sive supervision which her former subjects exercised over her, and to reach Hamburg accompanied only by a few confidential servants. She now began her travels through Europe. No sooner had she reached Brussels than she privately made profession of the Catholic faith, which she publicly repeated in Innsbruck; attracted by the promise of the pope's benediction, she hastened onwards to Italy, and left her crown and sceptre as a votive offering on the shrine of our Lady of Loretto. The Venetian ambassadors were astonished at the preparations which had been made in all the cities of the Roman territory to give her a magnificent reception. Pope Alexander, whose vanity was gratified that so illustrious a conversion had occurred in his pontificate, exhausted the apostolic treasury to celebrate the event with due selemnity: Christina entered Rome not as a penitent, but in triumph. 173.-THE MOON. WE select some of the passages of our poets which celebrate the beauties of our glorious satellite. And first the famous description of the "refulgent lamp of night' which Pope has adapted from Homer : As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night, O'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light, This is a magnificent passage; but the noble simplicity of Homer is better rendered in Chapman's version: As when about the silver moon, when air is free from wind, And stars shine clear; to whose sweet beams, high prospects, and the brows Of all steep hills and pinnacles thrust up themselves for shows; And even the lowly valleys joy to glitter in their sight, When the unmeasured firmament bursts to disclose her light, And all the signs in heaven are seen that glad the shepherd's heart. The spirit of ancient song was never more beautifully seized upon than in Jonson's exquisite hymn to Cynthia : Queen and huntress, chaste and fair, Now the sun is laid to sleep, Seated in thy silver chair, Earth, let not thy envious shade Lay thy bow of pearl apart, And thy crystal shining quiver; Give unto the flying hart Space to breathe, how short soever : Thou that mak'st a day of night, Goddess, excellently bright. Sidney's Sonnet is full of conceits, as the Sonnet poetry of his day was generally; but the opening lines are most harmonious : With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies! How silently, and with how wan a face! What! may it be, that e'en in heav'nly place That busy archer his sharp arrows tries? Sure, if that long-with-love-acquainted eyes Then, ev'n of fellowship, O Moon, tell me, Those lovers scorn, whom that love doth possess ? Keats, who of all our recent poets was the most imbued with a conception of the poetical beauties of the Greek mythology, has a passage full of antique grace: By the feud 'Twixt Nothing and Creation, I here swear, Is of all these the gentlier-mightiest. When thy gold breath is misting in the west, As if thine eye, high Poet! was not bent O Moon! the oldest shadows 'mongst oldest trees O Moon! old boughs lisp forth a holier din And from beneath a sheltering ivy leaf Coleridge sees in the shifting aspects of the Moon emblems of human griefs and joys: Mild Splendor of the various-vested Night! With the glories of the Moon are associated the "company of stars." Levden's Ode to the Evening Star is full of tenderness: How sweet thy modest light to view, To mark each image trembling there, Though blazing o'er the arch of night, Thine are the soft enchanting hours, When twilight lingers on the plain, That soon the sun will rise again. Thine is the breeze that murmuring bland, In love's delicious ecstasy. Fair star! though I be doom'd to prove That rapture's tears are mix'd with pain; Ah! still I feel 'tis sweet to love But sweeter to be loved again. But there is something higher in the contemplation of the starry heavens than thoughts "to love and lovers dear." Shakspeare has seized upon the grandest idea with which we can survey the firmament—an idea which two other great poets have in some degree echoed : Sit, Jessica. - Look how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold. There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins: But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.-SHAKSPEARE In deep of night, when drowsiness Hath lock'd up mortal sense, then listen I That sit upon the nine infolded spheres, And the low world in measured motion draw |