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,
When not a breath disturbs the deep serene,
And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene,
Around her throne the vivid planets roll,
And stars unnumber'd gild the glowing pole;
O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed,
And tip with silver every mountain's head;
Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise,
A flood of glory bursts from all the skies:
The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight,
Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful 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,
State in wonted manner keep:
Hesperus entreats thy light,
Goddess, excellently bright.

Earth, let not thy envious shade
Dare itself to interpose;
Cynthia's shining orb was made
Heav'n to clear, when day did close:
Bless us then with wished sight,
Goddess, excellently bright.

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
Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case;
I read it in thy looks; thy languish'd grace
To me, that feel the like, thy state descries.

Then, ev'n of fellowship, O Moon, tell me,
Is constant love deem'd there but want of wit?
Are beauties there as proud as here they be?
Do they above love to be loved, and yet

Those lovers scorn, whom that love doth possess ?
Do they call virtue there ungratefulness?

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,
Eterne Apollo! that thy sister fair

Is of all these the gentlier-mightiest.

When thy gold breath is misting in the west,
She unobserved steals unto her throne,
And there she sits most meek and most alone;
As if she had not pomp subservient;

As if thine eye, high Poet! was not bent
Towards her with the Muses in thine heart;
As if the minist'ring stars kept not apart,
Waiting for silver-footed messages.

O Moon! the oldest shadows 'mongst oldest trees
Feel palpitations when thou lookest in;

O Moon! old boughs lisp forth a holier din
The while they feel thine airy fellowship.
Thou dost bless everywhere, with silver lip
Kissing dead things to life. The sleeping kine,
Couch'd in thy brightness, dream of fields divine.
Innumerable mountains rise, and rise
Ambitious for the hallowing of thine eyes;
And yet thy benediction passeth not
One obscure hiding-place, one little spot
Where pleasure may be sent: the nested wren
Has thy fair face within its tranquil ken,

And from beneath a sheltering ivy leaf
Takes glimpses of thee; thou art a relief
To the poor patient oyster, where it sleeps
Within its pearly house. The mighty deeps,
The monstrous sea is thine-the myriad sea!
O Moon! far spooming Ocean bows to thee,
And Tellus feels her forehead's cumbrous load.

Coleridge sees in the shifting aspects of the Moon emblems of human griefs and joys:

Mild Splendor of the various-vested Night!
Mother of wildly-working visions! hail!
I watch thy gliding, while with watery light
Thy weak eye glimmers through a fleecy veil,
And when thou lovest thy pale orb to shroud
Behind the gather'd blackness lost on high;
And when thou dartest from the wind-rent cloud
Thy placid lightning o'er the awaken'd sky.
Ah, such is Hope! as changeful and as fair!
Now dimly peering on the wistful sight,
Now hid behind the dragon-wing'd Despair:
But soon emerging in her radiant might
She o'er the sorrow-clouded breast of Care
Sails, like a meteor kindling in its flight.

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,
Fair star! to love and lovers dear;
While trembling on the falling dew,
Like beauty shining through the tear:
Or hanging o'er that mirror-stream

To mark each image trembling there,
Thou seem'st to smile with softer gleam
To see thy lovely face so fair.

Though blazing o'er the arch of night,
The moon thy timid beams outshine,
As far as thine each starry night-
Her rays can never vie with thine.

Thine are the soft enchanting hours,

When twilight lingers on the plain,
And whispers to the closing flow'rs

That soon the sun will rise again.

Thine is the breeze that murmuring bland,
As music, wafts the lover's sigh,
And bids the yielding heart expand

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:
Such harmony is in immortal souls;

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
To the celestial Sirens' harmony,

That sit upon the nine infolded spheres,
And sing to those that hold the vital shears,
And turn the adamantine spindle round,
On which the fate of gods and men is wound.
Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie,
To lull the daughter of Necessity,
And keep unsteady Nature to her law,

And the low world in measured motion draw