On the dead waste of life. That specter lifts

The coffin lid of Hope and Joy and Love,
And, bending mournfully above the pale,

Sweet forms that slumber there, scatters dead flowers
O'er what has passed to nothingness.

The year

Has gone, and with it many a glorious throng
Of happy dreams. Its mark is on each brow,
Its shadow in each heart. In its swift course
It waved its scepter o'er the beautiful,
And they are not. It laid its pallid hand
Upon the strong man, and the haughty form
Is fallen, and the flashing eye is dim.

It trod the hall of revelry, where thronged
The bright and joyous, and the tearful wail
Of stricken ones is heard where erst' the song
And reckless shout resounded.

It passed o'er

The battle plain where sword and spear and shield
Flashed in the light of midday, and the strength
Of serried hosts is shivered, and the grass,
Green from the soil of carnage, waves above
The crushed and moldering skeleton. It came,
And faded like a wreath of mist at eve;
Yet ere it melted in the viewless air,
It heralded its millions to their home

In the dim land of dreams.

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Remorseless Time!

Fierce spirit of the glass and scythe!-what power
Can stay him in his silent course, or melt
His iron heart to pity! On, still on,

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He presses, and forever. The proud bird,
The condor of the Andes, that can soar
Through heaven's unfathomable depths, or brave
The fury of the northern hurricane,

And bathe his plumage in the thunder's home,
Furls his broad wings at nightfall, and sinks down
To rest upon his mountain crag—but Time
Knows not the weight of sleep or weariness,
And night's deep darkness has no chain to bind
His rushing pinions.

Revolutions sweep

O'er earth, like troubled visions o'er the breast
Of dreaming sorrow; cities rise and sink
Like bubbles on the water; fiery isles

Spring blazing from the ocean, and go back
To their mysterious caverns; mountains rear

To heaven their bald and blackened cliffs, and bow
Their tall heads to the plain; new empires rise,
Gathering the strength of hoary centuries,
And rush down like the Alpine avalanche,*
Startling the nations; and the very stars,
Yon bright and burning blazonry of God,
Glitter a while in their eternal depths,
And, like the Pleiades," loveliest of their train,
Shoot from their glorious spheres, and pass away
To darkle in the trackless void: yet Time,
Time the tomb-builder, holds his fierce career,
Dark, stern, all-pitiless, and pauses not
Amid the mighty wrecks that strew his path
To sit and muse, like other conquerors,
Upon the fearful ruin he has wrought.

!

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XLIX.

THE CHURCH OF ST. PETER'S AT ROME.

BY HORACE GREELEY.'

ST. PETER'S is the Niagara of edifices, having the same relation to other masterpieces of human effort that the great cataract bears to other terrestrial effects of divine power. In either case the first view disappoints, because the perfection of symmetry dims the con- 5 sciousness of magnitude, and the total absence of exaggeration in the details forbids the conception of vastness in the aggregate. Eternal endurance and repose may be fitly typified by the oceans and snow crested mountains, but power and energy find their best expressions 10 in the cataract and the dome.

I chose the early morning for my first visit. The sky was cloudless, as it mainly is here save in winter, but the day was not yet warm, for the summer nights are cooler here than in New York, and the current English 15 talk of the excessive heat which prevails in Rome at this season is calculated to deceive Americans. No one fails to realize from the first the great beauty and admirable accessaries of this edifice, with the far-stretching but quite other than lofty pile of the Vatican' on its right 20 and its own magnificent colonnade in front; but you do not feel that it is lofty, nor spacious, nor anything but perfect. You ascend the steps, and thus gain some idea of the immense proportions prevailing throughout; for the church seems scarcely at all elevated above the 25 square, and yet many are the steps leading up to the

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doors. Crossing a grand porch with an arched roof of glorious mosaic, you find yourself in the body of the edifice, which now seems large and lofty indeed, but by no means unparalleled. But you walk on and on, between opposing pillars the grandest the world ever saw, the space at either side between any two pillars constituting a separate chapel with its gorgeous altar, its grand pictures in mosaic, its sculptured saints and angels, each of these chapels having a larger area than any church I ever entered in America; and by the time you have walked slowly and observingly to the front of the main altar you realize profoundly that Earth has nothing else to match with St. Peter's. No matter though another church were twice as large, and erected at a cost of twice the thirty millions of dollars and fifty years ex-15 pended upon this, St. Peter's would still stand unrivaled. For every detail is so marvelously symmetrical that no one is dwarfed, no one challenges special attention. Of one hundred distinct parts, any one by itself would command your profoundest admiration, but everything around and beyond it is no less excellent, and you soon cease to wonder, and remain to appreciate and enjoy.

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I devoted most of the day to St. Peter's, seeing it under many different aspects, but no other view of the interior is equal to that presented in the stillness and com-25 parative solitude of the early morning. The presence of multitudes does not cloud your consciousness of its immensity, for ten thousand persons occupy no considerable portion of its area and might very easily be present yet wholly invisible to one who stood just inside the entrance and looked searchingly through the body of the edifice to find them; but there are usually very few seats, and those for the privileged, so that hundreds are constantly moving from place to place through the day,

which distracts attention and mars the feeling of repose and delighted awe which the naked structure is calculated to inspire. Go very early some bright summer morning, if you would see St. Peter's in its calm and stately grandeur.

I ascended to the roof, and thence to the summit of the dome, but, apart from a profounder consciousness of the vastness and admirable proportions of the edifice, this is of little worth. True, the entire city and its suburbs lie clearly and fully beneath and around you; but 10 so they do from the tower of the Capitol. Views from commanding heights are obtained in almost every city. The ascent, however, as far as the roof, is easier than any other I ever found within a building. Instead of stairs, here is a circular road, more like the ascent of a 15 mountain than a church. One single view is obtained, however, which richly compensates for the fatigue of the ascent. It is that from the interior of the dome down into the body of the church below. The Alps may present grander, but I never expect to have an-20 other like this.

Here I had personal evidence of the mean, reckless selfishness wherewith public edifices are regarded by too many, and the absolute necessity of constant, omnipresent watchfulness to preserve them from wanton di-g lapidation. Five or six French soldiers had been permitted to ascend the dome just before I did, and came down nearly at the same time with me. As I stood gazing down from this point into the church below, two of these soldiers came in on their way down, and one of 30 them, looking around to see that no one was present but a stranger, whipped the bayonet he wore out of its sheath, forced the point into the mosaic close behind as well as above us, pried out one of the square pieces of

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