a mistress. wholly broken off by means of a dog and a 4 dog and mistress. One Karsten possessed a performing poodle, and traveled about with this intelligent animal, representing a certain melodrama. The pampered and petted Von Heygendorff bore a spite against the inflexible director, and, with feminine malice, she, in order to annoy Goethe, induced her lover, the duke, to consent to an engagement of Karsten and his dog. Goethe at once resigned, and the duke accepted the resignation. He afterwards withdrew his acceptance, but Goethe remained proudly inflexible; and the classic epoch of the Weimar theatre was terminated by a clever and unconscious poodle, who emu- Goethe inlated the mischief produced by Newton's dog Diamond. It is related that when Layard, the discoverer of Nineveh, was Layard. twenty years old and lounging through Mesopotamia he was captured by an Arab tribe and made the chief's cook, in which position he was greatly admired, and called by the women of the tribe "the blue-eyed." He did not enjoy his slavery, and after a while managed to communicate with his friends, and at the end of a good deal of talk the Arab chief consented to exchange his prisoner for a greyhound, celebrated in flexible. Nineveh discovered. the country for hunting gazelles. His first halt on his return to civilization was at the encampment of Botta, who had been making longitudinal excavations, and to his despair without result. Layard was struck by a clever idea to cut transversely. This was done, and Nineveh was discovered. That happy thought decided his vocation - he became an archæologist. "The only memory I don't like," said Layard, gayly, "is that I was exchanged for a dog. My only consolation is in the fact that a Selongui greyhound is considered by Mussulmans as an especially noble animal." The foolish ballad of Lilli Burlero, treating the Papists, and chiefly the Irish, in a very ridiculous manner, slight and insignificant as it now seems, had once a more powerful Effect of a effect than the Philippics of either Demos ballad. thenes or Cicero; it contributed not a little toward the great revolution in 1688; the whole army and the people in country and city caught it up, and "sang a deluded. prince out of three kingdoms." The air is gay and beautiful; it is one of the masterpieces of Purcell, and lingers in the ear of every person who has once heard it. No wonder My Uncle Toby adopted it as a favorite and resource. Strahan, the tainties. printer, and friend of Johnson, once observed that many men were kept back from trying their fortunes in London because they were born to a competency, and said, "Small certainties are the bane of men Small cerof talents." "Small debts," said Johnson, "are like small shot; they are rattling on every side, and can scarcely be escaped without a wound: great debts are like cannon; of loud noise, but little danger. You must, therefore, be enabled to discharge petty debts, that you may have leisure, with security, to struggle with the rest." A gentleman visited Gibson, the sculptor, not long before his death, when he found him busy with his beautiful Pandora-finished, as it seemed, but still "in the clay." There she stood - a model of refined grace her box in her hand. The old man sat before it, talking and philosophizing. As he talked, he would gaze at his figure and, wetting his finger, would Figure of now and again pass it down the surface of a limb, giving a faint depression, or scraping off a film as faint. "Bless you," he said, "there's a month's work on it yet!" Reminding one of the saying of the old Greek sculptor, answering his objector that these were trifles. "Trifles make per Pandora. SECTS AND fection, and perfection is no trifle." Ah! trifles! "How much wiser," exclaimed Lady Mary Montagu, "are all those women I have despised than myself! In placing their happiness in trifles, they have placed it in what is attainable." Bayle in his Dictionary tells us that the sect which pleased Milton most in his youth was that of the Puritans; but in his middle age he was best pleased with the Independents and Anabaptists, because they allowed more liberty to every private person, and in his opinion seemed to come nearest to the primitive Christians but in the latter part of his life he separated himself from all communions, and did not frequent any Christian assembly, nor made use of their peculiar rites in his family. As for the rest, he expressed the profoundest reverence to God as well in deeds as words. It has been very justly said that the whole tangle of authoritative creeds The tangle is, at the best, embarrassing. They lead a man, from their nature, to try to continue in a belief which he once thought he had. They give a fossil form to what should be pliant, elastic, and alive. I believe, said Dean Swift, that thousands of men would embarrass ing. curious, or be orthodox enough in certain points, if divines had not been too curious, or too Divines too narrow, in reducing orthodoxy within the too narrow. compass of subtleties, niceties, and distinctions, with little warrant from Scripture, and less from reason or good policy. When Theodore Hook, in the old days of the English test oath, was asked if he could swear to the XXXIX articles, he replied, "Certainly, with all my heart; I am only sorry there are not more of them." Love, in the judgment of Hunt, is the The creed only creed destined to survive all others. survive. "They who think that no church can exist without a strong spice of terror, should watch the growth of education, and see which system of it is most beloved. They should see, also, which system in the very nursery is growing the most ridiculous." destined to Goethe's GOOD OUT A late commentator upon Faust is free to express the opinion that "evil, as a stimulant to deed, to creative activity, is an element of progress; as selfish indulgence, producing indolence and intellectual inactivity, tends downward, and causes cessation of spiritual life. It is in this respect comparable to poisons which in certain solutions stimulate the OF EVIL. |