monarchy may satisfy all the wants of the moral man; but we have given sufficient proofs of his total want of that common sense, accompanied with latent humour, which is happily to Englishmen a national Socratic

state of mind at the time, which prevented me from reflecting on circumstances calmly, the fact, that I derived less instruction from my examination, than from my dispute with my grandmother about the ghosts; and that it was only lately" (query, at the Berlin, cui plerumque parent, nunquam examination?) "that I learned that, as impellenti sæpe revocanti. He tells us, superstition is not to be overcome by indeed, that his unpopularity at Noexperience, so the vanity of learning remberg originated in the exercise of is not to be defeated by sound criti- a certain humorous disposition which cism of the pretended experience he derived from his father, and we which it brings forward." will not deny him the faculty, thongh we should scarcely have discovered its existence. Still less would we say that his countrymen in general are without humour. We know that some of their writers possess it in a high de gree; but in their common literature, it rather concerns itself with the oppositions of custom and reason, than with those of caprice or ignorance and custom, so that they direct the laugh against the rule which violates a principle, and we against the individual who, in pursuit of a supposed principle, breaks through the rule.

We wish some divine had drawn a similar rebuke upon himself, by criticising, as in the Eigendünkel der Gelehrsamkeit he might perhaps have been tempted to do, a plan which he formed in conjunction with Goeschen, a bookseller, during a pedestrian journey from Jena to Würzburg, "of a translation of the Bible as a popular book (Toilettenbuch). The translation was divided between us, and we saw in the spirit the fruits of this our undertaking to communicate this history more widely to mankind-fruits which this book produces not so much through the narrations, as through the manner of narration, and the comprehensive representation of all situations into which man, as a being of nature, must come." We had thought that "this book" had been translated into some two hundred languages, and, amongst others, into the mother tongue of one Martin Luther. We had even supposed the manner of narration had been tolerably preserved, and that it was the "toilettenbuch" of every toilet table from Berlin to the Sandwich Islands; but in this new and wonderworking publication, we recognise one remarkable element ;-one of the translators certainly, and the other probably, was profoundly ignorant of the original. Erhard, who knew only Latin enough to read modern works of science, had little or no Greek; and of Hebrew, he had, for all that appears, never so much as heard. What of that? "The road was made by these thoughts as pleasant as a road to everlasting blessedness. Nothing, in deed, has come of the proposal, but it was sufficiently rewarded by the pleasure it gave us at the time."

We might quote other instances of oddity; such as his complaining by letter to Washington of the pseudocolonel who cheated him, or the treatise which he, a republican from infancy, wrote to prove that absolute

After all, men who are not afraid of being laughed at, and have no tribu nal of humoristic conscience within themselves, are most likely to possess that self-confidence, which is the first, second, and third requisite for success in life.

We have seen the prosperous course which Erhard's fortunes took in the latter half of his life, and it is but fair to show, in the words of his biographer, how he deserved and how he bore them.

"On his personal character, one voice prevails from all who knew him. As the foundation of all his views, of his exertion and action, we must point out the strictest morality, to which he referred every thing. All his thoughts and his conduct continued, under all circumstances, to be devoted, in the first instance, to truth and justice, combined with the purest philan thropy, which he felt and displayed kindly and disinterestedly, but without any hypocritical affectation, for all his brethren-thousands of whom ho noured in him not only the skilful physician, but also the tried friend and counsellor, the generous benefactor. His great understanding, his inexhaustible learning, his kindly, unpretending, and yet one might say, proud character, made his society as instructive as it was attractive."

And so, with much regard and respect, we bid him farewell.

THE VISION OF CALIGULA.

A FRAGMENT.

BY B. SIMMONS.

"Incitabatur insomnia maxime; neque enim plus quam tribus nocturnis horis quiescebat; ac non his quidem placida quiete, sed pavida miris rerum imaginibus; ut qui, inter cæteras, PELAGI QUANDAM SPECIEM Colloquentem secum videre visus sit."

SUETONIUS, in Vit. Calig.

I.

THE night is over Rome-deep night intense-
Cloudlessly blue in its magnificence;
There is no moon, but holy starlight there
Shoots its soft lustre through the lucid air;

The trophied shrines along old Tiber's stream
Fling their dim shadows with a solemn gleam;
While, in its far supremacy above,

Like dawn's white glimmer, towers the Fane of Jove.*

The city's roar hath died, and far away
Died the gay discords of the jocund day;
Long hours ago the proud Theatre's yell
Sank fiercely glad as the last fencer fell;
And silent long, through every echoing path,
Lie the broad Forum and the mighty Bath;
Even Love, the watchful, shrouds his voiceless lute
In precincts now where all but Power is mute.

III.

Bright through yon groves of plane and cedar shine
The lamps' gold radiance from the Palatine;
Now lost, now lambent, as their circling ward,
The mail'd Pretorians pace, in ceaseless guard-
Theirs the high charge to keep unbroken still
The slumbering echoes of that haughty hill;
For, worse than treason's step or traitor's eye,
Who breaks the silence with a sound must die-
A silence sterner than the stillness spread
In Mizraïm deserts round her sceptred dead.

IV.

There, in its far immensity outroll'd,
The Cæsars' Palace lifts its domes of gold,†
Or nobly stretches through the olive shades,
In marble coolness, its superb arcades;
Or rears its soaring porticoes, that throw

A lustrous gloom on the tall groves below,

And porphyry founts, whose graceful waters gush
With clearer tinkle through the azure hush;

"In the midst, to crown the pyramid formed by such an assemblage of majestic edifices, rose the shrine of the Guardian of the Empire-the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, on a hundred steps, supported by a hundred pillars, adorned with all the refinements of art, and blazing with the plunder of the world."-EuSTACE.

The Imperial residence was fixed by Augustus on the Palatine Hill. It was here, too, that the Aurea Domus, the golden house of Nero, stood, which was afterwards destroyed by the order of Vespasian, as too sumptuous even for a Roman Emperor.

White shine the pillar'd terraces, and long
Bright hosts of gods in many a sculptured throng,
Whose breathless life, in the calm starlight hours,
Casts a chill loveliness upon the flowers-
The thousand-banded flowers that, wide and far,
From the deep beauty of bell, cup, and star,
Their fragrance fling to heaven, though not an air
To kiss the lily's languid lips is there-
Even the sweet rose, that leans its tender cheek
Against yon shaft of rare Synnada's stone,*
Seems sculptured from the marble's purple streak,
So deep night's dread solemnity is thrown.

V.

Say, to what Spirit's gentlest sway is given
This hour delicious 'neath the lull of heaven?
Steal its pure influences down to steep
The revel-wearied in the bath of sleep-
To waft adoring sounds to beauty's pillow,
And stir with song her bosom's dazzling billow-
Or breathe deep quiet through the lonely room
When the pale sophist, in his reasoning gloom,
Or dreaming lyrist-ah, less happy sage!-
Bends thoughtful o'er the lamp-illumined page?
Heed not, but hasten where the starlight falls,
And burns in gold on yon refulgent walls;
Glance through the Augustan chambers-even there
Where the still myrtles look like spectres in-
And see black Night slip from their wolfish lair
On murderous Power the dogs of Hell and Sin.

VI.

Far down the radiant galleries He came,
Where the soft cresset's duskly-curtain'd flame
Lent the voluptuous loneliness an air,

As Death and Pomp for mastery struggled there.
Onwards he came, and the tall Thracian slave,
That kept the portals with unsheathed glaive,
Stiffen'd with horror, till his glassy eye
That dared not look, froze in perplexity.

He came the Cæsar dread-Earth's awful lord-
The all-tremendous One, whose whisper'd word
Fill'd, like pervading Nature, land and flood; †

And, if but syllabled in wrathful mood,

Had the swift lightning's soundless power to pierce,
Rending and blasting, through the universe!

VII.

Breathe there no splendours from that august brow?
Forth from his presence does no halo glow?
Throng not around glad parasites to bask
In the stray smile their servile faces ask?

* The most precious marble of the Romans was that brought from Synnada; it was of a white colour, tinged with a delicate purple.

For

+ The arbitrary power of the emperors was as complete as it was despotic. the victim who incurred their displeasure, "to remain," says Gibbon, “was fatal, and it was impossible to fly; he was encompassed by a vast extent of sea and land, which he could never hope to traverse without being discovered, seized, and restored to his irritated master. "Wherever you are," said Cicero to the exiled Marcellus, “remember that you are equally within the power of the conqueror."

No!-in that tall attenuated form,*
Lone as some prowling leopard of the storm-
In that pale cheek, and those red restless eyes,
Where the sweet balm of slumber never lies-
In the parch'd lips, cleft by a moaning sound,
And haggard locks, where, twisted wildly round,
Empire's dread fillet clasps his temples broad,
Mark all a Despot needs to mar the works of God.

VIII.

"Bright maids!" the mad Blasphemer mutter'd—“ ye
Who track'd Orestes with such constancy
That his brain burn'd, and reason fled at last
Beneath the spell your beauties round him cast—
Accept my thanks, that, turning from the fane
His ardours rear'd you on Telphusia's plain,†
You now vouchsafe to shake the witchery curl'd
In your fair locks, o'er him who shakes the world!
More faithful than the mortal nymphs whose care
Is still my momentary love to share,

Ye never leave me-morning, fragnant noon,
And night, fierce-glaring with its bloody moon-
That moon that, even when icy winter reigns,
Scorches and dries the current in my veins,
And still will stare upon my aching sight,
Startling the slumber that does not alight:
All constant Three!

-yet if, avenging Jove,
Thy handmaids come commission'd from above
To wreak-as erst upon thy sire-on me,
Earth's thunder-wielder, thy grim jealousy,
I scoff the scourge that only can destroy.
Storm as thou wilt-the dull lethargic joy,
Which the vile slave in Laurion's caverns dim-
Could Cæsar sleep-might boast he shared with him.
Yet hold!-the hour imparts with its deep rest
To this unslumbering, pleasure-craving breast
One stimulating throb-one strong delight—
To burst upon the soft patrician's night,
And watch the terror starting through each limb
When summon'd here, 'mid gladiators grim
They stand ;-by Orcus! how they seem to feel
The cold keen fury of the griding steel
Already severing life asunder :-yes,
Night even to me is not without its bliss ;
And, while one sapient senator remains

To speed my hours with what fools call his pains,
Pale Nemesis may watch her lonely shrine,
Heap'd by no fear-wrung sacrifice of mine-

And choke my thresholds with a shadowy throng,
Each red hand shaking the uplifted thong;
And the Olympus-throned may thunder still
Upon the right of this defying hill:-

"Statura fuit eminenti, pallido colore, corpore enormi, gracilitate maxima cervicis et crurum, et oculis et temporibus concavis, fronte lata et torva," &c.-SUETONIUS.

However reluctant the worship offered in them, there were several temples erected to the Furies in Greece; those at Cyrenea and Telphusia in Arcadia were amongst the most distinguished. I am afraid, for the text's sake, that it was the former which Orestes dedicated to those deities who exercised so fatal an influence on his destiny.

Even now I

spurn,"

At once-as if the stroke

That in the Alp-storm smites the wasted oak

Had fell'd him there the god-contemner prone
Dropp'd, like that wild tree from its mountains blown:
And ere the noiseless and attendant crowd

Of slaves, who watch'd behind the Tyrian cloud
That flung its folds, in many a silken fall,
Around the vastness of that gorgeous hall,

Could reach their prostrate lord, a change had cast
Its shadow o'er him-paralysed-and pass'd.

IX.

They raised him, with stunn'd frame and drooping head,
As one scarce rescued from the ghastly dead—
They fann'd his forehead, where the fiery will
With some strong agony contended still:
Sudden he shook aside their trembling cares,
And starting forward, as a maniac stares
Upon some shape-how dreadful we but guess
From the rack'd gazer's terrible distress-
Transfix'd he stood; his fear-dilated eye,
Wild with amaze, stretch'd into vacancy,
As though some palpable horror stood between
Him and the placid beauty of the night,
That, through the rose and citron's fragrant screen,
Fill'd all the portal to its Parian height.

X.

Long stood the Cursed-with-empire moveless there,
As marble vow'd by nations to Despair;

Long seem'd to shudder at some voice, whose tone
Of thunder broke upon his ear alone:

At last the trance gave way in one wild gasp,
And, reeling back, he caught, with feeble clasp,
The nearest column, while shock'd nature's pain
Dropp'd from his forehead like the summer rain ;-
“Ho!—instant, slaves!" at length he falter'd-" Fly!
Bid to our sacred presence instantly

That prophet-raver, half a knave-half fool-
Adept in all that yonder starry school

Vouchsafes to teach its students-he who told
The wreath of empire never should enfold
This brow until o'er Baïa's sunny bay-
A liquid path-I urged my war-steed's way ;*
Fool-as if winds or waves could-

Ha! again
That awful voice!-tis crushing in my brain!
And thou wilt visit me, Tremendous Power,
Henceforth for ever in the stabber's hour?
'Tis well-thou look'st too dreadful for a God
That kings can bribe, or hecatombs defraud.
So let me dare thee deeply-yes, by Him
Who shakes the sable urn in Hades grim!
Or by an oath more sacred-by the shrine

Thrasyllus, an eminent soothsayer at Rome, in this and several of the preceding reigns, hazarded the prediction alluded to:-" Non magis Caïum imperaturum, quam per Baianum Sinum equis discursurum." To disprove the prediction, Caligula built the bridge from Pozzuoli to Baiæ.