Brought pails, and dipped them in thy crystal pool, And children, ruddy cheeked and flaxen haired The very rhythm of the stanzas "to "He who from zone to zone Guides through the trackless air thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone, Will guide my steps aright." But it is unnecessary to cite from pages so familiar; or we might allude to the grand description of Freedom, Hymn to Death," as and the beautiful " among the noblest specimens of modern The great principle of Bryant's verse. faith is that "Eternal love doth keep the deep." Gathered the glistening cowslip from its In his complacent arms, the earth, the air, edge." "Gather him to his grave again, The homage of man's heart to death, Once hallowed by the Almighty's breath." To set forth in strains the most attractive and lofty this glorious sentiment, is the constant aim of his poetry. Gifted must be the man who is loyal to so high a vocation. From the din of outward activity, the vain turmoil of mechanical life, it is delightful and ennobling to turn to a true poet, one who scatters flowers along our path, and lifts our gaze to the stars, breaking by a word, the spell of blind custom, so that we recognize once more the original glory of the universe, and hear again the latent music of our own souls. This high service has Bryant fulfilled. It will identify his memory with the loveliest scenes of his native land, and endear it to her children for ever. ROME: AS SEEN BY A NEW YORKER.* THIS is the title of a new work by Mr. Gillespie, designed to give the author's own impression of Rome, while wandering over it and mingling in its society. We have had many books on Italy, but none that we remember on Rome exclusively. Yet many volumes could be written upon it, without exhausting the materials for an entertaining work. Rome is a magic word with which men conjure up all that is heroic in our nature. It has, during its history, furnished the type of every thing that has since transpired, great in human life. The warrior turns back to the Roman soldier for examples of heroism-the statesman to its laws-the orator to its eloquence-the poet to its treasures of verse-the artist to its wealth of paintings and sculpture; and the Christian to its glorious bandof martyrs. The corpse of this dead empire is greater than all other living nations, for "Decay's effacing fingers" have not swept out all the lines of beauty. The very ruins of Rome are richer than modern wealth. Every stone is a history or monument, and one may spend years in wandering over the foundations of the ancient city alone, without troubling himself about modern Rome. Mr. Gillespie has looked upon this city with the eye and heart of a scholar. He does not take the miserable matter of fact view of it that Cooper did, nor yet the ultra classical one of Eustace. He does not go to the Coliseum to see how many it would hold for a mass meeting, nor yet wholly forget the present in too enthusiastic reverence for the past. He is not subject to the painful extremes of a more excitable temperament, nor cursed with the stupidity of a mere animal-like many who grumble around the Trattorias of the city-and hence he enjoys Rome. This very enjoyment of his communicates itself to his writings, and he involuntarily puts his readers in a state of feeling to enjoy it with him. He is happy with the very consciousness he is in Rome, and stands where the heart of the world once beat. This saves him many sad reflections, while he is too much buried in seeing to indulge in musing. This healthful state of the mental man adds much to the agreeableness of the narrative. The work is designed to give only the surface of things, taking up and describing those objects a stranger would be interested in. He not only gives us what his eyes behold, but he makes us acquainted with the impression things make on his feelings. Added to all this, the style is easy, natural and chaste. The city is taken up in detail in the work before us, and each part considered separately. We scarcely enter Rome before we find ourselves at St. Peter's. Succeeding this come the Coliseum, Capitol, Forum, Vatican, antiquities and ruins. By way of interlude, he gives us a peep into the Trattorias and Čafés with which Rome abounds. The Café Greco is admirably described, but how an American can endure its filth and smoke, and heterogeneous multitude, has always puzzled us. After two trials, we abandoned it for ever. The villas that environ Rome-the art and artists with which it is filled, are given not only with accuracy, but a charm is thrown around them by the style of the author. For a rarity he errs on the side of charity and affection, and will not see the deformities that so much disgust others. The modern Romans especially he defends in our opinion with more amiability than justice. Our artists are spoken of at length, and Mr. Crawford receives a high but merited encomium. The book opens in good taste, and the reader is started with the exclamation, "Roma," as the domes and battlements of the city rise on his view. Mr. Gillespie, however, does not go off into ecstatics-not quite so much, indeed, as we would wish; but, nevertheless, feels deeply the influence of the eternal city upon him. The opening paragraph is • One volume, 12mo.: Wiley & Putnam, N. York. in the author's own style, and quite characteristic of the rest of the work. "ROMA! shouted the postilion with his stereotyped emphasis and a melodramatic wave of his whip over the desolate Campagna, as a turn in the road disclosed in the distant horizon an irregular mass of churches, towers and palaces, above which rose supreme a huge dome at once recognized as that of Saint Peter's. A traveller becomes callous to the excitement of famous names and historical associations, for he daily eats and sleeps in their shadow: but ROME has a spell to arouse the most phlegmatic, and the attainment of this goal of every voyager seemed like a dream, which at the very next moment might vanish into thin air. But as we advanced, infinitely too slowly for our eager excitement, through the Campagna, so silent and barren that it seemed impossible that so great a city could be so near, its battlemented walls suddenly came into view, and the Tiber it self was crossed by the Ponte Molle, the same on which Cieero arrested the ambassadors of the Allobroges, and whence Constantine had his vision of the cross.' His first impressions on entering St. Peter's are given with much clearness and beauty; and whoever has stood in the centre of that magnificent structure, and endeavored, for the first time, to collect his amazed senses and comprehend into what strange temple he has fallen, will feel the force and beauty of his descrip tion. Around the Forum are the most interesting fragments of old Rome. There are the Capitoline and Palatine hills the steep Tarpeian, and the mouldering columns of the Temple of the Gods. Standing at one end of the Forum, the Capitol rises behind you, the Arch of Septimius Severus at your feet; the Palatine, on whose top rose the Golden House of Nero, and the Palace of the Cæsars on your right. The Arch of Titus throws its curve at the farther end, while the grey old Coliseum draws its semi-circular summit against the sky. Brutus, and Cæsar, and Antony, and Cicero, and Catiline, have been there before you. On that very spot Cicero turned to the Capitol, which stood like a beautiful vision on the hill, shining in silver and gold, and burst forth in that terrible denunciation against Catiline, and thanked the Gods for their providence over the city, and declared that their interference had been so mani fest, "ut eos pane oculis videri possimus." But the past sinks away, like a ghost at morning, and there are the spinners leisurely weaving their lines in the setting sun, and you wake to the consciousness that the Forum is a cattle market. Mr. Gillespie feels the influence of such a scene, as is seen in the following extract : "THE FORUM AND COLISEUM. before "The chief ruins of ancient Rome lie in the southern extremity of the city, as far as possible from the inhabited district, as if the degenerate modern Romans shrank from the sight of these solemn tokens of what their ancestors had been, and dared not contrast their present degradation with their former glory. The annual swarms of stangers-those hordes of modern Goths, who now rush down from the tramontane regions, not to destroy, but to admire and to sustain-all crowd together under the northern walls. A mile to the south are the Capitol, the Forum and the Coliseum. On a summerlike evening in the beginning of December, I strolled alone down the Corso, passing churches and palaces, till this narrow "Broadway" of Rome divided at the foot of the Capitoline hill. Taking the left hand branch, and leaving the Capitol on my right, I followed the narrow and dark Via di Marforio, till suddenly I emerged from its shadows, and a blaze of moonlight lit up for me the Roman Forum, which spread out my dazzled eyes in a wide waste of ruins, entered by a triumphal arch, terminated by the Coliseum, and dotted with columns, standing singly and in groups, crowned with moss-grown fragments of their cornices, and looking like tall mourners over the fallen greatness of their companions, or like the sole survivors of the field of battle on which the great works of man had contended in vain with the destroying angel of Time. A thrill of neither pleasure nor pain, but of intense quivering excitement, ran through every nerve, till my very fingers' ends tingled with enthusiasm. Such a unique and never-to-berepeated sensation is alone enough to repay a dozen voyages across the Atlantic. Behind me a broad and lofty flight of marble steps led up the hill of the Capitol; before me rose the triumphal arch erected in honor of Emperor Septimius Severus; on the right stood three columns of a ruined temple; beside them were eight pillars of another edifice; and a little farther rose the lonely column of Phocas. I walked on in solitude through Rome: ae seen by a New Yorker. the fields which were once the Forum in which the people met to decide upon the fate of empires, and in which the eloquence of Cicero had re-echoed from the temples and palaces which then studded every eminence and filled every valley, but which have now left only these scattered fragments for their memorials. There a thousand years of silenced factions sleep,' and the deep hush was unbroken, except by my own footsteps, till I was challenged by the sentinel before the Coliseum. The colossal amphitheatre rose like a mountain of stone, with stupendous arches above arches, half hid in deep shade and half bathed in the splendor of a day-bright moon. In the oval area within, in which so many gladiators had slain each other, and so many Christians had been torn to pieces by wild beasts, now rose a tall cross in emblem of the new religion which had changed the destinies of the place. On the arches which sloped up and back all around, and which once bore the seats of the ninety thousand spectators who there exulted in the butchery of the arena, trees were now growing high in air, and the long grass threw its veil over the yawning chasms. In the interior galleries, arcades and passages which form an immense labyrinth, I wandered for hours, climbing to the topmost arches to avoid an English party, whose ladies were giggling and babbling below in profane desecration of the influences of the spot. one's mind becomes fused and incorpoIn such scenes, rated with the genius of the place, and I could almost fancy myself an old Roman, and forget the cruelties of the conquerors of the world in admiration of their greatness of conception and execution, until the place "Became religion, and the heart ran oe'r With silent worship of the great of old, The dead, but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule Our spirits from their urns."" But eating is also a part of an existence in Rome, and the trattorias and cafés form one of the distinctive features of the modern city. They are the place of rendezvous to the strag glers from every quarter of the globe. Our author goes into details here with apparently great gusto, and unravels more than we ever knew of the mysteries of the kitchen. The information is valuable to the traveller, for he needs a great deal of skill and knowledge to escape eating the leavings of the tables of cardinals and nobles. These cafés Feb. also are the places of meeting to transact business or folly with the artists. We give the following excellent description of the initiation of an artist into the Association of Artists, as characteristic of the manner these strange unconventional beings transact most of their business. tracted to the Café Greco by the excel"Though visitors of all degrees are atlence of its coffee (which the proprietor imports directly from Mocha), the majority of its habitual guests are artists, and in the company of some of them I adjourned thence one evening to a PONTE MOLLE, or Artists' Festival. One of my companions was that night to be initiated into the general Association of Artists in Rome, the majority of whom are Germans, and who unite for mutual assistMolle is the bridge by which Northerners ance and social enjoyment. The Ponte given to the fête, which is the tax of the enter the city, and its name is therefore initiated. It was held in the trattoria about two hundred artists of all nations Monte Citorio, behind the post-office : and vagantly picturesque costumes, most of were there assembled in their most extrathem looking like Cavaliers of Charles I., all busily eating, drinking, and smoking. At the farther end of the chief room, the President was selling at auction a collection of drawings, paintings, &c., contrithe society, that the proceeds of the sale buted by the more prosperous members of might be applied to the relief of their poorer brethren in art. cies were named in the biddings, and when an Austrian offered a zwanziger, an AmeAll currenrican paralleled it precisely with Yankee shilling.' The sale went off were then sung, all joining in the chorus gaily and successfully. Some fine glees The initiation then took place. The doors and beating time with clashing glasses. of an adjoining room were thrown open, and displayed the tableau vivant of the standing on a table, and assuming succescandidate, wrapped in a scarlet mantle, sively the postures of the Apollo Belvedere, the flying Mercury, and the like, him worthy of being elected Knight of as proofs of his artistic taste. The asthe Baiocco. The response was a chorus sembly was then asked, if they thought Yes,' Oui, Si, Ya,' and other affirmations, and he was immediately invested with the ribbon and medal of the order, to wit, a new baiocco, or Roman cent; a democratic burlesque on the orders of knighthood, in token that artists should acknowledge the aristocracy of genius alone. The new knight then re ceived a horn of terra colta, holding about a quart, as his Scandinavian drinking cup. He went the rounds of the room, touching the glasses of every one, and a German ode, composed in honor of him and the society, was then sung. The election of officers next took place, and finally the crowd dispersed in perfect harmony, having renewed and strengthened, by their friendly festivities, the fraternal ties which here unite into one brotherhood the thousands of every nation who congregate in Rome for the common pursuit of Art." We have not time for further extracts, and can only say, that, whoever wishes to obtain a close and familiar view of Rome will get it nowhere better than in this work. The chief fault is a negative one. It does not cover enough ground. The two great features of modern Rome, the Carnival and Holy Week, we hear nothing of. We see the Corso in this work, but we want to see it streaming with maskers, while the city reels to the boisterous mirth of the multitude. We get a clear conception of St. Peter's, but we would also behold it crowded with the pomp and ceremony of Easter Sunday, and blazing in its grand illumination at evening, the great closing act of the magnificent farce. So also the fêtes of various kinds that occur in the spring, many of them handed down from antiquity and especially interesting to the traveller, are not noticed by Mr. Gillespie. A map of Rome accompanies the work, and there is an Appendix attached, giving directions how to see it. It is a valuable index to the traveller as well as a pleasant companion. It is beautifully got up, as a book written in the graceful style of this always should be. LITTLE MARY. A SWEET and blessed moment 'tis to me, Which haunts my years-but with them, never steals away. Thy image, Mary, on my heart is sealed, And wand'ring on thro' life, whate'er my doom, One joy will be to find it still revealed, When thoughts of thee break in on hours of gloom. And I've no place 'mong those around thee ranged, By full a score my years outnumber thine, D. D. S. |