Animal creation, with sciences, and things, their composites, and near associations,

Contributed their symbollings of old, wherewith to title

men:

And heraldry set upon its cresture the figured attributes as ensigns

By which, as by a name concrete, its bearer should be

known.

Egypt opened on the theme, dressing up her gods in qualities;

Horns of power, feathers of the swift, mitres of catholic dominion,

The sovereign asp, the circle everlasting, the crook and thong of justice,

By many mystic shapes and sounds displayed the idol's

name.

Thereafter, high plumed warriors, the chieftains of Etruria and Troy,

And Xerxes, urging on his millions to the tomb of pride, Thermopylæ,

And Hiero with his bounding ships, all figured at the

prow,

And Rome's Prætorian standards, piled with strange devices,

And stout crusaders pressing to the battle, locked in shining steel;

These all in their speaking symbols, earned, or wore, a

name.

Eve, the mother of all living, and Abraham, father of a multitude,

Jacob, the supplanter, and David, the beloved, and all the worthies of old time,

Noah, who came for consolation, and Benoni, son of

sorrow,

Kings and prophets, children of the East, owned each his title of significance.

Chere be names of high descent, and thereby storied honors;

Names of fair renown, and therein characters of merit : But to lend the lowborn noble names, is to shed upon them ridicule and evil;

Yea, many weeds run rank in pride, if men have dubbed them cedars.

And to herald common mediocrity with the noisy notes of fame,

Tendeth to its deeper scorn; as if it were to call the mole a mammoth.

Yet shall ye find the trader's babe dignified with sounding titles,

And little hath the father guessed the harm he did his child :

For either may they breed him discontent, a peevish repining at his station,

Or point the finger of despite at the mule in the tappings of an elephant:

And it is a kind of theft to filch appellations from the famous,

A soiling of the shrines of praise with folly's vulgar herd. Prudence hath often gone ashamed for the name they added to his father's,

If minds of mark and great achievements bore it well before;

For he walketh as the jay in the fable, though not by his own folly,

Another's fault hath compassed his misfortune, making him a martyr to his name.

Who would call the tench a whale, or style a torch, Orion?

Yet many a silly parent hath dealt likewise with his nurseling.

Give thy child a fit distinguishment, making him sole tenant of a name,

For it were a sore hindrance to hold it in common with a hundred ;

In the Babel of confused identities fame is little feasible, The felon shall detract from the philanthropist, and the sage share honors with the simple:

Still, in thy title of distinguishment, fall not into arrogant assumption,

Steering from caprice and affectations; and for all thou doest, have a reason.

He that is ambitieus for his son, should give him untried

names,

For those that have served other men, haply may injure by their evils;

Or otherwise may hinder by their glories; therefore, set him by himself,

To win for his individual name some clear specific praise. There were nine Homers, all goodly sons of song; but where is any record of the eight?

One grew to fame, an Aaron's rod, and swallowed up his brethren:

Who knoweth? more distinctly titled, those dead eight had lived;

But the censers were ranged in a circle, to mingle their sweets without a difference.

Art thou named of a common crowd, and sensible of high aspirings?

It is hard for thee to rise, - yet strive: thou mayst be among them a Musæus.

Art thou named of a family, the same in successive generations?

It is

open to thee still to earn for epithets, such an one, the good or great.

Art thou named foolishly? show that thou art wiser than thy fathers,

Live to shame their vanity or sin by dutiful devotion to thy sphere.

Art thou named discreetly? It is well, the course is free;

No competitor shall claim thy colors, neither fix his faults upon thee:

Hasten to the goal of fame between the posts of duty, And win a blessing from the world, that men may love thy name;

Yea, that the unction of its praise, in fragrance well deserving,

May float adown the stream of time, like ambergris at

sea;

So thy sons may tell their sons, and these may teach their children,

He died in goodness, as he lived;

name.

and left us his good

And more than these: there is a roll whereon thy name

is written;

See that, in the Book of Doom, that name is fixed in

light:

Then, safe within a better home, where time and its titles are not found,

God will give thee his new Name, and write it on thy

heart:

A Name, better than of sons, a Name dearer than of daughters,

A Name of union, peace, and praise, as numbered in thy God.

of Things.

Abstracted from all substance, and flying with the feathered flock of thoughts,

The idea of a thing hath the nature of its Soul, a separate seeming essence:

Intimately linked to the idea, suggesting many qualities, The name of a thing hath the nature of its Mind, an in tellectual recorder;

And the matter of a thing, concrete, is a Body to the perfect creature,

Compacted three in one, as all things else within the universe.

Nothing canst thou add to them, and nothing take away, for all have these proportions,

The thought, the word, the form, combining in the Thing:

All separate, yet harmonizing well, and mingled each with other,

One whole in several parts, yet each part spreading to a

whole :

The idea is a whole, and the meaning phrase that spake idea, a whole,

And the matter, as ye see it, is a whole; the mystery of true tri-unity:

Yea, there is even a deeper mystery, — which none, I wot, can fathom,

Matter, different from properties whereby the solid substance is described.

For, size and weight, cohesion, and the like, live distinct from matter,

Yet who can imagine matter, unendowed with size and weight?

As in the spiritual, so in the material, man must rest with patience,

And wait for other eyes wherewith to read the books of God.

Men have talked learnedly of atoms, as if matter could be ever indivisible,

They talk, but ill are skilled to teach, and darken truth by fancies:

An atom by our grosser sense was never yet conceived, And nothing can be thought so small, as not to be di

vided:

For an atom runneth to infinity, and never shall be caught in space,