Por. Tarry a little; there is something else,-
This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood;
The words expressly are a pound of flesh;
Then take thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh;
But, in the cutting it, if thou dost shed

One drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods
Are, by the laws of Venice, confiscate

Unto the state of Venice.

Gra. O upright judge!-Mark, Jew!—O learned judge! Shy. Is that the law?

Por.

Thyself shall see the act:
For as thou urgest justice, be assured

Thou shalt have justice, more than thou desirest.
Gra. O learned judge! Mark, Jew; a learned judge!
Shy. I take this offer then,-pay the bond thrice,
And let the Christian go.

Bass.
Por.

Here is the money.

Soft.

The Jew shall have all justice ;-soft;-no haste;—-
He shall have nothing but the penalty.

Gra. O Jew! an upright judge, a learned judge!
Por. Therefore, prepare thee to cut off the flesh.
Shed thou no blood; nor cut thou less nor more,
But just a pound of flesh; if thou tak'st more,
Or less, than just a pound,--be it but so much
As makes it light, or heavy, in the substance,
Or the division of the twentieth part

Of one poor scruple,-nay, if the scale do turn
But in the estimation of a hair,-

Thou diest, and all thy goods are confiscate.
Gra. A second Daniel, a Daniel, Jew!

Now, infidel, I have thee on the hip.

Por. Why doth the Jew pause? take thy forfeiture.
Shy. Give me my principal, and let me go.
Bass. I have it ready for thee; here it is.
Por. He hath refused it in the open court;
He shall have merely justice, and his bond.
Gra. A Daniel! still say I; a second Daniel !——
I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word.
Shy. Shall I not have barely my principal?
Por. Thou shalt have nothing but the forfeiture,
To be so taken at thy peril, Jew.

Shy. Why then the devil give him good of it!
I'll stay no longer question.
Tarry, Jew;

Por.

The law hath yet another hold on you.
It is enacted in the laws of Venice,-
If it be proved against an alien,
That by direct or indirect attempts
He seek the life of any citizen,

The party 'gainst the which he doth contrive
Shall seize one half his goods; the other half
Comes to the privy coffer of the state;
And the offender's life lies in the mercy
Of the duke only, 'gainst all other voice,
In which predicament, I say, thou stand'st:
For it appears, by manifest proceeding,
That, indirectly, and directly too,
Thou hast contriv'd against the very life
Of the defendant; and thou hast incurr'd
The danger formerly by me rehearsed.
Down therefore, and beg mercy of the duke.

Gra. Beg that thou may'st have leave to hang thyself: And yet, thy wealth being forfeit to the state,

Thou hast not left the value of a cord;

Therefore, thou must be hanged at the state's charge. Duke. That thou shalt see the difference of our spirit,

I pardon thee thy life before thou ask it:

For half thy wealth, it is Antonio's;
The other half comes to the general state,
Which humbleness may drive into a fine.

Por. Ay, for the state; not for Antonio.

Shy. Nay, take my life and all, pardon not that:
You take my house, when you do take the prop
That doth sustain my house; you take my life,
When you do take the means whereby I live.

Por. What mercy can you render him, Antonio?
Gra. A halter gratis; nothing else, I pray you.
Ant. So please my lord the duke, and all the court,
To quit the fine for one half of his goods;

I am content, so he will let me have

The other half in use, to render it,

Upon his death, unto the gentleman
That lately stole his daughter;

Two things provided more,-that for this favour,
He presently become a Christian;

The other, that he do record a gift

Here in the court, of all he dies possessed
Unto his son Lorenzo and his daughter.

Duke. He shall do this: or else I do recant

The pardon that I late pronounced here.

Por. Art thou contented, Jew; what dost thou say?
Shy. I am content.

Por.

Clerk, draw a deed of gift. Shy. I pray you give me leave to go from hence: I am not well; send the deed after me,

And I will sign it.

Duke.

Get thee gone, but do it.—Shakespeare.

ON EDUCATION.

Of all the blessings which it has pleased Providence to allow us to cultivate, there is not one that breathes a purer fragrance, or bears a heavenlier aspect, than education. It is a companion which no misfortune can depress, no clime destroy, no enemy alienate, no despotism enslave: at home a friend, abroad an introduction, in solitude a solace, in society an ornament: it chastens vice, it guides virtue, it gives at once a grace and government to genius. Without it, what is man? A splendid slave! a reasoning savage, vacillating between the dignity of an intelligence derived from God, and the degradation of passions participated with brutes; and, in the accident of their alternate ascendancy, shuddering at the terrors of a hereafter, or embracing the horrid hope of annihilation.

What is this wondrous world of his residence?

a dark, and desolate, and dreary cavern, without wealth, or ornament, or order. But light up within it the torch of knowledge, and how wondrous the transition! The seasons change, the atmosphere breathes, the landscape lives, earth unfolds its fruits, ocean rolls in its magnificence, the heavens display their constellated canopy, and the grand animated spectacle of nature rises revealed before him, its varieties regulated, and its mysteries resolved! The phenomena which bewilder, the prejudices which debase, the superstitions which enslave, vanish before education.

Like the holy symbol which blazed upon the cloud before the hesitating Constantine, if man follow but its precepts, purely, it will not only lead him to the victories of this world, but open the very portals of Omnipotence for his admission. Cast your eye over the monumental map of ancient grandeur,

once studded with the stars of empire and the splendours of philosophy. What erected the little state of Athens into a powerful commonwealth, placing in her hand the sceptre of legislation, and wreathing round her brow the imperishable chaplet of literary fame? What extended Rome, the haunt of banditti, into universal empire? What animated Sparta with that high, unbending, adamantine courage, which conquered nature herself, and has fixed her in the sight of future ages, a model of public virtue, and a proverb of national independence? What but those wise public institutions which strengthened their minds with early application, informed their infancy with the principles of action, and sent them into the world, too vigilant to be deceived by its calms, and too vigorous to be shaken by its whirlwinds?-Phillips.

THE OLD STATUE.

I.

In the market-place of Ypres, three hundred years ago,
A crumbling statue, old and rent by many a lightning blow,
Stood-sad and stern, and grim and blank, upon its
mossy base,
The woes of many centuries were frozen in its face.

It was a Cæsar some men said, and some said Charlemagne,
Yet no one knew when he it aped, began, or ceased to reign,
Nor who it was, or what it was could any rightly say,
For the date upon its pedestal was fretted quite away.

When blue and ghastly moonshine fell, severing the shadows dark,

And stars above were shining out with many a diamond spark,
It used to cast its giant shade across the market square,
And through the darkness and the shine it fixed its stony stare.

'Twas said that where its shadow fell on a certain day and year, An hour at least past midnight when the moon was up and clear,

Near to that statue's mouldy base, deep hid beneath the ground,

A treasure vast, of royal wealth, was certain to be found.

Slow round, as round a dial-plate, its sharp dark shadow passed,

On fountain and cathedral roof, by turns, eclipse it cast;

Before it fled the pale blue light, chased as man's life by Death, And deep you heard the great clock tick, like a sleeping giant's breath.

II.

In that same market-place there lived an alchemist of fame,
A lean and yellow dark-eyed man, Hans Memling was his

name,

In scarlet hood and blood-red robe, in crimson vest and gown, For twenty years, the moonlight through, he'd sat and watched

the town.

Like one flame lit he used to peer between the mullions there, As yonder stars shot blessed light through the clear midnight air;

When chess-board, chequered black and white, part silver and part jet,

The city lay in light and shade, barred with the moonbeams' net. When gable-ends and pinnacles, and twisted chimney-stalks, Rose thick around the market square, and its old cloister'd walks,

--

When gurgoyles on the minster tower made faces at the moon,
And convent gardens were as bright as if it had been noon,-
Memling the miser alchemist-then left his crimson vials,
His Arab books, his bottled toads, his sulphurous fiery trials,
His red-hot crucibles, and dyes that turned from white to blue,
His silver trees that starry rose the crystal vases through.
His room was piled with ponderous tomes, thick-ribbed and
silver-clasp'd,

The letters twined with crimson flowers, the covers goldenhasp'd,

With dripping stills and furnaces, whose doors were smoulder'd black,

With maps of stars and charts of seas lined with untravers'd track.

In dusty corners of his room black spiders mischief knit,
A skeleton, bound hand and foot, did ever by him sit.
Pale corpses, prisoned in glass, stood round his chamber
barr'd,

Two mummies at his blister'd door kept ever watch and ward.

The "Red man" he had long since bound-the "Dragon" he had chased,

No spell of Arab alchemist but he had long since traced,

D