into Savoy after a very unkingly fashion, and left his reverend coadjutor to take care of himself as best he could.

The present positions of the Western Allies, Austria, Pio Nono, and the Italian republicans, are not unlike those of the Italian cities, Barbarossa and Eugene III., during the early successes of the latter. May not the ultimate result be the same? Is there not a hope of it? Radetzky is concentrating his hundreds of thousands. He advertises his master that the volcano is ready for an eruption. The Allies, practically beaten in the Crimea, and positively tricked by Austrian diplomacy, are not far from a compulsory adoption of the Italian element of republicanism as a check to Austria. Can they use it? or will it assert its God-like essence and rise above even the friendly alliances of monarchical necessity? We hope, nay, we go near to believe it will.

We believe that from Italy will issue first for Europe the light of republicanism; neither as a meteor nor a consuming fire, but coming forth as the sun from his chambers in the east, to bless with steady lustre a new day of human progress.

We believe that Italy, faithful to her traditions, will be the first to give the lie to the boasted reäction of monarchical and absolutistic ideas, and in the holy name of republicanism, baptized with the blood of many martyrs, redeem the pledge of her history, and rear again the broken columns of her great

ness.

S. W. C.

THE POETS AND THE WORLD.

A RODOMONTADE.

L

I MEAN to celebrate the world's economy
In starving poets. 'Tis a grievous fault-
They will persist in studying gastronomy.

The generous world denies them bread and salt;
But when they're famished out of this cosmogony,
The world is ready with the handsome vault,
And nobly raise the gilded tomb and bust
Over the injured-nay, the murdered dust!

II.

Oh! what a grievous throng denounces Earth
Of murder in its slowest, keenest form!
God's noblest images of human birth

Have felt the gnawing of that pitiless worm,
The envious World, who makes it food for mirth
To see its victims writhing in the storm
Which it has raised by its unholy breath-
To goad, to sting, to torture them to death.

IIL

Young Chatterton!-the foremost type of all

Who have fallen in that single-handed fight-
Like Christ, thou hadst no one to hear THY CALL,
Thy Eli-Eli Lama, in the night;

When covered only with a pauper's pall,

Thy squalid corse felt not the morning's light;

There, in a garret of dark Fetter Lane,

Once more the Cross was reared, once more the Victim slain.

IV.

Army of martyrs! glorious host of men!

Bards, prophets, patriots, saints, and all who've died In Freedom's cause, on scaffold, cross, or den! Now by your conquered sufferings deified, Though racked and murdered, still within the ken

Of your rapt glance the future ye espied, And perished with the triumph on your lips, Knowing this life is but the soul's eclipse.

V.

As I am skilled in sciences sublime,

I'll calculate for all the fools on earth Each separate phase and the exactest time: The obscuration first begins at birth;

Is total darkness at our manhood's prime,

(So dark in some, they sleep and dream of mirth ;) The many think the day is sunny bright,

Although 'tis only Reason's candle-light.

VI.

At middle age, we get some gleam of day:
The eclipse is over at our dying hour;
For then Earth's shadow passes quite away,
And we behold the Sun in all his power.
The soul is light, the world is but the clay;
The body is the root, the soul's the flower;
Death is the gardener, and the grave's the hole
The dibble makes: 'tis true, upon my soul.

VII.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust!-that knells

The common lot; but it is ink to ink,

Paper to paper, pen to pen, which tells

The fate of those who sing and those who think.

The poet moulders into syllables,

(O'er which the solemn critics dine and drink,)

And tombed in Russia leather, silk, or calf,

Still makes all human nature weep or laugh!

VIII.

A poet is like man before the fall,

Having an Eden of his own, where bright, Celestial natures visit at his call;

His very dust are living words of might,

Stirring for ever in the hearts of all.

Men say, as Job did to the Infinite:
"Can dry bones live?" A poet never dies
None, save the poet, tastes the eternal skies!

ZODIACAL SYMBOLISM.-PART III.

THE PRIMITIVE ERA.

THE elemental symbolism must, from the nature of the facts, have maintained an undisputed sway for a vast period of time. As, however, the elements admit of being pictorially represented in a variety of ways, both directly and tropically, one representation suggested another, until, in process of time, we find them typified by several distinct and self-consistent sets of symbols, until ultimately they are superseded altogether by other direct representations of the seasons. These different symbolisms, with the myths and usages founded on them, constitute the chief materials of mythology. I shall point out the principal groups which I have thus far detected, and in the order in which they appear to me to have originated. They are wonderfully few when we consider the vast space of time which their history evidently embraces, and the immense mass of fable to which they have given origin.

The first of these groups, as far as I am as yet able to determine, is one for the knowledge of whose existence we are indebted to the same source which has already given us the purest form of the primitive myth, namely, the traditions of Mexico. Traces of its existence and wide diffusion are abundantly supplied by other mythologies, but they are too fragmentary ever to have led to the detection or re-construction of so very singular a combination. In Mexico, however, the

group has not only been preserved entire, but it occupies a position of the utmost prominence and importance, both in the arrangements of the calendar and in the dogmas of the national faith. I allude to the celebrated hieroglyphics of the month and cycle-TOCHTLI, the Rabbit, ACATL, the Cane, TECPATL, the Flint, and CALLI, the House. These symbols have long ceased to be employed for their original purposes even by the Mexicans, but the tradition of their true import was still kept alive by a variety of applications. This is evident from many facts, as well as from the formal testimony contained in the following passage from the "Giro del Mondo" of Gamelli Careri, who derived all his information on such matters from the learned Siguenza. Speaking of the use made of these hieroglyphics in naming the years of the cycle, and their disposition in reference to the four cardinal points, he adds:

They also symbolized with the same figures the four elements; for Tochtli was dedicated to Tevacayohua, god of the earth, Acatl to Tlalocatetuhtli, god of water, Tecpatl to Chetzalcoutl, god of air, and Cagli to Xihutecuhil, god of fire.*

The propriety of these attributions is easily demonstrated.

As an animal which lives in the earth, which serves for the food of man, and which is prolific in an extraordinary degree, the rabbit is a direct and appropriate type both of earth and autumn, perhaps the most perfect animal type that could be chosen. The cane or reed is a water plant, and therefore directly symbolizes that element, and indirectly the season which it represents; and we may reasonably presume that originally it was some plant as characteristically aquatic as the papyrus of Egypt or the lotus of India. Tecpat is the ancient arrow or spear-head, as is obvious from its invariable shape in the native pictures, as well as from the fact of its being represented as a spear-head in the wheels of the century, published by Gemellit and Boturini, the figures in which are not copies of the native paintings, but a European representation of the ideas expressed by them. In fact, they may be called a European translation of Mexican pictures, and must therefore have been executed under the guidance of native teachers; for the form of Tecpatl in the native pictures would never of itself have suggested the idea of a spear-head, least of all to such men as the Spanish conquerors in the sixteenth century. Viewing Tecpatl then as an arrow or spear-head, its import is unmistakable; for next to the bird or insect, the arrow is the

Giro del Mondo, tom. VI., cap. vi., p. 40.
Giro del Mondo, tom. VI., cap. vi., p. 46.
Antiquities of Mexico, vol. iv.