780 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. . N. P. WILLIS. N ATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS, author of three of the selections of this volume, was a native of Portland, Maine. He was born January 20th, 1807. He was graduated at Yale in 1827, before which he took a prize for a poem. He devoted himself to journalism at once after completing his college course, and adhered to it closely till his death, which occurred January 20th, 1867. He made several journeys abroad, and wrote voluminously, both in prose and verse. WILLIAM WIRT. ILLIAM WIRT, LL.D., was born at Bladensburg, Md., November 8th, 1772. He was left an orphan at the age of eight years, but was brought up by an uncle. He studied law, and commenced practice in Culpepper and Albemarle counties, Va. He was appointed United States Attorney for the District of Virginia in 1816, and was Attorney-General of the United States for three full terms under the administrations of Monroe and John Quincy Adams. He delivered, at Washington, on October 19th, 1826, a discourse commemorative of the deaths of Adams and Jefferson. His sketch of "The Blind Preacher" (p. 185) is a good illustration of his ability as a word painter. He died at Washington, D. C., February 18th, 1834, deeply lamented by all. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. SOUTHEY'S successor as poet laureate, and Tennyson's immediate predecessor, was William Wordsworth, born April 7th, 1770, in Cumberland, England. His alma mater was Cambridge, where he excelled in the classics. At thirteen his poesy began to appear, and he began to make it his chief study. After much foreign travel and little success as a poet, he began to loom up in the public favor about 1814, and he was sixty years old when he really became popular. He then began to live comfortably, received a pension and an honorary D. C. L. from Oxford, and in 1843, when seventy-three years of age, became the royal poet. He died in 1850. Three of his poems are in GEMS. LIVING THOUGHTS FROM THE WORLD'S GREAT ACTION. The only cure for grief is action.(G.H.Lewes Speak out in acts; the time for words has A stirring dwarf we do allowance give passed, and deeds alone suffice. Before a sleeping giant. (Shakespeare. Better to sink beneath the shock (Byron. (Whittier. Everywhere in life, the true question is, not what we gain, but what we do. (Carlyle. A slender acquaintance with the world must I have lived to know that the secret of hapconvince every man, that actions, not words, are the true criterion of the attachment of friends. Washington. Men must be decided on what they will NOT do, and then they are able to act with vigor in what they ought to do. (Mencius. Our acts, our angels are, or good or ill, Our fatal shadows that walk by us still. (John Fletcher. Our grand business is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand. (Carlyle. Push on-keep moving. (Thomas Morton. Heaven never helps the men who will not (Sophocles. No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offence. (Carlyle. act. piness is never to allow your energies God be thank'd that the dead have left still ADVERSITY. (Owen Meredith. Sweet are the uses of adversity; (Shakespeare. Cicero has said of men: "They are like wine; (Beaumont and Fletcher. 782 GEMS FOR THE FIRESIDE. Afflictions fall, not like the lightning strokes The eternal stars shine out as soon as it is upon the tree, to blast and shatter it the more, but like the blows of the sculptor which shape the marble into a thing of beauty. (Howard Malcom. It is often better to have a great deal of harm happen to one than a little; a great deal may rouse you to remove what a little will only accustom you to endure. (Greville. The greater our dread of crosses, the more necessary they are for us. (Fenelon. dark enough. AMBITION. (Carlyle. Ambition has but one reward for all: Oh, sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise, skies? Heav'n still with laughter the vain toil surveys, We know not of what we are capable till the And buries madmen in the heaps they raise. trial comes;-till it comes, perhaps, in a form which makes the strong man quail, and turns the gentler woman into a heroine. (Mrs. Jameson. Prosperity is no just scale; adversity is the (Pope. Most people would succeed in small things if they were not troubled with great ambitions. (Longfellow, Remember Milo's end, only balance to weigh friends. (Plutarch. Wedged in that timber which he strove to rend. (Wentworth Dillon. storms; Men think God is destroying them because Pours fierce Ambition in a Cæsar's mind. he is tuning them. The violinist screws up the key till the tense cord sounds the concert pitch; but it is not to break it, but to use it tunefully, that he stretches the string upon the musical rack. (Beecher. His overthrow heap'd happiness upon him; There are no crown wearers in heaven who LIVING THOUGHTS OF GREAT THINKERS. Say what we will, you may be sure that am Art is Nature made by Man 783 (Owen Meredith. bition is an error; its wear and tear of To Man the interpreter of God. heart are never recompensed, it steals away the freshness of life, it deadens its vivid and social enjoyments, it shuts our souls to our own youth,-and we are old ere we remember that we have made a fever and a labor of our raciest years. ART. Art is the child of Nature: yes, (Bulwer. (Longfellow. Seraphs share with thee Knowledge: But Art, O Man, is thine alone! (Schiller. I think I love and reverence all arts equally, only putting my own just above the others; because in it I recognize the union and culmination of them all. To me it seems as if when God conceived the world, that was Poetry; He formed it, and that was Sculpture; He colored it, and that was Painting; He peopled it with living beings, and that was the grand, divine, eternal Drama. (Charlotte Cushman. If it is the love of that which your work represents-if, being a landscape painter, it is love of hills and trees that moves you -if, being a figure painter, it is love of human beauty, and human soul that moves you-if, being a flower or animal painter, it is love, and wonder, and delight in petal and in limb that move you, then the spirit is upon you, and the earth is yours, and the fullness thereof. (Ruskin. His heart was in his work, and the heart Giveth grace unto every Art. (Longfellow. The one thing that marks the true artist is a clear perception and a firm, bold hand, in distinction from that imperfect mental vision and uncertain touch which give us the feeble pictures and the lumpy statues of the mere artisans on canvas or in stone. (Holmes. Dead he is not, but departed,-for the artist never dies. (Longfellow. He best can paint them who shall feel them most. (Pope. In sculpture did ever any body call the Apollo a fancy piece? Or say of the Laocoön how it might be made different? A master-piece of art has in the mind a fixed place in the chain of being, as much as a plant or a crystal. (Emerson. Nature is a revelation of God; (Longfellow. Art a revelation of man. The Gothic cathedral is a blossoming in stone subdued by the insatiable demand of harmony in man. The mountain of granite blooms into an eternal flower, with the lightness and delicate finish, as well as the aerial proportions and perspective of vegetable beauty. (Emerson. The stone unhewn and cold, Becomes a living mould, The more the marble wastes The more the statue grows. (Michael Angelo. Doubtless the human face is the grandest of all mysteries; yet fixed on canvas, it can hardly tell of more than one sensation; no struggle, no successive contrasts accessible to dramatic art, can painting give, as neither time nor motion exists for her. (Madame de Staël. And the cold marble leapt to life a god. (Milman. Were builded, with his own, into the walls, As offerings unto God. (Longfellow. 784 GEMS FOR THE FIRESIDE. within. (Thomson. (Socrates Nature is not at variance with art, nor art Thoughtless of beauty, she was beauty's self. with nature: they being both the servants of his providence. Art is the per- I pray thee, O God, that I may be beautiful fection of nature. Were the world now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a chaos. Nature hath made one world, and art another. In brief, all things are artificial; for nature is the art of God. (Sir Thomas Browne. The architect Loveliness Needs not the foreign aid of ornament, But is, when unadorn'd, adorn'd the most. (Thomson If the nose of Cleopatra had been a little shorter, it would have changed the history of the world. (Pascal |