"The mind should be great in imagination and virtuous emotion, no less than in intellect, to be healthy and vigorous in all its proportions."-RUSKIN. "It is no wisdom to make boys prodigies of information; but it is our wisdom and our duty to cultivate their faculties each in its season-first the memory and imagination, and then the judgment; to furnish them with the means, and to excite the desire of improving themselves, and to wait with confidence for God's blessing on the result."-REV. DR. ARNOLD. "Poetry has been to me an exceeding great reward; it has soothed my affliction; it has multiplied and refined my enjoyments; it has endeared my solitude; and it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the Good and the Beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me."-COLERIDGE. "Verse far exceedeth prose in the knitting up of the memory. Who is it that ever was a scholar that does not carry away some verses which in his youth he learned, and even to old age serve him for hourly lessons."-SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. "There are some truths, deeper and more vital than those of Science, and with respect to which the heart is wiser than the head. It is Poetry or Literature which-reflecting the concentrated result of the universal experience of life-communicates these unchanging and everlasting truths through the imagination, affections, and conscience."-NATIONAL REVIEW. "Its great tendency and purpose is, to carry the mind beyond and above the beaten, dusty, weary walks of ordinary life; to lift it into a purer element; and to breathe into it more profound and generous emotion. It reveals to us the loveliness of nature, brings back the freshness of early feeling, revives the relish of simple pleasures, keeps unquenched the enthusiasm which warmed the spring-time of our being, refines youthful love, strengthens our interests in human nature by vivid delineations of its tenderest and loftiest feelings, spreads our sympathies over all classes of society, knits us by new ties with universal being, and, through the brightness of its prophetic visions, helps faith to lay hold on the future life.-REV. DR. CHANNING. The Burial of William the Conqueror The Dying Christian to his Soul Cato's Soliloquy on the Immortality of the Soul Hamlet's Soliloquy on his Mother's Marriage. Cassius instigating Brutus against Cæsar Hotspur's Description of a Fop Claude Melnotte's Apology to Pauline. "Our Indiscretion sometimes serves us well". Richard the Second on Kingly Greatness Henry the Fifth to his Army at Harfleur Henry the Fifth to his Army at Agincourt "There is a Tide in the Affairs of Men". Othello's Address to the Senate The Banished Duke to his Followers Marino Faliero's Farewell to his Wife Marino Faliero's Imprecation on Venice Lord Chatham on the American War Burke's Impeachment of Warren Hastings Sheridan's Invective against Warren Hastings Burke on the Fall of Marie Antoinette Robert Hall on the threatened Invasion by Napoleon Charles Phillips on the Character of Napoleon Bonaparte. |