5. By what marvels drawn from heaven or from earth, did he, in the twinkling of an eye, again invest himself with the purple, and place between himself and his assassin a host of shadowy lictors? By the mere blank supremacy of great minds over weak ones. He fascinated the slave, as a rattlesnake does a bird.

6. Standing, "like Teneriffe," he smote him with his eye, and said, "Tune, homo, audes occidere C. Marium ?”—Dost thou, fellow, presume to kill Caius Marius? Whereat, the reptile, quaking under the voice, nor daring to affront the consular eye, sank gently to the ground-turned round upon his hands and feet-and, crawling out of the prison like any other vermin, left Marius standing in solitude as steadfast and immovable as the Capitol. DE QUINCEY.

76. MARIUS.

[Suggested by a painting of MARIUS seated among the ruins of Carthage. By VANDERLYAR.]

ILLARS are fallen at thy feet,

PILLARS

Fanes quiver in the air,

A prostrate city is thy seat

And thou alone art there.

2. No change comes o'er thy noble brow,
Though ruin is around thee;
Thine eye-beam burns as proudly now
As when the laurel crowned thee.

3. It cannot bend thy lofty soul,

Though friends and fame depart;
The car of fate may o'er thee roll,
Nor crush thy Roman heart.

4. And genius hath electric power,
Which earth can never tame;

Bright suns may scorch, and dark clouds lower

Its flash is still the same.

5. The dreams we loved in early life

May melt like mists away;

High thoughts may seem 'mid passion's strife

Like Carthage in decay.

6. And proud hopes in the human heart
May be to ruin hurled,
Like mouldering monuments of art,
Heaped on a sleeping world.

7. Yet there is something will not die,
Where life hath once been fair ;

Some towering thoughts still rear on high,

Some Roman lingers there.

LYDIA MARIA CHILD.

G

77. A LEGEND OF BREGENZ.

IRT round with rugged mountains,

The fair Lake Constance lies;

In her blue heart reflected

Shine back the starry skies.
And watching each white cloudlet

Float silently and slow,

You think a piece of heaven
Lies on our earth below!!

2. Midnight is there; and silence,
Enthroned in heaven, looks down

Upon her own calm mirror,

Upon a sleeping town;

For Bregenz, that quaint city

Upon the Tyrol shore,

Has stood above Lake Constance

A thousand years and more.

3. Her battlements and towers,
From off their rocky steep,
Have cast their trembling shadow
For ages on the deep;
Mountain, and lake, and valley,

A sacred legend know

Of how the town was saved one night,
Three hundred years ago.

4. Far from her home and kindred
A Tyrol maid had fled,

To serve in the Swiss valleys,
And toil for daily bread;
And every year that fleeted

So silently and fast,

Seemed to bear farther from her
The memory of the Past.

5. She served kind, gentle masters,
Nor asked for rest or change;

Her friends seemed no more new ones,

Their speech seemed no more strange. And when she led her cattle

To pasture every day,

She ceased to look and wonder
On which side Bregenz lay.

6. She spoke no more of Bregenz
With longing and with tears;
Her Tyrol home seemed faded
In a deep mist of years;
She heeded not the rumors

Of Austrian war and strife;
Each day she rose contented
To the calm toils of life.

7. Yet, when her master's children

Would, clustering, round her stand,

She sang them ancient ballads

Of her own native land;
And when, at morn and evening,
She knelt before God's throne,
The accents of her childhood
Rose to her lips alone.

8. And so she dwelt; the valley
More peaceful year by year;
When, suddenly, strange portents
Of some great deed seemed near.
The golden corn was bending
Upon its fragile stalk;

While farmers, heedless of their fields,
Paced up and down in talk.

9. The men seemed stern and altered,
With looks cast on the ground;
With anxious faces, one by one,
The women gathered round.
All talk of flax or spinning,
Or work was put away;
The very children seemed afraid
To go alone to play.

10. One day out in the meadow
With strangers from the town,
Some secret plan discussing,
The men walked up and down;
Yet now and then seemed watching
A strange, uncertain gleam,
That looked like lances 'mid the trees,
That stood below the stream.

11. At eve they all assembled,

Then care and doubt were fled;
With jovial laugh they feasted;

The board was nobly spread,

The elder of the village.

Rose up, his glass in hand,

And cried: "We drink the downfall
Of an accursed land!

12. "The night is growing darker;
Ere one more day is flown,
Bregenz, our foemen's stronghold,
Bregenz shall be our own!"
The women shrank in terror
(Yet Pride, too, had her part);
But one poor Tyrol maiden

Felt death within her heart.

13. Before her stood fair Bregenz;
Once more her towers arose ;
What were the friends beside her?
Only her country's foes!

The faces of her kinsfolk,

The days of childhood flown,
The echoes of her mountains
Reclaimed her as their own!

14. Nothing she heard around her

(Though shouts rang forth again); Gone were the green Swiss valleys, The pasture and the plain;

Before her eyes one vision,

And in her heart one cry,

That said: "Go forth, save Bregenz,
And then, if need be, die !"

15. With trembling haste, and breathless, With noiseless step she sped;

Horses and weary cattle

Were standing in the shed:

She loosed the strong white charger,

That fed from out her hand;