and wholesome excitement from the contemplations of poetic conceptions whose simplicity fits them to be received, and whose beauty commends them to be loved, by the youthful mind. The most powerful, the most beautiful and concise modes of expressing much of human feeling and passion, are to be found in the Grecian mythology. The true value of an image consists in the conciseness with which it expresses the idea that it represents. An image is misplaced and useless, no matter how beautiful in itself, if it presents your idea in a more tedious and cumbrous form than that in which a few simple words would have explained your meaning as well. It is then obviously unnecessary, and presents itself to the reader as a mere attempt at beauty, which at once recalls him from the subject to the author,--an effect which is always unfortunate for the latter. Good imagery, on the contrary, offers a glowing picture which at once makes a vivid impression upon the mind, accurately representing your meaning, and calling up ideas through the force of a necessary and natural association, which would not have been otherwise awakened except by the use of many more words. Such in an eminent degree is the imagery of the mythology of which we have been speaking. Where is the course of power without knowledge to guide it, so briefly yet so forcibly depicted as in the mad career of Phaeton misguiding the steeds of the sun? And what picture so descriptive of the writhings of disappointed ambition as that of Prometheus on his rock with the vulture at his liver? Tantalus in the stream is an ever living fiction, because it borrows the form of Truth when it points to the punishment of him who rashly essays to satisfy his thirst for happiness by the gratification of unhallowed lusts; and Sisyphus toiling at his stone, is the faithful picture of man who vainly confident in his unassisted strength seeks to roll the ball of fortune up the slippery eminence. What can be more beautiful than that picture of fraternal affection which we find in the fable of the sons of Leda--a union of spirit so pure that it was typified in the two bright stars which still maintain alternate sway in heaven as an everlasting memorial of that undying love which married the mortal to the immortal in one common destiny. In what other language could Byron have described fallen Rome, "the Niobe of nations," than that which he used, the language of truth and feeling which is now common to the whole of the civilized world, and must be as universally used as known, since it embodies the pictured thought and feeling of the human heart. The man who neglects this mythic and most beautiful of languages, must be content to see himself excelled by those who have studied it, both in strength and beauty of expression. Perhaps we do not hazard too much in asserting that a knowledge of this mythic language {226} alone (if