returning to those days-days not sorrowful, indeed, but of so lonely a character, that the remembrance of them is a "smile among many tears." There never was a literature so spiritual as that of the Greeks. Perhaps I ought to make a conditional exception in favor of the Hebrews, but their dramas and lyrics, exquisite as they are, never constituted a literature. The literature of Greece was the pure and fervent breathing of high-souled men, spreading itself, like the smoke of the incense flame, over the prayers, and hopes, and lives of the people. The child was cradled in beautiful remembrances; the mantle of light and holiness was thrown from father to son, unimpaired in its colors, and uninjured in its powers. It was a literature created from the imaginings of times past, the aspirations of things to come ;-the Adam of the human intellect, earthly in its birth, it became spiritual; mortal in its essence, it put on immortality. Homer, Eschylus, and Sophocles, Euripides and Pindar, the Eternal Words of poetry were embodied in glorious and imperishable visions, and dwelt in the bosoms of the people. In the cottage of the vine-dresser, and the temple of the deity, their influence was alike prevailing; no heart was so stubborn as not to be softened by their supplication, and no soul so agitated as not to be calmed by their soothing. They taught power to kneel at the footstool of genius. The whisper of their name was a watchword of mercy.* The early annals of a nation are its songs and ballads. History, therefore, long continued to be a "dream upon the borders of poetry." But in process of time the spirits of men took a higher and grander tone; Plato had struck the dry and stony places with the wand of his heavenly philosophy, and the waters gushed forth; Socrates too had breathed the breath of his peace over the minds of men, and built up a tabernacle in man's heart for wisdom, and History rose, virtue, and holiness. like Eve, from the beautifully moulded form of the olden poetry, enchanting in her nakedness, touching in her simplicity. She walked hand in band with poetry in sweet companionship, and the laugh of joy upon the cheek of the one has somewhat darkened with thought on the Hebe-like face of the other. I will not attempt to deny that Euripides has been assigned by many an inferior place among the elder dramatists. Let us take a momentary glance at the state of mind in Greece in the time of Euripides. It was, as the unfortunate Neele has so felicitously described the age of Elizabeth, the carnival of the imagination. Eschylus had rolled the stone from the tomb of poetry, and the radiant phantom walked forth over the earth, the soul of buried music; every head was bowed, and every knee was bent; it looked upon the faces of men, and they paled before it; the rushing of its wings was heard over every hill, and stream, and valley, throughout Greece; it was an almighty and overshadowing presence. The warrior beheld its glory on his shield,—the shepherd child felt an awe in his heart,-it was an unseen and abiding mystery. Every word of Eschylus was woven into a wild and fearful legend,-a waif of light and darkness passing from man to man, and from nation to nation, like the flying scroll of Ezekiel, "entering into the house of every man." Sophocles broke from the gloom of his solitary rival, like a lark in the misty dawn: the shadows rolled into light before his feet; the clouds waxed bright with the shining of his countenance; the eye rested upon him, not as on Eschylus in fear and trembling, but as the widow looked upon Job, with a joy that made her heart to sing within her. His voice came gently into the heart, like a song in the night. Eschylus was the dark and rolling cloud : Sophocles the peace that smiled it away. *It will be remembered that the Greeks who had accompanied Nicias in his expedition against Syracuse were freed from slavery by repeating some lines from Euripides. The feelings of the people, at this period, were, perhaps, more akin to those of the Italians, when painting was in its zenith, than anything among the moderns to which I may liken them. Poetry was to the Greek what painting was to the Italian,- -a child's book. He was a sojourner among all that was glorious in form, or ideal in loveliness-the images of surpassing beauty reflecting their faces upon the laurel-fountains and the dark blue streams; the rich and dewy harmonies which breathed a glow of bloomlike music over the visions of the theatre and the glory of the palæstra -the sweet and picturesque visionings chasing each other like gleams over an angel's face; the sound of Dian's bow as it rocked to and fro on the forest trees; the phantom-countenance, which, like a summer phantasy, looked up from the peacefulness of the waters. Thoughts such as these were the birth-right of the humblest peasant, a birth-right he scorned to sell, as many of a later age and other lands have done-for a mess of pottage ! The creation of genius wrought the same effect upon the Greek as Raphael's celebrated drawing of God the Father does upon the Christianit was a spell of worship and of prayer! accustomed to behold the workings of the Deity in the visible types of nature. More frequently still in the "dim religious light" of his own spirit, the mingled mystery of memory and imagination, he looked on the fashionings of poetry as the embodied essence of a bright and all radiant substance-every sweet rosied thought was a pleasant song to his dreaming, a shrined sanctity unto his mind. The streams were rippled by the breath of their hymns. Castaly was not then, as now, a despised and slandered word, but a light upon the hearts of men. It was the Jordan of Greece, the waters in which souls were baptized into the communion of gladsome thoughts, the fellowship of poetry and music. "The bulk of a people," says a very shrewd writer on Italy, "can never be poetical." It may be so with us of the 19th centu ry, it was not so in Greece at the time of Euripides. It is amusing to listen to observations on poetry. I heard a gentleman remark the other day, while praising one of Byron's sacred melodies, that Job might be converted into very good poetry! The unfortunates! they have no idea that poetry is but a name for every bright picturing, and every noble deed, whether it be the dream of Praxiteles embodied in marble, or the prayer of Raphael struck into glory, or the burning thought of Pindar mantled in the cloudiness of a word. Phidias was as mighty a poet as Homer, with this difference, the one spoke in words, the other in marble. When Canova was entreated by Napoleon to forsake Rome, and take up his residence at Paris, the sculptor replied, "Sans son atelier, sans ses amis, sans son bon ciel, sans sa Rome,❞—his genius would become torpid. signified that Italy was the Madonna of his inspiration. So it was with the Greek. Take him from his legendary fountains and his fabled vallies, and god-inhabited temples, the associations of religion, the remembrances of his childhood-take him from "his Greece," and he became a darkened and a lonely being. He It was neither Eschylus, nor Sophocles, nor Euripides, individually or collectively, who gave the tone to the mind of Greece. There are other spirits radiant in blessedness, making a faint but brightening sunshine in the dark and "shady places;" unthought of tabrets, whose sweet and unheeded melodies were ever dying away, like the sighs of Endymion, into the breezes and moonlight of Thessaly. There were men who, like Burns, exercised an influence over the minds of their neighbors and associates, and in a great degree purified, by the alchemy of their intellect, the feelings of their own class. But they lifted not their eyes beyond the boundaries of the hamlet; they asked no higher reward. That man has not wept over the life of Burns who shall say, they were not happier in so doing. Let me return to Euripides. A nation individually musical and poetical will be wont to express their sentiments in both indiscriminately. The gentlest touch of a cittern will draw forth a sound of melancholy and wake a feeling of grief in the hearer, -but not so with language—it requires happily selected and felicitous words to produce a correspondent effect. The fame of Euripides has suffered from this circumstance. He knew that one plaintive note called up innumerable associations of tenderness, and he naturally concluded one exquisite thought would do so likewise. But Euripides lived in an age of poetry of thought,-we vegetate in a time of poetry of diction. These remarks will perhaps in some way account for the inanity of our poet. The practice so frequent with Euripides of throwing in brief morals of conduct wherever he finds an opportunity, has given cause of offence to many. "His observations are SO simple and obvious," say they: "Love thy neighbor as thyself" is very simple in its meaning-I wonder why the obviousness of the injunction does not insure a more universal performance. of Euripides, I need only remark that the present tragedy is supposed to take place after the destruction of Troy, when Hecuba and her daughter Polyxene are captives in the camp of the Greeks. Hecuba. Maiden, with a voice so mild, In the midnight hush'd and deep, The bitter rivalry which always existed between Sophocles and Euripides, is well known. The imagination of Sophocles appears to have been the most powerful,—that of Euripides the most delicate. They stood in the same relationship to each other as Canova to Bernini; the same spirit was in both, but the workings of that spirit were more vivid in the one than in the other. Poetry was in the mind of Euripides, what the Edinburgh Re-ed-the lot has fallen upon her daughview so well defines it to have been in Keats, "an extreme sensibility, and a certain pervading tunefulness of nature." One word at parting-My readers will pause before they speak lightly of dramas which had the approval and revision of Socrates; or reject with contempt, even though injudiciously offered, the advice of the companion of Plato. My object being merely to present a few specimens of each of the plays The fears of the mother are realis ter, who is doomed to make an atonement with her blood, to the injured shade of Achilles. It remains with Hecuba to communicate the intelligence. Polyx. Mother, mother, thy tiding should Thou call'st me forth, to listen to thy charm- Hec. Woe is me, my child-my child! Polyx. Why dost thou sigh tokeneth Hec. My blessed daughter! Polyx. Speak to me, mother, for my heart doth shrink And shudder at thy meaning. Hec. My darling child, thou art the nursling Hec. Thy days are numbered, my, child! Polyx. O ever sorrowing, ever grief-worn mother, The spirit's hand lieth heavy on thee; For thou shalt see me, like a gleeful fawn My infancy-oh, not for these I sorrow, The Lamentation of Hecuba. O pride of my country! the cheek of the foeman Shall never more pale at the flash of thy name, The song of thy beauty is wither'd, and no man Will bow down his head at the shrine of thy fame. Farewell to thy cloud-mantled temples, the rout, The rush of the battle is foaming along, The laugh of the war-horse goes up with the shout, The prayer of the fainting, the curse of the strong. O fairest of cities! the voice of the singer May never more sound in thy desolate ' halls, Thy Priestess shall mourn, for the night prayer will bring her No fire to her altar, no spell to her calls. "Twas night, and the dancer's foot, flowerbreath'd, dying, Like the voice of a Grecian stream lonely and deep, And the wandering voice of the cittern came sighing In the glow of a thought on the hush of our sleep, Lift up thy voice, for the crown of thy bright- I started from rest, roll'd billowly and deeper ness, Pour out thy tears for the child at thy knee, Thy altars-the smoke is over their whiteness, Ilium the beautiful, Ilium the free! On the thick breath of midnight the death-cry of joy, The red-sabre glared on the face of the sleeper, The ruin-cloud dwelt on the towers of Troy ! RECENT VISIT TO POMPEII. My object in visiting Naples was to view that celebrated relic of antiquity, the city of Pompeii, of which about one half is now supposed to be cleared. The workmen proceed but slowly; nevertheless, some new remnant of antiquity is almost daily brought to light. A fine statue was discovered, almost immediately after my visit to this interesting place; but as I had quitted Naples, I had not an opportunity of seeing it. A stranger is, I think, apt to be much disappointed in the size of Pompeii; it was, on the whole, not more than three miles through, and is rather to be considered the model of a town, than one in itself. In fact, it is merely an Italian villa, or collection of villas; and the extreme smallness of what we may justly term the citizens' boxes, is another source of astonishment to those who have been used to contemplate Roman architecture in the magnificence of magnitude. Pompeii, however, must always interest the intelligent observer, not more on account of its awful and melancholy associations, than for the opportunity which it affords for remarking the extreme similarity existing between the modes of living then, and now. " "Tis Greece, * Priam. 40 ATHENEUM, VOL. 2, 3d series. but living Greece no more!" for in truth, we are enabled to surmise, from the relics of this buried and disinterred town, that manners and customs, arts, sciences, and trades, have undergone but little change in Italy since the period of its inhumation. In Pompeii, the shops of the baker and chemist are particularly worthy of attention, for you might really fancy yourself in a modern bottega in each of these. But the museum of Naples, wherein are deposited most of the articles dug from Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Pæstum, is a most extraordinary lion, and one which cannot fail to affect very deeply the spectator. There you may behold furniture, arms, and trinkets; and the jewelry is, in materials, pattern and workmanship, very similar indeed to that at present in fashion, and little injured by the lapse of years, and the hot ashes under which it was buried. There, too, you may behold various domestic and culinary utensils; and it is quite curious to observe various jars and bottles of fruits, and pickles, evidently preserved then, as they are by our notable housekeepers now. Of course they are blackened and incinerated, but the forms of pears, apples, chesnuts, cherries, medlars, &c. &c. are still distinguishable. Very little furniture has been found in Pompeii; probably, because it was only occasionally resorted to as a place of residence, like our own summer haunts of the drinkers of sea and mineral waters or, the inhabitants might have had warning of the coming misfortune, and conveyed most of their effects to a safer place; a surmise strengthened by the circumstance of so few human skeletons having been hitherto found in the town. In the museum, howe FOR A YOUNG SUCH goodness in your face doth shine, Can e'er express it. ver, is a specimen of the inclined couch or sofa, used at meals, with tables, and other articles of furniture. The method of warming apartments by flues, and ventilating them, as now practised, was known to the inhabitants of Pompeii. Of this town, amongst the public buildings, the Forum, the Theatre, and the Temple of Isis, have been discovered; and the latter has revealed, in a curious manner, the iniquitous jugglery of the heathen priests. The statue of Isis was, it seems, oracular, and stood on a very high pedestal, or kind of altar, in the temple of the goddess. Within this pedestal a flight of steps has been discovered, ascending to a metal tube or pipe, fixed in the hollow tube of the statue, and attached to its lips; by speaking through which, the priest of Isis was enabled to make the poor deluded multitude believe that their idol gave articulate answers to their anxious queries ! I have said that but few skeletons have been found in Pompeii; all that have been met with are covered with ornaments, and appear as in the act of escaping from their hapless town, with what they could carry off of their most valuable possessions. More wealth is supposed to have been buried in Herculaneum than in Pompeii; but owing to the excessive difficulty, time and expense, necessary to obtain it, excavations in that city are now almost, if not entirely abandoned : for it is to be remembered, that Herculaneum was destroyed by a flood of liquid lava, which, as it cools, hardens into solid and impenetrable rock; whereas the hot ashes of Vesuvius overwhelmed Pompeii, and consequently it is much less difficult to clear. LADY'S ALBUM. But stop, rash verse! and don't abuse Of that same goodness you admire, |