V.

Scatterer of Armies! hear :

Idol of adoring France!

Burst the cearments of thy bier :

Wake from thy long trance!

VI.

What are battles without thee?

War is but an idle game

Played by children; thou wert he

Who gave its sun-like fame!

VII.

Leaders caught from thee the ray

That made their immortality:

Vanquished foes were honoured-they

Had fought-had fled from thee!

VIII.

What! beneath Helena's willows

Sleep'st thou like a child?

What! when living, could her billows

Bound thy thoughts so wild?

IX.

Never-never! thy Shade still,

Throneless Monarch! rules us yet;

Reigns ascendant o'er our will,

And dares us to forget.

X.

Art thou dead? thou King! sleep on :

Hear not the world's idle strife,

Thy name-thy name, Napoleon!

Shall kindle freedom's soul to strife.

CI.

How He, the Love who made them :

God and Love are synonymes does not nature-mankind-the Universe-all that is visible and invisible attest the That it was felt as such from the most

everlasting truth?

ancient time, let a fragment, ascribed to Orpheus, testify: its translation is given:

"We will first sing a delightful Song on the ancient "Chaos; how Heaven, Earth, and Seas were formed from "it; as, also, on the wise and sagacious LOVE the Eldest "of All-the Self-Perfect: which, actively, produced all "these things; separating one thing from another."

This Love was no other than the operative Presence of the immutable and eternal First Cause.

CII.

In braided wreaths the starry hosts above:

The eloquent language of that Apostle of Nature, "Goëthe, seems almost to invest a fanciful image with truth:

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Every sun and planet bears within itself the germ of a higher fulfilment in virtue of which, its developement is

as regular as that of a rose-tree, by means of leaf, stalk, "and flower. You may call the germ an idea, or monad, if "you please. Enough that it is invisible, and antecedent to "the visible external developement. One and the same me

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tamorphosis, or capacity of Transformation in Nature, pro"duces a rose out of a leaf, a caterpillar out of an egg, and "again, a butterfly out of a caterpillar."

CIV.

A visible glory from the blossoms spread.

I saw one almond-tree, in full blossom, standing in a corner of the ivied wall; its effect, thus thrown out, was quite magical; nothing in the garden of Alcinous could have looked so rich, so glowing, and so beautiful. The ivy, clustering over, and hanging from the broken arches, gave a cresting grace and a plumed dignity to the softened grey walls. In full summer, all here must be Paradise; for the courts and areas were full of vines hanging from the trees, and thick with cherry-trees in blossom; laburnum, acacia, myrtle, and olive, with which the very air was redolent. I felt as did the Mercury of the Poet when descending to the haunt of Calypso:

"A scene, where if a god should cast his sight,

A god might gaze, and wander in delight;

Joy touched the Messenger of Heaven !"*

And I, involuntarily, repeated the glorious lines of the Master-poet, who must have written from such remembrances as are here:-in this

Spot more delicious than those gardens feigned

Or of revived Adonis, or renowned

Alcinous, host of old Laërtes' son !"

PARADISE LOST, b. ix.

* Pope's paraphrase will always be remembered as one of the most ex

quisite gems of poetry in the English language.

CVIII.

The mirror of Diana of old time.

There is an exquisite passage in Schiller's "Wallenstein," so perfectly translated by Coleridge, with which I cannot resist enriching the notes; previously observing, that Lake Nemi was Diana's mirror: the transfer, however, can hardly be called poetic license. The close of the stanza is in allusion to the beautiful moral fable of Actæon and Endymion.

The intelligible forms of ancient poets,

The fair humanities of old religion,

The Power, the Beauty, and the Majesty,

That had her haunts in dale and piny mountain,

Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring,

Or chasms and watery depths: all these have vanished,
They live no longer in the faith of reason!

But still the heart doth need a language, still
Doth the old instinct bring back the old names,
And to yon starry world they now are gone,
Spirits or gods, that used to share this earth
With man as with their friend; and to the lover
Yonder they move, from yonder visible sky
Shoot influence down: and even at this day
'Tis Jupiter who brings whate'er is great,
And Venus who brings everything that is fair!

No more of talk, where god or angel guest
With man, as with his friend familiar, used
To sit indulgent.

PARADISE LOST, b. ix.

CX.

In the libations poured.

Geniumque loci, primamque Deorum

Tellurem, Nymphasque, et adhuc ignota precatur

Flumina.

CXI.

ÆN. vii. 136.

The Intermediates with the Unforgot.

Never were there a people who had any religion but which believed in "mediate intelligences." The most subtle philosophers, even he who has been termed the Genius of Nature,*—the most sagacious Cartesians, all acknowledged this doctrine.

The sense of the Ancients on this subject is embodied in the following lines:

There are Existences in Nature

Beside our own; not palpable to sense,

But only by the inner Mind perceived.

They are the True-the Good-the Beautiful;

The Intelligence spread over all things, yea,

Pervading all things like the holy Light!

Aristotle "The First Being," says he, " moved the heavens round the earth by means of Intelligences,' which are perpetually occupied in his movements."