From where sweet Clanis1 wanders through corn and vines anl flowers; From where Cortona lifts to heaven her diadem of towers. Tall are the oaks whose acorns drop in dark Auser's rill; But now no stroke of woodman is heard by Auser's rill; The harvests of Arretium, this year old men shall reap; This year, young boys in Umbro shall plunge the struggling sheep: And in the vats of Luna, this year, the must shall foam Round the white feet of laughing girls, whose sires have marched to Rome. There be thirty chosen prophets, the wisest of the land, And with one voice the Thirty have their glad answer given :"Go forth, go forth, Lars Porsena-go forth beloved of heaven! Go, and return in glory to Clusium's royal dome ; And hang round Nurscia's altars the golden shields of Rome." 1 The Clanis (la Chiana) originally fell into the Tiber, but its current has been diverted into the Arno; and the valley now watered by it, once a pestilential swamp, is as fertile and salubrious a region as ever was the proverbially rich soil which it formerly intersected. "It stretches northward to the walls of Arezzo and the tower-crowned height of Cortona,” or Corythus, a Pelasgian, before it became an Etruscan, city, whose origin is hid in the mist of legendary antiquity.-See Dennis, ii. pp. 414, 415, 432-440. 2 Auser (the Serchiol, formerly a tributary of the Arno.-Ciminian hil!: "* the Ciminian forest," says Dennis, still, with its majestic oaks and chesnuts, vindicates its ancient reputation."-Dennis, i. 191. Umbro (Ombrone), southward, another tributary of the Arno. 3 Clitumnus, in which the bulls sacrificed to Jupiter were bathed; its sulphureous waters were supposed to render them of snowy whiteness: Virg. Georg. ii. 146.- Polsinian Mere, the Lake of Bolsena, of which Dennis says, "the fish and wild fowl which abounded here of old have still undisturbed possession of its waters. Strabo, v. 226; Colum. R. R. viii. 16."-Dennis, i. 515. 4 Arretium seems to have been more renowned for its vineyards than its grain-crops.— Plin. xiv. 4, 7. It was one of the "twelve cities" of the confederation. Its modern representative, Arezzo, the birth-place of Petrarch, as the old one was of Macenas, is supposed to occupy a different site.-Dennis, ii. pp. 417-431. Luna (Luni) produced the best wine in Etruria (Plin. xiv. 8, 51, as well as what we call the Carrara marble. It does not appear that "thirty" was a regulating number in the ritual or polity of the Etruscans, though it, as be ng 10 x 3, was adhered to in the distribution of the Latin townships, and at Rome, in respect to both the plebeian tribus, and the patrician curiae. -The sacred books of the Tuscan diviners, which are often mentioned by ancient authors, might be, like some among the Romans, libri lintei (linen books), before the use of parchment or papyrus -Their alphabet, which is closely allied to those of the other old peoples of Italy and Greece, preserved the direction from right to left which characterised the Phenician prototype; and the symbols, both alphabetical and numerical, inverted the shape taken by them when running from left to right-See Dennis, i. pp. lvii. xlvi. Nortia, Nutia, Nursia, or, as here, Nurscia, an Etruscan goddess, who has been re Now, by your children's cradles, now, by your father's graves, Be men to-day, Quirites,2 or be for ever slaves! For this did Servius3 give us laws? For this did Lucrece bleed? presented as analogous to Fortuna, to Minerva, and to Atropos, had a shrine at Volsinii, into which, as into one in the Roman Capitol, a nail was annually driven with religious solemnity, to serve the purpose of a kalendar-yet not without a reference to the fixedness of fate. See Liv. vii. 3; Juven. x. 74; Horat. Carm. i. 35, 17-20, iii. 24, 5-7. Compare Dennis, pp. li. 509, 510.—Golden shields, see note 1, p. 228, supra. 1 The infamous claim to the daughter of the centurion Virginius by the minion of Appius Claudius, the most tyrannical of the Decemviri, being determined against the father by that corrupt magistrate, Virginius, to save his daughter from infamy, publicly stabbed her in the forum before the very tribunal of the Decemvir (B. C 447). The death of Virginia resembled in its consequences that of Lucretia in a former age: a universal insurrection overthrew the Decemviri. 2 From Cures or Quirium (hence Quirinal the hill, and Quirinus the name of the deified Romulus), one of the cities that ultimately coalesced into Rome. In later times the designation was restricted to citizens, as distinguished from soldiers; Cæsar once quelled a mutiny in one of his legions by stigmatizing the soldiers as Quirites. 3 The sixth Roman king, the promulgator of a constitution favourable to the commonalty; he fell a victim to his patriotism, being cut off by a conspiracy among the patricians headed by his son-in-law Tarquinius (Superbus). The Romans looked back on the laws of Servins, as did our Saxon forefathers on those of "the sainted Confessor" after the Norman conquest. 4 Mucius, who, taken in the attempt to assassinate Lars Porsena, thrust his hand into the altar fire and held it there till consumed, to show the king that dread of painful punishment would not protect him from the daggers of the Roman youth; he bore the surname Scaevola, the left-handed. 5 An adaptation from the celebrated pamphlet against Cromwell, by Colonel Titus, "Killing no Murder,"—" Shall we, who would not suffer the lion to invade us, tamely stand to be devoured by the wolf?" 6 The Mons Sacer, three miles from Rome, stood in the angle formed by the Anio and Tiber, consecrated to Jupiter. In B. C. 494, the plebeians, goaded by their oppressions, seceded" to this hill, and refused to return to the city, till the inviolability of their tribunes was secured by a treaty.-Livy, ii. 33. 7 Caius Marcius Coriolanus. See Livy, ii. 34, 35-On the long-sustained "pride" or aristocratic feeling of the Gens Fabia, their humiliation, and their subsequent services in reconciling the two estates of their countrymen, see Livy, i 42-48-Kaso Quinctius, son of L. Quinctius Cincinnatus, when about to be tried in the Comitia for a murder and other flagrant crimes. forfeited his bail and fled into Etruria; Livy, iii. 11, 12, 13.-Of the patrician Claudii, see Niebuhr, vol. i. p. 599. The second Ap. Claudius, father of the Decemvir, was so detested by the soldiers under his command, that they threw away their arms, and fled before the Equian and Volscian foes, so that he returned to Rome in disgrace: he is said to have committed suicide in the following year, Livy, ii. 58, 59, 61. By their submission to the Decemviri. The Comitia. No Tribune breathes the word of might1 that guards the weak from wrong. Our very hearts, that were so high, sink down beneath your will. Riches, and lands, and power, and state-ye have them;-keep them still. Still keep the holy fillets; still keep the purple gown,? The axes, and the curule chair, the car, and the laurel crown; Still fill your garners3 from the soil which our good swords have won. And store of rods for free-born backs, and holes for free-born feet.* Who in Corinthian mirrors their own proud smiles behold, The sweet, sweet love of daughter, of sister, and of wife, Still let the maiden's beauty swell the father's breast with pride; That turns the coward's heart to steel, the sluggard's blood to flame, Lest, when our latest hope is fled, ye taste of our despair, And learn by proof, in some wild hour, how much the wretched dare. 1 VETO; when the Tribunes wrote this word on any senatorial decree it was annulled. 2 The Priesthood and the Consular offices, denoted by the fillets and the purple, were exclusively in the patrician families; the purple was a stripe (clarus) down the border of the toga (gown). The tribunal chair was called curule, an epithet either derived from currus, the car in which it was placed, or connected with Greek kuros, authority. The laurel, the triumphal crown, could be earned only by Imperatores, who at this period were exclusively patricians. 3 Two of the chief causes of heart-burning between the Roman orders were the refusal of the patricians to apportion tracts of conquered land to the plebeian infantry, and the law of Debtor and Creditor. See Livy, ii. 23, and passim. 4 The insignia of Consular authority were the Fasces (bundles of rods with axes stuck among them, denoting the punishments of scourging and decapitation; holes, the stocks (nervus, Lat.-podokakke, Gr.). See Potter and Adam. 5 The ancient mirrors were of metal; the aes Corinthium was celebrated for its excellence.-Capua," the luxurious capital" of Campania. The mines of Spain supplied gold to the neighbouring countries. For specimens of the Roman "radical" orations, on which the passage is founded, see Livy, ii. 23, 55; iii. 9. 10, 15, 39, 52; and, in later times, iv. 3-5, 35, 44; v. 2, &c. SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON. SIR E. B. LYTTON, one of the most elegant novelists of the time, is also a dramatic poet and a powerful satirist, and has lately possibly secured his title to immortality in his noble romance-epic "King Arthur." His plays are the "Lady of Lyons," the "Duchess de la Valliere," and "Richelieu." The lyrical pieces scattered over his novels are remarkable for their pure and classic gracefulness. Alas! the Church! 'Tis true, this garb of serge Or in the name of Priest? The Pharisees Had priests that gave their Saviour to the cross! That Truth may teach humanity to Power, Glide through the dungeon, pierce the arméd throng, Awaken Luxury on her Sybarites couch, And, startling souls that slumber on a throne, Bow kings before that priest of priests-THE CONSCIENCE ! 案 This makes us sacred. The profane are they Honouring the herald while they scorn the mission. The king who serves the church, yet clings to mammon, Will ne'er forego the sin, may sink, when age Great though thou art, awake thee from the dream Dark warnings have gone forth; along the air 1 The "amiable" mistress of Louis XIV. 2 Shakspeare; see p. 131, supra. Comp. Hor. Odes, i. 3, 9. 3 The Greek cities of the south coast of ancient Italy were infamous and proverbial for their luxury and effeminacy: one of the most splendid and powerful of them was Sybaris on the Tarentine Gulf. Juvenal, vi. 295. Ælian, i. 19, &c. Tt Lingers the crash of the first Charles's1 throne. May make no brother to yon headless spectre ! Tracks back the causes, tremble, lest he finds The seeds, thy wars, thy pomp, and thy profusion,3 Grew to the tree from which men shaped the scaffold,— A palace lifting to eternal summer SCENE 1. Whose songs should syllable thy name! At noon To excel them all in love; we'd read no books Translates the poetry of hearts like ours! And when night came, amidst the breathless Heavens I' the midst of roses! Dost thou like the picture ? 1 Of England. Louis XVI.; the French nation have of late had too much contempt for their deposed kings, or too much magnanimity, to execute them. Many of the seeds of the first French Revolution were sown, by the "causes" mentioned, in the reigns of Louis XIV and of his contemptible successor Louis XV., compared with whom Charles II. of England might be called a patriot. The events of the last two years must convey a terrible idea of the extent and importance of this "Future," whose "end is not yet.” |