contest, between a nightingale and a lutanist; finely imitated from a passage in Strada's Prolusions.

Passing from Italy to Greece, the tales,
Which poets of an elder time have feigned,
To glorify their Tempe, bred in me
Desire of visiting that paradise.

To Thessaly I came; and living private,
I day by day frequented silent groves,
And solitary walks. One morning early
This accident encounter'd me. I heard
The sweetest and most ravishing contention,
That art and nature ever were at strife at.

This contest was begun by a nightingale, who, chancing to hear a lutanist play several airs upon his lute, endeavoured to surpass them. In this attempt, however, the unfortunate bird failed: on which;

Down dropt she on the lute,

And broke her heart!

For Lover's Melancholy.

III.

In the vale of Tempe, Philip, king of Macedon, was cited to appear before the Romans, to answer for his conduct; and thither the Delphians sent a deputation every ninth year. This deputation consisted of the finest youths in their city. When they arrived in the valley, they erected an altar; offered sacrifices; cut some branches from the laurels which grew there; and carried them home, with a view of offering them in the Temple of Apollo, at Delphos. Julian, in a letter to Libanius, says, the beauties of this vale were second only to the groves of Daphne, near Antioch; and through its winding and

solitary defiles, Pompey proceeded after the battle of Pharsalia. Parched with thirst, he threw himself upon his face, and drank out of the stream. It is now a haunt for banditti !—and what a haunt!—a valley, lying in the bosom of mountains, shaded by the bay, the pomegranate, and the wild olive; the arbutus and the yellow jessamine; the wild vine; the evergreen oak; the oriental plane; and the turpentine tree; frequently festooned with various species of clematis.

The scene in England, which most resembles this celebrated vale, is the valley of Dovedale, in the county of Derby. This delightful spot wears an air of enchantment, which its transitions, caverns, rocks, and recesses, continually keep alive to the eye: while the imagination roves from scene to scene, and from transition to transition, with all the wild ardour of unsated curiosity.

In this dale are frequently seen virgin's threads, flying in the air, like small untwisted silk; and which, falling upon plants, open and discover a spider's web. This web is a delicate plexus, formed in the body of the spider, and which it is able to spin out of its bowels, at its own discretion. When the weather permits, the garden spider frequently darts out a thread, which flies before the wind to a considerable distance, still issuing from the bowels of the spider; which soon after leaps into the air, suspended by its own threads, and mounts with those threads flying before thus forming what are usually styled " Virgin's threads."

66

Who teaches the swallow, the woodcock, and the nightingale, to traverse the air from one climate to another, at different seasons of the year? Who directs the bee to return to its hive, from the distance of many miles,

when its eye can scarcely discern two inches before it'? Who invites the salmon from the depths of the sea to climb rivers; and the herring and the pilchard to traverse vast regions, in order to deposit their spawn, in climates congenial to their natures? Who maps the winds? And who has pointed the magnet?—The same power, and the same intelligence, which has taught the worm to weave its silken net, and the spider to waft through the lower regions of air!

In England, few are the vales, remarkable for picturesque effect. They are rich in wood, in meadow, in animals, and in buildings; but they are destitute, for the most part, of rocks, ruins, and mountains. None of them, therefore, can compare with the vales of Clwyd, Llangollen, or Ffestiniog: and they possess little, which will enable them to stand in competition with those of the Usk, the Towy, or the Glamorgan. Of these, the Clwyd is the most rich; Llangollen the most picturesque; Ffestiniog the most abounding in beautiful and sublime combination; the Glamorgan the most rural; the Usk the most graceful; but the Towy, by far, the most adapted for a tranquil and elegant retirement.

IV.

In contemplating these vales, so beautiful and so peaceful, with what delight does the imagination rest upon the virtues of those monarchs, who esteem the arts of peace the most glorious of human occupations! Such were those, which adorned the last years of Augustus. Impossible is it to meditate on that era, without a satisfaction of the purest kind. Men, says Paterculus, could not ask of the gods, nor the imagination paint, a more perfect

The last Years of Augustus ;-Legislators. 203

felicity, than that, which reigned at that time; not only in Italy, but throughout the whole empire. Horace, like a medal, pictures both sides at once. "The ox wanders safe in the pastures; corn is allowed to ripen in the field; ships navigate the sea without danger of pirates; the laws are strictly observed; no seductions, no adulteries stain our families; good manners have succeeded to vice, rudeness, and impiety; and our matrons are even worthy the matrons of antiquity." A description, strikingly picturesque to the Romans themselves: for but a few years before, not a sheep, nor an ox, could graze in safety in their master's grounds; the man, who sowed, had little hopes of reaping; and the soldiery carried infamy or the sword into the bosom of almost every family.

Oh! ye rulers of the earth! will ye never discard those vulgar enjoyments, which the merest peasant enjoys with greater appetite than you? Will ye always waste, in the degraded rapture of a camp, those powers, which nature directs should be cultivated in the bosom of peace? Why will ye never emulate the virtues of those legislators, to whom every bosom erected a cenotaph ?-Bocchyris and Trismegistus, among the Egyptians; Zoroaster among the Bactrians; Saturn among the Latins; Minos among the Cretans; Philolaus among the Thebans; and Solon among the Athenians: Eudoxus among the Cnidians; Archytas among the Tarentines; Charondas among the Carthaginians; Phido among the Corinthians; Lycurgus among the Spartans; Numa among the Romans; and though last, "not least," Alfred among the Saxons.

Not only legislators have been venerated by mankind, but royal inventors of useful arts. Pamphila, daughter 2 Montaigne.

1 B. iv. Od. 5.

of Platis, was held in the highest veneration, because she taught her father's subjects the art of manufacturing silk. Triptolemus, king of Eleusis, invented the plough; Vertumnus, an ancient king of Tuscany, taught the art of planting, pruning, and ingrafting; while Osiris traversed Ethiopia, Arabia, Judea, and no inconsiderable part of Europe; not to subdue nations, but to encourage the adoption of civilized life, by an authority, more commanding than that of persuasion alone. He was, for a long series of ages, worshipped under the shape of a bull; because he taught the use of oxen in husbandry. Bacchus! This hero has been so long associated with inebriety, that his merits, as a legislator, have sunk into forgetfulness. It was Bacchus, the Rama of the Hindoos, who taught the culture of the vine. He invented the art of dyeing purple; he discovered the use, and is said to have employed the loadstone, in the service of navigation; while Hebe, his wife, taught her subjects the art of transplanting trees and shrubs, and forming flower-beds. As a reward for these services, they called her the goddess of perpetual youth.

V.

Many princes have aimed at deification. They have been, for the most part, the most worthless of mankind. They would be gods of power and dominion; but not of Providence. They would be Jupiter Tonans; not Jupiter Magnificus. This is the vulgar passion, which rules-whether under the name of Archon, Prytanis, Tetrarch, Doge, or Negus: from the king of Bantum, up to the Emperor of France, or the Emperor of the Moguls; and thence down to the way wode, mayor, and