'But the passionate and creative genius, that is the nearest link to Divinity, and which no human tyranny can destroy, though it can divert it; that should have stirred the hearts of nations by its inspired sympathy, or governed senates by its burning eloquence; has found a medium for its expression, to which, in spite of your prejudices and your evil passions, you have been obliged to bow. The ear, the voice, the fancy teeming with combinations, the imagination fervent with picture and emotion, that came from Caucasus, and which we have preserved unpolluted, have endowed us with almost the exclusive privilege of Music; that science of harmonious sounds, which the ancients recognised as most divine, and deified in the person of their most beautiful creation. I speak not of the past; though, were I to enter into the history of the lords of melody, you would find it the annals of Hebrew genius. But at this moment even, musical Europe is ours. There is not a company of singers, not an orchestra in a single capital, that is not crowded with our children under the feigned names which they adopt to conciliate the dark aversion which your posterity will some day disclaim with shame and disgust. Almost every great composer, skilled musician, almost every voice that ravishes you with its transporting strains, spring from our tribes. The catalogue is too vast to enumerate; too illustrious to dwell for a moment on secondary names, however eminent. Enough for us that the three great creative minds to whose exquisite inventions all nations at this moment yield-Rossini, Meyerbeer, Mendelssohn, are of Hebrew race; and little do your men of fashion, your muscadins of Paris, and your dandies of London, as they thrill into raptures at the notes of a Pasta or a Grisi-little do they suspect that they are offering their homage to "the sweet singers of Israel!" Disraeli, Coningsby.

63. THE SAXONS.

This people most probably derive their name, as well as their origin, from the Sacæ, a nation of the Asiatic Scythia. At the time of which we write, they had seated themselves in the Cimbric Chersonesus, or Jutland, in the countries of Holstein and Sleswick, and thence extended along the Elbe and Weser to the coast of the German Ocean, as far as the mouths of the Rhine. In that tract they lived in a sort of loose military com

monwealth of the ordinary German model under several leaders, the most eminent of whom was Hengist, descended from Odin, the great conductor of the Asiatic colonies. It was to this chief that the Britons applied themselves. They invited him by a promise of ample pay for his troops, a large share of their common plunder, and the isle of Thanet for a settlement.

The army, which came over under Hengist, did not exceed fifteen hundred men. The opinion, which the Britons had entertained of the Saxon prowess, was well founded; for they had the principal share in a decisive victory, which was obtained over the Picts soon after their arrival, a victory which for ever freed the Britons from all terror of the Picts and Scots, but in the same moment exposed them to an enemy no less dangerous.

Hengist and his Saxons, who had obtained by the free vote of the Britons that introduction into this island they had so long in vain attempted by arms, saw that by being necessary they were superior to their allies. They discovered the character of the king; they were eye-witnesses of the internal weakness and distraction of the kingdom. This state of Britain was represented with so much effect to the Saxons in Germany, that another and much greater embarkation followed the first; new bodies daily crowded in. As soon as the Saxons began to be sensible of their strength, they found it their interest to be discontented; they complained of breaches of a contract, which they construed according to their own designs; and then fell rudely upon their unprepared and feeble allies, who, as they had not been able to resist the Picts and Scots, were still less in a condition to oppose that force by which they had been protected against those enemies, when turned unexpectedly upon themselves. Hengist, with very little opposition, subdued the province of Kent, and there laid the foundation of the first Saxon kingdom. Every battle the Britons fought only prepared them for a new defeat by weakening their strength, and displaying the inferiority of their courage. Vortigern, instead of a steady and regular resistance, opposed a mixture of timid war and unable negotiation. In one of their meetings, wherein the business, according to the German mode, was carried on amidst feasting and riot, Vortigern was struck with the beauty of a Saxon virgin, a kinswoman of Hengist, and entirely under his influence. Having married her, he delivered himself over to her councils.

His people harassed by their enemies, betrayed by their prince, and indignant at the feeble tyranny that oppressed them, deposed him, and set his son Vortimer in his place. But the change of the king proved no remedy for the exhausted state of the nation, and the constitutional infirmity of the government. For even if the Britons could have supported themselves against the superior abilities and efforts of Hengist, it might have added to their honour, but would have contributed little to their safety. The news of his success had roused all Saxony. Five great bodies of that adventurous people, under different and independent commanders, very nearly at the same time broke in upon as many different parts of the island. They came no longer as pirates, but as invaders.-Burke.

64. LAST WORDS OF CELEBRATED CHARACTERS.

Whoever has not lived well, does not know how to die well.

Martin Luther.

To learn how to die, is certainly one of the most useful endeavours in life. It is, therefore, a comfort and a powerful incitation for all of us to reflect on the way in which some of the eminent men, whose names are recorded in the political and literary history of the world, breathed their last, to remember the words which fell from their dying lips.

There is much to be learnt from such recollections, and we will, for that purpose, endeavour to describe some of these 'last scenes.'

The immortal German poet, the author of 'William Tell,' 'Wallenstein,' and 'Don Carlos,' died (1805) in the bloom of manhood, and at the acme of his glory. He had much to regret in life; yet, as a female friend asked him how he found himself, Schiller answered composedly: 'More and more calm.' And, in fact, calmness seems the death-prerogative of good men, certainly a precious reward for a life spent in the fulfilment of duties.

The great Goethe, true to the last to his high mind, already in the grasp of death, asks for 'light, more light.'

Johannes Müller, who has been named the Tacitus of Switzerland,' and who possessed really much of the thoughtful

G

brevity, and the ardent love of liberty of the Roman annalist, died in 1809, with the words: 'All that exists belongs to God, and all that happens comes from God.' The eminent historian uttered this remarkable exclamation in the last hour of his life, when he knew no longer those who stood around him, in a gentle but firm voice; then he turned round and was no more.

We have met somewhere with a curious instance of a very earnest man dying in the act of making a joke. Wolfgang Musculus, a professor of theology at Berne, lay quietly on his death-bed (1563). His learned friend Haller spoke to him on the vanity of life, and exclaimed: 'Ah! quid sumus?' The professor answered with a smile, ‘fumus,' and expired.

Jean Jacques Rousseau, who exercised a great influence over France, and, as it were, the world, the father of modern deists, author of the 'Contrat Social,' the code of revolutionists, of ‘Emile ’—in spite of many errors a most valuable work on education—of the romantic 'Nouvelle Héloïse,' and the curious 'Confessions' of his own life and feelings, died in 1778. His last words were a solemn confirmation of his religious faith : 'Being of beings, God!'

Addison, at the approach of death (1719), behaved in such a remarkable manner that we shall give Dr. Young's own account of it: 'After a long and manly, but vain struggle with his temper, he dismissed his physicians, and with them all hopes of life. But with his hopes of life he dismissed not his concern for the living, but sent for a youth nearly related and finely accomplished, but not above being the better for good impressions from a dying friend. He came, the dying friend was silent. After a pause, the youth said: "Dear sir, you sent for me; I believe and hope that you have some commands; I shall hold them most sacred. May distant ages not only hear but feel the reply." Forcibly grasping the youth's hand, he softly said: "See in what peace a Christian can die." He spoke with difficulty, and soon expired.'

Hunter, physician in ordinary to the Queen of England, one of the most learned and celebrated men of his profession, said at the hour of his death (1783): 'I would I could hold my pen in order to write down how easy and agreeable it is to die.'

The distinguished author of the 'Essay on Man,' Alexander Pope, said shortly before his death, which happened in May

1744: One of the things that I have always most wondered at, is that there should be any such thing as human vanity; if I had any, I saw enough to mortify it a few days ago, for I lost my mind for a whole day.' What could ordinary men say, when the writer of the Essay on the Immortality of the Soul' expressed himself in such a striking manner?

Last, but not least, the illustrious author of the ‘Essay concerning Human Understanding,' John Locke, who was, with his countryman, Bacon, and the French Descartes, the founder of our modern philosophy and method of reasoning, said the day before his death (1704), to Lady Masham: 'I have lived enough, and thank God for having spent my life so happily.'

When the good utopist and great scholar, Thomas More, was told that the king had graciously changed his sentence to be hanged, drawn, and quartered (1536), into that of being beheaded, he observed with his usual cheerfulness: God forbid that the king may ever grant the same favour to any of my friends.' When he had already put his head on the block, he begged the executioner to allow him to put his beard beside, observing that it had committed no high treason.

If we turn now from the sixteenth century to the eighteenth, the men and women of the French revolution will teach us an equally useful lesson, from Mirabeau, who, when he could no longer speak, wrote with his dying hand 'to sleep,' down to Danton, who, when the executioner prevented him, on the guillotine, from embracing his friend, Hérault de Séchelles, exclaimed in his usual bold manner: Will you prevent our two heads from embracing each other presently in the basket?' Is there not heroic grandeur in Madame Roland's last invocation Oh liberty! how many crimes are committed in thy name!' and moving despair in poor André Chénier's exclamation, when, at the foot of the scaffold, he touched his noble forehead and sighed, ‘And, nevertheless, there was something here!' And yet the death they suffered was violent and premature. Saint Just and Charlotte Corday were both under thirty years of age when they concluded their life under the hands of the executioner. Royalists and republicans, Girondists and Montagnards, all showed the same valorous spirit, for each had bound his life to a principle which he believed to be true and just.

And how many ended a noble, youthful, and brilliant career