Homer himself lived so much within the undeterminable limit of that doubtful era, when, though it was no longer night, it was not yet day in Greece, that the only date which can be assigned to him is not that of his actual existence, but that of his resurrection from an obscurity which had gathered round his tomb, and would probably for ever have concealed it and all but his name from posterity. Of course the allusion is to that act of Pisistratus, by which he almost redeemed the royal title of tyrant from the obloquy which his usurpation had entailed upon it, when, according to the only history of the period -unwritten tradition, he collected the scattered songs of Homer, and united the loose links into that perfect and inimitable chain in which they have been delivered down to us, most resembling, it may be said, "the golden everlasting chain” celebrated in the Iliad, wherewith the father of the gods bound the earth to his throne; for, in like manner, hath this father of poets, from his "highest heaven of invention" indissolubly bound the world to the sovereignty of his genius.

Whether the poems of Homer, like the "Orlando Innamorato" of Boiardo, as recomposed by Berni, or our national ballad of "Chevy-Chase," as altered and improved by successive hands, were rude but noble lays, refined gradually or at once; or whether they were originally composed in the form which two thousand five hundred years have not been able to amend or deteriorate, this is a question which it were vain to argue upon here; suffice it to say, that Greek literature, in poetry at least, had reached a

standard which has never been surpassed in the age of Pisistratus, who, as the prototype of Pericles (his imitator both in the career of learning and of ambition), if he deprived his countrymen of their birthright, conferred on them the only earthly advantage that can in any degree be regarded as an honourable compensation for the loss of liberty: he bestowed upon them, by his munificent patronage, the motives and the means of cultivating those elegant arts and useful sciences, which, more than all that fortune can give, or valour win beside, adorn, enrich, and dignify any people among whom they find a sanctuary and a home. The glory of Pisistratus, in the history of literature, is only second to that of Homer, for having gathered the poems of the latter into the most precious volume (the Sacred Scriptures excepted) which time has spared in the devastations of his march, and spared so long that even he cannot destroy it, except in that ruin in which he shall involve himself and all things under the sun.

From the era when the works of Homer were thus revived, and not they only but all the treasures of past and contemporary genius, in the library which Pisistratus first established, were thrown open to all who had leisure, ability, and disposition to avail themselves of the same from that auspicious era, not only Athens, but all the little commonwealths of Greece, Sparta excepted, rose so rapidly in learning and refinement, that thenceforward, till the subversion of their independence by Philip of Macedon, has been justly styled the golden era of that illustrious land, whose heroes, philosophers, poets, histo

rians, orators, and adepts in all that exalts and beautifies man in society, remain to this day, and must ever remain, the models and exemplars to the great and the glorious of every kindred and climate. Had they correspondingly excelled in virtue, how had they blessed their own and every other age in which their honour, name, and praise, should have been known!

But it is their literature, not their morals, with which we have at present to do, and it is but justice to say distinctly, after intimating that much was amiss, there were among them many not only of the wisest but of the best men, to whom no light but that of nature had been given, and whose nearest approach to the discovery of eternal truth was the consecration of an altar to the unknown God." Within the period above alluded to, but especially after the battles of Marathon and Salamis had raised the reputation of their arms to an equality with the eminence of their arts, the greatest number of their greatest men appeared, and flourished in such thick contiguity and rapid succession, that the mere relics, the floating fragments of the wreck of literature which have been preserved, because they could not sink in the dead sea of oblivion, that engulphed and stagnated over the buried riches of a hundred argosies, - the mere relics and wreck of literature preserved to us, from that brief period, are of as much value as all that has been inherited, or recovered rather, from the ages before that died-may I say it ? without will, and the ages after, that had comparatively little wealth either to live upon or to be

queath, though the country, under various forms of republican government, and as a province of Rome, continued to be the seat of arts, science, and philosophy through many succeeding centuries.

Athens.

It was during that brief but illustrious period that Athens, the eye of Greece-the loveliest feature in a face and form, of which every line and limb was moulded as exquisitely as her own ideal image of beauty, — it was then that Athens, the eye of Greece, shone forth in all its lustre, and, when it closed, left such a remembrance of its light behind as continued to cheer the paths both of the Muses and the Graces through the comparative darkness of succeeding times. Athens by day presented the brilliant and vivacious spectacle of a thronging population in the forum, the portico, the grove, the theatres, the temples, the palaces of her heroic yet voluptuous city, where the gayest, the proudest, the most intellectual people that ever dwelt in such close society, were eagerly pursuing glory under every form of labour, letters, arts, and arms, or pleasure, in all its diversities of pomp, licentiousness, and superstition superstition so elegantly disguised (and yet so profligate) as to impose on the imaginations, if not to captivate the understandings, of the wisest men. There every street, public edifice, and open space, was so crowded with the images of their popular divinities, and their divinities were but the symbols of the worshippers themselves personified, though

with superhuman strength and symmetry, in marble, metal, ivory, or wood, — that it was almost a proverb, "You will as easily find a God as a man at Athens." From this picturesque profusion of sculpture, exposed without injury to the open air in that delightful clime, Athens by night would resemble a city of statues, I had almost said a city of spirits, when the cold moon looking down from a pure blue heaven, beheld, emerging from black shadows, innumerable forms of Parian marble white as snow, and disposed in every attitude of grace and majesty. One seems to feel the silence of the scene in thinking upon it;its beauty, magic, grandeur, touch, and awe, and elevate the soul, and we almost expect that one of the more than mortal shapes should break the stillness, and address us in the language of Pericles or Demosthenes; till some patrician youth, like Alcibiades, flushed with wine, apparelled in purple, and crowned with flowers, followed by a rabble-rout of bacchanals, breaking forth from the haunts of their revelry, with shout, and song, and dance, and music, disenchant the whole, or rather transform the enchantment into a new and more exhilarating spectacle of the midnight orgies of the finest sons of Greece in her prime.

Is there any where a parallel to this picture of imagination? Somewhere in the depths of an abandoned wilderness, in the heart of Africa, according to an ancient tradition, there may be seen to this day, in perfect preservation, a magnificent city, once the capital of a surrounding empire, on which so strange a judgment came, that all its inhabitants were in a