Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

Robert A. Willmott

The instability of friendship furnishes one of the most melancholy reflections suggested by the contemplation of human life; and few of us have travelled far upon our pilgrimage without having had occasion to lament the loss of some companion who has parted from our side upon the first rumour that we have wandered from the fountains of the desert.

To study history is to study literature. The biography of a nation embraces all its works. No trifle is to be neglected. A mouldering medal is a letter of twenty centuries. Antiquities, which have been beautifully called history defaced, composed its fullest commentary. In these wrecks of many storms, which time washes to the shore, the scholar looks patiently for treasures. The painting round a vase, the scribble on a wall, the wrath of a demagogue, the drollery of a farce, the point of an epigram—each possesses its own interest and value. A fossil court of law is dug out of an orator; and the Pompeii of Greece is discovered in the Comedies of Aristophanes.