UNIVERSITY COURIER.
9
the judg-
Notice reflections. memory to
beauty proverb of it." may haveugh they to make
he says in command he able to which they cry in the that they cry beau-
ery low-paths of re than
ced; he g erecture laid. sculpture, of fame
lf: For lead, as sure, in-
being a despondent man, and oft in his wanderings through the woods he would mutter to himself as one
"Crazed with care or crossed in hopeless love."
And then at noon he would lie under the shade of yon beech, and gaze intently upon the brook that runs by.
In the twenty-third, how beautifully does he express that he had died, and that it was his funeral procession which was passing by the place which he was used to frequent.
In the twenty-fourth, how well does he express that he was a despondent person; though he had knowledge, and great penetrating and comprehensive information, still this was not enough to make him happy.
In the twenty-fifth he speaks of his own charity, and that Heaven rewarded him for this by giving him his only wish—a friend.
In the twenty-sixth, which is a very beautiful conclusion, he says: No further seek his merits to disclose, or draw the frailties from their dread abode, where they alike wait, trembling, the decision of God, who knows all.
Constant traces may found in all his works of the degree to which he had assimilated the spirit not only of the Greek lyric poetry, but the finest perfume of the great Italian writers. Many passages of his works are a kind of mosaic of thought and imagery, borrowed from Pindar, from the choral portions of the Attic tragedy, and from the majestic lyrics of the Italian poets of the 16th and 17th centuries; but though the substance of these mosaics may be borrowed from a multitude of sources, the fragments are fused into one solid body by the intense flame of powerful and fervent imagination.
Gray may be said to over-color his language, and to indulge occasionally in an excess of ornament and personification; he will, nevertheless, be always regarded as a lyric poet of very high order, and one who brought an immense store to feed the fire of rich and powerful fancy. * *
AN UNSELFISH CREED.
Writing in Scribner for April of "Some Thin Virtues," and especially of toleration, Dr. Holland says:
Men tolerate each other and each other's sentiments and opinions, and are much too apt to be content with that. They altogether over-estimate the value of it, but beyond this there is in some quarters, and ought to be in all quarters, a sense of brotherhood among all honestly and earnestly inquiring souls. There is no reason why Dean Stanley and Mr. Darwin should not be the most affectionate friends. There is no good reason why Cardinal Manning and Mr. Matthew Arnold should not be on the most delightful terms of intimacy. There is no good reason why Mr. Frothingham and Dr. Hall, Dr. Draper and Dr. Taylor should not be bound up in loving brotherhood. They undoubtedly tolerate one another now. It would be simply indecent for them to do anything less, but we fear that we have not quite reached the period when these men, with a profound respect for one another's manhood, truthfulness and earnestness, recognize each other as seekers for truth, and love and delight in each other as such. We are all interested in the same things, but we happen to be regarding them from different angles.
Some of the sincerest men in the world are the doubters.
"There is more faith in honest doubt,
Bellevy me, than in half the creeds."
These men get very little of the sympathy that by right belongs to them. They have as great a love for truth as anybody, and are looking for it, but by the constitution of their minds, or by the power of an unfortunate education, or the influence of an untoward personal experience, they find themselves thrown off into a region of skepticism, where they have
no congenial companionship. They do not get even toleration, from those particularly who inherit their creeds, and to whom faith is as natural as breathing. These men ought all and always to be brought affectionately into the great brotherhood of truth-lovers and truth-seekers, and a Christian of any name who cannot throw his warmest sympathies around these, and regard them with a peculiarly affectionate interest, must necessarily be a very poor sort of creature. All honest truth-seekers are always truth-finders, and all have something in possession that will be of advantage to the others. The differences between them are sources of wealth to the whole.
This is true of all truth-seekers, and it is particularly true of the different sects of Christendom. Let not the Catholic think for a moment that he has nothing to learn of the Protestant, and let not the Protestant think that he holds all truth to the exclusion of his Catholic brother. The fact that all these sects exist and find vitality enough in their ideas to keep them prosperously together, shows that there is something to learn, everywhere, and among them all, and that the policy is poor which shuts them away from one another's society. It is better to remember that truth is one, and that those who are earnestly after it, whether they deny Christianity or profess it, whether they are called by one name or another, belong together, in one great sympathetic brotherhood of affection and pursuit.
One of the Austrian officers employed in reorganizing the Persian army gives the following details of its strength, and of the peculiar characteristics of the men composing it. As at present organized, the armed forces of Persia consist of seventy-seven battalions of infantry, each from 800 to 1000 men strong, and numbering therefore altogether some 70,000 men; of seventy-nine regiments of cavalry, each of about 400 sabres, comprising, therefore, together, about 30,000 troopers; of twenty regiments of artillery, with a total strength of 5000 men and 200 guns, and, finally, of a regiment of pioneers, 500 men strong. The regular army, therefore, comprises altogether 105,000 officers and men of all ranks and of all arms of the service. The armament at present consists for the most of muzzle-loading rifles, but 30,000 men are to be at once supplied with breech-loading weapons. The Persian infantryman is, in the opinion of the Austrian writer, an excellent soldier. A good marcher, sober, capable of performing an almost incredible amount of hard and continuous work, he would, if adequately instructed and well fed, prove a most formidable enemy. The men composing the cavalry are all bold and skillful riders, but they are untrained in military evolutions.
—A young woman who, as the local newspaper phrases it, "was a high stepper and traveled with her neck arched," went to live in Vanceburg, Ky. The young village physician and others fell in love with her, but she encouraged none save the physician, who soon had the arrangements perfected for an elopement. At midnight he placed a ladder against her house, and climbed to her window. She raised the sash, disclosing herself in a traveling dress, ready for the journey. At that point several shots in rapid succession startled the pair, and they saw the physician's wife firing wildly from the foot of the ladder. The young woman dodged out of sight, and the physician, by abject prayers and promises, induced his wife to take him home uninjured.
—A San Francisco woman married a coachman unwittingly, believing him to be a Mexican nobleman. He was deceived, too, for he supposed her wealthy, whereas she was really poor. They parted after an unpleasant honeymoon of a week. "Had I known that I would only get morning breezes for breakfast, trade winds for dinner, and fog for supper," she wrote, "I would have told you my constitution couldn't stand it. I trust that, if you marry again, you will prepare to provide your wife with a bill of fare instead of a bill of air."