first day of the year, to observe the frolic compact, which half a century before, they had entered into at the Star and Garter at Richmond; Eight were in their graves! The four that remained stood upon its confines. Yet they chirped cheerily over their glass, though they could scarcely carry it to their lips, if more than half full; and cracked their jokes, though they articulated their words with difficulty, and heard each other with still greater difficulty. They mumbled, they chattered, they laughed, (if a sort of strangled wheezing might be called a laugh,) and as the wine sent their icy blood in warmer pulses through their veins, they talked of their past as if it were but a yesterday that had slipped by them; and of their future as if it were a busy century that lay before them.

At length came the LAST dinner; and the survivor of the twelve, upon whose head four score and ten winters had showered their snow, ate his solitary meal. It so chanced that it was in his house, and at his table, they celebrated the first. In his cellar, too, had remained, for eight and forty years, the bottle they had then uncorked, re-corked, and which he was that day to uncork again. It stood beside him. With a feeble and reluctant grasp he took the "frail memorial" of a youthful vow, and for a moment memory was faithful to her office. She threw open the long vista of buried years; and his heart travelled through them all: Their lusty and blithesome spring,their bright and fervid summer, their ripe and temperate autumn,-their chill, but not too frozen winter. He saw as in a mirror, one by one the laughing companions of that merry hour, at Richmond, had dropped into eternity. He felt the loneliness of his condition, (for he had eschewed marriage, and in the veins of no living creature ran a drop of blood whose source was in his own;) and as he drained the glass which he had filled, "to the memory of those who were gone," the tears slowly trickled down the deep furrows of his aged face.

He had thus fulfilled one part of his Vow, and he prepared himself to discharge the other by sitting the usual

number of hours at his desolate table. With a heavy heart he resigned himself to the gloom of his own thoughts

a lethargic sleep stole over him-his head fell upon his bosom-confused images crowded into his mind-he babbled to himself-was silent--and when his servant entered the room alarmed by a noise which he heard, he found his master stretched upon the carpet at the foot of the easy-chair out of which he had slipped in an apoplectic fit. He never spoke again, nor once opened his eyes, though the vital spark was not extinct till the following day. And this was the LAST DINNER!

EXERCISE. 7.

In this exercise, are found examples of the various ornaments of style which are brought to view in the chapter on Literary Taste.. In examining them the the student should institute the following enquiries;

1. How is the example to be classed.

2. Viewing it in itself, and in its connexion, is it to be approved or condemned.

In answering this second enquiry, the principles, on which the attempt to excite emotions of taste is founded, should be fully brought to view.

Example 1. President Kirkland, after mentioning the excitement which attended the public efforts of the late Fisher Ames as a speaker, says,

"This excitement continued when the cause had ceased to operate. After debate his mind was agitated, like the 0cean after a storm, and his nerves were like the shrouds of a ship, torn by the tempest."

Example 2. The attentions of a respectful and affectionate son to his mother are thus described by an anonymous writer;

They are the native courtesies of a feeling mind, shewing themselves amidst stern virtues and masculine energies, like gleams of light on points of rocks."

Example 3. Say, in his Political Economy, when describing the condition of the labourer in a Manufac

turing establishment, whose only occupation has been to fabricate a part of some article-the head of a pin perhaps, uses the following expression;

"He is, when separated from his fellow-labourers, a mere adjective, without individual capacity or substantive impor

tance."

EXAMPLE 4.-"Prayer must be animated. The arrow that would pierce the clouds, must part from the bent bow and the strained arm."

Example 5. The following passage is from W. Irving.

"I recollect hearing a traveller of poetical temperament, expressing the kind of horrour which he felt in beholding, on the banks of the Missouri,an oak of prodigious size, which had been in a manner overpowered by an enormous wild grape vine. The vine had clasped its huge folds round the trunk, and from thence had wound about every branch and twig, until the mighty tree had withered in its embrace. It seemed like Laocoon struggling ineffectually in the hideous coils of the monster Python. It was the lion of trees perishing in the embraces of a vegetable Boa."

Example 6. Webster in his address to General La Fayette has the following passage;

"Sir, we have become reluctant to grant monuments and eulogies-our highest and best honours, further. We would gladly hold them yet back from the little remnant of that immortal band. Šerus in cælum redeas."

Example 7.—"Mind is the great lever of all things,” Example 8. The following passage is addressed to time.

"Go, bind thine ivy o'er the oak,
And spread thy rich embroidered cloak
Around his trunk the while;

Or deck with moss the abbey wall,
And paint grotesque the Gothic hall,
And sculpture with thy chissel small
The monumental pile."

EXAMPLE 9.-"Thus she (the vessel) kept on, away up the river, lessening and lessening in the evening sunshine, 'until she faded from sight like a little white cloud melting away in the summer sky:”

Example. 10. Ferguson, the Scotch poet,was in erty and distress. A friend sent relief, but it did not arrive till after his death. Of this generous act it is said,

"It fell a sun-beam on the blasted blossom." EXAMPLE 11.-"The husbandman sees all his fields and gardens covered with the beauteous creations of his own industry; and sees like God, that all his works are good."

EXAMPLE 12. Literary immortality is a mere temporary rumour, a local sound. Like the tone of a bell, it fills the ear for a moment-lingering transiently in echo-and then passing away, like a thing that was not!

Example 13. Dr. Appleton thus closes an address to a Peace Society;

"This society and others, formed for the same object, both in this country and in Europe, may now be compared to light clouds, far distant from each other, and "no bigger than a man's hand. It is for divine wisdom to determine, whether these clouds shall be speedily attenuated and dissolved; or whether they shall be thickened and enlarged, and uniting with others, yet to be formed in the intermediate spaces, shall cover all the heavens, and shall distil the dew of Heaven; the dew that descended on the mountains of Zi

Example 14. The following is from Canning's Speech at Portsmouth, England.

"Our present repose is no more a proof of inability to act, than the state of inertness and inactivity, in which I have seen those mighty masses that float in the waters above your town, is a proof that they are devoid of strength and incapable of being fitted for action. You well know how soon one of those stupendous masses, now reposing on their shadows in perfect stillness-how soon, upon any call of patriotism or of necessity, it would assume the likeness of an animated thing, instinct with life and motion; how soon it would ruffle, as it were, its swelling plumage; how quickly it would put forth all its beauty and bravery; collect its scattered elements of strength,and awaken its dormant thunders. Such as is one of these magnificent machines, when springing from inaction into a display of its might, such is England herself, while apparently passive and motionless, she silently concentrates the power to be put forth on adequate occasion."

Example 15. The following is from the inaugural address of Professor Frisbie.

"Mrs. Edgeworth has stretched forth a powerful hand to the impotent in virtue; and had she added, with the apostle, in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, we should almost have expected miracles from its touch."

Example 16. The same writer describing the influence of the poems of Byron says,

"They are the scene of aSummer evening, where all is tender and beautiful and grand; but the damps of disease descend with the dews of heaven, and the pestilent vapours of night are breathed in with the fragrance and balm, and the delicate and fair are the surest victims of the exposure."

EXAMPLE 17.

"O tis

A goodly night! the cloudy wind, which blew
From the Levant, hath crept into its cave,
And the broad moon hath brightened."

Example 18. In a poem of Haley's the following lines are addressed to Mr. Gibbon.

"Humility herself, divinely mild,

Sublime religion's meek and modest child,
Like the dumb son of Croesus in the strife
When force assailed his father's sacred life,
'Breaks silence, and with filial duty warm,

Bids thee revere her parent's hallowed form." Example 19. The following is from Kennilworth; "The mind of England's Elizabeth was like one of those ancient Druidical monuments, called Rocking-stones. The finger of Cupid, boy as he is painted, could put her feelings in motion, but the power of Hercules could not have destroyed their equilibrium."

Example 20. Another from the same author.

"The language of Scripture gave to Macbriar's exhortation, a rich and solemn effect, like that which is produced by the beams of the sun, streaming through the storied representation of saints and martyrs on the Gothic window of some ancient cathedral."

Example 21. The following is from Percival;