No deeper rubies than compose thy lips,
Nor pearls more precious than inhabit them,
With the pure red and white, which that same hand
Which blends the rainbow mingles in thy cheeks,
This well-proportioned form (think not I flatter)
In graceful motion to harmonious sounds,
And thy free tresses dancing in the wind,-
Thou 'lt fix as much observance as chaste dames
Can meet without a blush.

CLXXX.

THE COLOSSEUM BY MOONLIGHT.

The Colosse um is the name given to the largest amphitheatre in the world, that of Vespasian and Titus in Rome, completed in the eightieth year of the Christian era, and the ruins of which are still attractive for their stupendous and picturesque appearance. It is a building of an elliptic figure, and covers five acres and a quarter of ground, the walls being one hundred and sixty-six feet high. It had seats for eighty-seven thousand spectators, with standing room for twenty-two thousand others. The great object of this magnificent building was to exhibit the brutal spectacle of the gladiators contending with wild beasts. The following is an account of a recent visit by moonlight to the Colosseum, by an American traveller :

1. As a matter of course, everybody goes to the Colosseum by moonlight. The great charm of the ruin under this condition is, that the imagination is substituted for sight, the mind for the eye. The essential character of moonlight is hard rather than soft. The line between light and shadow is sharply defined, and there is no gradation of color. Blocks and walls of silver are bordered by and spring out of chasms of blackness. But moonlight shrouds the Colosseum in mystery. It opens deep vaults of gloom where the eye meets only an ebon wall, but upon which the fancy paints innumerable pictures in solemn, splendid, and tragic colors. Shadowy forms of emperor and lictor, and vestal virgin and gladiator and martyr, come out of the darkness, and pass before us in long and silent procession. The breezes which blow through the broken arches are changed into voices, and recall the shouts and cries of a vast audience. By day the Colosseum is an impressive fact; by night it is a stately vision. By day it is a lifeless form; by night, a vital thought.

The

2. The Colosseum should by all means be seen by a bright starlight, or under the growing sickle of a young moon. fainter ray and deeper gloom bring out more strongly its visionary and ideal character. When the full moon has blotted out the stars, it fills the vast gulf of the building with a flood of spectral light, which falls with a chilling touch upon the spirit; for then the ruin is like a "corpse in its shroud of snow," and the moon is

a pale watcher by its side. But when the walls, veiled in deep shadow, seem a part of the darkness in which they are lost, when the stars are seen through their chasms and breaks, and sparkle along the broken line of the battlements, the scene becomes another, though the same; more indistinct, yet not so mournful; contracting the sphere of sight, but enlarging that of thought; less burdening, but more suggestive.

3. It was my fortune to see the Colosseum, on one occasion, under lights which were neither of night nor day. Arrange ments were made by a party of German artists to illuminate it with artificial flames of blue, red, and green. The evening was propitious for the object, being dark and still, and nearly all the idlers in Rome attended. Everything was managed with taste and skill, and the experiment was entirely successful. It was quite startling to see the darkness suddenly dispelled by these weird lights, revealing a dense mass of animated countenances. and hanging a broad sheet of green or crimson upon the wall. The magic change was a sort of epigram to the eye. But, from the association of such things with the illusions of the stage, the spectacle suggested debasing comparisons. It seemed a theatrical exhibition, unworthy of the dignity and majesty of the Colosseum. It was like seeing a faded countenance repaired with artificial roses, or a venerable form clothed in some quaint and motley disguise, suited only to the bloom and freshness of youth. Such lights, far more than sunshine, “ gild but to flout the ruin gray."

4. But under all aspects, in the blaze of noon, at sunset, by the light of the moon or stars, the Colosseum stands alone and unapproached. It is the monarch of ruins. It is a great tragedy in stone, and it softens and subdues the mind like a drama of Eschylus or Shakspeare. It is a colossal type of those struggles of humanity against an irresistible destiny, in which the tragic poet finds the elements of his art. The calamities which crushed the house of Atreus are symbolized in its broken arches and shattered walls. Built of indestructible materials, and seemingly for eternity, of a size, material, and form, to defy the "strong hours" which conquer all, it has bowed its head to their touch, and passed into the inevitable cycle of decay. "And this, too, shall pass away,"-which the Eastern monarch engraved upon his signet-ring, is carved upon these Cyclope'an blocks. The stones of the Colosseum were once water; and they are now turning into dust.

--

5. Such is ever the circle of nature. The solid is changing into the fluid, and the fluid into the solid; and that which is unseen is alone indestructible. He does not see the Colosseum

aright, who carries away from it no other impressions than those of form, size, and hue. It speaks an intelligible language to the wiser mind. It rebukes the peevish, and consoles the patient. It teaches us that there are misfortunes which are clothed with dignity, and sorrows that are crowned with grandeur. As the same blue sky smiles upon the ruin, which smiled upon the perfect structure, so the same beneficent Providence bends over our shattered hopes and our answered prayers.

6. The stars are forth, the moon above the tops
Of the snow-shining mountains. - Beautiful!
I linger yet with Nature, for the night
Hath been to me a more familiar face
Than that of man ; and in her starry shade
Of dim and solitary loveliness

I learned the language of another world.

7. I do remember me that in my youth,
When I was wandering, upon such a night
I stood within the Colosseum's wall,
'Midst the chief relics of almighty Rome;
The trees which grew along the broken arches
Waved dark in the blue midnight, and the stars
Shone through the rents of ruin; from afar
The watch-dog bayed beyond the Tiber; and
More near, from out the Cæsars' palace, came
The owl's long cry, and, interruptedly,
Of distant sentinels the fitful song
Begun and died upon the gentle wind.

HILLARD.

8. Some cypresses beyond the time-worn breach
Appeared to skirt the horizon, yet they stood
Within a bow-shot. Where the Cæsars dwelt,
And dwell the tuneless birds of night, amidst
A grove which springs through levelled battlements,
And twines its roots with the imperial hearths,
Ivy usurps the laurel's place of growth;

But the gladiators' bloody circus stands,
A noble wreck in ruinous perfection!

While Cæsar's chambers, and the Augustan halls,
Grovel on earth in indistinct decay.

9. And thou didst shine, thou rolling moon, upon
All this, and cast a wide and tender light,
Which softened down the hoar austerity
Of rugged desolation, and filled up,
As 't were anew, the gaps of centuries:
Leaving that beautiful which still was so,
And making that which was not, till the place
Became religion, and the heart ran o'er
With silent worship of the great of old,
The dead but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule
Our spirits from their urns!

LORD BYRON.

CLXXXI.

LITERATURE OF THE ANCIENT HEBREWS.

1. In no respect does the Hebrew nation appear to greater advantage than when viewed in the light of their sublime compositions. Nor is this remark confined simply to the style or mechanism of their writings, which is nevertheless allowed by the best judges to possess many merits; it may be extended more especially to the exalted nature of their subjects, the works, the attributes, and the purposes of Jehovah. The poets of pagan antiquity, on the other hand, excite by their descriptions of divine things our ridicule or disgust.

2. Even the most approved of their order exhibit repulsive images of their deities, and suggest the grossest ideas in conection with the principles and enjoyments which prevail among the inhabitants of Olympus. But the contemporaries of David, inferior in many things to the ingenious people who listened to the strains of Homer and of Virgil, are remarkable for their elevated conceptions of the Supreme Being as the Creator and Governor of the world, not less than for the suitable terms in which they give utterance to their exalted thoughts.

3. In no other country but Judea, at that early period, were such sentiments as the following either expressed or felt: "O Jehovah, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth, thou that hast set thy glory above the heavens! When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained, what is man, that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man, that thou visitest him? Bless Jehovah, O my soul! O Lord, my God, thou art very great, and art clothed with honor and majesty! Thou coverest thyself with light as with a garment, and stretchest out the heavens like a curtain who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters, who maketh the clouds his chariot, and walketh upon the wings of the wind!

4. "Bless Jehovah, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless Jehovah, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits; who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with loving-kindness and tender mercies. Jehovah is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy. He hath not dealt with us after our sins, neither rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame, he remembereth that we are dust."

5. "O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me: thou

knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thoughts long before. Thou art about my bed and about my path, and art acquainted with all my ways. Whither shall I go from thy spirit, or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there; if I go down to the dwelling of the departed, thou art there also. If I take the wings of the morning and abide in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me, even the night shall be turned into day. Yea, the darkness is no darkness with thee, but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light aro both alike to thee."

6. A similar train of lofty conception pervades the writings of the prophets. "Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out the heavens with a span, and compre hended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance? Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance; he taketh up the isles as a very little thing. It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers. Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, who bringeth out their host by number; he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one faileth. Hast thou not known, hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? There is no searching of his understanding."

7. But it is not only in such sublimity of language and exalted im'agery that the literature of the Hebrews surpasses the writings of the most learned and ingenious portion of the heathen world. A distinction not less remarkable is to be found in the humane and compassionate spirit which animates even the earliest parts of the sacred volume, composed at a time when the manners of all nations were still unrefined, and the softer emotions were not held in honor. "Blessed is he who considereth the poor and needy; the Lord will deliver him in the time of trouble. The Lord will preserve him and keep him alive; he shall be blessed upon earth, and thou wilt not deliver him into the will of his enemies. The Lord will strengthen him upon the bed of languishing; thou wilt make all his bed in his sickness."

8. We shall in vain seek for instances of such a benign and liberal feeling in the volumes of the most enlightened of pagan writers, whether poets or orators. How beautifully does the following observation made by Solomon contrast with the contempt expressed by Horace for the great body of his countrymen : ‹ Ĥe