Jane. I have well bethought me of my duties: oh, how extensive they are! what a goodly and fair inheritance! But tell me, would you command me never more to read Cicero, and Epictetus,' and Plutarch,' and Polybius? The others I do resign; they are good for the arbor and for the gravel-walk; yět leave unto me, I beseech you, my friend and father, leave unto me for my fireside and for my pillow, truth, eloquence, courage, constancy.

As. Read them on thy marriage-bed, on thy child-bed, on thy death-bed. Thou spotless, undrooping lily, they have fenced thee right well. These are the men for men ; these are to fashion the bright and blessed creatures whom God one day shall smile upon in thy chaste bosom. Mind thou thy husband.

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Jane. I sincerely love the youth (yooth) who hath espoused me; I love him with the fondèst, the most solicitous affection; I pray to the Almighty for his goodness and happiness, and do forget at times-unworthy supplicant!-the prayers I should have offered for myself. Never fear that I will disparage my kind religious teacher, by disobedience to my husband in the most trying duties.

As. Gentle is he, gentle and virtuous; but time will harden him time must harden even thee, sweet Jane! Do thou, complacently and indirectly, lead him from ambition.

Jane. He is contented with me and with home.

As. Ah, Jane! Jane! men of high estate grow tired of contentedness.

Jane. He told me he never liked books unless I read them to him I will read them to him every morning; I will open new worlds to him richer than those discovered by the Spaniard ;

:

1Ep`ic te'tus, a stoic philosopher, the moralist of Rome, lived about 90 years after Christ. His moral writings are justly very celebrated.

? Plutarch, (plū’tårk), an eminent ancient philosopher and writer, author of "Parallel Lives," which contains the biography of forty-six distinguished Greeks and Romans, was born in Chæronea, a city of Boeotia, about 50 years after Christ. His writings, comprehended under the title

I

of "Moralia" or "Ethical Works," amount to upward of sixty. They are pervaded by a kind, humane disposition, and a love of every thing that is ennobling and excellent.

'Polybius, a celebrated Greek historian and statesman, was born in Arcadia, B. C. 203. He wrote a “Universal History" in forty books, of which we have only five complete, and an abridgment of twelve others. 'Bosom, (bůz'um).

will conduct him to treasures-oh what treasures! on which he may sleep in innocence and peace.

As. Rather do thou walk with him, ride with him, play with him-be his faery, his page, his every thing that love and poëtry have invented,-but watch him well; sport with his fancies; turn them about like the ringlets round his cheek; and if ever he meditate on power, go toss up thy baby to his brow, and bring back his thoughts into his heart by the music of thy discourse. Teach him to live unto God and unto thee; and he will discover that women, like the plants in woods, derive their softness and tenderness from the shade.

LANDOR.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR was born in Warwick, England, on the 30th of Jan' uary, 1775, and was educated at Rugby and Oxford. He first resided at Swansea, in Wales, dependent on his father for a small income, where he commenced his "Imaginary Conversations," a work which alone establishes his fame. His first publication was a small volume of poems, dated 1793. On succeeding to the family estate he became entirely independent, and was enabled to indulge to the fullest his propensity to literature. He left England in 1806, married in 1814, and went to Italy the following year, where he has since chiefly resided. His collected works, of prose and verse, were published in 1846, in two large volumes. Mr. Landon is a poet of great originality and power. But he is most favorably known now, as he will be by posterity, for hisprose productions, which, written in pure nervous English, are full of thoughts that fasten themselves on the mind, and are "a joy forever." His "Imaginary Conversations," from which the preceding dialogue was selected, is a very valuable work. It is rich in scholarship; full of imagination, wit, and humor; correct, concise, and pure in style; various in interest, and universal in sympathy. He died at Florence, Sept. 17, 1864.

III.

118. PARRHASIUS AND THE CAPTIVE.

T

HERE stood an unsold captive in the mart,

A gray-haired and măjes'tical old man,
Chained to a pillar. It was almost night,
And the last seller from his place had gone,
And not a sound was heard but of a dog
Crunching beneath the stall a refuse bone,
Or the dull echo from the pavement rung,
As the faint captive changed his weary feet.

2. He had stood there since morning, and had bōrne
From every eye in Ath'ens the cold gaze
Of curious scorn. The Jew had taunted him
For an Olynthian slave. The buyer came
And roughly struck his palm upon his breast,

And touched his unhealed wounds, and with a sneer
Passed on; and when, with weariness o'erspent,
He bowed his head in a forgetful sleep,

The inhuman soldier smote him, and, with threats
Of torture to his children, summoned back
The ebbing blood into his pallid face.

3 Twas evening, and the half-descended sun
Tipped with a golden fire the many domes
Of Ath'ens, and a yellow atmosphere
Lay rich and dusky in the shaded street

4.

Through which the captive gazed. He had bōrne up
With a stout heart that long and weary day,
Haughtily patient of his many wrongs;

But now he was alone, and from his nerves
The needlèss strength departed, and he leaned
Prone on his massy chain, and let his thoughts
Throng on him as they would.

Unmarked of him,
Parrhasius' at the nearest pillar stood,
Gazing upon his grief. The Athenian's cheek
Flushed as he measured with a painter's eye
The moving picture. The abandoned limbs,
Stained with the oozing blood, were laced with veins
Swollen to purple fullnèss; the gray hair,
Thin and disordered, hung about his eyes;
And as a thought of wilder bitterness
Rose in his memory, his lips grew white,
And the fast workings of his bloodless face
Told what a tooth of fire was at his heart.
5. The golden light into the painter's room
Streamed richly, and the hidden colors stole
From the dark pictures radiantly forth,
And in the soft and dewy atmosphere

1 Parrhasius, (păr ră ̋ zĭ ŭs), a distinguished painter of antiquity, born about the year 450 B. C., was a native of Ephesus, though others say he was an Athenian, and the rival of Zeuxis. The latter painted grapes so naturally that birds came to pick them.

Parrhasius having exhibited a piece, Zeuxis said, "Remove your curtain that we may see your painting." The curtain was the painting. Zeuxis acknowledged his defeat, saying, "Zeuxis has deceived birds, but Parrhasius has deceived Zeuxis."

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Like forms and landscapes magical they lay.
The walls were hung with armor, and about
In the dim corners stood the sculptured forms
Of Cytheris,' and Diän,' and stern Jove,"
And from the casement soberly away

Fell the grotesque long shadows, full and true,
And, like a vail of filmy měllōwnèss,
The lint-specks floated in the twilight air.
6. Parrhasius stood, gazing forgetfully

7.

Upon his canvas. There Prome'theūs lay,
Chained to the cold rocks of Mount Caucasus-
The vulture at his vitals, and the links

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Of the lame Lĕm'niän festering in his flesh;
And, as the painter's mind felt through the dim,
Rapt mystery, and plucked the shadows forth
With its far-reaching fancy, and with form
And color clad them, his fine, earnest eye,
Flashed with a passionate fire, and the quick curl
Of his thin nostril, and his quivering lip,

Were like the winged god's, breathing from his flight.
"Bring me the captive now!

My hand feels skillful, and the shadows lift
From my waked spirit airily and swift,
And I could paint the bow

Upon the bended heavens-around me play
Colors of such divinity to-day.

Cy the' ris, a celebrated courtesan, the mistress of Antony, and subsequently of the poet Gallus, who mentions her in his poems under the name of Lycoris.

Ac

2 Diana, (di à ́na), an ancient Italian divinity, whom the Romans identified with the Greek Artemis. cording to the most ancient accounts, she was the daughter of Jupiter and Leto, and the twin sister of Apollo.

thology, was son of the Titan Sapetus and Clymene. His name signifies forethought. For offenses against Jupiter, he was chained to a rock on Mount Caucasus, where an eagle con sumed in the daytime his liver, which was restored in each succeedingnight.

5 Lem' ni an, from Lemnos, now Stalimni, an island of the Greek Archipelago, where the lame Hephæstus, or Vulcan, the god of fire, is said 3 Jōve, Jupiter, the supreme deity to have fallen, when Jupiter hurled of the Romans, called Zeus by the him down from heaven. Hence the Greeks. workshop of the god is sometimes • Pro me' theūs, in heathen my placed in this island.

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"Ha! bind him on his back!

Look!- —as Promē’theus in my picture here!
Quick-or he faints!-stand with the cordial near!
Now-bend him to the rack!

Press down the poisoned links into his flesh!
And tear agape that healing wound afresh!

"So-let him writhe! How long

Will he live thus? Quick, my good pencil, now!
What a fine agony works upon his brow!

Ha! gray-haired, and so strong!

How fearfully he stifles that short moan!
Gods! if I could but paint a dying grōan!

""Pity' thee! So I do!

I pity the dumb victim at the altar-
But does the robed priest for his pity falter?
I'd rack thee, though I knew

A thousand lives were perishing in thine—
What were ten thousand to a fame like mine.

"Hereafter!' Ay-hereafter!

A whip to keep a coward to his track!

What gave Death ever from his kingdom back
To check the skeptic's laughter?

Come from the grave to-morrow with that story-
And I may take some softer path to glory.

"No, no, old man! we die

Even as the flowers, and we shall breathe away
Our life upon the chance wind, even as they!
Strain well thy fainting eye-

For when that bloodshot quivering is o'er,
The light of heaven will never reach thee mōre.
“Yet there's a deathless name!

A spirit that the smothering vault shall spurn,
And like a steadfast planet mount and burn—
And though its crown of flame

Consumed my brain to ashes as it shone,
By all the fiery stars! I'd bind it on!

"Ay-though it bid me rifle

My heart's last fount for its insatiate thirst—

Though every life-strung nerve be maddened first