The new pythagorean

them frequently and unceremoniously, which he that of all knowledge being but the memory of a villingly promised to. do, and though Mary had had pre-existence as taught by his great disciple Plato:: butlittle agency in the success of the day, she con- * Tn connection with the phenomena ofmemory, grainlated herself that things ha! gone off so well, may be permitted here to take notice of-a cer: a result which she seemed to-imagine to have tain-mystery or marvel whieh has. occasionally prebeen chiefly from the effect of. her own exertions. |sented itself to me, andin voucher of the existence This mistake Frankwas good-natured enongh to of which [have the experience of others in addimake noattempt to remove, andin this pleasant de- tion to my own! I mean that strange impression, lusion we shall leave her for the present. Funan (Tobe Continued.) which will occasionally come with unexpected suddenness on the mind, that the scene now passing, and in which we share, is one, which in the very place, and in the very words, with the same persons, and with the same feelings, we had accurately. rehearsed we know not where before: Er on ag THE NEW PYTHAGOREAN. 25... It is the most extraordinary of sensatians, and is one which CHAPTER FIRST. will ogenr where in what is going forward there is nothing remarkable or of particular interest invol:. ved. While we speak, our former words are ringing in our ears, and the sentences which we form are the faint echoes of a conversation had in the olden time. Our conscious thoughts, too, as they” rise, seem to whisper to each other that this is not One of the deepest mysteries in the Ancient Greek Philosophy,is the doctrine. of the transmi- their first appearance in this place. In short, all _ gration of souls—the metempsy chosis, as it was that is now before us seems the apparition of a dicalled. According to that doctrine, the soul of man alogue long departed—the spectral resurrection:of ved forward, from body to body, in the drama of scenes and transactions longgone by, Or we may : his world. The soul which was Euphorbus at be said, by the momentary gleam. of a flash of re- = Troy, wasafterwards Pythagoras, the wander- work- miniscence, to he-reviewing in a mysterious mirror erof Greece. While one day musing inan Argive the dark reflection of times past, and living over, =... temple, the spirit, then in the body of Pythagoras, in minute and shadowy detail, a duplicate of the in; Saw and knew upon the wall, the shield it had worn cidents of some pre-existent state.”’*“= atthe siege of Troy, when it was in the body of The biographer of the Irish lawyer says, that : Euphorbus. * Clypeo T'rojana refixo tempora tes- the tact of such mysterious appearances is beyond And the mystical Sage professed that some all question in minds ofa peculiar constitution ; and = ‘memory of those grand old days at Troy goes on to give a conversation not long since had a:brokeinEpo him, there in Argos, after with another distinguished member of the. Bar,a man nat very prone to airy fancies, who said that, = ns (nam memini) Trojani tempore belli = Panthoides. Euphorbus eram.—Ovid. ‘once when shootingin a remote part of the county of Cork, which he had never till then. visited, ever believe that there was more of the * Nore ny Tue Epiror.—This striking passage from but another form of expressing what: notthe,body, of Math, among those noble Baron Smith seems Sir Walter Scott: has so:finely suggestedin the person of Bertramin Guy Mannering: I’ he:rend - will perhaps recollectthe train of thought in which Bertram indulged-on revisiting the castle of Ellangowan. A resemblance so remarkable conld scarcely have been accidental, We quote it is easy to: show: that, like several other things from Guy Mannering, in the opening of the alst chapter: which:satyrs- and sadducees had hooted away; and fötntain of human thought. «Why is it, he Lhought, continuing to follow out the suce: cession of ideas which the scene prompted,— Why is it that some scenes awaken thoughts, which ‘belong as it.were to’ Iıs germ was dreams of early and shadowy recollection, such as myold Bramin Moonshie would have ascribed: 10 a ‚state of previous. 1; and although its growth hapaine excrescent, existence? Is it the visions of our sleep that float confusedly in our memory, and are renalled by theappearance of such real objects as in any respect correspond lo. the phantoms they presented to ourim ination’ „How. often dowe. Land yet feel impressed‘with:amyisterious and il defined sciousness, that neither the scene, the SP akers nor the subjects, ~

them frequently and unceremoniously, which he that of all knowledge being but the memory of a willingly promised to do, and though Mary had had pre-existence as taught by his great disciple Plato: but little agency in the success of the day, she congratulated herself that things ha1 gone off so well, a result which she seemed to imagine to have been chiefly from the effect of her own exertions. This mistake Frank was good-natured enongh to make no attempt to remove, and in this pleasant delusion we shall leave her for the present. Fran - “ In connection with the phenomena of memory, may I be permitted here to take notice of a certain mystery or marvel which has occasionally presented itself to me, and in voucher of the existence of which I have the experience of others in addition to my own! I mean that strange impression, which will occasionally come with unexpected suddenness on the mind, that the scene now passing, and in which we share, is one, which in the very (Tobe Continued.) place, and in the very words, with the same persons, and with the same feelings, we had accurately rehearsed we know not where before. It is the most extraordinary of sensations, and is one which will occur where in what is going forward there is nothing remarkable or of particular interest invol- THE NEW PYTHAGOREAN. ved. While we speak, our former words are ringing in our ears, and the sentences which we form are the faint echoes of a conversation had in the CHAPTER FIRST. olden time. Our conscious thoughts, too, as they One of the deepest mysteries in the Ancient rise, seem to whisper to each other that this is not their first appearance in this place. In short, all Greek Philosophy, is the doctrine of the transmigration of souls—the metempsychosis, as it was that is now before ns seems the apparition of a dialogue long departed—the spectral resurrection of called. According to that doctrine, the soul of man moved forward, from body to body, in the drama of scenes and transactions long gone by. Or we may The soul which was Euphorbus at be said, by the momentary gleam of a flash of reTroy, wasafterwards Pythagoras, the wonder- work- miniscence, to he reviewing in a mysterious mirror this world. While one day musing in an Argive the dark reflection of times past, and living over, temple, the spirit, then in the body of Pythagoras, in minute and shadowy detail, a duplicate of the iner of Greece. saw and knew upon the wall, the shield it had worn cidents of some pre-existent state.”?* at the siege of Troy, when it was in the body of Euphorbus. tatus.” ‘ Clypeo Trojana refixo tempora tes- And the mystical Sage professed that some rays of memory of those grand old days at Troy actually broke in upon him, there in Argos, after the lapse of full five hundred years: The biographer of the Irish lawyer says, that the fact of such mysterious appearances is beyond all question in minds of a peculiar constitution ; and goes on to give a conversation not long since had with another distinguished member of the Bar, a man not very prone to airy fancies, who said that, “ once when shooting in a remote part of the coun- Ipse ego (nam memini) Trojani tempore belli ty of Cork, which he had never till then visited, Panthoides Euphorbus eram.—Ovid, We shall ever believe that there was more of the * Nore BY THE Eprror.—This striking passage from soul, if not the body, of truth, among those noble Baron Smith seems but another form of expressing what Sir Walter Scott has so finely suggested in the person of Bertram in Guy Mannering. ‘The render will perhaps reold lovers of the spirit’s mysteries, than there was among the Hobbeses and the Humes and other collect the train of thought in which Bertram indulged on Dry-as-dusts, their scoffers, in modern times. As revisiting the castle of Ellangowan. A resemblance so reVe mai? chapter: 41st the of opening the in Mannering, Guy from it is easy to show, that, like several other things wild a thing as this metempsychosis seems to be, Tarheblefeoulllacarcel iiiovelleenjace tents] which satyrs and sadducees had hooted away, and “ Why is it, he thought, continuing to follow out the suc- Why is it that which deeper, hnmbler souls are bringing back, it cession of ideas which the scene prompted,— some scenes awaken thoughts, which belong as it were to takes its rise from among the very crystals around the fountain of human thought. dreams of early and shadowy recollection, such as my old Its germ was Bramin Moonshie would have ascribed to a state of previous truth ; and although its growth became excrescent, yet it still continued to tel] a certain truth to all meditative minds. The following passage by Sir William C. Smith, late Baron of the Irish Exchequer, a man of a very highly cultivated and philoexistence? Is it the visions of our sleep that float confusedly in our memory, and are recalled by the appearance of such real objects as in any respect correspond to the phantoms they presented to our imagination? How often do we find ourselves in society which we have never before met, and yet feel impressed with a mysterious and ill-defined consophie mind, probably describes the very mystery sciousness, that neither the scene, the speakers nor the subjects, of human nature which gave rise to the doctrine are entirely new; nay, feel as if we could anticipate that of metempsychosis with the Samian sage, and to past of the conversation which has not yet taken place !”

[Decemser, he reached a certain spot which he had the most of the spectator ran—the dead object of love—the distinct remembrance of having seen before—the scenes of some splendid work of ancient genius— hills—the trees—the river—the old tower ; in fact, the object which genius or ambition emulated. He is said to have had an interview with the Wanderevery thing served to satisfy his memory.” And if one should take this fine piece of meta- ing Jew, that interloping outlaw of modern rophysical analysis io his hand, and visit the parlors mance, in which he shewed to the fascinated soul of the best cultivated and most reflecting characof that being, the eastern maiden whom he had ters from the Potomac to the Roanoke, a wager loved in his youth, under a palm-tree by a fountain could hardly be lost on his finding more witnesses somewhere in the East. to its trath than he would find Hobbists and Hum- Sir Thomas More was a great lover of the new Greek learning, and Agrip- And the wit- pa shewed Sir Thomas More the destruction of nesses for it would weigh more, as well as number Troy in a dream. By-the-by,it wasa dream which ists to scout the grand old mysteries. more, than those against it. An hundred men would a Sir Thomas More of this day would count it no say, each of them, that he had an hondred times great marvel to have without an Agrippa, provided had the same experience ;—that in passing some he had spent the preceding day and evening deeptrees, or in ly wrapped in the Iliad. To Thomas Cromwell, country-seat with its avenue of tall coming upon some wild striking scene by a sudden the Magician showed Henry VIII., and a bevy of turn of the road, or in looking out from the window Lords, hunting in Windsor forest. of a stage-coach unpremeditatedly, in And to Charles places he V., of Germany, a man ambitious of a sort of glowas visiting for the first time, he had caught “that ry which came not swiftly enough apon him, he momentary flash of reminiscence,” that ‘ dark re- showed David, Solomon, Gideon and the Nine Worthies, in their appropriate dress. See Godwin’s flection of times past.” This is perhaps the truth which is at the bottom Lives of the Necromancers. also of some of the most mysterious things related These men, it is true, Agrippa and Pythagoras, of Cornelius Agrippa, the German magician of the had much of what we should now term humbug fifteenth century; especially of what was said to about them. Yet they probably felt some mystehave occurred on the occasion of his meeting with rious but true laws of the soul more strongly than the poet-earl of Surrey, at the court of the Elec- other men. tor of Saxony. The Greek was evidently a man of Among many other eminent men the deepest idiosyncrasies. present was the famous Desiderius Erasmus. Emotions which in All other men show no great prominence, because they wanted to see some famous man of the past, pre- are balanced and counteracted, were probably the sented to view by the power of his art. One wish- daily governing impulses of his mind. ed to see Plautus; another Ovid; but the wish of as he saw it, was not the The world calm world of spirits Erasmus prevailed, who desired to see Tully in with which, though it is invisible, yet other men, the act of delivering his oration in behalf of Ros- indeed all men of meditative habits feel that they cius. It is said that the Roman did appear, and live and move and think in contact. did deliver the oration just as we have it, with world such gestures and animation and spirit that the au- drink of Spirits, and dancing in dience were ready again to acquit Roscius by a some unanimous verdict. Grecian some ethereal wild revelry on Walpurgis Night. Consequently The truth that is in the mar- there was.a monstrous deal of overacting in his vel is perhaps this. The very soul of Erasmus life. There was as had been nourished and bronght up on the genius philosophy. of Tully. Botit was the of spirits exhilarated with much overstatement in his The golden apples are almost undis- The same was probably true of others, coverable in the redundancy of the thick manyperhaps of all, in the company. It is plain in the hued foliage. May we not here turn Pythagorean, very terms of the story that they were all lovers or Agrippist, for a few chapters, and feel and live of the new classic learning which was then just along the chain which binds us to the past? fairly beginning to brighten the spirit of Europe. * The magician may have struck “ the electric chain” of their memory by means not more abstruse than those known to be in the leger-de-main, so as to employment of mere produce an impression of the presence of a scene upon which their thoughts were turned, and which their own deep anxieties were assisting him to present. At least Erasmus could without great difficulty dream he saw and heard Tully, and the others would not wish to have seen or heard less mus. than the learned Herr Eras- It is to be well noted that the exhibitions of Congora, in one of his odes calls the river of Madrid, “ the Duke of Streams and Viscount of Rivers.” Manganares, Manganares, Os que en todo el aguatismo, Agrippa to his various customers were always those Estois Duque de Arroyos persons of the past upon whom the Y Visconde de los Rios. deep passions

my intention of leaving was communicated to my kind hostess. “Can't you stay? Must you go?” she enquired. “Certainly must,” I replied. “The great world calls me, and though I expect to act in it but a small part, that small part must be acted. We have talked with travellers; but it's time for me to become a homeward pedestrian. Accept my best thanks, and my souvenirs will always return to your quiet home when summer is uttering its deep and loud voices.” “ Adieu, then,” she said. * Adieu—but come again.” “I will,” was my reply, ' si vita supersit.” And now, in the words of Sir Walter Raleigh— “ Give me my scallop shell of quiet, My staff of truth to walk upon— My scrip of joy—immortal diet— My bottle of salvation. My hope of glory—Hope’s true gage, And thus [ take my Pilgrimage.” Ringweod, Va. Chapter Second. HI. Spirit! I seek thee in the solemn night— Through the long watches, till the morning light, I seek thee, but in vain! The clear calm stars and moonbeams on me shine, They bring no calmness to this heart of mine— No quiet to this brain ; Bot pale and anxious, by sad thoughts opprest, I tum and toss, ’till morn (O1 welcome guest,) Bringeth the light again: And then, once more I close my drooping lids, But memory still thy soothing reign forbids! IV. Spirit invoked, oh! vainly: thou hast mot The power to chase the shadows from my lot ; The gift is not with thee! But one, who hath been called thine elder-brother, Who soon or late all human woe doth smother— . Will be more kind to me. … He will not scorn this sinking heart’s appeal— “Which hath no sorrow but his touch can heal Most sure and lastingly. Spirit! no more thy presence I compel, But turn beneath his shadowy wing to dwell ! New York. THE NEW PYTHAGOREAN. SPIRIT OF SLEEP, BY MRS. E. J. EAMES. Ob gentle sleep, Natare’s soft nurse ;— How have I frighted thee, that thou no more Wilt steep my senses in forgetfulness? ‘ Shakespeare, I Sparit that hidest ‘neath thy brooding wing The many-million woes and cares that spring In man's harsh path by day,— Thou who dost fold Earth's tired ones to thy breast, And on their heavy eyelids softly reat, Chasing their cares away :— Thou wbose sweet ministry o'er the silent world Is felt—where’er thy pinion is unfurled, Où! unseen spirit! say, By wbat enchanted spell—what magic sign I, too, may hope to make thy blessings mine 7— IL. Spirit of universal Nature's rest— Refresher of the frame by toil oppreat,— Or lingering illness bow’d. Sweet influence that is ever, ever woo’d Both for the mind, and languid mood, For the hopes and fears that crowd Tato oor little life, and through the day Prompt us to rise, or struggle as we may,— How shall the weary-bow'd And weary-hearted win thy bland caress, O, thou! that bast such hoty power to bless? CHAPTER SECOND. It would be a rich fruit indeed of spells and enchantments, a noble crown of mystical lore, could we call up the men of the olden time, whose spirits should give us living light upon the grand old cities, their arts, their poetry, their every-day thoughts and ways of life. Could we evoke, for instance, some man who had lived at Athens in her grandest days, who should appear not awaking from three and twenty centuries of dreamless slumber, but knowing the present, remembering the past, and bearing in his one spirit the scenes, and events, and thoughts, which man evolved in the intervening years, it would be truly a gtorious shade. The real shades of the men of Athens, like those of other men, have entered into that immortality not of earth, of which their half-inspired Plato dreamed. But there is also an earthly immortality of which men speak, not altogether iu a figure; and shades which, whether in fact or in figure, inhabit those earthly immortalities. And even here, “ farther west than his sires’ islands of the Blest,” such an one may not disrespectfully be invited to give us at least the shadow of light upon things of old. “J come. You shall hear me if you will hear. Let your spirit fly far backwards in the long journey of the marching years: Of a distant age, of

Chapter Second. (Fesrvary, times when a different light lay on the spirit of and found a conclave of the brightest gods and man from that which I now seo upon it, and of goddesses sitting together consulting or enjoying a distant land, you shall bear if you will hear. in their tranquil blessedness—the Propylea with At Athens I was Theophastus. My birth was the widely beautiful temples on its wings—the in Lesbos, the land of Sappho. I first saw statue of Minerva Promachos withia the encloAthens just after the day of Mantinea, when sure of the Acropolis, lifting her tall crest and Epaminondas fell in the greatest glory of all the spear-point 60 high as to be visible to sailors at Greeks. The Athenian warriors had fought sea farther off than Sunium—and to crown all against the Theban that day; but the Theban the works of glory, as it crowned the Acropelis, had beaten the Spartan wing, not the Athenian there stood the Parthenon itself, and within it wing; and as the news of the fight spread in the the gold-and-ivory statue of Minerva by Phidias. marble city, its mercurial men highly extolled the There was a robe of beauty about these things, great dead Theban as comparable even to thei a seeming life and meaning and language which own Pericles, inquired briefly of the battle, gave spoke to the soul as you gazed, and most clearly a few words of pity and regret to their own dead to the highest soul, whieh nothing but the sudden who had fallen there, and rushed to a drama of breaking out of a vernal sunbeam on an Attic Euripides’ at the theatre. Pericles had been landscape could illustrate. It was a city then in dead nearly seventy years. Since he was taken which an hour’s walk in the common haunts of away, the disastrous close of the Peloponessian the citizens, sent dreams of ideal loveliness into war, the reign of the Thirty, and the liberation the soul fairer than men of all other ages and by Thrasybulus had come and gone. Ihicrates climes have since attained to form or to conceive. and Chabrias were the leaders of the State in “ Such beauty in the outer world singing its its new freedom; but they were not sons, hardly daily song to the eye and to the imagination, — were they effigies, of Pericles. Had you com- almost indeed singing to the ear—was sure to pared them to him in the Agora, some aged man breed its kindred things ia the inner world of with his braided hair surmounted by the Golden man. It is true, indeed, that Aeschylus, SophoCicada, mingling in his tones, sadness, reproof cles, Euripides, Aristophanes, had all passed and a sense of triumph in the old times, would away. But though dead, yet they were still have shown you Pericles in the field; would have speaking to the Athenians in the theatre. And told you how the eloquence of Pericles inspired by feeding the spirits of men with the intellectual thoughts so lofty and heroie, that the people called beauties they were prepared to taste, the trageit Olympian, and said it thundered ; would have dies were preparing them, by the mystic and described to you the scene when the throneless prophetic strains of the choruses, for higher things and now childless old statesman came one day yet to come. From such a cradle, in such an into the Pnyx into the public Assembly, where age, PLATO came; and none less than Plato the fickle Demos had a little while befere fined would have been a worthy offspring. I, a schoolhim fifty talents; how the crowd saluted: him boy, was sent from Lesbos to be his pupil; and with deeper reverence than ever, and sobs of I saw him first seated in the grove of the Acadecontrition burst from the whole Assembly; how my, venerable with more than sixty years of age, they all earnestly entreated his forgiveness, and surrounded by a crowd of the young nobles of by one sweeping vote re-invested him with all all Greece, modestly professing to teach them authority in the State. ‘That,’ he would have merely the philosophy of the murdered Socrates, said, ‘ was indeed a man,’ Zeuxis and Parrha- yet bearing away bis auditors, their heads insius were men when Pericles was a boy. Phi- clining to him and their countenances lighted dias, the sculptor, was near the same age as his with rapture, in the flights of a genius which all great patron, and died less than one Olympiad felt to be of far more nervous wing, and higher before him. And of about the same age was soaring and keener eye than that of Socrates. also Ictinus, the architect of the Parthenon. I Some years after my coming, there came also, myself, in the latter years of my life, saw Praxi- one day, from the city of Stagyra to school there, teles, who came from Italy and wrought in Pa- young ARISTOTLE, a gentleman of the most acrian marble instead of the Pentelican which had complished manners, scrupulously elegant in his been chiefly used before. These were the men dress, contrary to the maxims of the first Acadof Athens of that grand day, which was just be- emy, and of a sort of inexorable justness of fore my day, in the arts which shed glory upon thought, which led him often to scruple at the outward life. I saw their works about the city— loftier visions of the poet-sage. This finally the canvass of Zeuxis and the marble of Praxi- made his house a rallying point to those memteles at the portico of the Poecile, which caused bers of the Academy in whose minds the rational one to feel on entering and looking around, as if and reflective understanding was stronger than he had entered Jove’s richest hall on Olympus, the poetic faculty; and was the nucleus of the

—— school on the other side of the eity in the grove selves, we felt that the beam of the intellectual of the Lyceum :—but not until after the death of light of Athens was complete. Plato. For twenty years Aristotle lived with “Yet fair as was that shining city, it is not the his master, beloved by him, and by him called mere preception of its wonders which chiefly re“the mind of the school.” I became a member turns to me now of the reminiscenses of that ef that school in the Lyceum called Peripatetic; Athenian life of mine. Although I have stood and finally succeeded Aristotle as its head. From in the Propylea when some grand procession of this new location, between the city walls and citizens of all classes and ranks, clad in mystic Mount Hymettus, on the South-eastern side of or triumphal dress in honor of Minerva, was the city, being not far from the theatre of Bac- about to pass through, and seeing the bronze ehus, we could hear every night the plaudits of valves of the five gates fly suddenly open, have the people, and the soft wild chorus of flutes, felt the force of the exultation of Aristophaeausing us to feel that Athens was learning rap- nes: idly to speak to the ear in music, and clothe in sound the mystic joy, and love, and aspiration of ‘Shout, shout aloud of the view which appears of the old mortal life, as she had before spoken to the eye time-honored Athenae, and the imagination, and the reason, by sculpture, Wondrous in sight and famous in song where the noble and poetry, and philosophy. Then it seemed Demos abhideth,’ to us that the beam of light was perfect, having all its prismatic rays, and was pure and clear when the grandeur of the Parthenon burst upon white. But it was not yet so; there was yet my view ;—although from one of the hill of another earthly ray to be added; another yet Hymettus, I have looked upon the city in distant different from that beam from the Higher God view, on a fair day, when it seemed as if a bevy which was to shine on another city, far eastward of the Spirits of the Blest had descended to nesef Athens, and which Plato foresaw and longed tle and abide there ;—although I have gazed and to see with open vision, and which he said some wondered for hours at the Poecile and in other greater Socrates, descending from a city above, porticoes of the artists ;—although in listening to even higher than that of the Olympian deities, legends of Pericles or in hearing an oration of was to visit the earth to bring down.* There Demosthenes, I have had visions of civil granwas yet another ray to come beside that. A deur brought before me of great magnificence; yeung orator whom I bad known a short while even although I have gone along with some chorus asa senior school-fellow at the Academy was of Euripides in the theatre, or some rhapsody of the next year hissed from the Bema of Athens. Plato in the grove, to the highest reach of their For some years he had been lost from public soaring powers of invention, yet it is the response sight. Few cared to inquire what had become to these things in the depths of my own soul of him. Of those who spoke of him at all, some which now arises to my view rather than the said he was taking private lessons from an actor bare memory of the things themselves. The whe profeased to see a jewel in him; and others arts of Athens sprang from certain primitive that he was living in a cave by the sea-shore, de- fountains of the love of beauty in the human claiming in greater anger to the angry waves. soul. They did not create those fountains, as Bat suddenly one day there came a tremendous some suppose; but were born of them. And as shout from the Public Assembly. It was the offspring is like parent, as face answers to face in day on which the repeal of Leptines’ law came a glass, as the sky which appeared beneath the up for discussion. This man, making an invidi- waters at Sunium was the image of the sky ous distinction in favor of the descendants of which glided over Attica, so were the arts of Harmodius and Aristogiton, had proposed and Athens the images of the love and the dreams of carried a heavy tax on every other citizen of ideal beauty in the souls of men. And our souls Athens. Young Demosthenes had reappeared respond in flashes of inward light and glory to that day; and seizing on the occasion which their own image in their own offspring. It is gave fuil scope to his favorite passion, as well as those flashes of light which now return upon me the favorite passion of his audience, the pride of in connection with the grandeur of Grecian life, Athenian glory, he overwhelmed Leptines in an rather than the memory of the scenes and pereration “on the Inmmunities of Athenian citizens.” ceptions themselves which were but the connectWith sach an orator 2s he proved himself to be ing chains by which the inward and the outward en this and on other occasions, when even the world held communion. And flying from life to schools of philosophy went to hear him, not ex- life, those gleams of inward light pass down the eepting the snarlers of the Cynosarges them- stream of life in devious and wonderful ways. As a poet of the race which is,in the modern * Plato's Alcibides, lib. 2.

— Recollections of another Elderly Gentleman. Stanzas. (FEBRUARY, Soon thus—did I think—will the cares of this life world, what the Greeks were in the ancient, has In the stillness of death be no more, said: And the storms, that attend us with tumult and strife, Forever be hushed in their roar. Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting The soul that rises with us, our life’s star Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar; Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we. come.” [ Wordsworth. * The sorrows that gather so dark shall be past, The cares that our pleasures would drown— And all shall be peaceful—be tranquil at last, When brightly the sun shall go down! F, D. & H. Bolivar, Tenn. THE RECOLLECTIONS Of another Elderly Gentleman. STANZAS. 1 looked on the sun as he sank in the west— Not a cloud overshadowed his beam; But calmly he shone from the place of his rest, And brightly expired with a gleam. And, while ‘neath the curtain of eve his last ray Was still on the far-rolling wave, He fied like a spirit when passing away Beyond the sad gloom of the grave. As calmly he poised on his pinions of light— And left, as he faded from view, Such smile as a heaven-bound spirit would write On his clay when he whispers—adieu! There came o’er the earth and along the blue sky A beauty as tranquil as sleep, And the soft, balmy dews on the breeze that moaned by Seemed hovering angels to weep! How calm was that hour! as calm as if Death Had reigned o’er the land and the sea— For the dash of each wave, and the moan of each breath Spoke but of repose unto me. The green earth around me was yet smiling on, Though its luminous spirit had fled, — And soft from the sky the evening-star shone, Like the hope that remains for the dead ! The hues of his glory soon vanished away, Pursuing the Sun jn his flight, BY LAUNCELOT WAGSTAFF. When the Countess of Blessington’s very agreeable book first appeared, a number of good people determined not to be amazed, because the variety of her hero's entanglements seemed to them both unnatural and improper. I, on the contrary, belonged to that small and unhappy class, who fancied that she had not done entire justice to the capacity of the human heart. Looking back from my mellow autumn, through a sweet summer, to a pleasant spring, I recalled more adventures of that sort, than her amiable hero had encountered. Not all indeed were as successful. It is my misfortune to remember having chased several butterflies, which, after keeping me breathless with haste, anxiety and expectation, left me, cap in hand, a sad spectacle of their triumphant escape from the projected capture. But yet. on the whole, I have had no reason to be dissatisfied with my success ; and as the pleasing delusion of being dearly loved, has never in my case been purchased by the misery of the fair lady who did me that honor, my reflections have not been disturbed by any phantoms of remorse for a little innocent amusement. The instance that I am about to relate is of that kind which derives its chief character from the intention of the man who playe the part of tempter. As I certainly had no satanic design in view, nor dreamed of expelling the fair Eve, at While, swift on the track of the fast-fading day, Flew darkly the shadow of night. whose ear I sat, from that position which through sheer necessity she was constrained to regard as The reign of deep silence came still o'er the scene— a paradise, I bespeak the silence of all good Scarce aught save a murmur arose, people as to the heinous character of my offence. Of the faint-breathing zephyr, that told how serene— If the tranquillity of my conscience, reflecting at How pure the untroubled repose. this day upon the whole affair, be regarded as any proof of innocent intention, my conduct It seemed that the angel of peace had descended, must be looked upon as lamb-like in the retroAnd all with his spirit had blessed ;— The thoughts that rushed darkly within me were Liended spect. In the year—, no matter what, I found myself With hopes of a heaven of rest !

Swept as a thing of naught from out their sterile plain, Thy city, thy glory and thy throne have passed away forever— Leaving but the dim reflection of their meteor light, As eternal warnings on the devious highway of Ambition. E. T. green of their evergreen foliage. Like the cheeks of the vampire, they seem to triumph over winter and desolation, in retaining still that color which is the livery of summer and of Nature's life; and which has doubtless been chosen for that livery on account of its gratefulness to the eye, and may it not be added, on account of its mysterious charm for the spirit of man. A writer of very great genius locates one of the most fearful crimes which his own or any other pages unfold, under a “bare, wan and giant-like tree” surrounded by a ghastly wilderness and dead hedges. Who can tell what would be the social CHAPTER THIRD. character of the men of this earth, if for one Accounts which seem entitled to credit say half-century, summer should fail to give foliage that sometimes the dead, in what is called the to the woods and flowers to the earth, leaving vampire state, are found, weeks and months after the trees gaunt and unsightly, the gardens una. interment, with undecayed flesh, cheeks of life- dorned ? like color, the old skin sloughing off like that of In regions where the pine groves are lofty and a serpent in early summer, and new and fresh of uniform height, scenery is sometimes to be skin forming underneath, as if the body were met with, which, if we saw things at home with preparing to come out of the grave for another as deep a spirit as we dream of things afar away, life on earth, or as if some mysterious power of would probably be thought not to yield to “ Arnature were sporting in images of resurrection, cadia’s rocks and pines” in power over certain in types and shadows of the future history of the emotions of the mind. The flooring in such a grave. Perhaps this is a mere superstition. If grove is more uniform than in other woods as it it is not, it is one of the many things in heaven is covered with the spears of the foliage which and earth yet not more than “dreamed of in our has fallen. And when in addition it is carpeted philosophy”—a mysterious vis vivida able to ex- with pure snow, and gleams of sunshine, on days ist still in the house of death; a strange power fairer and far more blessed than was made by that can beard the old Stygian lion, corruption, that grand “ Sun of Austerlitz” which so deeply in his very den. May it not be regarded as a impressed the mind of the French Cesar all his just emblem of some of our Piedmont land- after life, mingle with the canopy above, making scapes ?—In these landscapes the parts of many a rich vault of green and gold, and then fall a hill-side which are not furrowed with ghastly sparkling on the floor of snow, and pour the varred gullies, are covered with ash-colored and nish of an ineffably soft golden light over its surworthless grass, which ‘ withereth before it face of pearl, it is a scene fit for brighter beings groweth up; wherewith the mower filleth not than we; suggesting thoughts of things not rehis hand nor he that bindeth sheaves his bosom.” alized in this life ; perhaps a fit place of conclave The slight waves into which it is indented by the for those pure visiters of earth which a dreaming winds of autumn, seem as grinning mockeries of poet has described, apparently with some such the waves of golden grain to be seen in other scene in imaginary view : fields far away. Its complexion is that of the old skin of the dead. Too often there are no # Look! look! in the shade of that grand old tree, What a glorious group is collected there, signs of the new robes of green springing up at move like the streamers of light which we see its roots. Too often it is the mere and only robe Who In Aurora’s strange night-scenes in northern air. of an unreviving decay. Not spring with all the revelry of the days of vegetable resurrection, nor Or like winter-day sunbeams at noon in the grove, As they reach through the boughs to the snow beneath; the sunshine of May and June, nor the showers of mid-summer, which seem almost to gladden Or as dreaming we image the spirits of love Whom the light and the glory of heaven enwreathe. the earth to its core, can awake in it the greenness of life. Such fields are desolate indeed when As men in Elysium enchanted, they stand, skirted and spotted with ragged thickets of dwarf And their forms seem the models of heroes sublime, oak and pine. But in some regions the pines Their faces bow radiant ! how peerlessiy grand, And their bearing how nobler than beings of time ! have ceased to be dwarfs. They stand as uniform in height as if they were a harvest growFor they are indeed spirits who here had their birth ing to be reaped by the scythe of some Titan or And were righteous, and now live in glory above, son of Anak. Even in the desolation of win- Whom heaven has allowed to revisit the earth, tér there is an indescribable charm in the deep ® And enquire for awhile of its light and its love. Var. XV—27

The Goldemith's Daughter. mmm —— ternating star between the robes of the fashion Now they hear and they see, not as we of this world, But whole cities and states from their chosen arcade which we see now and those of which we know They distinctly can hear, and see, plainly unfurled, not where to find legend or chronicle, or brazen By the change in their senses which heaven has made.” clasp old enough to tell us. (Anon. e Agriculture has not contributed as much to our scenery as it might have done, and as it will do hereafter. In many places time and taste and spring and summer do much. But there are few places where, if you stand and look round with calm eye, and watch the richer sunsets, and await the fairer seasons, and learn to know their favored times, you may not catch glimpses of the grand spirit of nature, and feel the strange sympathies of your kindred with sky and air and tree and flower. True, the sympathies of that kindred have yet been but little uttered in appropriate expression. Our pines have not yet had their Theocritus. That voice of the wind among them, concerning which there is an insoluble doubt whether it is a sigh or a shout, a hallelujah or a dirge, is just the same as the ‘446 ri ra yrOdpene,” the song of the pines, of which the poet sung in the dominions of Ptole8 my Philadelphus. They lack the charm of the thought that a poet has been among them; they lack the charm of the pagan dream that huntress Diana has made them ring with the chorus of her phantom dogs, and the wild woodland revelry of her buskined train of nymphs; and the charm of the thought that Minerva too has mused among them who “non minus in sylvis errare quam Diana.” Yet they also have their charms. They are the produce of a renovating power in nature as dark to our knowledge as the growing of the vampire skins of thedead. Their eolour is that of summer and hope and joyous life. They seem too to disport themselves in types and emblems. ‘Theirs are colors over which winter, the annual shade and ghost of death, has no mastery. They stand there forever showing and singing forth the tidings of an immortality which the grave touches not but to brighten. Their line of blue lies along the horizon like man’s redemption in the horizon of history, a sign and an actual source of bright hopes yet abiding in the land. Above them are often spread the glory-wings of a sunset probably quite as fine as the Athenians ever saw over “sea-born Salamis.” In such an hour they deeply mingle in the dreams which the soul has brought with it from the unknewn realms. In those mystic recognitions there is always asense of the present as well as of the past. It is this which is now before us that is made to seem an apparition of the past. It is a strange thing of two widely differenteras. The hues of the time now, and of the time long ago, are both upon it. It is a pageant whose costume varies like an al- THE GOLDSMITH’S DAUGHTER. FROM THE GERMAN OF UHLAND. A Goldsmith stood where shone around His pearls and diamonds dear: “ The brightest gem I ever found Art thou, my pet, my Helena, My little daughter dear! A dainty knight just then came in: “ Good day, my pretty maid: Good day, my brave old Goldsmith, too, I need a rich set garland My sweet bride’s locks to braid.” Now when the finished garland shone, And sparkled all so bright, Aud Helen could be quite alone, Upon her arm she hung it. And saddened at the sight. “ Ah, happy, sure, the bride will be ‘Who wears this pretty toy: Ab! if the dear knight would give me A simple wreath of roses, O, I should die for joy.” Ere long the knight came in again, And close the garland eyed: “My good old Goldsmith, make me, then, A little ring of diamonds For my sweet little bride.” And when the finished circlet shone With precious diamonds bright, And Helen could be quite alone, Sbe drew it on her finger And saddened at the sight. “ Ab! happy, sure, the bride will be Who wears the pretty toy, Ab! if the dear knight would give me A little lock of hair, only, O, I should die for joy.” Ere long the knight came in again, And close the ringlet eyed: “] see, my good old Goldsmith, then, Thou mak'st quite beautifully The gifts for my sweet bride. But that their fitness I may see, Come, pretty maiden, now, And let me try at once on thee The jewels of my deareat, For she is fair as thou.”

end approaching, in the joyful exclamation ofthe apostle ‘the night is far spent,—the day is at band,’ the bright and beautiful morning of eternity! “If we should regard it as an evil, still it is wisdom’s part to look steadily upon it, for all evils may be mitigated by foresight and preparatom. It is true that we may not avert thie: itis the certain, the inevitable doom of all; we may each apply to ourselves the simple lines of the poet— #To think of Summer yet to come, That [ shall never see ; To think a weed is yet to bloom, From dust that I shall be.’ Chapter Fourth. ‘6 L'have found it!” with a sigh Cries the weary of the world, And my aching head shall lie On the lap of mother earth,— He speaks, and mighty death Bears away his feeble breath. “] have found it !” he can say Who is near the narrow tomb, Who beholda the final day Disclosing heaven to bis view, And “ Eureka!” he alone, May exclaim with joyous tone. Philadelphia, Feb. 1848. And we may take an enlarged view of it, we may see the mighty hand of our Maker brushing away from the face of the earth an entire generation, and then, calling out to the succeeding race, ‘Come again, ye children of men;’ and 80 shall wave after wave of mankind roll on, and THE NEW PYTHAGOREAN. roll away, until its last heave is lost in the bosom of Eternity! CHAPTER FOURTH.—DELOS. If Athens was, as the great bard called it, the EUREKA, BY MARY 6. WELLS. « [ have found it!” quoth the ehild With a merry, ringing shout, Catching what his feet beguiled The gay, painted butterfly, And behold—the insect dies In bis grasp, before his eyes! In the evening’s gentle hush “| have found it” breathes the maiden, With a softly stealing blush ; “ Love, life’s sweetest bliss is mine:” Fleeting joy ;—she weeps alone And her faithless lover’s gone! The flush of triumph on his brow, “| have found it!" cries the bard, Aad what shall deprive me now Of an everliving fame— Of the laurel-wreath J crave?” Lo, ‘tip laid upon his grave! “J have found it !” cries the king, With a proud exulting smile, As he clasps the signet ring And the sceptre to his heart, And his forehead feels the crown, Which, alas, shall weigh it down! % [have found it!” says the sage, And uplifts bis care-dim eyes From the quaint, bleck-lettered page He has scanned for live-long years; Man! thy lore avails thee not, Thou must share the common lot. eye of Greece, the little island of Delos may, with quite as much justness of metaphor, be called the heart of Greece. Not that its soil was the richest of Greece, or its people the most warlike, its fortresses the most impregnable, or its citadel the most defensible. But that island, ‘ longe clarissima, cycladum media, templo Apollinis et mercatu celebrata,” was the organ, as it were, of some of the strangest social feelings of the Athenian confederacy with which it was joined. It was their treasury, their Congressional city, the Bethlehem of their purest deities, the Mecca of their pilgrimages; the spot which they purified when their fortunes were, and their deities seemed, adverse; the altar to which they sent their most sacred and mysterious offerings by their fairest and noblest messengers; the port from which the sacred bark must return before even such enemies as Melitus and Lycon and Anytus would compel the hemlock to the lipe even of so dangerous a prisoner as Socrates; the sacred isle which Cicero tells us, was safe without walls—sine muro nihil timebat— when the _ pirates were swarming in the Greek and Italian seas, which Polyerates of Samos spared when he was irresistible on the ocean, and which even the Persians themselves dared not violate in a war which laid Athens in ruins. That island wo would see, in whatever sense the vision may be won. Yet a vision of Delos as it lies in the past is the only one which is worth having. As the island now is, there is no voice of glory heard in it save the voice of the memory of far remote centuries. Like Milton’s Eden after the deluge, it is but “the haunt of seals and orcs, and seamew’s clang.” The whole island has

been rented as pasture-ground for twenty crowns with its crowd of Ionian islanders who came there with their spirits steadfastly gazing forward a year! Poetry sees and shows and sings Delos rising into the then very imperfectly explored realms of from the depths of the ocean, drifting in the human art and intellectual beauty, its bands of Ægean sen, and at length fixed in its place, at a Ionian maidens at length collected on the day critical period, as a receptacle for that unpopu- and at the place for which their highest odes and lar courtezan of the gods, the unwedded mother the sweetest melodies of their voices had been of Apollo. But the sterner pages of Herodotus reserved, on the occasion of their purest worship and Thucydides exhibit scenes in Delos, in more offered to those of their divinities for whom, sober colors, and more sober times, which we alone of all the pantheon, the purest cheeks would rather have toiled to some high place to among them need not blush. Suddenly there is to witness, than even the emergence of the a pause in their measured tread. They incline seeming leviathan. and the smack of the per- their ears to catch a new voice breathing through turbed waves against the sands of Rhenea and the song, as wild souls stricken with the music of Myconos, and the drifting about of the unsteady the spheres are fabled to incline their ears to the float, and the air-borne Latona alighting upon it, stars at night, and listen to catch more surely the trembling lest so frail a floor should yet careen strange melody—and in their own partial silence with her weight, and again go down; the stroke it is now distinctly audible “new as if brought of Lothario Jupiter’s seeptre which made it fast; from other spheres,” sweet as if from the lipe of the relinquished pursuit of foiled Juno, and the Apollo himself, easily confessed to be the voice scene beneath the sacred olive-tree which gave of a prince of singers. Rather than any secrets Apollo and Diana to Greek adoration. Let us of the Hyperborean mysteries on which Herodorather look upon the Delos of historic times. tus so expatiates, we would have heard the voice There was an annual day, in later times, when of that question—it was doubtless one of the the trailing-tuniced Ionians with their children most queenly of the island maidens who uttered and their modest spouses, from many an Ægean it—* who can this prince of singers be, who was island, assembled at Delos in great, joyous, bust- announced here as a poor stranger?” Rather ling festal crowds, for contests of pugilism and than the blazing wheat-straw of the Hyperboorchestry and song ;* when, among others things rean mysteries themselves, we would see that which awoke the spirits and gave light to the “+ brorpivaede ciPapus,” that eourteous, artful, smieyes of the assembly, choirs of the brightest ling evasion of the others of the choir, as if they maidens of the islands, arrayed in the most im- would make sign that the strange voice itself posing forms of Greek dress, walked in graceful must answer; and more than all, the pausing order through the crowd, and uttered the purest step and voice and the reverting head of the blind sentiments of Greek imagination in tones of the man of Chios himeelf, his sightless eye-balls upwildest and richest music of the Greek islands. turned, and their lost cunning transferred to the It was on one of such days—we have a hint portals of the keen ear, while, with half sad, of it from the chief actor himselff— while these half smiling face, and in the same gentle kind bands of the fairest maidens were moving through voice which had called forth the question, he the great crowd with measured step and voice, answers: “A blind old man, and he dwells in that suddenly a voice was heard which was none rugged Chios.” That scene did linger in the of theirs, blending with their notes, and a half spirit of him who was the jewel of it—Homer— joy and half surprise arose among them, and although it reached him only through the portals looks of enquiry and wreathed smiles were ex- of the ear. Delos on another day within the light of aschanged, and one said to another among them : “O girls, what prince of singers is this man who sured history would be worth seeing. It isa has come among us here!” And when they scene reminding us of the visions of the beings have seen from whence the voice comes: “ This of the world above, which came to the Hebrew man was announced as a poor stranger and we patriarchs of old, and the significant names and are all so delighted with his singing!” And monumental places connected with those viswhen no answer is returned to the enquiry, and ions—their Nissi, their Bethel, their Mahanaim. the stranger himself has heard the gossip of the It seems a visible motion, among the mysteries merry maidens, he answers for himself: “A of this life, of a spirit greater than human, greatblind man and he dwells in rugged Chios.”— er than Apollo, or Jupiter, or Fate. It was not lawful either to be born or to die in Rather than any of the scenes of a cloudy mythology, we would see the assembly of that day, Delos. Both were held impure. The couch of Latona might be the couch of no one else; in * Thucydides, lib. iii, 104. + Homan’s Hymn to Apol., 165—176. the birth-place of Apollo and Diana, no one else might be born. Those who were approaching

The Message to the Deaa either of the two forbidden events were to em- the minds of the Attic statesmen, that all is not bark immediately for the neighboring island of right between themselves and the Immortal ImRhenia, which had been devoted to these purpo- personations of truth and purity. They are puses by a solemn bond. Death and burial in De- rifying this soil, that they may thus purify the los had been sometimes winked at when fortune spirit of the Attic confederacy, and prepare it to smiled on the Athenians and adverse fate seemed enter with firm heart into the struggle for existafar off. Pisistratus had undertaken to purify ence with proud Sparta. They stand in the the island before the Peloponessian war, but Ana- sight of all future ages testifying by the singular mias-like, he had deceived the Latoides, and done and signifieant action in which they are employthe work but partially. He had disinterred and ed that there is an innate moral sense in man, removed only the dead bodies which were buried bearing reference to his weal or his woe, distribwithin reach of the eye from the Temple. The uted by Invisible Powers above. So let every conscience of Attic Greece was only partially nation purify its Delos. purified. Thucydides tells us,* that when the Peloponessiah war broke out, there was a headJong rush to arms on both sides, each seizing their sharpest weapons, because there were many youths both at Athens and at Sparta who had never seen war, and thought of it only in the hues of its romantic glory, not in those of its erimsoned battle-fields. But at that time a prodigy occurred which checked even the martial fury of the Athenian warriors. Delos was shaken by an earthquake !—as it had not been, in the memory of man, and as it had been supposed that the stroke of Jupiter's trident secured it from ever being. This shook the hearts of the Athenians. Delos then was not acceptable to the gods. The conduct of Pisistratus came into remembrance. Delos was not perfectly purified! And rashly as they were rushing to battle, this earthquake, together with a “certain oracle” to the same effect, arrested their stepe, and they sent a solemn deputation to purify the soil of Delos of all the dead who had been permitted there to sleep in the dust of the earth. Perhaps classic antiquity hardly presents another scene in which the mysteries of the moral life of the Greeks stand out so palpably, as on that strange day of resurrection at Delos. It is not summer; the forests are bare except the gloomy cypresses; the fields are not waving with ripe grain, that these groups of men which appear in them, should be thought to be Delian harvesters. Nor are they sportsmen; the precincts are too sacred to permit the rude revelry of field spurts. Nor are they funeral processions employed in those solemn ceremonies of respect for the dead, which will release their manes from an hundred years of vagrancy on the hither shore of the Styx. They are not indeed Delians at all; but Attic men, reversing funoral obsequies, disinterring the dead, taking away from this island the odor of death which may offend those Immortal Powers who preside ever the destinies of men; obeying the dictate of last summer’s earthquake, complying with that deep and strange conviction which has seized on © 114. THE MESSAGE TO THE DEAD. BY GRETTA. T heard a lovely legend. It had birth Amid that race, that swarthy warlike race Once proud Columbia’s kings; but over whom A tempest's wrath has swept, and given to earth The crested warrior and his gentle wife, Children and parent, friend and foe alike, Save a few stricken hearts that still beat on; Aud which like seeds before that tempest swept, Are scattered far in distant covert spots To bloom in stealthy loneliness and die! That race upon whose sepulchre we rear Our temples and ou: bearth-stones, and whose names Written in water, still as Time rolla on, Are deep ingulphed within the rushing stream Whose sweep is onward to Eternity. Bat this I heard was in the olden time When still the azure luke reflected back To Indian maids, their dark-eyed loveliness. Theu, in the sweet spring-tide's bright breezy hours They wandered forth, and sought an unfledy’d dove And caged his callow limbs with gentlest vare. With dewy flowers, and fruits, and duintiest things, They stored his ozier prison, till the down Lengthened upon his pinions, and his heart Throbb'd with quick pulse for native liberty. But not yet must he go, nor till there came At nightfall or at morn, some unseen thing And gave the gift of song. Then when it gush'd From his full throbbing throat, they bore him forth Warbling the while his untaught melodies— And on that spot in wild and shaded dell Or flow'ry field begirt with murmuring stream, Their place of graves, they oped the pain:ed bers And gave the panting captive to the skies. But ere they said “be free," with soft caress They pressed him to their lips, and whinper’d low Fond messages of love and tales of grief And yearning wishes, hopes and joys and fears, And all that aude life lovely, all that gave To their dark shy its gloom; while fond tears fell Spangling his pinions as they fain essayed To try their new-born strength. Then when each heart Had voiced its deep revealings, the restraint