5. Who on the marriage-day, Made the poor cabin gay And did both laugh and sing, 6. Who as friend only met, Never did flout me yet, And, when my eye was dim, 7. Och! you, and only you, And for this I was true to you, In love they'll never shake, We a true part did take, 53. SUMMER'S FAREWELL. THAT sound is that? 'Tis Summer's farewell, WHAT In the breath of the night-wind sighing; The chill breeze comes like a sorrowful dirge BANIX. The oak of the forest is losing its robe, The flowers have fallen and faded. All that I look on but saddens my heart, To think that the lovely so soon must depart. 2. Yet, why should I sigh? Other Summers will come, Joys like the past one bringing; Again will the vine bear its blushing fruit; Again will the birds be singing: The forest will put forth its "honors" again; The hives will have honey, the bees will hum, 3. They will, they will; but oh! who can tell To awake with the warbling or humming. This cheek now pale may be paler far When the Summer's next sun is glowing; The grass on my grave-turf glowing: 4. And few would weep in the beautiful world My follies and sins alone would live, Oh! what a change in my spirit's dream May there be ere the Summer's sun next shall beam ! E. Cook Α' 54. ROME UNDER NERO. UGUSTUS is no more; but still the folds and fringes of his mantle hang over the marble city. The freshness of his works of taste and magnificence in every one of his “fourteen regions" is yet undimmed, though soon to be marred by the flames and the smoke of Nero's conflagration. Rome reclines with ease and beauty in the mellow sunset of her fairest day of refinement and elegant letters. The golden age is not yet all gone. 2. The enchantment, not yet all dispelled, lingers awhile around temple and triumphal arch, amphitheatre and colonnade. While poetry, eloquence, and the fine arts are slowly and not ungracefully sinking to rest on their own heaped-up trophies, the altars of Venus, and Hebe, and Bacchus are fain to break beneath the rich offerings sent thither by high and low, from every "region" of the city, and from the suburbs. 3. How every remnant of the urbane manliness of yore is softening away into Greek sentimentality and Oriental luxuriousness! Pleasure, with both her hands, flings perfumes and roses over the mansions that crown the hills, and among the suburban and inter-mountain crowds over whom swell up every day unwonted forms and numbers of circuses of great vastness, and most luxurious baths: all through the day-long leisure of equestrian youth, a mimicry of Grecian sports stirs along the once warlike Campus Martius. 4. To sounds of soothing music processions of fancifullydecorated victims pace the solemn way to the almost untrodden temples. The Roman knight smiles languidly on his train of white slaves that troop along in pairs, or cluster in groups along his usual progress to an imperial bath, or one of his own delicious villas. The gravity and power of the Senate have vanished, still the stately retinue is borne homeward with hollow pomp. 5. Ever and anon from the gates and walls of the city come outbursts of boisterous joy; it is the prætorian guard, whose revelries send back their echoes far across to the Palatine, that palace hill that still glows on through the long night; amid the effulgence streaming out from Nero's banquet-halls, and the golden saloons of his gay and dissolute court. 6. Yet loudly and fiercely resounds throughout all the gayety and dissipations of the city a cry that was first caught up at the theatres: "To the lions with the Christians! The Christians to the lions!" 7. Peter had lifted up his voice, but a short time before, in the patrician street, and in the mansion of the Senator Pudeas, and he had with simplicity and earnestness told equestrian and plebeian, in the heart of Rome-as he had told the Israelites from beyond the Tiber-of Him who loved us all even unto death! 8. A loud laugh from all sides first met these words of "foolishness;" yet some there were, Gentiles as well as Jews, who at once followed Peter, and for twenty-five years, day after day, brought around him new groups of believers. First converts of the holy Church of Rome, towards them the laugh of scorn is soon turned into cries of rage and sentence of death. High or low, young or old, it matters not, they must away from any share in the glory, the festivities, or the enjoyments of Rome, as soon as suspected of being followers of Christ. 9. They are ever driven away from the face of day itself, and must hasten out into some of the caverns and sand-pits yawning along the roads, or in the fields outside the city, and look through their dark windings and intricacies underground, for some temporary place of refuge for themselves and their household, and some uncontaminated burial-place for their martyred brethren. 10. Forty years since the crucifixion of man's Redeemer have not yet gone by-Rome yet shines in the faintly altering brightness of the golden age- and behold! the first chapel and tomb in the catacombs are already lighted up with Catholic rites-the Litany of Sepulchral Inscriptions, commonly ending "with dread and tears," is already begun-the first dates in the calendar of the Roman martyrology are already fixed; and in Rome, the capital and mistress of the heathen world, the contest for the dominion of Rome-the empire of the world— is already fierce and hot between the foes of God and man, and the divine Spouse of Christ. 11. Soon shall the engagement spread through the provinces, and the field of battle become as vast, and the trophies that ornament the triumph of the victorious party become as numerous, as all the nations and tribes of earth. MANAHAN. 55. ACRE. ["The city of Acre was the first seat of the sovereignty of the Knights of Malta."] BEAU EAUTIFUL as it is, in our own day, it was yet more beautiful when, seven centuries ago, it was the Christian's capital of the East. Its snow-white palaces sparkled like jewels against the dark woods of Carmel, which rose towards the south. To the east there stretched away the glorious plain, over which the eye might wander till it lost itself in the blue outlines of hills on which no Christian eye could gaze unmoved; for they hid in their bosoms the village of Nazareth and the waters of Tiberius, and had been trodden all about by One whose touch had made them holy ground. 2. That rich and fertile plain, now marshy and deserted, but then a very labyrinth of fields and vineyards, circled Acre to the north; but there the eye was met by a new boundary— the sunny summits of a lofty mountain range, whose bases were covered with cedar; while all along the lonely coast broke blue waves of that mighty sea whose shores are the empires of the world. And there lay Acre among her gardens; the long rows of her marble houses, with their flat roofs, forming terraces odorous with orange-trees, and rich with flowers of a thousand hues, which silken awnings shaded from the sun. |