Man is his own star, and the soul that can -Fletcher. Upon an Honest Man's Fortune. I count myself in nothing else so happy, There's a strange secret sweet self-sacrifice To a worthy end. --R. Browning. Mr. Sludge, the Medium. What is the elevation of the soul? A prompt, delicate, certain feeling for all that is beautiful, all that is grand; a quick resolution to do the greatest good by the smallest means; a great benevolence joined to a great strength and great humility. -Lavater. Far from mankind, my weary soul, retire, Read well thyself, and mark thy early ways, -Chaucer. The body,--that is dust; the soul,—it is a bud of eternity. -Nathaniel Culverwell, Where are Shakspere's imagination, Bacon's learning, Galileo's dream? Where is the sweet fancy of Sidney, the airy spirit of Fletcher, and Milton's thought severe ? Methinks such things should not die and dissipate, when a hair can live for centuries, and a brick of Egypt will last three thousand years, I am content to believe that the mind of man survives, somehow or other, his clay. 17 -Barry Cornwall. SLEEP. God gave to earth no greater boon than sleep; He giveth His beloved sleep. -J. C. H. -Bible. Sweet pillows, sweetest bed; a chamber deaf to noise, and blind to light; a rosy garland, and a weary head. Sir P. Sidney. To sleep, there is a drowsy mellifluence in the very word that would almost serve to interpret its meaning,-to shut up the senses and hoodwink the soul; to dismiss the world; to escape from one's self; to be in ignorance of our own existence; to stagnate upon the earth, just breathing out the hours, not living them,-" doing no mischief, only dreaming of it"; neither merry nor melancholy, something between both, and better than either. Best friend of frail humanity, and, like all other friends, it is best estimated in its loss. -Longfellow. (O) sleep, O gentle sleep, Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee, Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs, And hush'd with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber, Than in the perfum'd chambers of the great, And lull'd with sounds of sweetest melody? Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast And in the visitation of the winds, Who take the ruffian billows by the top, Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them -Shakspere. Henry IV., Pt. II. (King Still last to come where thou art wanted most. -Wordsworth. Sonnet to Sleep, XIII. Our life is twofold: Sleep hath its own world, A boundary between the things misnamed Death and Existence. -Byron. The Dream, I. To be, or not to be, that is the question- The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's con tumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, |