Imatges de pàgina
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The pilgrim bless'd his grateful shade
Ere Richard led the first crusade;
And maidens loved to dance
Where, boy and man, in summer-time,
Chaucer once ponder'd o'er his rhyme ;3

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Stole hither to Maid Marian;

(And if they did not come, one can
At any rate suppose it);

They met beneath the mistletoe,-
We've done the same, and ought to know
The reason why they chose it!

And this was call'd the Traitor's Branch, Guy Warwick hung six yeoman stanch Along its mighty fork;

Uncivil wars for them! The fair

Red rose and white still bloom, but where

Are Lancaster and York?

Right mournfully his leaves he shed

To shroud the graves of England's dead,
By English falchion slain;

And cheerfully, for England's sake,
He sent his kin to sea with Drake,
When Tudor humbled Spain.

While Blake was fighting with the Dutch, They gave his poor old arms a crutch;

And thrice four maids and men ate

A meal within his rugged bark,
When Coventry bewitch'd the Park,
And Chatham sway'd the Senate.

His few remaining boughs were green,
And dappled sunbeams danced between
Upon the dappled deer,

When, clad in black, two mourners met,
To read the Waterloo Gazette,-

They mourned their darling here.

They join'd their boy.

The Tree at last

Lies prone, discoursing of the past,

Some fancy-dreams awaking;

At rest, though headlong changes come,
Though nations arm to roll of drum,
And dynasties are quaking.

Romantic spot! By honest pride
Of old tradition sanctified;

My pensive vigil keeping,

Thy beauty moves me like a spell,

And thoughts, and tender thoughts, upwell, That fill my heart to weeping.

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The Squire affirms, with gravest look,
His Oak goes up to Domesday Book:
And some say even higher!

We rode last week to see the Ruin,
We love the fair domain it grew in,
And well we love the Squire,

A nature loyally controll'd,

And fashion'd in that righteous mould

Of English gentleman;

'My child some day will read these rhymes, She loved her "godpapa" betimes,

The little Christian!

I love the Past, its ripe pleasance,
And lusty-thought, and dim romance,-
Its heart-compelling ditties;

But more, these ties, in mercy sent,
With faith and true affection blent,
And, wanting them, I were content
To murmur, "Nunc dimittis,” 5

F. Locker.

VII.

THEMISTOCLES1

IT is confessed by all that from his youth he was of a vehement and impetuous nature, of a quick apprehension, and a strong and aspiring bent for action and state affairs. The holidays and intervals in his studies he did not spend in play or idleness, as other children, but would be always inventing or arranging some oration or declamation to himself, the subject of which was generally the excusing or accusing his companions. So that his master would often say to him: "You, my boy, will be nothing small; but great one way or the other, for good or else for bad." He received reluctantly and carelessly instructions given him to improve his manners and behaviour, or to teach him any pleasing or graceful accomplishment; but whatever was said to improve him in sagacity or in management of business, he would give attention to beyond one of his years, from confidence in his natural

capacities for such things. And thus, afterwards, when in company where people engaged themselves in what are commonly thought the liberal and elegant amusements, he was obliged to defend himself against the observations of those who considered themselves highly accomplished, by the somewhat arrogant retort, that he certainly could not make use of any stringed instrument; could only, were a small and obscure city put into his hands, make it great and glorious.

Notwithstanding this, Stesimbrotus says that Themistocles was a hearer of Anaxagoras, and that he studied natural philosophy under Melissus; contrary to chronology; for Melissus commanded the Samians in their siege by Pericles, who was much Themistocles' junior; and with Pericles also Anaxagoras was intimate. They, therefore, might rather be credited, who relate that Themistocles was an admirer of Mnesiphilus, the Phrearrhian, who was neither rhetorician nor natural philosopher, but a professor of that which was then called wisdom, consisting in a sort of political shrewdness and practical sagacity, and having come to him by succession, almost like a sect of philosophy, from Solon 2; but those who came afterwards, and mixed it with pleadings and legal artifices, and transformed the practical part of it into a mere art of speaking and an exercise of words, were generally called Sophists.

Themistocles resorted to Mnesiphilus when he was already engaged in politics. But in the first essays of his youth he was not regular nor

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happily balanced; he allowed himself to follow mere natural character, which, without the control. of reason and instruction, is apt to hurry, upon either side, into sudden and violent courses, and very often to break away and determine upon the worst; as he afterwards owned himself, saying, that the wildest colts make the best horses, if they only get properly trained and broken in. But those who upon this fasten stories of their own invention, as of his being publicly disowned by his father, and that his mother died for grief of her son's ill-fame, certainly calumniate3 him. And there are others who relate, on the contrary, that to deter him from public business, and to let him see how the people treat their leaders when they have at last no further use for them, his father showed him the old galleys as they lay forsaken and cast about upon the sea-shore.

But his mind, it is evident, was very early possessed with the keenest interest in public affairs, and the most passionate ambition for distinction. Eager from the first to obtain the highest place, he unhesitatingly accepted the hatred of the most powerful and influential leaders in the city, but more especially of Aristides,5 the son of Lysimachus, who, throughout, took the course opposed to his. And yet all this great enmity between them arose, it appears, from a very boyish occasion, both being in love with the same person, as Ariston the philosopher tells us; ever after which they took opposite sides, and were rivals in politics. Though certainly the dissimilarity of their lives and manners must

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