The same year in which Shakspeare is supposed to have gone up from Stratford to London,5 was a proud one in his country's annals, for it was then that stout hearts and the stormy alliance of the ocean saved the soil from the pollution of foreign invasion, and the boastful attempt of the Spaniard, whose hateful presence in the palace when he shared the throne was not forgotten, and who was coming now with the terrors of the Inquisition in his train. When the scattered remnants of the Armada were driven, not back to the ports of Spain, but as far north as the stormy latitude of the Hebrides, there must have been a high and general fervour kindling each heart; and none more so than the large heart that beat in the breast of William Shakspeare. An intense nationality, and a happy loyalty to the government, as represented in the sovereign-fervid as were those emotions in the days of Queen Elizabeth-could not but affect vividly the national literature, especially the dramatic literature, placed as it was in close contact with the people. This influence is manifest in Spenser, in Shakspeare, in Ben Jonson, and all the great authors of the time; and doubtless it was one of the causes that helped them to their greatness.

ever

Henry Reed.

XLIX.

ARETHUSA.

ARETHUSA1 arose

From her couch of snows

In the Acroceraunian mountains,-
From cloud and from crag
With many a jag,
Shepherding her bright fountains.
She leapt down the rocks
With her rainbow locks
Streaming among the streams ;-

Her steps paved with green
The downward ravine
Which slopes to the western gleams:
And gliding and springing,

She went, ever singing,

In murmurs as soft as sleep;

The Earth seemed to love her,
And Heaven smiled above her,

As she linger'd towards the deep.

Then Alpheus bold,

On his glacier cold,

With his trident the mountains strook;

And open'd a chasm

In the rocks; with the spasm

All Erymanthus shook.

And the black south wind

It conceal'd behind

The urns of the silent snow,

And earthquake and thunder
Did rend in sunder

The bars of the springs below:
The beard and the hair
Of the river-god were
Seen through the torrent's sweep,
As he follow'd the light

Of the fleet nymph's flight

To the brink of the Dorian deep.

"Oh, save me! Oh, guide me! And bid the deep hide me, For he grasps me now by the hair!" The loud ocean heard,

To its blue depth stirr'd

And divided at her prayer;
And under the water
The Earth's white daughter

Fled like a sunny beam;

Behind her descended

Her billows, unblended
With the brackish Dorian stream:

Like a gloomy stain

On the emerald main

Alpheus rush'd behind,→

As an eagle pursuing

A dove to its ruin

Down the streams of the cloudy wind.

Under the bowers

Where the Ocean Powers

Sit on their pearléd thrones:
Through the coral woods
Of the weltering floods,

Over heaps of unvalued stones;

Through the dim beams

Which amid the streams
Weave a net-work of colour'd light;
And under the caves,

Where the shadowy waves

Are as green as the forest's night :-
Outspeeding the shark

And the sword-fish dark

Under the ocean foam,

And up through the rifts

Of the mountain clifts;
They pass'd to their Dorian home.

And now from their fountains

In Enna's mountains,

Down one vale where the morning basks,
Like friends once parted

Grown single-hearted,
They ply their watery tasks.
At sunrise they leap
From their cradles steep

In the cave of the shelving hill;
At noon-tide they flow
Through the woods below

And the meadows of Asphodel;2
And at night they sleep

In the rocking deep
Beneath the Ortygian 3 shore ;-

Like spirits that lie

In the azure sky

When they love but live no more.

P. B. Shelley.

L.

HISTORY IN LOCAL NAMES.

THE deep religious feeling of the earlier voyagers is well illustrated by the names which they bestowed upon their discoveries. The first land descried by Columbus was the island of San Salvador. From day to day he held on, in spite of the threats of his mutinous crew, who threatened to throw the crazy visionary into the sea. With what vividness does this name of San Salvador disclose the feelings with which, on the seventieth night of the dreary voyage, the brave Genoese caught sight of what seemed to be a light gleaming on some distant shore; how vividly does that name enable us to realize the scene when, on the next day, with a humble and grateful pride, he set foot upon that New World of which he had dreamed from his boyhood, and, having erected the symbol of the Christian faith and knelt before it, he rose from his knees and proclaimed, in a broken voice, that the land should henceforth bear the name of San Salvador-the Holy Saviour, who had preserved him through so many perils!

We cannot but reverence the romantic piety which chequers the story of the violence and avarice of the conquistadors. When unknown shores were reached, the first thought of those fierce soldiers was to claim the lands as new kingdoms of