She holds her virtue still, and I my mind.

CYMBELINE i. 4.

I TOOK her hand in mine, and we went out of

the ruined place; and as the morning mists had risen long ago, when I first left the forge, so the evening mists were rising now; and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her.

DICKENS.

DEAR, if you change, I'll never choose again;
Sweet, if you shrink, I'll never think of love;
Fair, if you fail, I'll judge all beauty vain ;
Wise, if too weak, more wits I'll never prove;
Dear, sweet, fair, wise! change, shrink, nor be

not weak,

And, on my faith, my faith shall never break.

ANON.

My bonds in thee are all determinate,

For how do I hold thee but by thy granting?

SONN. LXXXVII.

O when Sir Launcelot was departed, the Queen made no manner of sorrow in showing, to none of his blood, nor to none other: but, wit ye well, inwardly, as the book saith, she took great thought, but she bare it out with a proud countenance, as though she felt nothing nor danger.

MALLORY.

SINCE there's no help, come, let us kiss and part!
Nay, I have done. You get no more of me.
And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,
That thus so clearly I myself can free.
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.

Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath,
When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes:

Now, if thou wouldst, when all have given him

over,

From death to life thou mightst him yet recover!

DRAYTON.

Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath. MERCHANT OF VENICE ii. 7

DE

ESTINY is no artist. The facts that confront us are relentless. No statement of the case is adequate which maintains, by ever so delicate an implication, that in the long run and somehow it is well in temporal things with the just, and ill with the unjust. Until we have fairly looked in the face the grim truth that temporal rewards and punishments do not follow the possession or the want of spiritual or moral virtue, so long we are still ignorant what that enigma is, which speculative men, from the author of the book of Job downwards, have striven to resolve.

So Virtue, given for lost,

JOHN MORLEY.

Depressed and overthrown, as seemed,
Like that self-begotten bird

In the Arabian woods embost,

That no second knows nor third,

And lay erewhile a holocaust,

From out her ashy womb now teemed,

Revives, reflourishes, then vigorous most

When most inactive deemed;

And though her body die, her fame survives,
A secular bird, ages of lives.

MILTON.

A pageant truly play'd,

Between the pale complexion of true love
And the red glow of scorn and proud disdain.
AS YOU LIKE IT iii. 4.

AY

Y, ay, suffer your cruelty to ruin the object of your power, to destroy your Lover-And then how vain, how lost a thing you'll be! Nay, 'tis true: you are no longer handsome when you've lost your Lover; your beauty dies upon the instant: For beauty is the Lover's gift; 'tis he bestows your charms-your Glass is all a cheat. The ugly and the old, whom the looking-glass mortifies, yet after commendation can be flattered by it, and discover beauties in it: For that reflects our praises, rather than your Face.

CONGREVE.

THAT killing power is none of thine,
I gave it to thy voice and eyes;
Thy sweets, thy graces all are mine;

Thou art my star, shin'st in my skies:
Then dart not from thy borrowed sphere
Lightning on him that fixed thee there.
Tempt me with such affrights no more,
Lest what I made I uncreate;
Let fools thy mystic forms adore,

I'll know thee in thy mortal state;
Wise poets that wrapt Truth in tales

Knew her themselves through all her veils.

CAREW.

Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.

SONN. CXXIX.

THE presence that thus so strangely rose beside the waters is expressive of what in the ways of a thousand years man had come to desire. Hers is the head upon which all the ends of the world are come,' and the eyelids are a little weary. It is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite passions. Set it for a moment by the side of one of those white Greek goddesses or beautiful women of antiquity, and how would they be troubled by this beauty, into which the soul with all its maladies has passed!

WALTER PATER.

BEWARE of her fair hair, for she excels
All women in the magic of her locks ;
And when she winds them round a young

man's neck,

She will not ever set him free again.

SHELLEY (from GOETHE).