Of crystal for all men to read their actions
Through: men's hearts and faces are so far asunder,
That they hold no intelligence.

Beaumont and Fletcher.
What wit so sharp is found in age or youth,
That can distinguish truth from treachery?
Falsehood puts on the face of simple truth,
And masks i' th' habit of plain honesty,
When she in heart intends most villany.
Mirror for Magistrates.
As folks, quoth Richard, prone to leasing,
Say things at first because they're pleasing;
Then prove what they have once asserted,
Nor care to have their lie deserted :
Till their own dreams at length deceive them,
And, oft repeating, they believe them.-Prior.

So the false spider, when her nets are spread.
Deep ambush'd in her silent den does lie.

Dryden

Observe the wretch who hath his faith forsook,
How clear his voice, and how assured his look!
Like innocence, and as serenely bold
As truth, how loudly he forswears thy gold!

Dryden.

1196. FAME. Brevity of

WHERE is the fame

Which the vain-glorious mighty of the earth
Seek to eternize? Oh! the faintest sound
From time's light footfall, the minutest wave
That swells the flood of ages, whelms in nothing
The unsubstantial bubble. Aye, to-day
Stern is the tyrant's mandate, red the gaze
That flashes desolation, strong the arm
That scatters multitudes. To-morrow comes!
That mandate is a thunder-peal that died
In ages past; that gaze, a transient flash
On which the midnight closed, and on that arm
The worm has made his meal.-Shelley.

Sepulchral columns wrestle, but in vain,
With all-subduing time; her cankering hand
With calm deliberate malice wasteth them:
Worn on the edge of days, the brass consumes,
The busto moulders, and the deep-cut marble,
Unsteady, to the steel, gives up its charge.
Ambition, half-convicted of her folly,
Hangs down the hand and reddens at the tale.
Blair.

Absurd! to think to over-reach the grave,
And from the wreck of names to rescue ours:
The best-concerted schemes men lay for fame
Die fast away only themselves die faster.
The far-famed sculptor, and the laurell'd bard,
Those bold insurers of eternal fame,
Supply their little feeble aids in vain.-Blair.

And what is fame? the meanest have their day; The greatest can but blaze, and pass away.

Pope.

'Stern sons of war!' sad Wilfrid sigh'd,
'Behold the boast of Roman pride!
What now of all your toils are known?
A grassy trench, a broken stone!'-Scott.

The very generations of the dead
Are swept away, and tomb inherits tomb,
Until the memory of an age is fled,
And, buried, sinks beneath its offspring's doom.

I scorn this hated scene

Of masking and disguise,

Where men on men still gleam,

With falseness in their eyes;

Where all is counterfeit,

And truth hath never say; Where hearts themselves do cheat, Concealing hope's decay.-Motherwell. The man of pure and simple heart Through life disdains a double part, He never needs the screen of lies His inward bosom to disguise.-Gay.

1197. FAME: deserved.

Byron.

BUT there are deeds which should not pass away, And names that must not wither, though the earth Forgets her empires with a just decay,

The enslavers and the enslaved, their death and

birth;

The high, the mountain majesty of worth

Should be, and shall, survivor of its woe,

And from its immortality look forth

In the sun's face, like yonder Alpine snow,
Imperishably pure beyond all things below. -Byron.

Yet vanity herself had better taught
A surer path even to the fame he sought,
By pointing out on history's fruitless page
Ten thousand conquerors for a single sage,
While Franklin's quiet mem'ry climbs to heaven,
Calming the lightning which he thence had riven,
Or drawing from the no less kindled earth
Freedom and peace to that which boasts his birth;
While Washington's a watchword, such as ne'er
Shall sink while there's an echo left to air.-Byron.

1198. FAME. Earthly

Of all the phantoms fleeting in the mist

Of Time, though meagre all, and ghostly thin,
Most unsubstantial, unessential shade,
Was earthly Fame. She was a voice alone,
And dwelt upon the noisy tongues of men.
She never thought; but gabbled ever on;
Applauding most what least deserved applause;
The motive, the result was nought to her :
The deed alone, though dyed in human gore,
And steep'd in widow's tears, if it stood out
To prominent display, she talk'd of such,
And roar'd around it with a thousand tongues.
As changed the wind her organ, so she changed
Perpetually: and whom she praised to-day,
Vexing his ear with acclamations loud,
To-morrow blamed, and hiss'd him out of sight.

Such was her nature, and her practice such :
But, oh! her voice was sweet to mortal ears;
And touch'd so pleasantly the strings of pride
And vanity, which in the heart of man
Were ever strung harmonious to her note,
That many thought to live without her song
Was rather death than life to live unknown,
Unnoticed, unrenown'd! to die unpraised!
Unepitaph'd! to go down to the pit,

And moulder into dust among vile worms,
And leave no whispering of a name on earth!
Such thought was cold about the heart, and chill'd
The blood. Who could endure it? who could choose,
Without a struggle, to be swept away
From all remembrance, and have part no more
With living men? Philosophy fail'd here;
And self-approving pride. Hence it became
The aim of most, and main pursuit, to win
A name to leave some vestige as they pass'd,
That following ages might discern they once
Had been on earth, and acted something there.

Many the roads they took, the plans they tried:

Of honour, glory, and immortal fame,
Can these recall the spirit from its place,
Or re-inspire the breathless clay with life?
What though your fame, with all its thousand
trumpets,

Sound o'er the sepulchres, will that awake
The sleeping dead ?-Sewell.

How vain that second life in others' breath,
Th' estate which wits inherit after death!
Ease, health, and life for this they must resign;
Unsure the tenure, but how vast the fine!
The great man's curse without the gain endure;
Be envied, wretched; and be flatter'd, poor.
Pope.

What so foolish as the chase of fame?
How vain the prize! how impotent our aim !
For what are men, who grasp at praise sublime,
But bubbles on the rapid stream of time,
That rise and fall, that swell, and are no more,
Born and forgot, ten thousand in an hour?

Young.

Fame is the shade of immortality,
And in itself a shadow. Soon as caught,
Contemn'd, it shrinks to nothing in the grasp.
Consult th' ambitious, 'tis ambition's cure:
And is this all? cried Cæsar at his height,
Disgusted. - Young.

The selfish as a promise of advancement, at least to a man's own kin,

And common minds as a flattering fact, that men have been told of their existence. -Tupper.

For fame the wretch beneath the gallows lies,
Disowning every crime for which he dies,
Of life profuse, tenacious of a name,
Fearless of death, and yet afraid of shame.
Nature has wove into the human mind
This anxious care of names we leave behind,
To extend our narrow views beyond the tomb,
And give an earnest of a life to come;
For, if when dead, we are but dust or clay,
Why think of what posterity shall say?
Her praise or censure cannot us concern,
Nor ever penetrate the silent urn.

And what is fame, that flutt'ring noisy sound,

Thousands of men fall in the field of honour,

1208. FAME. Power of

OH! who shall lightly say that fame
Is nothing but an empty name?
Whilst in that sound there is a charm
The nerve to brace, the heart to warm,
As, thinking of the mighty dead,
The young from slothful couch will start,
And vow, with lifted hands outspread,
Like them to act a noble part?

Oh! who shall lightly say that fame
Is nothing but an empty name?
When but for those our mighty dead,
All ages past a blank would be,
Sunk in oblivion's murky bed-
A desert bare, a shipless sea?
They are the distant objects seen-
The lofty marks of what hath been.

Joanna Baillie.

THE aspiring youth that fired the Ephesian dome Outlives in fame the pious fool that raised it.

Cibber

1209. FAME. Qualities of WHAT'S fame?-a fancied life in others' breath,

A thing beyond us, e'en before our death.

Just what you hear, you have, and what's unknown

The same (my lord) if Tully's, or your own.

All that we feel of it begins and ends
In the small circle of our foes or friends;
To all beside as much an empty shade
A Eugene living as a Cæsar dead;

Alike or when or where they shone or shine,
Or on the Rubicon, or on the Rhine.
A wit's a feather, and a chief a rod;

An honest man's the noblest work of God.
Fame but from death a villain's name can save,
As justice tears his body from the grave;
When what to oblivion better were resign'd
Is hung on high, to poison half mankind,
All same is foreign, but of true desert;

Plays round the head, but comes not to the heart:
One self-approving hour whole years outweighs
Of stupid starers and of loud huzzas.

And more true joy Marcellus exiled feels

Than Casar with a senate at his heels.-Pope.

1214. FAMILY: a Book.

THE family is like a book,
The children are the leaves,
The parents are the cover that
Protective beauty gives.

At first the pages of the book

Are blank, and smooth, and fair; But time soon writeth memories,

And painteth pictures there.

Love is the little golden clasp

That bindeth up the trust; Oh break it not, lest all the leaves Shall scatter and be lost.

1215. FAMILY: inseparable.

'Tis but one family-the sound is balm,
A seraph-whisper to the wounded heart,

It lulls the storm of sorrow to a calm,

And draws the venom from the avenger's dart.

'Tis but one family-the accents come

Like light from heaven to break the night of woe, The banner-cry to call the spirit home,

The shout of victory o'er a fallen foe.

Death cannot separate-Is memory dead?

Has thought, too, vanish'd, and has love grown chill?

Has every relic and memento fled,

And are the living only with us still?

No! in our hearts the lost we mourn remain
Objects of love and ever-fresh delight;
And fancy leads them in her fairy train,

In half-seen transports past the mourner's sight. Yes! in ten thousand ways, or far or near,

The call by love, by meditation brought,
In heavenly visions yet they haunt us here,
The sad companions of our sweetest thought.
Death never separates; the golden wires

That ever trembled to their names before,
Will vibrate still, though every form expires,
And those we love, we look upon no more,

No more indeed in sorrow and in pain,

But even memory's need ere long will cease,
For we shall join the lost of love again,
In endless bands, and in eternal peace.

1216. FAMILY. Reunion of a

Edmeston.

SCATTER'D o'er various fields by Heaven,
Through various pathways led,
What happiness in peace to meet
Around a common head!

To talk of mercies shared by all,
Of hopes that virtues raise;
And in the general bliss enjoy'd,
To join in general praise !

The pleasures of the past recall,

And tell the tales again

Of infant dreams, and childhood's joys,

And youth's delightful reign,

And then the strange vicissitudes

Of mankind to compare ;

And mark how wonderful, how kind,
Heaven's dispensations are,—

To plan the schemes of future bliss ;

Rejoicing to confess,

That He whose love hath bless'd the past,

The future, too, will bless.

Thus the domestic hearth is made
Both love and virtue's shrine,

And thus earth's dross is purified,

And man becomes divine.-Bowring.

1217. FAMILY. Ties of the

If there is happiness below,

In such a home she's shrined: The human heart can never know

Enjoyment more refined,

Than where the sacred band is twined
Of filial and parental ties,—
That tender union, all combined
Of Nature's holiest sympathies !

'Tis friendship in its loveliest dress! 'Tis love's most perfect tenderness ! All other friendships may decay, All other loves may fade away: Our faults or follies may disgust The friend in whom we fondly trust; Or selfish views may intervene, From us his changeful heart to wean: Or we ourselves may change, and find Faults to which once our love was blind: Or ling'ring pain, or pining care At length may weary friendship's ear; And love may gaze with alter'd eye, When beauty's young attractions fly: But in that union, firm and mild, That binds a parent to his child, Such jarring chords can never soundSuch painful doubts can never wound. Though health and fortune may decay, And fleeting beauty pass away; Though grief may blight, or sin deface Our youth's fair promise, or disgrace May brand with infamy, and shame, And public scorn, our blasted name; Though all the fell contagion fly, Of guilt, reproach, and misery,— When love forgets, and friends forsake,