« There is some soul of goodness in things evil,
Would men observingly distil it out.”-SHAKESPEARE.

« Terra salutiferas herbas, eademque nocentes,

Nutrit, et urticæ proxima sæpe rosa est." - OVID.

"The strawberry grows underneath the nettle,
And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best

Neighbour'd by fruit of baser quality.”SHAKESPEARE.

"Sweet is the rose, but grows upon a brere;"
Sweet is the junipeer, but sharpe his bough;
Sweet is the eglantine, but pricketh nere;
Sweet is the firbloom, but his braunches rough;
Sweet is the cypresse but his rynd is tough;
Sweet is the nut, but bitter is his pill;

Sweet is the broome-flowre, but yet soure enough ;

And sweet is moly, but his root is ill.

So every sweet with soure is tempered still.”SPENSER.

“ δοιοὶ γάρ τε πίθοι κατακείαται ἐν Διὸς οὔδει
δώρων οἷα δίδωσι, κακῶν, ἕτερος δὲ ἐάων·

ᾧ μέν κ ̓ ἀμμίξας δοίη Ζεὺς τερπικέραυνος,
ἄλλοτε μέν τε κακῳ ὅγε κύρεται, ἄλλοτε δ ̓ ἐσθλῳ·
ᾧ δέ κε τῶν λυγρῶν δοίη, λωβητὸν ἔθηκεν·

καί ἑ κακὴ βούβρωστις ἐπὶ χθόνα δῖαν ἐλαύνει,

φοιτᾷ δ' οὔτε θεοῖσι τετιμένος οὔτε βροτοΐσιν.”—HOMER.

"Nulla dies adeo est Australibus humida nimbis,
Non intermissis ut fluat imber aquis;

Nec sterilis locus ullus ita est, ut non sit in illo
Mista fere duris utilis herba rubris.

Nil adeo fortuna gravis miserabile fecit,

Ut minuant nullâ gaudia parte malum.”—OVID.

“ οὐκ ἔστιν ἀγαθὸν τῷ βίῳ

Φυόμενον ὥσπερ δένδρον ἐκ βίζης μιας.

Αλλ' ἐγγὺς ἀγαθοῦ παραπέφυκε καὶ κακόν,

Ἐκ τοῦ κακοῦ τ ̓ ἤνεγκεν ἀγαθὸν ἡ φύσις.”MENANDER.

ἔλπιδα τὰν ἄγαθαν

χρῆναι σ ̓ ἀνάλγητα γὰρ ὅ πάντα κράινων βασίλευς

ἐπέβαλε θνᾶτοις κρόνιδας· αλλ ἐπὶ πῆμα και χάρα πάσι κυκλουσιν ὅιον ἀρκτου στρόφαδες κέλευθοι· μένει γὰρ ουτ' ἄιολα

νύξ βροτοισιν ουτε χήρες ὄντε πλουτος

αλλ' ἀφαρ βέβακε, τῷ δ ̓ ἐπέρχεται χαιρειν τε και στέρεσθαι.”

SOPHOCLES.

Self-The Present.

"He who ascends the mountain-tops shall find
The loftiest peaks most w rapt in clouds and snow."
"Let me often to these solitudes

Retire, and in their presence reassure
My feeble virtue."-BRYANT,
"Aloof with hermit eye I scan

The present works of present man:

A wild and dream-like tale of blood and guile,

Too foolish for a tear, too wicked for a smile."-Coleridge.

"Vitavi culpam, non laudem merui."-HORACE.

"Esse bonum facile est ubi quod vetat esse remotum est.-OVID. "Quanto plura recentium seu veterum revolvo, tanto ludibrium rerum mortalium cunctis in rebus observantur.”—TACITUS.

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· μόρφη μὲν οὐκ ἐύωπος ἀνδρειος δ' άνην

ὀλιγακῶς ἄστυ κ' άγορας χράινων κύκλον
αυτουργος, ὅιπερ και μόνοι σώζουσι γήν
ξύνετος δε χωρειν, ὄμοσε τοις λογοις θέλων

ἀκέραιος, ἀνεπίληπτον ἠσκηκὼς βίον.”EURIPIDES.

Better perchance, as 'tis, that I should pass
Tranquil and even days in solitude,
Nursing apart my quaint poetic mood,
And, as 'twere, in phantasmagoric glass,
To conjure up each phase of what I was,
To ruminate some sweet, much bitter food,
And rather only missing to be good,
Than to be bad, worse tempted!-

Let thy mass

Fume on, old Europe; crush, be crush'd by thrones ;
Burn with sectarian hate; cringe; flatter; sneer ;
Throw the false die of party-politics;

And wade for wealth through filth blacker than Styx-'Tis a kind fate which rolleth half a sphere

Betwixt me and your laughter or your groans.

*Charon's account, according to the witty fable in Lucian, (Dial Contem. Tom 2) of what he saw when Mercury took him to a place whence he could discern all the world at once, is o'er true a tale. He said he saw a vast multitude and a promiscuous, their habitations like mole hills, the men as emmets; could discern cities like so many lines of bees, wherein every bee had a sting, and they did nought else but sting one another, some domineering like hornets bigger than the rest some like filching wasps, others as drones. Over their heads were hovering a confused company of perturbations, hopes, fear, anger, avarice, ignorance &c., and a multitude of diseases hanging which they still pulled on their peates. Some were crawling, some fighting, riding, running sollicite ambientes calide litigantes for toys and trifles and such momentary things. Their towns and provinces were factions rich against poor, poor against rich, nobles against artificers, they against nobles, and so the rest. He condemned them all for madmen, fools, idiots, asses. "O stulte quænam hæc est dementia ? Insana studia, insani labores." If the stars be inhabited by Intellingences who look down upon this pigmy Earth, surely they must laugh like Democritus-or weep like Heraclitus, at the scene below them.

The Present Coromandel.

"Tis most true

That musing meditation most affects
The pensive secrecy of desert cell."-- MILTON.
Dive thro' the stormy surface of the flood

To the great current flowing underneath."-WORDSWORTH.

"Nec nos ambitio, nec amor nos urget habendi,

Contempto hic colitur lectus et umbra foro."-OVID.

""Tis pleasant through the loop-holes of retreat

To peep at such a world; to see the stir

Of the great Babel, and not feel the crowd.

To hear the roar she sends thro' all her gates,

At a safe distance, when the dying sound

Falls a soft murmur on the uninjured ear."-Cowper.

Here on this isle, where none beside me dwells,

Let me, the while my lonely leisure flies,
Fathom all past and present histories;

Reading the World's tale from the sea-worn shells,
Time's medals, on whose face he marks and tells
Creation-dates through countless centuries:
And be it mine, with calm, clear, piercing eyes,
Here, where no bias turns, no passion swells,
Or head or heart, the present acts of Man
To view; as from some promontoried steep
The peerer through the glassy-surfac'd wave,
Which on a summer noon no breezes fan,
A thousand fathom downward in their grave,
Surveys the buried cities of the deep.*

*The legend of buried cities which can be seen under the waters, appears to be common enough. Thus Ovid says:

"Si quæras Helicon et Burin, Achaidas urbes,
Invenies sub aquis; et adhuc ostendere nautæ
Inclinata solent cum manibus oppida mersis."

And Moore writes:

"On Loch Neagh's banks,

As the fisherman strays

In the calm cool eve's declining,
He sees the towns of former days

In the waves beneath him shining."

The same story is told of Glendenburgh in Wicklow; and, if I recollect aright, similar belief exists as to the remains of the city of Maha Balipooram, at the Seven Pagodas, on the Coromandel Coast.

Geology.

"Vidi ego quod fuerat quondam solidissima tellus
Esse fretum; vidi fractas ex æquore terras:
Et procul a pelago concha jacuere marinæ ;
Et vetus inventa est in montibus anchora summis
Quodque fuit campus vallem decursus aquarum
Fecit, et eluvie mons est deductus in æquor,
Eque paludosâ siccis humus aret arenas;
Hic fontes Natura novos emisit, at illa
Clausit."-OVID.

Last-born of all the Sciences, whose gaze

Is fixed on Earth; who measurest Sea and Land;
Gauging their depths, yet walking hand-in-hand
With her, whose contemplation never strays
From Heaven's unfathomable starry maze,
Cælestia, fairest of the sister band;

And Flora, tripping with her budding wand,

Rose-cheek'd, among the flowers with which she plays:

Thy brows, O Nymph, are wreath'd with coral, torn

From the curl'd summit of the Ocean wave;

Thy sandles are of primal slabs, that pave

Earth's sure foundations; river-streams adorn
Thy girdle; and thy magic rod divines

Where sleep the virgin metals in their mines.

66

Geology.

(Continued.)

"There rolls the deep where grew the tree!
Oh! earth what changes hast thou seen,
There, where the long street roars, hath been
The stillness of the central sea..

The hills are shadows, and they flow

From form to form, and nothing stands,

They melt like mists, the solid lands,

Like clouds they shape themselves and go."-TENNYSON.

ὄψε θεων ἀλεοῦσι μύλοι, ἀλεοῦσι δε λέπτα.”—PROVERB.

Patient Philosophy hath loved to trace
Up to creation this world's history;
Reading Time's records which all open lie,
By myriad Ages seamed upon its face :
Assigning every change appropriate place;
Whether the Sea hath swallowed mountains high,
Or gradual land emerged from Ocean dry,
Before this Earth was ready for our race.

May there not wait it yet another change,
Mighty as all fore-runners, nor less strange;
Its shrivell'd crust a new formation find;
More genial climes, spontaneous herbage-suit,
Fitted for creatures far above Mankind,

As Man is o'er the self-unconscious Brute ?