in the soul of the prince as in the soul of the galley-slave; whereas in the later relative positions of men who must pursue various paths through life, they have become much more diversified by occult and inward, intellectual qualities, than in civil and political respects, or outward condition. In former times, the leech, the adept, the astrologer, or the heretic, stood out isolated and in bold relief from the equally tempered mass, as the representatives and purveyors of learning. The spirit of inves

scribing narrow circles around scattered and migratory centres; but art grew up in joyful luxuriance on the broad and deep soil of faith, and the artist was no virtuoso, no dilettante, who with unwonted strength of genius ushers something overwhelming into day; he was what Thomas Carlyle calls, a worker, who by his personifications gave tone and expression to the common feeling, and never delivered a text to which every soul had not a response and a commentary at hand.

future destinies of literature, if we were to judge of the present character of poetical talent, from inferences drawn from our estimate of intellectual culture of earlier times, as exhibited in their standard works, did we not look beyond our day. Every one is aware that poetry, by being spread out before so many classes, with which it formerly hardly came in contact, has indeed become more common, but not, therefore, in a good sense, more popular; that among the nauseating trash which daily falls from the press, as well as in those of her off-tigation and acquisition was fettered, despring for which we have no need of blushing before posterity, we may search long and wearily to find any thing resembling a germ, a grain of fresh and genuine poetic nationality, (Volks-poesie.) But yet such germs and grains do already exist; we discern (as we think) the first faint auguries and beginnings of a development, in the progress of which the people gradually will become susceptible of poetie feeling, and once more the foundation be laid for creative art, not from above, from the gentry downwards, but from beneath, out of the heart and quarry of the nation. Such a blessing can never spring from mere bellelettreism and artificial dilettanteism; it seems rather to be hoped for from a certain tone among the people which has little affinity with literature. We allude to those marks of a revived nationality, which are traceable in the awakening of patriotic sentiments, and in an impulse towards free associations. It is of much significance to our nation and to our period, that this disposition reveals itself in its poetical tendency, by music; in the numerous musical and vocal societies, which, steadily spreading, embrace social unions of quite distinct classes. It is a matter of congratulation that the poetical electrometre has hitherto elicited so faint sparks of genuine original poetry; all healthy growth is remarkably slow. This remark leads us to the last idea, which we here wish to record.

Culture, in its universal sense, before the discovery of the art of printing, had an aspect widely differing from that which it subsequently assumed. We see education in the middle ages, notwithstanding the rigid separation of classes and ranks, far more uniform than now, when so many of these barriers of caste have been done away with. The gulf between the suzeraine and the vassal was more of a civil and external nature than an intellectual. The ideas of Deity, of the world, and of nature, were, if we so may speak, bounded and fixed pretty much within the same figure

This revival of art threw its last vibrations pretty far within the domains of the press, and in an age where, through the reformation, the might of that press had already been sensibly felt, art once more stood up in glorious strength. The paintings of the sixteeth century are the delicious fruit, and also the sere and yellow leaf of a rapidly consummating year of the universe. A new era commences from the hour in which the idea of printing became reality, and at the time, when the antiquarian no longer invoked his old books and parchments as Incunables; the genius or demon of a new cycle of the world, leaped out of his cradle accoutred in complete armor. From that hour, the fetters which had until then held nearly all, high and low, great and small, in the bondage of simplicity, begin to be loosened; differences and controversies in thinking and feeling come to be identified and expressed in words; the warfare between spirit and mind, the upper and lower powers, begins; the understanding quenches and conquers sentiment, and the watch-word of an ever increasing, rapid development, is knowledge. In this process, the ancient spiritual level of society was necessarily destroyed; here it rose into eminences, while there again it sank into declivities; the ideas and standards of individuals and of classes tallied less and less, distinct circles and platforms formed themselves separately, which took very unequal interest in the solution of the master-problem of the age, research, and were

very unequally affected by its results. A Janalysis and classification in the outward spiritual aristocracy stood over against the world, the creative spirit of the inner world mass of the people, as pioneers in the move-shall again be emancipated; in which art ment towards enlightening reason, which shall fully perfect and ennoble that which not only ruled them politically, but kept science has so gloriously achieved during them morally muzzled. But the deeper the last centuries, making it by a touch of the mind penetrated into nature and histo- her magic wand the legitimate spiritual ry, the more the horizon cleared up at those capital of the people. points, the darker and denser and more Such a view can give umbrage only when confused became the shadows resting on not rightly understood; it will, however, the intellectual world; the more divided, only be pointed out in this place. At anoessentially differing, men became among ther time we may take a nearer view from themselves touching the most momentous this point, of the present course of history. questions and interests. Science bounded Culture has evidently struck into another up to the clouds, but the church languish- path, leading to quite a different goal from ed, and with her that art which springs that which she seemed to follow fifty years from a common and paramount spirit. The ago, and many are the phenomena of our foundations of this common paramount time which may be construed in consofeeling were demolished, and thus art and nance with our views. State, legislation, poetry became the property and preroga- arranging and intercourse of classes, motive of the higher, knowing, enlightened rals, customs, dress, in short, the whole classes, and the offspring and impress of social system as it at present exists, and in their taste and spirit. The arts were no its present state of progress already indilonger the common spiritual bread of life; cate, on close observation, where the new they became seasoned dishes for refined movement has taken its beginning-where palates, for those who know how to enjoy it betrays more affinity to a state of things scientifically; but utterly insipid, indi- as they existed before the discovery of the gestible, incomprehensible to those who art of printing, than to that of the past cenbrought nothing but nature's common un- tury. In many respects present circumsophisticated appetite to the banquet. stances appear altogether the reverse of While culture thus rapidly advanced to what they were in the middle ages; but in ward the aristocratic pole of the social this complete transformation, the new is world, light, spurious as well as true, pene- far nearer to the old than merely on the trated yet slowly the masses toward the way to it. Whether reading and writing democratical. This descending tendency of shall form the rule or the exception-wheculture, has become wonderfully accele- ther very many do not think, because they rated since the latest important changes in read nothing or have read too much; whepolitics, in science, and in trade, and the ther men obey, because they must, and conviction is forced upon this generation, know no better, or whether the idea of a that culture and education will assume an just government shall pervade the commuentirely new aspect. The press, that very nity; whether a certain category of the instrument which yet in its imperfection, laws of nature, or a certain amount of auat the close of the middle ages, exploded thenticated facts, shall be known by the the unity of feelings and ideas, appears many or the few; whether every person now in its mature strength, to labor for the shall be able to propel himself forty miles restoration of this very unity. It looks as in the hour, or whether high and low must if History were intent upon reconducting travel on foot or on horseback:-all this is mankind by some spiral windings to the of no consideration, when treating of the same point which they occupied half a main-springs, of the stamina of social develthousand years ago; as if out of the pre-opment; and every one, who is not an entire sent commotion, a middle age is to emerge stranger in the history of the middle ages, on a more splendid and exalted scale; that is able to extend these parallelisms into is a state in which the entire people shall, every direction and department of life. in spiritual and moral respects, again form It must not be forgotten, that even the a phalanx more unbroken than ever; an highest and most sublimated views of naage in which the common mind, in its nature, as they strike ever deeper, have broken ture essentially one and unchangeable, away from the materialism of mere ratioshall again find its equipoise in connection cination, and manifest a leaning, a returnwith the isolated aristocratic mind; in ing towards the mystical point d'appui of which, after a final momentary satisfying

of the spirit of research and inquiry, of

*

Verstandesaufklärung.

of two there are now five canal passage boats in
use, and two steam tugs, besides 48 horses. This
improvement has enormous advantages, but will
circumstances. On the Nile, instead of one there
be felt best by those who have travelled under both
are four steamboats. The Desert, too, has lost most
of its terrors. At the time to which I allude,
and subsequently, I have seen and shared serious
privations. But this has undergone a change. The
wretched horses formerly in use have been replaced
with efficient ones, their number increased from 80
to 250; a relay, instead of every 40 or 60 miles,
now established at every station, say every 10
the station-houses fitted up most comfortably, and an
English male and female attendant at the centre
and principal bungalow; all the dependents
throughout the line better ordered and more civil,
and none of that extortion which was practised at
had heretofore existed; and there is now no cause
hotels and at every point where a possibility of it
sufficient to deter the most timid or delicate travel-
ler, at any season of the year from crossing Egypt
with perfect safety and comfort, and without the
slightest risk of delay. For much of the improve-
ment thus rapidly introduced into the overland
route the public is indebted to his Highness the
Pacha, who continues to afford every facility to-
wards the complete development of a communica-
tion which is daily becoming more important both
to England and India. It is understood that an
arrangement is now in course of completion between
the new Transit Company and the Peninsular and
Oriental Steam Navigation Company, by which the
means possessed by both parties in Egypt will be
the transit permanently secured.
brought into united operation, and the efficiency of

the middle ages. But one asks what |iences and scenes of the most repulsive nature pasabout religion-the church? Where is sengers were obliged to spend 12 or 15 hours huddled together within a space not fit for the accomhere a general soothing, satisfying, effect-modation of half the number conveyed. Instead ual remedy to be found a reconciling of opposites discoverable? Our answer is: the depths of cavil and contradiction must become exhausted, as they now are pretty much for the first time, before a reconciliation can become imaginable, or before a reformation can begin. No one can as much as conjecture in what sense such a re-formation is to ensue, and consequently no one can determine whether it has already begun or not. But, at all events, at this point a vista opens upon us of an indeter-miles; the vans and harness refitted and repaired, minable duration of the present ferment. We do not even know in which season we are of the current year of the universal cycle; whether we are yet in the vernal season, or whether autumn is at hand. Sufficient for us, is the persuasion, that the world is not on the point of dissolution, but rushing onward to some grand transformation, or rather re-modelling, re-formation, and that the present sufferings and throes of humanity shall subside, her infirmities will be healed, to give place to other infirmities. Should, however, the procreative sap once ascend into the upper branches, evolving research and creative intellect, the common mind will again yield untainted, genuine blossom and fruit. Yet, while even now, imperceptibly to us, a new germ of the beautiful and of a true living nationality, is slowly developing from the heart of the people, that which poetry and art have produced by its unnatural and soulless alliance with science, may cause yet greater confusion, until those weeds shall be choked by the fresh and healthy vegetation. And we see, therefore, no cause in the world to despair, even if our social, literary, artistical, theatrical, and every other characteristic institution of the day, should appear to succeeding generations to be the same as the last scarcely departed century is to many a one among us, the good old time.

PREMATURE RISE OF THE NILE.-A very rethe periodical flux of the Nile. markable anomaly has been observed this year in From time immemorial the first day of the rise of the Nile has ensued soon after the summer solstice, and at Cairo the phenomenon has usually taken place some time between the 1st and the 10th of July; this year, however, there was a rise of the river on the night of the 5th of May, consequently two months earlier than usual. This rise contined only four days, after which the water fell, and it still continues falling as it always does until the period of the summer rise of the river, and only a few instances are solstice. History affords no example of so early a recorded of a second rise taking place shortly after

the first. One of these instances occurred in the reign of Cleopatra, and the other in the year 1737. -Bell's Weekly Messenger.

IMPOST ON MERCHANDISE THROUGH EGYPT.— The Pacha of Egypt has issued a proclamation esTHE CROSSING OF THE DESERT-Extract of a tablishing the transit duty of only half per cent. on letter dated Alexandria, June 20th, 1843-"It the declared value of all merchandise in transitu gives me great pleasure, in taking a retrospect of between India and Europe, subject to very rational the last 12 months, during which time I have cross-regulations. The duty must be paid at Alexandria ed the entire of Egypt 13 times, and as far as Cairo for the merchandise landed at that port, and also no fewer than 29 times, to bear testimony to the for that landed at Suez. In case of fraud being amazing change that has been wrought in the sys- manifest, either in the denomination or valuation tem and means of transit. At that time the means of the merchandise, the Custom-house, after having and arrangements of the canal navigation were of proved the fraud by opening the packages, will the most wretched description, and amid inconven-charge a duty of ten per cent.- Britannia.

WORDSWORTH'S GREECE.*

From the Dublin University Magazine.

should have been the voice of truth. The tem-
ples of Athens should not have been to him
mere schools of art. He should not have con-

sidered them as existing, in order that he might
examine their details, measure their heights,
delineate their forms, copy their mouldings, and
trace the vestiges of coloring still visible upon
them. They should not have afforded materials
merely for his compass or his pencil, but for his
affections and for his religion.
We commence our description of this city with
"This, we gladly confess, is not our case.
avowing the fact, that it is impossible at this
time to convey, or entertain an idea of Athens
such as it appeared of old to the eyes of one of
its inhabitants. But there is another point of
view from which we love to contemplate it--one
which supplies us with reflections of deeper in-
than could have been ever suggested in ancient
terest, and raises in the heart sublimer emotions
days by the sight of Athens to an Athenian.

THIS very beautiful book is worthy of the name of Greece, and of another name now classical in England by a double claim, that of Wordsworth. As regards the pictorial, it delineates almost every thing-scenery, buildings, costume; and has besides numberless fanciful vignettes. There are up. wards of three hundred and fifty engravings on wood, and twenty-eight on steel, all by such artists as Copley, Fielding, F. Creswick, D. Cox, Harvey, Paul Huet, Meissonier, Sargent, Daubigny, and Jacques. The descriptive paints Greece as it was, and again as it is; and with the hand of one who is master of his subject, thoroughly acquainted with the ancient and modern "We see Athens in ruins. On the central geography of the country, and an accom- rock of its Acropolis exist the remains, in a muplished observer in all that relates to the tilated state, of three temples--the temple of arts. The historical portion, in like man- Victory, the Parthenon, and the Erectheum; ner, exhibits the learning and judgment of of the Propyleea in the same place; at its westhe author. The traveller in Greece will tern entrance, some walls and a few columns are still standing; of the theatre on the south side find this, we are inclined to think, the very of the Acropolis, in which the dramas of Eschybest book he could take with him-no oth-los, Sophocles, and Euripides were represented, er work contains, perhaps, so much mat- some stone steps remain. Not a vestige surter in one fair octavo ; and it has this fur- vives of the courts in which Demosthenes pleadther advantage, that whatever information Dr. Wordsworth gives us on subjects of this class, comes stamped with acknowledged authority. The classical student, albeit that he never makes a voyage except it be autor de sa chambre, will find in these pages most interesting and abundant information; and the poet, the architect, and the antiquarian may gather from them quite enough to repay a perusal.

One or two short extracts may give some idea of the manner and matter of the book. The passage which follows leads to his description of Athens:

ed. There is no trace of the academic porches of Plato, or of the lyceum of Aristotle. The pocile of the Stoics has vanished; only a few of the long walls which ran along the plain and united Athens with its harbors, are yet visible. Even nature herself appears to have undergone a change. The source of the fountain Callirrhoe has almost failed; the bed of the Illissus is nearly dry; the harbor of the Piræus is narrowed and made shallow by mud.

"But while this is so, while we are forcibly and mournfully reminded by this spectacle of the perishable nature of the most beautiful objects which the world has seen, while we read in the ruins of these temples of Athens, and in the total extinction of the religion to which they were dedicated, an apology in behalf of Christianity, "To describe Athens, a man should be an and a refutation of paganism, more forcible and Athenian, and speak the Athenian language. eloquent than any of those which were comHe should have long looked upon its soil with a posed and presented to the Roman emperor by feeling of almost religious reverence. He should Aristides and Quadratus in this place, we are have regarded it as ennobled by the deeds of naturally led by it to contrast the permanence illustrious men, and have recognized in them his and vitality of the spirit and intelligence which own progenitors. The records of its early his-produced these works, of which the vestiges tory should not be to him a silence; they should not have been the objects of laborious research, but should have been familiar to him from his infancy-have sprung up, as it were, spontaneously in his mind, and have grown with his growth. Nor should the period of its remote antiquity be to him a land of shadows-a platonic cave in which unsubstantial forms move before his eyes as if he were entranced in a dream. To him the language of its mythology

Greece, Pictorial, Descriptive, and Historical. By Christopher Wordsworth, D. D. Royal 8vo. London: W. S. Orr & Co.

either exist in a condition of ruinous decay, or have entirely disappeared, with the fragility of the material elements of which they are composed.

"Not at Athens alone are we to look for Athens. The epitaph--Here is the heart: the spirit is everywhere-may be applied to it. From the gates of the Acropolis, as from a mother city, issued intellectual colonies into every region of the world. These buildings now before us, ruined as they are at present, have served for two thousand years as models of the most admired fabrics in every civilized country of the world. Having perished here, they sur

vive there. They live in them as in their legit- | her, the islands, nurseries for a maritime imate offspring. Thus the genius which con- population, her facilities for communicating ceived and executed these magnificent works, with other countries-all led to a system while the materials on which it labored are dis

solved, has itself proved immortal. We, therefore, at the present time, having witnessed the fact, have more cogent reasons for admiring the consummate skill which created them, than were possessed by those who saw these structures in their original glory and beauty."-pp. 129, 130,

131.

These eloquent and able passages attest the scholarship of the author. He goes on to observe that it is not in the material productions of Athens that her spirit is still seen it survives in the intellectual creations of her great minds; and the interest which they have given to the soil, invests it with new and strange charms for us of modern times. Dr. Wordsworth then enters into a minute account of the remarkable buildings of Athens-a subject on which no one in these times could venture to say much, who had not some confidence in his classical acquirements, and in his knowledge of the arts. Dr. Wordsworth is well known to be a sure guide in all these matters. His name alone might give character to the book, but it would fail to do it justice. It is so beautifully got up, that to be appreciated it must be seen.

The passage we have quoted may give our readers a very fair impression of the author's style; but being only introductory to more detailed observations, it does not exhibit any thing of the fulness and variety of matter for which the work is very remarkable. We had pencilled some other passages for extracts. One giving the fable and the history of Theseus, another sug gesting with much ingenuity and apparent truth, that the systems of education adopted at Athens and in Sparta-systems strongly contrasted in all points-arose from the physical forms of the two countries. The site of Sparta at a distance from the coast, secluded in a valley at the extremity of Greece, led to a system of self-dependence, abstinence, and denial, and to that principle of implicit obedience to the law, "so emphatically described," says Dr. Wordsworth, in the epitaph engraved upon the tomb of the Spartan heroes who fell at Thermopyla" Oh, stranger, go and tell the Lacedemonians that we lie here in obedience to their commands."

"At Athens," observes our author, "the maintenance of such a system of education would have been a physical impossibility." Her site, her soil, barren in corn, but rich in marble, the sea flowing before

of education of which the freest development of all her resources, of all the energies of her population, was the object and the result.

Travellers in Greece are usually struck with its Homeric aspect-with the resem blance of the localities to those described in the Iliad. Scenes of any note, and many but little known to fame, are given in the illustrations. The mountain-chain-the rich vale, made classic by its ruined temple--the headland and the isle, all form attractive pictures, being nearly all immortal by their names; and the attention of the reader is directed to almost every circumstance that can lend them interest.

There is one topic which we exceedingly regret that Dr. Wordsworth has not touched on, that is, a comparison of the Romaic with the ancient language of Greece. The resemblances are so constant, the identities so frequent, that a tolerable classic might make his way there with but little difficulty. A striking circumstance is, that the language appears to be the same throughout the country-that there are no longer those differences of dialect which were so remarkable in the ancient times. We regret that our learned author did not examine this subject, as we cannot often hope to have a traveller so well qualified to undertake it.

There are very considerable efforts now making for the civilization and advancement of Greece. A great deal doing in the way of schools by King Otho and his government; but these efforts attract hardly any notice in England, or in the principal countries of Europe. We may further observe, that in their contests with the Turks the Greeks exhibited traits of character and deeds of heroism quite worthy of their ancestry, and yet were they but little regarded by other nations, and are hardly remembered. It may be that our acquaintance with the story of ancient Greece is so early and so intimate, and leaves on our mind so many and such absorbing impressions, that we have no interest to spare for that kingdom now, save what is connected with the past. This we are disposed to think is, to a great extent, actually true, and it is a most singular result, consigning a fair country to the destiny that, do what she will, she can never revive-that the nations of Europe will think of her only through the past, and for ever hold

"'Tis Greece, but living Greece no more."