And Time, who bids thy flame expire, Will also quench yon heaven of suns!

Oh then, if earth's united power
Can never chain one feathery hour;
If every print we leave to-day
To-morrow's wave shall steal away;
Who pauses to inquire of Heaven
Why were the fleeting treasures given,
The sunny days, the shady nights,
And all their brief but dear delights,
Which Heaven has made for man to use,
And man should think it guilt to lose?
Who that has cull'd a weeping rose
Will ask it why it breathes and glows,
Unmindful of the blushing ray
In which it shines its soul away;
Unmindful of the scented sigh
On which it dies, and loves to die?

ARISTIPPES considered motion as the principle of happiness, in which idea be differed from the Epicureans, who looked to a state of repose as the only true voluptuousness, and avoided even the too lively agitations of pleasure, as a violent and ungraceful derangement of the senses.

2 MACPERTUIS has been still more explicit than this philosopher, in ranking the pleasures of sense above the sublimest pursuits of wisdom. Speaking of the infant man, in his production, he calls him - une nouvelle créature, qui pourra comprendre les choses les plus sublimes, et ce qui est bien au-dessus, qui pourra gouter les mêmes plaisirs. See bis Vénus Physique. This appears to be one of the efforts at Fontenelle's gallantry of manner, for which the learned President is so well ridiculed in the Akakia of Voltaire.

MACPERTCIS may be thought to have borrowed from the ancient ARISTIPPES that indiscriminate theory of pleasures which he has set forth in his Essai de Philosophie Morale, and for which he was so very justly condemned. ARISTIPPUS, according to LAERTIES, held με διαφέρειν τε ήδονην ηδονης, which irrational sentiment has been adopted by MAUPERTUIS: Tant qu'on ne considère que l'état present, tous les plaisirs sont du même genre, etc. etc.

Till o'er her cheek she thrilling feel My sighs of fire in murmurs steal, And I shall lift the locks that flow Unbraided o'er her lids of snow, And softly kiss those sealed eyes, And wake her into sweet surprise!

Or if she dream, oh! let her dream

Of those delights we both have known, And felt so truly, that they seem

Form'd to be felt by us alone!
And I shall mark her kindling cheek,
Shall see her bosom warmly move,
And hear her faintly, lowly speak

The murmur'd sounds so dear to love!

Oh I shall gaze till even the sigh
That wafts her very soul be nigh,
And, when the nymph is all but blest,
Sink in her arms and share the rest!
Sweet Lais! what an age of bliss

In that one moment waits for me! Oh sages!-think on joy like this, And where's your boast of apathy?

TO MRS BL-H-D.

WRITTEN IN HER ALBUM.

Τούτο δε τι εστι το ποτον ή πλάνη, έφη. Cebetis Tabula.

THEY say that Love had once a book

(The urchin likes to copy you), Where all who came the pencil took,

And wrote, like us, a line or two.

'T was Innocence, the maid divine,

Who kept this volume bright and fair, And saw that no unhallow'd line, Or thought profane, should enter there.

And sweetly did the pages fill

With fond device and loving lore, And every leaf she turn'd was still

More bright than that she turn'd before!

Beneath the touch of Hope, how soft,

How light the magic pencil ran! Till Fear would come, alas! as oft,

And trembling close what Hope began.

A tear or two had dropp'd from Grief,
And Jealousy would, now and then,
Ruffle in haste some snowy leaf,

Which Love had still to smooth again'

But, oh! there was a blooming boy,

Who often turn'd the pages o'er, And wrote therein such words of joy, As all who read still sigh'd for more!

And Pleasure was this spirit's name,

And though so soft his voice and look, Yet Innocence, whene'er he came, Would tremble for her spotless book!

For still she saw his playful fingers

Fill'd with sweets and wanton toys; And well she knew the stain that lingers After sweets from wanton boys!

And so it chanced, one luckless night
He let his honey goblet fall
O'er the dear book so pure, so white,
And sullied lines, and marge and all!

In vain he sought, with eager lip,

The honey from the leaf to drink, For still the more the boy would sip, The deeper still the blot would sink!

Oh! it would make you weep, to see The traces of this honey flood Steal o'er a page, where Modesty

Had freshly drawn a rose's bud!

And Fancy's emblems lost their glow,
And Hope's sweet lines were all defaced,
And Love himself could scarcely know
What Love himself had lately traced!

At length the urchin Pleasure fled,

(For how, alas! could Pleasure stay?) And Love, while many a tear he shed, In blushes flung the book away!

The index now alone remains,

Of all the pages spoil'd by Pleasure, And though it bears some honey stains, Yet Memory counts the leaf a treasure!

And oft, they say, she scans it o'er,
And oft, by this memorial aided,
Brings back the pages now no more,
And thinks of lines that long have faded!

I know not if this tale be true,

But thus the simple facts are stated; And I refer their truth to you, Since Love and you are near related!

EPISTLE VII.

TO THOMAS HUME, ESQ. M. D.

FROM THE CITY OF WASHINGTON.

'Tis evening now; the heats and cares of day
In twilight dews are calmly wept away.
The lover now, beneath the western star,
Sighs through the medium of his sweet cigar,
And fills the ears of some consenting she
With puffs and vows, with smoke and constancy!
The weary statesman for repose hath fled
From halls of council to his negro's shed,

And look, how soft in yonder radiant wave,
The dying sun prepares his golden grave!—
Oh great Potowmac! oh you banks of shade!
You mighty scenes, in Nature's morning made,
While still, in rich magnificence of prime,
She pour'd her wonders, lavishly sublime,
Nor yet had learned to stoop, with humbler care,
From grand to soft, from wonderful to fair!
Say, were your towering hills, your boundless floods,
Your rich savannas and majestic woods,
Where bards should meditate and heroes rove,
And woman charm and man deserve her love!
Oh! was a world so bright but born to grace
Its own half-organized, half-minded race 5
Of weak barbarians, swarming o'er its breast,
Like vermin gender'd on the lion's crest?

********* of the United The black Aspasia of the present States, inter Avernales haud ignotissima nymphas, has given rise to much pleasantry among the anti-democrat wits in America.

On the original location of the ground now allotted for the seat of the Federal City (says Mr WELD), the identical spot on which the capitol now stands was called Rome. This anecdote is related by many as a certain prognostic of the future magnificence of this city, which is to be, as it were, a second Rome.-WELD's Travels, letter iv. A little stream runs through the city, which, with intolerable affectation, they have styled the Tiber. It was originally called GooseCreek.

4. To be under the necessity of going through a deep wood for one or two miles, perhaps, in order to see a next-door neighbour, and in the same city, is a curious and I believea novel circumstance." -WELD, letter iv.

The Federal City (if it must be called a city) has not been much increased since Mr Weld visited it. Most of the public buildings which were then in some degree of forwardness, have been since utterly suspended. The Hotel is already a ruin; a great part of its roof has fallen in, and the rooms are left to be occupied gratuitously by the miserable Scotch and Irish emigrants. The President's house, a very noble structure, is by no means suited to the philosophical humility of its present possessor, who inhabits but a corner of the mansion himself, and abandons the rest to a state of uncleanly desolation, which those who are not philosophers cannot look at without regret. This grand editice is encircled by a very rude pale, through which a common rastic stile introduces the visitors of the first man in America. With respect to all that is within the house, I shall imitate the pradent forbearance of Herodotus, and say, τα δε εν απορρήτω. The private buildings exhibit the same characteristic display of arrogant speculation and premature ruin; and the few ranges of houses which were began some years ago, have remained so long waste and unfinished, that they are now for the most part dilapidated.

The picture which Burrox and DE PAUW bave drawn of the American Indian, though very humiliating, is, as far as I can judge, much more correct than the flattering representations which Mr JEFFERSON has given us. See the Notes on Virginia, where this gentleman endeavours to disprove in general the opinion maintained strongly by some philosophers, that nature (as Mr JEFFERSON expresses it) belittles her productions in the western world. M. DE PAUW attributes the imperfections of animal life in America to the ravages of a very recent deluge, from whose effects upon its soil and atmosphere it has not yet sufficiently recovered.-See his Recherches sur les Américains, part, i, tom. i, p. 103.

Were none but brutes to call that soil their home,
Where none but demi-gods should dare to roam?
Or, worse, thou mighty world! oh! doubly worse,
Did Heaven design thy lordly land to nurse
The motley dregs of every distant clime,
Each blast of anarchy and taint of crime
Which Europe shakes from her perturbed sphere,
In full malignity to rankle here?

But hush!-observe that little mount of pines,
Where the breeze murmurs and the fire-fly shines,
There let thy fancy raise, in bold relief,

The sculptured image of that veteran chief, '
Who lost the rebel's in the hero's name,
And stepp'd o'er prostrate loyalty to fame;
Beneath whose sword Columbia's patriot train
Cast off their monarch, that their mob might reign!

How shall we rank thee upon Glory's page?
Thou more than soldier and just less than sage!
Too form'd for peace to act a conqueror's part,
Too train'd in camps to learn a statesman's art,
Nature design'd thee for a hero's mould,
But, ere she cast thee, let the stuff grow cold!

While warmer souls command, nay, make their fate,
Thy fate made thee and forced thee to be great.
Yet Fortune, who so oft, so blindly sheds
Her brightest halo round the weakest heads,
Found thee undazzled, tranquil as before,
Proud to be useful, scorning to be more;
Less prompt at glory's than at duty's claim,—
Renown the meed, but self-applause the aim;
All thou hast been reflects less fame on thee,
Far less, than all thou hast forborne to be!

Now turn thine eye where faint the moonlight falls
On yonder dome-and in those princely halls,
If thou canst hate, as, oh! that soul must hate,
Which loves the virtuous and reveres the great,
If thou canst loathe and execrate with me
That Gallic garbage of philosophy,
That nauseous slaver of these frantic times,
With which false liberty dilutes her crimes!
If thou hast got, within thy free-born breast,
One pulse that beats more proudly than the rest,
With honest scorn for that inglorious soul
Which creeps and winds, beneath a mob's control,
Which courts the rabble's smile, the rabble's nod,
And makes, like Egypt, every beast its god!
There, in those walls-but, burning tongue, forbear!
Rank must be reverenced, even the rank that's there :
So here I pause-and now, my Hume! we part;
But oh! full oft in magic dreams of heart,
Thus let us meet, and mingle converse dear
By Thames at home, or by Potowmac here!

O'er lake and marsh, through fevers and through fogs,
Midst bears and yankees, democrats and frogs,
Thy foot shall follow me, thy heart and eyes
With me shall wonder, and with me despise! 2

In the ferment which the French revolution excited among the democrats of America, and the licentious sympathy with which they shared in the wildest excesses of jacobinism, we may find one source of that vulgarity of vice, that hostility to all the graces of life, which distinguishes the present demagogues of the United States, and has

of neutrality to which they are indebted for the most lucrative part of their commerce, and by which they have so long infringed and counteracted the maritime rights and advantages of this country. This unwarrantable trade is necessarily abetted by such a system of collusion, imposture, and perjury, as cannot fail to spread rapid contamination around it.

Though I call this a Dithyrambic Ode, I cannot presume to say that it possesses, in any degree, the characteristics of that species of poetry. The nature of the ancient Dithyrambic is very imperfectly known. According to M. BERETTE, a licentious irregularity of metre, an extravagant research of thought and expression, and a rude embarrassed construction, are among its most distinguishing features. He adds, Ces caractères des dityrambes se font sentir à ceux qui lisent attentivement les Odes de Pindare.»- Mémoires de l'Acad. vol. x, p. 306. And the same opinion may be collected from SCHMIDT'S Dissertation upon the subject. But I think, if the Dithyrambics of Pindar were in our possession, we should find that, however wild and fanciful, they were by no means the tasteless jargon they are represented, and that even their irregularity was what BOILEAU Calls un beau désordre.» CHIABRERA, who has been styled the Pindar of Italy, and from whom all its poetry upon the Greek model was called Chiabreresco (as CRESCIMBENI informs us, lib. i, cap. 12) has given, amongst his Vendemmie, a Dithyrambic, all' uso de' Greci: it is full of those compound epithets which, we are told, were a chief character of the style (συνθέτους δε λεξεις εποιουν. SUID. Διθυραμβοδιδ.); such as

The Olympian cup

Burn'd in the hands

2

This is a Platonic fancy; the philosopher supposes, in his Timæus that, when the Deity had formed the soul of the world, be proceeded to the composition of other souls; in which process, says PLATO, he made use of the same cup. though the ingredients he mingled were not quite so pure as for the former; and having refined the mixture with a little of his own essence, he distributed it among the stars, which served as reservoirs of the fluid. Taut' ELTE και πάλιν επι τον προτερον κρατήρα εν ώ την του παντος ψυχην κεραννύς εμισγε, κ. τ. λ.

"We learn from THEOPHRASTUS, that the roses of Cyrene were par

ticularly fragrant. Ευοσμοτατα τα δε τα εν Κυρήνη ρόδα.

Sweet Hebe, what a tear

And what a blush were thine,

When, as the breath of every Grace

With a

Wafted thy fleet career

Along the studded sphere,

rich cup for Jove himself to drink,
Some star, that glitter'd in the way,
Raising its amorous head

To kiss so exquisite a tread,
Check'd thy impatient pace!
And all Heaven's host of eyes
Saw those luxuriant beauties sink

In lapse of loveliness, along the azure skies! 3
Upon whose starry plain they lay,
Like a young blossom on our meads of gold,

Shed from a vernal thorn

Amid the liquid sparkles of the morn!
Or, as in temples of the Paphian shade,
The myrtled votaries of the queen behold
An image of their rosy idol, laid

Upon a diamond shrine!

The wanton wind,

Which had pursued the flying fair,

And sweetly twined

Its spirit with the breathing rings

Of her ambrosial hair,

Soar'd as she fell, and on its ruffling wings

(Oh wanton wind!)

1 Heraclitus (Physicus) held the soul to be a spark of the stellar essence: Scintilla stellaris essentiæ.-MACROBIUS, in Somn. Scip. lib. i, cap. 14.

The country of the Hyperboreans; they were supposed to be placed so far north that the north wind could not affect them;they lived longer than any other mortals; passed their whole time in music and dancing, etc. etc. But the most extravagant fiction related of them is that to which the two lines preceding allude. It was imagined that instead of our vulgar atmosphere, the Hyperboreans breathed nothing but feathers! According to HERODOTES and PLINY, this idea was suggested by the quantity of snow which was observed to fall in those regions; thus the former, Tx w птеρa eixaζοντας την χιονα τους Σκύθας τε και τους περιοίκους δοκέω λέγειν.—Henobor. lib. iv, cap. 31. Orio tells the fable

otherwise: see Metamorph. lib. xv.

Mr O'Halloran, and some other Irish Antiquarians, have been at great expense of learning to prove that the strange country, where they took snow for feathers, was Ireland, and that the famous Abaris was an Irish Druid. Mr Rowland, however, will have it, that Abaris was a Welshman, and that his name is only a corruption of Ap Rees! I believe it is SERVICS who mentions this unlucky trip which Hebe made in her occupation of cup-bearer; and HOFFMAN tells it after him: Cam Hebe pocula Jovi administrans, perque lub icum minus caute incedens, cecidisset, revolutisque vestibus-in short, she fell in a very awkward manner, and though (as the Encyclopédistes think) it would have amused Jove at any other time, yet, as he happened to be out of temper on that day, the poor girl was dismissed from her employment.

Fell glowing through the spheres,
While all around, new tints of bliss,
New perfumes of delight,
Enrich'd its radiant flow!

Now, with a humid kiss,
It thrill'd along the beamy wire

Of heaven's illumined lyre, 3
Stealing the soul of music in its flight!
And now, amid the breezes bland
That whisper from the planets as they roll,
The bright libation, softly fann'd
By all their sighs, meandering stole!
They who, from Atlas' height,
Beheld the rill of flame

Descending through the waste of night,
Thought 't was a planet whose stupendous frame
Had kindled as it rapidly revolved
Around its fervid axle, and dissolved
Into a flood so bright!

The child of day,

Within his twilight bower,
Lay sweetly sleeping

On the flush'd bosom of a lotos-flower; 4

The arcane symbols of this ceremony were deposited in the cista, where they lay religiously concealed from the eyes of the profane. They were generally carried in the procession by an ass; and hence portat mysteria-See the Divine Legation, book ii, sect. 4. the proverb, which one may so often apply in the world, asinus

In the Geoponica, lib. ii, cap. 17, there is a fable somewhat like this descent of the nectar to earth. Ev oupaves twv SeaY SUNχουμένων, και του νέκταρος πολλού παρακειμένου, ανασκιρτηται χορεία του Έρωτα και σύσσεισαι τῷ πτερω του κρατήρος την βάσιν, και περιτρέψαι μεν αυτόν το δε νεκταρ εις την γην εκχυθεν, κ. τ. λ. See Autor, de Re Rust, edit. Canta'), 1704.

The constellation Lyra. The astrologers attribute great virtues to this sign in ascendenti, which are enumerated by PONTANO, in his Crania:

--Ecce novem cum pectine chordas
Emodulans, mulcetque novo vaga sidera cantu,
Quo capta nascentum animæ concordia ducunt
Pectora, etc.

The Egyptians represented the dawn of day by a young boy seated upon a lotos. 1ιτε Αιγυπτους έωρακώς αρχήν ανατολης παιδίον νεογνόν γράφοντας ἐπὶ λωτῳ και