hind us. We forget the Present in the Past; the Poets, the Philosophers, the Orators of the golden age, arise in all their lustre, and we hang upon the lips of Socrates, or wander through the enchanted Garden of Plato.

What a light has the antique Muse poured into the most desolate chambers. How many hearts has she cheered with her music; how many consoled by her eloquence and truth! Various are the ministerings of this gentle spirit. Who has forgotten Ascham's visit to Lady Jane Grey at Brodegate in Leicestershire, where he found her alone reading the Phædo of Plato?

And

.....

Though the horn was blown,

every ear, and every heart was won,

And all in green array were chasing down the sun!

ROGERS.

'I wist all their sport in the park,' she said, 'is but a shadow to that pleasure which I find in Plato. Thus does the Muse brighten even the cheek of innocence and fortune; but most lovely is she when bringing flowers to the pillow of the sick and suffering scholar. She loves her children best in the hour of affliction.

When a cloud had fallen upon the eyes of Milton, this faithful Guide, who had known and watched over him in the bowers of Christ's, was

still at his side to lead him through all the flowery valleys of Arcady, and into the glorious assembly in the Academe. He could still sit with Bion under a spreading plane; or listen to the heavy breathings of slumbering Pan; or hear the nightingales, as they sang to Sophocles, among the ivy and violets of Colonos!

WALKER.

The drama of Greece, unlike our own, did not ascend to excellence by slow steps. In tracing the annals of the English Stage, many names arise to the memory before the series closes in Shakspeare. Greene, from one of whose tracts came the Winter's Tale; the tender and harmonious Peele; the extravagant, but picturesque Marlow; Lodge, who excelled in touches of pastoral tenderness and beauty, and to whom we probably owe the charming Rosalind of As You Like It; not to mention Lyly, who, though deficient in fancy and taste, became the leader of a very popular sect; Kyd, the writer of a tragedy which acquired considerable reputation; and Nash, who, destitute as he was of vigour and scholarship, yet exercised some influence upon the literature of his day. These, with others, had trodden the path of dramatic poetry before the appearance of Shakspeare. But Eschylus stood alone; a sculptor working without a

drawing or a model. What could he pick up the cart of Thespis?

from

The drama of Greece was essentially national. Eschylus formed the noble design of shaping some of the terrific legends of his country into tragedies of stately argument; and his greatest work, the Agamemnon, is reared in the faintest twilight of romantic history. The prevailing characteristics of his mind were a daring grandeur and force of sentiment. He delighted in the stern, the lofty, and the terrible. His imagination was wild and stormy. Who would have expected to behold BEAUTY rising from such a sea? Yet over his darkest pictures clouds of gold float along. The story of Iphigenia is told with a sweetness of pathos and a picturesque grace, worthy the pen of Sophocles; and the picture of Helen glows with all the richness of her voluptuous charms.

Now as she stood, and her descending veil,

Let down in clouds of saffron, touch'd the ground,
The priests and all the sacrificers round,
All felt the melting beams that came

With sofest pity wing'd, shot from her lovely eyes.
Like some imagined pictured maid she stood,
So beauteous look'd she, seeming as she would
Speak, yet still mute; tho' oft her father's halls
Magnificent among,

She, now so mute, had sung

Full many a lovely air,

In maiden beauty fresh and fair:

And with the warbled music of her voice

Made all his joyous bowers still more rejoice.

SYMMONS.

MOULTRIE.

You remember that animated account of the Fire-signals, by which Agamemnon had promised to announce to Clytemnestra the capture of Troy. The watchman, after so many vigils passed in vain expectation, in the midst of a complaining soliloquy, beholds the long-looked-for beacon darting up into the sky. Vossius observes, that without being able to prove the historical truth of this account, such is the geographical accuracy of the poet, that criticism cannot charge him with fiction. If the signals were not lighted they might have been.

WALKER.

Poetry contains few pictures equal in liveliness and graphic truth to this description. We watch the course of the fire through all its journey—and almost fancy we hear the hissing sound of that 'beard of flame,' rushing up from the dry heather. These signals are of great antiquity. They are frequently noticed in Scripture. Fires are still lighted along the mountains in view of Cosseir on the Red Sea, to announce the approach of the

Jeremiah,

Caravans, travelling from the Nile. while warning the children of Benjamin to flee from Jerusalem, commands them to Blow the trumpet in Tekoa, and set up a sign of fire in Beth-haccerem. Burning torches were employed by the Greeks and Romans as telegraphs. Chateaubriand has a pleasant allusion to the beacon-fires, as kindled in Greece at the present day. On arriving at the house of an Albanian, an acquaintance of M. Fauvet, he hastened to an eminence east of the village, to gain a view of the Austrian ship. In the evening a fire was lighted of myrtle and heather, the span of Eschylus, and a goatherd stationed on the road to inform him without delay of the arrival of the boats from Zea.

I have attempted a translation of this narrative; at least as literal as any of its metrical predeces

sors:

The God of Fire*, on Ida's steep,
Sent forth the living flame:
From watch to watch with giant leap
Along the mountain tops it came,
Unto Lemnos' hill of fame.

Up Athos, where the Spirit dwells †,

* Ηφαιστος.

† Αιπος Ζηνος. The modern name of Athos is Τραγιον Ορος ; by the European inhabitants of Turkey it is called Monte Santo.