tians of Jerusalem have sent to his relief a monk of Libanon, distinguished for medical skill. The tender attentions of Sittah to her brother, recall those unin which Electra watches the perturbed surpassably beautiful scenes of Euripides, Orestes. During a pause of fever, Saladin is desirous of seeing Nathan. No thing can be more equitable than the manner in which the poet paints the emptiness and impotence of those consolations, which the sceptic has to offer over a death-bed, to the troubled conscience. From an unpublished version of the poem, this striking interview shall be given. Scene: the apartment of Saladin, who reposes on a sofa in an alcove. SALADIN, pushing aside the curtain. Abdallah, Come nigh, and wipe my forehead., Ah! how weary! in other worlds-alas! how weak I feelwhere light and darkness strove more horribly than life and death within my soul.-Is Nathan come yet, Abdallah? ABDALLAH shows in Nathan and retires. SALADIN. Then let him enter.-We are now, my Nathan, got to the frontier.-Sit thee down, I pray. Now I have slept, I hope to talk with thee more calmly. Thou art sorrowful, my Nathan. It grieves me, NATHAN. Saladin. SALADIN. I know thy feeling : but recollect it is the will of God, and bow to it. Nathan, I have sent for thee, to give my breast once more the lost rep.se, thy wisdom took away. NATHAN. I, Sultan, 1 from thee? O God forbid! SALADIN. Or rather say, my own presumption, Nathan. O how direly has Truth reveng'd upon me her importance! It was at bottom but a sport of fancy, a mere amusive levity; but really truth is too high to sport with, too important to make a jest of. MONTHLY MAG. No. 185. o'er my consenting heart; it seem'd to close at once the mouth of each precipitate intolerant decider. Ah! indeed some strength of mind is needful to withstand, particularly when-excuse me, Nathanthe teacher bas been first announced to us, from lips of praising thousands, by the name of the wise man. I took it as thou gavest it; and little thought, O Nathan, that so soon the judges thousand thousand years for me would have an end. Now I must die. And then in this uncertainty, and with my ring O! Nathan, how, if I have been deceiv'd? alone, am summon'd up before the judge. NATHAN. Is it not contingent? It is the circumstances amid which a lucky chance has plac'd thee-'tis the land nay e'en the very air that bathes thy brow, and above all the early bending given to thy yet tender forces, education, paternal prejudice, and the first thrust with which Fate hurls thee into life's career, hence is thy virtue, man. Soil, weather, climate, these shape the tree. SALADIN. The upshot comes of course: we have at worst to die, and all is over: truth's but a dream; virtue, an accident. Troth, Nathan, thou 'art à sage indeed; and hast philosophiz'd me nearly into madness. How-grows there not upon the self-same soil beside the goodly stem the crooked dwarfling? NATHAN. The fault perhaps was in the seed; perhaps a grub, or an unheeded gust of wind, or any of the thousand petty causes, this wondrous frame of things. SALADIN. But, my good friend, man is not quite a block, a log of wood obeying mere external laws. Is he chain'd to the earth he springs from? In the east is it too sultry for thy virtue, fly, go to the pole. If wine provoke thy blood, drink water: if thy neighbour, seek a better. What curbs thy freedom does not therefore exclude it. Else what were freedom? NATHAN. A mere play on wordṣg a leading string, with which good easy man believes he strays alone, yet can't advance further than his conductress Providence SALADIN. Thou-unless alone of all mankind, thou art excepted from the lot of man: unless thou only art th' infallible, the wise.-Ye sceptics, is then nothing true, allotted for thy country-'tis the men but that we're fools? with whom thou dwellest-'tis thy meat, thy drink, NATHAN. Be calm, have patience, Sultan, accept man as he is-if he should err, can't here below infallibly decide,— earth is but earth a dull and lightless body. SALADIN. Ay but the soul, my Nathan. NATHAN. Be it light; be it a quenchless spark of fire etherial; or what you will. So long as night inwraps this light; so long no tone, no ray, no image comes to thy soul, but thro' ear, eye, or nerves; but what thro' flesh, or bone, or wand'ring juices, according to the nature and arrangement of thy material part, is modified into a thought for thee, and thee alone, which could not dwell another human soul: so long must feelings, instincts, passions, form opinion-error be each mortal's lot, and what seems truth to one stand with whose action and reaction hold together another for proven falshood. SALADIN. No: that goes too far. Then would each image to himself in flower, sun, man, a different something; because each sees not with the same eyes. But do we, Nathan, not understand each other; although each hears with his own ears only? Language be my pledge, that, between man and truth, at least no such entire antipathy exists, as thou maintainest. Many as our words, so many commonly consented truths. NATHAN. So many images by all acknowleged, which strike on one more strongly than permits. "Tis, if you will, a whirling car another, and irritate in different degrees our several passions. Tell me, Saladin, is passion, truth; vice, truth? Is avarice, is cheated into? SALADIN. Nathan, O beware least with thy wisdom thou impair thy virtue. cannot be just; for if truth be illusion, we boys get in, and shout to our companions proudly: how fast we drive" but round and round the eternal measur'd circle of the world we are but dragg'd, SALADIN. NATHAN. And would to God it never had been, Saladin. The few worthy and noble souls should only act, live after truth, and leave their deeds behind them. All disputation if and what be truth wastes the fair hours bestow'd so sparingly upon the wanderer, who for his journey has not one hour too much. The lazy man may fling himself along beneath the shade, and with his fellow weigh and ascertain how far he has to go-is this the road? are we come wrong?-but let us with fresh strides baste to the goal; we then, I ween, shall know how far it was, and, if we have not chosen the shortest road, our industry at least will have made up for many a round-about. SALADIN. My pilgrimage is almost at an end; but, friend, its goal I see not. I am confounded. thro' many a labyrinth on this murky earth: Live after truth, thou sayst, and yet not from thee the fetters drop. Soon thy free soul No stream can cleanse the conscience of its sin; no flame can purify the sullied heart before the sight of God. How can I know whether, if God is just, to guilt a foe, I too shall be forgiven. O my Nathan, 'tis that, 'tis that, which wounds me, which impels me to make the dread inquiry, not, as erst, the idle love of disputation. Death itself is nothing but a step across a narrow threshold; but a troubled moment, and all is over. The intoxicated will dare the stride, and boldly spring avaunt, fare as he may without. But there's no art can drug the conscience into bold delirium, sele to the night of death its wakeful eye, and teach it at futurity to sport. Those with a sober conscience, Nathan.. NATHAN. Sultan, I would not flatter: but can God above be found less just, less gracious, than thyself? may hail yon clearer heaven, and eaglewing'd soar to her God, the eternal only source of light and bliss. O might I follow, sultanGod be thy guide! NATHAN. No, sultan, him I know not. SALADIN. God knows him. NATHAN. As he knows the chaos, from whose deep the light arose. It does not therefore now exist. Thou art not the first, whom he has imperceptibly allow'd thro' crimes to find out virtue's path. What boots the bas been, so the is be right. God will not ask the just man's virtue to atone the sinner's trespass, will not punish the worthy for the faulty Saladin. SALADIN. Yet not unoften the amended man dies of his sins. NATHAN. Dies of some law of nature. SALIDIN. What is this fear then? what this inward until the fair flower withers. It is shrivell'd, struggling, these racking tortures of avenging conscience? NATHAN. A proof of tenderer virtuous feelings, of abhorrence against vice. It is perhaps the working of thy fever, of strain'd nerves and flurried spirits. SALADIN. 'Tis no doubtful pang obscure and undefin'd, but clear perception that I have not liv'd as a man should live. It is the palpitation of a culprit advancing to his judge. Conscience, my Nathan, is no disease. NATHAN. Strive not against thy peace; do not o'erlook thy virtues; shove not from thee the consolations which on penitence God has bestow'd. SALADIN. God? Where has he bestow'd it? How am I sure of that; And is not God a friend to order? Values he no longer the laws he made, no longer loves his creatures? Who breaks thro' those, or sacrifices these, NATHAN. Who takes it from thee, my good Saladin; why may'st thou not believe whate'er thou wilt? SALADIN. No longer, Nathan, now; no longer now. NATHAN. Does not thy prophet teach thee, like mine me, that God is merciful, that he forgives. SALADIN. Keep for thyself tby talismanic ring,and do not mock at the poor trodden worm e'en in the dust. NATHAN. For God's sake no; no; no. Sultan, if with my blood I could procure thee rest-O! how willingly. SALADIN. Give, give, conviction. faded for me; and round about me lie Who was the sower here? NATHAN. Saladin, what ails thee, Saladin SALADIN. I, I, 'twas I, the valorous Saladin, NATHAN. do recollect thyself. My Sultan, SALADIN. Ha! now I stand in blood up to my girdle. 'Twas well fought, NATHAN. Dost thou know me no longer? faith is a precious thing. Beside the grave dwindles to a lie; where even reason's torch SALADIN. What of pity. Behold in me the mighty Saladin, NATHAN. thy Nathan any longer? Canst thou not know SALADIN. Get thee gone; I will not deal with thee, jew, usurer, cheat. hence with thy ware; 'tis trash; sell, sell, to fools. Avaunt. NATHAN. For the Monthly Magazine. THE DILLETANTI TOURIST, Or LETTERS from un AMATEUR of ART, in LONDON, to a FRIEND near MANCHESTER. No. V. N pursuing my tour through the TOWNLEY Collection of Antiquities, the next department that I shall attempt describing, is that of the ROMAN SEPUL CHRAL ANTIQUITIES, which are depo sited in the fifth room. This room is of excellent proportions, vaulted, and lighted from a dome; the ceiling is supported by antæ of the Doric order, and in the interpilasters are niches and recesses in which are deposited sepulchral urns with inscriptions of great antiquity and considerable beauty. In the centre of the floor is a beautiful Mosaic pavement lately discovered in digging the foundations for the new buildings at the Bank of England, and presented to the British Museum by the directors of that opulent establishment. They are mostly taken from the cemeteries of the Romans, of which every family of consequence had one appropriat ed to itself. The largest and most ancient cemeteries were those of Memphis, which have been discovered near that city in a circular plain, nearly four leagues in diameter, which is called the Plain of Mummies. The care of the Egyptians for the preservation of the body after death, exceeded even their wishes for the conservation of the memory of their il lustrious dead. The Greeks and Romans Alas! thou hear'st; thy brother is delirious. did not so anxiously preserve the mortal relics of the body; they contented themselves with burying them. The custom of burning their dead and preserving the ashes appears to have arisen more from a wish of preventing violation, than the mere destruction of the body. The Romans paid great veneration to the remains of their forefathers; they erected ceme teries to their honour, and deposited the ashes of each individual in its own distinct catacomb, in a cinerary urn, inscribed with the name of the party, whose memory is thus recorded. The contents of this room a e principally of these cinerary and sepulchural urns and monumental inscriptions, each deposited after the ancient manner in a catacomb. No. 1, is a monumental inscription to Q. Aufidius Generosus, formerly in the collection of Thomas Hollis, esq. and presented by him to the Museum; toge ther with No. 2, to Delia Fortunata, Aelius Telesphorus, and others; No. 3, to M. Nævius Proculus; No. 5, to T. Sex. Agatha; No. 20, to Eutychia; No. |