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or wrapping-paper, as it is elsewhere called, or in the waste leaf of a more mortal publication—a custom which will probably prevail for a long time to come-and despatched to the bookseller.

Let us pass to the Via Sacra, and observe among the crowd who press from the forum over its flinty pavement, those who happen to be carrying books. We may learn something from them. Here loiters a young lad, whose rarely cheap education costs but a cent and half a year, carrying his books and paper-slate in his satchel, which is swung over his left shoulder Near this child of inferior rank, passes another-a young scion of nobility-whose books are carried, not by himself in a satchel, but by the slave who treads in his lordly footsteps, and has a box under his arm. This personage, with the two narrow stripes of purple on the breast of his robe, is one whose prerogative is mighty for good or evil-a tribune of the people. He is carrying a huge code in his hands, from which he will soon read aloud a law before a public assembly. In the distance, you may perceive a young man with a letter in his hand. This consists of several leaves, like the books of other countries. He has broken the waxen seal impressed with a knightly ring, snapped the thread which is designed to betray fraud, and, as he approaches, is studying the postscript, which is written in a single line crosswise on the margin. That fellow, who dashes by so furiously, is a courier, with a royal order in his hand for relays of horses. It consists of two leaves and is written over on but one side. It is, in other words, a specimen of the "royal letters patent." Such orders only last until a certain time, when they become outlawed. Pliny the Younger, once made use of one of them to expedite the journey of his wife to visit a bereaved relative, and his bold act was approved by his royal master, Trajan. Here is hastening a Roman maiden, with a book in the folds of her dress. Very likely, it is a copy of Martial's latest book of epigrams; for he assures us that the ladies are extravagantly fond of his writings. He evidently thinks, that the beautiful sex are fond of scandal.

Is it your wish to see a Roman library? Undoubtedly you are aware of that remarkable fact, under which lurks so beautiful a moral, that the first public library in the world was opened in the Temple of LIBERTY at Rome. It would seem that Liberty and the Press were born to be united, the world over. Ovid, in his

lamentation over the various details of wretchedness, to which his exile subjects him, mentions his longings for the libraries of Rome, and calls this, to which I just alluded,

The fane, where Liberty was first enshrined

The first asylum of recorded Mind.

Shall we enter the library in the Capitol (not at Washington,) where the public archives are to be obtained: which, by the way, constituted Domitian's sole reading, although he sent to Alexandria to replace the miscellaneous works which perished in the conflagration of the old Capitol? Or shall we seek out the library of Faustus, (not the friend of Mephistophiles,) where Cicero once fed

himself (to use his own expression) with books; or to that of Atticus, where this true Roman gentleman sat under his bust of Aristotle, perusing the works of his literary friends? Or would you choose that of Pliny the Younger, at his Laurentine villa, through whose windows the wintry sun streamed during its whole daily circuit; where he lay listening to the murmurs and the roar of the sea, or poring over those volumes which he took down from a closet empanelled in the wall, and were-as he most wittily saidbooks not to be read, but to be re-read? We might visit that of Silius Italicus, crowded with statues and busts, eminent among which, is that of his idol, Virgil. If we select the library of any man of wealth, we shall find elegant book-cases distributed around the room; exquisite statues, busts and pictures, lining the walls; the doors of the cases inlaid with glass, and the ceiling glistening with the same material. The shelves are of cedar and ebony, filled to the very top of the wall with volumes. A library is selected by the Roman Dives without regard to the merits of books, but with an evident partiality for gorgeous bindings, glaring ti tles, and a multitude of volumes-an absurd fancy not altogether Roman. The library and the bath-room stand on a level, as necessary ornaments to a splendid dwelling. Books are bought for the same purpose as Corinthian vases and Greek pictures; to be the furniture of a supper-room for the evening party in Rome is given in the library. Seneca, in rebuking this folly, grows so extravagant as to declare that it would take a life-time to read the titles of the books in some of these collections. He asks the reason of this profusion, and shrewdly adds: A multitude of books oppresses and does not instruct the reader; it is better to devote yourself to a few books than to ramble through many. He could tolerate the literary avarice of a bookish virtuoso, but disdained the desecration of the works of genius to be the machinery of foppery. He says: I would of course pardon this profusion, if it sprung from an excessive passion for study, but these books are the toys of exquisitism; and the works of men, whom their genius has made sacred, are accumulated, like their busts, for the sake of display and to grace our walls.

If you have kindly followed me thus far, curious reader, in my desultory saunterings among the paper shops, book-stores and li braries of old Rome, perhaps I cannot bid you "au revoir" with a better word of parting, than by reminding you of a beautiful superstition, which exists here in this pagan city. It is founded on almost Christian sentiments, which I trust you are too profound to despise, though you stand within the walls of a city, wherein Trajan was but lately deliberating concerning the best method of "punishing" the followers of Christ. It is passing strange that such a superstition should be so strongly set forth by Plautus, a dashing delineator of common life, who revels in the satire, humor, and broad caricature of the stage. But he has alluded to it in the prologue of his plans, entitled "The Cable." The speaker in Arcturus, who is explaining his own prerogative and that of the other

watchers of the nightly sky. He mentions a "book of remem-
brance," kept by Jupiter on high, in which the evil acts of meu
are recorded, and the other book, containing a register of human
virtues. But let us listen to Arcturus. My paraphrase will not
exaggerate to the least degree the moral sentiment of the original.
We are Jove's sentinels; thus, every even,
Posted along the azure fields of heaven,

To note, with burning eyes, the restless flow
Of human action in the world below;

To learn whom riches curse and whom they bless ;
To mark fidelity and gentleness;

Observing those, whose claims on falsehood built
With shameless front make law the slave of guilt.
All these we see, and straight the tidings bring
To the high chancery of our sovereign king.
They, who some crime have meditated long
And ask of Justice sanction of the wrong,
Perchance succeed, by many a cunning feat,
In blinding wisdom on her judgment-seat.
Jove overrules the sentence, makes it vain,
And turns to dreadful loss their fancied gain.

Jove has ANOTHER RECORD, clear and fair:
The deeds of virtue are engraven there.

Let not the wicked fancy that their stain
Will be forgiven for a victim slain.
They waste their labor: Jove will not receive
The tainted off 'ring which the perjured give.
Far better may the pure in spirit dare

To seek forgiveness, answering to his prayer.
Gladly I warn the good, then, still to lead

A life of pious thought and honest deed.

Hold fast the good; unwavering in your choice:
When all is over, ye shall then rejoice.

PROF. FELTON'S AGAMEMNON OF ÆSCHYLUS, WITH ENGLISH NOTES.

It is no dishonor to sculpture to say of it, that even in its perfection it is defective as the art of expression. The defect is but negative, and in this regard it resembles all other departments in high art. The difference is only in degree. It may strive to express passion-it will be passion petrified; or music, it must be frozen music; it may struggle to be eloquent-it can only be the eloquence of silence-eloquence in repose.

In the drama, expression is carried to a higher point. Language being the vehicle or the drapery of thought, is a much more direct, transparent and elastic medium for the exhibition of subtle high-wrought poetic passion. But when this language is the

flexible, the musical, the nervous Greek, and in the plastic hand of the great master of tragic art, what else could we have expected, under appropriate circumstances, than an "Attic tragedy of the stateliest and most regal arguments."

Such have we received. Such Prof. Felton has introduced to American students, in this great master-piece of the "Grecian Shakspeare" as he finely and justly styles it. "Sculpture," says Cowper, "gives bond in stone and ever-during brass, to guard and immortalize her trust." But where now is the brazen statue, the Minerva Polias of Phidias? where his Olympian Jupiter? where above all, that most magnificent Chryselephantine, one of the "immortal maid," the protecting goddess of the Parthenon? When Lord Elgin brought to London, from the ruins of the Acropolis those splendid fragments, the scholars and artists of the civilized world were in an ecstasy of joy. How ardently every intelligent admirer wished they could have looked upon those works, as they came breathing from the cunning right hand of the master! How they desired to see those things which Pericles saw! If such were the torso, what must the full stature of the perfect man have been? But this Tragedy has descended to us through twenty-three centuries unmutilated, while temples have crumbled, and dynasties perished forever. And yet how slight a notice does its editor receive, either from private sources or from his government, compared with what Lord Elgin received from both. The one furnished his countrymen with the legs and arms of men, the bodies of centaurs, horses' heads and torsos of Cecrops and Hercules. Had he procured for them an entire Apollo, a Laocoon or a Niobe, greater would have been their joy and his fame. But in the Agamemnon we have no cold, corroded and heart-saddening fragment. We have passion in high and swelling relief; all the concealed purposes and evanescent emotions of the soul delineated with more vivid and impressive power, than "by the sweet mystery of lines and colors," and a music in its progress and its pauses that makes every chord of the heart to vibrate.

A critical analysis would disclose to us more fully, not only the fine proportions and perfect consistence of the whole, but the matchless beauty of some of its minor pictures, which seem rather to have crystalized into one than been inwoven even by the hand of genius. The different characters also are sustained throughout with great distinctness. There is the most agreeable diversity in unity, and yet the highest artistic unity in multeity. Were their names not given, we should never confound the language of any one character with that of any other. The words of Cassandra and of the Chorus, are as easily distinguished as Spring and Autumn. In the terrible consistency of Clytemnestra's character, we have all that is ferocious, daring, and bloody in Jezebel, and the steady desperate decision of Lady Macbeth, with a far reaching purpose, and a remorselessness that would utterly appal the murderers of Naboth and Duncan. We breathe more freely when

we reflect at the close of the tragedy, that it is fiction not fact. Our love of the sex, or of the race, makes us glad that the heroine is not a daughter of Eve, but a creation of Eschylus.

This superhumanizing, if we may be allowed the word, is one of the prominent characteristics of this poet. "It seems," says Schlegel, "as if it required an effort in him, to condescend to paint mere men to us." Everything is bold, stately, sublime. He seems to be familiar alone with gods and Titans. The grand and the gloomy are his element. Seas, mountains, thunderings, and earthquakes, heroes and the heroic, were the materials out of which his spirit builded up these lofty and imperishable structures. We can scarcely conceive of "the meanest flower that blows," giving to him "thoughts that did often lie too deep for tears," or that he ever bowed down his ear to hear the "still sad music of humanity." Had he lived in our day, Dante rather than Wordsworth would have been his favorite. He would have been found more frequently in the studio of Michael Angelo than in that of Raphael; yet would he not have loved the Madonna less, but the Moses more.

"Had he lived in our day?" ay does he not live? Is it not life-the life for which he toiled in that olden time-to be read and studied and admired in regions, and by men never approached in the wanderings of Ulysses, and never conceived by the fertile imagination of him who has sung these wanderings, "in notes almost divine." "Non omnis moriar" is a conviction which every truly great mind has, whether it will or no. Seventy generations have lived and died since this noble tragedy won for its author the applause and the laurels of the accomplished Athenians; and still we find it eliciting the intelligent homage of the first scholars in other lands, as well as in the Athens of America. How strange it would sound, to hear of an edition of "The Hamlet of Shakspeare with Greek notes, by, Professor of English Literature in the Academy of Athens;" or to observe its students reading Macbeth on the banks of the Ilyssus!

We wish very much that Prof. Felton, or his honored coadjutor in this revival of Greek classic literature, President Woolsey, would give us the remainder of this splendid Trilogy. Gladly and speedily, we have no doubt, it would be done were it demanded, and remunerated as it should be, by the scholars and universities of our country. But smooth things and soft things and sweet things, in the department of Beautiful Letters, are the aliments of many of the graduates, as well as undergraduates, of our best colleges. Upon these they grow large and lusty. Tacitus. would bring leanness into their bones, and Eschylus would kill them. We would most humbly and seriously suggest, whether reason and analogy do not render it very probable, that God will punish such a prostitution of intellect. The question cannot be, which study is most pleasing or most popular, any more than these should be the standard in morals or in medicine. Neither the perfume of a rose, nor the air of an Eolian will harden a

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