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The evening came, yet there the people stood,
As if 't were noon, and they the marble sea,
Sleeping without a wave. You could have heard
The beating of your pulses while he spoke.

2. SOLILOQUY OF VAN ARTEVELDE. - Henry Taylor.

Say that I fall not in this enterprise, —
Still must my life be full of hazardous turns,
And they that house with me must ever live
In imminent peril of some evil fate. —
Make fast the doors; heap wood upon the fire;
Draw in your stools, and pass the goblet round.
And be the prattling voice of children heard.
Now let us make good cheer

Do I not see, or do I dream I see,

A form that midmost in the circle sits

But what is this?

Half visible, his face deformed with scars,

And foul with blood? —O! yes, I know it- there Sits Danger with his feet upon the hearth!

The dweller in the mountains, on whose ear
The accustomed cataract thunders unobserved, ~
The seaman, who sleeps sound upon the deck,
Nor hears the loud lamenting of the blast,
Nor heeds the weltering of the plangent wave,
These have not lived more undisturbed than I.
But build not upon this; the swollen stream
May shake the cottage of the mountaineer,
And drive him forth; the seaman, roused at length,
Leaps from his slumber on the wave-washed deck;
And now the time comes fast when here in Ghent
He who would live exempt from injuries
Of armed men must be himself in arms.
This time is near for all, - nearer for me.
I will not wait upon necessity,

And leave myself no choice of vantage-ground,
But rather meet the times where best I may,
And mould and fashion them as best I can.

3. INNOCENCE.

Whence learned she this?

O, she was innocent!
And to be innocent is Nature's wisdom!
The fledge-dove knows the prowlers of the air,
Feared soon as seen, and flutters back to shelter
And the young steed recoils upon his haunches,
The never yet seen adder's hiss first heard.
O, surer than suspicion's hundred eyes
Is that fine sense which to the pure in heart
By mere oppugnancy of their own goodness
Reveals the approach of evil.

4. TITUS BEFORE JERUSALEM. Rev. H. H. Milman

It must be

And yet it moves me, Romans! it confounds

The counsel of my firm philosophy,

That Ruin's merciless ploughshare must pass o'er,
And barren salt be sown on yon proud city.—

As on this olive-crowned hill we stand,
Where Hebron at our feet its scanty waters
Distils from stone to stone with gentle motion,
As through a valley sacred to sweet peace,
How boldly doth it front us! how majestically!
Like a luxurious vineyard, the hill-side
Is hung with marble fabrics, line o'er line,
Terrace o'er terrace, nearer still and nearer

To the blue heavens! There bright and sumptuous palaces,

With cool and verdant gardens interspersed ;

There towers of war that frown in massy strength;

While over all hangs the rich purple eve,

As conscious of its being her last farewell

Of light and glory to that fated city.

And, as our clouds of battle, dust, and smoke,
Are melted into air, behold the Temple
In undisturbed and lone serenity,

Finding itself a solemn sanctuary

In the profound of heaven! It stands before us
A mount of snow, fretted with golden pinnacles!
The very sun, as though he worshipped there,
Lingers upon the gilded cedar roofs,

And down the long and branching porticos!
On every flowery-sculptured capital
Glitters the homage of his parting beams!
By Hercules! the sight might almost win
The offended majesty of Rome to mercy.

5. THE DUKE ARANZA TO JULIANA.-John Tobin.

I'll have no glittering gewgaws stuck about you,
To stretch the gaping eyes of idiot wonder,
And make men stare upon a piece of earth
As on the star-wrought firmament; no feathers

To wave as streamers to your vanity;

Nor cumbrous silk, that, with its rustling sound,
Makes proud the flesh that bears it. She's adorned
Amply that in her husband's eye looks lovely—
The truest mirror that an honest wife

Can see her beauty in!

Thus modestly attired,

A half-blown rose stuck in thy braided hair,

With no more diamonds than those eyes are made of,

No deeper rubies than compose thy lips,
Nor pearls more precious than inhabit them,
With the pure red and white, which that same hand
Which blends the rainbow mingles in thy cheeks,
This well-proportioned form (think not I flatter)
In graceful motion to harmonious sounds,
And thy free tresses dancing in the wind, -
Thou 'lt fix as much observance as chaste dames
Can meet without a blush.

CLXXX.

THE COLOSSEUM BY MOONLIGHT.

The Colosse um is the name given to the largest amphitheatre in the world, that of Vespasian and Titus in Rome, completed in the eightieth year of the Christian era, and the ruins of which are still attractive for their stupendous and picturesque appearance. It is a building of an elliptic figure, and covers five acres and a quarter of ground, the walls being one hundred and sixty-six feet high. It had seats for eighty-seven thousand spectators, with standing room for twenty-two thousand others. The great object of this magnificent building was to exhibit the brutal spectacle of the gladiators contending with wild beasts. The following is an account of a recent visit by moonlight to the Colosseum, by an American traveller :

1. As a matter of course, everybody goes to the Colosseum by moonlight. The great charm of the ruin under this condition is, that the imagination is substituted for sight, the mind for the eye. The essential character of moonlight is hard rather than soft. The line between light and shadow is sharply defined, and there is no gradation of color. Blocks and walls of silver are bordered by and spring out of chasms of blackness. But moonlight shrouds the Colosseum in mystery. It opens deep vaults of gloom where the eye meets only an ebon wall, but upon which the fancy paints innumerable pictures in solemn, splendid, and tragic colors. Shadowy forms of emperor and lictor, and vestal virgin and gladiator and martyr, come out of the darkness, and pass before us in long and silent procession. The breezes which blow through the broken arches are changed into voices, and recall the shouts and cries of a vast audience. By day the Colosseum is an impressive fact; by night it is a stately vision. By day it is a lifeless form; by night, a vital thought.

The

2. The Colosseum should by all means be seen by a bright starlight, or under the growing sickle of a young moon. fainter ray and deeper gloom bring out more strongly its visionary and ideal character. When the full moon has blotted out the stars, it fills the vast gulf of the building with a flood of spectral light, which falls with a chilling touch upon the spirit; for then the ruin is like a " corpse in its shroud of snow," and the moon is

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a pale watcher by its side. But when the walls, veiled in deep shadow, seen a part of the darkness in which they are lost, when the stars are seen through their chasms and breaks, and sparkle along the broken line of the battlements, · - the scene becomes another, though the same; more indistinct, yet not so mournful; contracting the sphere of sight, but enlarging that of thought; less burdening, but more suggestive.

3. It was my fortune to see the Colosseum, on one occasion, under lights which were neither of night nor day. Arrange ments were made by a party of German artists to illuminate it with artificial flames of blue, red, and green. The evening was propitious for the object, being dark and still, and nearly all the idlers in Rome attended. Everything was managed with taste and skill, and the experiment was entirely successful. It was quite startling to see the darkness suddenly dispelled by these weird lights, revealing a dense mass of animated countenances. and hanging a broad sheet of green or crimson upon the wall. The magic change was a sort of epigram to the eye. But, from the association of such things with the illusions of the stage, the spectacle suggested debasing comparisons. It seemed a theatrical exhibition, unworthy of the dignity and majesty of the Colosseum. It was like seeing a faded countenance repaired with artificial roses, or a venerable form clothed in some quaint and motley disguise, suited only to the bloom and freshness of youth. Such lights, far more than sunshine, "gild but to flout the ruin gray."

4. But under all aspects, in the blaze of noon, at sunset, by the light of the moon or stars, the Colosseum stands alone and unapproached. It is the monarch of ruins. It is a great tragedy in stone, and it softens and subdues the mind like a drama of schylus or Shakspeare. It is a colossal type of those struggles of humanity against an irresistible destiny, in which the tragic poet finds the elements of his art. The calami ties which crushed the house of Atreus are symbolized in its broken arches and shattered walls. Built of indestructible materials, and seemingly for eternity, of a size, material, and form, to defy the "strong hours" which conquer all, it has bowed its head to their touch, and passed into the inevitable cycle of decay. "And this, too, shall pass away," which the Eastern monarch engraved upon his signet-ring, is carved upon these Cyclope ́an blocks. The stones of the Colosseum were once water; and they are now turning into dust.

5. Such is ever the circle of nature. The solid is changing into the fluid, and the fluid into the solid; and that which is unseen is alone indestructible. He does not see the Colosseum

aright, who carries away from it no other impressions than those of form, size, and hue. It speaks an intelligible language to the wiser mind. It rebukes the peevish, and consoles the patient. It teaches us that there are misfortunes which are clothed with dignity, and sorrows that are crowned with grandeur. As the same blue sky smiles upon the ruin, which smiled upon the perfect structure, so the same beneficent Providence bends over our shattered hopes and our answered prayers.

6. The stars are forth, the moon above the tops
Of the snow-shining mountains. - - Beautiful!

I linger yet with Nature, for the night
Hath been to me a more familiar face
Than that of man; and in her starry shade
Of dim and solitary loveliness

I learned the language of another world.

7. I do remember me that in my youth,
When I was wandering, upon such a night
I stood within the Colosseum's wall,
'Midst the chief relics of almighty Rome;
The trees which grew along the broken arches
Waved dark in the blue midnight, and the stars
Shone through the rents of ruin; from afar
The watch-dog bayed beyond the Tiber; and
More near, from out the Cæsars' palace, came
The owl's long cry, and, interruptedly,
Of distant sentinels the fitful song
Begun and died upon the gentle wind.

HILLARD.

8. Some cypresses beyond the time-worn breach
Appeared to skirt the horizon, yet they stood
Within a bow-shot. Where the Caesars dwelt,
And dwell the tuneless birds of night, amidst
A grove which springs through levelled battlements,
And twines its roots with the imperial hearths,
Ivy usurps the laurel's place of growth;

But the gladiators' bloody circus stands,

A noble wreck in ruinous perfection!

While Caesar's chambers, and the Augustan halls,
Grovel on earth in indistinct decay.

9. And thou didst shine, thou rolling moon, upon
All this, and cast a wide and tender light,
Which softened down the hoar austerity
Of rugged desolation, and filled up,

As 't were anew, the gaps of centuries:
Leaving that beautiful which still was so,
And making that which was not, till the place
Became religion, and the heart ran o'er
With silent worship of the great of old,
The dead but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule
Our spirits from their urns!

LORD BYRON.

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