He wept for worlds to conquer—half the earth
Knows not his name, or but his death and birth.”
5. Some of the features of the Cathedral of Cologne that render it famous are as follows: It is considered one of the finest monuments of Gothic architecture in existence. It contains the shrine of the three kings, or magi, who visited and worshiped the infant Savior, and their reputed bones. It is the largest Gothic church in the world. It was begun in 1248 and finished in 1881—six hundred and thirty-two years in building. It is the loftiest building in the world, the tower being about five hundred feet high. Its beauty is in its exquisite proportions, and it does not invite long study to appreciate its grandeur. It has beautiful stained-glass windows, a double range of flying buttresses, a perfect forest of pinnacles. Under a slab in the pavement the heart of Maria de Medici is buried. The cathedral is in the form of a cross, 510 feet long and 231 feet broad. The roof rests on 100 columns, of which the four center ones are 30 feet in circumference.
6. The expression “Perish the thought” probably had its origin in a speech of Gloucester, interpolated by Colly Cibber, in Shakspere’s “Richard the Third.” The reading there is “Perish that thought,” and is to be found in Bell’s edition of Shakspere’s plays as performed at Drury Lane Theater. The part of the speech containing the expression is as follows:
“Perish that thought! No, never be it said
That fate itself could awe the soul of Richard,
Hence, babbling dreams; you threaten here in vain;
Conscience, avaunt, Richard’s himself again!”
7. The lines of Pope in his paraphrase of the moonlight scene, given in the closing part of the eighth book of the Iliad, are “false and contradictory” in the following particulars: The planets do not revolve around the moon. The stars do not make bright the pole. Those near the pole are scarcely visible on such a night. It is not a correct translation of the original. The light on a moonlight scene is mild, subdued and silvery, and therefore is not glorious, yellow and golden. It is contradictory, because he says the stars gild the pole, and cast a yellow verdure o’er the trees, and at the same time tip with silver the mountain heads. He speaks of a flood of glory bursting from all the skies which he calls blue. The night filled with the noises of neighing coursers and ardent warriors, waiting for the morn, could not be like the one “when not a breath disturbs the deep serene.”
8. Webster’s famous seventh of March speech was delivered in the United States Senate on the seventh of March, 1850. The occasion was the discussion of a series of resolutions submitted by Mr. Clay in reference to the admission of California as a State, and embodying a basis of a proposed compromise of all differences relating to the territories and to slavery. In this speech Mr. Webster took ground against the abolitionists; against further legislation prohibitory of slavery in the territories; against secession or disunion; against whatever seemed calculated to produce irritation or alienation between the North and the South. In consideration of its character, and the manner in which it was received by the people throughout the country, it has been entitled, “For the Constitution and the Union.”