rest of his system were men in the highest sense creative, absolutely setting the very first example, each in his particular walk of composition; themselves without previous models, and yet destined, every man of them, to become models for all after generations; themselves without fathers or mothers, and yet having all posterity for their children. First came the three divini spiritus under a heavenly afflatus-Eschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, the creators of Tragedy out of a village mummery; next comes Aristophanes, who breathed the breath of life into Comedy; then comes the great philosopher, Anaxagoras, who first theorized successfully on man and the world. Next come-whether great or not-the still more famous philosophers, Socrates, Plato, Xenophon; then comes, leaning upon Pericles, as sometimes Pericles leaned upon him, the divine artist Phidias ; and behind this immortal man walk Herodotus and Thucydides. What a procession to Eleusis would these men have formed! what a frieze, if some great artist would arrange it dramatically as Chaucer has arranged the Pilgrimage to Canterbury! .

Now let us step on a hundred years forward. We are now within hail of Alexander; and a brilliant consistory of Grecian men is that by which he is surrounded. There are now exquisite masters of the more refined comedy; there are again great philosophers, for all the great schools are represented by able successors; and, above all others, there is the one philosopher who played with men's minds (according to Lord Bacon's comparison) as freely as ever his princely pupil did with their persons-there is Aristotle. There are great orators; and, above all others, that great orator whom succeeding generations (wisely or not) have adopted as the representative name for what is conceivable as oratorical perfection-there is Demosthenes. Aristotle and Demosthenes are in themselves bulwarks of power; many hosts lie in those two names. For artists, again, to range against Phidias, there is Lysippus the sculptor, and there is Apelles the painter. For great captains and masters of strategic art, there is Alexander himself, with a glittering cortège of general officers, well qualified to wear the crowns which they will win, and to head

the dynasties which they will found. Historians there are now, as in the former age, and upon the whole it cannot be denied that the "turn-out" is showy and imposing..

Before comparing the second "deposit " (geologically speaking) of Grecian genius with the first, let us consider what it was (if anything) that connected them. Here, reader, we would wish to put a question: Saving your presence, did you ever see what is called a dumbbell? We have, and know it by more painful evidence than that of sight. You, therefore, O reader! if personally cognizant of dumb-bells, we will remind-if not, we will inform that it is a cylindrical bar of iron or lead, issuing at each end in a globe of the same metal, and usually it is sheathed in green baize.

Now, reader, it is under this image of a dumb-bell that we couch our allegory. Those globes at each end are the two systems or separate clusters of Greek literature; and that cylinder which connects them is the long man that ran into each system, binding the two together. Who was that? It was Isocrates. Great we cannot call him in conscience, and therefore by way of compromise we call him long, which in one sense he certainly was; for he lived through four-and-twenty Olympiads, each containing four solar years. He narrowly escaped being a hundred years old; and though that did not carry him from centre to centre, yet as each system might be supposed to protend a radius each way of twenty years, he had, in fact, full personal cognizance (and pretty equally) of the two systems, remote as they are, which composed the total world of Grecian genius.

Now, then, reader, you have arrived at that station from which you overlook the whole world of Greek literature, as a few explanations will soon convince you. Where is Homer? where is Hesiod? you ask: where is Pindar? Homer and Hesiod lived 1,000 years before Christ, or, by the lowest computation, near 900. For anything that we know, they may have lived with Tubal Cain. At all events, they belong to no power or agency that set in motion the age of Pericles, or that operated on that age. Pindar, again, was a solitary emanation

of some unknown influences at Thebes, more than five hundred years before Christ. These are all that can be cited before Pericles.

Of

Next, for the ages after Alexander, it is certain that Greece proper was so much broken in spirit by the loss of her autonomy, dating from that era, as never again to have rallied sufficiently to produce a single man of genius-not one solitary writer who acted as a power upon the national mind. Callimachus was nobody, and not decidedly Grecian. Theocritus, a man of real genius in a limited way, is a Grecian in that sense only according to which an Anglo-American is an Englishman. Besides that, one swallow does not make a summer. any other writers-above all others of Menander, apparently a man of divine genius-we possess only a few wrecks; and of Anacreon, who must have been a poet of original power, we do not certainly know that we have even any wrecks of those which pass under his name not merely the authorship, but the era, is very questionable indeed. Plutarch and Lucian, the unlearned reader must understand, both belong to post-Christian ages. And for all the Greek emigrants who may have written histories, such as we value for their matter more than for their execution, one and all, they belong too much to Roman civilization that we should ever think of connecting them with native Greek literature. Polybius, in the days of the second Scipio, Dion Cassius, and Appian in the acme of Roman civility, are no more Grecian authors because they wrote in Greek than the emperors Marcus Antonius and Julian were other than Romans because, from monstrous coxcombry, they chose to write in Greek their barren memoranda,

JOAN OF ARC.

What is to be thought of her? What is to be thought of the poor shepherd-girl from the hills and forests of Lorraine, that-like the Hebrew shepherd-boy from the hills and forests of Judea-rose suddenly out of the quiet, out of the safety, out of the religious inspiration. rooted in deep pastoral solitudes, to a station in the van of armies, and to a more perilous station at the right

hand of kings? triotic mission by man could deny.

The Hebrew boy inaugurated his paan act, by a victorious act such as no But so did the girl of Lorraine, if we read her story as it was read by those who saw her nearest. Adverse armies bore witness to the boy as no pretender; but so they did to the gentle girl. Judged by the voices of all who saw them from a station of good-will, both were found true and loyal to any promises involved in their first acts. Enemies it was that made the difference between their subsequent fortunes. The boy rose to a splendor and a noon-day prosperity, both personal and public, that ran through the records of his people, and became a by-word amongst his posterity for a thousand years. The poor forsaken girl, on the contrary, drank not herself from that cup of rest which she had secured for France. She never sang together with them the songs that rose from her native Domrémy, as echoes to the departing steps of invaders. She mingled not in the festal dances at Vaucouleurs which celebrated in rapture the redemption of France. No! for her voice was then silent. No! for her feet were dust.

Pure, innocent, noble-hearted girl! whom, from the earliest youth, ever I believed in as full of truth and self-sacrifice, this was amongst the strongest pledges for thy side, that never once-no, not for a moment of weakness-didst thou revel in the vision of coronets and honors from man. Coronets for thee! Oh, no. Honors, if they come when all is over, are for those that share thy blood. Daughter of Domrémy, when the gratitude of the king shall awaken, thou shalt be sleeping with the dead. Call her, King of France, but she will not hear thee! Cite her, by thy apparitors, to come and receive a robe of honor, but she will be found en contumace. When the thunders of universal France, as even yet may happen, shall proclaim the grandeur of the poor shepherd-girl that gave up all for her country-thy ear, young shepherd-girl, will have been deaf for five centuries. To suffer and to do, that was thy portion in life; to do never for thyself, always for others; to suffernever in the persons of generous champions, always in thy own that was thy destiny; and not for a moment

was it hidden from thyself. "Life," thou saidst, "is short, and the sleep which is in the grave is long; let me use that life, so transitory, for the glory of those heavenly dreams destined to comfort the sleep which is so long."

This pure creature-pure from every suspicion of even a visionary self-interest, even as she was pure in senses more obvious-never once did this holy child, as regarded herself, relax her belief in the darkness that was travelling to meet her. She might not prefigure the very manner of her death; she saw not in vision, perhaps, the aërial altitude of the fiery scaffold, the spectators without end on every road pouring into Rouen as to a coronation; the surging smoke, the volleying flames; the hostile faces all around; the pitying eye that lurked but here and there until nature and imperishable truth broke loose from artificial restraints: these might not be apparent through the mists of the hurrying future. But the voice that called her to death, that she heard forever.

THE THREE LADIES OF SORROW.

I know them thoroughly, and have walked in all their kingdoms. Three sisters they are, of one mysterious household, and their paths are wide apart; but of their dominion there is no end. Them I saw often conversing with Levana,* and sometimes about myself. Do they talk then? Oh, no! Mighty phantoms like these disdain the infirmities of language. They may utter voices through the organs of man, when they dwell in human hearts, but amongst themselves there is no voice nor sound; eternal silence reigns in their kingdoms. They spake not, as they talked with Levana; they whispered not; they sang not; though oftentimes methought they might have sung: for I upon earth had heard their mysteries oftentimes deciphered by harp and timbrel, by dulcimer and organ. Like God, whose ser

*Levana (the "lifter-up ") was the Roman goddess of Education, who was supposed to "lift up" every new-born human being from the earth, in token that it should live; and to rule the influences to which it should be subject thenceforth till its character should be fully formed.