RURAL LIFE - PATRIOT TRIALS. When the sweet limes, so full of bees in June, Thou wouldst call up and question."— p. 42-46. 399 Other cares and trials and triumphs await him. He fights the good fight of freedom in the senate, as he had done before in the field — and with greater peril. The heavy hand of power weighs upon him, and he is arraigned of crimes against the State. "Like Hampden struggling in his country's cause, "Tis not the first time I shall shed my blood ") — Then to the place of trial; and alone, Stands for his life! there, on that awful day, Thrice greeting those that most withdrew their claim He reads thanksgiving in the eyes of all, All met as at a holy festival! On the day destin'd for his funeral ! * Traitor's Gate, in the Tower. NIA We know of nothing at once so pathetic and so sublime, as the few simple sentences here alluded to, in the account of Lord Russel's trial. Lord Russel. May I have somebody write to help my memory? Lord Chief Justice. Any of your Servants shall assist you in writing Lord Russel. My Wife is here, my Lord, to do it! When we recollect who Russel and his wife were, and what a destiny was then impending, this one trait makes the heart swell, almost to bursting. 400 ROGERS PATRIOT TRIUMPH, AND RETIREMENT. Lo, there the friend, who entering where he lay, Take thou my cloak Nay, start not, but obey then sought him as before, Believing she should see his face no more!"-p. 48 — 50. What follows is sacred to still higher remembrances. "And now once more where most he lov'd to be, In his own fields - breathing tranquillity We hail him - not less happy, Fox, than thee! Thee, who wouldst watch a bird's nest on the spray, I saw the sun go down! - Ah, then 'twas thine Shakespeare's or Dryden's- thro' the chequer'd shade And where we sate (and many a halt we made) Some splendid passage not to thee unknown, Thy bell has toll'd! The scene of closing age is not less beautiful and atnor less true and exemplary. tractive ""Tis the sixth hour. The village-clock strikes from the distant tower. The ploughman leaves the field; the traveller hears, Yet hovering, and the thistle's down at rest. "And such, his labour done, the calm He knows, Whose footsteps we have followed. Round him glows An atmosphere that brightens to the last; The light, that shines, reflected from the Past, And from the Future too! Active in Thought Among old books, old friends; and not unsought By the wise stranger. In his morning-hours, SERENE CLOSE OF LIFE. He muses, turning up the idle weed; "At night, when all, assembling round the fire, A tale is told of India or Japan, Of merchants from Golcond or Astracan, -- Stamp'd with its signet that ingenuous brow; Trees he has climb'd so oft, he sits and sees "Now in their turn assisting, they repay A feeling of enjoyment. In his walks, 401 We have dwelt too long, perhaps, on a work more calculated to make a lasting, than a strong impression on the minds of its readers and not, perhaps, very well calculated for being read at all in the pages of a Miscellaneous Journal. We have gratified ourselves, however, in again going over it; and hope we have not much wearied our readers. It is followed by a very striking copy of verses written at Pæstum in 1816- and more 402 ROGERS TEMPLES OF PESTUM. characteristic of that singular and most striking scene than any thing we have ever read, in prose or verse, on the subject. The ruins of Pæstum, as they are somewhat improperly called, consist of three vast and massive Temples, of the most rich and magnificent architecture; which are not ruined at all, but as entire as on the day when they were built, while there is not a vestige left of the city to which they belonged! They stand in a desert and uninhabited plain, which stretches for many miles from the sea to the mountains- and, after the subversion of the Roman greatness, had fallen into such complete oblivion, that for nearly nine hundred years they had never been visited or heard of by any intelligent person, till they were accidentally discovered about the middle of last century. The whole district in which they are situated, though once the most fertile and flourishing part of the Tyrrhene shore, has been almost completely depopulated by the Mal'aria; and is now, in every sense of the word, a vast and dreary desert. following lines seem to us to tell all that need be told, and to express all that can be felt of a scene so strange and so mournful. "They stand between the mountains and the sea; Awful memorials - but of whom we know not! The seaman, passing, gazes from the deck. The buffalo-driver, in his shaggy cloak, 66 How many centuries did the sun go round Their iron-brown o'erspread with brightest verdure! The PESTUM. This classic ground. And am I here at last? Mountains and mountain-gulphs! and, half-way up, Where once a slave withstood a world in arms. "In such an hour as this, the sun's broad disk - And what within them? what but in the midst These Three, in more than their original grandeur, And, turning, left them to the elements." 403 The volume ends with a little ballad, entitled "The Boy of Egremond"- which is well enough for a Lakish ditty, but not quite worthy of the place in which we meet it. |