himself. But he asked: "What are you doing, you strange people? My chief reason for sending away the women was that we might be spared such discordance as this; for I have heard that a man ought to die in solemn stillness. So pray be composed, and restrain yourselves!"

On hearing this we were ashamed, and forced back our tears. And he walked about until he said that he began to feel a heaviness in his legs, and then he lay down on his back, as he had been told to do. Thereupon the man who had given the poison, taking hold of him, examined from time to time his feet and legs, and then, pressing one foot hard, asked if he felt it, to which he answered, No; and after that again his legs, and then still higher, showing us the while that he was getting cold and stiff. Then Socrates himself did the same, and said that by the time the poison had reached his heart he should be gone. And now he was cold nearly up to his middle, when, uncovering his face, for he had covered it up, he saidand these were his last words—“ Crito, we owe a cock to Esculapius. Pay the debt, and do not neglect it." It shall be done, Socrates," said he. "But think if you have nothing else to say."

There was no answer to this question; but after a moment Socrates stirred, and when the man uncovered him, we saw that his face was set. Such was the end of our friend—a man whom we may well call, of all men known to us of our day, the best, and besides the wisest and the most just.

From PROFESSOR GOODWIN's edition of Plato's "Socrates."

92. HYMN.

CREATION.

The spacious firmament on high,
With all the blue ethereal sky

And spangled heavens—a shining frame-
Their great Original proclaim.

The unwearied Sun, from day to day

Does his Creator's power display;

And publishes to every land

The work of an Almighty hand.

Soon as the evening shades prevail,
The Moon takes up the wondrous tale,
And, nightly to the listening Earth,
Repeats the story of her birth;

While all the stars that round her burn,
And all the planets in their turn,

Confirm the tidings as they roll,
And spread the truth from pole to pole.

What though in solemn silence all
Move round the dark terrestrial ball?
What though no real voice, nor sound,
Amidst their radiant orbs be found?
In Reason's ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious voice;
For ever singing, as they shine,
"The hand that made us is divine."

ADDISON.

I had rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind. And, therefore, God never wrought miracle to convince atheism, because His ordinary works convince it.-Bacon.

(1,183)

27

93. LONDON IN THE TIME OF CHAUCER.

Chaucer's birthplace was the city of London. This is completely ascertained by his own words in the "Testament of Love:" " Also the citye of London, that is to me so dere and swete, in which I was forth growen; and more kindely love have I to that place than to any other in yerth, as every kindely creture hath full appetite to that place of his kindely engendrure."

He who loves to follow the poet through the various scenes from which his mind receives its first impressions, will be eager in this place to recollect what sort of a city London was in the beginning of the fourteenth century; how far it resembled, and in what respects it differed from, the present metropolis of England.

I am afraid little doubt can be entertained that, if we were to judge of it from the first impression it was likely to make upon a stranger, it would not have been found much more advantageous than that of Paris at the same era, which Petrarca describes (A.D. 1333) "as the most dirty and ill-smelling town he had ever visited, Avignon only excepted."

Of this, however, we may be sure, that the impression which London produced on the mind of Chaucer was very different from that of Paris on the mind of Petrarca. Petrarca was an Italian, proud that he owed his birth to the country of Cicero and Virgil, of Brutus and Cato, and looking on the rest of the world as a people of barbarians. Chaucer had

none of these prejudices. London, with its narrow lanes and its dirty ways, its streets encumbered with commerce, and its people vexed with the cares of gain, was in his eyes beautiful, lovely, and engaging. "More kindly love and fuller appetite" had he "to that place than to any other in yerth."

But though London had at this time very little to boast on the score of its general architecture, it was already the scene of considerable population and wealth. The topographer who would attain to an exact idea of any of our principal towns at a remote period of their history, must go back in the first place to the consideration of what they were in the time of the Roman Empire. For near four centuries, from the year of Christ 50 to the year 450, Britain was a flourishing and powerful colony to the great mistress of the world.

London was founded by the Romans, and enclosed with a wall nearly equal in extent to the present boundaries of the City of London strictly so called. Its limits were from about the foot of Blackfriars Bridge west to the Tower Stairs east; on the north it extended to the street now denominated London Wall, and on the south it had another wall which skirted the whole length of the city along the shores of the river.

In that melancholy period when the Roman Empire in the west became a prey to the hordes of ferocious barbarians, England fell to the lot of certain piratical tribes from the north of Germany, since known by the general denomination of Anglo-Saxons. These

invaders were successful in exterminating from among us all vestiges of literature and Roman civilization. The Christian religion itself sank under their hostility. The institutions of the ancient Germans and the mythology of Woden became universal. At the time when the monk St. Augustine arrived in this country, for the pious purpose of converting its usurpersA.D. 596-it has been supposed that there was not a book to be found through the whole extent of the island.

From this time, however, there was a period of comparative illumination. The Saxons had poetry, and the missionaries from Rome brought with them such literature as Europe then had to boast. We had our Bede, our Alcuin, and our Alfred. This infancy of improvement was nearly crushed by the Danes, the inveterate foes of monasteries and learning, who were in the tenth century what the Saxons had already been in the sixth. England presents little to soothe the eye of the lover of civilization from the retreat of the Romans to the epoch of the Norman Conquest, when a race of warriors, educated in a happier scene, and a succession of kings nearly all of distinguished ability, brought back to us the abode of the Muses and the arts of cultivated life.

During this interval, London, the heart of England, had experienced a common fate with the rest of its members. The walls, indeed, in considerable part remained, but the houses tumbled into ruin, and the tall grass waved in the streets; not that it was ever wholly unpeopled, but that it was an inconsiderable