Some of these hymns are of considerable poetical merit: that for Sunday, Aeterne Rerum conditor, is a little masterpiece.

Prose masterpieces of English and American literature, by Robert Silliman Hillyer, Kenneth Ballard Murdock and Odell Shepard.

" The impression which the first part of "Faust," the poetical masterpiece of German literature, made among foreigners, was, though in some instances ultimately powerful, yet on the whole surprisingly slow.

The silent transit of the Ghost, desiring to speak, yet tongue-tied, is certainly one of Shakespeare's unrivalled masterpieces of dramatic craftsmanship.

Published in 1831, it is the earliest in date of his veritable masterpieces, and the finest in conception.

A minor masterpiece.

Stevenson himself died in the midst of the most arduous work possiblethe making of a literary masterpiece.]

The prose was written chiefly in the south of England after the greatest poetic masterpieces had been produced.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he began, "I have translated into the French tongue, which Brunetto Latini declared to be the most delectable of all, the Gerusalemme Liberata, the glorious masterpiece of the divine Torquato Tasso.

I mean not here the prosody of a verse, which they could not but have hit on before among the rudiments of grammar; but that sublime art which in Aristotle's Poetics, in Horace, and the Italian commentaries of Castelvetro, Tasso, Mazzoni, and others, teaches what the laws are of a true epic poem, what of a dramatic, what of a lyric, what decorum is, which is the grand masterpiece to observe.

Gloomy masterpiece.

The immortal masterpieces of Shakespeare contain little that excites interest; the action does not go forward in one straight line, but falters, as in Hamlet, all through the play; or else it spreads out in breadth, as in The Merchant of Venice, whereas length is the proper dimension of interest; or the scenes hang loosely together, as in Henry IV.

Bacon's essays are the unique masterpiece in our literature of this oracular wisdom of life, applied to the scattered occasions of men's existence.

I am confident that the Pietà is one of his rarest and most difficult masterpieces; particularly because the figures are kept apart distinctly, nor does the drapery of the one intermingle with that of the others.

He was comfortably settled in his opinion that his picture was, in a modest way, the companion piece long awaited by the "Wedding of Cana," that gigantic masterpiece whose dazzling splendor the dust of three centuries has not dimmed.

The third case, Zoe Blundell's leap to nothingness, in that harsh and ruthless masterpiece, Mid-Channel, is as inevitable as anything can well be in human destiny.

"You see, sir," returned the demonstrator, perched high, like a sculptor at work on some heroic masterpiece, "what we want is to split off this rock."

In 1837 when Carlyle finished the third volume of his historic masterpiece, The French Revolution, he handed the manuscript to his wife for her criticism, saying: "This I could tell the world: 'You have not had for a hundred years any book that comes more direct and flamingly from the heart of a living man.'"

I confess that I hope the pile contained stacks of incomparable masterpieces if the sacrifice made that one real moment more real.

This, then, is the reason why, sustained by a style rich in grace and strength, full of the breath of poetry which is felt rather than described, "Le Marquis des Saffras" holds its place as an incontestable masterpiece in the choice libraries that preserve the renown of great writers.

The Medinan Mosque, built with fervent hearts and anxious prayers by the Muslim and their leader, contains the embryo of all the later masterpieces of Arabian architecturethat art unique and splendid, which developed with the Islamic spirit until it culminated in the glorious temple at Delhi, whose exponents have given to the world the palaces of southern Spain, the mysterious, remote beauty of ancient Granada.

Alternate courses of white and black marble, cornices loaded with grave or animated portraits of the Popes, sculptured shrines, altars, pulpits, reliquaries, fonts and holy-water vases, panels of inlaid wood and pictured pavements, bronze candelabra and wrought-iron screens, gilding and colour and precious work of agate and lapis lazulithe masterpieces of men famous each in his own linedelight the eye in all directions.

Here are carved names and intertwined lettering, arabesque masterpieces of penknife-ingenuity, with a general preponderance of feminine appellatives, bold incisures, at times, of some worthy professor in profile,the whole besmutched with ink, and dotted with countless punctures, the result of the sharp spike with which every student's ink-horn is armed, that he may steady it upon the slanting board.

The loftiest masterpieces have something aloof and cheerless about them at our first approach, something of the cold breath of those starry spaces into which they soar, and to which they uplift our spirits.

When, as luck would have it, his wife eloped with a wrestler, a flood of melody poured from his soul which, connoisseurs have assured us, ranks high amongst the lyrical masterpieces of the world.