Bear witness, Greece, thy living page,
Attest it many a deathless age!
While kings, in dusty darkness hid,
Have left a nameless pyramid;
Thy heroes (though the general doom
Hath swept the column from their tomb)
A mightier monument command-
The mountains of their native land!
There points thy Muse to stranger's eye
The graves of those that cannot die !
"Twere long to tell, and sad to trace,
Each step from splendour to disgrace;
Enough-no foreign foe could quell
Thy soul, till from itself it fell.-BYRON.

THE ANCIENT ROMANS.

There is something solemn and evidently providential in the unbroken advance, and ultimately boundless dominion of Rome._She held with an iron grasp the continents of Europe and the East; her military chain spread with unbroken links from Lebanon to Gaul, and from the Caspian to the Nile; her wealth and arts had called into being thousands of cities, no mean imitations of her own greatness; her institutions had diffused a universal repose, and the energy of government was exercised with a rapidity and precision never surpassed. The durability of her greatness was in proportion to the slowness of its growth and the solidity of its materials. Twelve centuries elapsed from the origin of Rome to its capture by the barbarians; and it required ten centuries more of corruption and decline to extinguish the brilliant empire of the East which had been regenerated by the genius of Constantine, in the matchless situation of Byzantium.

The predominant feeling left on the mind after reading the history of Rome, is that she was pre-eminently skilled in the arts of conquest; and in establishing durable political ties, among the diversified nations under her sway, so as to comprise them all in one grand social net-work, which prepared the way for the subsequent spread of Christianity. But the history of the Romans also shows that they were a stern, relentless, and unfeeling people. Whilst there was a grandeur about all their public works, temples, baths, roads, aqueducts, sewers, defensive walls, and public arenas,in their private and social qualities there was little to admire. One half the population was in bondage; and their public amusements, modes of punishment, and treatment of captives, were generally cruel and barbarous.

Adapted from Chambers's History of Rome.

C

THE DYING GLADIATOR.

I see before me the gladiator lie :
He leans upon his hand; his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony,
And his drooped head sinks gradually low:
And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,
Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now
The arena swims around him he is gone,

Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won.

He heard it, but he heeded not; his eyes
Were with his heart, and that was far away:
He recked not of the life he lost nor prize,
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay:
There were his young barbarians all at play,
There was their Dacian mother-he, their sire,
Butchered to make a Roman holiday!

All this rushed with his blood. Shall he expire,

And unavenged? Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire !-BYRON.

ROME.

Oh Rome! my country! city of the soul!
The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,
Lone mother of dead empires! and control
In their shut breasts their petty misery.

What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see
The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way
O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, ye

Whose agonies are evils of a day!

A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay.

The Niobe of nations! there she stands,
Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe;
An empty urn within her withered hands,
Whose holy dust was scattered long ago:
The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now;
The very sepulchres lie tenantless

Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow,
Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness?

Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress!

The Goth, the Christian, time, war, flood, and fire,
Have dealt upon the seven-hilled city's pride;
She saw her glories star by star expire,

And up the steep barbarian monarchs ride,
Where the car climbed the Capitol; far and wide
Temple and tower went down, nor left a site :
Chaos of ruins! who shall trace the void,
O'er the dim fragments cast a lunar light,

And say, "here was, or is," where all is doubly night?

The double night of ages, and of her,

Night's daughter, Ignorance, hath wrapt, and wrap
All round us; we but feel our way to err.

The ocean hath its chart, the stars their map,
And knowledge spreads them on her ample lap;
But Rome is as the desert, where we steer
Stumbling o'er recollections; now we clap
Our hands and cry, "Eureka!" it is clear-
When but some false mirage of ruin rises near.

Alas! the lofty city! and alas!

The trebly hundred triumphs! and the day
When Brutus made the dagger's edge surpass
The conqueror's sword in bearing fame away!
Alas for Tully's voice, and Virgil's lay,
And Livy's pictured page!-but these shall be
Her resurrection; all beside-decay.

Alas for earth, for never shall we see

That brightness in her eye she bore when Rome was free!

BYRON.

THE JEWS AND THE SCRIPTURES.

The Jews were instrumentally the means of conveying to us our pure religion, as we owe to them the Bible, which is the repository of its historical facts and teachings. This wonderful book is the great auto-biography of human nature, from its infancy to its perfection. Whatever man has seen, and felt, and done in the great theatre of the world, is therein expressed with the simplicity and vividness of personal consciousness, in the happiest moments of inspiration which have fallen upon our race during the lapse of sixteen centuries. This volume stations us on a spot well selected as a watch-tower, from which we may overlook the history of the world, an angle of coast between the ancient continents of Asia and Africa, subtended by the newer line of European civilization. There we have a neighbouring view of every form of human life, and every variety of human character. The solitary shepherd on the plains of Assyria, watching the changing heavens until he worships them;-the patriarch pitching his tent on the nearer plain of Mamre;-the Arab or Ishmaelite, half-merchant and halfrobber, hurrying his fleet dromedaries across the sunny desert; the Phoenician commerce, gladdening the Mediterranean with its sails, or, on its way from India, spreading its wares on the streets of Jerusalem;-the sacerdotal grandeur of Egypt, and the vast magnificence of Nineveh the Great, and Babylon the Great-are all spread beneath our eye in vivid colours and quick transition ;all agents on this stage of providence, and all partaking in the trials and triumphs of humanity. If we inquire who were the men that have recorded its truths, vindicated its rights, and illustrated the excellence of its scheme-from the depth of ages comes forth the answer the Patriarch, the Prophet, the Apostle, and the Martyr. If we regard the literature of the Bible, we find-i

words of Fenelon-that it surpasses the Greek classics in native simplicity, loveliness and grandeur. Homer himself never reached the sublimity of the Song of Moses, or of the book of Job and the prophecies of Isaiah. The passages describing the majesty and government of God, are unequalled in any language or in any age. No ode, either Greek or Latin, ever came up to the loftiness of some of the Psalms. What can be compared to the Lamentations of Jeremiah in pathos, or to the sweetness of those passages of Isaiah, in which he draws such a smiling image of Peace? Did space permit, we might also enumerate the peculiar excellencies of the other writers of Scripture, and especially those of the New Testament. The deep interest-attaching to the wide and various scenes described, and to the momentous truths inculcated,-gradually gathers itself to a single point-towards which all the conveying lines meet, and that is the Saviour. He indeed is the great central object, around which all the ages and events of the Bible are but an outlying circumference.-J. MARTINEAU, adap.

JERUSALEM.

Fallen is thy throne, O Israel!
Silence is o'er thy plains!
Thy dwellings all lie desolate,
Thy children weep in chains.
Where are the dews that fed thee
On Etham's barren shore?
That fire from heaven that led thee
Now lights that path no more!

Lord, thou didst love Jerusalem;
Once she was all thine own;
Her love thy fairest heritage,
Her power thy glory's throne;

Till evil came and blighted
Thy long-loved olive-tree,
And Salem's shrines were lighted
For other gods than thee.

Then sank the star of Solyma;
Then passed her glory's day,
Like heath that in the wilderness
The light wind whirls away.
Silent and waste her bowers,
Where once the mighty trode;
And sunk those guilty towers,
Where Baal reigned as God.

"Go," said the Lord, "ye conquerors,
Steep in her blood your swords,
And raze to earth her battlements,

For they are not the Lord's.

Tell Zion's mournful daughter
O'er kindred bones she'll tread,
And Himmon's vale of slaughter

Shall hide but half her dead."

But soon shall other pictured scenes
In brighter vision rise,

When Zion's sun shall sevenfold shine
On all her mourner's eyes;

And on her mountains beauteous stand
The messengers of peace;

"Salvation by the Lord's right hand!"
They shout and never cease.-MOORE.

MODERN CIVILIZATION FOUNDED ON THE ANCIENT.

Our present mental light, like that of nature, is composed of distinct rays of various colours; and for each we are indebted to some one of past civilizations. Three of these stand out prominently from the rest, with regard to the mighty influence they have exercised over modern society; and each had a distinct mission assigned it by Providence. To the Greeks it has been given to develope the beautiful in art and literature, and the true in science and philosophy; to the Romans, jurisprudence and the municipal rule; but to the Jews it was assigned to teach the holiness of God and the salvation of man; or in the sublime words of one of their great poet-prophets,-announcing the mission of Sion to a world enslaved by sense, self and passion:

"Behold darkness covereth the earth,
And thick mist the peoples,

But Jehovah riseth upon thee;
And His glory shall be seen on thee;

Then the Gentiles shall come to thy light,

And kings to the brightness of thy rising."

Prospective Review, adap.

KING WITLAF'S DRINKING-HORN.

Witlaf, a king of the Saxons,

Ere yet his last he breathed,

To the merry monks of Croyland
His drinking-horn bequeathed,-

That, whenever they sat at their revels,
And drank from the golden bowl,

They might remember the donor,
And breathe a prayer for his soul.

So sat they once at Christmas,
And bade the goblet pass;

In their beards the red wine glistened
Like dew-drops on the grass.