may possibly sojourn in your planet?" "Nay," replied the priests, "but verily you will find it of excellent use so long as you remain in it." "A very little of it will suffice me," replied he; "for consider how soon this period will be past. What avails it what my condition may be for so short a season? I will betake myself from this hour, to the grand concerns of which you have so charitably informed me."

8. Accordingly, from that period, continues the legend, the stranger devoted himself to the performance of those conditions on which, he was told, his future welfare depended; but, in so doing, he had an opposition to encounter wholly unexpected, and for which he was at a loss even to account. By thus devoting his chief attention to his chief interests, he excited the surprise, the contempt, and even the enmity of most of the inhabitants of the city; and they rarely mentioned him but with a term of reproach, which has been variously rendered in all the modern languages.

9. Nothing could equal the stranger's surprise at this circumstance; as well as at that of his fellow-citizens' appearing, generally, so extremely indifferent as they did, to their own interests. That they should have so little prudence and forethought, as to provide only for their *necessities and pleasures, for that short part of their existence in which they were to remain on this planet, he could but consider as the effect of disordered intellect; so that he even returned their incivilities to himself with affectionate texpostulation, accompanied by lively emotions of compassion and amazement.

10. If ever he was tempted for a moment to violate any of the conditions of his future happiness, he bewailed his own madness with *agonizing emotions; and to all the invitations he received from others to do anything inconsistent with his real interests, he had but one answer-"Oh," he would say, "I am to die: I am to die."

LXXVII. A PSALM OF LIFE.
FROM LONGFELLOW.

1. TELL me not in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

2. Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not written of the soul.

3. Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destin'd end and way,
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

4. Art is long, and time is fleeting,

And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave.

5. In the world's broad field of battle,
In the +bivouac of life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

6. Trust no future, howe'er pleasant,
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act!-act in the living Present!

Heart within, and God o'er head.

7. Lives of great men all remind us,
We can make our lives *sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us,
Footprints on the sands of time.

8. Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn +main,
A forlorn and shipwreck'd brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

9. Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

LXXVIII. THE DREAM OF CLARENCE.

FROM SHAKSPEARE.

CLARENCE, prisoner in the Tower of London.
Enter BRAKENBURY.

Brakenbury. WHY looks your grace so heavily to-day?
Clarence. O, I have pass'd a miserable night,
So full of fearful dreams, of ugly sights,
That, as I am a Christian, faithful man,
I would not spend another such a night,
Though 't were to buy a world of happy days,
So full of dismal terror was the time.

Brak. What was your dream, my lord? I pray you tell me.

Clar. Methought that I had broken from the Tower, And was tembark'd to cross to Burgundy;

And, in my company, my brother Gloster;

Who, from my cabin, tempted me to walk

Upon the thatches; whence we look'd toward England,
And tcited up a thousand heavy times,

During the wars of York and Lancaster,

That had befallen us. As we paced along

Upon the giddy footing of the hatches,

Methought, that Gloster stumbled; and, in falling,
Struck me, that thought to stay him, overboard
Into the tumbling billows of the main.

O then, methought, what pain it was to drown!
What dreadful noise of water in mine ears!
What sights of ugly death within mine eyes!
Methought, I saw a thousand fearful wrecks;
A thousand men that fishes gnaw'd upon;
Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,
+Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,

All scatter'd in the bottom of the sea.

Some lay in dead men's skulls; and, in those holes
Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept
(As 't were in scorn of eyes) reflecting gems,
That woo'd the slimy bottom of the deep
And mock'd the dead bones that lay scatter'd by.
Brak. Had you such leisure, in the time of death,
To gaze upon these secrets of the deep?

Clar. Methought I had; and often did I strive
To yield the ghost: but still the envious flood

Kept in my soul, and would not let it forth
To seek the empty, vast, and wandering air;
But smother'd it within my panting bulk;
Which almost burst to belch it in the sea.

Brak. Awaked you not with thy sore agony?

Clar. O no; my dream was lengthen'd after life!
O, then began the tempest to my soul!

I pass'd, methought, the melancholy flood,
With that grim ferryman which poets write of,
Unto the kingdom of perpetual night.

The first, that there did greet my stranger soul,
Was my great father-in-law, renowned Warwick;
Who cried aloud, "What scourge for *perjury
Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence?
And so he vanish'd.

Then came wandering by

A shadow, like an angel with bright hair
Dabbled in blood; and he shriek'd out aloud:
"Clarence is come! false, fleeting, perjur'd Clarence!
That stabb'd me in the field by Tewksbury:

Seize on him, furies, take him to your torments!”
With that, methought, a legion of foul fiends
+Environ'd me, and howl'd in mine ears
Such hideous cries, that, with the very noise,
I, trembling, waked, and, for a season after,
Could not believe but that I was in hell;
Such terrible impression made my dream.
Brak. No marvel, lord, that it affrighted you;
I am afraid, methinks, to hear you tell it.

Clar. O, Brakenbury, I have done these things,
That now give evidence against my soul,
For Edward's sake, and see how he trequites me!
O God! if my deep prayers can not appease thee,
But thou wilt be avenged on my misdeeds,

Yet execute thy wrath on me alone:

O, spare my guiltless wife and my poor children!
I pray thee, gentle keeper, stay by me;

My soul is heavy, and I fain would sleep.

Brak. I will, my lord: God give your grace good rest! [CLARENCE reposes himself on a chair.

Sorrow breaks seasons and reposing hours,

Makes the night morning, and the noon-tide night.

1. WHEN Hercules was in that part of his youth, in which it was natural for him to consider what course of life he ought to pursue, he one day retired into a desert, where the silence and the solitude of the place very much favored his *meditations. As he was musing on his present condition, and very much perplexed in himself on the state of life which he should choose, he saw two women of larger stature than ordinary, approaching him.

X

2. One of them had a very noble air and graceful +deportment; her beauty was natural and easy, her person clean and unspotted, her eyes cast toward the ground with an agreeable +reserve, her motion and behavior full of modesty, and her raiment as white as snow. The other had a great deal of health and +floridness in her countenance, which she had helped with an artificial white and red; and she endeavored to appear more graceful than ordinary in her mien, by a mixture of affectation in all her gestures. She had a wonderful confidence and assurance in her looks, and all the variety of colors in her dress, that she thought were the most proper to show her complexion to advantage. She cast her eyes upon herself, then turned them on those that were present, to see how they liked her, and often looked on the figure she made in her own shadow. Upon her approach to Hercules, she stepped before the other lady, who came forward with a regular composed carriage, and running up to him, accosted him after the following manner:

3. "My dear Hercules, I find you are very much divided in your thoughts upon the way of life that you ought to choose: be my friend, and follow me: I will lead you into the possession of pleasure, and out of the reach of pain, and remove you from all the noise and disquietude of business. The affairs of either war or peace shall have no power to disturb you. Your whole employment shall be to make your life easy, and entertain every sense with its proper gratifications. +Sumptuous tables, beds of roses, clouds of perfumes, *concerts of music, crowds of beauties, are all in readiness to