arched gateway which leads to the interior, and his measured footsteps were the only sound that broke the breathless silence of the night. What a contrast with the scene which that same midnight hour presented, when, in Domitian's time, the eager populace began to gather at the gates, impatient for the morning sports! Nor was the contrast within less striking. Silence, and the quiet moonbeams, and the broad, deep shadows of the ruined wall! Where were the senators of Rome, her matrons, and her virgins? where the ferocious populace that rent the air with shouts, when, in the hundred holidays that marked the dedication of this imperial slaughter-house, five thousand wild beasts. from the Libyan deserts and the forests of Anatolia made the arena sick with blood? Where were the Christian martyrs, that died with prayers upon their lips, amid the jeers and imprecations of their fellowmen? where the barbarian gladiators, brought forth to the festival of blood, and "butchered to make a Roman holiday"? The awful silence answered, "They are mine!" The dust beneath me answered, "They are mine!"

و

ROME.

LORD BYRON.

Он, Rome! my country! city of the soul!
The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,
Lone mother of dead empires! and control
In their shut breasts their petty misery.

What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see
The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way
O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, ye
Whose agonies are evils of a day-

A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay!

The Niobe of nations! there she stands,
Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe;
An empty urn within her withered hands,
Whose holy dust was scattered long ago;
The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now;
The very sepulchres lie tenantless

Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow,
Old Tiber, through a marble wilderness?

Rise with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress!

THE CATACOMBS.

EMILIO CASTELAR.

WHо that has seen the two as they once were, Christianity and Paganism, would not have said that the caverns were destined to disappear, and that the mightier structure raised in the air and light as the abode of pleasure and vice was destined, by its false brilliancy, by its apparent power, by its pretended strength, by the courtiers who encircled it, to endure for ages?

Yet the Cæsars have departed; the Senate is crowned with laurels no more!

There were the soldiers with their burnished armor;

the priests, those oracles of the past and prophets of the future; the proud and wealthy nobles; the slaves of the Circus; the gladiators; the triumphal arches; the colossal monuments; the obelisks, witness of so many ages and the spoil of so many battles. And beneath all these lived an obscure and feeble sect, proclaiming a high morality in the midst of general depravity, and having for their only power, prayer! For their only victory, martyrdom!

What strength had they, what arms?

Their word!

What riches?

Their faith!

What power?

That of resignation and suffering!

Had they legions? The legions of martyrs! Had they property? That of the tomb !

What they possessed was a force unconquerable; a weapon never blunted; riches that cannot be lost; possessions that cannot be exhausted. The mysterious light without shadow and which grows not dim; the living fire which quickens and is not quenched; the immortal soul of nature; the acting spring of society; the air in which the soul is free! an unfailing faith bestowed on them by Heaven with the gift of miracles. .

The conquered were conquerors. The proscribed became mighty, the dead were givers of life; the weak, with hands pierced by the nails of the cross, vanquished the savage strength of Pagan Rome!

MORNING IN LONDON.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

EARTH has not anything to show more fair,—
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty;
The city now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning: silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky,

All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendor, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will;
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still.

VENICE.

LORD BYRON.

I STOOD in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs,
A palace and a prison on each hand:

I saw from out the wave her structures rise
As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand;
A thousand years their cloudy wings expand
Around me, and a dying glory smiles

O'er the far times when many a subject land
Looked to the winged Lion's marble piles,

Where Venice sat in state, throned on her hundred isles!

She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean,
Rising from her tiara of proud towers,
At airy distance, with majestic motion,
A ruler of the waters and their powers:

And such she was; — her daughters had their dowers
From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East
Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers.
In purple was she robed, and of her feast
Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased.

In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more,
And silent rows the songless gondolier;
Her palaces are crumbling to the shore,
And music meets not always now the ear;
Those days are gone— but Beauty still is here.
States fall, arts fade- but Nature doth not die,
Nor yet forget that Venice once was dear,
The pleasant place of all festivity,

The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy!

TO THE LION OF ST. MARK.

JOAQUIN MILler.

I KNOW you, Lion of Gray St. Mark;
You fluttered the seas beneath your wing,
Were King of the seas with never a King.
Now over the deep and up in the dark,
High over the girdles of bright gas-light,
And crouching as if about to spring