ARGUMENT. How a Ship, having first sailed to the Equator, was driven by Storms, to the cold Country towards the South Pole; how the Ancient Mariner cruelly, and in contempt of the laws of hospitality, killed a Sea-bird; and how he was followed by many and strange Judgements; and in what manner he came back […]

Faith may be defined as fidelity to our own being, so far as such being is not and cannot become an object of the senses; and hence, by clear inference or implication to being generally, as far as the same is not the object of the senses; and again to whatever is affirmed or understood […]

LETTERS ON THE INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. LETTER I. My dear friend, I employed the compelled and most unwelcome leisure of severe indisposition in reading The Confessions of a Fair Saint in Mr. Carlyle’s recent translation of the Wilhelm Meister, which might, I think, have been better rendered literally The Confessions of a Beautiful Soul. […]

Si partem tacuisse velim, quodeumque relinquam,Majus erit. Veteres actus, primamque juventamProsequar? Ad sese mentem praesentia ducunt.Narrem justitiam? Resplendet gloria Martis.Armati referam vires? Plus egit inermis.CLAUDIAN DE LAUD. STIL. (Translations.)–If I desire to pass over a part in silence, whatever I omit will seem the most worthy to have been recorded. Shall I pursue his old […]

– the generous spirit, who, when broughtAmong the tasks of real life, hath wroughtUpon the plan that pleased his childish thought:Whose high endeavours are an inward lightThat makes the path before him always bright;Who, doom’d to go in company with pain,And fear and bloodshed, miserable train!Turns his necessity to glorious gain;By objects, which might force […]

Almighty God, by thy eternal Word my Creator Redeemer and Preserver! who hast in thy free communicative goodness glorified me with the capability of knowing thee, the one only absolute Good, the eternal I Am, as the author of my being, and of desiring and seeking thee as its ultimate end;–who, when I fell from […]

Fortuna plerumque est velutiGalaxia quarundam obscurarumVirtutum sine nomine.BACON. (Translation)–Fortune is for the most part but a galaxy or milky way, as it were, of certain obscure virtues without a name. “Does Fortune favour fools? Or how do you explain the origin of the proverb, which, differently worded, is to be found in all the languages […]

Quod me non movet aestimatione:Verum est [Greek text which cannot be reproduced] mei sodalis.CATULL. xii. (Translation.)–It interests not by any conceit of its value; but it is a remembrance of my honoured friend. The philosophic ruler, who secured the favours of fortune by seeking wisdom and knowledge in preference to them, has pathetically observed–“The heart […]

PRAYER. A man may pray night and day, and yet deceive himself; but no man can be assured of his sincerity who does not pray. Prayer is faith passing into act; a union of the will and the intellect realising in an intellectual act. It is the whole man that prays. Less than this is […]

– Whose powers shed round him in the common strife,Or mild concerns of ordinary life,A constant influence, a peculiar grace;But who, if he be call’d upon to faceSame awful moment, to which Heaven has join’dGreat issues, good or bad for human kind,Is happy as a lover, is attiredWith sudden brightness like a man inspired;And through […]

The shepherds went their hasty way, And found the lowly stable-shed Where the Virgin-Mother lay; And now they checked their eager tread, For to the Babe that at her bosom clung, A mother’s song the Virgin-Mother sung. They told her how a glorious light, Streaming from a heavenly throng, Around them shone, suspending night! While […]