It may require some effort of the imagination, certainly, to discover the precursor of such a state of things in the miserable traffic now carried on by the Macassar proas; but still, I think, we possess some data on which to found such an opinion, and I am persuaded that Port Essington will ultimately hold the proud position I predict for it.

30 Yet they, so blithe of heart, seemed fit For finest tasks of earth or air: Wings let them have, and they might flit Precursors to Aurora's car, Scattering fresh flowers; though happier far, I ween, 35 To hunt their fluttering game o'er rock and level green.

Then they took up their quarters, all of them, for some time, between Worms and Mayence, and followed up their political proceeding with military fetes, precursors of the knightly tournaments of the middle ages.

I look abroad on these stars of our literary firmament,some crowded together with their minute points of light in a galaxy, some standing apart in glorious constellations; I recognize Arcturus and Orion and Perseus and the glittering jewels of the Southern Crown, and the Pleiades shedding sweet influences; but the Evening Star, the soft and serene light that glowed in their van, the precursor of them all, has sunk below the horizon.

Their very vices were not without a certain fascinating grandeur; and the pleasures of the table in which our Plantagenet rulers outstripped even their precursors, the earlier sovereigns of that line, were enhanced and multiplied by the Crusades, by the commencing spirit of discovery, and by the foreign intermarriages, which became so frequent.

There never was any undue familiarity; my father's reserve, and their own dignity, would of themselves have precluded that certain precursor to the decline of superficial friendship; but a consistent and somewhat ceremonious intercourse was preserved from first to last, that could scarcely be called intimacy.

The cup of tea proves the precursor of many kind services and pleasant hours.

I recognised the precursor of its becoming dangerous.

" The popular Elizabethan book containing twelve classical love-stories "Sinorex and Camma," "Tereus and Progne," etc.in style the precursor of Euphues, now first reprinted under the editorship of Professor I. GOLLANCZ.