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XCIX. PUCK AND THE FAIRY.

Puck-How now, spirit-whither wander you?

Fairy-Over hill, over dale,

Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,

Thorough flood, thorough fire,
I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moonés sphere;
And I serve the fairy queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green:
The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
In their gold coats spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy favors;

In those freckles live their savors.
I must go seek some dewdrops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.
Farewell, thou lob of spirits! I'll be gone;

Our queen and all her elves come here anon.

Puck-The king doth keep his revels here to-night:
Take heed the queen come not within his sight;
For Oberon is passing feli and wrath,
Because that she, as her attendant, hath
A lovely boy stolen from an Indian king:
She never had so sweet a changeling;
And jealous Oberon would have the child
Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild;
But she, perforce, withholds the lovéd boy,

Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy :
And now they never meet in grove, or green,
By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen,

But they do square; that all their elves, for fear,
Creep into acorn cups, and hide them there.

Fairy-Either I mistake your shape and making quite, Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite Called Robin Goodfellow. Are you not he That frights the maidens of the villagery, Skims milk, and sometimes labors in the quern, And bootless makes the breathless housewife churn, And sometimes makes the drink to bear no barm, Misleads night wanderers, laughing at their harm? Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck, You do their work, and they shall have good luck. Are you not he?

Puck

Fairy, thou speak'st aright:
I am that merry wanderer of the night.
But room, Fairy-here comes Oberon !

Fairy-And here my mistress !-Would that he were

gone!

William Shakespeare.

FOR PREPARATION.--I. From the "Midsummer-Night's Dream," Act II., Scene 1. Puck serves the king, and the Fairy serves the queen of fairies. The king and queen are quarreling, and separate; Puck and the Fairy meet suddenly, as they are on errands for their superiors. "Cowslip's ear (cow's-lip). The English cowslip differs how from the American?

II. Wan'-der, spån'-gled (spång'-gld).

III. Note the old English thorough for through, moonés for moon's. (Here is an example of the use of the es denoting possession, which we always write 's, omitting the e.) Note, the meter requires two syllables in moon-es, and also in lov-ed (és and éd marked with' to show that they are to be pronounced as separate syllables).

IV. Pensioners, rubies, savors, "lob of spirits" (clown of spirits), ‘passing fell” (surpassingly malicious).

V. "Cowslips tall"-are cowslips tall flowers? One editor of Shakespeare has suggested that we read all for tall. "Gold coats -an editor

suggests, "In their gold cups spots you see.'

The original words that

Shakespeare wrote are doubtful in many places; it is so easy for mistakes to be made in copying manuscripts, or in printing them." 'They do square" (i. e., draw up in opposite lines to quarrel). "Labors in the quern" (in the hand mill, when it does not grind well). “No barm" (no yeast; i. e., does not ferment well).

C. THE WONDERS OF ASTRONOMY.

1. The great object of all knowledge is to enlarge and purify the soul, to fill the mind with noble contemplations, and to furnish a refined pleasure. Considering this as the ultimate end of science, no branch of it can surely claim precedence of astronomy. No other science furnishes such a palpable embodiment of the abstractions which lie at the foundation of our intellectual systemthe great ideas of time, and space, and extension, and magnitude, and number, and motion, and power. How grand the conception of the ages on ages required for several of the secular equations of the solar system; of distances from which the light of a fixed star will not reach us in twenty millions of years; of magnitudes, compared with which the earth is but a football; of starry hosts, suns like our own, numberless as the sands on the shore; of worlds and systems shooting through the infinite spaces, with a velocity compared with which the cannon ball is a wayworn, heavy-paced traveler!

2. I had occasion, a few weeks since, to take the early train from Providence to Boston, and for this purpose rose at two o'clock in the morning. Everything around was wrapped in darkness and hushed in silence, broken only by what seemed at that hour the unearthly clank and rush of the train. It was a mild, serene midsummer's night; the sky was without a cloud; the winds were whist. The moon, then in the last quarter, had just risen, and the stars shone with a spectral luster but little affected by her presence. Jupiter, two hours high, was the herald of the day; the Pleiades, just above the horizon, shed their sweet influence in the east; Lyra sparkled near the zenith; Andromeda veiled her newly discovered glories from the naked eye, in the south; the steady