Church-belis at best but ring us to the door;
But go not in to mass; my bell doth more;
It cometh into court and pleads the cause
Of creatures dumb and unknown to the laws,
And this shall make in every Christian clime
The Bell of Atri famous for all time.

383

Longfellow: T. of a Wayside Inn. Bell of Atri

BENEDICTION see Compliments.

Now the fair goddess, Fortune,
Fall deep in love with thee;
Prosperity be thy page!

384

Shaks.: Coriolanus. Act i. Sc. 5.

The heavens rain odors on you! 385

Shaks.: Tw. Night. Act iii. Sc. 1.

The grace of heaven,

Before, behind thee, and on every hand,
Enwheel thee round!

386

BENEVOLENCE- - see Bounty.

Shaks.: Othello. Act ii. Sc. 1.

How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world. 387

Shaks.: M. of Venice. Act v. Sc. 1.

Is there a variance? enter but his door,
Balk'd are the courts, and contest is no more.
Despairing quacks with curses fled the place,
And vile attorneys, now an useless race.

388

Pope: Mor. Essays. Epis. iii. Line 272.

From the prayer of want and plaint of woe,

O never, never turn away thine ear!

Forlorn in this bleak wilderness below,

Ah! what were man should heaven refuse to hear!

389

Beattie: Minstrel. Bk. i. St. 29.

BETTING

-

-see Wagers.

I've heard old cunning stagers

Say, fools for arguments use wagers. 390

Butler: Hudibras. Pt. ii. Canto i. Line 297.

Most men, till by losing rendered sager,

Will back their own opinions by a wager.

391

BIBLE.

A glory gilds the sacred page,
Majestic like the sun;

It gives a light to every age;
It gives, but borrows none.
392

Byron: Beppo. St. 27

Cowper: Olney Hymns. No. 30.

Most wondrous book! bright candle of the Lord!
Star of Eternity! The only star

By which the bark of man could navigate
The sea of life, and gain the coast of bliss
Securely.

393

Pollok: Course of Time. Bk. ii. Line 270.

Within this awful volume lies
The mystery of mysteries!
Happiest they of human race,
To whom God has granted grace
To read, to fear, to hope, to pray,
To lift the latch, and force the way;
And better had they ne'er been born,
Who read to doubt, or read to scorn.
394

BIGOTRY.

Scott: Monastery. Ch. xii.

Sure 'tis an orthodox opinion,
That grace is founded in dominion.

395

Butler: Hudibras. Pt. i. Canto iii. Line 1173.

Soon their crude notions with each other fought;
The adverse sect deny'd what this had taught;
And he at length the amplest triumph gain'd,
Who contradicted what the last maintain'd.
396

Prior: Solomon. Bk. i. Line 717.

For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight;
His can't be wrong, whose life is in the right.

397
Pope: Essay on Man. Epis. iii. Line 305.
Christians have burnt each other, quite persuaded
That all the Apostles would have done as they did.
398
Byron: Don Juan. Canto i. St. 83
Shall I ask the brave soldier, who fights by my side
In the cause of mankind, if our creeds agree?
Shall I give up the friend I have valued and tried,
If he kneel not before the same altar with me?
From the heretic girl of my soul should I fly,
To seek somewhere else a more orthodox kiss?
No! perish the hearts and the laws that try
Truth, valor, or love, by a standard like this.
399

Moore: Come, Send Round the Wine

And many more such pious scraps,

To prove (what we've long prov'd perhaps)
That mad as Christians used to be
About the thirteenth century,

There's lots of Christians to be had
In this, the nineteenth, just as mad!

400

Moore: Twopenny Post Bag. Letter iv 1 Var. that ample.

BIRDS.

The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark,
When neither is attended; and, I think,
The nightingale, if she should sing by day,
When every goose is cackling, would be thought
No better a musician than the wren.

401
Ten thousand warblers cheer the day, and one
The live-long night: nor these alone whose notes
Nice-fingered art must emulate in vain,

Shaks.: M. of Venice. Act v. Sc. 1

But cawing rooks, and kites that swim sublime
In still repeated circles, screaming loud,
The jay, the pie, and ev'n the boding owl
That hails the rising moon, have charms for me.
402

Cowper: Task. Bk. i. Line 200

You call them thieves and pillagers; but know
They are the winged wardens of your farms,
Who from the cornfields drive the insidious foe,
And from your harvests keep a hundred harms;
Even the blackest of them all, the crow,
Renders good service as your man-at-arms,
Crushing the beetle in his coat of mail,
And crying havoc on the slug and snail.

403

Longfellow: Birds of Killingworth. St. 19

Do you ne'er think what wondrous beings these?
Do you ne'er think who made them, and who taught
The dialect they speak, where melodies

Alone are the interpreters of thought?

Whose household words are songs in many keys,
Sweeter than instrument of man e'er caught!

Whose habitations in the tree-tops even

Are half-way houses on the road to heaven!

404

Longfellow: Birds of Killingworth. St. 15

The birds, great nature's happy commoners, That haunt in woods, in meads, and flow'ry gardens, Rifle the sweets and taste the choicest fruits,

Yet scorn to ask the lordly owner's leave.

405

BIRTH - see Ancestry.

Let high birth triumph! what can be more great?
Nothing- but merit in a low estate.

To virtue's humblest son let none prefer

Vice, though descended from the Conqueror.

406 BIRTHDAY.

Young: Love of Fame. Satire i. Line 131.

Is that a birthday? 'tis, alas! too clear, 'Tis but the funeral of the former year.

407

Pope: To Mrs. M. B. Line 9

My birthday!

what a different sound

That word had in my youthful ears;
And how each time the day comes round,
Less and less white its mark appears.
408

This is my birthday, and a happier one
Was never mine.

Moore: My Birthday

409 Longfellow: Divine Tragedy. Second Passover. Pt. ii My birthday!" How many years ago? Twenty or thirty?' Don't ask me! "Forty or fifty?

How can I tell?

I do not remember my birth, you see!

410

Julia C. R. Dorr: My Birthday.

A birthday : and now a day that rose
With much of hope, with meaning rife -
A thoughtful day from dawn to close:
The middle day of human life.

411

--

Jean Ingelow: A Birthday Walk.

Thou art my single day, God lends to leaven
What were all earth else, with a feel of heaven.

412

BLACKGUARDS.

Robert Browning: Pippa Passes. Sc. 1.

They each pull'd different ways, with many an oath, "Arcades ambo," id est -- blackguards both.

413

BLASPHEMY.

Byron: Don Juan. Canto iv. St. 93.

Great men may jest with saints; 'tis wit in them;
But, in the less, foul profanation.

That in the captain's but a choleric word,
Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.

414

Shaks.: M. for M. Act ii. Sc. 2.

Pope: Epil. to Satires. Dialogue ii. Line 194.

And each blasphemer quite escape the rod,
Because the insult's not on man, but God?

415

BLINDNESS.

O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon;
Irrecoverably dark! total eclipse,
Without all hope of day.

416

Milton: Samson Agonistes. Line 80

O, loss of sight, of thee I most complain!
Blind among enemies, O worse than chains,
Dungeons, or beggary, or decrepit age!
Light, the prime work of God, to me's extinct,
And all her various objects of delight

Annul'd, which might in part my grief have eas'd.

417

Milton: Samson Agonistes Line 67

Thus with the year

Seasons return, but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair
Presented with a universal blank

Of nature's works, to me expunged and rased,
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.
418

Milton: Par. Lost. Bk. iii. Line 40
These eyes, though clear

To outward view of blemish or of spot,
Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot;
Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear

Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year,
Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not

Against heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer
Right onward.

419

BLISS - see Happiness.

Milton: Sonnet xxii. Line 1

Condition, circumstance, is not the thing,
Bliss is the same in subject or in king.
420

Pope: Essay on Man. Epis. iv. Line 57.

The spider's most attenuated thread

Is cord, is cable, to man's tender tie

On earthly bliss; it breaks at every breeze. 421

Young: Night Thoughts. Night i. Line 178.

O, “darkly, deeply, beautifully blue,”1

As some one somewhere sings about the sky.

422

BLUNTNESS.

Byron: Don Juan. Canto iv. St. 110.

Rudeness is a sauce to his good wit,

Which gives men stomach to digest his words
With better appetite.

423

Shaks.: Jul. Cæsar. Act i. Sc. 2

I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,

Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech,
To stir men's blood: I only speak right on.

424

Shaks.: Jul. Cæsar. Act iii. Sc. 2.

These kind of knaves I know, which in their plainness
Harbor more craft, and more corrupter ends,

Than twenty silly ducking observants,

That stretch their duties nicely.

425

Shaks.: King Lear. Act ii. Sc. 2

1 Southey; Madoc in Wales. V.