notes of scholiasts and annotators are easily made, as
apothecaries make drugs by pouring from one phial into another. But
criticism of things, of ideas, of characters, of conceptions, can never
come to an end; for every successive age is bringing forth fresh
comparisons to make, and fresh combinations to exhibit. It is the
outpouring of a heart overburdened with admiration which must be
delivered, and will ever discover a new mode of deliverance.

How many subjects of critical comparison in this view, hitherto nearly
untouched upon, has the literature of Europe, and even of this age,
afforded! AEschylus, Shakspeare, and Schiller--Euripides, Alfieri, and
Corneille--Sophocles, Metastasio, and Racine--Pindar, Horace, and
Gray--Ovid, Ariosto, and Wieland--Lucretius, Darwin, and
Campbell--Demosthenes, Cicero, and Burke--Thucydides, Tacitus, and
Gibbon--Thomson, Cowper, and Claude Lorraine: such are a few which suggest
themselves at first sight to every one who reflects on the rich retrospect
of departed genius. It is like looking back to the Alps through the long
and rich vista of Italian landscape; the scene continually varies, the
features are ever new, the impression is constantly fresh, from the
variety of intervening objects, though the glittering pinnacles of the
inaccessible mountains ever shine from afar on the azure vault of heaven.
Human genius is ever furnishing new proofs of departed excellence. Human
magnanimity is ever exhibiting fresh examples of the fidelity of former
descriptions, or the grandeur of former conception. What said Hector,
drawing his sword, when, betrayed by Minerva in his last conflict with
Achilles, he found himself without his lance in presence of his
fully-armed and heaven-shielded antagonist? "Not at least inglorious shall
I perish, but after doing some great thing that men may be spoken of in
ages to come."[2]

PING-KEE'S VIEW OF THE STAGE.

This is not, O Cho-Ling-Kyang! a barbarian land, as in our foolish
childhood we were taught; but, contrariwise, great is the wisdom of the
English, and great their skill. Yea, I will not conceal the fact, that in
some things they are worthy to be imitated by the best and most learned in
the flowery land. Three moons have I resided in London, and devoted
myself, with all the powers of my mind and body, to fulfil the task which
you and the ever-venerated Chang-Feu have laid upon me. Convey to his
benignant ear the words of my respect, and te