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Yet deem not Gertrude sighed for foreign joy;
To soothe a father's couch her only care,
And keep his reverend head from all annoy:
For this, methinks, her homeward steps repair,
Soon as the morning wreath had bound her hair;
While yet the wild deer trod in spangling dew,

While boatmen carolled to the fresh-blown air,
And woods a horizontal shadow threw ;
And early fox appeared in momentary view.

Apart there was a deep untrodden grot,

Where oft the reading hours sweet Gertrude wore :
Tradition had not named its lonely spot;

But here, methinks, might India's sons explore
Their fathers' dust, or lift, perchance of yore,
Their voice to the great Spirit: -rocks sublime
To human art a sportive semblance bore,
And yellow lichens coloured all the clime,

Like moonlight battlements, and towers decayed by time.

But high in amphitheatre above,

His arms the everlasting aloe threw :
Breathed but an air of heaven, and all the grove
As if with instinct living spirit grew,
Rolling its verdant gulf of every hue;
And now suspended was the pleasing din, -
Now from a murmur faint it swelled anew;
Like the first note of organ heard within
Cathedral aisles, ere yet its symphony begin.

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It was in this lone valley she would charm

The lingering noon, where flowers a couch had strewn; Her cheek reclining, and her snowy arm,

On hillock by the palm-tree half o'ergrown;
And aye that volume on her lap is thrown

Which every heart of human mould endears:

With Shakspeare's self she speaks and smiles alone, And no intruding visitation fears,

To shame the unconscious laugh, or stop her sweetest tears.

EXERCISE CLXXXVII.

THE FAMILY MEETING.

Charles Sprague.

WE are all here!

Father, Mother,

Sister, Brother,

All who hold each other dear.

Each chair is filled, we're all at home;
To-night let no cold stranger come:
It is not often thus around

Our old familiar hearth we're found.
Bless, then, the meeting and the spot;
For once be every care forgot;
Let gentle Peace assert her power,
And kind Affection rule the hour;
We're all, all here.

We're not all here!

Some are away,- the dead ones dear,
Who thronged with us this ancient hearth,
And gave the hour to guiltless mirth.
Fate, with a stern, relentless hand,
Looked in, and thinned our little band:
Some like a night-flash passed away,
And some sank, lingering, day by day;
The quiet graveyard

some lie there;

And cruel Ocean has his share:

Even they,

We're not all here.

We are all here!

the dead, — though dead, so dear.

Fond Memory, to her duty true,
Brings back their faded forms to view.
How life-like, through the mist of years,
Each well-remembered face appears!
We see them as in times long past:
From each to each kind looks are cast;
We hear their words, their smiles behold;
They're round us as they were of old;
We are all here.

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THE Acropolis of Athens! It is difficult to conceive the perpetual and vivid interest, with which the stranger wanders around its scenery, inhaling, at every step, the air of ancient Athenian glory. Even now it is an object which one would never be wearied with gazing at; and in its perfection it must have been a combination of natural beauty of situation with the highest magnificence of art, such as would renew the admiration of the mind with every day's examination. Its Propylæa, its Parthenon, and its other temples, in solemn, melancholy ruins, make it an altar of THE PAST, magnificent beyond description. How glorious must it have been in the freshness of its early unity, and the unbroken symmetry of all its outlines, a vast white pile of fretted Pentelican marble, with every sculpture in the pediments and friezes of its temples breathing with life!

The Acropolis, before which we now stand, looks directly towards the port of the Piræus. Entering now the deep massive arched way which forms the only access to the citadel, we see beneath us on our right the remains of the Theatre of Herodes. Passing another dilapidated gateway, and presenting our passport, or permit, at the door of the cell of the keeper, a precaution, that, if it had been adopted at a much earlier period, would have saved the ruins of the Parthenon

from many a pilferer, we are conducted to the innermost gateway, through which, amidst broken pillars and pedestals lying 'n heaps around us, we pass upwards, directly in front of the grand ranges of columns, which constitute the centre of the Propylæa. A square marble tower, formerly crowned with an equestrian statue, rises on the north; and opposite on the south, the Temple of " Victory without Wings," is still visible, having been recently disinterred from the rubbish, and restored almost completely to its ancient proportions.

Here let us step back a little nearer to the brink of the massive western walls of the citadel; and, from this point, you will think it scarcely possible to conceive a design of purer majesty in architecture, than the remaining splendours of the Propylæa offer to the view. A huge square tower, erected by the Turks, at the southern wing, encumbers and disfigures the harmony of the picture; but originally it must have been a pile of surpassing magnificence and beauty.

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By quoting a part of Col. Leake's accurate description of the plan and execution of this work under the administration of Pericles, you will have a better idea of the whole than I can otherwise convey. The western end of the Acropolis," says this writer, "which furnished the only access to the summit of the hill, presented a breadth of only one hundred and sixty-eight feet, an opening so narrow, that it appeared practicable to the artists of Pericles to fill up the space with a single building, which, in serving the main purpose of a gateway, should contribute at once to fortify and adorn the citadel. This work, the greatest production of civil architecture in Athens, which equalled the Parthenon in felicity of execution, and surpassed it in boldness and originality of design, was begun 437 years before Christ, and completed in five years. The entire building, like others of the same kind, received the name of Propylæa from its forming a vestibule to the five gates or doors by which the citadel was entered."

The whole structure was entirely of Pentelican marble. There were six fluted Doric columns, in front; each five feet in diameter, and twenty-nine feet high. Behind this was a vestibule forty-three feet deep, with six Doric columns on each side. Marble beams, twenty-two feet long, covered the side-aisles. This vestibule leads to the five doors of the Propylæa; and through these you pass into the inner eastern portico, with its Doric colonnade.

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Here, above all places at Athens," says Mr. Wordsworth,

our system, which is no less than eighteen hundred millions of miles from the sun.

Is light material? I have no knowledge of it but what is obtained through the medium of sight; no other sense recognizes it; we cannot taste it; we cannot smell it; and it makes no impression on the nerves of touch. But I can learn, that it is not only compounded of three primary coloured rays, but also of others not connected with colour at all; of calorific and of oxidizing and deoxidizing rays. I can see, that it is necessary to vegetation; that plants, deprived of its presence, lose their green colour; that it effects various chemical decompositions; and that it is subjected to certain fixed laws, which form the basis of the science of optics. From these circumstances I infer that it is matter, that it is a substance. But how subtile must be the nature of a substance whose particles can move in every direction, without interfering with each other; which can travel ninetyfive millions of miles in eight minutes, and yet not exert the least perceptible force of collision; which will pass through the hardest crystal, or the purest diamond, with as much ease as through air or water!

Light is imponderable, and wants various properties which philosophers have thought to be essential to matter; but, in fact, we can seldom tell what is essential to any thing. We see objects and light by the eyes: that you will admit; and you will adınit, also, that without organs of vision, we could have no knowledge of light and colours. But is it the eye that sees? Consider now. You say, Yes: I say, No.

When you take up a telescope, and look at the moons of Jupiter, you see those moons, which, without the telescope, you could not see. But does the telescope see them? You laugh, perhaps you think the question childish. It is not so. Suppose a card were slipped in between your eye and the eye-glass, you would then neither perceive the planet nor his satellites.

Now, the eye is to vision what the telescope is: it is an optical instrument; it serves to form an image; but the eye itself does not see: it is the organ of communication with light, and is necessary to vision; but the sensation lies in the brain, or rather, I should say, in the mind which inhabits it. Cut off the communication between the eye and the brain; and the same result follows as when a card is placed between the eye and the telescope: all is dark. The optic

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