through summer breezes. Shake rudely the morning dew from the petals of the rose, and its brightest grace has vanished. There is a delicate charm about friendship, without which it becomes a very coarse and common thing; it is so subtile and etherial that I know not what to compare it to, but you have felt it and know its power. If you would have your friendship retain this charm, which is like fragrance to the flower, or bird music to a spring morn, treat it very tenderly. The more intimate your relations with another, the more delicate and considerate should be your conduct. Though the cold forms of etiquette may be dispensed with, the most refined courtesy should dictate every word and action. Would I not advocate frankness and allow one friend to help another by advice or gentle reproof? Surely; and unselfish affection will dictate the true and delicate course to be taken. In friendship as in everything else, the Golden Rule is the best one to follow; it will make you true, generous, and unexacting, and be likely to win for you such friends as will follow you faithfully through sunshine and storm, and through every vicissitude of life, even unto the time of its sun-setting. Reader, when your last hour has come, when earth with its delusive dreams is passing away, may fond friends weep that you must leave them; and when you open your eyes in the morning land, may glad friends there welcome you to heaven. THITHER-SIDE SKETCHES. NO. XXV. Epitaphs-Keats and Shelley, their graves in the Protestant burial ground at Rome Spring influences-Palace and gardens of the Quirinal-Palazzo Spada-Statue of Pompey -Mutilated statuary-Laocoon-Dying gladiator. "Here lies one whose name was writ ten in water!" Because Keats in a moment of morbid bitterness occasioned as much by physical disorder as by any unjust criticism, desired that these words (containing in themselves the very essence of a peevish invalid's complainings,) might be engraven upon his tomb-stone, shoull his request have been complied with, and the unhealthful sentiment so unjust to himself in his better moments, have been thus perpetuated? We trow not. If all the votaries of the tuneful muse, who, when attacked with a fit of the blues, (and from the very constitution of things it must be acknowledged no class is more prone to this sort of visitation,) make requests of similar character, were to have their morbid fancies chronicled upon sepulchral monuments, then, we say-heaven save the poets and the people who be lieve in the divinity of their mission! That this epitaph, inscribed upon the burial stone of Keats, in the English cemetery at Rome, has perpetuated a false impression, received, in regard to the cause of the sweet poet's death, is much to be regretted. It is not true that he died of a broken heart, in consequence of the cruel and unjust criticisms of those relentless "penny-a-liners; "those vultures of the press, by whose talons another noble many poet, as well as Keats, has been barbarously torn. Though suffering keenly from this cause, aggravated by an unusually delicate sensitiveness which, at a time of physical prostration, wrung from him, upon the spur of the moment, this morbid sentiment ;- no harshness of critical reviewers ever hastened his death, whom the White Angel had long before marked for his own. Of a disease of the heart the lamented bard certainly died, - and dur ing its fatal progress, suffered all those bodily pains and distresses, with the mental anguish which is often an accompani ment of this insidious malady; intensified in his case, by the natural fineness of his nervous organism. In view of this baptism of suffering, through which his spirit was early called to pass, on its way to the upper temple, we may well say in the common mode of ejaculation, "Poor Keats!"-but not coupled with the idea of him as a martyr to the pen of a British reviewer, as is too frequently done. It is but a sorry compliment to his genius, and an unjust appreciation of the common sense even, of one who possessed certainly some consciousness of his own inner strength in the realms of poesy, to believe that he would allow himself to be killed by any random shafts of all the goose quills in the world, however malig nantly pointed they may have been, and whatever biographers may say to the contrary. Leigh Hunt, who was to the poet the same as an elder brother,-who kept him in the bosom of his family, during a portion of the time when he was suffering acutely in bealth, who, as editor of a London literary journal, wrote such delightful and appreciative criticisms upon his poems; he who knew the lamented poet as well as any other person could have done, declares the notion of Keats dying of a broken heart, entirely wrong. Upon this decision we rest our belief, glad that the author of that most exquisite poem, "The Eve of St. Agnes," which, of all the sweet things he has ever written, always occurs to our memory in connexion with his name, is thus exculpated from the charge of so pitiable a weakness. It was some satisfaction, however, while lamenting at the grave of Keats, that the objectionable inscription was recorded there, to find it engraved in such minute letters, as to require the use of artificial aid in reading it; for this purpose a pair of magnifying glasses were suspended upon the stone, for the use of visitors to this sacredly interesting spot. "Nothing of him that doth fade, Thus sang Shelley, passionate worship per of the sea, and thus, as he yielded up his life in that element so much loved,— most fittingly is this sweet, weird melody, -so prophetic of his fate, carved upon the low slab which covers all that remains of the earthly form of him who, notwithstanding his avowed scepticism, was more spiritual in his nature, more pure and Christ-like in his habits and temper, than many a professed disciple of the Meek and Holy One, who condemns his character and influence, without stint, and without scruple, as all evil! Despite his bold revolt against time-honored opinions and institutions, and the reckless immorality which characterized his early effusions, the (latter of which, short as was his life, he lived long enough to regret), despite of his breaking away, in a measure,-according to his idea of right-from the restraints of law and order, while there is much to deplore, there is, we think, more to pity, to admire and love in his life, taken as a whole. 66 Cor, Cordium.” "The heart of hearts," inscribed upon his burial tablet, possesses a deeper meaning than that applied to the remarkable preservation of this part of his remains, during the process of burning them, in order to insure their removal, that they might rest by the side of those of his child, in this sacred enclosure, as also in accordance with a preference which he had expressed while living. With the thought of this gifted child of genius-Shelley-arises his contemporary and friend, Byron. What a striking contrast do these two sons of song present! The really coarse nature of Byron, notwithstanding the polish of his writings, in contrast with the etherial fineness of Shelley-the one a slave to public opinion even while loudly deriding it, the other, in his sincere loyalty to an inner ideal, perfectly unconscious of the speech of people, or indifferent to its tenor. Passing through the furnace of suffering had lifted the latter up into a higher, though not always a serene atmosphere, yet blest with glimpses of a brighter glory than the former ever saw in his loftiest poetic flights. Suffering, which goaded the one on to mad recklessness, was borne by the other with a patience as untiring as it was beau rather poor duty as an instrumental player good Stephano plucked us a coveted spray of delicate leaves for our book of mementoes. Quite a number of people were gathered around the musical wonder, ap parently much entertained with the novelty of a water organ. What a dreary, dreary thing it must be to be "His Holiness," thought we, as from salon to salon, we passed through the inte rior of the palace. Elevated too high above his fellow-mortals, by reason of the dignity of his office, to mingle familiarly with them in social, every day interchange of feeling and sentiment, and debarred from the sweets of family intercourse, surely that high ecclesiastical honor is gained at a painful cost! Here is the room of audience where the Pope receives distinguished visitors: there is his sleeping-room that other suite was occupied by the Emperor and Empress of Austria, at such a time; this goblin tapes try was a present from Napoleon to His Holiness. In this salon His Holiness dines, always alone, (another instalment this, of the price of superlative sanctity?) But since the revolution of 1848, His Holiness has never slept in the Palace, and seldom occupies it at the present. The associations connected with it are not at all pleasant. He has not yet entirely recovered, we imagine, from the shock received in this palace, at that time, when assaulting cannon made it a most dangerous place of refuge. Still, in February but spring, the beautiful, the glad-voiced spring, was look ing forth smilingly from the hills of Rome! The short, fresh grass was already spangled with daisies, (the day's eye?) the pen dant boughs of the weeping willows were beginning to look quite green with their feathery foliage, just peeping out from its sheltering sheaths. Birds were blithely carolling in the gardens, and the sunshine lay warm and bright upon the landscape; while the soft airs blew balmily, reminding one of the latter May, or early June days, in our Northern home. 'Twas during this lovely weather that we were wandering among these green graves, the fresh awakening of nature from winter's repose, speaking eloquently of that immortal spring, for all God's human children. "If HE so clothe the grass of the field, will He not much more clothe you," O! sleepers Thus much learned we from the con'neath the verdant sod? Aye, hath he ductor, who showed us through the palace. not, ere this, given spiritual robes of We also saw some fine frescoes. In the beauty for perishing vestments, cast down principal salon of audience of the present into the earth-mould as no longer needed? Pope, is a frieze and bas relief by Thor'Twas on such a such a bright, rejoicing waldsen; its scene is the entrance of Alday, too, that we visited the palace and exander into Babylon. Paintings of Ragardens of the Quirinal, where we strolled phael, Salvator Rosa, Vandyke, Domenileisurely through the trim avenues, border-chino, and other of the masters, adorn the ed, and even screened by the tall, dense galleries. growth of box kept so carefully clipped. Choice exotics, rare trees, and shrubbery - shaded nooks and evergreen arches bright patches of shine; statues, grottoes and fountains, made up the garden-show, which was, as a whole, stiff and formal. - From a wall close by the musical fountain, whose plashing water is made to do This same palace of the Quirinal bears another important feature in the Papal connections, besides that of being a place of summer residence, for the severa! successive popes during these long years past; for here, is always held the sessions of that august body of Eclesiastical Electors, upon whom devolves the responsibil ity of choosing a successor, when a vacancy occurs in the "Chair of St Peters." From that balcony yonder, the announcement of the choice, is made to the waiting officials, and thence to the populace, who as a matter of course make a great jubilation over the event. A visit to the Plazzo Spada, occupied another morning. This palace suffered considerably from the cannonade, during that last uprising. A large ball was shown us, and the fractures caused by its unceremonious entrance into the building, at that time; happily however no irreparable damage was done, and the collection of Statues, Paintings, etc., is still open to the inspection of visitors. Among the former is the celebrated statue of Pompey, the authenticity of which has incited so much controversy. The fact being at last settled satisfactorily we believe, to those versed in the matter, that it is the veritable statue of Pompey, "at whose base, great Cæsar fell." This is glory enough for one palace, and so long as it stands in its present position, the Plazzo Spada, will attract its thousands of visitors from the world's end. A word here upon torsos and mutilated statuary in general,—like you the contemplation of it?-art interested in examining such remains?' "Nay, dear madame Interrogation! On the contrary, these specimens, with which with which most of the old world collections are more or less plentifully interspersed, are always subjects of discomfort, sometimes of actual distress; giving one that shivery feeling experienced at sight of mutilated human beings." Proves the excellence, the very perfection, which those old Greeks attained in copying the living form?" "Ay, and grand studies too, have these same old broken marbles proved to hosts of moderns, who doubtless have received many a meed of praise for delineations, whose merit was in a great degree due to a faithful studying of these same antique piece-by-piece mod els ! " As for individual feeling, respecting these relics, we would never desire to look upon their like; but would prefer giving them a decent burial, instead of resurecting them, as the appreciative art-world has been happy to do. A poor compliment this, to these same, valuable relics? "Not so, friendly madam! but the very reverse if you please, it being a virtual acknowledgment of their superior excellence, the perfect naturalness of their human resemblance." Are we aware that this idea of putting out of sight imperfect statuary, would require the burial of the Laocoon in the soil of the Esquiline from whence it was exhumed, because forsooth, the father and both of his sons, lacked each a right arm? 'Or the hiding away in the earth again the Dying Gladiator, found in the gardens of Sallust on account of the loss of an arm and being minus of toes?' "Ridiculous! thou knowest we never had such a thought! neither will we own to any such barbarous conclusion from our premise! These wonderful productions were restorable, not hopelessly broken; and it is only of such that we expressed that personal desire." True, Canova and others of good authority, claimed that the arm of the Father, and one of the sons of the Laocoon, were not restored in their original positions,— supporting this opinion with fair proof drawn from the group itself; but however this may be, it stands to the eye unbroken in its terrible reality, inciting the wondering admiration of appreciative beholders, and the horror of one foolish person at least, who was attracted from, rather than towards it. Upon the Dying Gladiator, we could gaze with a continually intensified interest: mournfully gaze, it is true, yet, the contemplation was elevating to ones human nature. Taken from actual "death, in life," from a real subject as we feel that it must have been. Unlike most other delineations of human suffering, this marvel of the sculptor's art, drew one spell-bound, without inciting those painful emotions inspired by other works of similiar character. The expression of patient endurance is deeply touching, while the fast receding life-tide, seen in the drooping head and relaxed muscles, gives one a feeling of glad relief, that the agony, borne so unflinchingly, is now deadened, and release from misery nearly won! Like the real presence of death its very nat Poets who sung of love, how they misjudged And shall the clouds to-night be rift of crimson, Because it lit a Universe of bliss, To one true heart, last midnight on the wave. These make its sunsets and its mornings rich. It is so full of light, it fires the dark Oh, heart that struggles 'neath the tender touch That summons doubts to fling the magic off, I will be free. Love's flowery chains, alas, Thus Love's revenge upon its rebel child, The heavenly spark goes never out in time; A SCRAP OF HISTORY. BY MRS. CAROLINE A. SOULE. The great elector, Frederick William I. of Brandeburgh, was so very partial to tall men, that he was determined his body guard should be composed only of soldiers of extraordinary height. To compass this whim, he spared neither time nor expense. He kept recruiting officers constantly employed in nearly all the large cities of Germany, and gave them positive orders to who would measure over six feet. secure every young man they should meet, From time to time a great number of persons disappeared. Mothers shuddered at the growth of their sons, while young brides mourned their lost husbands. Once a soldier and there was no longer a return to the home of his youth, or the beloved of his manhood. It was a fearful fate for those who loved peace better than war; the light of home better than the glory of the battle-field. One day, these recruiters, while stationed at Dresden, met a man whom they were sure would measure over seven feet; in fact, he was a giant, one too of splendid proportions. Being disguised in the cos tume of citizens, as was usually the case, the easier to entrap their victims, they ac costed him under some slight pretence and when he had answered them, they walked quietly beside him. Passing an inn, they invited him to stop and take a mug of beer. He asknowledged their civility, but declined, saying that he was a journeman cabinet maker, and his master would discharge him if he was not in the shop punctually. As he passed on, one of them followed him at a distance and noted the shop at which he stopped. |