITION from an author's book to his conversation, is too often like an entrance into a large city, after a distant prospect. Remotely, we see nothing but spires of temples and turrets of palaces, and imagine it the residence of splendour, grandeur, and magnificence; but when we have passed the gates, we find it perplexed with narrow passages, disgraced with despicable cottages, embarrassed with obstructions, and clouded with smoke. Dr. Johnson, Rambler, No. 14.

FAVOURITE AUTHORS.

AT twenty, Ovid may be the favourite author; Horace at forty; and perhaps Tacitus at fifty. We choose our favourite author as we do our friend, from a conformity of humour and disposition. Mirth or passion, sentiment or reflection; whichever of these most predominates in our temper, it gives us a peculiar sympathy with the writer who resembles us.

Hume, Essays, xxii.

FAVOURITE AUTHORS.

WE may observe that those compositions which we read the oftenest, and which every man of taste has got by heart, have the recommendation of simplicity, and have nothing surprising in the thought when divested of that elegance of expression and harmony of numbers with which it is clothed. If the merit of the composition lie in a point of wit, it may

strike at first, but the mind anticipates the thought in the second perusal, and is no longer affected by it. When I read an epigram of Martial, the first line recalls the whole, and I have no pleasure in repeating to myself what I know already; but each line, each word, in Catullus has its merit, and I am never tired with the perusal of him. It is sufficient to run over Cowley once; but Parnell, after the fiftieth reading, is as fresh as the first. Besides, it is with books as with women, where a certain plainness of manner and of dress is more engaging than that glare of paint, and airs, and apparel, which may dazzle the eye, but reaches not the affections. Terence is a modest and bashful beauty, to whom we grant everything because he assumes nothing, and whose purity and nature make a durable though not a violent impression on us.

Hume, Essays, xix.

AVARICE.

THERE is no vice has been so pelted with good sentences, and especially by the poets, who have pursued it with stories, and fables, and allegories, and allusions, and moved, as we say, every stone to fling at it. Cowley, Essay on Avarice.

AVARICE.

We find no vice so irreclaimable as avarice; and though there scarcely has been a moralist or philosopher, from the beginning of the world to this day, who has not levelled a stroke at it, we hardly find a single instance of any person's being cured of it. For this reason, I am more apt to approve of those who attack it with wit and humour than of those who treat it in a serious manner: there being so little hopes of doing good to the people infected with this vice, I would have the rest of mankind at least diverted by our manner of exposing it; as, indeed, there is no kind of diversion of which they seem so willing to partake.

Hume, Essay on Avarice.