view with Andromache; an extract in which that metre is used with admirable success, and whose melody will recommend it even to the English reader. "Then for another, perchance, thou'lt handle the shuttle in Argos, Sorely against thy will, for force will weigh heavily on thee. Some one, perchance, will say, while he looks at thee bitterly weeping, 'Mong the Dardanian host, when they fought for the safety of Ilion.' Widowed of husband so brave, who might have kept off the enslaver. Ere I can hear thy wail, when they drag thee from Troy as a captive." A FORGOTTEN GRAVE. BY A. MESSLER, D. D. In one of the most retired hamlets in New Jersey there are still to be seen a few marks of an old graveyard. I remember when the dilapidated walls of the old church frowned over it in their gloomy silence, hearing no sabbath music but what the swallow made: but for many years they have disappeared, for the utilitarian, even here, has been at work. On the little plot of green sward, where the ancients of the village sleep, there remain a few rude and moss-grown monuments of the dead. The most conspicuous of them is a broad upright marble slab, marked by time and every year sinking deeper and deeper in the soft spongy soil. It has the following inscription: IN MEMORY OF THE HON. CAPT. WILLIAM LESLIE, HE FELL JAN. 3, 1777, AGED PRINCETON. HIS FRIEND BENJAMIN RUSH, M. D. OF PHILADELPHIA, HAS CAUSED THIS STONE TO BE ERECTED, AS A MARK OF ESTEEM FOR HIS WORTH, A visit to this spot occasioned the following stanzas: Pause stranger by this hillock green And leave a tear of sympathy! Beneath this sward there sleeps unseen, He came in hope and youthful pride He fought, was stricken, fell and died; All that was bright in youth he knew; And hoped to inscribe it deep and clear His heart was full of hope and love, They rose in visions on his heart, And rapt his soul in bliss away, Transported from himself apart To live all o'er his childhood's day; The chills of death creep round his heart; Pause stranger! though his dying bed Here many a soul with pity bled, And strangers gave the mourner's tear. Worth called them forth-they freely flow'd, And warmed his cold and silent tomb; And when the spring's soft zephyrs blow'd These roses grew, and yet they bloom! Oh grave! thou sacred lonely bed! Could all the tears around thee shed Be gathered-what a sea of wo Would roll its dark waves here below! Oh! thou hast deluged long the earth With show'rs that joy should only give! From Eden's close, and sin's dread birth, Till heavea succeeds and glory lives! ITALY AND PIUS IX. The doctrine of human progress is a favorite one with republicans. They are loth to believe that mankind has made no progression in the laws of his social and political state. They do not believe that all the bloody revolutions of the past present properly to the view merely the sum total of so many individual struggles between right and force, between reason and authority, between the subject and the tyrant: that they are so many important events in themselves considered, but not necessarily, nor in fact, following each other as effects follow their causes, and bearing immedi ately upon the liberties and destiny of the race. They can trace the progress of the free principle from its starting point, away back in the distant past: struggling for development now against the secret machinations of its enemies, and now against the imposing array of kingly armies: at one time apparently crushed by the overwhelming power of numbers, and at another rising like a phoenix from its ashes, in the full proportion of its strength and beauty, to adorn and bless the world. They can see it rising in the bosom of the church, and asking for liberty of conscience as opposed to the exactions of a vitiated system of religious worship: then taking the form of a political sentiment, and emboldened by its success in the church, demanding as a right-not asking as a privilege for certain necessary reforms of state. They can see it struggling into light with the free governments of antiquity and the republics of the middle ages, with charters and reform bills, with declarations of independence, with revolutions like those of France overturning the barriers of despotism throughout Europe-flickering beneath the ashes of Polish nationality and Grecian independence, burning brightly among the hardy mountaineers of Switzerland, and reflecting its steady light upon the sky of Italian freedom. In short, they believe in a just God and his superintending providence. The history of Italy contains within itself a striking exemplification of the struggles of the free-principle. In fact Italy has been the theatre upon which the bloodiest tragedies of the world have been enacted, upon which lawless conquests and dark oppression and inhuman crimes have played their part against the most heroic virtues, the loftiest love of liberty, and the most towering intellect. It is upon her beautiful plains, and beneath her beautiful skies, that the world's greatest poet has laid the most renowned scenes of his story, and drawn his startling pictures of life and character. Here too, lived the poet and the orator, whose words have come down to us through the lapse of centuries, in all the freshness of their originality and power. Here have arisen those lights of political philosophy, and of christian ethics, of science and literature, which have added a lustre to the brightest pages of the world's history, and for centuries have given to that world more of its civilization and advancement in knowledge, than any other nation upon the face of the earth. Indeed if Italy had never been any thing else than a nation of painters, and if she had produced only a Titian, a Raphael, and an Angelo: if Rome had never been the mistress of the world, and Cæsar had never fought, and Cato had never philosophized, and Horace, and Virgil, and Petrach, and Dante had never sung their immortal songs-still she would have been classed among our most poetic remembrances, as the land where the beautiful was impersonated in every visible form, and where poetry delighted to dwell. But by a singular kind of fatuity so often visible in those lands where nature has bestowed her most bountiful gifts, the oppression of a bad government has been felt through a long series of years, not only in the political degradation and imbecility of the state, considered relatively in the scale of nations, but in the more miserable condition and prospects of the people-the poor people-the peasantry-the toiling millions-who while they do most to support, feel most the burdens of the government. Half-clothed and fed, without political importance, and surrounded by the spies and insolent officials of Austria, it is no wonder that we should find among the Italian people, a deep-seated distrust of their rulers, and that the half-suppressed murmurs of the more intelligent inhabitants have so often been heard, giving premonitory symptoms of a rebellion, whenever the feelings of hatred that rankle at their hearts shall be directed and controlled by some master mind. This indeed was natural. The disaffection of the people is always the consequence of tyranny, and the only remedy of the tyrant is, as in Italy, a standing army. But it remained for the congress of Vienna to give the finishing stroke to the oppressive policy under which Italy so long had labored. The congress of Vienna which assembled about thirty years ago, was a most remarkable body, both in respect to the character of its members and the objects for which it was called. Several of the crowned heads of Europe met in solemn conclave, to determine the destinies of a continent. Their object was really the perpetuation of tyranny. For the better accomplishment of this result, it was thought necessary to denationalize those countries in which the spirit of liberty yet lived. Greece was given to the Sultan, Poland was committed to the gentle protection of Russia, and Italy to the crafty Metternich. The Polish war-song was to be heard no more upon the banks of the Vistula. The cry of revolution was to be hushed forever among the classic islands of the Mediterranean. Monarchy must be rivetted upon the necks of the people with new chains, and the examples of a free state, so odious to its power, must exist no longer upon the continent of Europe. Not only must the external forms of free government be abolished, but those subtle agencies must be resorted to, by which the internal life, the domestic fire-sides of the people, must be reached. An odious system of police and espoinage was therefore established by means of internal foes and foreign emissaries. The allies of despotism, hired for this base purpose by Austrian gold, were se cretly despatched throughout every portion of the Italian territory, to watch the progress and consummation of the tyranical measures adopted by the congress of Vienna. Every expression of sympathy for the people, every sentiment of indignation at the course of their oppressors, every hope of political reformation for unfortunate Italy, was studiously repressed by the patriotic, as well as the prudent, and the people prevented from exchanging and reänimating their felt sympathies by the universal pressure of espoinage, and its sure rewards of the dungeon, of exile and of death, granted by those terrible secret tribunals, which more resembled the Venetian councils than the courts of impartial justice, the whole people presented to the eye of the observer, a state of torpor and political imbecility, as complete as Austria herself could desire. Occasionally, very seldom indeed, some daring spirit, full of patriotic ardor and impatient of restraint, would break through all the bonds by which it was chafed, and escaping the rigid censorship of the press, would give to the world its free thoughts, its animating sentiments, and its enthusiastic hopes. But the fate of such would be, at least, that of another Silvio Pellico-to live among the condemned felons of an Italian prison, and perhaps to recount with an intenseness of sensibility, and eloquence and power, which the language of Italy alone can express, another record of Le Miec Prigioni. Gregory XVI. the late Pope, was a fit instrument in the hands. of Austria. Whatever might have been his capacity to occupy the Papal chair, he was, at any rate, a weak and superannuated political potentate. He had gathered around him in his council of state, a body of despotic ministers, and he and they and all of his officials, minions of a foreign influence as they were, hesitated not to perpetuate their own power and aggrandizement, by concessions the most humiliating to themselves, the most injurious to the people and the most gratifying to Austria. Under his administration, an infamous army had to be supported by the Italian people, in order thus to support their plunderers and prop up the power of their rulers, in the absence of that moral power which, in the present aspect of affairs in the peninsula, shows itself to be stronger than standing armies. The scales of justice were never equally balanced. Knowledge was not encouraged. Public enterprises, railways and the like, were suppressed for fear of too free communication between the people. And yet with all this surveillance of the police, crimes of the darkest character were enacted, and robberies upon the public highways were frequent and almost undisguised. Even art, which, in the healthy atmosphere of Italy, has always glowed with so much beauty, reflecting the soft tints of her unequalled skies, her purple waters and her inland scenery, with so much of their native brilliancy art, so necessary to the spirit |