Roman majesty, than in the saying of Trajan'—Imperatorem oportere stantem mori-that Cæsar' ought to die standing?-a speech of imperatorial' grandeur. Implying that he, who was "the foremost man of all this world," and, in regard to all other nations, the representative of his own, should express its characteristic virtue in his farewell act―should die in procinctu,“ and should meet the last enemy as the first, with a Roman countenance and in a soldier's attitude. If this had an imperatorial, what follows had a consular majesty, and is almost the grandèst story upon record.

2. Māriüs,' the man who rose to be seven times consul, was in a dungeon, and a slave was sent in with commission to put him to death. These were the persons-the two extremities of exalted and forlorn humanity, its vanward and its rearward man, a Roman consul and an abject slave. But their natural relations to each other were, by the caprice of fortune, monstrously inverted the consul was in chains; the slave was for a moment the arbiter of his fate. By what spells, what magic, did Marius reïnstate himself in his natural prerogatives? By what marvels drawn from heaven or from earth, did he, in the twinkling of an eye, again invest himself with the purple, and place between himself and his assassin a hōst of shadowy lictors?

3. By the mere blank supremacy of great minds over weak ones. He fascinated the slave, as a rattlesnake does a bird. Standing "like Teneriffe," he smote him with his eye, and said, Tunc, homo, audes occidere C. Marium?"-Dost thou, fellow,

66

1 Trajan, one of the most illustrious emperors of Rome, was born near Seville, in Spain, in the year 53. By his great victories over the Dacians, Germans, and Parthians, he fixed securely the boundaries of the Roman empire on the banks of the Rhine and the Tigris. His internal administration was equally glorious, his reign being celebrated for its great clemency, and rigid discipline of justice, and for its humanity to Christians. He died at Selinus, a town in Cilicia, August, 117.

2 Caius Julius Cæsar, Dictator of Rome, was born July 12th, B. c. 100,

and died by the hands of assassins, in the Senate House, in the 15th of March, in the fifty-sixth year of his age. As a warrior, a statesman, and a man of letters, he was one of the most remarkable men of any age.

3 Im per`a to' ri al, of, or relating to the office of Imperator, or Commander-in-chief, a title of honor conferred on Roman generals for great military exploits; commanding.

* In procinctu, about to join battlo; ready for action.

'Ma'ri us, one of the greatest generals and dictators of the Roman republic, born about 157, died B. c. 86.

presume to kill Caius Marius? Whereat, the rep'tile, quaking under the voice, nor daring to affront the consular eye, sank gently to the ground, turned round upon his hands and feet, and, crawling out of the prison like any other vermin, left Marius standing in solitude as steadfast and immovable as the capitol. DE QUINCEY.

2. He

peeps into the warrior's heart
From the tip of a stooping plume,

And the sĕrried' spears, and the many men,
May not deny him room.

He'll come to his tent in the weary night,

And be busy in his dream,

And he'll float to his eye in the morning light,
Like a fay on a silver beam.

3. He hears the sound of the hunter's gun,
And rides on the echo back,

And sighs in his ear like a stirring leaf,

And flits in his woodland track.

The shade of the wood, and the sheen of the river,
The cloud, and the open sky,-

He will haunt them all with his subtle quiver,
Like the light of your very eye.

• Sěr ried, close; crowded; compact.

Sheen, brightness.

4. The fisher hangs over the leaning boat.
And ponders the silver sea,

For Love is under the surface hid,
And a spell of thought has he :
He heaves the wave like a bosom sweet,
And speaks in the ripple low,

Till the bait is gone from the crafty line,
And the hook hangs bare below.

5. He blurs the print of the scholar's book,
And intrudes in the maiden's prayer,
And profanes the cell of the holy man
In the shape of a lady fair.

In the darkest night, and the bright daylight,
In earth, and sea, and sky,

In every home of human thought,

Will Love be lurking nigh.

WILLIS.

NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS, one of the most voluminous and successful of American writers, was born in Portland, Maine, January 20th, 1807. His father, a distinguished journalist, removed to Boston when he was six years of age. He was prepared for college at the Latin School of Boston and at the Phillips Academy at Andover. He graduated with high honors at Yale in 1827. While in college, he distinguished himself by a series of sacred poems, and gained the prize of fifty dollars for the best poem, offered by Lockwood, the publisher of "The Album." After his graduation he edited "The Legendary," a series of volumes of tales, and then established the " American Monthly Magazine,” which, after two years and a half, was merged in the "New York Mirror," and the literary fraternity of N. P. Willis and George P. Morris began. Immediately after the partnership was formed, he set sail for a tour in Europe, palatable and piquant reports of which appeared in the "Mirror," entitled "Pencilings by the Way." This first and extended residence abroad led our traveler through all the capitals of Europe, and even to "the poetic altars of the Orient." In 1885, after residing two years in London, and contributing to the "New Monthly Magazine" tales and sketches, republished under the title of "Inklings of Adventure," he married Mary Leighton Stacy, the daughter of a distinguished officer who had won high honors at Waterloo, and was then Commissary-general in command of the arsenal, Woolwich. In 1837, he returned to his native land, and established himself at "Glenmary," in Central New York, near the village of Owego. The portrait of this happy home and the landscape around, is drawn in "Letters from under a Bridge." In 1839, he became one of the editors of “The Corsair,” a literary gazette, and made a short trip to England. On his return home, "The Corsair" having been discontinued, he revived, with his former partner, Gen. Morris, the "Mirror." Upon the death of his wife, in 1844, he again visited Europe for the improvement of his health. Soon after, the "Mirror" having passed into other hands, the partners established "The Home Journal." In October, 1846, he married Cornelia, only daughter of the Hon. Joseph Grinnell, of Massachusetts, since which time he has resided at "Idle wild," a romantic place, which he has eultivated and embellished, near Newburg.

on the Hudson. His poems have recently been published in an elegant octavo volume, richly illustrated, and a uniform collection of his prose writings, in twelve volumes, of some five hundred pages cach, has also come from the press. Mr. Willis is equally happy as a writer of prose and verse. With a felicitous style, a warm and exuberant fancy, and a ready and sparkling wit, he wins the admiration of readers of the most refined sentiment and the daintiest fancy, and at the same time commands the full sympathy of the masses.

II.

93. THE PALM AND THE PINE.

WHEN Peter led the First Crusade,

Norseman wooed an Arʼab maid.

He loved her lithe and palmy grace,
And the dark beauty of her face :
She loved his cheeks, so ruddy fair,
His sunny eyes and yellow hair.

2. He called: she left her father's tent;
She followed wheresoeer he went.
Sho left the palms of Palestine
To sit beneath the Norland pine.
She sang the musky Orient strains
Where Winter swept the snowy plains.
3. Their natures met like Night and Morn
What time the morning-star is born.
The child that from their meeting grew
IIung, like that star, between the two.
The glossy night his mother shed
From her long hair was on his head :
But in its shade they saw ariso
The morning of his father's eyes.

4. Beneath the Orient's tawny stain
Wandered the Norseman's crimson vein :
Beneath the Northern force was seen
The Arʼab sense, alert and keen.
His were the Viking's' sinewy hands,
The arching foot of Eastern lands.

5. And in his soul conflicting strove

Northern indifference, Southern love :

'VI' king, one of the pirate chiefs from among the Northmen, who plun dered the coasts of Europe in the eighth and ninth centuries.

The chastity of temperate blood,
Impetuous passion's fiery flood;
The settled faith that nothing shakes,
The jealousy a breath awakes;
The planning Reason's sober gaze,
And fancy's meteoric blaze.

6. And stronger, as he grew to man,
The contradicting natures ran,—
As mingled streams from Etna flow,
One born of fire, and one of snow.
And one impelled, and one withheld,
And one obeyed, and one rebelled.
One gave him force, the other fire;
This self-control, and that desire.
One filled his heart with fierce unrest;
With peace serene the other blessed.
7. He knew the depth and knew the height,
The bounds of darkness and of light;
And who these far extremes has seen
Must needs know all that lies between.
8. So, with untaught, instinctive art,
He read the myriäd-natured heart.
He met the men of many a land;
They gave their souls into his hand;
And none of them was long unknown :
The hardest lesson was his own.

9. But how he lived, and where, and when,
It matters not to other men ;
For, as a fountain disappears,
To gush again in later years,
So hidden blood may find the day,
When centuries have rolled away;
And fresher lives betray at last
The lineage of a far-off Past.

10. That nature, mixed of sun and snow,

Repeats its ancient ebb and flōw :
The children of the Palm and Pine

Renew their blended lives-in mine.

TAYLOR.

BAYARD TAYLOR, the noted American traveler and poet, was born in the vi lage of Kennett Square, Chester County, Pennsylvania, January 11th, 1825. At