We have done with education. We come to the Charity of the Muse. She visits the poor man's home and the sick-bed. One almost starts at the thought, in the midst of the smoke, and the wealth, and the uproar of Pagan Rome. Yet there the plain words are, "She (pardon me) comforts the indigent and the sick man." Is it not _sic in orig._? NORTH. _Sic._ BULLER. Of her ministrations to the splendour of Arts and the luxury of Patrician feasts--of her Theatres, that spread laughter or tears over the dense myriads of the World's Metropolis--not a syllable. The innermost heart of the Poet must have held the chord that gave out the soft low sound--_inopem solatur et ægrum_. No introduction and no comment. A solitary, unpretending sentence or clause. NORTH. God bless you, my dear Buller. TALBOYS. Amen. May the Chairman of Quarter Sessions live a thousand years! The indigent man may, I suppose, be a poor learned or a poor unlearned man. Relatively to the latter we may think, for Scotland, of Burns' Poems lying in Scottish cottages; and beginning from Scotland, of the traditional ballads and songs that sound in every hut throughout Europe:--for Italy, of what they say of the Venetian Gondoliers singing a Venetianised Gerusalemme Liberata. NORTH. So far, my children, for the "_parvis rebus_." Something on a more extended scale, and of a loftier reach! We are commenting Horace. From the earliest times of civilisation, a principal office of verse was to adorn and solemnise the services of Religion. The cultivation of Verse was early in the Temples. A moment's recollection recalls to us the immense influence on the Hellenic Poetry of this ritual dedication. This theme closes the Praise of the Poet. But faithful to the strain which he has undertaken, and so far adhered to, the discreet Eulogist still, in the loftiest matter, diminishes the pomp, rejects ostentation, confines the sensible dimensions. And still faithful, he dwells on that which, of less show, is the more touching. He has to array a religious procession that drawing, as it moves along, all gaze--thrilling--as it slowly passes door after door, and winds through street after street, with solemn and sweet chaunt lifted from the sorrowing Earth to the listening Heavens--the universal heart of the Eternal Queen-City--Look! Who are they that, as the crowds divide, draw into sight? Chaste boys, and girls yet afar from the marriage-bond. The sanctity of natural innocence heightening to the heart, and rendering more gracious, the sanctity of the altar!--winning favour--alluring the worshipper to the worship! SEWARD. The only expanded movement of the short passage--a third of it--seven verses out of the twenty-one. NORTH.