With sprinkled water first the city choke.
And then pursue the citizens with smoke.
Two honey harvests fall in ev'ry year:
First when the pleasing Pleiades appear,
And, springing upward spurn the briny seas:
Again, when their affrighted choir surveys
The wat❜ry scorpion mend his pace behind,
With a black train of storms, and winter wind,
They plunge into the deep, and safe protection
find.

Prone to revenge, the bees, a wrathful race, When once provok'd, assault the aggressor's face,

And through the purple veins a passage find; There fix their stings, and leave their souls be

hind.

But, if a pinching winter thou foresee,
And wouldst preserve thy famish'd family;
With fragrant thyme the city fumigate.
And break the waxen walls to save the state.
For lurking lizards often lodge, by stealth,
Within the suburbs, and purloin their wealth;
And worms, that shun the light, a dark retreat
Have found in combs, and undermined the

seat;

Or lazy drones, without their share of pain,
In winter quarters free, devour the gain ;
Or wasps infest the camp with loud alarms,
And mix in battle with unequal arms;
Or secret moths are there in silence fed;
Or spiders in the vault their snary webs have

spread.

The more oppress'd by foes, or famine pin'd, The more increase they care to save the sinking kind;

With greens and flow'rs recruit their empty

hives,

And seek fresh forage to sustain their lives.
But, since they share with man one common

fate,

In health and sickness, and in turns of state,Observe the symptoms. When they fall away, And languish with insensible decay,

They change their hue, with haggard eyes they stare;

Lean are their looks, and shagged is their hair :
And crowds of dead, that never must return
To their lov'd hives, in decent pomp are borne:
Their friends attend the hearse; the next rela-

tions mourn.

The sick, for air, before the portal gasp,
Their feeble legs within each other clasp,
Or idle in their empty hives remain,

Benum'd with cold, and listless of their gain. Soft whispers then, and broken sounds, are heard,

As when the woods by gentle winds are stirr'd ;
Such stifled noise as at the close furnace hides,
Or dying murmurs of departing tides.
This when thou seest, galbanean odours use,
And honey in the sickly hive infuse.
Through reeden pipes convey the golden flood,
To invite the people to their wonted food.
Mix it with thicken'd juice of sodden wines
And raisins from the grapes of Psythian vines :

To these add pounded galls, and roses dry, And with Cecropian thyme, strong scented

centaury.

A flower there is, that grows in meadowground,

Amellus call'd, and easy to be found;
For in one root, the rising stem bestows
A wood of leaves, and vi❜let-purple boughs :
The flow'r itself is glorious to behold,

And shines on altars like refulgent goldSharp to the taste-by shepherds near the stream

Of Mella found; and thence they gave the

name.

Boil this restoring root in generous wine,

And set beside the door, the sickly stock to

dine :

But, if thy lab'ring kind be wholly lost,
And not to be retrieved with care or cost;
The time to touch the precepts of an art,
Th' Arcadian master did of old impart ;
And how he stock'd his empty hives again,
Renewed with putrid gore of oxen slain.
An ancient legend I prepare to sing,
And upward follow Fame's immortal spring;
For, where with sev'nfold horns mysterious

Nile

Surrounds the skirts of Egypt's fruitful isle, And where in pomp the sun-burnt people ride, On painted barges o'er the teeming tide, Which, pouring down from Ethiopian lands, Makes green the soil with slime, and black prolific sands.

That length of region, and large tract of ground,
In this one art a sure relief have found.

First, in a place by nature close, they build
A narrow flooring, gutter'd, wall'd, and til❜d.
In this, four windows are contriv'd, that strike,
To the four winds oppos'd, their beams oblique.
A steer of two years old they take, whose
head

Now first with burnish'd horns begin to spread:
They stop his nostrils, while he strives in vain
To breath free air, and struggles with his pain.
Knock'd down, he dies: his bowels, bruis'd
within,

Betray no wound on his unbroken skin.
Extended thus, in this obscene abode

They leave the beast; but first sweet flow'rs are strow'd

Beneath his body, broken boughs and thyme,
And pleasing casiæ just renew'd in prime.
This must be done, ere spring makes equal day,
When western winds on curling waters play;
Ere painted meads produce their flow'ry crops,
Or swallows twitter on the chimney tops.
The tainted blood, in this close prison pent,
Begins to boil, and through the bones ferment.
Then (wond'rous to behold) new creatures rise,
A moving mass at first, and short of thighs :
Till shooting out with legs, and imp'd with
wings,

The grubs proceed to bees with pointed stings,
And, more and more affecting air they try
Their tender pinions, and begin to fly:

At length, like summer storms from spreading
clouds,

That burst at once, and pour impetuous floods-
Or flights of arrows from the Parthian bows,
When from afar they gall embattled foes—
With such a tempest through the skies they
steer;

And such a form the winged squadrons bear. VIRGIL, Georgic. 4th 519 Let us now make Man in our image, Man

Then were explained to the admiring host of Heaven the vast intentions of the Godhead in the preceding acts of creation. All was before beauty and order, marvellous and glorious, yet, till man appeared, there was not among the numerous works of the Creator one capable of adoring his Almighty hand. God said, "Let us make man." Gen. i. 26. And lo, the being arose for whom all these glorious and mighty preparations had been made.

524 This said, he form'd thee, Adam, thee, O Man,

Respecting the nature and quality of man, when first he came from the hand of his Maker, we are assured, that God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him ; male and female created he them. A declaration which loudly proclaims man's excellence, and leaves no doubt, but that" God saw that this," like every other of his works," was good." And we are told in the succeeding verse that "God blessed them. Gen. i. Life is not therefore to be considered as mere existence with this choicest