and when the doors were open, and the breeze passed through, it came loaded with the perfume of flowers and fruits.

The minds of those enjoying such pure pleasures, and sucking wisdom from the lips of such a man, were chaste without effort, and elevated, not so much from enthusiasm as from nature. Knowing nothing mean, seeing nothing vulgar, hearing nothing vile, with bodies healthy by constitution, and preserved by simple habits, uncontaminated by falsehood and excitement, fresh as the flowers that bloomed by their feet, and innocent as the birds that waked their morning dreams, they realized to their instructor the theory, so abused by bigotted orthodoxy,' but now spreading widely over our country, that man is not wholly vile by nature.

'I consider health of body,' said he, 'equally a matter of education with the mind. You may educate a child to be a drunkard, by giving him dainties in his youth, injuring the tone of his stomach, and creating an unnatural appetite. Such a child, when he grows up, never will be satisfied with simple food. His nature, his acquired habit, will be, to crave stimulants; and, unless he possess a strong mind, and circumstances are favorable, he will prove a victim to his stomach. The world is mistaken upon the subject of intemperance, in my opinion. I believe it a disease; and by this view, I am enabled to account for ten thousand of brilliant and noble souls, that fall powerless under its ravages. To create a drunkard, you must, in the first place, destroy his natural stomach; and to reform one, you need something else than mere abstinence. Nature cannot well hold out, if unassisted. It is asking too much of him whose soul and ener gies are already wasted. No; he needs care and medicine; medicine for his mind and medicine for his body. On this account, I have paid great attention to the physical education of my adopted children; taking care that they always breathe pure air, and that their blood should never stagnate for want of exercise.'

The Quakers view all derelictions in the 'world's people,' as they call all without their own class, as the result of their faulty education. They have much charity for the errors of the young of other denomi nations; and indeed a very reasonable feeling for all errors, in young and unformed minds. They believe that vice and misery grow out of the fashions- the innocent fashions, to appearance of a pleasure-loving world. They attribute the errors and vices of men to the seeds their parents sow in their infancy. Is not this the truth? Whence the contamination of the city? Because there are the allurements held out to the young, to distract their minds, and make them loathe simplicity and quiet. There are held out the food for the passions of our nature, not intended to be called out until age has given prudence to counteract their injurious impulses, but which, by an early and fatal precocity, prove bane and poison to our city youth. Ask young men themselves, in those hours of sickness, and pain, and solitariness, which always come to the followers of pleasure, to remind them of the darker lot which awaits them, and they will tell you of the rock on which they split. They can trace the steps of their progress; they have never outgrown the early lessons of their childhood; they know what virtue is, and they love it in the abstract; but the force of temptation has been too great for them,

and they have fallen, 'blessed with the best capacity of doing right,' victims to the allurements of the world.

Now the Quakers know all this, for though not of the world, they are still in it, surrounded by its contagions, and disgusted by its frivolity. Hence their charity for the errors of the young, viewing them rather as diseases they could hardly have avoided, than as voluntary acts of evil. People generally do not know what good these kind folks do. How many hearts they fortify; how many souls they save; how many dissolute they reform; what blessings they scatter over the hills of Pennsylvania!

LINES TO A POET.

WRITTEN NEAR TRINITY CHURCH-YARD, NEW YORK.

Оn what a priceless mine of wealth within thee hoarded lies!
True lofty thought, sweet tenderness, and gentlest sympathies,
Like precious gems, are flashing up from their deep treasure-cells,
Through the pure waters of that fount, which from thy soul out-wells;
Thy words have waked a silent chord, firm in my bosom strung,
To thrilling melody, like that from the wild wind-harp wrung
By the soft summer breath of eve; an echo deep within

My soul, whose loud responding tone doth hail thee as its kin!

Sipping a cup, whose waters were as 'Marah to the soul,'
Yet miserly still lingering o'er each drop within the bowl,
I mused at morn, all moodily, upon the ancient graves,
O'er whose each old inhabitant, some low tree sadly waves,

Where nought but name and epitaph, traced on each time-worn stone,
Or mouldering urn, or cenotaph, tells of the loved ones gone!

Thinking how many a brow smiled o'er a heart all dead and cold,
Veiled like the ghastly skeleton at Egypt's feasts of old;
Whose hope was in the tomb of years, whose dread, futurity,
When forth thy glorious numbers burst, like sunbeams unto me!

Like Memnon's lyre of yore, which nought but the sun's touch might wake,
Forth from my heart the ringing chords to thy proud sweep did break:

I turned me from my moodiness, to swell the lay to thee,
Whose pen, like an enchanter's wand, hath mighty witchery!

IONE.

LETTERS

OF LUCIUS M. PISO, FROM ROME, TO FAUSTA, THE DAUGHTER OF GRACCHUS, AT PALMYRA.

BY THE AUTHOR OF THE PALMYRA LETTERS."

THE record which follows, is by the hand of me, NICHOMACHUS, once the happy servant of the great Queen of Palmyra, than whom the world never saw a queen more illustrious, or a woman adorned with brighter virtues. But my design is not to write her eulogy, or recite the wonderful story of her life. That task requires a stronger and a more impartial hand than mine. The life of Zenobia by Nichomachus, would be the portrait of a mother and a divinity, drawn by the pen of a child and a worshipper.

It

My object is a humbler, but perhaps also a more useful one. is to collect and arrange, in their proper order, such of the letters of the most noble LUCIUS MANLIUS PISO, as shall throw most light upon his character and times, supplying all defects of incident, and filling up all chasms that may occur, out of the knowledge which, more exactly than any one else, I have been able to gather concerning all that relates to the distinguished family of the Pisos, after its connection with the more distinguished one still, of the Queen of Palmyra.

It is in this manner that I propose to amuse the few remaining

years of a green old age, not without hope both to amuse and benefit others also. This is a labor, as those will discover who read not unsuitable to one who stands trembling on the verge of life, and whom a single rude blast may in a moment consign to the embraces of the universal mother. I will not deny that my chief satisfaction springs from the fact, that in collecting these letters, and binding them together by a connecting narrative, I am engaged in the honorable task of tracing out some of the steps by which the new religion has risen to its present height of power. For whether true or false, neither friend nor foe, neither philosopher nor fool, can refuse to admit the regenerating and genial influences of its so wide reception upon the Roman character and manners. If not the gift of the gods, it is every way worthy a divine origin; and I cannot but feel myself to be worthily occupied in recording the deeds, the virtues, and the sufferings, of those who put their faith in it, and in times of danger and oppression, stood forth to defend it. Age is slow of belief. The thoughts then cling with a violent pertinacity to the fictions of its youth, once held to be the most sacred realities. But for this I should, I believe, myself long ago have been a Christian. I daily pray to the Supreme Power that my stubborn nature may yet so far yield, that I may be able, with a free and full assent, to call myself a follower of Christ. A Greek by birth, a Palmyrene by choice and adoption, a Roman by necessity — and these are all honorable names - I would yet rather be a Christian than either. Strange that with so strong desires after a greater good, I should remain fixed where I have ever been! Stranger still, seeing I have moved so long in the same sphere with the excellent Piso, the divine Julia that emanation of Godand the God-like Probus! But there is no riddle so hard for man to read as himself. I sometimes feel most inclined toward the dark fatalism of the Stoics, since it places all things beyond the region of conjecture or doubt.

Yet if I may not be a Christian myself— I do not, however, cease both to hope and pray- I am happy in this, that I am permitted by the Divine Providence to behold, in these the last days of life, the quiet supremacy of a faith which has already added so much to the common happiness, and promises so much more. Having stood in the midst, and looked upon the horrors of two persecutions of the Christians the first by Aurelian and the last by Diocletian — and which seemed at one moment as if it would accomplish its work, and blot out the very name of Christian I have no language in which to express the satisfaction with which I sit down beneath the peaceful shadows of a Christian throne, and behold the general security and exulting freedom enjoyed by the many millions throughout the vast empire of the great Constantine. Now, every where around, the Christians are seen, undeterred by any apprehension of violence, with busy hands rëerecting the demolished temples of their pure and spiritual faith; yet not unmindful, in the mean time, of the labor yet to be done, to draw away the remaining multitudes of idolaters from the superstitions which, while they infatuate, degrade and brutalize them. With the zeal of the early apostles of this religion, they are applying themselves, with untiring diligence, to soften and subdue the stony heart of hoary Paganism, receiving but too often, as their only return,

curses and threats - now happily vain - but often again retiring from the assault, leading in glad triumph captive multitudes. Often, as I sit at my window, overlooking, from the southern slope of the Quirinal, the magnificent Temple of the Sun, the proudest monument of Aurelian's reign, do I pause to observe the labors of the artificers who, just as it were beneath the shadow of its columns, are placing the last stones upon the dome of a Christian church. Into that church the worshippers shall enter unmolested; mingling peacefully, as they go and return, with the crowds that throng the more gorgeous temple of the idolaters. Side by side, undisturbed and free, do the Pagans and Christians, Greeks, Jews, and Egyptians, now observe the rites, and offer the worship, of their varying faiths. This happiness, we owe to the wise and merciful laws of the great Constantine. So was it, long since, in Palmyra, under the benevolent rule of Zenobia. May the time never come, when Christians shall do otherwise than now; when, remembering the wrongs they have received, they shall retaliate torture and death upon the blind adherents of the ancient superstitions!

These Letters, relating chiefly to the connexion of Piso and Julia with Probus and the Christians, now follow.

LETTER 1. FROM PISO TO FAUSTA.

I AM not surprised, Fausta, that you complain of my silence. It were strange indeed if you did not. But as for most of our misdeeds we have excuses ready at hand, so have I for this. First of all, I was not ignorant that, however I might fail you, from your other greater friend you would experience no such neglect; but on the contrary, would be supplied, with sufficient fulness and regularity, with all that could be worth knowing, concerning either our public or private affairs. For her sake, too, I was not unwilling, that at first the burden of this correspondence, if I may so term it, should rest where it has, since it has afforded, I am persuaded, a pleasure, and provided an occupation, that could have been found no where else. Just as a flood of tears brings relief to a bosom laboring under a heavy sorrow, so has this pouring out of herself to you, in frequent letters, served to withdraw her mind from recollections which, dwelt upon as they were at first, would soon have ended that life in which all ours seem bound up.

Then again, if you accept the validity of this excuse, I have another which, as a woman, you will at once allow the force of. You will not deem it a better one than the other, but doubtless as good. It is this: that for a long time I have been engaged in taking possession of my new dwelling upon the Coelian, not far from that of Portia. Of this you may have heard, in the letters which have reached you, but that will not prevent me from describing to you, with more exactness than any other can have done it, the home of your old and fast friend, Lucius Manlius Piso; for I think it adds greatly to the pleasure with which we think of an absent friend, to be able to see, as in a picture, the form, and material, and position, of the house he inhabits, and even the very aspect and furniture of the room in which he