It would do one good to see how heartily she despiseth anything that is fit for her to do.

Marquis of Halifax, Advice to a Daughter.

VEGETATION.

Lo! on each seed, within its slender rind,
Life's golden threads in endless circles wind;
Maze within maze the lucid webs are roll'd,
And, as they burst, the living flame unfold.
The pulpy acorn, ere it swells, contains

The oak's vast branches in its milky veins;
Each ravelled bud, fine film, and fibre-line,
Traced with nice pencil on the small design;
The young narcissus, in its bulb compress'd,
Cradles a second nestling on its breast,
In whose fine arms a younger embryon lies,
Folds its thin leaves, and shuts its floret-eyes;
Grain within grain successive harvests dwell,
And boundless forests slumber in a shell.

Darwin, Botanic Garden.

VEGETATION.

PLANT within plant, and seed enfolding seed,
For ever-to end never-still proceed;
In forms complete, essentially retain

The future semen, elemental grain ;

And these again, the tree, the trunk, the root,
The plant, the leaf, the blossom, and the fruit;
Again the fruit and flower the seed enclose,
Again the seed perpetuated grows,

And beauty to perennial ages flows.

Brooke, Universal Beauty, b. iii.

WEB OF LIFE.

Lo, when with light and shade, concordant strife,
Stern Clotho weaves the chequered thread of life;
Hour after hour, the growing line extends,
The cradle and the coffin bound its ends;
Soft cords of silk the whirling spoles reveal,
If smiling Fortune turn the giddy wheel;
But if sweet Love, with baby-fingers twines,
And wets with dewy lips the lengthening lines,
Skein after skein celestial tints unfold,
And all the silken tissue shines with gold.

Darwin, Loves of the Plants.

WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

A MAN may read a sermon, the best and most passionate that ever man preached, if he shall but enter into the sepulchres of kings. In the same Escurial where the Spanish princes live in greatness and power, and decree war or peace, they have wisely placed a cemetery, where their ashes and their glory shall sleep till time be no more; and where our kings have been crowned, their ancestors lie interred, and they must walk over their grandsire's head to take his crown. There is an acre sown with royal seed, the copy of the greatest change, from rich to naked, from ceiled roofs to arched coffins, from living like gods to die like men. There is enough to cool the flames of lust, to abate the heights of pride, to appease the itch of covetous desires, to sully and dash out the dissembling colours of a lustful, artificial, and imaginary beauty. There the warlike and the peaceful, the fortunate and the miserable, the beloved and the despised princes mingle their dust, and pay down their symbol of mortality, and tell all the world that, when we

die, our ashes shall be equal to kings', and our accounts easier, and our pains for our crowns shall be less.

Jeremy Taylor, Holy Dying, ch. i. sc. 2.

WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

MORTALITY, behold, and fear!
What a change of flesh is here !
Think how many royal bones
Sleep within this heap of stones:
Here they lie, had realms and lands,
Who now want strength to stir their hands;
Where, from their pulpits soiled with dust,
They preach, 'In greatness is no trust.'
Here's an acre sown indeed

With the richest, royalest seed

That the earth did e'er suck in

Since the first man died for sin.

Here the bones of birth have cried

'Though gods they were, as men they died.'

Here are sands, ignoble things,

Dropt from the ruined sides of kings:
Here's a world of pomp and state,

Buried in dust, once dead by fate.

F. Beaumont, On the Tombs in Westminster Abbey.

WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

THAT antique pile behold

Where royal heads receive the sacred gold;

It gives them crowns, and does their ashes keep;
There made like gods, like mortals there they sleep;
Making the circle of their reign complete,

Those suns of empire, where they rise, they set.

Edmund Waller.

WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

WHEN I am in a serious humour, I very often walk by myself in Westminster Abbey, where the gloominess of the place, and the use to which it is applied, with the solemnity of the building, and the condition of the people who lie in it, are apt to fill the mind with a kind of melancholy, or rather thoughtfulness, that is not disagreeable. . .

When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow; when I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together. Addison, Spectator, No. 26.

WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

OFT let me range the gloomy aisles alone,
(Sad luxury to vulgar minds unknown,)
Along the walls where speaking marbles show
What worthies form the hallowed mould below;
Proud names, who once the reins of empire held ;
In arms who triumphed, or in arts excelled;
Chiefs, graced with scars, and prodigal of blood;
Stern patriots, who for sacred freedom stood;

Just men, by whom impartial laws were given;
And saints, who taught, and led, the way to heaven.
Ne'er to these chambers where the mighty rest,
Since their foundation, came a nobler guest,
Nor e'er was to the bowers of bliss conveyed
A fairer spirit, or more welcome shade.

Tickell, Elegy on Addison.

WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

THE spaciousness and gloom of this vast edifice produce a profound and mysterious awe. We step cautiously and softly about, as if fearful of disturbing the hallowed silence of the tomb; while every footfall whispers along the walls, and chatters among the sepulchres, making us more sensible of the quiet we have interrupted. It seems as if the awful nature of the place presses down upon the soul, and hushes the beholder into noiseless reverence. We feel that we are surrounded by the congregated bones of the great men of past times, who have filled history with their deeds, and earth with their renown.

And yet it almost provokes a smile at the vanity of human ambition, to see how they are crowded together and jostled in the dust; what parsimony is observed in doling out a scanty nook, a gloomy corner, a little portion of earth, to those whom, when alive, kingdoms could not satisfy; and how many shapes, and forms, and artifices are devised to catch the casual notice of the passenger, and save from forgetfulness, for a few short years, a name which once aspired to occupy ages of the world's thought and admiration. Washington Irving, Sketch Book.

WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

WHAT memories haunt the venerable pile!
It is the mighty treasury of the past,