LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE. THE current, that with gentle murmur glides, Thou know'st, being stopped, impatiently doth rage; But, when his fair course is not hindered, He makes sweet musick with the enamel'd stones, Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge He overtaketh in his pilgrimage; And so by many winding nooks he strays With willing sport to the wild ocean. Then let me go, and hinder not my course: I'll be as patient as a gentle stream, Till the last step have brought me to my love; A blessed soul doth in Elysium. SHAKESPEARE. IDEM LATINE. NONNE vides, leni labens cum murmure rivus, J. C. GODLEY. CURTIUS, HIST. OF GREECE, vol. ii, p. 209 (Engl. Trans.) In the last years of the Tyrants, as the ancient writers relate, two boys had grown up together, the sons of Lysimachus and of Neocles; both becoming, from an early period of their lives, by the great promise of their natural gifts, objects of a general attention, which was heightened by the circumstance that from year to year a more marked difference manifested itself between the two. The son of Lysimachus was Aristides. He was distinguished by a lively sense of order and right, a tender conscience, a deep moral abhorrence of all illegal proceedings, and an inborn hatred of all untruth and dishonesty. His early manhood coincided with the fair springtime of Attic popular liberty, in the foundation of which he already took an active part as the friend of Clisthenes; nor has any man ever possessed a deeper and more lively comprehension of the mission of Athens the union of free mental progress with the discipline of law. Simple, pure, and sincere of heart as Aristides was, he, at an early period of his life, without any personal wish of his own, acquired both the confidence of the public and an influence upon it; in him his fellow-citizens beheld and loved the model of a young Athenian, and knew that all his wishes were for Athens, and none for himself. Themistocles, the son of Neocles, was a few years younger than Aristides. By nature Themistocles possessed a passionate temperament, which rendered a peaceable and harmonious development impossible; his vehement and selfwilled disposition resisted all guidance by other hands; his desires shot up untamed, and it was impossible to decide whether there was more to be hoped or feared from him. |