was never before heard; and to the silent searching after truthtruth for itself, for its own intrinsic value, which is being at present made among all grades of the labouring classes. It may indeed be long before the same spirit of enlightenment pervades the collier population which now shadows itself forth in almost every house of the artizans of England, but it will follow; and the originator of the Colliery Act, though he may be taunted as a false philanthropist, and though he may not live to see its effects, will be remembered with gratitude by generations which are yet unborn.

ROME.

'Rome, Rome, thou art no more
As thou hast been.'-F. HEMANS.

SUCH as she was she is not now;
The wreath is withered on her brow ;
The sceptre from her hand is gone;
Low in the dust her ancient throne.
Her warriors, and her statesmen, dead,
Her gods forgot, her freedom fled,
Unfeared, unloved, a Queen no more,
She weareth not the front she wore.
O'er her lone streets and ruined fanes
Blank Desolation sadly reigns;

On her house-tops the owl is sitting,

Thro' her arched piles the dark bat flitting;

Her Forum where the Sabine maids

Parted their sires' and husbands' blades;

Where Curtius on his war-steed mounted,

Plunged down to death 'mid throngs uncounted,—
Where, streaming from his eloquent tongue,

The fire of Tully blazed along,

Where Brutus dealt the doubtful blow

:

That laid his friend, earth's ruler, low ;-
Her Forum, where, porch, column, shrine,
Statue and arch, in gorgeous line,
Looked down magnificently then
On busy multitudes of men ;-
Her Forum is a vacant space,
A dreary and a desert place;

And save the youth of other climes,
Who ponders her remoter times,
When Freedom on the seven-fold height
Triumphant waved her wings of light,
And the rough herdsman tending there
His cattle for the morrow's fair,-
Save these-none move in that lone spot,
Where silence dwells, yet peace is not.
Feebly the mind at evening moans
O'er sightless heaps of shivered stones,
On which long yellow grass is growing,
Thro' the dull twilight dimly showing,
And sadly does that long grass wave
And sigh above the vasty grave.
It sighs above the mixed remains
Of twice an hundred crumbled fanes,
The wreck wherewith June's ceaseless toil
Has overlaid the burial soil.

Yet still a few fair columns stand,
In just proportions nobly grand,
Amid that waste of temples blent,-
Their record and their monument.

And who, ah! who, unmoved can gaze
On trace so sad of by-gone days?
Lives there the man so void of fire,
So dead to all such scenes inspire,
As standing there, and looking round
Upon that memorable ground,
To feel his breast no warmlier glow,
No quicker rush his red blood's flow,-
But see the stones and turn away,
As senseless and as cold as they?
Oh! is it nought that bolder men
Than the wide world may see again,

That Cato, Cassius, Cæsar there

Have trod that earth and breathed that air; Or may not daring deeds impart

A power to scenes to touch the heart?

Ah! yes.

Those deeds rise up to view,

The buried heroes live anew;

Years, that have rolled their course between,
Shrink back as though they had not been,
And olden times mount on the eye,
In all their pomp and pageantry.—
Thronged, glorious, gorgeous as of yore,
Lo! ruined Rome is Rome once more.

Alas! that aught so bright should fade,
Visions so lovely sink in shade,-

The rainbow tints that Fancy flings,
Where'er she spreads her vivid wings,
To dimness changing, melting-go-
And Truth's dark hues more sternly show.

Oh! Rome, how art thou fallen! O'er thee
Broods lifeless, hopeless apathy.
Bowed beneath Superstition's rod,
A priest thy king, almost thy God,
A conclave in thy senate's place,—
Thy people blind to their disgrace,-
Nobles unworthy of the name,
Scarce conscious of thy former fame,
Content to waste the boon of life
In selfish ease or petty strife,

How art thou fallen from thy estate,—
Thou Desolator desolate !'

Oh! Rome, there is no hope for thee;-
No eye of man will see thee free.
Crescentius failed, Rienzi bled,-

Who then shall raise thee from the dead?
The spirit of these later times,

That, black with unrepented crimes,
Walks the wide earth and far and near,
Taints and pollutes the atmosphere,—
The spirit of universal Change

May reach thee in its ceaseless range.
Low-muttered murmurs from within
May fright thee with unwonted din,—
Mysterious harbingers of ill,

Internal tremors thro' thee thrill,-
Till sudden thy foundations rock

To the wild earthquake's desperate shock,
Throb following throb, convulsing, rending;-

While shriek and shout and death-cry blending,

Hoarsely amid thy ruins roar :

Where Murder, smeared with purple gore,

Dismay and Avarice in his train,

Sits gloating o'er his victims' pain.

Then Lust and Rapine, hand in hand,
Revenge and Hate, insatiate band!

Untrammelled thro' thy streets may roam,
Or revel 'neath thy hallowed dome.
On reeking scaffolds may expire
The pious priest, the harmless friar;
Perish for want, or live forlorn,
The sons of wealth, the nobly born;
And monsters vie to fill their place,
As bold and truculent as base.

Then, hushed in horror, thou may'st see
The reign of Blood and Anarchy,
But never more wilt thou be free.
For brief the course of uncontrol,
And ending at dominion's goal.
Weak and exhausted by her throes,
And longing madly for repose,
The shattered state invites a lord,
And hails her sceptre in the sword.

Yes! thou art fallen to rise no more-
No morrow will thy sun restore.
But thou hast been enough of fame
Clings to thy venerable name.

Still thou art Rome-whate'er thy fate,
Still, being Rome, thou wilt be great.
And even as thou standest now,
What city so sublime as thou?
Wonder of wonders! girt around
With long, long tracts of barren ground,
Whose sods, of glory tired, disdain
To bring forth fruit, or wave with grain ;'
Thy dome, thy mole, thy columns rise,
In solemn and majestic guise ;-
Temples and obelisks are there,
And arches grand, and pillars fair ;-
Still thou art Rome, undying ever,-
Eternal as thine own red river,-
Still to thy dotage from thy birth,
The foremost city of the earth!

*

G. E. R. N.

* Cette terre, fatiguée de gloire, qui semble dédaigner de produire.-Corinne.

HH

VOL. III.

LOMBARDY is changed since I can remember, and will be changed yet more. Che sara sara. I for one will not whine over the change. The snake like rails stretch and wind from Milan to the Adriatic, and the vetturino will soon ply no more. It is false sentiment to moan over these matters: as to saying that they mar the poetry of life, (though the railway bridge does destroy the picture of Venice from the shore of the lagoon,) he that can say so has no deep well-spring of poetry in his breast, I trow. People who can decry the age we live in, and justly, for its mammon-worship, why do they call their utopian era the golden age? There is a Midas-like spirit lurking in it after all; and as to poetry, an Eschylus would be at home in an age of iron. Wherefore I will speak no ill of the iron-breasted engine which shall whirl the future traveller across luxuriant Lombardy; but will hope for his sake that the directors' have not forgotten to make a station near Sermione.

Sirmio station, as we northerns would have it, has, perhaps, a grating sound on better ears than the false romantic; but consider the soft southern dialect. Stazione di Sermione, I maintain, sounds musical and mellifluous enough to satisfy the nicest organ. Besides, there is something very grand in swooping down upon a fair sequestered spot, to while away an hour in imaginings, and then with magic speed, with whirr and clang, to be thrown once more into the heart of some huge palpitating city. A man needs not to go to Lombardy to find out this; but may learn the truth at pretty Pangbourne, on the Great Western line, any sunny day in summer.

But to Sermione, when I was there, in my first days of travel, it was the jingling leather-curtained vetturino, the classical conveyance of Mrs. Starke's Ausonia, that conveyed us to the brink of old Lake Benacus. Five-and-twenty weary miles from the