Aulus, with his good broadsword, A bloody passage cleared He dropped the lance: he dropped the reins: Fast down to earth they spring: A death wound in the face; The priest of Juno's shrine: Of Rome's great Julian line; High on the Velian hill, And through all turns of weal and wo And Titus groaned with rage and grief, Valerius struck at Titus, And lopped off half his crest; A span deep in the breast. Like a mast snapped by the tempest, Ah! wo is me for the good house That loves the People well! The struggle is now to recover the bodies of the fallen warriors; Aulus animating the Romans to recover the body of their champion Valerius-bidding the patriot warriors remember that "For your wives and babies In the front rank he fell : Now play the men for the good house Then tenfold round the body The roar of battle rose, When a strong North wind blows. Other desperate encounters of knights and leaders take place, but auxiliaries are seen approaching the Latian array. Herminius is slain, and fortune is turning against the Romans; when, at the critical moment while the Dictator is preparing for a last desperate effort, Castor and Pollux, the Twin-gods, appear, and He was aware of a princely pair Did such rare armor gleam; 23 Every warrior is struck with awe when these unknown knights take the van of the Roman ranks. They confess that they are called by many names, and known in many lands; that their home is by the proud Eurotas, and that they have come to battle for the right on the side of Rome. The fight is now renewed with fresh vigor. Victory is with Rome, the citizens of which, with the High Pontiff, the Fathers, the higher dignitaries, and a great promiscuous crowd, are represented as waiting, with anxious hearts, for tidings of the battle. Eve was closing, when the same princely pair who, in the hour of need, stood by Aulus, were seen pricking towards the town." 66 So like they were, man never Hail to the hill-tops seven! Hail to the fire that burns for aye, Under the Porcian height, Shall bring in triumph home To deck the shrines of Rome!" A shout that shook the towers, And some ran north, and some ran south, But on rode these strange horsemen, While laurel-boughs and flowers, They vaulted down amain, And washed their horses in the well We must stop here -The generous attempt of Mr. Macaulay will, we hope, give an impulse to our younger poets. When the capabilities of the popular Ballad, for great and regenerating moral and political, as well as poetical purposes, begin to be understood, a change for the better must be visible in the character of popular verse. SHORT RIDES IN AN AUTHOR'S OMNIBUS. MONOPOLISTS. THE greatest monopolist upon record was the philanthropic Antoninus Pius, who wish MISAPPLICATION OF TERMS. ed that the whole world might become one convert the pleasures of Memory into the city, an aspiration which is destined, per- pleasures of Hope, and live in the delighthaps, to receive its ultimate accomplish- ful and exalting conviction that there is a ment from the power of steam, and the in- Golden Age to come. creased intercourse of nations, through the universal predominance of free trade.When the passions and the interests of men are engaged on behalf of tranquillity and Calling a straight canal the Serpentine commerce, when there is rapid and unre- River: terming the North and South Amestricted communication from one country rican Stocks and Bonds-Securities; after to another, when the sea that goes round some much-ado-about-nothing debate, talkour globe like a ring, marries the uttermost ing of taking the sense of the House; reends of the earth to each other through questing the public, in some affair of which the ministry of steam navigation; is it not it is profoundly ignorant, to suspend its possible that their nuptials may be cele- judgment; dubbing every gross or nasty brated by an all-embracing peace and love inquiry, a delicate investigation. But perthat shall realize the benevolent desire of haps the most signal misnomer is that of Antoninus? The thought may be deemed visionary, but let us indulge it, however small may be the chance of its fulfilment, for though our hopes may often appear Uto. pian to others, may often disappoint ourselves, they have a constant tendency to produce their own accomplishment. To achieve any great object we must first believe in it, and by constantly stretching ourselves upwards, our elastic minds may eventually reach what at first seemed unattainable. The reputed visionaries and men of sanguine temperament who have predicted and hailed the uprising of a better age, have expedited its advent: while they who have written despondingly of man's prospects, if they have not in reality darkened the future, have at least thrown a cloud over the present. Lord Herbert of Cherbury, who, being in doubt whether or not he should publish a work he had written, went upon his knees and prayed to Heaven for a directing sign, which he received in a supernatural noise, described as being loud, though yet gentle, whereupon he published his book, and entitled it " De Veritate" THERE IS A SOUL OF GOODNESS IN THINGS It has been said that alchemy, astrology, and superstition are the worthless parents of three noble children-chemistry, astronomy, and religion; to which might be added the old dictum, that invention is the offspring of necessity. Would men observingly distil it out, And even if the visionist do sometimes they would find that the great moral chesequester himself into Utopian and Atlan-inist is perpetually extracting antidotes tic schemes," let it not be imagined that from banes, wholesome medicaments from his speculations are unbeneficial to man- the most deadly poisons. As in the matekind; for a glittering delusion, instead of rial world the vilest refuse stimulates the beguiling us like an ignis fatuus into sloughs and quagmires, may sometimes enlighten our footsteps, and guide us from the crooked and dirty paths of life into a higher and purer course. Hopes for the future are our compensation for the past, and there is consolation even in the dreams and manelevating mistakes of our species, for we should scarcely be able to endure the degrading truths of history, were it not for its ennobling illusions. "At all the great periods of history," writes Madame de Staël, "men have embraced some sort of enthusiastic sentiment as an universal principle of action. Chivalry is to modern what the heroic age was to ancient times: all the noble recollections of the nations of Europe are attached to it." As these recollections fade away, we should turn from the past to the future growth and expands the beauty of nature's vegetable productions, so in the moral world are our worst passions and vices sometimes converted into a measure for the noblest virtues. Goodness, in fact, could not exist independently of evil, for without hardness of heart, meanness, fraud, falsehood, hypocrisy, oppression, there would be no charity, generosity, honesty, truth, candor, justice. The latter qualities are called into existence by the former; or rather they are the contrasted lights and shades that create each other. Eradicated and burnt weeds fertilize the field on which they grew; so do our extirpated and destroyed vices improve the reclaimed heart from whose rankness they first sprang. Our virtues are like plants of which the hidden root may sometimes be surrounded with impurity; but what man, when he might smell to a rose, would go sniffing and groping among the compost beneath the surface? Providence is constantly working out a purifying process through the fermentation of impure passions. "La législation," writes Jules Michelet,* "considere l'homme tel qu'il est, et veut en tirer parti pour le bien de la société humaine. Ainsi de trois vices, l'orgueil fèroce, l'avarice, l'ambition, qui égarent tout le genre humain, elle tire le métier de la guerre, le commerce, la politique, dans lesquels se forment le courage, l'opulence, la sagesse de l'homme d'état. Trois vices capables de detruire la race humaine produisent la félicité publique." the actor. "I beg your pardon," said a gentleman, courteously saluting another in a coffeeroom, "I don't immediately recollect your name: but I think I have had the pleasure of meeting you somewhere." "Nothing is more probable, for I very often go there," replied the party, returning the bow, and resuming the perusal of his newspaper. A medical man asked his legal adviser how he could punish a footman who had stolen a canister of valuable snuff. "I am not aware of any Act," replied the lawyer, "that makes it penal to take snuff." Methinks I hear the reader petulantly exclaim, "this is all very frivolous!" Most sapient sir or madam! (as the case may be) the fact is frankly admitted. One cannot be always talking sense, and it would be wrong were it practicable. Misce stultitiam consiliis brevem, sed ad jocos revocanda."—if we wish the mental bow to retain its strength and elasticity, it must be occasionally unbent. TIDINESS. Without going to the full extent of those housewives who sometimes tell their slatternly servants or children that cleanliness is next to godliness, I have a strong disposition to give tidiness precedence of many virtues that may perhaps consider themselves entitled to take the lead instead of following in its train. Even when pushed to a finical and fastidious nicety, it is an excess in the right direction, for it is surely better to go beyond the mark of neatness and regularity than to fall short of it. Tidiness has in it much more than meets the eye. It will generally be found that a love of material order involves a love of moral order, for there is a much greater sympathy than is commonly supposed between corporeal and mental habits, between the outward and visible sign, and the inward sense of grace-so that I should immediately predicate of a tidy person that he was a well-conducted person-one disposed to set his house in order metaphorically as well as literally, one who would have clean hands figuratively as well as digitally. When I observe that a person (call him a precision, a quiz if you will) feels his eye offended if a picture hang awry, if his room be littered, if the smallest article be out of its place, I see before me a pilot balloon, which shows me the current of his inclinations, and I say to myself, that man in the great affairs of life, as well as in the small economy of his parlor, is a friend to congruity, order, arrangement, fitness, and all the properties. What tidiness of inward feeling can be looked for from those who are slovens and slatterns in externals; what regard to appearances in conduct from those who neg. lect them in person? And yet we have sluts who seem to think they have a vested interest in their dirty habits, and feel themselves aggrieved when they are exposed. "Do you call this cleaning the room?" asked a mistress, observing one bright morning that the dust, instead of being carried away, had been brushed into the recesses of the apartment. "Yes, ma'am," was the flippant reply, "the room would be clean enough if it were not for the nasty sun, that shows all the dirty corners." Exactly in the same spirit do our senatorial sluggards, and anti-education and very well-as-we-are sort of people complain of And sickness, failure, misfortune, unhapthe intrusive rays of knowledge when they piness, those master miseries of which we penetrate into their privilege; darkness and so loudly complain when they occur, what foulness. They hate the public enlighten- are they but interruptions of health, sucment which reveals all the dirty corners of cess, good fortune, joy? What are they the political and social system. Their own but the salutary changes and checks which ignorance may be bliss, and they not per-will give a zest to the return of our former haps be altogether unwise in anticipating state, even as hunger imparts a higher relmischief from the march of intellect in ish to food, and fatigue enhances the pleaothers; for in a general illumination people sure of repose. Many are the men who must either write "empty house" upon their would never know that they had been living front, or run the risk of having their dark in the possession of blessings unless they windows pelted by the passing rabble. occasionally lost them. This is one of the advantages of subtraction, a precious rule of moral arithmetic, when we calculate it rightly. THE ARITHMETIC OF HAPPINESS. If the grumblers who are envious of their superiors, and discontented with their own lot, would but subtract those above from the aggregate of those beneath them, they would generally find themselves much beyond the mean position. The balance is in their favor, and if they understood arithmetic they would be thankful that they are no lower, instead of being discontented that they are not higher. To simple numerals, either Roman or Arabic, I make no allusion. I stop not to stigmatize the dishonest spendthrift, who, being anxious to cut a figure in the world, and to take good care of number one, makes a great dash until his affairs are all at sixes and sevens, is eventually reduced to a cipher, takes refuge in a continental hospital for pecuniary incurables, and when he dies, affords old Nick a fair opportunity to dot and carry one. No, I would simply refer And why, while complaining of present to the four arithmetical rules-mutliplica- disappointments, are we so rarely grateful tion, addition, subtraction, division-by a for past pleasures? Because we do not careful study of which we may steer into understand the rule of multiplication.the harbor of happiness with the same cer- When the mirror, slipping from the boy's tainty that the sailor reaches his deside- hand was shattered to pieces, showing him rated port by consulting the points of the his face in every fragment, he exclaimed, "How fortunate that I let it fall! I have now twenty looking-glasses instead of one." compass. "Happiness!" exclaims the reader, "what so easy to lose, what so difficult to attain ?" Such might be our own reflections when any long-enjoyed advantage falls broken to Pardon me, you are wrong in both posi-the ground. We should multiply it by the tions, because you have forgotten your twenty years during which we possessed arithmetic. Recollect how memory multi-it, add the future hope of its recovery, and plies the joys that are past-how hope mul- by deducting the whole from the quantum tiplies the joys that are to come. The of our present discontent, the latter ought whole life of a good man may be a continu- to be reduced to a cipher. ously grateful recollection of duties discharged, an ever-present antepast of the celestial beatitudes. Take this ecstatic feeling for your multiplicand, threescore and ten years for your average multiplicator, and then add up the quantum of happiness obtainable even in this world! If we would but make a right calculation of life, how incalculably would it rise in our estimation! What a glorious and delightful enigma is mere existence, apart from all its accidents and concomitants. Is it nothing, when you might have been a spider, an earwig, a tadpole, to be a lord of this beautiful creation, a reasoning being, with all his proud privileges and enjoyments? Add up all these capacities for felicity, get the sum total by heart, and be grateful. The most miserable man that ever lived would diminish his ground of complaint by a third at least, if he would subtract from his sufferings the hours of sleep, during which he was on a par with the happiest. An eastern fabulist, recording a king who dreamt every night that he was a beggar, and a beggar who dreamt every night that he was a king, inquires which of the two, supposing each to have slept twelve hours out of twenty-four, had the greatest or the least enjoyment of existence. If there be any truth in the crede quod habes et habes, and we exchange the monarch's day or the mendicant's night, we shall reduce the enjoyments of the two to an equation. And this is what Providence is constantly effecting, by a system of drawbacks and compensations; by balancing the fear of losing what we have, against the hope of gaining what we have not. Instead of mournfully adding up the amount of any loss as a groundwork for complaint, it would be well to subtract it from what is left, that we may see how much remains as a basis for gratitude. It is very absurd, says Plutarch, to lament for what is lost, and not to rejoice for what it left, à propos to which he quotes a wise speech of Aristippus, the Cyrenaic philosopher, who, having lost a considerable farm, said to one who seemed excessively to compassionate his misfortune, "You have but one field, I have three left; why should I not rather grieve for you?" SONG. Bright flowers that gem our grounds, Ye teach us if we scan Our morning claims fulfill'd, Our evening hours with mirth. SIMILES OF DISSIMILITube. Metaphors have been called transparent veils, but they are sometimes rather more opaque than diaphonous, and bear a nearer resemblance to plate glass, which, though pellucid enough to the tenant within, is impervious to the passenger without. So it is with comparisons and resemblances, which are to be used with due direction, For similes on plain occasions, Discontent becomes still more unreasonable when people bewail the loss of that of which the possession gave them no pleasure. Determined to reserve to themselves the right of complaint, they toss up with fate upon the same knavish principle as the schoolboy's "heads, I win-tails you lose." Division, also, is a valuable rule, for we halve our sorrows by imparting them to a sympathizing friend; while, contradictory as it may sound, we double our own grati- Of this offuscating process, a proof occurs fications by sharing them with another. in a sermon by the celebrated Dr. SacheIn conclusion, let it be recollected by those verell, who, speaking of different courses of who study the calculations and the arith- action tending to the same result, says, metic of happiness, that the merest trifles" They concur like parallel lines meeting may be made to minister to its support, in one common centre." even as a swimmer is enabled to keep his head above water by bladders filled with air;-that the burden which is well and cheerfully borne ceases to be felt; that not to wish for a thing is the same as to have it; that not to regret a loss is still to possess what you have lost;-and that we may all have what we like, simply by liking what we have. THE LIGHT FROM ABOVE. For one truly pious man whose looks and thoughts are fixed upon the sky, in order that he may study, like an astronomer, the wonders and the ways of heaven, there are fifty hypocrites, whose upturned eyes take the same direction in order that, like sailors steering by the stars, they may the better make their way here below. We have been told, on very competent authority, that men go into the church to live by it: but we hear little of their living for it, and nothing of their being prepared to die for it, if necessary. Well would it be for us all if the current of our dispositions, and the tides of our passions, like those of the sea, were always governed by a light from above. To thicken what they're meant to clear. THE SEPULCHRES OF ETRURIA. From the Dublin Review. H. Tour to the Sepulchres of Etruria in 1839, by THE volume before us is written on a subject of no ordinary interest; and we shall add of no ordinary importance. It is a subject also, which is new to a vast num ber of our English readers; sepulchres are not usually objects of attraction to the continental, much less to the female, tourist ; and the very novelty of the present work, independently of its historical value, should make it acceptable to a larger proportion of the reading public. In the crowd of travellers who go each year the round of the continental cities; getting rid of much of their cash, and none of their prejudices; who estimate the motives of men and of actions, and the tendencies of civil and religious institutions, by the narrow and erring standard of their own preconceived opinions, and these not of the most enlight |