the large purple veins stood out upon it, as if ready to burst their frail and delicate covering. Her smile for she would smile on me-that angelic smile grew fainter as death drew nigh, but that voice lost none of its heavenly tones. It merely grew more softened by disease. I watched these dreadful tokens with an agony only to be felt. But I loved her still; yes, and I cherished the fond hope that she would bloom again. Fool that I was, I would not allow the thought of losing her to master me. Still she glided to the tomb-and-she died! The memory of that day harrows up mine inmost soul. 'Twas a bright day. Even the plants, as they sprung forth and swung in the wind, seemed to burst into smiles, while they gazed upward at the sun. But I knew no sympathy with them. What was their joy to me. My only life, my only love, my all, was passing away! Dark, melancholy thoughts brooded o'er my soul, and triumphed in my breast like a savage crew. She died, I said,-aye, and she breathed forth her last faint breath upon my faithful bosom. Just ere she went, she looked up to me with a glance of unearthly love, and thus addressed me: "It has come, and I must leave this earth of sorrow. Yet I could go with joy most unalloyed, did not the chain of love bind me to thee so closely. Even now I almost feel the joys of heaven. Soon this faded body will rest within the quiet tomb. And when the flowers of spring wave their loveliness above my head, come, Henry, to my grave, and think of her who loved thee so fondly when on earth; then-'tis my last request-go, forget me, and take another to thyself." She sighed, and these lips caught the fleeting life from that bosom so long adored. They buried her. I knew it not, for reason deserted her throne, and fled with that pure spirit to the skies. They tore her from my arms, and gave her to the earth's cold embrace. Month's passed, and now frightened reason had returned, but only to renew my sufferings. It was a balmy day of spring. I felt more calm, for now a sense of utter loneliness absorbed my soul. And then I walked unto her resting place alone. I found a lily of the valley rocking its snowy bells above her grave. Oh! how I loved that little shrinking flower! It seemed an emblem of her modest beauty, and the sweet memory of her loveliness. It spoke to me in every fragrant breath it breathed, and by its spotless purity, of her last request. Often she now whispers in that soft, gentle, touching voice of hers, "Pine not for me, but cull one of the many modest flowers which surround thy path, and cherish it as thou didst me. Be unto her a sun, and shine upon her with thy warmest beams." I did cull a flower-I culled that lily of the valley, and laid it in my bosom, on my heart. There it shall remain, till my spirit meets hers in the mansions of eternal rest. MS.

THE Greeks knew no solitude in nature. Every place was peopled with forms of beauty, and animated with living intelligences. Their mountains and valleys, deserts and forests were

each thronged with presiding deities. Their fountains were filled from the pure urns of the Naiades; their grottos were the haunts of gods; the wind, sighing in their groves, was but the spirit song of the wood-nymph; the coralline chambers of the ocean echoed to the soft tread of the Nereids; their heavens were lighted with the smiles of departed heroes. This superstition, so full of poetry, which thus led them to see life and beauty in all the phenomena of the universe, and to consider every manifestation of power and skill as resulting from the secret workings of omnipresent mind, is by no means peculiar to any age or people. To all, at least of the "poetic temperament," the exhibitions of nature in her wildest, grandest mood, are terrible or sublime only as they appear the effect of an all-pervading mental energy. The clouds may gather blackness, the winds howl through the forests, and the rain descend in torrents-but it is when we hear in the blast the shrill voice of the "spirits of the storm" and feel, that,

"horsed

Upon the sightless couriers of the air,"

they are marshalling the warring elements at their will, that we look and listen with mingled awe and admiration. We love to contemplate the ocean lashed to madness, the cataract uttering its ceaseless roar in the ear of the Eternal, and the mountain belching forth the fires that rage within, because we see in them the manifestations of Infinite mind.

But even the clay-fettered intellect of man, though in its operations less startling and mysterious, bespeaks, in no ambiguous terms, the divinity of its origin. Whatever may be said of the degradation of human nature, he has looked only upon its darkest shades, who discovers in it no redeeming features, no enobling qualities, no godlike energies. True, it is fallen, but, like the palace shattered by a bolt from heaven, it is magnificence in ruins; and the philosopher, while he may lament its desolation, finds much in the wreck which he cannot but admire and revere. He sees a grandeur in the spectacle, which a Herschel presents, as, in his nightly solitude, he sends out his observations into the regions of illimitable space and converts the faint, sparkling dots that checker the concave into the burning centers of revolving systems. He reverences the power of a Franklin, as the lightnings, at his word, leave their fearful pastime in the clouds and trace their noiseless way in quiet submission to his feet. He is awed at the sublimity displayed in the vast conceptions of a Milton, as, "with no middle flight," he soars "to the height of his great argument," and from the battlements of heaven, surveys with eye undazzled, the glittering armies of warring angels, and listens, unabashed, to the shout, that

"Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night."

But men of giant intellect are not only able to secure to themselves the awe and admiration of mankind; they confer also a sacredness and immortality on every thing, upon which they set their seal. What has made the castles of Scotland the abode of enchantment, and clothed her rugged scenery with a beauty which fades not with "the sear and yellow leaf?" What but the genius of the "Great Unknown," in whose wonderful productions

Why do we contemplate with so much pleasure and enthusiasm the memorials of past greatness? It is because they tell us of the power and indestructibility of mind. Why does the traveller tread softly as he wanders over the ruins of hundred gated Thebes? Why linger among the catacombs embosoming their millions of "living dead?" It is because he feels himself in the presence of the master spirits of other times. He sees their mementos on every hand. The pyramids, which rise before him, the vocal Memnon, which seems again to speak, remind that he roams a land, dark though it may be now, yet once lighted by the fires of genius.

Why did Byron tear himself from the delights of Ravenna, and plunge into the fatal marshes of Missolonghi? It was because the arm of the Turk had assayed to crush the rising spirit of liberty in that birth-place of thought, his own beloved Greece, where, with his young affections not yet

"Chilled by misfortune's wintry blast,"

he had drunk inspiration from the springs of her muses, and read the records of her greatness, not only as traced upon her imperishable works of art, but written upon the burning pages of her poets, with the finger of immortality. Had the voice of Demosthenes never blended with the deep murmurs of her ocean, had the songs of Homer and Euripides never floated along her hills and valleys, his sword would have remained in its scabbard; his lyre might yet have been unbroken. It was the mind of her olden days, as developed in her orators, her poets, and philosophers, that appealed to his soul of fire with an eloquence which could not be resisted; it was this that nerved his arm for battle; it was this that rescued the object of his idolatry from the iron grasp of her oppressor.

What gives the magic charm to Italy and draws the world, a pilgrim to her shores? Is it that her fields are green? that her sky is as serene and blue as the eye of Beauty? These may have their attractions, but the gushing feelings of the scholar, as he treads her soil, are absorbed in other things. He turns, with

filial affection, to the villa of Cicero and the tomb of Virgil, or strays among the broken columns of the Pantheon and Colliseum, The waving luxuriance of her plains, the fading glory of her summer sunsets are unseen amid the shadowy grandeurs of the past. With feelings of mingled awe and reverence, not unlike those which swell the bosom of the Catholic devotee as he bows in the presence of the "Holy Mother," he fixes his gaze upon the "Lone mother of dead empires."

He remembers that the streets, now deserted or traversed only by roving banditti, were once thronged with life and beauty and refinement; that crumbling temples, now the home of the owl and the bat, were once crowded with blind, though willing worshippers; that the forsaken, decaying halls, now as silent as the sepulchre, once resounded with the voice of music or the clamor of debate. He lingers among the scattered relics of her former genius, with all the rapture and enthusiasm of the poet, because he finds in them the golden links which unite him to the intellect of other days; the many-voiced interpreters, through which he can commune with the noble spirits of the mighty dead.

The

Distance may have concealed the defects, and thrown an enchantment around the exploits of olden times, but it is almost exclusively to the power of cultivated mind, that the past is indebted for that indefinable charm, that peculiar sacredness which commands the admiration and the homage of the world. fame of the warrior, like the smoke of his battle field, was from its nature evanescent. It was the scholar who evoked the spirit of commotion and revolution. It was in his bosom, that there slept, in momentous certainty, the unborn actions which were to constitute the soul of succeeding ages. It was he who placed the coronet upon the brow of antiquity; it was he who gemmed her sky with stars. In the calm retirement of his cell he may then, as now, have escaped the notice of the noisy, bustling world. Influences the most powerful, have ever been most silent and most secret in their operations. The mighty agent, which suspends in ether the innumerable suns and worlds, and holds them wheeling on forever in the spheres prescribed to them by Omnipotence, has never unveiled itself to human observation. But is attraction less strong because unseen?

It is a mistaken notion, which some have entertained, that as the world grows old, the mind must, through sympathy, exchange its morning freshness and vigor for the palsied strugglings of age; its ancient originality for the insignificant apings of helpless imbecility. Mind is always young; profound thought always original; the fountains of that "great deep," the human heart, fathomless and inexhaustible. The same power, therefore, which the scholar possessed in the days of Pericles and Augustus, he