"The police in

"You are mistaken," cried Mr. Kuttenkeiler. Berlin will not allow any suspected writer to remain there for a night. The other day they sent off half-a-dozen Prussian authors only because these gentlemen had been expelled from Leipsic. There had been some disturbance at Leipsic. A mob broke the windows of an hotel, where some unpopular prince lodged. The Saxish riflemen fired among the populace and killed a score of persons who were as innocent and quiet as you or I. Next morning it was thought proper to make the Press the scape-goat for this butchery, and almost all foreign writers resident at Leipsic were banished from the kingdom of Saxony.

We

"You are also mistaken," said Mr. Bölling, "if you fancy this gentleman may go to whatever place in Prussia he likes. have a law which recommends all persons who follow no trade or profession to the especial care of the police, who have to inquire into their means of sustenance, and if the answers are not satisfactory, the police can arrest and transport them to the parish in which they are born."

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Why!" cried the Englishman, indignantly, "I know that law, for it is the same in almost all civilised countries. But surely it cannot apply here. It is a law against vagrants.'

It

"Such was its original intention," said Mr. Kuttenkeiler, sententiously. "The Prussian government are thrifty; they are capital hands at bringing out the hidden virtues of a statute. saves the making of a new one. It is a quiet and unostentatious way of exerting sovereign power. Mr. Eichhorn, our Premier, does not consider the profession of an author a satisfactory means of sustenance. If a writer displeases him, he consigns the poor fellow to the care of his parish.'

"Who could have thought it?" cried Mr. Capel.

you do, sir? Where can you go to?"

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"What can

'I might go to some obscure village, where there are no means of pursuing my studies. But I prefer trying how long I shall be allowed to reside in Switzerland."

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'What! would they drive you even from there?"

The Swiss have banished many a better man. They are not fond of German authors, because they have little to spend. The Swiss Republics are but too happy to please the ambassadors from the German courts. Gentlemen, I wish you a good evening!" Sir," said Mr. Capel, taking my hand, I own it-I have wronged you and your fellow-sufferers by mistaking your patient

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If

and persevering opposition for stupidity and fanaticism. I am ashamed of it. Take my best wishes for your future welfare. I can do anything for you, command me!

"I thank you, Mr. Capel," said I. "I am happy to see you think better of my nation and its writers. for me, and I hope you will do it.

You can do one thing Whenever you feel shocked by the flatness of our Prussian Press, remember that it is the stifled groan of a fettered nation."

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I will. But I tell you candidly, I would much rather be a dog than a political writer in a country like Prussia."

XAVER XANTEN.

THE GODS OF GREECE.

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BY THE AUTHOR OF 'AZETH, THE EGYPTIAN."

HERA. ARTEMIS.

CALL ye the Gods of Hellas dead ?-Call ye the faith and the poetry no more ?-Deem ye that oblivion and decay can compass the immortal?-that life can be absorbed in death? In truth, nay! Under other names, and masqued in other forms, the Gods of Greece yet hold place upon the earth-the deities of Olympos yet dwell among men ! And if not now, as of old-if not now, as the cloud-compelling Zeus, the venerable Hera, the far-darting Apollo, the well-tressed, laughter-loving, queen of love-sweet Aphrodite, sea-born darling !-if not as these, yet as other impersonations, true, beautiful, and living as they. As the saint and the hero-as the maid, the wife, and the mother-as the senator, the general, and the paladin-as the present forms of life, the divinities of the past make good their claim to immortality. And this, because of their TRUTH. Because they were life-like,-embodying the passions of all times and the characteristics of universal manhood, clothing in local fashions forms whose type is from the beginning, and through all ages, and in all climes; because they find an echo in the heart of man, the Gods of Greece still possess their lovers and their children,-Olympos still detains his worshippers! Life cannot die!-Death is a nullity-a wizard's name wherewith to frighten children-the goblin of a painted show!-nor can that which has once dwelt in strong and healthy shape among

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men, and been their food, their soul's companion, their life, their God-ever fade away into nothingness, leaving not a shadow of themselves and of their power. Neither is it unprofitable, this looking to the past; for all that has ever been of interest or of service to man, must still continue to be so, if properly viewed and understood. Our passions, intellect, life, desires, aspirations, are all the same now, as in the days of Pericles; the difference is only in society-only in the dress. Our senators wear black coats and chimney hats, instead of the chiton and the orator's myrtle crown; but they are the same men, discussing the same principles, though the particular questions are unlike, as once collected in the Pnyx, and who now yawn upon the Commons' benches. But we are all so fettered by forms, so imposed on by appearances, so swayed by names, that we hedge round our own day as a thing utterly apart an isolated plot of time a foreign land in the great world of feeling-an unwrit page of history-a day which shall not see one moment like to the past which shall not give back one passion or one interest that used to influence men. This feeling of isolation in the world's history was never more powerful than at present; caused by the application of principles which have worked a revolution in society, truly; but man himself remains the same!

If a nation, such as Greece, in all its refinement, polish, and learning, could find truth and beauty in its mythology, we also must surely meet with much in that same mythology both interesting and useful to us. We must surely find that a whole people did not concur in worshipping dead, dry forms, but that beneath these forms ran an undercurrent of deep meaning-within these eidola, dwelt a spirit of life. And in truth, they were no mere names, these Gods of Greece! They were no mere elemental facts, poetically pourtrayed, embodying nothing deeper than the physical phenomena of nature; they were no dull records of past events, when history was confused, and a mythic legend became the sole chronicle of the hero's deeds; they were not chymic mysteriesthey were not scholastic subtleties, but they were faithful transcripts of human nature. They were true-they are immortal!

Oh! we could not part with them-our brethren of Olympos we could not blot out from the sky our brightest stars of poetry! In all this frantic haste, this giant noise, this speedy flight toward the dim future, we turn back to the asphodelian plains, the calm heroic grandeur, the stately dignity, the stillness, and the beauty

of the Grecian age, as the late-weaned child turns still and still to its estranged mother; and a quiet, as from an evening sky, falls on us while we look upon this fair picture of the past! It stands out from the smoke and heat of the weary Now, as the shade of its own Achilles in the mists about the isle of Leucè; the features of its glory fixed, the forms of its loveliness determined. One by one our dreams of youth fade in the grey dawn of reality; one by one the fairest blossoms of our hope wither from the tree ere they be plucked, or plucked, are proved but bitterness to the taste: one by one our friends and lovers part into the distance, and we are left alone with our affections; but midst all our sorrow and our solitude, still cling we to thee, brightest land of love and beauty -still band we to thy side, fair and fruitful Hellas!

The Present has many noble names, and the works done now and lately are glorious, and will be enduring; but the olden time overtops us yet! In poetry and art infinitely,-in bravery and in eloquence-aye! Our Flaxmans are not Pheidias nor Praxiteles; our Peels and our Russells are not Pericles nor Phocion; our Sheils and our Grattans are not Demosthenes; nor, by a declining scale, are our Trafalgar fountains, National Galleries, and Duke's statues, equal to the nine-piped fount of the sweet Callirrhöe, the Painted Portico, or the horses of Lysippos-no! no! The Present has its press, its steam, its true religion, its unfettered speech, its social clubs and benefit societies-both of which were also general in Greece, under the name of "pavo-its learned women, and its manly children; but the sunny brightness of the past shames our gas-light many a time yet when we look at them together. It is the same with our characters as with our theatres. The Greeks performed by the light of Heaven, with no false glare of blue or red, no stage lamps, no unnatural skies, no impossible scenes; their artistic aids were all for grandeur; nature was left the same in kind, only increased in degree-not travestied altogether, into a thing unnatural and untrue. They had their high cothurni, their tragic masks, their sweeping robes, their stage gestures, and their dramatic voices; but still the clear sun shone over all, and distance, not falseness, was the softening medium between the spectator and the actor. With us, nature is overlaid by a false superficial plastering of artifice-scarce of art; and all is represented to us coloured by a peculiar light which never came from sun, or moon, or stars. One thing we lack which the ancients possessed --simplicity. All our work is done consciously; each puny mind

"knows its own power; "-Heaven save the mark !—each virtue gazes at herself in the glass, and smiles, and nods, and cries "How fair I am!" bidding the world admire her as she stands. Nothing of the child is left us; nothing of unconscious greatness, of ingenuous simplicity: nothing of that graceful goodness from its own inward impulse, and not because " 'tis well to be virtuous, the neighbours praise; "nothing of modesty of thought, of reverence, of silence from awe. Out to the whole world must each deepest mystery be displayed! Showered down as tinsel-rags of what was once the covering of a temple; showered down, that a mob may clothe itself therewith, ignorant of the worth or the intention of those fluttering rags!

We would not have truth closed in from any. No, not that; but we would have mysteries held in reverence; the unknown spoken of in whispers, not thundered forth with blare of trumpets and a clown's rude jests, exhibited for gold to an audience all unfitted to receive it. We would have the holy things of life treated of in all holiness, and its great secrets searched for in all stillness and religious awe. We would keep close the door of the Adytum, until the God could be understood of by his worshippers, and we would not leave the temple free to the pollutions of a mindless rabble. We would scarce arm a child with the hero's weapons, lest they turn to his own destruction-not defence. We would look back lovingly and oft, and we would learn the lessons which the past breathes out.

And all this we would do, free of thought, wide of faith, φιλοδημος, as we are! An education which begins with the book, and not the alphabet, and a temple built from the top downwards, are things which Michael Scott's familiar would liken unto "twisting ropes out of sea-sand," and Socrates would say, were as vain and null as to "boil stones in a chytra. Yet what but this is it, when the results of a long apprenticeship, and of a tedious education, are laid before the unformed mind, and it is bid to learn? The ancients understood these things better, and they portioned out their intellectual food in such rations as were fit for their recipients. They knew human nature well; and admirably they adapted all they knew, framing lessons, not for a day, but for all time. It is curious to trace out the different parts of humanity, which different nations more particularly enshrined. With some it was physical nature; with others beauty of form; with a third, mental truths; with a fourth, social virtues. Take,