THE FIRST DAY OF DEATH. HE who hath bent him o'er the dead The last of danger and distress, Have swept the lines where beauty lingers,) The rapture of repose that's there, The fix'd yet tender traits that streak That fires not, wins not, weeps not now, The doom he dreads, yet dwells upon :- * Whose touch thrills with mortality, And curdles to the gazer's heart, The Giaour. is one reading. SUNSET IN HELLAS. SLOW sinks, more lovely ere his race be run, Not, as in northern climes, obscurely bright, O'er the hush'd deep the yellow beam he throws, The god of gladness sheds his parting smile; But lo! from high Hymettus to the plain And, dun and sombre 'mid the holy calm, All tinged with varied hues, arrest the eye- Again the Ægean, heard no more afar, That frown-where gentler ocean seems to smile. The Corsair. THE BATTLE-FIELD. WHAT boots the oft-repeated tale of strife, Deem'd few were slain, while more remain'd to slay. And Desolation reap'd the famish'd land; The torch was lighted, and the flame was spread, сс Lara. TWILIGHT. Ir is the hour when from the boughs Seem sweet in every whisper'd word; And on the leaf a browner hue, And in the heaven that clear obscure, Which follows the decline of day, As twilight melts beneath the moon away. Parisina. THE TRUE SOLITUDE. To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell, Where things that own not man's dominion dwell, Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unroll'd. But 'midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men, To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess, And roam along, the world's tired denizen, With none who bless us, none whom we can bless; Minions of splendour shrinking from distress! None that, with kindred consciousness endued, If we were not, would seem to smile the less Of all that flatter'd, follow'd, sought, and sued; This is to be alone; this, this is solitude! Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. THE COLISEUM-PAST AND PRESENT. HERE the buzz of eager nations ran, In murmur'd pity, or loud-roar'd applause, As man was slaughter'd by his fellow-man.* And wherefore slaughter'd? wherefore, but because This veritable Temple of Moloch, in which almost every species of living being, from man downwards-the most innocent equally with the most ferocious-was congregated in one indiscriminate mass by the Roman Emperors and Magistrates to amuse themselves and the starving and savage populace, must have often, literally, 'flowed with rivers of blood,' or would have done so but for the carefully prepared arena of porous soil. At the celebration of the Triumphs of Trajan more than 10,000 gladiators were doomed to mutual slaughter. On another occasion (in the reign of Carinus, A.D. 284) we are credibly informed that 1,000 ostriches, 1,000 stags, 1,000 fallow deer, besides numerous wild sheep and goats, were mingled together for indiscriminate slaughter by the wild beasts of the forest or the equally wild beasts of the city. Elephants, zebras, and giraffes were transported to Rome from the remotest parts of the known world for the same purpose. If the imperial city could boast of the superior scale on which these scenes were enacted, there was scarcely any city of importance within the wide limits of the Empire that had not its provincial Coliseum and Circenses.' The most famous scene of these fashionable butcheries-the Flavian amphitheatre or Coliseum-was' a building of an elliptic figure, 564 feet in length and 467 in breadth, founded on four score arches, and rising, with four successive orders of architecture, to the height of 140 feet. The outside of the edifice was encrusted with marble and decorated with statues. The slopes of the vast concave, which formed the inside, were |