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are told that madness is inevitably caused by the perpetual trickling of water on the head. The most ardent love cannot hold out against perpetual unkindness, and from that night Edith endured little else. She had procured some embroidery, in which her taste and skill were exercised, and at this she toiled almost day and night. She felt that her unborn child must depend on her for support; that she and it were alike matters of indifference, or worse, to her husband, and she laboured hard. Often days passed without any but monosyllabic speeches from her once loving husband-not unfrequently a curse. Occasionally, indeed, when her eyes filled with tears, and her pale cheek and quivering lip told her emotion, he would for a moment relent, and attempt to embrace her, saying, "a kiss would make all right;" but we cannot command our belief; she knew too well the real value of such protestations. She turned away coldly, and tears froze on her cheeks; she would not let him see them.

The agitation of her mind, rather than her exertions, affected her health. She became irritable, feverish, excitable, and frequently suffered severely. After a time this passed away, and though "melancholy had marked her for its own," no one knew why she had become so placid and serene. In fact, hope once more dawned upon her broken heart. A sweet hope, though not one of this world. It was the hope of an early grave!

We speak of the dreadful nature of a sudden death-of being called, unwarned and unprepared, into eternity; but it has always been a question in my mind whether in many instances this suddenness is not rather apparent to the survivors than to the dying. I cannot but think that the mind is much more frequently prepared for such a change than we are aware. So many instances are on record of a strong presentiment occupying the mind for days, weeks, or months before hand, that it seems only reasonable to imagine that this is at least in many cases granted; and to Edith's mind the presentiment gave solemnity, yet tranquillity: the consideration of the rapid period that would be put to all her trials made them more endurable.

At length, the hour so long desired and dreaded arrived. She became a mother; but no little voice was heard to gladden her heart, and make her forget her suffering.

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My child! Let me see it!" she exclaimed. The attendant placed its lifeless form in her arms. "Thou wilt never know a

broken heart, dearest! It is a great blessing I need not now desire life," she said, as she fondly kissed it. Another hour, and she too was at rest.

In a shady nook in

Cemetery is a humble tomb. On

the stone are the initials " E. M.," with the words—

"Peace is in the Grave!"

VOL III.

E 2

STANZAS AT EVENING.

BY MRS. B. F. FOSTER.

Oh! how I love the placid eve,

When all rude sounds are still;
For then can ærial fancy weave
Her magic garland, till

The raptured soul, on wings of bliss,
Flies from a world so dull as this.

To revel in yon cloudless sky,

Or sweep from star to star,
Borne on the zephyr's softest sigh,
As only spirits are;

Beyond the confines of our earth,
Its biting cares and noisy mirth.

Oh! could the spirit, in its flight

Along the æther plain,

Meet with some long-lost soul of light,

And commune once again-

Tho' but a moment, it would be

A moment of deep extacy.

But yet, what agony to think

That those bright, glorified,

Might haply from my presence shrink,

And coldly turn aside,

Shunning a spirit that is bound

With spells of earthly love around.

Then let the heart no longer sigh
For converse with the blest;
But to one mortal bosom fly

And seek its place of rest,
Content to find a little while

Its heaven in the loved one's smile!

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WORTHY Old Philippe de Comines, when he contemplated, in the quiet of his old age, the busy scenes in which his youth had been passed, and recollected the blind fatality with which Charles of Burgundy and Louis XI. had rushed into war, and their ignorance of each other's motives, plans, and resources, could not help exclaiming, "que l'une partie du monde ne sait point comme l'autre vit et se gouverne;"* and well may we use his words, if we look at the history of the past. Wherever we turn in history, nothing astonishes us so much as to see how every nation lives in a world of its own, and dwells in a peculiar realm of thought, as much its own private possession as the tract of earth which it inhabits. We have been so brought up in the beautiful superstitions of Greece and Rome, where the popular religion was formed by poetry and art, that we forget that other nations have had their peculiar superstitions and myths, which are as worthy of study and attention to those who trace the stream of human thought as it issues from antiquity, and bears down the real wealth of the world on its bosom. Sallust, the Platonist, says, that "this world is itself a myth; for the bodies and things therein are seen, but the souls and ideas which they represent are concealed." Let us bear this ever in our minds as we read the legends of a great people. Call them not absurd, however unnatural they may appear, for there is a beautiful reality hidden underneath them all; were it nothing but this, that the human mind must have a belief to cling to, a something exterior to itself and to the world, which shall be its household property; and is not this the greatest of all arguments against the universal doubtings of Pyrrho, Sextus Empiricus, and Hume?

* Ch. xlviii.

These national superstitions had each their home, where they were once believed, and some bounds and landmarks within which lay the circle of their influence. The Greeks and the Romans had their nymphs, their Oreades, Dryades, &c., and modern rhymesters have tried to prolong their existence in sonnets; but other nations have had their superstitions as wild as these, and heroes as godlike as Theseus or Romulus. Britain, Spain, Scandinavia, Hindostan, Persia, and Arabia, have each their popular tales, which remain to us still; all that is left of a generation and habit of thought, and mode of life, that have passed away for ever. We may recall the legends of old, and sing again the deeds that have won the marvel of their country; but what magic can recall the throng of chiefs that heard the strain and fought their battles over again at the festal board? Their age and its habits have fled.

Ah! how all this hums

In wakeful ears like uproar past and gone!
Like thunder clouds that spake to Babylon,

And set those old Chaldeans to their tasks.-KEATS.

Other times far happier and more glorious have succeeded, and the twilight of superstition is fading before the light of civilization.

But to understand a national literature aright, we must first put on its nationality, and then many of its difficulties will vanish, and its absurdities gain a meaning and speak tales. To enter into the spirit of Oriental literature we must wrap ourselves in all the romance that is flung before childhood's eye over the land of the East, the birthplace of the sun and the human race. We must inhale again the poetry that hangs round the names of Arabia and Cathay; and Mount Meru and Mount Calasay, and Kaf and Elburz must sound to the mind's ear like Mount Ida, Olympus, or Pelion. And why should this seem strange, since they are all consecrated by the national poetry? Jami has said, that "every fate that moves the heart of man is a veil of the world's beauty;" and what has ever so moved the hearts of a people before civilization has softened its sternness (emollit mores, &c.) as the songs of its bards?

Every national literature is distinct. It has its own haunts and names of romance, its own heroes and feats, and the glory of all is bounded by the national limits. "The one part of the world knows not how the other lives;" one nation is utterly ignorant of its neighbour's legends and heroes; or perhaps, frequently the names that are words of thunder to one country, are words of scorn to another. Gibbon says, "the infamous George of Cappadocia became the immortal St. George of England," and the unfortunate wife of Potiphar is the ideal of devoted love to the Persian. Hercules, Achilles, and Theseus, seem names for the world "to grow pale at;" but pass onwards, and we shall find there are bowers of poetry where the names of these chieftains have never entered, and the fame of their achievements has not been

heard. The Greeks boast of Alexander's expedition into India; but the legends of Hindustan bear no echo of his triumphs; Rama and his beloved Sita are the names of romance, by the Ganges; and Rustem and his Tuhmeenah, and Zal and his Rudabeh, are the centre of the poetry of Persia. We know not when these chieftains lived; perhaps, they never lived at all.

I've heard Troy doubted; Time will doubt of Rome.

But they have at any rate lived in the hearts of nations, and their names have been their watchwords, and their memories have led them to battle. There are some fine lines of Firdusi,* which Togrul Ben Erslan, the last of the Seljukian race, died repeating in the fight. This is an actual fact; Firdusi's poetry (the Iliad of the East) has been heard amid the din of war, just as Tyrtæus' songs echoed along the ranks of Lacedæmon, as they marched against the Messenians. Poetry is no "dream," but a reality of unmeasured influence and power, for good or for ill; so much so, that one law-giver (Charondas) wrote his laws in verse, and another banished Homer from his ideal Republic. Homer's words have decided national disputes,† but they also, according to Plato, corrupted the popular religion, and sensualized its ideas of divinity (Republic, iii.). It is somewhat singular (or rather, it shows some old sage's idea; for, as Emerson says, "language is fossil poetry") that the words poetry and drama are both derived from words meaning action. This was not a mere verbal coincidence, but the thought of some old seer, whom we know nothing of. Poetry sends its influences into the outward life, and the dreams of the poet's internal life become realities in the deeds of succeding generations. Homer, doubtless, thought he had uttered but an ordinary truth when he said in his Odyssey (iii. 48), that "all men need gods ;" but three thousand years afterwards, Robespierre had to repeat the same words (the great moral of the French revolution), " if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent his being." And yet men call poetry "dreaming," when the earliest of Gentile poets proclaimed a truth which had to be fully proved in after days, by a reign of Terror, with its "suspects" and guillotines.

But our concern for the present is more especially with Oriental poetry, and to that we propose now to address ourselves. The names of the bards of Persia are little known in England by

The anecdote can be found in Sir W. Jones's grammar, and the lines in Mr. Lumsden's edition of the Shahnameh, vol. i., page 216 (with some variations). The lines, as quoted by Sir W. J., are something to the following effect :-" When the dust arose from the approaching army, the cheeks of my warriors turned pale. But I raised my battle-axe, and with one stroke left a passage for my troops; my steed raged like a furious elephant, and the plain shook like the waters of Nile."

+ Thus the quarrel between the Athenians and Megarenses about Salamis, was settled in favour of the former, by a line in the Iliad (B. 558).

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