says Macaulay in his glorious _Lays of Ancient Rome_, and something in the nature of both these animals fits them especially for the endurance of labour and the imposition of weight. It is well for a man when he has a little of the bovine repose of character, a good deal of the asinine thickness of skin and insensibility to hard usage. Such a disposition toils on contentedly enough, obedient indeed to the goad so far as moderately to increase the staid solemnity of his gait, taking the flinty path and the weary load as necessary conditions of life, with a serene equanimity for which he has the philosophical example of the ass! The ways are rough, you know, and the journey long. Depend upon it these animals arrive at its termination with less wear and tear, more safety, and even more despatch, than the sensitive, high-spirited, and courageous horse, wincing from the lash, springing to the voice, striving, panting, sweating, straining every muscle to get home. In the parable of the _Ancient Mariner_—for is it not indeed the wildest, dreamiest, and most poetical of parables?—you remember the hopelessness of the weight he carried when “Instead of the cross the albatross About his neck was hung.” It was not his misfortune, you see, but his crime that bore him down. Its consciousness lay far heavier on his spirit than did his after-punishment, when, weary and desolate, he wailed that he was “Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide, wide sea, And never a saint took pity on My soul in agony.” The saints, indeed, might not have heard him; how do we know about that? but he _was_ heard nevertheless, and thus he got rid of his burden to raise his head once more in the face of heaven. He looked upon beauty, nature, animate life, the wonders of the deep, the creatures of his Maker, and “blessed them unaware!” Enough. The hideous dream vanishes, the unholy spell is broken, and he cries exulting— “That self-same moment I could pray, And from my neck so free The albatross fell off, and sunk Like lead into the sea.”