of flowers. Some flowers grow with the
hollow of their cup upwards: others "hang
the pensive head," and turn the opening down-out-herods Herod: Pray you, avoid it.
wards. Now of these "nodding flowers," as
Linnæus calls them, he observes that they are
such as have their pistils longer than the
stamens; and, in consequence of this position,
the dust from the anthers which are at the end
of the stamens can fall upon the stigma or
extremity of the pistil; which process is requi-
site for making the flower fertile. Other
botanists have remarked, that the position
changes at different periods of the flower's
progress. The pistil of the Euphorbia (which
is a little globe or germen upon a slender stalk)
grows upright at first, and is taller than the
stamens: at the period suited to its fecunda-
tion, the stalk bends under the weight of the
ball at its extremity, so as to depress the
germen below the stamens: after this it
again becomes erect, the globe being now a
fruit filled with fertile seeds.

dumb-show and noise: I would have such a
fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it

The positions in all these cases depend upon the length and flexibility of the stalk which supports the flower, or, in the case of the Euphorbia, the germen. It is clear that a very slight alteration in the force of gravity, or in the stiffness of the stalk, would entirely alter the position of the flower-cup, and thus make the continuation of the species impossible. We have therefore here a little mechanical contrivance, which would have been frustrated if the proper intensity of gravity had not been assumed in the reckoning. An earth greater or smaller, denser or rarer than the one on which we live, would require a change in the structure and strength of the footstalks of all the little flowers that hang their heads under our hedges. There is something curious in thus considering the whole mass of the earth from pole to pole, and from circumference to centre, as employed in keeping a snowdrop in the position most suited to the promotion of its vegetable health. Whewell.

PLAYERS-Instructions to.

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus; but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance, that may give it smoothness. Oh, it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable

Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor; suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature; for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first, and now, was, and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time, his form and pressure. Now, this overdone, or come tardy of, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of which one must, in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. Oh, there be players, that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly-not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, Pagan, nor man, have so strutted, and bellowed, that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

Oh, reform it altogether: and let those that play your clowns, speak no more than is set down for them; for there be of them, that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though, in the meantime, some necessary question of the play be then to be considered: that's villanous; and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Shakspeare.

PLAYERS-Fictitious Passions of.
Is it not monstrous, that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion.
Could force his soul to his own conceit,
That, from her working, all his visage wann'd;
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing!
For Hecuba!

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would
he do,

Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with
tears,

And cleave the general ear with horrid speech;
Make mad the guilty, and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze, indeed,
The very faculties of eyes and ears.
PLEASING-Pleasure of.

Ibid.

We all live upon the hope of pleasing some body; and the pleasure of pleasing ought to

PLEASURE.

PLEASURE-a Stern Moralist.

Though sages may pour out their wisdom's

treasure,

There is no sterner moralist than pleasure.

PLEASURE-Refined.

Byron.

The most delicate, the most sensible of all pleasures, consists in promoting the pleasures La Bruyère.

of others.

PLEASURE-Roses of.

The roses of pleasure seldom last long enough to adorn the brow of him who plucks them, and they are the only roses which do not retain their sweetness after they have lost their beauty. Blair.

PLEASURE-Satiety of.

The youth who bathes in pleasure's limpid

stream

PLEASURE.

goods into one jewel, the value is the same, and the convenience greater. Tillotson.

PLEASURE AND PAIN.

One reason why God hath scattered up and down several degrees of pleasure and pain, in all the things that environ and affect us, and blended them together, in almost all that our thoughts and senses have to do with, is, that we, finding imperfection, dissatisfaction, and want of complete happiness in all the enjoy ments which the creatures can afford us, might be led to seek it in the enjoyment of Him with whom "there is fulness of joy, and at whose right hand are pleasures for evermore." | Locke. PLEASURES-in Anticipation.

tion and enjoyment; but all spiritual pleasures
All earthly delights are sweeter in expecta
more in fruition than expectation.

At well-judged intervals, feels all his soul
Nerved with recruited strength; but if too oft
He swims in sportive mazes through the flood, PLEASURES-Choice of.
It chills his languid virtue.

PLEASURE-Slave of.

Mason.

Feltham

Choose such pleasures as recreate much, and cost little. Fuller.

PLEASURES-Moderation in.
Pleasures waste the spirits more than pains;
therefore the latter can be endured longer, and
in greater degree, than the former.

Zimmerman.

Venture not to the utmost bounds of even lawful pleasure; the limits of good and evil join. Fuller.

PLEASURES-Rational.

POET-Death of the.

Call it not vain: they do not err,
Who say that when the poet dies,
Mute nature mourns her worshipper,
And celebrates his obsequies;
Who say tall cliff and cavern lone
For the departed bard may moan;
The mountains weep in crystal rill;
That flowers in tears of balm distil;
Through his loved groves that breezes sigh;
And oaks, in deeper groan, reply;
And rivers teach the rustling wave
To murmur dirges round his grave.

POET-Difficulties of the.

Sir Walter Scott.

Studious he sate, with all his books around, Sinking from thought to thought, a vast profound;

It is an error to imagine that devotion enjoins a total contempt of all the pleasures and amusements of human society. It checks, indeed, that spirit of dissipation which is too prevalent. It not only prohibits pleasures which are unlawful, but likewise that unlawful degree of attachment to pleasures in themselves innocent, which withdraws the attention of man from what is serious and important. But it brings amusement under due limitation, without extirpating it. It forbids it as the business, but permits it as the relaxation of life. For there is nothing in the spirit of true religion which is hostile to a cheerful enjoy- But gave him at his birth what most he ment of our situation in the world. Blair.

PLEASURES-inimical to Virtue.

In the pursuit of pleasure, the greatest virtues lie neglected. Tully.

POESY-Characteristics of.
What is poesy, but to create,

From overfeeling, good or ill, and aim
At an external life beyond our fate?
Bestowing fire from heaven, and then, too late,
Finding the pleasure given repaid with pain!
And vultures to the heart of the bestower,
Who, having lavish'd his high gift in vain,

Lies chain'd to his lone rock by the seashore.
Byron.

POESY-Inspirations of.

! In dim out shadowing, earth's first poets, from the loveliness of external nature, evoked beautiful spiritualizations. To them the sturdy forests teemed with aërial beings; the gushing spirits rejoiced in fantastic sprites; the leaping cataracts gleamed with translucent shades; the cavernous hills were the abodes of genii; and the earth-girdling ocean was guarded by mysterious forms. Such were the creations of the far-searching mind in its early consciousness of the existence of unseen powers. POESY-Objects of.

Robert Hunt.

Poesy serveth and conferreth to magnanimity, morality, and to delectation. Bacon.

Plunged for his sense, but found no bottom
there;

Then wrote, and flounder'd on in mere despair.
Pope.

POET-Dower of the.

Nature denied him much,

valued