EXERCISE XCVI. ENIGMA is derived from a Greek word signifying to speak darkly, that is, to hint at. It is, therefore, applied to all compositions in which the language is designedly obscure and ambiguous, and is left to the reader to be made out by conjecture. The following are beautiful specimens of this kind of composition. "Twas whispered in heaven, and muttered in hell, II. It begins every hope, every wish it must bound, *The letter H. V. And there, with pearl and amber crowned, While freshest breezes play around. And merry mermaids sport; EXERCISE XCVII. LYDIA HUNTLEY SIGOURNEY was born at Norwich, Connecticut, in the year 1791. Early in the field of authorship and assiduous in its culture, sho has continued to labor till some fifty or more volumes, is said, stand forth to attest her claims to deserved distinction. She is known chiefly as a poetess; but she has written much in prose, and, thus, has richly earned the praise of having ministered gracefully and successfully to the well-being and well-doing of her fellow-creatures. E PHEM E RAL (EP, on, and HEMERAL, pertaining to a day) is a Greek word, meaning pertaining to, or lasting for a day; transitory; shortlived. Toil on! toil on! ye ephemeral train, Who build on the tossing and treacherous main; With your sand-based structures and domes of rock: Ye're a puny race, thus to boldly rear A fabric so vast, in a realm so drear. II. Ye bind the deep with your secret zone. Fresh wreaths from the coral pavement spring, And the mountains exult where the wave hath been III. But why do ye plant 'neath the billows dark IV. With moldering bones the deeps are white, V. Ye build-ye build but ye enter not in, Like the tribes whom the desert devoured in their sin, Ye slumber unmarked 'mid the desolate main, EXERCISE XCVIII. GEORGE TICKNOR was born in Boston, Massachusetts, August 1st, 1791. After ample study and travel abroad, he entered, in 1820, upon the Professorship of Modern Languages and Literature in Harvard University. In this position, he achieved a reputation for richness, variety, and depth of learning, and for extraordinary power and polish of diction, such as belongs only to merit of the highest order. For fifteen years he continued his labors in this connection. Then again he visited Europe. Nine years after his return, in 1840, he published his great work-" The History of Spanish Literature," which, with his other contributions to literature, immediately fixed his claims to distinction on the most enduring foundation. THE AIM OF DON QUIXOTE. GEORGE TICKNOR. 1. At the very beginning of his great work, Cervantes announces it to be his sole purpose to break down the vogue and authority of books of chivalry, and at the end of the whole, he declares anew, in his own person, that "he had no other desire than to render abhorred of men the false and absurd stories contained in books of chivalry;" exulting in his success, as an achievement of no small moment. And such, in fact, it was; for we have abundant proof that the fanaticism for these romances was so great in Spain, during the sixteenth century, as to have become matter of alarm to the more judicious. 2. To destroy a passion that had struck its roots so deeply in the character of all classes of men, to break up the only reading which, at that time, could be considered widely popular and fashionable, was certainly a bold undertaking, and one that marks anything rather than a scornful or broken spirit, or a want of faith in what is most to be valued in our common nature. The great wonder is, that Cervantes succeeded. But that he did, there is no question. No book of chivalry was written after the appearance of Don Quixote in 1605; and from that date, even those already enjoying the greatest favor ceased, with one or two unimportant exceptions, to be reprinted: so that, from that time to the present, they have been constantly disappearing, until they are now among the rarest of literary curiosities. 3. The general plan Cervantes adopted to accomplish this object, without, perhaps, foreseeing its whole course, and still |