Saintly Camillus lived, and firm Atilius died.

But when tears stained thy robe of vestal whiteness,
And gold profaned thy capitolian throne,

Thou didst desert, with spirit-winged lightness,
The senate of the tyrants: they sunk prone

Slaves of one tyrant: Palatinus sighed

Faint echoes of Ionian song; that tone

Thou didst delay to hear, lamenting to disown.

A thousand years the Earth cried, Where art thou?
And then the shadow of thy coming fell

On Saxon Alfred's olive-cinctured brow:
And many a warrior-peopled citadel,
Like rocks which fire lifts out of the flat deep,
Arose in sacred Italy,

Frowning o'er the tempestuous sea

Of kings, and priests, and slaves, in tower-crowned majesty ;
That multitudinous anarchy did sweep,

And burst around their walls, like idle foam,
Whilst from the human spirit's deepest deep
Strange melody with love and awe struck dumb
Dissonant arms; and Art, which cannot die,
With divine wand traced on our earthly home
Fit imagery to pave heaven's everlasting dome.

Thou huntress swifter than the Moon! thou terror
Of the world's wolves! thou bearer of the quiver,
Whose sunlike shafts pierce tempest-winged Error,
As light may pierce the clouds when they dissever
In the calm regions of the orient day!

Luther caught thy wakening glance,

Like lightning, from his leaden lance Reflected, it dissolved the visions of the trance

In which, as in a tomb, the nations lay;

And England's prophets hailed thee as their queen, In songs whose music cannot pass away,

Though it must flow for ever: not unseen

Before the spirit-sighted countenance

Of Milton didst thou pass, from the sad scene
Beyond whose night he saw, with a dejected mien.

The eager hours and unreluctant years

As on a dawn-illumined mountain stood, Trampling to silence their loud hopes and fears, Darkening each other with their multitude, And cried aloud, Liberty! Indignation

Answered Pity from her cave;

Death grew pale within the grave, And Desolation howled to the destroyer, Save! When like heaven's sun girt by the exhalation

Of its own glorious light, thou didst arise, Chasing thy foes from nation unto nation

Like shadows as if day had cloven the skies At dreaming midmgnt o'er the western wave, Men started staggering with a glad surprise, Under the lightnings of thine unfamiliar eyes.

Thou heaven of earth! what spells could pall thee then,
In ominous eclipse? a thousand years

Bred from the slime of deep oppression's den,
Dyed all thy liquid light with blood and tears,
Till thy sweet stars could weep the stain away:
How like Bacchanals of blood

Round France, ghastly vintage, stood

Destruction's sceptred slaves, and Folly's mitred brood!
When one, like them, but mightier far than they,
The Anarch of thine own bewildered powers

Rose: armies mingled in obscure array,

Like clouds with clouds, darkening the sacred bowers

Of serene heaven. He, by the past pursued,

Rests with those dead, but unforgotten hours,

Whose ghosts scare victor kings in their ancestral towers.

England yet sleeps: was she not called of old?

Spain calls her now, as with its thrilling thunder Vesuvius wakens Ætna, and the cold

Snow-crags by its reply are cloven in sunder: O'er the lit waves every Æolian isle

From Pithecusa to Pelorus

Howls, and leaps, and glares in chorus:

They cry, Be dim; ye lamps of heaven suspended o'er us.
Her chains are threads of gold, she need but smile
And they dissolve; but Spain's were links of steel,
Till bit to dust by virtue's keenest file.

Twins of a single destiny! appeal

To the eternal years enthroned before us,

In the dim West; impress us from a seal,

All ye have thought and done! Time cannot dare conceal,

Tomb of Arminius! render up thy dead,

Till, like a standard from a watch-tower's staff,

His soul may stream over the tyrant's head;

Thy victory shall be his epitaph,

Wild Bacchanal of truth's mysterious wine,
King-deluded Germany,

His dead spirit lives in thee.

Why do we fear or hope? thou art already free!
And thou, lost Paradise of this divine

And glorious world! thou flowery wilderness!

Thou island of eternity! thou shrine

Where desolation clothed with loveliness,

Worships the thing thou wert! O Italy,

Gather thy blood into thy heart; repress

The beasts who make their aens thy sacred palaces.

He who taught man to vanquish whatsoever

Can be between the cradle and the grave
Crowned him the King of Life. O vain endeavour!
If on his own high will a willing slave,

He has enthroned the oppression and the oppressor.
What if earth can clothe and feed

Amplest millions at their need,

And power in thought be as the tree within the seed?
O, what if art, an ardent intercessor,

Driving on fiery wings to Nature's throne,
Checks the great mother stooping to caress her,
And cries: Give me, thy child, dominion

Over all height and depth? if Life can breed

New wants, and wealth from those who toil and groan
Rend of thy gifts and hers a thousand fold for one.

Come Thou, but lead out of the inmost cave

Of man's deep spirit, as the morning-star Beckons the Sun from the Eoan wave,

Wisdom. I hear the pennons of her car Self-moving, like cloud charioted by flame; Comes she not, and come ye not,

Rulers of eternal thought,

To judge, with solemn truth, life's ill-apportioned lot?
Blind love, and equal Justice, and the Fame

Of what has been, the Hope of what will be?

O, Liberty! if such could be thy name

Wert thou disjoined from these, or they from thee:

If thine or theirs were treasures to be bought

By blood or tears have, not the wise and free

Wept tears, and blood-like tears? The solemn harmony

Paused, and the spirit of that mighty singing
To its abyss was suddenly withdrawn;
Then, as a wild swan, when sublimely winging
Its path athwart the thunder-smoke of dawn,
Sinks headlong through the aerial golden light
On the heavy-sounding plain,

When the bolt has pierced its brain;
As summer clouds dissolve, unburthened of their rain;
As a far taper fades with fading night,

As a brief insect dies with dying day,
My song, its pinions disarrayed of might,

Drooped; o'er it closed the echoes far away
Of the great voice which did its flight sustain,
As waves which lately paved his watery way
Hiss round a drowner's head in their tempestuous play.

SHELLEY.

MARRIED? OR NOT MARRIED?

FROM THE GERMAN.

THE Countess von Werbe became a widow very young. Her husband was old and rich when he asked her in marriage. She rejected his addresses, and wept in the arms of her father. Her father laughed at her tears. He did not conceive how it was pos sible to reject the count, and his daughter did conceive it. Her father reckoned the estates of the count, and she reckoned his years.

She had sometime before become acquainted with Herr von Welt, who had fewer estates, and fewer years over his head, danced well, talked tenderly, and loved ardently. But the count was pressingthe father severe-the Herr von Welt was poor, and the count rich. She continued to love the Herr von Welt, and gave the count her hand.

The count had no children. The gout and a cough reminded him of temperance, and he retired in the arms of hymen to one of his estates. The young countess lived in solitude; the count coughed worse, and remained without children. His old age and his infirmities increased every day; in two years he left the world and his estates, and the young wife was a widow.

She laid aside her white dresses and put on black. The countess was fair-the dark dress set off her complexion-mourning became her.

The count left her all his property: but old people are often fantastical! According to a singular condition of the will, if she married again, the greatest part of the property reverted to one of his relations, living at the residence.

Herr von Welt hastened to comfort the widow. He found her beautiful, and she found him as amiable as before. He talked all day long without coughing, and she listened to him all day long without yawning. He could relate a thousand little anecdotes, and the countess was curious. He spoke of the torch of love and his own feelings, and the countess felt. He described the torments of separation, and the anxieties which had martyred him, and the countess was compassionate. He lay at her feet; protestations of his passion streamed from his lips, and his tears upon her hand, and the countess loved; but she thought with tears on the conditions of the will. She was melancholy. It was already six weeks since the count had bid adieu to his gout for ever, and grief appeared now for the first time on the countenance of the countess.

66

"My dear friend," said Herr von Welt to her in the morning, you torment yourself with doubts, and it remains in your own power to put an end to them."

"How so?" said the countess.

"You believe in the possibility," continued he, "of my ceasing to love you; you consider the band of the feelings not strong enough to withstand time; but, my dear friend, how easy it is for the hand of the priest to join ours together; you will then be tranquillized." "Have you then forgotten the will?" said she weeping.

My love, the question now is only about making you easy. We will be married privately. You and I, the priest-and love will hear our oath."

"But you see, there must be a priest," said she, hastily.

"Let me manage that," said Herr von Welt. "Here in the neighbourhood lives an old man, who is borne down by poverty, and more than half a century of years. He is as worthy as the times in which he was born, and as silent as the tomb which will soon receive him. He will carry our secret with him to the grave, and we will bury it in our bosoms."

The countess threw herself into his arms, and entreated him to hasten. Welt did so. The conscience of the priest was tranquillized; twilight, and a distant summer-house, concealed them from the eye of suspicion, and Welt embraced with rapture-his wife.

A year passed away; she no longer looked after him with inquietude when he rode out, and his eyes were no longer fixed on her window when he returned; she could yawn when he related, and he sometimes felt ennur though she was sitting by him-but they lived together. The servants had observed familiarities not warranted by friendship; yet their attachment did not appear to be ardent enough to account well for their being together. A year had made them feel secure, and they no longer paid that strict attention which they did at first to their conduct and conversation. People began to conjecture, to doubt, at last to believe, and after a time to impart their sentiments to each other.

The Count von Werbe, who was to inherit the property in default of the condition of the will being observed, was at this time out of favour with the prince, through the intrigues of his numerous creditors, and had left the residence with his wife, to take refuge in the arms of nature. He had purchased the situation of grand chamberlain to the prince-had squandered his property by giving balls and fetes, and destroying his health by dancing and dancers. His wife was formerly a lady of honour-people had formerly paid homage to her charms-she was formerly surrounded by a circle of admirers, but the boundaries of this circle grew