Sad were the fallen, and vainly dissembled
Fears of "the woman" in Eden foretold;
Darkly they guessed, as believing they trembled,
Who was the gem for the casket of gold.[302]
Oft as thy parents bent musingly o'er thee,
Watching thy slumbers and blessing their God,
Little they dreamt of the glory before thee,
Little they thought thee the mystical Rod.
Though the deep heart of the nations forsaken
Beat with a sense of deliverance nigh;
True to a hope through the ages unshaken,
Looked for "the day-spring" to break "from on high;"
Thee they perceived not, the pledge of redemption—
Hidden like thought, though no longer afar;
Not though the light of a peerless exemption
Beamed in thy rising, immaculate star!
All in the twilight, so modestly shining,
Dawned thy young beauty, sweet star of the sea!
Only the angels, the secret divining,
Hailed the elected, "the Virgin,"[303] in thee.
B. D. H.
PLUTARCH.
The moral influence which Plutarch exerts over posterity is of a very peculiar kind. He has not, like Aristotle, laid down the law to an entire world for nearly two thousand years. He has not been deemed so perfect a master of style as Virgil or Cicero, who were the models, first of the Benedictines, and then of the prose writers and poets of the humanitarian school. His reputation pales by the side of the brilliant fame which the resurrected Plato enjoyed during the fifteenth century; and yet he has done what all these immortals, whose authority far surpasses in extent and duration that of his biographies, have failed to do. Among the revived ancient authors none has surpassed Plutarch in inspiring the moderns with the same keen appreciation of the classic characteristics, with the same love and enthusiasm for whatever is really or supposedly great in antiquity; and none has therefore contributed so much to the revelation of what we understand by the purely human in man's nature.