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Or flocks or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair,
Presented with a universal blank

Of nature's works to me expunged and razed,
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.
So much the rather, thou celestial Light,
Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate; there plant eyes; all mist from thence
Purge and disperse; that I may see, and tell

Of things invisible to mortal sight,

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Spell and pronounce: - Stygian, sojourn, chaos, vital, Sion, re-ascend, renown, voluntary, covert, nocturnal, invisible, razed, purge, and disperse.

Notes.-1. Or'phe an-Orpheus wrote a hymn to Night, addressing her as "Mother of gods and men.'

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2. Milton's blindness was caused by gutta serena.

3. Tham'y ris-A Thracian who invented the Doric measure. 4. Mæ on' i deg-Homer, the blind Epic poet. (The Iliad and The Odyssey.)

5. Ti re'si as-a blind Theban prophet.

6. Phin'e us-King of Arcadia.

ON MILTON.

"Three poets in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn:
The first in loftiness of thought surpassed;
The next in majesty; in both the last.
The force of nature could no further go;
To make a third she joined the other two."

DRYDEN.

1 Homer.

2 Virgil.

LESSON CXXXII.

mo răss', a marsh; bog; fen. eon'jured, produced by magic. quǎg'mīre, soft wet land that shakes under the feet.

vi çis'si tūdeş, regular changes. prone, inclined, or disposed to.

e pit'o mēs, brief summaries. whim'şi eal, having odd fancies.

vo çif'er oùs, noisy; clamorous. gŎs'sa mers, filmy, web-like substances.

THE CATSKILL MOUNTAINS.

I shall never forget my first view of these mountains. It was in the course of a voyage up the Hudson, in the good old times before steamboats and railroads had driven all poetry and romance out of travel. Such an excursion in those days was equal to a voyage to Europe at present, and cost almost as much; but we enjoyed the river then. My whole voyage up the Hudson was full of wonder and romance. I was a lively boy, somewhat imaginative, of easy faith, and prone to relish everything which partook of the marvelous.

Among the passengers on board of the sloop, was a veteran Indian trader, on his way to the lakes to traffic with the natives. He had discovered my propensity, and amused himself throughout the voyage by telling me Indian legends, and grotesque stories about every noted place on the river.

The Catskill Mountains, especially, called forth a host of fanciful traditions. We were all day tiding along in sight of them, so that he had full time to weave his whimsical narratives. In these mountains, he told me, according to Indian belief, was kept the great treasury of storm and sunshine for the region of the Hudson. An old squaw spirit

had charge of it, who dwelt on the highest peak of the mountain.

Here she kept Day and Night shut up in her wigwam, letting out only one of them at a time. She made new moons every month and hung them up in the sky, cutting up the old ones for stars. The great Manitou, or master spirit, employed her to manufacture clouds; sometimes she wove them out of cobwebs, gossamers, and morning dew, and sent them off, flake after flake, to float in the air and give light summer showers; sometimes she would brew up black thunder storms and send down drenching rains, to swell the streams and sweep away everything.

He had many stories, also, about mischievous spirits who infested the mountains in the shape. of animals, and played all kinds of pranks upon Indian hunters, decoying them into quagmires and morasses, or to the brinks of torrents and precipices. All these were doled out to me as I lay on the deck, throughout a long summer's day, gazing upon these mountains, the ever-changing shapes and hues of which appeared to realize the magical influences in question.

Sometimes they seemed to approach, at others to recede. During the heat of the day, they almost melted into a sultry haze. As the day declined they deepened in tone, their summits were brightened by the last rays of the sun, and, later in the evening, their whole outline was printed in deep purple against an amber sky. As I beheld them thus shifting continually before my eye, and listened to the marvelous legends of the trader, a host of fanciful notions was conjured into my brain which have haunted it ever since.

As to the Indian superstitions concerning the treasury of storms and sunshine, and the cloudweaving spirits, they may have been suggested by the atmospherical phenomena of these mountains, the clouds which gather round their summits, and the thousand aerial effects which indicate the changes of weather over a great extent of country. They are epitomes of our variable climate, and are stamped with all its vicissitudes. And here let me say a word in favor of those vicissitudes, which are too often made the subject of exclusive repining. If they annoy us occasionally by changes from hot to cold, from wet to dry, they give us one of the most beautiful climates in the world.

They give us the brilliant sunshine of the south of Europe, with the fresh verdure of the north. They float our summer sky with clouds of gorgeous tints or fleecy whiteness, and send down cooling showers to refresh the panting earth and keep it green. Our seasons are all poetical; the phenomena of our heavens are full of sublimity and beauty. Winter with us has none of its proverbial gloom. It may have its howling winds and chilling frosts and whirling snow-storms, but it has also its long intervals of cloudless sunshine, when the snowclad earth gives redoubled brightness to the day; when, at night, the stars beam with intensest luster or the moon floods the whole landscape with her most limpid radiance.

And then the joyous outbreak of our spring, bursting at once into leaf and blossom, redundant with vegetation and vociferous with life! And the splendors of our summer; its morning voluptuousness and evening glory; its airy palaces of sun-gilt clouds piled up in a deep azure sky, and its gusts

of tempest of almost tropical grandeur, when the forked lightning, and the bellowing thunder volley from the battlements of heaven, and shake the sultry atmosphere! And the sublime melancholy of our autumn, magnificent in its decay, withering down the pomp and pride of a woodland country, yet reflecting back from its yellow forests the golden serenity of the sky! Surely we may say that, in our climate, “The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth forth His handiwork; day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge."

WASHINGTON IRVING.

Spell and pronounce : — decoying, doled, haunted, proverbial, superstitious, recede, summits, luster, precipices, veteran, haze, grotesque, traffic, voluptuousness, and fleecy.

Give synonyms for propensity, amuse, legend, grotesque magical, noted, especially, torrent, question, and splendor.

FOR MEMORY.

"God doth not need

Either man's work, or his own gifts. Who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait."

MILTON (on his blindness).

"Pray though the gift you ask for
May never comfort your fears-

May never repay your pleading,
Yet pray, and with hopeful tears;
An answer, not that you long for,
But diviner, will come one day;
Your eyes are too dim to see it,
Yet strive, and wait, and pray."

ADELAIDE A. PROCTER.

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