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In describing the Paris gardens Horace Walpole says, "they form light corridors and transpicuous arbours, through which the sunbeams play and checker the shade, set off the statues, vases, and flowers, that marry with their gaudy hotels, and suit the gallant and idle society who paint the walks between their parterres, and realise the fantastic scenes of Watteau and Durf�!"

On earth no wave How clean soe'er, that would not seem to have Some mixture in itself, compared with this, Transpicuous clear; yet darkly on it rolled Darkly beneath perpetual gloom, which ne'er Admits or sun or moonlight there to shine.

Of this opinion also was Cæsar la Galla, whose words are these, The Moone doth there appeare clearest, where shee is transpicuous, not onely through the superficies, but the substance also, and there she seemes spotted, where her body is most opacous.

Pierce, then, with thought’s steel probe, the trodden ground, Till passion’s buried floods be found; Intend thine eye Into the dim and undiscover’d sky Whose lustres are the pulsings of the heart, And promptly, as thy trade is, watch to chart The lonely suns, the mystic hazes and throng’d sparkles bright That, named and number’d right In sweet, transpicuous words, shall glow alway With Love’s three-stranded ray, Red wrath, compassion golden, lazuline delight.’

In this voluminous series of papers the critical pen, when most earnestly eulogistic or most sharply incisive, is wielded with so much skill and art and fine temper, that personality is seldom transpicuous.