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CVI.

As for the rest, to come to the conclusion

Of this true dream, the telescope is gone Which kept my optics free from all delusion, And show'd me what I in my turn have shown;

alangh at the absurdity of the poet, might then be enjoyed by the reader, without an apprehension that he was guilty of profanity in giving it. Milton has been blamed by the most udicious critics, and his warmest admirers, for expressing he counsels of Eternal Wisdom, and the decrees of Almighty Power, by words assigned to the Deity. It offends against poetical propriety and poetical probability. It is impossible to deceive ourselves into a moinentary and poetical belief that words proceeded from the Holy Spirit, except on the warrant of inspiration itself. It is here only that Milton fails, and here Milton sometimes shocks. The language and condict ascribed by Milton to his inferior spirits, accord so well with our conceptions and belief respecting their nature and existence, that in many places we forget that they are, in any respect, the creatures of imagination. The blasphemies of Milton's devils offend not a pious ear, because they are devils who utter them. Nor are we displeased with the poet's presumption in feigning language for heavenly spirits, because it is a language that lifts the soul to Heaven; and we more than believe, we know and feel, that, whatever may be the nature of the language of angels, the language of the poet truly interprets their sentiments. The words are human; but the truths they express, and the doctrines they teach, are divine. Nothing of the same kind can be said of any other fable, serious or ludicrous, pious or profane, that has yet been written in any age or language.-Blackwood, 1592.1

The “Vision of Judgment" appeared, as has been already said, in "The Liberal"-a Journal which, consisting chiefly of pieces by the late Mr. Hazlitt and Mr. Leigh Hant, was not saved from ruin by a few contributions, some of the highest merit, by Lord Byron. In his work, entitled "Lord Byron and his Contemporaries," Mr. Hunt assaulted the dead poet, with reference to this unhappy Journal; and his charges were thus taken to pieces at the time in the Quarterly Review:

Mr. Hunt describes himself as pressed by Lord Byron Into the undertaking of that hapless magazine: Lord Byron un the contrary, represents himself as urged to the service by the Messrs. Hunt themselves." e. g.

Genoa, Oct. 9th, 1822.-I am afraid the Journal is a bad business, and won't do, but in it I am sacrificing myself for others. I can have no advantage in it. I believe the brothers Hunt: to be honest men; I am sure that they are poor ones; they have not a Nap. They pressed me to engage in this work, and in an evil hour I consented; still I shall not repent if I can do them the least service. I have done all I can for Leigh Hunt since he came here, but it is almost useless: his wife is ill; his six children not very tractable; and in affairs of this world he himself is a perfect child. The death of Shelley left them totally aground; and I could not see them in such a state without using the common feelings of humanity; and what means were in my power to set them afloat again.' "Again-Mr. Hunt represents Lord Byron as dropping his connection with The Liberal,' partly because his friends at home (Messrs. Moore, Hobhouse, Murray, &c.) told him it was a discreditable one, and partly because the business !did not turn out lucrative.

It is a mistake to suppose, that he was not mainly influenced by the expectation of profit. He expected very large returns from The Liberal Readers in these days need not be told, that periodical works which have a large sale are a mine of wealth: Lord Byron had calculated that matter well.'- Lord Byron and his Contemporaries, p. 50.

The failure of the large profits-the non-appearance of the golden visions he had looked for of the Edinburgh or Quarterly returns-of the solid and splendid proofs of this new country, which he should conquer in the regions of notoriety, to the dazzling of all men's eyes and his ownthis it was-this was the bitter disappointment which made him determine to give way.'-Ibid. p. 51.

"Now let us hear Lord Byron himself :

Genoa, 9r 18th, 1822.-They will, of course, attribute motives of all kinds; but I shall not abandon a man like Hunt because he is unfortunate. Why, I could have no pecuniary motives, and, least of all, in connection with Hunt.' "Genoa, 10re 25th, 1822.-Now do you see what you and your friends do by your injudicious rudeness? actually cemeat a sort of connection which you strove to prevent, and which, had the Hunts prospered, would not, in all probability, have continued. As it is, I will not quit them in their adversity, though it should cost me character, fame, money,

All I saw farther, in the last confusion,
Was, that King George slipp'd into heaven for

one;

And when the tumult dwindled to a calm,

I left him practising the hundredth psalm.'

and the usual et cetera. My original motives I already explained; (in the letter which you thought proper to show ;) they are the true ones, and I abide by them, as I tell you, and I told Lesh Hunt, when he questioned me on the subject of that etter. He was violently hurt, and never will forgive me at the bottom; but I cannot help that. I never meant to make a parade of it; but if he chose to question me, I could only answer the plain truth; and I confess, I did not see any thing in the letter to hurt him, unless I said he was a bore," which I don't remember. Had this Journal gone on well, and I could have aided to make it better for them, I should then have left them after a safe pilotage off a lee shore to make a prosperous voyage by themselves. As it is, I can't, and would not if I could, leave them among the breakers. As to any community of feeling, thought, or opinion, between Leigh Hunt and me, there is little or none. We meet rarely, hardly ever; but I think him a good-principled and able man, and must do as I would be done by.'" The Reviewer proceeds to comment on Mr. Hunt's general abuse of Lord Byron's manners, habits, and conversation: "The witness is, in our opinion, disqualified to give evidence upon any such subjects: his book proves him to be equally ignorant of what manners are, and incompetent to judge what manners ought to be: his elaborate portraiture of his own habits is from beginning to end a very caricature of absurdity; and the man who wrote this book, studiously cast, as the whole language of it is, in a free-and-easy, conversational tone, has no more right to decide about the conversation of such a man as Lord Byron, than has a pert apprentice to pronounce ex cathedra-from his one-shilling gallery, to wit-on the dialogue of a polite comedy. We can easily believe, that Lord Byron never talked his best when this was his Companion. We can also believe, that Lord Byron's serious conversation, even in its lowest tone, was often unintelligible to Mr. Leigh Hunt. We are morally certain, that in such company Lord Byron talked, very often inof his ignorant, fantastic, lack-a-daisical guest; that he condeed, for the mere purpose of amusing himself at the expense sidered the Magnus Apollo of Paradise Row as a precious butt, and acted accordingly. We therefore consider Mr. Hunt's evidence as absolutely inadmissible, on strong preliminary grounds. But what are we to say to it, when we find it, as we do, totally and diametrically at variance both with the substance and complexion of Lord Byron's epistolary correspondence; and with the oral testimonies of men whose talents, originally superior beyond all possibility of measurement to Mr. Hunt's, have been matured and perfected by study, both of books and men, such as Mr. Hunt never even dreamed of; who had the advantage of meeting Lord Byron on terms of perfect equality to all intents and purposes; and contemporaries, to appreciate Lord Byron, whether as a who, qualified, as they probably were, above any of their poet, or as a man of high rank and pre-eminent fame, ming. ling in the world in society such as he ought never to have sunk below, all with one voice pronounce an opinion exactly and in every particular, as well as looking to things broadly and to the general effect, the reverse of that which this unworthy and ungrateful dependant has thought himself justified in promulgating, on the plea of a penury which no Lord Byron survives to relieve? It is too bad, that he who has, in his own personal conduct, as well as in his writings, so much to answer for-who abused great opportunities and great talents so lamentably-who sinned so deeply, both against the society to which he belonged and the literature in which his name will ever hold a splendid place-it is really too bad, that Lord Byron, in addition to the grave condemnation of men able to appreciate both his merits and his demerits, and well disposed to think more in sorrow than in anger of the worst errors that existed along with so much that was excellent and noble-it is by much too bad, that this great man's glorious though melancholy memory

Must also bear the vile attacks
Of ragged curs and vulgar hacks'

whom he fed ;-that his bones must be scraped up from their bed of repose to be at once grinned and howled over by creatures who, even in the least hyena-like of their moods, can touch nothing that mankind would wish to respect without polluting it."

Mr. Moore's Verses on Mr. Hunt's work must not be omitted here:

THE AGE OF BRONZE:

OR, CARMEN SECULARE ET ANNUS HAUD MIRABILIS.'

I.

"Impar Congressus Achilli."

THE "good
old times"-all times when old are
good-
Are gone; the present might be if they would;
Great things have been, and are, and greater still
Want little of mere mortals but their will:

A wider space, a greener field, is given
To those who play their "tricks before high heaven."
I know not if the angels weep, but men
Have wept enough-for what?-to weep again!
II.

All is exploded-be it good or bad.

Reader-remember when thou wert a lad,
Then Pitt was all; or, if not all, so much,
His very rival almost deem'd him such."
We, we have seen the intellectual race
Of giants stand, like Titans, face to face-
Athos and Ida, with a dashing sea

Of eloquence between, which flow'd all free,
As the deep billows of the Egean roar
Betwixt the Hellenic and the Phrygian shore.
But where are they-the rivals! a few feet
Of sullen earth divide each winding-sheet
How peaceful and how powerful is the grave,
Which hushes all! a calm, unstormy wave,
Which oversweeps the world. The theme is old
Of "dust to dust;" but half its tale untold:
Time tempers not its terrors-still the worm
Winds its cold folds, the tomb preserves its form,
Varied above, but still alike below;
The urn may shine, the ashes will not glow,
Though Cleopatra's mummy cross the sea
O'er which from empire she lured Antony;

"Next week will be published (as Lives' are the rage)
The whole Reminiscences, wondrous and strange,
Of a small puppy-dog that lived once in the cage
Of the late noble lion at Exeter 'Change.
"Though the dog is a dog of the kind they call 'sad,'
'Tis a puppy that much to good breeding pretends:
And few dogs have such opportunities had

Of knowing how lions behave-among friends.
"How that animal eats, how he moves, how he drinks,
Is all noted down by this Boswell so small;
And 'tis plain, from each sentence, the puppy-dog thinks
That the lion was no such great things after all.
"Though he roar'd pretty well-this the puppy allows-
It was all, he says, borrow'd-all second-hand roar;
And he vastly prefers his own little bow-wows
To the loftiest war-note the lion could pour.
"Tis, indeed, as good fun as a Cynic could ask,
To see how this cockney-bred setter of rabbits
Takes gravely the lord of the forest to task,
And judges of lions by puppy-dog habits.

"Nay. fed as he was (and this makes it a dark case) With sops every day from the lion's own pan, He lifts up his leg at the noble beast's carcass, And-does all a dog, so diminutive, can. "However, the book's a good book, being rich in Examples and warnings to lions high-bred, How they suffer small mongrelly curs in their kitchen, Who'll feed on them living, and foul them when dead."] 1 [This poem was written by Lord Byron at Genoa, in the early part of the year 1823; and published in London, by

Though Alexander's urn a show be grown,
On shores he wept to conquer, though unknown-
How vain, how worse than vain, at length appear
The madman's wish, the Macedonian's tear!
He wept for worlds to conquer-half the earth
Knows not his name, or but his death, and birth,
And desolation; while his native Greece
Hath all of desolation, save its peace.
He "wept for worlds to conquer!" he who ne'er
Conceived the globe, he panted not to spare!
With even the busy Northern Isle unknown,
Which holds his urn, and never knew his throne.'
III.

(thrones"

But where is he, the modern, mightier far,
Who, born no king, made monarchs draw his car;
The new Sesostris, whose unharness'd kings,"
Freed from the bit, believe themselves with wings,
And spurn the dust o'er which they crawl'd of late,
Chain'd to the chariot of the chieftain's state?
Yes! where is he, the champion and the child
Of all that's great or little, wise or wild?
Whose game was empires, and whose stakes were
Whose table earth-whose dice were human bones?
Behold the grand result in yon lone isle,
And, as thy nature urges, weep or smile.
Sigh to behold the eagle's lofty rage
Reduced to nibble at his narrow cage;
Smile to survey the queller of the nations
Now daily squabbling o'er disputed rations;
Weep to perceive him mourning, as he dines,
O'er curtail'd dishes and o'er stinted wines;
O'er petty quarrels upon petty things.

Is this the man who scourged or feasted kings?

Mr. John Hunt. Its authenticity was much disputed at the time.]

2 [Mr. Fox used to say-"I never want a word, but Pitt never wants the word."]

[The grave of Mr. Fox, in Westminster Abbey, is within eighteen inches of that of Mr. Pitt,

"Where-taming thought to human pride!-
The mighty chiefs sleep side by side.
Drop upon Fox's grave the tear,
"Twill trickle to his rival's bier:
O'er Pitt's the mournful requiem sound,
And Fox's shall the notes rebound.
The solemn echo seems to cry-
'Here let their discord with them die;
Speak not for those a separate doom,
Whom fate made brothers in the tomb;
But search the land of living men,
Where wilt thou find their like again ""
SIR WALTER SCOTT.)

4 [A sarcophagus, of Breccia, supposed to have containe! the dust of Alexander, which came into the possession of the English army, in consequence of the capitulation of Alexandria, in February, 1802, was presented by George III. to the British Museum.]

[Sesostris is said, by Diodorus, to have had his chariot drawn by eight vanquished sovereigns:

"High on his car Sesostris struck my view,
Whom sceptred slaves in golden harness drew;
His hands a bow and pointed jav'lin hold,

His giant limbs are arm'd in scales of gold."-POPE.] [St. Helena.]

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Behold the scales in which his fortune hangs,
A surgeon's' statement, and an earl's harangues!
A bust delay'd,' a book refused, can shake
The sleep of him who kept the world awake.
Is this indeed the tamer of the great,
Now slave of all could tease or irritate-
The paltry jailer and the prying spy,
The staring stranger with his note-book nigh?
Plunged in a dungeon, he had still been great;
How low, how little was this middle state,
Between a prison and a palace, where
How few could feel for what he had to bear!
Vain his complaint,-my lord presents his bill,
His food and wine were doled out duly still:
Vain was his sickness, never was a clime
So free from homicide-to doubt 's a crime;
And the stiff surgeon, who maintain'd his cause,
Hath lost his place, and gain'd the world's applause."
But smile-though all the pangs of brain and heart
Disdain, defy, the tardy aid of art;

Though, save the few fond friends and imaged face
Of that fair boy his sire shall ne'er embrace,
None stand by his low bed-though even the mind
Be wavering, which long awed and awes mankind;
Sande-for the fetter'd eagle breaks his chain,
And higher worlds than this are his again.

IV.

How, if that soaring spirit still retain
A conscious twilight of his blazing reign,
How must he smile, on looking down, to see
The little that he was and sought to be!
What though his name a wider empire found
Than his ambition, though with scarce a bound;
Though first in glory, deepest in reverse,
He tasted empire's blessings and its curse;
Though kings, rejoicing in their late escape
From chains, would gladly be their tyrant's ape;
How must he smile, and turn to yon lone grave,
The proudest sea-mark that o'ertops the wave!
What though his jailer, duteous to the last,
Scarce deem'd the coffin's lead could keep him fast,
Refusing one poor line along the lid,

To date the birth and death of all it hid;

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The bust of his son.] 4 [Sir Hudson Lowe.] Captain Basil Hall's interesting account of his interview with the ex-emperor occurs in his " Voyage to Loo-choo."] [The circumstances under which Mr. O'Meara's dismissal from his Majesty's service took place will suffice to show how little "the stiff surgeon" merited the applause of Lord Byron. In a letter to the Admiralty Board by Mr. OM.. dated Oct. 28, 1818, there occurred the following Faragraph:In the third interview which Sir Hudson Lowe had with Napoleon Bonaparte, in May, 1816, he proposed to the latter to send me away, and to replace me by Mr. Baxter, who had been several years surgeon in the Corsican Rangers. Failing in this attempt, he adopted the resolution of manifesting great confidence in me, by loadme with civilities, inviting me constantly to dine with tim, conversing for hours together with me alone, both in his own house and grounds, and at Longwood, either in my own room, or under the trees and elsewhere. On some of these occasions he made to me observations upon the Lenefit which would result to Europe from the death of Napoleon Bonaparte; of which event he spoke in a manner which, considering his situation and mine, was pecubarly distressing to me."-The Secretary to the Adoralty was instructed to answer in these terms:-" It is mpossible to doubt the meaning which this passage was inended to convey; and my Lords can as little doubt that the insinuation is a calumnious falsehood: but if it were true, and if so horrible a suggestion were made to you, directly or indirectly, it was your bounden duty not to have jost a moment in communicating it to the Admiral on the

That name shall hallow the ignoble shore,
A talisman to all save him who bore:
The fleets that sweep before the castern blast
Shall hear their sea-boys hail it from the mast;
When Victory's Gallic column shall but rise,
Like Pompey's pillar, in a desert's skies,
The rocky isle that holds or held his dust
Shall crown the Atlantic like the hero's bust,
And mighty nature o'er his obsequies
Do more than niggard envy still denies.
But what are these to him? Can Glory's lust
Touch the freed spirit or the fetter'd dust?
Small care hath he of what his tomb consists;
Naught if he sleeps--nor more if he exists:
Alike the better-seeing shade will smile
On the rude cavern of the rocky isle,
As if his ashes found their latest home
In Rome's Pantheon or Gaul's mimic dome.
He wants not this; but France shall feel the want
Of this last consolation, though so scant;
Her honor, fame, and faith demand his bones
To rear above a pyramid of thrones;

Or carried onward in the battle's van,

To form, like Guesclin's dust, her talisman.
But be it as it is-the time may come

His name shall beat the alarm, like Ziska's drum."

V.

Oh heaven! of which he was in power a feature;
Oh earth of which he was a noble creature ;
Thou isle! to be remember'd long and well,
That saw'st the unfledged eaglet chip his shell!
Ye Alps, which view'd him in his dawning flights
Hover, the victor of a hundred fights!

Thou Rome, who saw'st thy Caesar's deeds outdone!
Alas! why pass'd he too the Rubicon—
The Rubicon of man's awaken'd rights,
To herd with vulgar kings and parasites?
Egypt! from whose all dateless tombs arose
Forgotten Pharaohs from their long repose,
And shook within their pyramids to hear
A new Cambyses thundering in their ear;
While the dark shades of forty ages stood
Like startled giants by Nile's famous flood;10

spot, or to the Secretary of State, or to their Lordships. An overture so monstrous in itself, and so deeply involving, not merely the personal character of the governor, but the honor of the nation, and the important interest committed to his charge, should not have been reserved in your own breast for two years, to be produced at last, not (as it would appear) from a sense of public duty, but in furtherance of your own personal hostility against the governor. Either the charge is in the last degree false and calumnious, or you can have no possible excuse for having hitherto suppressed it. In either case, and without adverting to the general tenor of your conduct, as stated in your letter, my Lords consider you to be an improper person to continue in his Majesty's service; and they have directed your name to be erased from the list of naval surgeons accordingly." O'Meara died in 1836.]

[Bonaparte died the 5th of May, 1821.]

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Or from the pyramid's tall pinnacle
Beheld the desert peopled, as from hell,
With clashing hosts, who strew'd the barron sand
To re-manure the uncultivated land!
Spain which, a moment mindless of the Cid,
Beheld his banner flouting thy Madrid!
Austria; which saw thy twice-ta'en capital
Twice spared to be the traitress of his fall!
Ye race of Frederic!-Frederics but in name
And falsehood-heirs to all except his fame;
Who, crush'd at Jena, crouch'd at Berlin, fell
First, and but rose to follow! Ye who dwell

Where Kosciusko dwelt, remembering yet
The unpaid amount of Catherine's bloody debt!
Poland! o'er which the avenging angel pass'd,
But left thee as he found thee, still a waste,
Forgetting all thy still enduring claim,
Thy lotted people and extinguish'd name,
Thy sigh for freedom, thy long flowing tear,
That sound that crashes in the tyrant's ear-
Kosciusko! On-on-on-the thirst of war
Gasps for the gore of serfs and of their czar.
The half barbaric Moscow's minarets
Gleam in the sun, but 'tis a sun that sets!
Moscow thou limit of his long career,

For which rude Charles had wept his frozen tear
To see in vain-he saw thee-how? with spire
And palace fuel to one common fire.

To this the soldier lent his kindling match,
To this the peasant gave his cottage thatch,
To this the merchant flung his hoarded store,
The prince his hall-and Moscow was no more!
Sublimest of volcanoes! Etna's flame

Pales before thine, and quenchless Hecla 's tame;
Vesuvius shows his blaze, a usual sight

For gaping tourists, from his hackney'd height: Thou stand'st alone unrivall'd, till the fire in which all empires shall expire!

To come,

Thou other element! as strong and stern,
To teach a lesson conquerors will not learn!-
Whose icy wing flapp'd o'er the faltering foe,
Till fell a hero with each flake of snow;
How did thy numbing beak and silent fang
Pierce, till hosts perish'd with a single pang!
In vain shall Seine look up along his banks
For the gay thousands of his dashing ranks!
In vain shall France recall beneath her vines
Her youth-their blood flows faster than her wines;
Or stagnant in their human ice remains
In frozen mummies on the Polar plains.
In vain will Italy's broad sun awaken

Her offspring chill'd; its beams are now forsaken.
Of all the trophies gather'd from the war,
What shall return ?-the conqueror's broken car!

The conqueror's yet unbroken heart! Again
The horn of Roland sounds, and not in vain.
Lutzen, where fell the Swede of victory,'
Beholds him conquer, but, alas! not die :
Dresden surveys three despots fly once more
Before their sovereign-sovereign as before;
But there exhausted Fortune quits the field,
And Leipsic's treason bids the unvanquish'd yield;
The Saxon jackal leaves the lion's side

To turn the bear's, and wolf's, and fox's guide;
And backward to the den of his despair

The forest monarch shrinks, but finds no lair!

Oh ye! and each, and all! Oh France! who found Thy long fair fields, plough'd up as hostile ground, Disputed foot by foot, till treason, still

His only victor, from Montmartre's hill
Look'd down o'er trampled Paris! and thou Isle,
Which see'st Etruria from thy ramparts smile,
Thou momentary shelter of his pride,

Till woo'd by danger, his yet weeping bride!
Oh, France! retaken by a single march,
Whose path was through one long triumphal arch!
Oh, bloody and most bootless Waterloo!
Which proves how fools may have their fortune too,
Won half by blunder, half by treachery:
Oh, dull Saint Helen! with thy jailer nigh-
Hear! hear Prometheus from his rock appeal
To earth, air, ocean, all that felt or feel
His power and glory, all who yet shall hear
A name eternal as the rolling year;
He teaches them the lesson taught so long,
So oft, so vainly-learn to do no wrong!
A single step into the right had made
This man the Washington of worlds betray'd:
A single step into the wrong has given
His name a doubt to all the winds of heaven;
The reed of Fortune, and of thrones the rod,
Of Fame the Moloch or the demigod ;
His country's Cæsar, Europe's Hannibal,
Without their decent dignity of fall.
Yet Vanity herself had better taught
A surer path even to the fame he sought,
By pointing out on history's fruitless page
Ten thousand conquerors for a single sage.
While Franklin's quiet memory climbs to heaven,
Calming the lightning which he thence hath riven,
Or drawing from the no less kindled earth
Freedom and peace to that which boasts his birth;
While Washington's a watchword, such as ne'er
Shall sink while there 's an echo left to air:
While even the Spaniard's thirst of gold and war
Forgets Pizarro to shout Bolivar !

Alas! why must the same Atlantic wave
Which wafted freedom gird a tyrant's grave-

[Gustavus Adolphus fell at the great battle of Lutzen, in November, 1632.]

2 [The Isle of Elba.]

3 I refer the reader to the first address of Prometheus in Eschylus, when he is left alone by his attendants, and before the arrival of the Chorus of Sea-nymphs. [Thus translated by Potter:

"Ethereal air, and ye swift-winged winds,

Ye rivers springing from fresh founts, ye waves,
That o'er th' interminable ocean wreath
Your crisped smiles, thou all-producing earth,
And thee, bright sun, I call, whose flaming orb
Views the wide world beneath, see what, a god,
I suffer from the gods; with what fierce pains,
Behold, what tortures for revolving ages

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The king of kings, and yet of slaves the slave,
Who bursts the chains of millions to renew
The very fetters which his arm broke through,
And crush'd the rights of Europe and his own,
To fit between a dungeon and a throne?

VI.

Bat 'twill not be the spark 's awaken'd-lo!
The swarthy Spaniard feels his former glow;
The same high spirit which beat back the Moor
Through eight long ages of alternate gore
Revives and where? in that avenging clime
| Where Spain was once synonymous with crime,
Where Cortes' and Pizarro's banner flew,

The infaut world redeems her name of "Now."
Tis the old aspiration breathed afresh,
To kindle souls within degraded flesh,
Such as repulsed the Persian from the shore

Where Greece was-No! she still is Greece once

more.

One common cause makes myriads of one breast,
Slaves of the east, or helots of the west;
Oa Andes' and on Athos' peaks unfurl'd,

The self-same standard streams o'er either world:
The Athenian wears again Harmodius' sword ;'
The Chili chief abjures his foreign lord;
The Spartan knows himself once more a Greek,
Young Freedom plumes the crest of each cacique;
Debating despots, hemm'd on either shore,
Shrink vainly from the roused Atlantic's roar;
Through Calpe's strait the rolling tides advance,
Sweep slightly by the half-tamed land of France,
Dash o'er the old Spaniard's cradle, and would fain
Unite Ausonia to the mighty main:

But driven from thence awhile, yet not for aye,
Break o'er th' Egean, mindful of the day
Of Salamis !-there, there the waves arise,
Not to be lull'd by tyrant victories.
Lone, lost, abandon'd in their utmost need

By Christians, unto whom they gave their creed,
The desolated lands, the ravaged isle,
The foster'd feud encouraged to beguile,
The aid evaded, and the cold delay,
Prolong'd but in the hope to make a prey;2-
These, these shall tell the tale, and Greece can show
The false friend worse than the infuriate foe.
But this is well: Greeks only should free Greece,
Not the barbarian, with his mask of peace.
How should the autocrat of boudage be
The king of serfs, and set the nations free?
Better still serve the haughty Mussulman,
Than swell the Cossaque's prowling caravan;
Better still toil for masters, than await,
The slave of slaves, before a Russian gate,-
Number'd by hordes, a human capital,
A live estate, existing but for thrall,
Lotted by thousands, as a meet reward
For the first courtier in the Czar's regard;
While their immediate owner never tastes
His sleep, sans dreaming of Siberia's wastes;
Better succumb even to their own despair,
And drive the camel than purvey the bear.

VII.

But not alone within the hoariest clime
Where Freedom dates her birth with that of Time,
And not alone where, plunged in night, a crowd
Of Incas darken to a dubious cloud,

The dawn revives: renown'd, romantic Spain
Holds back the invader from her soil again.
Not now the Roman tribe nor Punic horde
Demand her fields as lists to prove the sword;
Not now the Vandal or the Visigoth
Pollute the plains, alike abhorring both;
Nor old Pelayo on his mountain rears
The warlike fathers of a thousand years.
That seed is sown and reap'd, as oft the Moor
Sighs to remember on his dusky shore.
Long in the peasant's song or poet's page
Has dwelt the memory of Abencerrage;
The Zegri, and the captive victors, flung
Back to the barbarous realm from whence they sprung.
But these are gone-their faith, their swords, their
sway,

Yet left more anti-christian foes than they :
The bigot monarch and the butcher priest,
The Inquisition, with her burning feast,
The faith's red "auto," fed with human fuel,
While sate the catholic Moloch, calmly cruel,
Enjoying, with inexorable eye,
That fiery festival of agony!

The stern or feeble sovereign, one or both

By turns; the haughtiness whose pride was sloth:
The long degenerate noble; the debased
Hidalgo, and the peasant less disgraced,
But more degraded; the unpeopled realm;
The once proud navy which forgot the helm;
The once impervious phalanx disarray'd;
The idle forge that form'd Toledo's blade;
The foreign wealth that flow'd on ev'ry shore,
Save hers who earn'd it with the natives' gore;
The very language which might vie with Rome's,
And once was known to nations like their homes,
Neglected or forgotten:-such was Spain;
But such she is not, nor shall be again.
These worst, these home invaders, felt and feel
The new Numantine soul of old Castile.
Up! up again! undaunted Tauridor!
The bull of Phalaris renews his roar;
Mount, chivalrous Hidalgo! not in vain
Revive the cry-" Iago! and close Spain !"
Yes, close her with your armed bosoms round,
And form the barrier which Napoleon found,—
The exterminating war, the desert plain,
The streets without a tenant, save the slain;
The wild sierra, with its wilder troop
Of vulture-plumed guerrillas, on the stoop
For their incessant prey; the desperate wall
Of Saragossa, mightiest in her fall;
The man nerved to a spirit, and the maid
Waving her more than Amazonian blade ;
The knife of Aragon, Toledo's steel;
The famous lance of chivalrous Castile;
The unerring rifle of the Catalan;
The Andalusian courser in the van;

The famous hymn, ascribed to Callistratus:-
"Cover'd with myrtle-wreaths, I'll wear my sword
Like brave Harmodius, and his patriot friend
Anstogeiton, who the laws restored,

The tyrant slew, and bade oppression end," &c. &c.] [For the first authentic account of the Russian intrigues

in Greece, in the years alluded to, see "Gordon's History of the Greek Revolution," (1832,) vol. i.]

3 ["Santiago y serra España!" the old Spanish war-cry.] 4 [See ante, p. 20.]

The Aragonians are peculiarly dexterous in the use of this weapon, and displayed it particularly in former French

wars.

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