The sensibility of Catullus, however, is not confined to the subjects of amatory song. There are several of his poems, on various occasions, which are full of tenderness and deep pathos. Quando leggete, says Flaminio, his imitator and almost his rival-" non vi sentite voi liquefare il cuore di dolcezza." Nothing can be more true to nature and more touching than his address to the Peninsula of Sirmio-his home, and perhaps his birth-place. The Carmen Nuptiale has been often imitated, and is committed to memory by every scholar, and the Epithalamium of Julius and Manlius may be regarded as perfect in its kind. But the noblest specimen, beyond comparison, of poetry and pathos which the works of Catullus present-the most powerful appeal to the sympathies of the human bosom as the liveliest picture of its hidden workings and intensest agonies, is that Galliambic ode to which we have already alluded. The subject is, to be sure, a very affecting one. Under the influence of a frenzied enthusiasm, a young man forsakes his home and his country, for the purpose of dedicating himself to the service of the Idæan Goddess. The vow of chastity which a monk may break, was rendered inviolable to the Gallæ (for so the priests of Cybele were called) by the same means which, in later times, a father of the church adopted to disarm the temptations of the flesh. Atys, in the frenzy of his first excitement, is regularly initiated. He rushes madly forth to mingle in the revelry of the Gallæ, whom he arouses by the trump and the timbrel, and wildly exhorts to follow him to the lofty groves of the goddess. Their frantic demeanor, the Bacchanalian dances, their shrill and piercing howls are painted with a force of colouring which nothing can surpass. The imitative harmony of the versification is perfect-it is abrupt, irregular, disordered. You hear it in the hurried step, the clashing cymbal, the resounding timbrel. To all this commotion and disorder, a moment of repose-of soft but fatal repose-succeeds. The Mænades, exhausted by their furious excitement, sink down at the threshold of the temple to sleep. A beautiful morning rises upon them, and Atys wakes-to despair. His lament is affecting beyond the power of language to describe. It seems wrung from a broken heart and is fraught with all its agony and desolation. All the poetry of all ages may be safely challenged to produce any thing more painfully interesting and pathetic.

it. Its compass and flexibility, its riches and its powers, are altogether unlimited. It not only expresses with precision all that is thought or known at any given period, but it enlarges itself naturally, with the progress of science, and affords, as if without an effort, a new phrase, or a systematic nomenclature whenever one is called for. It is equally adapted to every variety of style and subject—to the most shadowy subtlety of distinction, and the utmost exactness of definition, as well as to the energy and the pathos of popular eloquence--to the majesty, the elevation, the variety of the epic, and the boldest license of the dithyrambic, no less than to the sweetness of the elegy, the simplicity of the pastoral, or the heedless gaiety and delicate characterization of comedy. Above all, what is an unspeakable charm—a sort of naiveté is peculiar to it, which appears in all those various styles, and is quite as becoming and agreeable in a historian or a philosopher-Xenophon for instance-as in the light and jocund numbers of Anacreon. Indeed, were there no other object in learning Greek but to see to what perfection language is capable of being carried, not only as a medium of communication, but as an instrument of thought, we see not why the time of a young man would not be just as well bestowed in acquiring a knowledge of it-for all the purposes, at least, of a liberal or elementary education—as in learning algebra, another specimen of a language or arrangement of signs perfect in its kind. But this wonderful idiom happens to have been spoken, as was hinted in the preceding paragraph, by a race as wonderful. The very first monument of their genius-the most ancient relic of letters in the western world-stands to this day altogether unrivalled in the exalted class to which it belongs. What was the history of this immortal poem and of its great fellow? Was it a single individual, and who was he, that composed them? Had he any master or model? What had been his education, and what was the state of society in which he lived? These questions are full of interest to a philosophical inquirer into the intellectual history of the species, but they are especially important with a view to the subject of the present discussion. Whatever causes account for the matchless excellence of these primitive poems, and for that of the language in which they are written, will go far to explain the extraordinary circumstance, that the same favoured people left nothing unattempted in philosophy, in letters and in arts, and attempted nothing without signal, and

FROM AN ESSAY ON CLASSICAL LEARNING.

Ir is impossible to contemplate the annals of Greek literature and art, without being struck with them, as by far the most extraordinary and brilliant phenomena in the history of the human mind. The very language-even in its primitive simplicity, as it came down from the rhapsodists who celebrated the exploits of Hercules and Theseus, was as great a wonder as any it records. All the other tongues that civilized man has spoken are poor and feeble, and barbarous, in comparison with

undertakes to assign some reasons for this astonishing superiority of the Greeks, and talks very learnedly about a fine climate, delicate organs, exquisite susceptibility, the full development of the human form by gymnastic exercises, &c. For our own part, we are content to explain the phenomenon after the manner of the Scottish school of metaphysicians, in which we learned the little that we profess to know of that department of philosophy, by resolving it at once in an original law of nature: in other words, by substantially, but decently, confessing it to be inexplicable.

WILLIAM WARE was born at Hingham in Massachusetts on the third of August, 1797. He is a descendant in the fifth generation from Robert Ware, one of the earliest settlers of the colony, who came from England about the year 1644. His father was Henry Ware, D. D., many years honourably distinguished by his connection with the Divinity School at Cambridge, and the late Henry Ware, jr., D. D., was his elder brother. His only living brother is Dr. John Ware, who also shares of the literary tastes and talents of his family.

William Ware was graduated at Harvard University in 1816. After reading theology the usual term he was settled over the Unitarian society of Chambers street, New York, where he remained about sixteen years. He gave little to the press except a few sermons, and four numbers of a religious miscellany called The Unitarian, until near the close of this period, when he commenced the publication in the Knickerbocker Magazine of those brilliant papers which in the autumn of 1836 were given to the world under the title of Zenobia or the Fall of Palmyra, an Historical Romance. Before the completion of this work he had resigned his pastoral office and removed to Brookline, near Boston.

The romance of Zenobia is in the form of letters to Marcus Curtius, at Rome, from Lucius Manlius Piso, a senator, who is supposed to have been led by circumstances of a private nature to visit Palmyra toward the close of the third century, to have become acquainted with the queen and her court, to have seen the City of the Desert in its greatest magnificence, and to have witnessed its destruction by the Emperor Aurelian. For the purposes of romantic fiction the subject is perhaps the finest that had not been appropriated in all ancient history; and the treatment of it, which is highly picturesque and dramatic throughout, shows that the author has been a successful student of the institutions, manners and social life of the age he has attempted to illustrate.

Mr. Ware's second romance, Probus, or Rome in the biza Century, was published in

the summer of 1838. It is a sort of sequel to the Zenobia, and is composed of letters purporting to be written by Piso from Rome to Fausta, the daughter of Gracchus, one of the old Palmyrene ministers. In the first work Piso meets with Probus, a Christian teacher, and is partially convinced of the truth of his doctrine; he is now a disciple, and a sharer of the persecutions which marked the last days of the reign of Aurelian. The characters in Probus are skilfully drawn and contrasted, and with a deeper moral interest, from the frequent discussions of doctrine which it contains, the romance has the classical style and spirit which │ characterized its predecessor.

Mr. Ware's third work is entitled Julian, or Scenes in Judea, and was published in 1811. The hero is a Roman, of Hebrew descent, who visits the land of his ancestors, to gratify a liberal curiosity, during the last days of the Saviour. Every thing connected with Palestine at this period is so familiar that the ground might seem to be sacred to History and Religion; but it has often been invaded by the romancer, and perhaps never with more success than in the present instance. Although Julian has less freshness than Zenobia, it has an air of truth and sincerity that renders it scarcely less interesting.

Mr. Ware was several years editor of the Christian Examiner, the very able journal of religion and letters published at Boston, and he was recently minister of the Unitarian Society at West Cambridge, but ill health has since compelled him to relinquish all kinds of occupation.

The writings of Mr. Ware betray a familiarity with the civilization of the ancients, and are written in a graceful, pure and brilliant style. In our literature they are peculiar, and they will bear a favourable comparison with the most celebrated historical romances relating to the same scenes and periods which have been written abroad. They have passed through many editions in Great Britain, and have been translated into German and other languages of the continent.

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THE JOURNEY TO PALMYRA.

FROM ZENOBIA.

I WILL not detain you long with our voyage, but will only mark out its course. Leaving the African shore, we struck across to Sicily, and coasting along its eastern border, beheld with pleasure the towering form of Etna, sending up into the heavens a dull and sluggish cloud of vapours. We then ran between the Peloponnesus and Crete, and so held our course till the Island of Cyprus rose like her own fair goddess from the ocean, and filled our eyes with a beautiful vision of hill and valley, wooded promontory, and glittering towns and villas. A fair wind soon withdrew us from these charming prospects, and after driving us swiftly and roughly over the remainder of our way, rewarded us with a brighter and more welcome vision still-the coast of Syria and our destined port, Berytus.

As far as the eye could reach, both toward the north and the south, we beheld a luxuriant region, crowded with villages, and giving every indication of comfort and wealth. The city itself, which we rapidly approached, was of inferior size, but presented an agreeable prospect of warehouses, public and private edifices, overtopped here and there by the lofty palm, and other trees of a new and peculiar foliage. Four days were consumed here in the purchase of slaves, camels, and horses, and in other preparations for the journey across the desert. Two routes represented themselves, one more, the other less direct; the last, though more circuitous, appeared to me the more desirable, as it would take me within sight of the modern glories and ancient remains of Heliopolis. This, therefore, was determined upon; and on the morning of the fifth day we set forward upon our long march. Four slaves, two camels, and three horses, with an Arab conductor, constituted our little caravan; but for greater safety we attached ourselves to a much larger one than our own, in which we were swallowed up and lost, consisting of travellers and traders from all parts of the world, and who were also on their way to Palmyra, as a point whence to separate to various parts of the vast east. It would delight me to lay before you, with the distinctness and minuteness of a picture, the whole of this novel and to me interesting route; but I must content myself with a slight sketch, and reserve fuller communications to the time when, once more seated with you upon the Cœlian, we enjoy the freedom of social converse.

Our way through the valleys of Libanus was like one long wandering among the pleasure grounds of opulent citizens. The land was everywhere richly cultivated, and a happier peasantry, as far as the eye of the traveller could judge, nowhere exists. The most luxuriant valleys of our own Italy are not more crowded with the evidences of plenty and contentment. Upon drawing near to the ancient Baalbec, I found, on inquiry of our guide, that we were not to pass through it, as I had hoped, nor even very near it, not nearer than between two and three miles. So that in this I had been

clearly deceived by those of whom I had made the most exact inquiries at Berytus. The event proved, however, that it was not for nothing; for soon after we had started on our journey, on the morning of the second day, turning suddenly around the projecting rock of a mountain ridge, we all at once beheld, as if a vail had been lifted up, Heliopolis and its suburbs spread out before us in all their various beauty. The city lay about three miles distant. I could only therefore identify its principle structure, the Temple of the Sun, as built by the first Antonine. This towered above the walls and over all the other buildings, and gave vast ideas of the greatness of the place, leading the mind to crowd it with other edifices that should bear some proportion to this noble monument of imperial magnificence. As suddenly as the view of this imposing scene had been revealed, so suddenly was it again eclipsed by another short turn in the road, which took us once more into the mountain valleys. But the overhanging and impenetrable foliage of a Syrian forest shielding me from the fierce rays of a burning sun, soon reconciled me to my loss-more especially as I knew that in a short time we were to enter upon the sandy desert which stretches from the Anti-Libanus almost to the very walls of Palmyra.

Upon this boundless desert we now soon entered. The scene which it presented was more dismal than I can describe. A red, moving sand -or hard and baked by the heat of a sun such as Rome never knows-low, gray rocks just rising here and there above the level of the plain, with now and then the dead and glittering trunk of a vast cedar, whose roots seemed as if they had outlasted centuries-the bones of camels and elephants, scattered on either hand, dazzling the sight by reason of their excessive whiteness-at a distance occasionally an Arab of the desert, for a moment surveying our long line, and then darting off to his fastnesses-these were the objects which, with scarce any variation, met our eyes during the four wearisome days that we dragged ourselves over this wild and inhospitable region. A little after the noon of the fourth day, as we started on our way, having refreshed ourselves and our exhausted animals, at a spring which here poured out its warm but still grateful waters to the traveller, my ears received the agreeable news that toward the east there could now be discerned the dark line which indicated our approach to the verdant tract that encompasses the great city. Our own excited spirits were quickly imparted to our beasts, and a more rapid movement soon revealed into distinctness the high land and waving groves of palm trees which mark the site of Palmyra.

It was several miles before we reached the city, that we suddenly found ourselves-landing as it were from a sea upon an island or continent-in a rich and thickly peopled country. The roads indicated an approach to a great capital in the increasing numbers of those who thronged them, meeting and passing us, overtaking us, or crossing our path. Elephants, camels, and the dromedary, which I had before seen only in the amphitheatres,

I here beheld as the native inhabitants of the soil. Frequent villas of the rich and luxurious Palmyrenes to which they retreat from the greater heats of the city now threw a lovely charm over the scene. Nothing can exceed the splendour of the sumptuous palaces. Italy itself has nothing which surpasses them. The new and brilliant costumes of the persons whom we met, together with the rich housings of the animals they rode, served greatly to add to all this beauty. I was still entranced, as it were, by the objects around me, and buried in reflection, when I was aroused by the shout of those who led the caravan, and who had attained the summit of a little rising ground, saying, " Palmyra! Palmyra!" I urged forward my steed, and in a moment the most wonderful prospect I ever beheld-no, I cannot except even Rome-burst upon my sight. Flanked by hills of considerable elevation on the east, the city filled the whole plain below as far as the eye could reach, both toward the north and toward the south. This immense plain was all one vast and boundless city. It seemed to me to be larger than Rome. Yet I knew very well that it could not be, that it was not. And it was some time before I understood the true character of the scene before me, so as to separate the city from the country and the country from the city, which here wonderfully interpenetrate each other and so confound and deceive the observer. For the city proper is so studded with groups of lofty palm trees, shooting up among its temples and palaces, and on the other hand, the plain in its immediate vicinity is so thickly adorned with magnificent structures of the purest marble, that it is not easy, nay it is impossible at the distance at which I contemplated the whole, to distinguish the line which divided the one from the other. It was all city and all country, all country and all city. Those which lay before me I was ready to believe were the Elysian Fields. I imagined that I saw under my feet the dwellings of purified men and of gods. Certainly they were too glorious for the mere earthborn. There was a central point, however, which chiefly fixed my attention, where the vast Temple of the Sun stretched upward its thousand columns of polished marble to the heavens, in its matchless beauty casting into the shade every other work of art of which the world can boast. I have stood before the Parthenon, and have almost worshipped that divine achievement of the immortal Phidias. But it is a toy by the side of this bright crown of the eastern capital. I have been at Milan, at Ephesus, at Alexandria, at Antioch; but in neither of these renowned cities have I beheld any thing that I can allow to approach in united extent, grandeur, and most consummate beauty, this almost more than work of man. On each side of this, the central point, there rose upward slender pyramids pointed obelisks-domes of the most graceful proportions, columns, arches, and lofty towers, for number, and for form, beyond my power to describe. These buildings, as well as the walls of the city, being all either of white marble or of some stone as white, and being everywhere in their whole extent interspersed, as I have already said, with mul

titudes of overshadowing palm trees, perfectly filled and satisfied my sense of beauty, and made me feel for the moment, as if in such a scene I should love to dwell and there end my days. Nor was I alone in these transports of delight. All my fellow-travellers seemed equally affected: and from the native Palmyrenes, of whom there were many among us, the most impassioned and boastful exclamations broke forth. What is Rome to this?" they cried. "Fortune is not constant. Why may not Palmyra be what Rome has been-mistress of the world? Who more fit to rule than the great Zenobia? A few years may see great changes. Who can tell what shall come to pass ?" These, and many such sayings, were uttered by those around me, accompanied by many significant gestures and glances of the eye. I thought of them afterward. We now descended the hill, and the long line of our caravan moved on toward the city.

THE DESTRUCTION OF PALMYRA. FROM THE SAME.

AFTER One day of preparation and one of assault the city has fallen, and Aurelian again entered in triumph; this time in the spirit of revenge and retaliation. It is evident, as we look on, horror-struck, that no quarter is given, but that a general massacre has been ordered, both of soldier and citizen. We can behold whole herds of the defenceless populace escaping from the gates or over the walls, only to be pursued-hunted-and slaughtered by the remorseless soldiers. And thousands upon thousands have we seen driven over the walls, or hurled from the battlements of the lofty towers to perish, dashed upon the rocks below.

No sooner had the evening of this fatal day set in, than a new scene of terrific sublimity opened before us, as we beheld flames beginning to ascend from every part of the city. They grew and spread till they presently appeared to wrap all objects alike in one vast sheet of fire. Towers, pinnacles and domes, after glittering awhile in the fierce blaze, one after another fell and disappeared in the general ruin. The Temple of the Sun stood long untouched, shining almost with the brightness of the sun itself, its polished shafts and sides reflecting the surrounding fires with an intense brilliancy. We hoped that it might escape, and were certain that it would, unless fired from within-as from its insulated position the flames from the neighbouring buildings could not reach it. But we watched not long ere from its western extremity the fire broke forth, and warned us that that peerless monument of human genius, like all else, would soon crumble to the ground. To our amazement however and joy, the flames, after having made great progress, were suddenly arrested, and by some cause extinguished; and the vast pile stood towering in the centre of the desolation, of double size as it seemed, from the fall and disappearance of so many of the surrounding structures......

On the third day after the capture of the city

and the massacre of the inhabitants, the army of the "conqueror and destroyer" withdrew from the scene of its glory, and again disappeared beyond the desert. I sought not the presence of Aurelian while before the city, for I cared not to meet him drenched in the blood of women and children. But as soon as he and his legions were departed, we turned toward the city, as children to visit the dead body of a parent.

No language which I can use can give you any just conception of the horrors which met our view on the way to the walls and in the city itself. For more than a mile before we reached the gates, the roads and the fields, on either hand, were strewed with the bodies of those who, in their attempts to escape, had been overtaken by the enemy and slain. Many a group of bodies did we notice, evidently those of a family, the parents and the children, who, hoping to reach in company some place of security, had all-and without resistance apparently-fallen a sacrifice to the relentless fury of their pursuers. Immediately in the vicinity of the walls and under them the earth was concealed from the eye by the multitudes of the slain, and all objects were stained with the one hue of blood. Upon passing the gates and entering within those walls which I had been accustomed to regard as embracing in their wide and graceful sweep the most beautiful city of the world, my eye met naught but black and smoking ruins, fallen houses and temples, the streets choked with piles of still blazing timbers and the half-burned bodies of the dead. As I penetrated farther into the heart of the city, and to its better built and more spacious quarters, I found the destruction to be less--that the principal streets were standing, and many of the more distinguished structures. But everywhere-in the streets-upon the porticoes of private and public dwellings upon the steps and within the very walls of the temples of every faith-in all places, the most sacred as well as the most common, lay the mangled carcasses of the wretched inhabitants. None apparently had been spared. The aged were there, with their bald or silvered heads-little children and infants-women, the young, the beautiful, the good-all were there, slaughtered in every imaginable way, and presenting to the eye spectacles of horror and of grief enough to break the heart and craze the brain. For one could not but go back to the day and the hour when they died, and suffer with these innocent thousands a part of what they suffered, when the gates of the city giving way, the infuriated soldiery poured in, and with death written in their faces and clamouring on their tongues, their quiet houses were invaded, and resisting or unresisting, they all fell together beneath the murderous knives of the savage foe. What shrieks then rent and filled the air-what prayers of agony went up to the gods for life to those whose ears on mercy's side were adders'what piercing supplications that life might be taken and honour spared! The apartments of the rich and the noble presented the most harrowing spectacles, where the inmates, delicately nurtured, and knowing of danger, evil and wrong, only by name

and report, had first endured all that nature most abhors, and then, there where their souls had died, were slain by their brutal violators with every circumstance of most demoniac cruelty. Happy for those who, like Gracchus, foresaw the tempest and fled. These calamities have fallen chiefly upon the adherents of Antiochus; but among them, alas! were some of the noblest and most honoured families of the capital. Their bodies now lie blackened and bloated upon their door-stones-their own halls have become their tombs.....

The silence of death and of ruin rests over this once and but so lately populous city. As I stood upon a high point which overlooked a large extent of it, I could discern no signs of life, except here and there a detachment of the Roman guard dragging forth the bodies of the slaughtered citizens, and bearing them to be burned or buried. This whole people is extinct. In a single day these hundred thousands have found a common grave. Not one remains to bewail or bury the dead. Where are the anxious crowds, who, when their dwellings have been burned, eagerly rush in as the flames have spent themselves to sorrow over their smoking altars, and pry with busy search among the hot ashes, if perchance they may yet rescue some lamented treasure, or bear away at least the bones of a parent or a child, buried beneath the ruins? They are not here. It is broad day, and the sun shines bright, but not a living form is seen lingering about these desolated streets and squares. Birds of prey are already hovering round, and alighting without apprehension of disturbance wherever the banquet invites them; and soon as the shadows of evening shall fall, the hyena of the desert will be here to gorge himself upon what they have left, having scented afar ofl' upon the tainted breeze the fumes of the rich feast here spread for him. These Roman grave-diggers from the legion of Bassus, are alone upon the ground to contend with them for their prize. 0, miserable condition of humanity! Why is it that to man have been given passions which he cannot tame, and which sink him below the brute! Why is it that a few ambitious are permitted by the Great Ruler, in the selfish pursuit of their own aggrandizement, to scatter in ruin, desolation, and death, whole kingdoms-making misery and destruction the steps by which they mount up to their seats of pride! O, gentle doctrine of Christ! doctrine of love and of peace, when shall it be that I and all mankind shall know thy truth, and the world smile with a new happiness under thy lifegiving reign!

DEDICATION OF THE TEMPLE OF THE SUN.

FROM PROBUS.

VAST preparations had been making for the dedication for many days or even months preceding, and the day arose upon a city full of expectation of the shows, ceremonies and games that were to reward their long and patient waiting. For the