Jewish writers so great an ascendency over the hearts of men. Though borne naturally and instinctively to goodness, his Meditations do not display the keen æsthetical sense of the beauty of virtue which was the leading motive of Greek morals, and which the writings of Plotinus afterwards made very familiar to the Roman world. Like most of the best Romans, the principle of his virtue was the sense of duty, the conviction of the existence of a law of nature to which it is the aim and purpose of our being to conform. Of secondary motives he appears to have been little sensible. The belief in a superintending Providence was the strongest of his religious convictions, but even that was occasionally overcast. On the subject of a future world his mind floated in a desponding doubt. The desire for posthumous fame he deemed it his duty systematically to mortify. While most writers of his school regarded death chiefly as the end of sorrows, and dwelt upon it in order to dispel its terrors, in Marcus Aurelius it is chiefly represented as the last great demonstration of the vanity of earthly things. Seldom, indeed, has such active and unrelaxing virtue been united with so little enthusiasm, and been cheered by so little illusion of success. "There is but one thing," he wrote, "of real valueto cultivate truth and justice, and to live without anger in the midst of lying and unjust men." without a change of sentiments what can you | Hebrew virtue, and which have given the make but reluctant slaves and hypocrites!" He promulgated many laws inspired by a spirit of the purest benevolence. He mitigated the gladiatorial shows. He treated with invariable deference the senate, which was the last bulwark of political freedom. He endowed many chairs of philosophy which were intended to diffuse knowledge and moral teaching through the people. He endeavoured by the example of his court to correct the extravagances of luxury that were prevalent, and he exhibited in his own career a perfect model of an active and conscientious administrator; but he made no rash efforts to force the people by stringent laws out of the natural channel of their lives. Of the corruption of his subjects he was keenly sensible, and he bore it with a mournful but gentle patience. We may trace in this respect the milder spirit of those Greek teachers who had diverged from stoicism, but it was especially from the stoical doctrine that all vice springs from ignorance that he derived his rule of life, and this doctrine, to which he repeatedly recurred, imparted to all his judgments a sad but tender charity. "Men were made for men; correct them, then, or support them." "If they do ill, it is evidently in spite of themselves and through ignorance." "Correct them if you can; if not, remember that patience was given you to exercise it in their behalf." "It would be shameful for a physician to deem it strange that a man was suffering from fever." "The immortal gods consent for countless ages to endure without anger, and even to surround with blessings, so many and such wicked men; but thou who hast so short a time to live, art thou already weary, and that when thou art thyself wicked?” "It is involuntarily that the soul is deprived of justice, and temperance, and goodness, and all other virtues. Continually remember this; the thought will make you more gentle to all mankind." "It is right that man should love those who have offended him. He will do so when he remembers that all men are his relations, and that it is through ignorance and involuntarily that they sin the vicious tendencies that afterwards made and then we all die so soon." The character of the virtue of Marcus Aurelius, though exhibiting the softening influence of the Greek spirit which in his time pervaded the empire, was in its essentials strictly Roman. Though full of reverential gratitude to Providence, we do not find in him that intense humility and that deep and subtle religious feeling which were the principles of The command he had acquired over his feelings was so great that it was said of him that his countenance was never known to betray either elation or despondency. We, however, who have before us the records of his inner life, can have no difficulty in detecting the deep melancholy that overshadowed his mind, and his closing years were darkened by many and various sorrows. His wife, whom he dearly loved and deeply honoured, and who, if we may believe the court scandals that are reported by historians, was not worthy of his affection, had preceded him to the tomb. His only surviving son had already displayed him one of the worst of rulers. The philosophers who had instructed him in his youth, and to whom he had clung with an affectionate friendship, had one by one disappeared, and no new race had arisen to supply their place. After a long reign of self-denying virtue, he saw the decadence of the empire continually more apparent. The stoical school was rapidly fading before the passion for oriental superstitions. The barbarians, repelled for a time, were again menacing the frontiers, and it was not difficult to foresee their future triumph. The mass of the people had become too inert and too corrupt for any efforts to regenerate them. A fearful pestilence, followed by many minor calamities, had fallen upon the land and spread misery and panic through many provinces. In the midst of these calamities the emperor was struck down with a mortal illness, which he bore with the placid courage he had always displayed, exhibiting in almost the last words he uttered his forgetfulness of self and his constant anxiety for the condition of his people. Shortly before his death he dismissed his attendants, and, after one last interview, his son, and he died as he long had lived, alone. -Thus sank to rest in clouds and darkness the purest and gentlest spirit of all the pagan world, the most perfect model of the later Stoics. In him the hardness, asperity, and arrogance of the sect had altogether disappeared, while the affectation its paradoxes tended to produce was greatly mitigated. Without fanaticism, superstition, or illusion, his whole life was regulated by a simple and unwavering sense of duty. The contemplative and emotional virtues which stoicism had long depressed, had regained their place, but the active virtues had not yet declined. The virtues of the hero were still deeply honoured, but gentleness and tenderness had acquired a new prominence in the ideal type. BARTHOLOMEW SIMMONS. He [Bartholomew Simmons was born in the earlier years of the century at Kilworth, co. Cork, the scenery of which is very faithfully and effectively described in his poems. early obtained an appointment in the Excise Office, London, which he held until his death on July 21, 1850. For a considerable number of years he contributed poems to several of the leading magazines and annuals, which met with wide-spread approval. A writer in Blackwood's Magazine, where many of his effusions made their first appearance, speaks of him in the following terms:"Simmons, on the theme of Napoleon, excels all our great poets. Byron's lines on that subject are bad; Scott's poor; Wordsworth's weak; Lockhart and Simmons may be bracketed as equal; theirs are good, rich, and strong;" and the following poems from his pen will show that by his early death Ireland lost one of the most promising poets who were ever born on her soil.] NAPOLEON'S LAST LOOK. What of the night, ho! Watcher there Upon the armed deck, That holds within its thunderous lair Ho! rock'd upon the moaning main, Watcher, what of the night? "The stars are waning fast-the curl Of morning's coming breeze, Far in the north begins to furl Night's vapour from the seas. Her every shred of canvas spread, The proud ship plunges free, While bears afar with stormy head Cape Ushant on our lee." At that last word, as trumpet-stirr'd, A silent man made to the deck And leaning o'er the poop, he gazed Well may he look until his frame And lost-and lo! in vapour furled, He lives, perchance, the past again, Voluptuous in repose, as she who, 'mid the Ægean | Raised like an evening star her head, and look'd Isles, upon the night, Rose radiant from the frowning deep, she dazzled Praying the tardy moon to rise—and through the into smiles. Fast by that lady's pillow sits the passionate De shadows dim, Encountering but that spectral form beside the rudder grim. Now dimming with his doating kiss the glory of The moon at last!-blood-red and round, she her hair; wheeleth up the wave, Or watching till their sleepy lids her eyes' blue Soaring and whitening like a soul ascending from languish veilthe grave; Or murmuring on her lips of rose fond love's un- Then riseth too the Beauty-brow'd, and quits with tiring tale. Yet restless all is her repose, no solace can she find; gentlest motion Her tent's festoons,-two rival Moons at once upon the ocean! The press of canvas overhead hoarse-groaning in O Queen of Quiet-thou who winn'st our adoration the windstill, The cordage-strain-the whistling shrouds-De As when a wondering world bow'd down on thine Ephesian hill! Vere's devoted words— All things, or soft or sullen, now disturb her spirit's Stainless thyself, impart thy calm and purifying chords. "In vain thy love would lull my ear, thou flattering knight, for whom I faithless fled my lord and land!—methinks that, through the gloom, Some fearsome Genii's mighty wings are shadowing my soul, grace, To her, the stain'd one, watching thee with her resplendent face! The breeze has dropp'd-the soundless sails are flagging one by one; While in his cabin still De Vere the parchment pores upon; Black as the clouds and waters now that round Sudden a shriekabout us roll." "Ah, cheer thee, sweet-'tis but the rude and restless billows' heaving, That frets thy frame of tenderest mould with weariness and grieving; "Twill vanish soon: when mounts the moon at midnight from the sea, Sweet Cyprus, with its rosy rocks high shining on our lee, -a broken groan, his ear have smitten-hark! That laughing yell!-sure fiends from hell are hailing to the Bark! He gains the deck-the spot where last idolatrous he stood, Is cross'd by some dark horrid thing-a narrow creeping flood; Great Heaven forbid!--but where's the heart from whence it gush'd?-for now "Shall see us anchor'd-if the truth our Moorish The decks contain no form but that stone-stiff be pilot tell, Who, since we weigh'd, has steer'd for us so steadily and well. E'en now I go to track below our bearings by the chart; With freight like thee can I be free from wistfulness of heart?" De Vere is gone. side the prow. Stone-stiff-half life, half death-it stands with hideous terror dumb, And bristling hair, and striving still for words that will not come: Speak thou-speak thou, who from the prow kept watch along the water, His silent crew, from all the, And kill thy lord with one dread word of Gaza's decks above, Descend, lest even a murmur mar the slumbers of his Love; Yon aged Moor, who, spectre-like, still at the rudder stands, Yon stripling, station'd at the prow, are all the watching hands. glorious daughter! He told at last, that as he turn'd, what time the breeze had died, To rouse his mates-far at the stern, the lady he espied, Sky-musing there: and by the helm, with eyes coal-blazing-Him, Pavilion-screen'd, from her soft couch how oft The Evil One, in semblance of their Moorish Who stole to her, before that boy could cross him- | Where olive-groves their shadows fling from Cyprus' musky shore, self for grace, His turban doff'd, then touch'd her arm, and stared The Bel-Marie high stranded lies, to plough the her in the facewaves no more; That furnace-stare!--her scorch'd head droop'd And day by day, far, far away, in Rouen's aisles a flash-at once she fell I ween, Prone at his feet, who instantly sprang with her Down-broken, like that stately bark, a mournful down to hell! monk is seen. EARL [The career of Lord Cairns is one of the most remarkable of any man even among the brilliant band who have risen to the same great height. His life has been an unbroken series of triumphs; and even those who have no love for his politics cannot deny that those triumphs have been legitimately earned. Lord Cairns owes his success to the sheer force of great abilities. Hugh M'Calmont Cairns was born on December 27, 1819, and is the son of William Cairns, Esq., of Cultra, county Down. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he had a distinguished undergraduate career, obtaining first class in classics. He graduated B.A. in 1838. In January, 1844, he was called to the English bar at the Middle Temple. Before long he became one of the most largely employed barristers in the courts of equity; and while still a stuff-gownsman could boast of a larger practice than the majority of those at the inner bar. In 1856 he was made a queen's counsel and a bencher of Lincoln's Inn. He had meantime entered upon another and more important career, having been elected Conservative member for Belfast in 1852, and the time soon came when this position placed the highest gifts of the legal profession at his disposal. In February, 1858, he was made solicitor-general in the administration of Lord Derby. Promotion to office so high after but fourteen years' practice at the bar was almost unprecedented; but the comments of the profession and the press were unanimously favourable. The new solicitor-general soon proved the wisdom of Lord Derby's choice. The successful lawyer is frequently a terrible parliamentary failure; but the part Sir Hugh Cairns took in the great debate on Lord Ellenborough's censure of Lord Canning's proclamation proved his right to a place in the front rank of parlia CAIRN S. mentary orators. His fame as a speaker was established; and from this time forward he was recognized as one of the great debaters, who, if they cannot sway divisions—which no orator almost ever does in a representative assembly -can excite the enthusiasm of friends and the dread of foes. Lord Derby's resignation in December, 1858, deprived Sir Hugh Cairns of office. When his chief returned to power in June, 1866, he became attorney-general. This post he did not long hold, accepting in the October following a lord-justiceship of appeal. In February, 1867, he was raised to the peerage as Baron Cairns of Garmoyle in the county of Antrim; and just about a year afterwards (February, 1868) he became Lord-chancellor of England. After the retirement of the ministry in 1868 he assumed for a while the responsible position of leader of the Conservative party in the House of Peers. When the Conservatives returned to office in February, 1874, he resumed his place of lord-chancellor. In September, 1878, he was still further advanced, attaining the honour of an earldom-a dignity that has not been reached by some of the most brilliant of his predecessors. The style of Lord Cairns's eloquence is chaste. He rarely soars to high flights, and he is deficient in humour. His great merit is perfect lucidity of expression, so that his arguments are always presented as if they formed tightly-bound links in an unbroken chain of reasoning.] ON THE OUDE PROCLAMATION. [In the course of the session of 1858, when the Derby-Disraeli government was in power, Lord Ellenborough, who was president of the Board of Control, got his party into trouble |