lation of the whole ode; which is of much more considerable length. Like the former morsel, it recals the days when our deserted king sang his sorrows to his lonely harp in the neat herd's hut, or on the marsh of Æthelingay.

Ο THOU, that art Maker of heaven and earth,
Who steerest the stars and hast given them birth,
For ever Thou reignest upon Thy high throne,
And turnest all swiftly the heavenly zone.

Thou, by Thy strong holiness, drivest from far
In the way that Thou willest each worshipping star;
And, through thy great power, the sun from the night
Drags darkness away by the might of her light.

The moon, at Thy word, with his pale-shining rays
Softens and shadows the stars as they blaze,
And even the Sun of her brightness bereaves
Whenever upon her too closely he cleaves.

So also the Morning and Evening Star
Thou makest to follow the Sun from afar,
To keep in her pathway each year evermore,
And go as she goeth in guidance before.

Behold too, O Father, Thou workest aright
To summer hot day-times of long-living light,
To winter all wondrously orderest wise
Short seasons of sunshine with frost on the skies.

Thou givest the trees a south-westerly breeze,
Whose leaves the swart storm in its fury did seize
By winds flying forth from the east and the north
And scattered and shattered all over the earth.

On earth and in heaven each creature and kind
Hears Thy behest with might and with mind,
But Man and Man only, who oftenest still
Wickedly worketh against Thy wise will.

For ever Almighty One, Maker and Lord,
On us, wretched earthworms, Thy pity be pour'd;
Why wilt Thou that welfare to sinners should wend,
But lettest weird ill the unguilty ones rend?

Evil men sit, each on earth's highest seat,
Trampling the holy ones under their feet;
Why good should go crookedly no man can say,
And bright deeds in crowds should lie hidden away.

The sinner at all times is scorning the just,
The wiser in right, and the worthier of trust ;
Their leasing for long while with fraud is beclad;
And oaths that are lies do no harm to the bad.

O Guide, if Thou wilt not steer fortune amain
But lettest her rush so self-will'd and so vain,
I know that the worldly will doubt of Thy might,
And few among men in Thy rule will delight.

My Lord, overseeing all things from on high
Look down on mankind with mercy's mild eye,
In wild waves of trouble they struggle and strive,
Then spare the poor earthworms, and save them alive !

This is one of the best known of King Alfred's paraphrases, and is almost worthy of its holy subject; for elevation of sentiment and breadth of view not easily exceeded by any uninspired writer. The metre here adopted is a long line only in appearance; for it has a regular break in the middle, and is in fact nearly the same as the 149th psalm : one very appropriate in an address to the Glorious Creator.

The Sun and Moon exchange genders in the Anglo-Saxon language; as in the modern German. Mr Fox refers us to an asserted instance of this interchange in Shakspeare, 1st HENRY IV, A. 1. S. 2, which however is very doubtful; where Prince Hal likens "the blessed Sun himself to a fair hot wench in a crimson taffety." It is much more to the point to take notice that in Hebrew the same peculiarity of genders is observable, where the moon is masculine: while the sun is usually feminine. We may add this verbal evidence to those adduced by Turner, bearing upon the Asiatic origin of the Saxons, whom he, with great probability, considers to be the Sacæ of Herodotus.

Ye may learn by the stars and the sun
Shining on cities so bright,

If the welkin hangs dreary and dun,
To wait in the mist for the light.

So too, the calm sea, glassy-grey,

The southwind all grimly makes riot,

And whirlpools in strife stir away

The whale-pool that once was so quiet.

So also, outwelleth a spring,

All clear from the cliff and all cool,

Till midway some mountain may fling
A rock to roll into the pool.

Then broken asunder will seem

The rill so clear-running before,
That brook is turn'd out of its stream,
And flows in its channel no more.

So now, in thy darkness of mind,
Thou willest my wisdom to spurn,
Withstanding, by trouble made blind,
The lessons thou never wilt learn.

Yet now, if ye will, as ye may,

The true and pure light clearly know,

Let go the vain joys of to-day,

The weal that brings nothing but woe.

And drive away bad unbelief,

The fears of the world and its care,

And be not thou given to grief,

Nor yield up thy mind to despair.

Nor suffer thou glad-going things

To puff thee with over-much pride,

Nor worldliness lifting thy wings

To lure thee from meekness aside :

And let not, too weakly again,

Ills make thee despair of the good,
When hunted by peril and pain,
And haunted by misery's brood.

For always the mind of a man

Is bound up with trouble below,
If riches or poverty can

Engraft it with sin or with woe.

Because the twin evils make dun
The mind in a misty swart shroud,
That on it eternity's sun

Is dim till it scatters the cloud.

It really is a pity to rob Alfred of his originality by representing all or any of these poems as servile translations from Boethius, or