was enthusiastic, the whole population coming out to meet him. But he had scarcely arranged his plans to aid the nation he had so befriended, when he was seized with a fever, and expired on the 19th of April, 1824.1

Of the character of Lord Byron's poetry there can be but one opinion in every honest and pure mind:-that, while it exhibits powers of description unusually great, is full of passages of exquisite beauty, and has some that are truly sublime; that while it gives abundant evidence of the richness and variety of his genius, and is characterized by intense feeling and energy, it cannot, as a whole, be read without an injurious influence upon the moral sensibilities. It is colored by that combination of reckless gayety, despondency, and misanthropy, which is a sure token of a mind ill at ease, and which, unhappily, reflected only too accurately the character of the bard himself; and the tendency of his writings is and must be to shake our confidence in virtue, to diminish our abhorrence of vice, to palliate crime, and to unsettle our notions of right and wrong.2

THE DYING GLADIATOR.

I see before me the gladiator lie:

He leans upon his hand; his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony,
And his droop'd head sinks gradually low;
And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,

Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now

The arena swims around him; he is gone,

Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hail'd the wretch who won.

He heard it, but he heeded not; his eyes
Were with his heart, and that was far away:
He reck'd not of the life he lost, nor prize;
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay,
There were his young barbarians all at play,
There was their Dacian mother, he, their sire,
Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday.

All this rush'd with his blood. Shall he expire,
And unavenged? Arise, ye Goths, and glut your ire!

1"We are to remember that the period of lives is not so peremptorily determined by God, but that we may lengthen or shorten them, live longer or die sooner, according as we behave ourselves in this world. Thus, some men destroy a healthful and vigorous constitation of body by intemperance and lust, and das manifestly kill themselves as those who hang, or poison, or drown themselves."SELFVICE.

-I admire the sublimity of his genius. But I have feared, and do still fear, the conseones-the inevitable consequences of his writings. I fear that in our enthusiastic adBiration of genius, our idolatry of poetry, the wful impiety and the staggering unbelief

contained in those writings are lightly passed over, and acquiesced in, as the allowable aberrations of a master intellect, which had lifted itself above the ordinary world, which had broken down the barriers of ordinary mind, and which revelled in a creation of its own; a world, over which the sunshine of imagination lightened at times with an almost ineffable glory, to be succeeded by the thick blackness of doubt, and terror, and misanthropy, relieved only by the lightning flashes of terrible and unholy passion."-J. G. WHITTIER. Read articles in Encyclopædia Britannica, in WHIPPLE'S Essays, in BAYNE, First Series, and in PROF. WILSON's Essays, vol. i.

APOSTROPHE TO THE OCEAN.
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar;
I love not man the less, but nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the universe, and feel

What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean-roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin-his control
Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,-
Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown.

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee:— Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters wasted them while they were free, And many a tyrant since; their shores obey The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay Has dried up realms to deserts: not so thou; Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play, Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow: Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,

Calm or convulsed,-in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime

Dark-heaving; boundless, endless, and sublime,—
The image of Eternity, the throne

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are made; each zone Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone. And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy I wanton'd with thy breakers,-they to me Were a delight; and if the freshening sea Made them a terror, 'twas a pleasing fear; For I was, as it were, a child of thee, And trusted to thy billows far and near, And laid my hand upon thy mane,-as I do here.

FAREWELL.

Farewell! if ever fondest prayer
For others' weal avail'd on high,
Mine will not be lost in air,

But waft thy name beyond the sky.

'Twere vain to speak,-to weep,-to sigh:
Oh! more than tears of blood can tell,
When wrung from guilt's expiring eye,
Are in that word,-Farewell!-Farewell!
These lips are mute, these eyes are dry;
But in my breast and in my brain
Awake the pangs that pass not by,

The thought that ne'er shall sleep again.
My soul nor deigns nor dares complain,
Though grief and passion there rebel :
I only know we loved in vain,—
I only feel-Farewell!-Farewell!

NIGHT AT CORINTH

'Tis midnight: on the mountains brown
The cold round moon shines deeply down;
Blue roll the waters, blue the sky
Spreads like an ocean hung on high,
Bespangled with those isles of light,
So widely, spiritually bright;
Who ever gazed upon them shining,
And turn'd to earth without repining,
Nor wish'd for wings to flee away
And mix with their eternal ray?
The waves on either shore lay there
Calm, clear, and azure as the air;
And scarce their foam the pebbles shook,
But murmur'd meekly as the brook.
The winds were pillow'd on the waves;
The banners droop'd along their staves,
And, as they fell around them furling,
Above them shone the crescent curling;
And that deep silence was unbroke,
Save where the watch his signal spoke,
Save where the steed neigh'd oft and shrill,
And echo answer'd from the hill,
And the wild hum of that wild host
Rustled like leaves from coast to coast,
As rose the Muezzin's voice in air
In midnight call to wonted prayer.

A CALM NIGHT AT LAKE GENEVA.

Clear, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake,
With the wild world I dwelt in, is a thing
Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake
Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring.
This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing

In 1715 Corinth, then in the possession of the Venetians, was besieged by the Turks. In the Riege of Corinth Byron describes one of the delicious nights of that fine climate.

2 The Muezzin's voice. The Turks do not use bells to summon the religions to their de votions. They have an appointed person whose function it is to send forth, to the extent of las -voice, the call to wonted prayer.

To waft me from distraction; once I loved
Torn ocean's roar, but thy soft murmuring
Sounds sweet as if a sister's voice reproved

That I with stern delights should e'er have been so moved.
It is the hush of night, and all between
Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear,
Mellow'd and mingling, yet distinctly seen,
Save darken'd Jura, whose capt heights appear
Precipitously steep; and, drawing near,

There breathes a living fragrance, from the shore,
Of flowers, yet fresh with childhood; on the ear
Drops the light drip of the suspended oar,
Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more;
He is an evening reveller, who makes
His life an infancy, and sings his fill;
At intervals, some bird from out the brakes
Starts into voice a moment, then is still.
There seems a floating whisper on the hill;
But that is fancy, for the starlight dews
All silently their tears of love instil,
Weeping themselves away, till they infuse
Deep into Nature's breast the spirit of her hues.

AN ALPINE STORM AT LAKE GENEVA.
The sky is changed!—and such a change! O night,
And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong,
Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light
Of a dark eye in woman! Far along
From peak to peak, the rattling crags among,
Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone cloud,
But every mountain now hath found a tongue,
And Jura answers, through her misty shroud,
Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud!
And this is in the night-most glorious night!
Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be
A sharer in thy fierce and far delight,-
A portion of the tempest and of thee!
How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea,
And the big rain comes dancing to the earth!
And now again 'tis black,—and now the glee
Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain-mirth,
As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth.

LIBERTY.

Eternal spirit of the chainless Mind!
Brightest in dungeons, Liberty, thou art!
For there thy habitation is the heart,-
The heart, which love of thee alone can bind;
And when thy sons to fetters are consign'd,-

To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom,
Their country conquers with their martyrdom,
And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind.

Chillon! thy prison is a holy place,

And thy sad floor an altar,-for 'twas trod,
Until his very steps have left a trace

Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod,
By Bonnivard!-May none those marks efface!
For they appeal from tyranny to God.

MODERN GREECE.

He who hath bent him o'er the dead,
Ere the first day of death is fled,
Before decay's effacing fingers

Have swept the lines where beauty lingers;
And mark'd the mild angelic air,

The rapture of repose that's there,

The fix'd yet tender traits that streak
The languor of the placid cheek;
And but for that sad shrouded eye,
That fires not, wins not, weeps not now;
And but for that chill, changeless brow,
Where cold obstruction's' apathy
Appalls the gazing mourner's heart,
As if to him it could impart

The doom he dreads, yet dwells upon;
Yes, but for these, and these alone,
Some moments, ay, one treacherous hour,
He still might doubt the tyrant's power:
So fair, so calm, so softly seal'd,

The first-last look-by death reveal'd!
Such is the aspect of this shore:-

'Tis Greece, but living Greece no more!3
So coldly sweet, so deadly fair,

We start,-for soul is wanting there.
Hers is the loveliness in death,

That parts not quite with parting breath,
But beauty with that fearful bloom,

That hue which haunts it to the tomb,-
Expression's last receding ray,

A gilded halo hovering round decay,

The farewell beam of feeling past away!

Spark of that flame-perchance of heavenly birth-
Which gleams, but warms no more its cherished earth!
Clime of the unforgotten brave!
Whose land from plain to mountain-cave
Was freedom's home or glory's grave!

There is perhaps no instance in our poetical literature in which a continued simile so beautifully sustained as that which runs through these lines. The affecting picture of the lovely form, no longer animated by the living spirit, deeply touching in itself, derives A new interest from its exquisite adaptation to the subject which suggested it. The music of the rhythm, too, so soft, so delicately modalated,floats like a requiem over the whole, and leaves nothing to be desired in consummating the effect."-PAYNE.

1 Cid obstruction. This expression is taken frm Shakspeare, who speaks of the dead as

"lying in cold obstruction," in allusion to the stoppage of the animal functions.

The following passage, from Gillies's History of Greece, is thought to have suggested the above comparison:-" The present state of Greece, compared to the ancient, is the silent obscurity of the grave contrasted with the vivid lustre of active life."

4 The transition here to another variation of the same theme, by a change of key, as it were, is very striking. The energy of these lines is as remarkable as the pathos of the preceding.