The name of Belisarius can never die; but instead of the funeral, the monuments, the statues, so justly due to his memory, I only read that his treasures, the spoils of the Goths and Vandals, were immediately confiscated by the emperor. Some decent portion was reserved, however, for the use of his widow; and, as Antonina had much to repent, she devoted the last remains of her life and fortune to the foundation of a convent. Such is the simple and genuine narrative of the fall of Belisarius and the ingratitude of Justinian. That he was deprived of his eyes and reduced by envy to beg his bread"Give a penny to Belisarius the general!" -is a fiction of later times which has obtained credit, or rather favor, as a strange example of the vicissitudes of fortune. A SLEEPING CHILD. RT thou a thing of mortal birth ART Whose happy home is on our earth? Or art thou, what thy form would seem, Thou smil'st as if thy soul were soaring O vision fair, that I could be Vain wish the rainbow's radiant form And JOHN WILSON (Christopher North). THE MANIAC BOY. DOWN yon lets few The village wonder and the widow's joy— Dwells the poor mindless, pale-faced maniac boy. He lives and breathes, and rolls his vacant eye To greet the glowing fancies of the sky, woe Reveal the withered thoughts that sleep below. A soulless thing, a spirit of the woods, He loves to commune with the fields and floods; Sometimes along the woodland's winding glade He starts and smiles upon his pallid shade, Or scolds with idiot threat the roaming wind But rebel music to the ruined mind— Playing his fingers in the noontide rays; roar, He counts the billows plunging to the shore; And oft beneath the glimmer of the moon He chants some wild and melancholy tune, Till o'er his softening features seems to play A shadowy gleam of mind's reluctant sway. Thus, like a living dream, apart from men, From morn to eve he haunts the wood and glen; But round him, near him, wheresoe'er he rove, A guardian angel tracks him from above; romantic dale, where ham- Nor harm from flood or fen shall e'er destroy The mazy wanderings of the maniac boy. Arrest the summer pilgrim's pensive view— ROBERT MONTGOMERY. But sooner or later the reckoning arrives, THE UPAS IN MARYBONE LANE. ATREE grew in Java whose pestilent And ninety-nine perish for one who survives. rind They quickly steal in, and they slowly reel Resistless words were on his tongue : out. Surcharged with the venom, some walk forth erect, Apparently baffling its deadly effect; Then eloquence first flashed below; Full-armed to life the portent sprung, Minerva from the Thunderer's brow, And his the sole, the sacred hand That shook her ægis o'er the land. |