Here runs the mountainous and craggy ridge, That tempts ambition.

For no one who puts the mere dread out of his mind will call the Cobras ugly, even anything but beautiful; nor, again, the deadly Coral snake of Trinidad, whose beauty tempts children, and even grown people, to play with it, or make a necklace of it, sometimes to their own destruction.

tempts destruction Here is no home, here is but wilderness: Forth, pilgrim, forth!beast, out of thy stall!

V. try, essay; experiment &c 463; endeavor, strive; tempt, attempt, make an attempt; venture, adventure, speculate, take one's chance, tempt fortune; try one's fortune, try one's luck, try one's hand; use one's endeavor; feel one's way, grope one's way, pick one's way.

And this accursed inheritance tempts men ever to long for and hope for that which they have not earned.

This is a defect of taste frequently noticeable in two very good writers, De Quincey and Ruskin, whose command of expression is so varied that it tempts them into FIORITURA as flexibility of voice tempts singers to sin against simplicity.