founded on democratic principles. He had barely reached home, when a revolt broke out. Returning, he won the glorious naval engagement off Tragie, and beseiged the city of Samos. Learning that a Phoenician fleet was on its way to the relief of the besieged, he steered for the Mediterranean to meet it. No sooner had he departed, than our army was defeated by the Samians, and many of our ships destroyed. On receiving the tidings of these disasters Pericles hastily returned, and in a pitched battle completely defeated the Samians. Careful of the lives of his soldiers, he did not attempt to carry the city by assault, but with admirable military foresight built a wall around it. In nine months the proud and insolent city surrendered to our arms. Its walls were razed, its ships carried off, and heavy contributions were laid on it by Pericles. The funeral obsequies of those who fell in this war were celebrated with great pomp at Athens; and when Pericles, who had been appointed to deliver the eulogium, finished the eloquent discourse, he was crowned by the Athenian women with chaplets of flowers.

You well know (during the few years of peace that followed the Samian war) how rapidly our city increased in extent, wealth and population, while a luxury softer than that of Persia stole upon us- -Pericles still continued to scatter with a prodigal hand the public treasure, refusing to give any reply to the murmurs of the people concerning his extravagant expenditures. A decree was proposed by Dracontides, requiring him to give an account of the public money before the Prytanes. To avoid the dishonor which would attend this inquiry, and to draw off from it the attention of the people, he began with zeal and energy to advocate a war with the Lacedemonians. A thousand reasons readily presented themselves to his aid. A deep seated jealousy of our power and glory was felt by most of the states of Greece, and on many occasions they had taken sides with our revolted territories. Yet they sought to arrange the numerous difficulties which had arisen, by a resort to negotiation, and the Lacedemonian ambassadors were heard before the assembly of the people. Their propositions for a peace, alike advantageous and honorable to us, might have been accepted; but the powerful eloquence of Pericles kindled into a blaze the slumbering heroism of Athens, and with one accord we surrendered ourselves to him. He told us that these ambassadors came not to expostulate-but to order; that if we yielded to them in the smallest matter, they would increase in their demands; that the states who threatened us had no ability to prosecute the war with speed or vigor; that we were the mistress of the seas; that we had nothing to fear from the contest, every thing to hope. In glowing colors he sketched our abilities and resources, and in thrilling tones he appealed to our patriotism and courage. Thus commenced the war in which we are now engaged, hurried on, because Pericles dared not state his accounts to the people! Accursed power of gold! Such are thy triumphs, and such are some of the consequences which nations feel, when both rulers and people are thy slaves!

On the call of Pericles, great numbers flocked into the city from all parts of Attica, enrolling themselves in the ranks, while the most active preparations were made in equipping our ships of war. But one feeling animated our people-and that was a determination to prosecute the war, reckless of life and treasure. The honor of our country was at stake, and in Athens there was no traitor-heart which dared to sneer at the country's cause! None speculated about the causes of the war-none desired the peace of dishonor, but with one accord the old and the young prepared for the conflict.

The Lacedemonians and their confederates with a large army having invaded and laid waste our soil, encamped at Acharnæ, near the city. Despite the popular murmurs, Pericles refused to convene an assembly of the people, for fear he might be compelled to act against his own opinion, and engage the enemy. In every shape and form he was attacked by vilification and obloquy. His prudence was termed cowardice, and he was even charged by some with a design to betray his country. Self-possessed and firm, he resisted every appeal, and sternly submitted to the cloud of disgrace which was thickening around him. On a single battle he would not risk the safety of the state and the destiny of his country. To allay the popular excitement, he made a distribution of money and lands among the people; and when the enemy retired, (after vainly attempting to provoke a battle,) by means of our fleet he carried the war into their own country, and also into that of the confederates.

About this period broke out that terrific pestilence, the plague, which decimated our city. I have no taste to recall its wide-spread horrors. You witnessed it, and over the utter destitution of sympathy and charity which it produced, let us forever draw a veil Starting from Ethiopia, and spreading desolation on its way, it found a full harvest of death in the multitude which had flocked into Athens on the first alarm of invasion. Joyous youth, elastic manhood and temperate age, were alike its victims, and each family found more than one vacant place around their hearths. To cheer the drooping spirits of the people, Pericles fitted out a large fleet for the purpose of harrassing the enemy, and soon laid siege to the sacred city of Epidamus. Here he was defeated, not by the enemy, but by a fearful pestilence which prevailed in bis army. Returning to Athens, discomfited and unfortunate, he encountered the public resentment, and although with accustomed eloquence he justified his conduct, and endeavored to console the people under their defeat, and to animate them to renewed exertion, he was yet condemned, deprived of command, and a heavy fine imposed on him.

To this sentence, alike sudden and unexpected, were added the domestic afflictions which now fell on him. Most of his early and fast friends, who had aided him in the administration of the government, had fallen by the plague, and he was alone. Yet he surrendered not his dignity of soul until the death of Paralus, his only remaining legitimate son; and when placing the garland upon the head of his dead child, he broke into loud and womanly lamentations.

Ere a year had passed by, the people invited him to resume the direction of the civil and military affairs of Athens. He had lived in the closest retirement, and when Alcibiades and his other friends persuaded him to make his appearance before the people, he did not hesitate. Forgetting the sentence imposed on him, he calmly heard them, and resumed the reins of government with a firm and steady hand. How short was the period, ere

death removed him from us!

*

The eloquence of Pericles was the philtre by which he seduced the heart of Athens, and money was the instrument with which, for more than forty years, he held over us a monarch's power. His oratory had been formed on the best models, and it was perfected by constant practice. Who that ever heard him could forget his manner, gesture or delivery, or the living thought which fell from his lips? Like a rare strain of music, it forever haunted the memory of the heart, and could not be forgotten. Whatever cause he advocated, succeeded, and seldom was he defeated. On the trial

of Aspasia for impiety and immorality of life, he appeared in the defence, and on this occasion only was his forensic skill fruitless. She was acquitted by a majority of her judges, not by his eloquence, but only when that strong and gifted man, around whose brow clustered the glories of Athens, gave way to a flood of unmanly tears. At the Ceramicas, on the end of the first campaign of the present war, over the ashes of those who were there interred, he delivered that beautiful and matchless oration, the brilliant truths and lofty patriotism of which have become to us as household words, and which, so long as our language exists, can never perish, With what thrilling power did he allude to the heroic men who had given their lives for their country? Their glory was not buried-but treasured up. The whole earth was to them a sepulchre. Happiness was only in liberty, and they, her sons, had protected her by valor and virtue. No one in that vast assembly but caught the enthusiasm of the orator, and with swelling pride listened to his eulogium on Athens and the Atheniaus, and to the priceless blessings freedom gives only to the good and brave. We once had these blessings, but gold has expelled them forever from us. Athens will add one more page to the history of those republics which have fallen in the contest between liberty and money. In such a conflict liberty has never conquered. How false then were these professions of the orator, and what a satire on a people degraded by luxury and enslaved by corruption! Yet, deluded by his eloquence, we believed ourselves free, and foolishly dreamed that the republic of our fathers had not withered unto death, and that liberty had never fled from her chosen dwelling-place on earth-our own heavenkissed Attica?

THE PROVERB.

FROM THE FRENCH OF BERANGER.

ALAIN a princess did admire,

But saw his hopes defeated;
Ignobly born, a simple squire,

He like a serf was treated.
The princess had her stately dame,
A flower whose bloom had fleeted;
Alain to her transports his flame,
But like a serf is treated.

The dame, too, had her waiting-maid,
Who none but nobles greeted;
In vain to her his court he paid;

He like a serf was treated.

But when her under-maid he meets,
She finds her bliss completed;
Surprised, since her so we'l he treats,
That he like serf was treated.

The waiting-maid for him does burn;
She hears his charins repeated;
The dame now courts him in her turn;
He's like a baron treated.

At last the princess, with less pride,
To him her favours meted;

Then was the proverb cast aside,
"He like a serf is treated."

FAITH.

A POEM IN THREE PARTS.

"In Faith, everything depends on the fact of believing;
What is believed is perfectly indifferent."-GOETHE.

ALAS! deserted Pindus sees no more,
Around its sacred summits, as of yore,
Gather th' Olympian throng; the God of light
Urges no more in their ethereal flight,
His panting coursers; Jove's own dreaded
thunder,

Robb'd of its awe and of its mystic wonder,
No longer heaven's up-treasur'd wrath deals
forth.

But tamed by man, obedient toils on earth.

No Demigod, his urn in hand, presides
At each clear river's birth; the stream!et glides
As fresh and wanton through the yielding

green;

But yet more sadly woos the rural scene,
And vainly seeks, where silence broods alone,
Its warden Naiads now forever gone.

The waves yet dash against the echoing rock;
Or. dying on the pebbly beach, they mock
The startled ear with their perpetual dirge;
But still the many voices of the surge,
Its distant roar, its sadness-breathing sighs,
More plaintive yet and melancholy rise-
A wail for the departed Nereids.

No sudden fear of lurking satyr bids
The traveller start, when moans the evening
breeze,

At each strange murmur through the forest

trees;

Reft of its playful Fauns, each sylvan maze
Untenanted, bathes in the twilight haze;
And, widow'd twice, the lone voice of the

grove

Now mourns its Nymph, as Echo mourn'd her love.

The world, grown wise with age, has cast

away

Those errors of a younger, brighter day,
As man, adulted, spurns the gilded toys
That long had fed his boyhood's humbler joys.

And Truth now reigns-o'er smouldering
remains,

As wont with other conquerors, she reigns;
Or like the Scythian's peace, who checked his

steed

When Poland's heart had ceased to beat or bleed,

Then sheathed his sword, and, with a reeking band.

Penned the despatch: "Peace reigneth in the land." ↑

No idle boast; 'twas the deep peace of death.

I.

Well may the poet mourn that graceful faith,
Offspring of Art, which fostered Art so well,
And lured the muses from the sky, to dwell
Where Homer sang and god-like Phidias
wrought,

No wonder, Hellas, if thy children sought
A glorious death amidst the Persian throng;
They died to live in marble and in song;
And win among the stars a happier home:
For, gazing at the planet-studded dome,
Fond Superstition saw there, not the page
Science interprets to this learned age,
But azure fields, where immortality
Rewarded those who fell for Liberty.

A light came from the east ; a god, 'twas said,
Had trod the earth in human form, and shed
From his own guileless vein, th' atoning blood,
In mystic sacrifice for man to God,-
Himself that God! The Hellen's ardent mind,
Pleased at the novel theme, rejoiced to find
A path untrod, an unexplored sea
Open to Logic's subtle devotee.
Oh! that with pure simplicity of heart
Those favor'd sons of Poetry and Art
Had listened to the teachings of that law,
Nor ventured in the sanctuary, to draw
The veil which the Eternal's hand had thrown
O'er what He willed should yet remain un-
known.

But busy Sophistry would not permit
One sacred word of heaven-dictated writ
To go without its tomes of sage comment,
Frivolous gloss and pond'rous argument;
Till through the mazes of their trifling lore,
Faith lost her way, and wandered more and

more,

And sank. by rhetor's specious skill beset,
And Byzance fell while doctors argued yet.

There blooms in sunny climes, a fairy land,
Where partial Nature's fondly liberal hand
Has lavished all her richest gifts; has thrown
Her choicest treasures like a dazzling crown
Of beauty and of loveliness; where rays
Of far more genial warmth illume the days,
Where cooler breezes murmur in the night,
Wafting their scented music to delight
List ning creation; where the human mind
Boasts powers more lofty, instincts more re-
fined.

And yet, profaners of those gifts sublime,
Th' unworthy children of that happy clime
Bow to the stranger and dare not be free!
Italia! how I long once more to see
That rich land of the great, the fair, the brave,
Those temples whose huge ruins mark the grave

These four lines are a literal translation from Lamartine.
An allusion to the official despatch of a Russian general, which appeared translated at length in the
Moniteur, concluding with: "l'ordre règne à Varsovie."

60

Of her past greatness, and that fertile soil,
Bounteous rewarder of the ploughman's toil.
Italia lovely yet, though great no more.
yore
When shall the mighty spirit, which of
Watched o'er thy wondrous destinies, awake
Thy children's dormant energies, and shake
Thy sunny hills with freedom's joyous cry?
When shall ye dare to conquer Liberty,
Degenerate sons of Romulus? Frowns not,
Indignant from yon doubly hallowed spot,
His arm had freed, his blood now sanctifies,
Rienzi's mighty shadow? Do but rise.
But dare to face your tyrants and they fall-
Vain the appeal! The lofty hymn of Gaul
Unheeded thundered by; great Harold's strain
Rose high in Freedom's cause and rose in vain.

I passed where Harold dwelt, and traced his

The wave of Sestos, bold Leander's grave.

And when, a weary traveller, again
I saw, majestic o'er the expanding main,
Rise thy fair shores, Italia, with delight
My glad heart wildly bounding at the sight,
I hailed thee as long parted lovers greet
Each other who had thought ne'er more to

meet

With outstretched arms; and in thy fairy clime,
Though homeward bound, I lingered for a
time,

Searching 'mid scattered records of thy fame,
The precious fragments of my idol's frame,
Interrogating marble, parchment, books,
Grim statues in their consecrated nooks,
Relics that once adorned, but shame thee now,
And which, without a blush, thy children show,
As courtesans their charms, for gold to all.
Of these I asked the secret of thy fall;
And from each witness I had thus evoked,
From crumbling battlements with ivy yoked,
From high Soracte's ever sullen brow
That frowned on infant Rome as on us now,
From dust of cities and from secular stone
The same voice rose and answered, "Faith
is gone!"

For, know it. mortals, whether based on rror,
Or sternest truth, on love, or hope, or terror,
Strong Faith, when free from dampening doubt,
incites

Your hearts to greatest deeds, and ever writes
Your names, with brightest letters, on the page
Which history hands down to each wondering

From cloud to cloud, and make succeeding
night

More murky with their fitful glare of light.
Hark, 'tis the coming tempest's warning threat;
Anon the waves, by adverse winds beset,
Writhe as in agony, their huge crests bending
In fiercest shapes like things of life contending.
Again the winds are hushed in deep repose,
Deceitful as the panther's sudden pause
Before a deadly leap; and now, with speed
Out-running in its course the flame-winged
steed

His own fleet lightning rides, he comes, he

comes,

The spirit of the storm! the lashed sea foams,
Its surface yielding, as the gale howls past,
A tortured calm beneath the stronger blast.

Darker upon the billows' foaming field, What was that shade yon brighter flash revealed?

A petrel, on the liquid mountain's crest
Riding, as if the wave-top were his nest,
The sea his home, his element the gale?
Another flash-it is, it is a sail!

And such a night! Bathed in the lurid glare,
Forbidden spirits revel in the air
Unchecked; and, with their dismal howlings,
make

The deep foundations of the mountains quake.

And yet, fear not, ye anxious ones on shore,
Eagerly listening to the tempest's roar;
Trust in the mariner's skill: that buoyant bark
Will safely reach the sheltered bay; for mark
Deep rooted in the solid rock, upright,
Yon stone-framed giant sentinels the night;
And lifting up his tow'ring head on high
Beacons the sailor with his glaring eye.

That sea is Time, on whose storm-furrowed
space,

The keels of nations print a fleeting trace;
Those storms, which, sent to renovate by strife
In dormant waves the properties of life,
With wholesome tortures vex the panting

deep,

Are revolutions and fierce wars, that sweep
Betimes on thunder wings athwart the land.
Loosed on the earth by some mysterious hand
To wake the slumbering energies of men.

'Tis then, while mists are gathering on the
main,

Spreading their pall of darkness o'er the sky
And in one mass confounding to the eye,
Earth, heaven and air, the ocean and the shore;
When, with loud shrieks, the spirits of Discord

soar;

Foul carrion-birds that scent their feast of gore,
And ken afar the shipwreck or the fight-
'Tis then the trembling pilot scans the night-
For the accustomed beacon.-oh! 'tis then
That all instinctively the minds of men
Distracted with discussion-stillborn schemes,
And the word warring forum's sterile dreams,
Turn unto Faith-the Faith of former years,
As if, 'mid so many doubts and fears,
They felt the need of some conceded thing.
Some settled point, not open to the din
And clamor of debate, bui sanctified
And raised above the passions' stormy tide,