In the poorest cottage are Books; is one BOOK, wherein for several thousands of years the spirit of man has found light and nourishment, and an interpreting response to whatever is Deepest in him; wherein still, to this day, for those that will look well, the Mystery of Existence reflects itself. This is what some one names "The grand sacred Epos, or Bible of World-History; infinite in meaning as the Divine Mind it emblems; wherein he is wise that can read here a line and there a line.". THOMAS CARLYLE. Shakespeare had penetrated into innumerable things; far into Nature with her divine splendors and infernal terrors, her Ariel melodies and mystical mandragora moans; far into man's workings with Nature, into man's art and artifice. Shakespeare knew innumerable things; what men are and what the world is, and how and what men aim at there. THOMAS CARLYLE. Sophocles also sang, and showed in grand dramatic rhythm and melody, not a fable, but a fact, the best he could interpret it, to the judg ments of Eternal Destiny upon the erring sons of men. In the tragedies of Sophocles there is a most deep-toned recognition of the eternal justice of Heaven, and the unfailing punishment of crime against the Laws of God. - THOMAS CARLYLE. To Sophocles, the greatest dramatic poet of Greece, has been assigned a higher place in the history of Greek literature than to Homer himself. His work was to turn the mythology of Homer “ into an instrument of moral education, and to lead men upwards to the eternal laws of God and the thought of his righteous order."-E. H. PLUMPTRE, in "The Life and Writings of Sophocles." No poet comes near Shakespeare in the number of his bosom lines, of lines that we may cherish in our bosoms, and that seem almost as if they had grown there,― of lines that, like bosom friends, are ever at hand to comfort, counsel, and gladden us under all the vicissitudes of life, of lines that, according to Bacon's expression, “come home to our business and bosoms," and open the door for us to look in, and to see what is nestling and brooding there. - GUESSES AT TRUTH. We ought to make collections of the thoughts of Shakespeare; they may be cited on every occasion and under every form, and no man who has a tincture of letters can open his works without finding there a thousand things which he ought not to forget.-ABEL FRANÇOIS VILLEMAIN, quoted by Price. Shakespeare is an author of all others calculated to make his readers better as well as wiser. - SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. SHAKESPEARE'S MORALS. God's Providence. Enviable indeed was the faith of the world's young day; sad that it should ever have been intercepted by the frigid, murky phantasm of law; and blessed will it be for man when his maturity shall have grown into a second childhood, with the Father's arms again around him, and, in his ripest philosophy, law shall yield place to the all-present God! A. P. PEABODY, D.D. A little philosophy inclineth a man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion: for, while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them and go no farther; but, when it beholdeth the chain of them confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to providence and deity. SIR FRANCIS BACON, Essay on Atheism. HERE'S a special providence in the fall of a sparrow.1 ΤΗ If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all. Hamlet, Act v. Sc. 2, 1. 230. 1 Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your father. Matt. x. 29. The words of Heaven; on whom it will, it will; On whom it will not, so; yet still 'tis just.1 Measure for Measure, Act i. Sc. 2, l. 126. Our wills and fates do so contrary run That our devices still are overthrown ; Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own. Hamlet, Act iii. Sc. 2, 1. 221. Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well, When our deep plots do pall: and that should teach us There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will.2 Hamlet, Act v. Sc. 2, 1. 8. But since correction lieth in those hands King Richard II., Act i. Sc. 2, 1. 4. In Pericles, his queen and daughter, seen, Pericles, Act v. Sc. 3, 1. 86. 1 For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. — Rom. ix. 15. 2 The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord. Prov. xvi. 23. |