halo of light to stimulate us to exertion, that in after years thou may'st not be ashamed to own us for thy sons. N. N. N.

A GOLDEN Summer is past and gone,
And unsparing time still bears me on
To the brink of life's tempestuous sea,
And the ocean of eternity.

Enough in my sunny boyhood's hours
Have I toyed with youth's ambrosial flowers.
Already the pangs of life I feel,

And the cares of manhood around me steal,
As away friends are hurried one by one,
And faces sadden that brightly shone,
And sorrow will moisten the eye, where late
But mirth and gladness and laughter sate-
Thou too must part, not without a tear,
Comrade thro' Eton's blest career;

Thou too must part, and no more that voice
Shall be heard thro' the fields where all rejoice;

With other hearts must my own entwine :
When shall I know such a heart as thine?
We're as two leaves on the self-same spray,
Nipped by the cutting wind's rage away;
Two pearls on the self-same flower, which morn
Smiled on in brightness, but noon hath borne
One to the sky, and one to the river,
Till they meet in the ocean's breast for ever.
Thou must to Granta's time-honoured towers,
I unto soft-flowing Isis' bowers;

Both to a world of care and pain.

When shall we know such a life again?

But what, tho' thro' distant lands we range?

The true heart's constancy nought can change :

And, tho' we meet not on life's dark sea,
Yet shall we meet to eternity.

P. N.

LINES ADDRESSED TO THE MOON.

"To behold the wandering moon."

IL PENSEROSO.

O SILENT Moon, when melancholy steals
At times, unseen, my inmost heart within,
Thou art my solace, when, unveiled to earth,
Thou rid'st in heav'n, and hazy twilight dies
Extinguished at thy glance; while distant sounds,
Like the last flickerings of a midnight lamp,
Throng hurried and tumultuous, soon to fade
In the approaching night. No piercing light,
O moon, is thine, but such as serves to shew
Broad outlines, and soothes down whate'er by day
Offends the eye. O'er tow'r, and field, and wood,
And where the mists of night in the thin air
Hang o'er the rivers, all things seem to lie
Steep'd and enchanted in thy mellow rays.
Then shadowy silence lends her influence

To lead the mind, oppressed with anxious thoughts,

From each particular care, that it

may roam
Where'er it lists, in dreamy happiness.
In silent awe all nature worships. Things
Inanimate and animate alike

Send up to thee, and to thy Maker's praise,

Their nightly adoration. So I too,

Stricken with all those images, that calm,

Yet move the heart, confess thy reign of peace-
Thy reign of peace—and thought, and poetry.
Oft from my window do I gaze on thee,
And long drink in the calm thou giv'st, and love
Thy pale, wan face, that seems to sympathize
With sadness. Thou, with gentle violence

Seizing my heart, dost win away the pain,
Or rather, win it into happiness;

That melancholy's self doth seem disarmed
Of its sharp sting, and only wounds with peace.

ON THE

ESTIMATE OF FEMALE CHARACTER,

AS DEVELOPED IN THE WRITINGS OF THE ANCIENTS.

"Le donne antiche hanno mirabil cose

Fatto nell' arme, et nelle sacre Muse;

E di lor opre belle e gloriose

Gran lume in tutto il mondo si diffuse."

ARIOSTO.

Bright dames of old did many a wondrous deed,

In sacred poetry, and knightly arms.

Fame's lustre thro' the world is spread; the meed
Of their fair actions, and their glorious charms.

"I HATE love," says Alcæus, the Messenian, in one of his Epigrams, but he seems to have half repented of this harsh sentence, before he has got through the three remaining lines. And verily, it is a terrible and formidable thing, to renounce the empire of Cupid altogether, to deny the point of his arrows, when shot by the dark beaming eyes of some fair girl, an ordeal, the force of which few of those can have experienced,

who treat love as a mere metaphysical idea, as a convenient entity for supplying a place in some favourite system, instead of the primum mobile, and spring of all our actions. To such Zoilists in love, we can in all confidence recommend a dose of 30 or 40 stanzas of Ariosto or Tasso, to be taken daily, and well digested; and we stake our professional reputation on its producing a healthy change in a few months. But it is not our intention here to give directions for engaging the affections of young ladies, being quite confident that practice is, in that case, the best guide; but to offer a few remarks upon the different degrees of estimation, in which ladies seem to have been held in the two great nations of antiquity.

It must strike every reader of the Homeric poems, that there is something in them which hints at an essentially different estimate of female virtue and excellence, than that pourtrayed in the next great delineations of human character, the Dramas of Athens. In the Odyssey, as might be expected, this is more apparent, inasmuch, as that is confined to the adventures of one man, and, therefore, gives us a clearer insight into the domestic and social relations of the Greeks, to one another, than the other, where war is the theme, and the deeds and achievements of several are grouped together. But, nevertheless, how different is the character of Helen in the Iliad, from that in the Helena and Orestes of Euripides. With Homer she is a noble lady, conscious of a fault committed, yet at the same time appearing to have been led to the committal of it by the impulse of a superior power

F

affectionate to all around her, as fully appears in the exquisitely beautiful speech, which she makes as the third mourner over the corse of Hector. There is something too very touching in the kind and respectful way Priam treats her in the 3rd book, during the combat of Menelaus and Paris, unmindful of the calamities which, through her, are about to fall on him and his race. Shakspeare, whose knowledge of mankind seems to have amounted to little less than absolute intuition, has excellently preserved both these points in his play of Troilus and Cressida, where he represents her commanding as much respect from the warriors of Troy, as any fair Helen of the present day could wish for. She appears also in the Odyssey, though with a less degree of interest, but the same sweetness and grace, never for a moment desert her. She is a queen, but what is more, she is a lady, and Homer alone, of the ancient poets, has been able to unite the two. The character of Penelope is rather obscured by that of her husband. She seems drawn with a studied coldness, in order to give greater force to the beautifully imagined scene of her recognition with Ulysses-a scene which few can read without feeling its transcendant art and beauty. The two remaining female characters, which serve to elucidate what we are saying, are those of Andromache and Nausicaa; the former of which, perhaps, has never been equalled-and there could hardly be selected anything which would shew more clearly the superiority of Homer over every other poet, than a comparison of her parting with Hector and Tecmessa's