Phidias is putting up the frieze. We turn into another street; a rhapsodist is reciting there; men, women, children, are thronging round him; the tears are running down their cheeks; their eyes are fixed; their very breath is still; for he is telling how Priam fell at the feet of Achilles, and kissed those hands-the terrible, the murderous—which had slain so many of his sons. We enter the public place; there is a ring of youths, all leaning forward with sparkling eyes, and gestures of expectation. Soerates is pitted against the famous atheist from Ionia, and has just brought him to a contradiction in terms. But we are interrupted. The herald is crying, "Room for the Prytanes!" The general assembly is to meet. The people are swarming in on every side. Proclamation is made: "Who wishes to speak?" There is a shout and a clapping of hands; Pericles is mounting the stand. Then for a play of Sophocles, and away to sup with Aspasia.

THE CROWNING OF PETRARCH.

Among the great men to whom we owe the resuscitation of science, he deserves the foremost place; and his enthusiastic attachment to this great cause constitutes his most just and splendid title to the gratitude of posterity. He was the votary of literature. He loved it with a perfect love. He worshipped it with an almost fanatical devotion. He was the missionary who proclaimed its discoveries to distant countries-the pilgrim who travelled far and wide to collect its relics-the hermit who retired to seclusion to meditate on its beauties-the champion who fought. its battles the conqueror who, in more than a metaphorical sense, led barbarism and ignorance in triumph, and received in the capitol the laurel which his magnificent victory had earned.

Nothing can be conceived more affecting or noble than that ceremony. The superb palaces and porticos, by which had rolled. the ivory chariots of Marius and Cæsar, had long mouldered into dust. The laurelled fasces, the golden eagles, the shouting legions, the captives, and the pictured cities were indeed wanting to his victorious procession. The sceptre had passed away from Rome. But she still retained the mightier influence of an intellectual empire, and was now to confer the prouder reward of an intellectual triumph. To the man who had extended the dominion of her ancient language-who had erected the trophies of philosophy and imagination in the haunts of ignorance and ferocitywhose captives were the hearts of admiring nations enchained by

the influence of his song-whose spoils were the treasures of ancient genius rescued from obscurity and decay-the Eternal City offered the just and glorious tribute of her gratitude. Amidst the ruined monuments of ancient, and the infant erections modern art, he who had restored the broken link between the two ages of human civilization was crowned with the wreath which he had deserved from the moderns who owed to him their refinement-from the ancients who owed to him their fame. Never was a coronation so august witnessed by Westminster or Rheims.

BOOKS AND EDUCATION IN CHARLES SECOND'S REIGN.

Literature which could be carried by the post bag then formed the greater part of the intellectual nutriment ruminated by the country divines and country justices. The difficulty and expense of conveying large packets from place to place was so great, that an extensive work was longer in making its way from Paternoster Row to Devonshire or Lancashire, than it now is in reaching Kentucky. How scantily a rural parsonage was then furnished, even with books the most necessary to a theologian, has already been remarked. The houses of the gentry were not more plentifully supplied. Few knights of the shire had libraries so good as may now perpetually be found in a servant's hall, or in the back parlor of a small shopkeeper. An esquire passed among his neighbors for a great scholar, if Hudibras and Baker's Chronicle, Tarlton's Jests and the Seven Champions of Christendom, lay in his hall window among the fishing-rods and fowling-pieces. No circulating library, no book society, then existed even in the capital; but in the capital those students who could not afford to purchase largely had a resource. The shops of the great booksellers, near Saint Paul's Churchyard, were crowded every day and all day long with readers; and a known customer was often permitted to carry a volume home. In the country there was no such accommodation; and every man was under the necessity of buying whatever he wished to read.1

As to the lady of the manor and her daughters, their literary stores generally consisted of a prayer-book and a receipt-book.

1 Cotton seems, from his Angler, to have found room for his whole library in his hall window; and Cotton was a man of letters. Even when Franklin first visited London in 1724, circulating libraries were unknown there. The crowd at the booksellers' shops in Little Britain is mentioned by Roger North in his Life of his brother John.

But in truth they lost little by living in rural seclusion. For, even in the highest ranks, and in those situations which afforded the greatest facilities for mental improvement, the English women

that generation were decidedly worse educated than they have been at any other time since the revival of learning. At an earlier period, they had studied the masterpieces of ancient genius. In the present day, they seldom bestow much attention on the dead languages; but they are familiar with the tongue of Pascal and Molière, with the tongue of Dante and Tasso, with the tongue of Goethe and Schiller; nor is there any purer or more graceful English than that which accomplished women now speak and write. But, during the latter part of the seventeenth century, the culture of the female mind seems to have been almost entirely neglected. If a damsel had the least smattering of literature, she was regarded as a prodigy. Ladies highly born, highly bred, and naturally quick-witted, were unable to write a line in their mother tongue without solecisms and faults of spelling such as a charity girl would now be ashamed to commit.1

The explanation may easily be found. Extravagant licentiousness, the natural effect of extravagant austerity, was now the mode; and licentiousness had produced its ordinary effect, the moral and intellectual degradation of women. To their personal beauty it was the fashion to pay rude and impudent homage. But the admiration and desire which they inspired were seldom mingled with respect, with affection, or with any chivalrous sentiment. The qualities which fit them to be companions, advisers, confidential friends, rather repelled than attracted the libertines of Whitehall. In such circumstances, the standard of female attainments was necessarily low; and it was more dangerous to be above that standard than to be beneath it. Extreme ignorance and frivolity were thought less unbecoming in a lady than the slightest tincture of pedantry.

One instance will suffice. Queen Mary had good natural abilities, had been educated by a bishop, was fond of history and poetry, and was regarded by very eminent men as a superior woman. There is, in the library of the Hague, a superb English Bible, which was delivered to her when she was crowned in Westminster Abbey. In the title-page are these words in her own hand: "This book was given the King and I, at our crownation. Marie R."

MRS. NORTON.

CAROLINE ELIZABETH SARAH SHERIDAN is the granddaughter of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and was born about the year 1803. She early showed that she inherited the genius of her celebrated ancestor, and in her seventeenth year composed her poem "The Sorrows of Rosalie." "Bereaved by death," as it has been said, "of one to whom she had given her heart, she became, in an unpropitious hour, the wife of the Hon. George Chappel Norton." This was at the early age of nineteen, and it may well be asked, how much "heart" she had to give away, when she could so soon transfer that heart to another? And if she had not a sincere affection for the Hon. (?) George Chappel Norton, the case is worse. Be this as it may, the union proved a most unhappy one, and was dissolved in 1840, Mrs. Norton having been, for many years, the object of suspicion and persecution of the most mortifying and painful character. That her husband's treatment of her was most unjustifiable, no one who is acquainted with the history of this most unfortunate union for a moment doubts; but that in such cases the fault is all on one side, the world rarely, if ever, believes.

Mrs. Norton's next work was a poem founded on the ancient legend of the "Wandering Jew," which she termed "The Undying One." A third volume appeared from her pen in 1840, entitled "The Dream, and other Poems." These have given her a very high rank among the female poets of England. The " Quarterly Review" says that "she is the Byron of our modern poetesses. She has very much of that intense personal passion by which Byron's poetry is distinguished from the larger grasp and deeper communion with man and nature of Wordsworth. She has also Byron's beautiful intervals of tenderness, his strong practical thought, and his forceful expression. It is not an artificial imitation, but a natural parallel." For the honor of the sex, I hope the "natural parallel" cannot be carried any further. Indeed it cannot. Much of Byron's poetry is "earthly, sensual, devilish;" Mrs. Norton's is pure, serene, spiritual, and her moral vision is far more elevated than that of the author of Don Juan. We will now let her speak for herself.

The following impassioned verses are addressed by Mrs. Norton to her to whom she has dedicated her poems :

TO THE DUCHESS OF SUTHERLAND.

Once more, my harp! once more, although I thought
Never to wake thy silent strings again;

A wandering dream thy gentle chords have wrought,
And my sad heart, which long hath dwelt in pain,
Soars, like a wild bird from a cypress bough,
Into the poet's heaven, and leaves dull grief below!

And unto thee-the beautiful and pure-
Whose lot is cast amid that busy world
Where only sluggish Dulness dwells secure,

And Fancy's generous wing is faintly furled;
To thee-whose friendship kept its equal truth

Through the most dreary hour of my embittered youth

I dedicate the lay. Ah! never bard,

In days when poverty was twin with song,

Nor wandering harper, lonely and ill-starred,

Cheered by some castle's chief, and harbored long;

Not Scott's "Last Minstrel," in his trembling lays,

Woke with a warmer heart the earnest meed of praise!

For easy are the alms the rich man spares

To sons of Genius, by misfortune bent;

But thou gav'st me, what woman seldom dares,

Belief in spite of many a cold dissent

When, slandered and maligned, I stood apart

From those whose bounded power hath wrung, not crushed, my heart.

Thou, then, when cowards lied away my name,
And scoffed to see me feebly stem the tide;
When some were kind on whom I had no claim,
And some forsook on whom my love relied,
And some,
who might have battled for my sake,

Stood off in doubt to see what turn the world would take

Thou gav'st me that the poor do give the poor,

Kind words and holy wishes, and true tears;

The loved, the near of kin could do no more;

Who changed not with the gloom of varying years,

But clung the closer when I stood forlorn,

And blunted Slander's dart with their indignant scorn.

For they who credit crime are they who feel

Their own hearts weak to unresisted sin;

Memory, not judgment, prompts the thoughts which steal
O'er minds like these, an easy faith to win;
And tales of broken truth are still believed
Most readily by those who have themselves deceived.

But like a white swan down a troubled stream,
Whose ruffling pinion hath the power to fling
Aside the turbid drops which darkly gleam

And mar the freshness of her snowy wing-
So thou, with queenly grace and gentle pride,
Along the world's dark waves in purity dost glide:

Thy pale and pearly cheek was never made

To crimson with a faint false-hearted shame; Thou didst not shrink-of bitter tongues afraid, Who hunt in packs the object of their blame; To thee the sad denial still held true,

For from thine own good thoughts thy heart its mercy drew.