may

ye perish! Pallas, when she gave Your free-bora rights, forbade ye to enslave.

Look on your Spain: she clasps the hand she hates,
But coldly clasps, and thrusts you from her gates.
Bear witness, bright Barrossa, thou canst tell
Whose were the sons that bravely fought and fell;
While Lusitania, kind and dear ally,

¦ Can spare a few to fight and sometimes fly.
Oh glorious field! by famine fiercely won;
The Gaul retires for once, and all is done!
But when did Pallas teach that one retreat
Retrieved three long olympiads of defeat?
Look last at home-ye love not to look there,
On the grim smile of comfortless despair;
Your city saddens, loud though revel howls;
Here famine faints, and yonder rapine prowls:
See all alike of more or less bereft--

No misers tremble when there's nothing left.
'Blest paper credit' 11 who shall dare to sing?
It clogs like lead corruption's weary wing:
Yet l'allas plucked each Premier by the ear,
Who gods and men alike disdain'd to hear;
But one, repentant o'er a bankrupt state,
On Pallas calls, but calls, alas! too late!
Then raves for *** ; 13 to that Mentor bends,
Though he and Pallas never yet were friends:
Him senates hear whom never yet they heard,
Contemptuous once, and now no less absurd.
1 So once of
yore each reasonable frog
Swore faith and fealty to his sovereign log;
Thus hail'd your rulers their patrician clod,
As Egypt chose an onion for a god.

«Now fare ye well, enjoy your little hour;
Go, grasp the shadow of your vanish'd power;
Gloss o'er the failure of each fondest scheme,
Your strength a name, your bloated wealth a dream.
Gone is that gold, the marvel of mankind,
And pirates barter all that's left behind; 14

| No more the hirelings, purchased near and far,
Crowd to the ranks of mercenary war;
The idle merchant on the useless quay
Droops o'er the bales no bark may bear away,
Or, back returning, sees rejected stores
Rot piecemeal on his own encumber'd shores;
The starved mechanic breaks his rusting loom,
And, desperate, mans him 'gainst the common doom.
Then in the senate of your sinking state,

Show me the man whose counsels may have weight.
Vain is each voice whose tones could once command;
Even factions cease to charm a factious land;
While jarring sects convulse a sister isle,

And light with maddening hands the mutual pile.

⚫T is done, 't is past! since Pallas warns in vain,
The Furies seize her abdicated reign;

Wide o'er the realm they wave their kindling brands,
And wring her vitals with their fiery hands.
But one convulsive struggle still remains,
And Gaul shall weep ere Albion wear her chains.
The banner'd pomp of war, the glittering files,
O'er whose gay trappings stern Bellona smiles;
The brazen trump, the spirit-stirring drum,
That bid the foe defiance ere they come;
The hero bounding at his country's call,
The glorious death that decorates his fall,

Swell the young heart with visionary charms,
And bid it antedate the joys of arms.
But know, a lesson you may yet be taught—
With death alone are laurels cheaply bought:
Not in the conflict havoc seeks delight,
His day of mercy is the day of fight;
But when the field is fought, the battle won,
Though drench'd with gore, his woes are but begun;
His deeper deeds ye yet know but by name-
The slaughter d peasant and the ravish'd dame,
The rifled mansion and the foe-reap'd field,
Ill suit with souls at home untaught to yield.
Say with what eye, along the distant down,
Would flying burghers mark the blazing town?
How view the column of ascending flames
Shake his red shadow o'er the startled Thames?
Nay, frown not, Albion for the torch was thine
That lit such pyres from Tagus to the Rhine
Now should they burst on thy devoted coast,
Go, ask thy bosom, who deserves them most?
The law of heaven and earth is life for life;
And she who raised in vain regrets the strife.»>

NOTES.

Note 1. Page 189, line 22.

How watch'd thy better sons his farewell ray,

That closed their murder'd sage's latest day!

Socrates drank the hemlock a short time before sunset (the hour of execution), notwithstanding the entreaties of his disciples to wait till the sun went down. Note 2. Page 189, line 34.

The queen of night asserts her silent reign.

The twilight in Greece is much shorter than in our country; the days in winter are longer, but in summer of less duration.

Note 3. Page 189, line 44.

The gleaming turret of the gay kiosk.

The kiosk is a Turkish summer-house; the palm is without the present walls of Athens, not far from the temple of Theseus, between which and the tree the wall intervenes. Cephisus' stream is indeed scanty, and Ilissus has no stream at all.

Note 4. Page 190, line 5.

These Cecrops placed—this Pericles adorn'd. This is spoken of the city in general, and not of the Acropolis in particular. The temple of Jupiter Olympius, by some supposed the Pantheon, was finished by Hadrian: sixteen columns are standing, of the most beautiful marble and style of architecture.

Note 5. Page 190, line 10.

The insulted wall sustains his hated name

It is stated by a late oriental traveller, that when the wholesale spoliator visited Athens, he caused his own name, with that of his wife, to be inscribed on a pillar of one of the principal temples. This inscription was executed in a very conspicuous manner, and deeply engraved in the marble, at a very considerable elevation. Notwithstanding which precautions, some person doubtless inspired by the Patron Goddess), has been at the pains to get himself raised up to the requisite height, and has obliterated the name of the laird, but left that of the lady untouched. The traveller in question ac

companied this story by a remark, that it must have cost some labour and contrivance to get at the place, and could only have been effected by much zeal and determination.

Note 6. Page 190, line 26.

When Venus half avenged Minerva's shame.

His lordship's name, and that of one who no longer bears it, are carved conspicuously on the Parthenon above; in a part not far distant are the the torn remnants of the basso-relievos, destroyed in a vain attempt to remove them.

Note 7. Page 190, line 32.

Frown not on England-England owns him not-
Athena, no! the plunderer was a Scot!

The plaster wall on the west side of the temple of Minerva Polias bears the following inscription, cut in very deep characters:

Quod non fecerunt Goti

Hoc fecerunt Scoti.

Hobhouse's Travels in Greece, etc., p. 345.

Note 8. Page 190, line 35.

And well I know within that bastard land.

Is a new palace to be erected (at Rome) for an upstart family? the Coliseum is stripped to furnish materials. Does a foreign minister wish to adorn the bleak walls of a northern castle with antiques? the temples of Theseus or Minerva must be dismantled, and the works of Phidias or Praxiteles be torn from the shattered frieze.

That a decrepid uncle, wrapped up in the religious duties of his age and station, should listen to the suggestions of an interested nephew, is natural; and that an oriental despot should undervalue the masterpieces of Grecian art, is to be expected; though in both cases the consequences of such weakness are much to be lamented-but that the minister of a nation, famed for its knowledge of the language, and its veneration for the monuments of ancient Greece, should have been the prompter and the instrument of these destructions Such rapacity is a crime against

is almost incredible.

all ages and all generations: it deprives the past of the trophies of their genius and the title-deeds of their fame; the present, of the strongest inducements to exertion, the noblest exhibitions that curiosity can contemplate; the future, of the masterpieces of art, the

Note 9. Page 190, line 82.

With palsied band shall turn each model o'er,
And own himself an infant of fourscore.

Mr West, on seeing the Elgin collection » (I suppose we shall hear of the Abershaw's and Jack Shephard's collection next), declared himself a mere Tyro in Art. Note 10. Page 190, line 86.

While brawny brutes in stupid wonder stare, And marvel at his lordship's stone-shop there. Poor Crib was sadly puzzled when exhibited at Elginhouse; he asked if it was not « a stone-shop: » he was right,-it is a shop.

Note 11. Page 190, line 100.

And last of all, amidst the gaping crew, Some calm spectator, as he takes his view. Alas! all the monuments of Roman magnificence, all the remains of Grecian taste, so dear to the artist, the historian, the antiquary, all depend on the will of an arbitrary sovereign; and that will is influenced too often by interest or vanity, by a nephew or a sycophant.

of such depredations is the wish of every man of genius, the duty of every man in power, and the common interest of every civilized nation.»-Eustace's Classical Tour through Italy, p. 69.

<«<<This attempt to transplant the temple of Vesta from Italy to England, may, perhaps, do honour to the late Lord Bristol's patriotism or to his magnificence, but it cannot be considered as au indication of either taste or

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE grand army of the Turks (in 1715), under the Prime Vizier, to open to themselves a way into the heart of the Morea, and to form the siege of Napoli di Romania, the most considerable place in all that country, thought it best in the first place to attack

Napoli di Romania is not now the most considerable place in the Morea, but Tripolitza, where the Pacha resides, and maintains bis

The

Corinth, upon which they made several storms. garrison being weakened, and the governor seeing it government. Napoli is near Argos. I visited all three in 1810-1; and in the course of journeyin; through the country from my first arrival in 180, crossed the Isthmus ei, ht times in my way from when passing from the Gulf of Athens to that of Lepanto. the routes are picturesque and beautiful, though very different: that by sca has more sameness, but the voyage, being always within sight of land, and often very near it, presets many attractive views of the islands salamis, Egina, Poro, et... and the coast of the con

Attica to the Morea, over the mountains, or in the other direction

tinent.

Both

was impossible to hold out against so mighty a force, thought it fit to beat a parley: but while they were treating about the articles, one of the magazines in the Turkish camp, wherein they had six hundred barrels of powder, blew up by accident, whereby six or seven hundred men were killed: which so enraged the infidels, that they would not grant any capitulation, but stormed the place with so much fury, that they took it, and put most of the garrison, with Signor Minotti, the governor, to the sword. The rest, with Antonio Bembo, proveditor extraordinary, were made prisoners of war.»> -History of the Turks, vol. iii, p. 151.

THE

SIEGE OF CORINTH.

MANY a vanish'd year and age,

And tempest's breath, and battle s rage,
Have swept o'er Corinth; yet she stands,
A fortress form'd to Freedom's hands.

The whirlwind's wrath, the earthquake's shock,
Have left untouch'd her hoary rock,
The keystone of a land which still,
Though fall'n, looks proudly on that hill,
The land-mark to the double tide
That purpling rolls on either side,
As if their waters chafed to meet,
Yet pause and crouch beneath her feet.
But could the blood before her shed
Since first Timoleon's brother bled,
Or baffled Persia's despot fled,

Arise, from out the earth which drank
The stream of slaughter as it sank,
That sanguine ocean would o'erflow
Her isthmus idly spread below:
Or could the bones of all the slain,
Who perish'd there be piled again,
That rival pyramid would rise

More mountain-like, through those clear skie,
Than yon tower-capt Acropolis,
Which seems the very clouds to kiss.

II.

On dun Citharon's ridge appears

The gleam of twice ten thousand spears;
And downward to the Isthmian plain
From shore to shore of either main,
The tent is pitch'd, the crescent shines
Along the Moslem's leaguering lines;
And the dusk Spahi's bands advance
Beneath each bearded pacha's glance;
And far and wide as eye can reach,
The turban'd cohorts throng the beach;
And there the Arab's camel kneels,
And there his steed the Tartar wheels;
The Turcoman hath left his herd,'
The sabre round his loins to gird;
And there the volleying thunders pour,
Till waves grow smoother to the roar.
The trench is dug, the cannon's breath
Wings the far-hissing globe of death,

But near and nearest to the wall
Of those who wish and work its fall,
With deeper skill in war's black art
Than Othman's sons, and high of heart
As any chief that ever stood
Triumphant in the fields of blood;
From post to post, and deed to deed,
Fast spurring on his reeking steed,
Where sallying ranks the trench assail,
And make the foremost Moslem quail,
Or where the battery, guarded well,
Remains as yet impregnable,
Alighting cheerly to inspire
The soldier slackening in his fire,
The first and freshest of the host
Which Stamboùl's sultan there can boast,
To guide the follower o'er the field,
To point the tube, the lance to wield,
Or whirl around the bickering blade,--
Was Alp, the Adrian renegade!

IV.

From Venice-once a race of worth
His gentle sires-he drew his birth;
l'ut late an exile from her shore,
Against his countrymen he bore
The arms they taught to bear; and now
The turban girt his shaven brow.
Through many a change had Corinth pass d
With Greece to Venice' rule at last;
And here, before her walls, with those
To Greece and Venice equal foes,
He stood a foe, with all the zeal
Which young and fiery converts feel,
Within whose heated bosom throngs
The memory of a thousand wrongs.
To him had Venice ceased to be
Her ancient civic boast--« the Free,
And in the palace of St Mark
Unnamed accusers in the dark
Within the « Lion's mouth » had placed

A charge against him uneffaced:
He fled in time, and saved his life,
To waste his future years in strife,
That taught his land how great her loss
In him who triumph'd o'er the Cross,
Gainst which he rear'd the Crescent high,
And battled to avenge or die.

V.

Coumourgi-he whose closing scene
Adorn'd the triumph of Eugene,
When on Carlowitz' bloody plain,
The last and mightiest of the slain,
Hle sank, regretting not to die,
But curst the Christian's victory-
Coumourgi-can his glory cease,
That latest conqueror of Greece,

Till Christian hands to Greece restore
The freedom Venice gave of yore?
A hundred years have roll'd away
Since he refixed the Moslem's sway;
And now he led the Mussulman,
And

gave the guidance of the van To Alp, who well repaid the trust By cities levell'd with the dust;

And proved, by many a deed of death, llow firm his heart in novel faith.

VI.

Her voice less lively in the song;

The walls grew weak; and fast and hot
Against them pour'd the ceaseless shot,
With unabating fury sent
From battery to battlement;
And thunder-like the pealing din
Rose from each heated culverin;

And here and there some crackling dome
Was fired before the exploding bomb:
And as the fabric sank beneath
The shattering shell's volcanic breath,
In red and wreathing columns flash'd
The flame, as loud the ruin crash'd,
Or into countless meteors driven,
Its earth-stars melted into heaven;
Whose clouds that day grew doubly dun,
Impervious to the hidden sun,

With volumed smoke, that slowly grew
To one wide sky of sulphurous hue.

VII.

But not for vengeance, long delay'd,
Alone, did Alp, the renegade,
The Moslem warriors sternly teach
His skill to pierce the promised breach :
Within these walls a maid was pent
His hope would win, without consent
Of that inexorable sire,
Whose heart refused him in its ire,
When Alp, beneath his Christian name,
Her virgin haud aspired to claim.
In happier mood and earlier time,
While unimpeach'd for traitorous crime,
Gayest in gondola or hall,

He glitter'd through the Carnival,
And tuned the softest serenade
That e'er on Adria's waters play'd
At midnight to Italian maid.

VIII.

And many deem'd her heart was won; For, sought by numbers, given to none, Had young Francesca's hand remain'd Still by the church's bonds unchain'd: And when the Adriatic bore Lanciotto to the Paynim shore, Her wonted smiles were seen to fail, And peusive wax'd the maid and pale; More constant at confessional, More rare at masque and festival; Or seen at such, with downcast eyes, Which conquer'd hearts they ceased to prizeWith listless look she seems to gaze; With humbler care her form arrays;

Her step, though light, less fleet among The pairs, on whom the morning's glance Breaks, yet unsated with the dance.

IX.

Sent by the state to guard the land
(Which, wrested from the Moslem's hand,
While Sobieski tamed his pride

By Buda's wall and Danube's side,
The chiefs of Venice wrung away
From Patra to Euboea's bay),
Minotti held in Corinth's towers
The Doge's delegated powers,
While yet the pitying eye of peace
Smiled o'er her long-forgotten Greece:
And, ere that faithless truce was broke
Which freed her from the unchristian yoke,
With him his gentle daughter came:

Nor there, since Menelaus' dame
Forsook her lord and land to prove
What woes await on lawless love,
Had fairer form adorn'd the shore
Thau she, the matchless stranger, bore.

X.

The wall is rent, the ruins yawn, And, with to-morrow's earliest dawn, O'er the disjointed mass shall vault The foremost of the fierce assault. The bands are rank'd; the chosen van Of Tartar and of Mussulman, The full of hope, misnamed « forlorn,» Who hold the thought of death in scorn, And win their way with falchions' force, Or pave the path with many a corse, O'er which the following brave may rise, Their stepping-stone-the last who dies'

XI.

'Tis midnight: on the mountains brown The cold round moon shines deeply down; Blue roll the waters, blue the sky Spreads like an ocean hung on high, Bespangled with those isles of light, So wildly, spiritually bright, Who ever gazed upon them shining, And turn'd to earth without repining, Nor wish'd for wings to flee away, And mix with their eternal ray? The waves on either shore lay there Calm, clear, and azure as the air; And scarce their foam the pebbles shook, But murmur'd meekly as the brook. The winds were pillow'd on the waves; The banners droop'd along their staves, And, as they fell around them furling, Above them shone the crescent curling; And that deep silence was unbroke, Save where the watch his signal spoke, Save where the steed neigh'd oft and shrill, And echo answer'd from the hill, And the wide hum of that wild host Rustled like leaves from coast to coast, As rose the Muezzin's voice in air In midnight call to wonted prayer;

It rose, that chaunted mournful strain,
Like some lone spirit's o'er the plain :
T was musical, but sadly sweet,

Such as when winds and harp-strings meet,
And take a long unmeasured tone,
To mortal minstrelsy unknown.
It seem'd to those within the wall

A cry prophetic of their fall:
It struck even the besieger's ear
With something ominous and drear,
An undefined and sudden thrill,

Which makes the heart a moment still,
Then beat with quicker pulse, ashamed
Of that strange sense its silence framed:
Such as a sudden passing-bell

Wakes, though but for a stranger's knell.
XI.

The tent of Alp was on the shore;

The sound was hush'd, the prayer was o'er;
The watch was set, the night-round made,
All mandates issued and obey'd;
T is but another anxious night,
His pains the morrow may requite
With all revenge and love can pay
In guerdon for their long delay.

Few hours remain, and he hath need
Of rest, to nerve for many a deed
Of slaughter; but within his soul
The thoughts like troubled waters roll.
He stood alone among the host;
Not his the loud fanatic boast
To plant the Crescent o'er the Cross,
Or risk a life with little loss,
Secure in paradise to be
By houris loved immortally:
Nor his, what burning patriots feel,
The stern exaltedness of zeal,
Profuse of blood, untired in toil,
When battling on the parent soil.
He stood alone-a renegade
Against the country he betray'd;
He stood alone amidst his band,
Without a trusted heart or hand:

They follow'd him, for he was brave,
And great the spoil he got and gave;
They crouch'd to him, for he had skill
To warp and wield the vulgar will;

But still his Christian origin
With them was little less than sin.
They envied even the faithless fame

can stoop

He earn'd beneath a Moslem name;
Since he, their mightiest chief, had been
In youth a bitter Nazarene.
They did not know how pride
When baffled feelings withering droop;
They did not know how hate can burn
In hearts once changed from soft to stern;
Nor all the false and fatal zeal

The convert of revenge can feel.

He ruled them-man may rule the worst,

By ever daring to be first:

So lions o'er the jackal sway;

The jackal points, he fells the prey,
Then on the vulgar yelling press

To gorge the relics of success.

XIII

His head grows fever'd, and his pulse
The quick successive throbs convulse;
In vain from side to side he throws
His form, in courtship of repose;
Or if he dozed, a sound, a start
Awoke him with a sunken heart.
The turban on his hot brow press'd,
The mail weigh'd lead-like on his breast,
Though oft and long beneath its weight
Upon his eyes had slumber sate,
Without or couch or canopy,
Except a rougher field and sky

Than now might yield a warrior's bed,
Than now along the heaven was spread.
He could not rest, he could not stay
Within his tent to wait for day,
But walk'd him forth along the sand,
Where thousand sleepers strew'd the strand
What pillow'd them? and why should he
More wakeful than the humblest be?
Since more their peril, worse their toil,
And yet they fearless dream of spoil;
While he alone, where thousands pass'd
A night of sleep, perchance their last,
In sickly vigil wander'd on,
And envied all he gazed upon.

XIV.

He felt his soul become more light
Beneath the freshness of the night.
Cool was the silent sky, though calm,
And bathed his brow with airy balm
Behind, the camp-before him lay,
In many a winding creek and bay,
Lepanto's gulf; and, on the brow
Of Delphi's hill, unshaken snow,
High and eternal, such as shone
Through thousand summers brightly gone,
Along the gulf, the mount, the clime:
It will not melt, like man, to time.
Tyrant and slave are swept away,
Less form'd to wear before the ray;
But that white veil, the lightest, frailest,
Which on the mighty mount thou hailest,
While tower and tree are torn and rent,
Shines o'er its craggy battlement;
In form a peak, in height a cloud,
In texture like a hovering shroud,
Thus high by parting Freedom spread,
As from her fond abode she fled,
And linger'd on the spot, where long
Her prophet spirit spake in song.
Oh, still her step at moments falters
O'er wither'd fields and ruined altars,
And fain would wake, in souls too broken
By pointing to each glorious token.
But vain her voice, till better days
Dawn in those yet remember'd rays
Which shone upon the Persian flying,
And saw the Spartan smile in dying.

XV.

Not mindless of these mighty times Was Alp, despite his flight and crimes,