LXXXVIII. Well didst thou match thy fame : There is a moral sublimity in the confidence with which Horace speaks of his works; it seems like the prophetic impression of a mind conscious of its own immortality; of setting its peculiar stamp on every thought and feeling. He was, indeed, a true vates, and his Odes are his vaticinations. Both Virgil and himself considered their fame as lastingly fixed as the Capitol :—where is a brick that formed it? where is a line of either Poet that shall not descend to remotest posterity? The Capitol possesses for us an interest deeper still. "It was at Rome," says the equally enduring Gibbon, on the 15th of October, 1764, as I sate musing amidst "the ruins of the Capitol, whilst the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of "writing the Decline and Fall of the city first started to my "mind." 66 XC. How much of life is lost! The entire sentiment is from Pliny while gazing on the same scenes which the illustrious characters of past times beheld, we experience a mingled feeling of pride and delight in adopting their sentiments; it seems as if we thus identified our beings with their own: as if the void of time were filled up, the links of the present united with those of the past, while we are moulding our minds, as it were, to receive from the same objects the same humanising impressions. JOURNAL. XCI. Romantic Tivoli! When standing in the gorge beneath, the circuitous hills around, their sides, grey, and broken, and rocky, overhanging, the "præceps Anio" falling in one noble sheet of foam, full in front, the mists everywhere rising up from its rocky bed below, and curling upwards against the castellated looking cliffs then does the Temple of the Sibyl, crowning the very top of the precipice, stand out, imposing in the extreme. It has survived the fall of the Roman Empire and its language; and, after eighteen hundred years of storms and convulsions of man and nature, it still raises its graceful and delicate proportions, and still claims, from its injuries, even more of our veneration than when first it rose. Gray describes it inefficiently in his letter, Forsyth characteristically: "The hill of Tivoli is all over picture "cession of landscapes superior, in the delight produced, to "the richest cabinet of Claude's. Tivoli cannot be de"scribed: no true portrait of it exists: all views alter and "embellish it: they are poetical translations of the matchless "original." XCVI. While their perfumed Mecenas. a suc Augustus indulged in jesting, particularly with his friend "Mecanas, whom he rallied on all occasions for his 'per"fumed locks,' and bantered by imitating the manner of "his expression." SUETONIUS. XCVII. The wrecks of Hadrian's Villa. The circumference of this Villa extended to seven miles, and, even to this day, they are pillaging from its ruins, to clear away patches of the excellently fruitful soil, which they serve but to encumber. In wandering among those open halls and areas, every one must feel the impression that they are the most gracefully picturesque of all ruins, either in Italy, or perhaps on the face of earth. I never saw such happy accidents, as they are termed, as here, whether one stands on the ruined terrace looking down the still lovely vale of Tempè, or whether one turns into the Palace, to wander among its wilderness of speaking ruins. I noticed one solemn looking pine which rose right in the centre of what was, or might have been, the Greek Theatre, as if the place were now its natural right. Wild flowers parseméed the ground (as the French beautifully express it) everywhere: pines, olives, cypresses, and blushing pink almond-trees, flourished thick among the ruins. XCVIII. The world's dull stage or left in hate or scorn: One modern example-would it were the last!-of the sentiments of these restless Movers of the Nations: At Calade, Napoleon said to those around him-" I renounce 66 now, and for ever, the world of politics, I will no longer "take any part in whatever may happen. At Porto Ferrajo "I can live happy: there I shall be happier than I have ever "been. No! were this day the crown of Europe to be offered me, I would not accept it. I will employ myself in study-with the sciences and mathematics. You have suf"ficient evidence what the people are. I have done well “never to esteem mankind: my treatment of them has been "better than they deserved. Yet France-the French"what ingratitude! I am disgusted with ambition-I have 66 no longer a wish to reign." With all his profound insight into human character, how little Napoleon knew his own, his life, as well as these expressions of disjointed irritabilities, prove well. It is in vain to deny the fact from any just reasonings formed from the head, that, with all his gigantic errors, which were fully equal to his genius, that man must be a wonderful one, who could so entwine himself, both living and dead, with the very heart of a mighty Empire; who could become the absolute Creator of its destinies; and who could cause, from the time of his first movement upon Egypt, to the very last step of his troubled career, always a painful, often a thrilling interest from one end of the world to the other. These are facts which may be distorted, but cannot be denied by the impartial Historian; we should be just, even where we most condemn. I have dwelt thus much on this subject, because I may find no place so apposite, in which to insert an Ode written while the minds of most men-especially Englishmen-were deeply interested in the struggle of the Poles for freedom;-a struggle but too unfortunate, and therefore, not the last. The Ode was hardly a composition, emanating as it did, from the feeling of the hour, on hearing of the heroic fight at Ostrolenka. ODE TO NAPOLEON. A.D. 1832. I. Where art thou, inspiring Spirit! Can the dull, cold grave inherit Thy world embracing mind? II. See'st thou not that world awaking From her torpor, from her chain? From Oppression's reign? III. Feel'st thou not-oh! can Death freeze Thy mind's immortal part? The "gaudia certaminis,"* The life-bound of thy heart? IV Hark! War yokes his fiery car, POLAND wakes, and would be free : Thou, her light, her guiding Star, She calls-she calls on thee ! "The joys of battle," the favourite expression of the destroying Attila. |