WEARY, I open wide the antique pane I ope to the air I ope to I open to the air the antique pane And gaze {beyond?} the thrift-sown field of wheat, { across } [commonplace?] A-shimmering green in breezes born of heat; And lo! And high And my soul’s eyes behold { a? } billowy main { the } Whose farther shore is Greece strain again vain [_Arcadia_—mythological allusion.—Mem.: _Lemprière_.] I see thee, Atalanta, vestal fleet, And look! with doves low-fluttering round her feet, Comes Venus through the golden {fields of?} grain. { bowing } (_Heard by the Poet’s neighbour._) Venus be bothered—it’s Virginia Dix! (_Found on the Poet’s door._) _Out on important business—back at 6._ _H. C. Bunner._ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ _A NEW SYSTEM OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR._ I HAVE often thought that the adjectives of the English language were not sufficiently definite for the purposes of description. They have but three degrees of comparison—a very insufficient number, certainly, when we consider that they are to be applied to a thousand objects, which, though of the same general class or quality, differ from each other by a thousand different shades or degrees of the same peculiarity. Thus, though there are three hundred and sixty-five days in a year, all of which must, from the nature of things, differ from each other in the matter of climate, we have but half-a-dozen expressions to convey to one another our ideas of this inequality. We say—“It is a fine day;” “It is a _very_ fine day;” “It is the _finest_ day we have seen;” or, “It is an unpleasant day;” “A _very_ unpleasant day;” “The _most_ unpleasant day we ever saw.” But it is plain that none of these expressions give an _exact_ idea of the nature of the day; and the two superlative expressions are generally untrue. I once heard a gentleman remark, on a rainy, snowy, windy, and (in the ordinary English language) indescribable day, that it was “most preposterous weather.” He came nearer to giving a correct idea of it than he could have done by any ordinary mode of expression; but his description was not sufficiently definite.