octave of his solemn banishment, without de- | mur, or doubt, or tremor, back he plunges into the very centre of Eden. On a Friday, suppose, he is expelled through the main entrance on the Friday following, he re-enters upon the forbidden premises through a clandestine entrance. The upshot is, that the heavenly police suffer, in the first place, the one sole enemy, who was, or could be the object of their vigilance, to pass without inquest or suspicion; thus they inaugurate their task; secondly, by the merest accident (no thanks to their fidelity) they detect him, and with awful adjurations sentence him to perpetual banishment; but, thirdly, on his immediate return, in utter contempt of their sentence, they ignore him altogether, and apparently act upon Dogberry's direction, that, upon meeting a thief, the police may suspect him to be no true man; and, with such manner of men, the less they meddle or make, the more it will be for their honesty. From Eliza Cook's Journal. THE RAINBOW. Colors are the smiles of nature.-LEIGH HUNT. Ir is undeniable that the Greeks had greatly the advantage of us dull moderns, not only in their exquisite perception of beauty, their architecture, their sculpture, and their poetry, but even in the imaginative errors of their primeval philosophy. "I had rather be wrong with Plato than right with any one else," said Cicero, and we may (with all due respect for the majesty of science) in like manner prefer the speculations of Virgil and Ovid to the superior accuracy of Sir Isaac Newton and Antonio de Dominis,*-at all events on the subject of rainbows. The dry certainties of later discovery pale before the glowing suppositions of those Sons of the Morning, who invested with deity all the varied phenomena of earth and air; who worshipped Hyperion in the sun, and Diana in the moon; who regarded the convulsions of the Sicilian volcano as the restlessness of a captive monster; who looked * Antonio de Dominis, bishop of Spaletro, published a treatise in the year 1611, entiled De Radiis Visus et Lucis, in which he advanced that the rainbow was formed by the refraction of the sunbeams in the drops of rain-water, instead of being produced on the whole body of rain or vapor, as was previously supposed. "Typhæus was a monstrous giant with a hundred dragons' heads, who warred against Jupiter in the great struggle of the Titans with the king of the gods. Jupiter tore up the whole island of Sicily and flung it upon him. One promontory acted as a presser upon one hand; another on another; a upon the spring flowers as the bounty of Aurora, and were grateful to Ceres for the plenteousness of autumn; who beheld in the lightnings the thunderbolts of Jove, and welcomed Iris, the god descended, in the ethereal glories of the rainbow. Candor compels us to admit that the sun and the vapor, the refrangibility of the different particles of light, and the degrees in which the rays are decomposed into their proper colors within the drops of water, have a great deal to do with the matter; but the study of optics is infinitely perplexing and unsatisfactory; we get bewildered. amid whole alphabets of contradictory A's and B's, who, looking straight at C, behold D instead; and giving up the diagrams in disgust, revert gladly from this staid anatomical view of the "triple-colored bow" to the mythological genealogy of Iris. Iris was one of the fabled Oceanides, a messenger of the gods, and an attendant of Juno. A light and gorgeous being with golden. locks, borne upon the purple clouds of the sunset, and winged with heavenly plumage, brilliant in all the tints of the rainbow. To her was confided the task of severing that thread which detains the soul in the mortal body of the dying: she supplied the clouds with the waters of the deluge, and became, third on his legs; and the crater of Mount Etna was left him for a spiracle. There he lay in the time of Ovid, making the cities tremble as he turned."- Vide Leigh Hunt's Jar of Honey. when they subsided, the type of human | hope. The very name of the Rainbow is a pleasant compound, greatly superior to the arcobaleno of the Italians, but not to be compared to the poetical arc-en-ciel of our French neighbors. How elegant is the form of the rainbow! Arched and unsubstantial-the perfect curve of beauty that the artists say so much about. Then its unsullied and divinely contrasted hues; distinct, yet blending; red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet---deep and glowing, yet fading imperceptibly one into an other, Like sweet thoughts in a dream. Painters have seldom succeeded in transferring the evanescent splendor of the rainbow to the material canvas: Turner has done it, Martin (we believe) has done it, and Claude might have done it, but we cannot, at this moment, recall any picture of his in which it is represented. Its airy transparency, the rich, yet delicate hues of which it is composed, Orange and azure deepening into gold,— and the optical delusion that combines apparent nearness with actual remoteness, are the great difficulties to the artist, and the chief attributes of the phenomenon. : "Colors are the smiles of nature," saith the quotation at the commencement of our essay-then is nature for ever smiling upon us in the green meadows, the blue sky, and the "laughing flowers;" but never smiles she so joyously and so kindly as in the rainbow after weeping gentle rains upon the earth, she rejoices again:-"after a storm, comes a calm,"-after showers, sunshine and a rainbow. Fancy one of these bright things after a storm at sea, spreading its beauty over half the sky, and cheering the faint hearts of the weary voyagers. Fancy the ship, after its hard battle with the angry waters, going gallantly forward, as if it meant to sail right through this glorious archway into some terra incognita of undiscovered fertility. What a land might we not hope to find beyond a portal such as this,-what cloudless skies, new flowers, and strange birds with wondrous plumage; and, above all, what just and happy human beings, blest with liberty and love, and wise in all the lore Of painting, sculpture, and wrapt poesy, Byron, in the second canto of Don Juan, has described a rainbow on the ocean under more dreary circumstances, however, than this Utopian reverie; the verses contain much that is picturesque and even grand, but scarcely earnest enough for the fearful narrative to which they belong : Now overhead a rainbow, bursting through Waxed broad and waving, like a banner free, Then changed like to a bow that's bent, and then Forsook the dim eyes of these shipwrecked men. It changed of course; a heavenly chameleon, The airy child of vapor and the sun,Brought forth in purple, cradled in vermilion, Baptized in molten gold, and swathed in dun, Glittering like crescents o'er a Turk's pavilion, And blending every color into one. Not less beautiful is the motionless calm of the rainbow when throned on the fierce deluge of the tempest, or on the restless torrent of the mountain cataract: it seems to us a strange and lovely phenomenon that this calmest arch should be based on one of the least substantial and controllable of elements. Fire itself is not more irresistible than the Alpine cataracts of Mont Blanc, or the cascade of Velino. Shelley has worthily described one of the former,* and Byron the latter : Thine earthly rainbows stretched across the Of the ethereal waterfall, whose veil SHELLEY. Mont Blanc. The roar of waters !-from the headlong height Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice; The fall of waters! rapid as the light The flashing mass foams, shaking the abyss; The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss, And boil in endless torture; while the sweat Of their great agony, wrung out from this That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set. Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet Resembling, 'mid the torture of the scene, Love watching madness with unalterable mien. BYRON. Childe Harold, Canto IV. Such is the rainbow of Velino, such that of Terni, of Niagara, and of the cataracts of the monarch of mountains. The winds and dashing spray disturb not its impalpable serenity; the icy mountain peaks, and the silent glaciers are not more eternal. The glorious ministry of the sun appears so indispensable, that the notion of a lunar rainbow is something unfamiliar and strange. The poets put it out of the question altogether; and still more uncongenial are the colorless rainbows of M. Marlotte. M. Bohault, in agreeable contrast, tells us of brilliant colored rainbows on the grass, formed by the refractions of the sun's rays on the morning dew. It is pleasant to fancy the daisies and buttercups peeping up through this new and gorgeous raiment. siasm of diction, his extended philosophical views, and boundless liberality of opinion, errs (on the side of justice, however) in calling it "the million-colored bow." Notwithstanding that the rainbow has been long a favorite illustration and accessory in poetry, we do not remember ever to have met with it as the subject of a poem. Campbell, in his Pleasures of Hope, alludes to it but once, and then cursorily, which is strange, considering the title of that beautiful work. It is in the opening lines, as follows:At summer eve, when Heaven's aerial bow Spans with bright arch the glittering hills below, Why to yon mountain turns the musing eye, Whose sun-bright summit mingles with the sky? More sweet than all the landscape smiling near?Why do those cliffs of shadowy tint appear Tis distance lends enchantment to the view, And robes the mountain in its azure hue. Still more strange is Shakspeare's infrePainters and poets have long agreed in quent allusion to this most poetical of obconsidering the rainbow as a symbol of Hope.jects; he mentions it but thrice in the whole Alas! that Hope should so frequently be anchored on dreams as fragile as its emblem! Milton says, in the twelfth book of Paradise Lost, that Noah descends from the Ark With all his train; Then with uplifted hands, and eyes devout, It is curious to observe in what trifling touches the shades of character are defined: -let us compare this bow of "three listed colors" with Shelley's account of a rainbow in his exquisite poem on A Cloud: The triumphal arch through which I march, When the powers of the air are chained to my chair, Is the million-colored bow; The sphere-fire above its soft colors wove A greater contrast could scarcely be exhibited than this, or one that would illustrate with greater accuracy the antagonistic natures of the two poets. Milton's gigantic mind-looking at nature as set within bounds more distinct and formal,-limited the hues of the bow to the three primary colors, which was not just, for the secondary shades of orange, green, and violet, are as lovely to the eye. Shelley, with his daring enthu Trait de Physique. course of his works, and the following is the only instance in which it is not used as a mere passing illustration to the subject.* To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, Thomson, in his fine, noble style, says of it in Spring: Meantime, refracted from yon eastern cloud, Laman Blanchard, with great fancy and feeling, exclaims with a poet's fervor: A rainbow! it is heaven's lyre! and L. E. L. says beautifully in one of her brief and sorrowful lyrics :- But hope has wakened since and wept Itself like a rainbow, away; And the flowers have faded and fallen around, We have none for a wreath for to-day. *See Merry Wives of Windsor, Act IV. Scene 3; and Winter's Tale, Act IV. Scene 3. I WAS travelling in Germany some eigh- | teen or twenty years ago, when the events which I am going to relate took place. It was my first tour. I was fresh from college, where I had studied with an intensity that had rendered total relaxation as much a necessity as a pleasure. REGNIER. proceed to the University of Gottingen, in his native Saxony, and I had not seen or heard of him since his departure. Could study have altered him thus? It was strange: his means were ample; his prospects excellent; and it seemed scarcely probable that any great misfortune should have befallen him, that could stamp such an expression of haggard wretchedness upon his countenance. It was at Coblentz that I met with my early friend Heinrich S., or, to speak more accurately, it was on the road to Coblentz, He took my arm, and we walked slowly for I had sent my servant on with the horses, on towards Coblentz. He spoke little by the and was proceeding leisurely along the road, way, and that little hastily and unwillingly : which, at this point, hangs like a suspended his words were frequently contradictory, and gallery above the wooded banks and nest- uttered in a wandering, melancholy tone, that ling villages that border the glorious Rhine. was most distressing. He lapsed frequently The evening was beautiful, and above, in the into a moody silence, and then laughed loudclear sky, the first solitary star was tremly when I had said nothing to provoke it. bling into light. I should never have recognized Heinrich S., but that he spoke to me, as I stood looking over the landscape, and extended his hand to me. I had some difficulty in believing that it was the same youth who had been my class-fellow at Eton. There Heinrich was the sharpest, the boldest, and the most mischievous boy amongst usthe idol of the scholars, and the misery of the masters. Now, how changed was his appearance. Though in reality but a few months my senior, he looked ten years older. His cheeks were white and sunken; his lips bloodless; his eyes, surrounded by a dark circle, looked bright and wild; his hair hung in long dark masses about his face, and his dress was soiled and travel-stained. He had left Eton-where he had been placed by his parents, then resident in England-to I began to fear that he was not perfectly in his right senses, and was glad when we entered the narrow streets of the town, and reached the inn whither my servant had preceded me. Here Heinrich left me, promising to return in an hour's time to dinner, for he was staying, he told me, at a neighboring hotel. So I sat and waited for him in the wooden gallery outside the windows of my apartment, watching the passers-by in the street below, and pondering over my late encounter. I came back into the room, closed the window, drew the curtains, replenished my meerschaum, and waited, not very patiently, for my dinner and my guest. Both came at last: first the guest, then the dinner. S. seemed to make an effort to shake off his gloom, but the meal was not a social one, and I saw with concern that he ate little, but drank recklessly, pouring out for himself | all my buoyancy of spirit; the noisy extravglass after glass of pure cognac brandy. I no longer fancied that Heinrich was not in his right mind, but I feared that he drank deeply-perhaps to banish the memory of some passion which I felt sure must be the secret care of his life. We smoked, we drank -the former, as all do in Germany, incessantly-the latter on his part deeply, on mine moderately. We talked of old times: of Eton; of our friends and relations (his parents, he told me, were both dead); of college life; of Cambridge; of Gottingen; of learning; and of writers. By this time the coldness of his manner had quite vanished. A feverish excitement seemed to possess him. I was the listener, he the speaker. He was enthusiastic on the subject of ancient literature-a stream of eloquence flowed from his lips, and with every draught of the burning liquid he grew more and more delightful in his discourse. "You must be very happy, Heinrich," said I, with a sigh, "to be so young, and to have studied with great advantage. I have not succeeded in acquiring half the knowledge which you possess of art, science, and literature." He made no answer; turned as pale as a corpse, and seemed unable to articulate. I poured out another glass of brandy, and gave it into his hand, for his expression alarmed me. He drank it at a draught, laughed hysterically, and burst into tears. I was inexpressibly shocked. "Heinrich," "Heinrich," said I, "earnestly, laying my hand at the same time upon his sleeve, "Heinrich, what has done this?" For a long time he would not reply to me: at last he yielded to my entreaties, drew his chair nearer to mine, filled another glass, and placed it at his elbow, wiped his forehead nervously, and confided to me the following story: agancies of my fellow-countrymen and stu- The "I was a literary fanatic; I dwelt in a world of imagination, and amid an ideal community. In the silent nights, when the passing student looked up with pitying surprise at the steady light from my windows, I walked in thought with the philosophers of old, and held high converse with the spirits of the past. My rooms had almost the appearance of some ancient wizard's retreat. Crucibles, retorts, magnetic apparatus, electrical machines, microscopes, jars, receivers, philosophical instruments, and books, crowded every part. No chemical theory was too wild, no enterprise too difficult for me. I think I was scarcely sane at this time, for I began to hate mankind, and live solely for myself and my own mind. When I am of age,' I promised myself, 'I will seek out some lonely solitude where travellers never pass, and there I will build a house and live the life of the soul.' And I did so. My parents died before I left the university, and when I passed out of its gates I stepped forth into the wide world, a creature ignorant of the usages of life; possessed of riches for which I had no value; lonely, learned, and friendless. Yet not utterly friendless: that could be called that subsisted solely in the interchange of thought, for I believe we had never even shaken hands or broken bread together-with the professor of mathematics under whom I had studied. To him alone I bade a "It is now ten years since I entered the University at Gottingen. I was then eigh-I had contracted a friendship-if friendship teen, and my name was entered on the books on the 2nd of February, 1822. I was a very wild, happy fellow, when you knew me; but somehow I became a very different fellow when I entered on my university life. I had left my parents, my friends, my English home farewell; to him confided my plans of rebehind me. Germany was no fatherland to tirement; to him promised the knowledge of me. England was the scene of my youthful my retreat as soon as I had established myeducation, the land of my first friends, and I self in it, and to him offered the hospitality felt lonely, and a stranger in my native place. of that roof when I obtained it. It was not Perhaps it seemed all the lonelier for its be-long before I found such an one as I desired. ing my native place, and my knowing no I left Germany, and crossed over to Engsoul in any part of it. At all events, I lost land. My old friends were all removed, or |