The singing masons building roofs of gold;
The civil citizens kneading up the honey;
The poor mechanic porters crowding in
Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate;
The sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum,
Delivering o'er to executors pale

The lazy yawning drone.

Alas! in Beedom, the archbishop himself, inasmuch as he was no wax-chandler, would have been accounted one of these same lazy, yawning drones, and delivered over to the secular arm. Bees do not teach men, nor ought they. We have some higher things among us, even than wax and honey; and though we have our flaws, too, in the art of government, and do not yet know exactly what to do with them, we hope we shall find out. Will the bees ever do that? Do they also hope it? Do they sit pondering, when the massacre is over, and think it but a bungling way of bringing their accounts right? Man, in his self-love, laughs at such a fancy. He is of opinion that no creature can think, or make progression, but himself. What right he has, from his little experience, to come to such conclusions, we know not; but he must allow, that we know as little of the conclusions of the bees. All we feel certain of is, that with bees, as with men, the good of existence outweighs the evil; that evil itself is but a rough working towards good; and that if good can

ultimately be better without it, there is a thing called hope, which says it may be possible. We take our planet to be very young, and our love of progression to be one of the proofs of it; and when we think of the good, and beauty, and love, and pleasure, and generosity, and nobleness of mind and imagination, in which this green and glorious world is abundant, we cannot but conclude that the love of progression is to make it still more glorious, and add it to the number of those older stars, which are probably resting from their labours, and have become heavens.

LANEOUS FEELINGS RESPECTING SICILY, ITS SIC, ITS RELIGION, AND ITS MODERN POETRY.

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EVENING.-AVE MARIA OF BYRON.THE SICILIAN SPERS.-NOTHING INFERNAL IN NATURE.-SICILIAN RINER'S HYMN.-INVOCATION FROM COLERIDGE.-PAGAN ) ROMAN CATHOLIC WORSHIP.-LATIN AND ITALIAN JPLET.-WINTER'S RATTO DI PROSERPINA."-A HINT ON LIAN AIRS.-BELLINI.-MELI, THE MODERN THEOCRITUS.

66

IME flies,

2 and friends must part.

In closing

our Blue

Jar, a rosy light seems

to come

over it, at

once beau

tiful and

melan

choly; for

termina

tions are

farewells, and farewells remind us of evenings, and of

the divine lines of the poet :

Era già l'ora, che volge 'l desio

A' naviganti, e intenerisce 'l cuore

Lo dì ch'an detto a' dolci amici A Dio:
E che lo nuovo peregrin d'amore

Punge, se ode squilla di lontano,

Che paia 'l giorno pianger che si muore.

'T was now the hour, when love of home melts through
Men's hearts at sea, and longing thoughts portray
The moment when they bade sweet friends adieu;
And the new pilgrim now, on his lone way,

Thrills as he hears the distant vesper bell,

That seems to mourn for the expiring day.

Divine, indeed, are those lines of Dante. Why didn't he write all such, instead of employing two volumes out of three, to show us how much less he cared to be divine than infernal? Was it absolutely necessary for him to have so much black ground for his diamonds?

And another poet who took to the black, or rather the burlesque, side of things, how could he write so beautifully on the same theme, and resist giving us whole poems as tender and confiding, to assist in making the world happy? The stanza respecting the Ave Maria is surely the best in Don Juan:

Ave Maria! blessed be the hour!

The time, the clime, the spot where I so oft

Have felt the moment in its fullest

power

Sink o'er the earth, so beautiful and soft,
While swung the deep bell in the distant tower,
Or the faint dying day-hymn stole aloft,

And not a breath crept through the

rosy air,
And yet the forest leaves seemed stirr'd with prayer.

Not, we beg leave to say, that we are Roman Catholic, either in our creed or our form of worship; though we should be not a little inclined to become such, did the creed contain nothing harsher or less just than the adoration of maternity. We have been taught to be too catholic in the true sense of the word (Universal) to wish for any ultimate form of Christianity, except that which shall drop all the perplexing thorns through which it has grown, and let the odour of its flower be recognized in its spotless force without one infernal embitterment.

But it will be said that there are infernal embitterments even in the sweetest forms of things, whether we will have them or no-massacres in bee-hives, Dantes among the greatest poets, Sicilian Vespers. Think of those, it will be said. Think of the horrible massacre known by the name of the "Sicilian Vespers." Think of the day in your honeyed, Hyblæan island, when the same hour which

Sinks o'er the earth, so beautiful and soft,