and see

Thence to the gates cast round thine eye,
What conflux issuing forth, or entering in,
Prætors, proconsuls to their provinces
Hasting, or to return, in robes of state;
Lictors and rods, the ensigns of their power,
Legions and cohorts, turms of horse and wings;
Or embassies from regions far remote,
In various habits on the Appian road,

Or on th' Æmilian, some from farthest south,
Syene, and where the shadow both way falls,
Meroe Nilotic isle, and more to west,

The realm of Bocchus to the Black-moor sea ;
From the Asian kings and Parthian among these,
From India and the golden Chersonese,
And utmost Indian isle Taprobane,

Dusk faces with white silken turbans wreathed
From Gallia, Gades, and the British west
Germans and Scythians, and Sarmatians north
Beyond Danubius to the Tauric pool.

All nations now to Rome obedience pay.
To Rome's great Emperor, whose wide domain
In ample territory, wealth and power,
Civility of manners, arts and arms,

And long renown, thou justly may'st prefer
Before the Parthian; these two thrones except,

The rest are barbarous, and scarce worth the sight,
Shared among petty kings too far removed;

These having shown thee, I have shown thee all
The kingdoms of the world, and all their glory."

The reader who has been instructed in history, knows that this splendour has in the course of years passed away, and that though travellers still resort to Rome for the gratification of curiosity, yet the monuments of its greatness form the present attraction to it. Under the Emperors, such bloody civil wars raged at Rome, that it became an unsafe and unhappy residence; the arts of peace were neglected, and its population insensibly diminished. The Goths and other barbarians devastated the empire; and in A. D. 476, Rome was abandoned by its last Emperor. Then Genseric and Alaric, two barbarian generals, with their infatuated armies, took and ravaged the city of the Cæsars. But they did not entirely demolish it—it has ever retained its name, and after its conquerors grew weary of destruction, civilization sprung up from its ashes.

In A. D. 800 Charlemagne, who included Italy in his dominions, yielded the city to the Pope, formerly the Bishop of Rome. From that time Rome became the capital of a new dominion— that of the Catholic religion; and the fine arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture, have attained to high perfection in modern Rome. Still Rome continually decays, and its present population little exceeds 100,000. Mr. Pope describes Rome thus:

"See the wild waste of all-devouring years!
How Rome her own sad sepulchre appears,
With nodding arches, broken temples spread
The very tombs now vanished like their dead!
Imperial wonders raised on nations spoiled,
Where mixed with slaves the groaning martyr toiled;
Huge theatres, that now unpeopled woods,
Now drained a distant country of her floods :
Fanes, which admiring gods with pride survey;
Statues of men scarce less alive than they!
Some felt the silent stroke of mouldering age,
Some hostile fury, some religious rage.
Barbarian blindness, Christian zeal conspire,
And Papal piety, and Gothic fire.

Perhaps, by its own ruins saved from flame,
Some buried marble half preserves a name ;
That name the learned with fierce disputes pursue,
And give to Titus old Vespasian's due."

Barbarian blindness, Christian zeal conspire,
And Papal piety, and Gothic fire.—

These several causes contributed to the destruction of Rome. The Goths with undiscerning fury, burnt, battered down, and buried many beautiful works of ancient art; and the Catholic Christians, finding among the buildings of Rome many heathen temples and many statues of ancient gods and heroes, thought it their duty to destroy those remains of Paganism.

Some buried marble half preserves a name.

It has become desirable among the curious and the learned to recover as much as possible of the buried sculpture of ancient Rome. Much of this has been disinterred, and many disputes among connoisseurs have originated in the doubtful character of these marbles.

ATHENS.

In describing the glories of the world, to disregard a place where the human mind had attained the highest perfection, and where the arts had flourished for ages, would have been an oversight not at all characteristic of the pervading intelligence which comprehended the various genius of them all. Therefore, before he descends from the mount of observation, the tempter stops awhile to point out the distinguishing genius of Athens. That city had then for two centuries been under the dominion of Rome, but her language, her monuments, her traditions, and many of her institutions still existed; and thither the best educated of the Romans resorted to complete their course of study. Milton's verses represent Athens thus :

Behold

Where on the Ægean shore a city stands
Built nobly, pure the air, and light the soil,
Athens the eye of Greece, mother of arts
And eloquence, native to famous wits
Or hospitable, in her sweet recess,
City or suburban, studious walks and shades;
See there the olive grove of Academe,
Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird

Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long.
There flowery hill Hymeltus with the sound
Of bees' industrious murmur oft invites

To studious musing; there Ilissus rolls

His whisp'ring stream; within the wall then view
The schools of ancient sages; his who bred
Great Alexander to subdue the world,

Lyceum there, and painted Stoa next:

There shalt thou hear and learn the secret power

Of harmony in tones and numbers hit

By voice or hand, and various measured verse,
Æolian charms and Dorian lyric odes,

And his who gave them breath, but higher sung,
Blind Melesigenes thence Homer called,
Whose poem Phoebus challenged for his own.

Thence what the lofty grave tragedians taught
In chorus or iambic, teachers best

Of moral prudence, with delight received
In brief sententious precepts, while they treat
Of fate and chance, and change in human life;
High actions and high passions best describing.
Thence to the famous orators repair,

Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence
Wielded at will that fierce democratic,
Shook th' arsenal and fulmined over Greece,
To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne.

To sage philosophy next lend thine ear,
From heav'n descended to the low-rooft house
Of Socrates; see there his tenement,
Whom well inspired the oracle pronounced
Wisest of men; from whose mouth issued forth
Mellifluous streams that watered all the schools
Of academics, old and new, with those
Sirnamed Peripatetics, and the sect
Epicurean, and the Stoic severe.

The poets, orators, and philosophical schools of Athens are only mentioned here. Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were the grave tragedians—teachers best Of moral prudence. The challenge of Phoebus means that Homer's poetry was declared by some to be that of Apollo himself. Æolian charms and Dorian lyric odes, alludes to different measures and dialects of Greek poetry. He, who bred great Alexander, was the philosopher Aristotle. The chief of the thundering orators, was Demosthenes, who exhorted his countrymen by the most powerful eloquence to resist Philip of Macedon; and Socrates was so pure, humble, and powerful a moralist, that he has sometimes been compared with the founder of our religion.

COMUS.

Among the ancients, Comus was the god of low pleasures— of those noisy and foolish frolics which are suited to night rather than to day, and which some ignorant and intemperate people delight in. Milton's Masque of Comus is a beautiful poem: it is founded upon the supposed power which Comus possesses over the minds of the pure and wise, and over the weak and sensual.

Milton presumes that when men devote themselves to the rites of Comus, that is to excessive drinking, and, as the Gospel says, to "riotous living," they become in reality beasts, though they know not that they are thus degraded, but, that if the mind is firm in good principles it will resist every attraction of vice, and retain its innocence under the strongest temptations. Comus was written in the dramatic form, to be represented by the Earl of Bridgewater's family at Ludlow Castle.

The Fable of Comus is this—A beautiful lady, accompanied by her two brothers, is journeying through the perplexed paths of a drear wood. A spirit from heaven, charged with the care of the young travellers, secretly watches over them, but the brothers for a while are separated from their sister. The lady, in the absence of her brothers, is found by Comus, but she resists all his attractions, and though she is endangered, finally escapes from his

snares.

"Comus enters with a charming-rod in one hand, his glass in the other; with him a rout of monsters, headed like sundry sorts of wild beasts, but otherwise like men and women, their apparel glistening; they come in making a riotous and unruly noise, with torches in their hands."

The lady hears this noise, but does not see the revellers. She is introduced listening and in doubt, but encouraging herself in her own innocence, and in the gracious protection of the "Supreme Good."

The Lady enters.

"This way the noise was, if mine ear be true,
My best guide now; methought it was the sound
Of riot and ill-managed merriment,

Such as the jocund flute, or gamesome pipe
Stirs up among the loose unlettered hinds,
When from their teeming flocks, and granges full,
In wanton dance they praise the bounteous Pan,
And thank the gods amiss. I should be loath
To meet the rudeness, and swilled insolence
Of such late wassailers; yet O where else
Shall I inform my unacquainted feet
In the blind mazes of this tangled wood?
My brothers, when they saw me wearied out
With this long way, resolving here to lodge
Under the spreading favor of these pines,
Stept, as they said, to the next thicket side
To bring me berries, or such cooling fruit