LXXII. Eternal PÆSTUM there : The only account we have of the origin of Pæstum is from Solinus, who says it was built by the Dorians ;* but a profound modern antiquary+ has undertaken to prove these came from the East; his chief arguments are drawn from tracing the names Pæstum and Posidonia, to the same oriental radix. Herodotus, also, observes that we shall look in vain for the word ПOZЕIAN among the Greeks—the word, and Deity, being of Libyan origin. The Vision changes ages take their flight: When the Lucanians attacked the Grecian settlements, Posidonia was the first that fell; they changed its name to Pæstum, as also the language and customs of the natives. Of this we have a most touching account in Athenæus, who cites from Aristoxenus, a philosopher of Tarentum: "We "are doing much the same as the Posidonians, who, from "having been Greeks, are now barbarised into Romans. "These, assembling on one of their old festivals, recalled to "memory their ancient names and customs, for the loss of "which they indulged a social grief, and parted in tears;"so we, now that our theatres are become barbarous, and "the general taste in music so corrupted, meet together, a slender party—to lament the change, and to remember "what Music was!" * Notum est Pæstum a Dorensibus constitutum. + Mazochii Comment. Naples, 1754. I cannot resist collecting into a wreath the beautiful tributes of the Roman Poets to the roses of Pæstum-it is like steeping oneself in their fragrance ! and first, Virgil : Forsitan et pingues hortos quæ cura colendi Ornaret, canerem, biferique rosaria Pæsti. The full tribute of Ovid: Nec Babylon æstum, nec frigora Pontus habebit Could we omit Propertius? Vidi ego odorati victura rosaria Pæsti Sub matutino cocta jacente noto. And though quotations might extend, the following exquisite couplet of Ausonius would excel them all he brings his roses before the eye, with their morning dews dripping heavily from them! Vidi Pæstano gaudere rosaria cultu Exoriente novo roscida Lucifero! During a long sojourn at Naples, the writer of this note had collected, from various sources, some interesting notices of Paestum; they extended, however, too far: an extract only is given, which was written on the spot. Looking at the gigantic Temple, massed and concentrated in its own strength-the three huge steps ascending its platform-its quadrilateral shape of nearly two hundred feet in length, and eighty in breadth-its double front-each mounting a pediment supported by six stupendous fluted columns of the Doric order-its vast vestibules-its grand unadorned frieze and cornice-its ponderous exterior columns guarding the whole, which Time has softened, and mellowed into tones of harmony, casting over their "glory obscured" a tinge of melancholy which renders them more touching still,-we experience sensations such as that Temple alone could inspire. While the naked and boundless waste surrounds us with solitude and with silence, a solitude far removed from "towered cities" and "the hum of men"-a silence for ever soothed rather than broken by that grand and monotonous Chant-the pulsations of the living Sea!—we feel as if we were removed back into the very night of time; as if we looked upon the works of a gigantic race of men who held nothing in common with our weak humanity; as if the old works of the Titanic ages were developed before us; as if, had we turned to the Altar for an Oracle, we still should hear an answer from its shrine. We look not, here, upon the classical, but on the heroic style of Architecture; the offspring of an heroic age. The Temple is the Record which stamps the People who erected it: simple, uncorrupted, and, therefore great; no effeminate or enfeebled nation could have designed such a colossal pile: of such a severe and unadorned character; it testifies the grandeur of both. The whole is stamped with a grand and mighty Energy which awes and fills the mind. Far more impressive are they as ruins, than if presented to us in a perfect state. Their rents serve but to develope the more their Herculean proportions; their injuries, inflicted by time and disaster, command, rather than ask, the respect of the beholder. We feel, while surveying them, that, each moment, our reverence is increased; for we cannot avoid reflecting on all they have met on all which they have endured. We remember how often the Earth has upheaved around, and shook those columned masses, with their ponderous entablatures, to their foundations; how often the thunder-stone has been hurled through them, having left its so palpable traces on their sides; how the Hosts of Heaven have there kept watch; how the Storms of countless ages have raged above and within them; how Empires have risen-flourished -fallen-their very positions erased from the earth, while the generations of man have been as grass in the field !—and still to see how fixedly they grow in their places-how firmly they present their fronts-how serriedly they keep their long ordered ranks-scathed and, splintered-but unbroken and immovable! We almost regard them with human sympathies--but they seem to have outlived the ordeal of human endurance; and, spared or forgotten by Time and Change, to have become allied with Nature herself: a part of the waste and savage plain they stand on-of the grey mountains-of the everlasting Sea! they, also, need no written histories from man; they bear their own records on their time-withered but majestic brows. Cold, and uninspired, indeed, shall that man be, who, sitting under the shadows of their gigantic columns, does not feel the awful impression they convey of the mutability of all human power and grandeur-of the very nothingness of NN humanity! Who shall not feel in the presence of those palpable—those last—and those not silent Witnesses of a World gone by that here a mighty City once flourished; that a populous and busy existence once rolled, Ocean-like, around; —that all the deeds and thoughts which exalt or debase the man, all the passions that soothe or agitate humanity, were stirring here? Who shall not feel, I repeat, a moral for his own life; and for his brethren so long gone before him in a path which he and unborn Ages must follow-a feeling too deeply seated for his tears? JOURNAL. LXXXV. Arrayed in marble now: It was the kingly boast of Augustus that he found Rome built of brick, but left it in marble. LXXXVII. The Stars that draw their crowns of light from thine ! Milton has a beautiful idea on this subject: Hither, as to their fountain, other Stars Repairing, in their golden urns draw light. Julian, in his Oration, says the Phoenicians represent Light as "the energy of an intellect perfectly pure, i. e. solar "intellect which, scattering its beams from the middle re"gion of the heavens, fills all the celestial orbs with powerful 66 66 vigour, and illuminates the universe with divine and incorruptible light." "Αρδην εμψυχουσα φὰος πῦρ αἰθέρα κόσμους. |