'Tis glory to a soldier's eye, To see the pageant proud pass by. Ere dies the shout of victory. IV. "Ye men of Thebes, hear me, and then condemn; Behold my victories in foreign lands. You know them well; they're graven on your heart, I have but one request: inscribe my tomb Know of my punishment and of my crime. Engrave upon it, the Messenians cried When their best blood their peaceful hearths had dyed; Tell them I washed that stain in Spartan gore, And now Messenia's brighter than before. Go to Arcadia's sunny plains, and see A nation joined in perfect harmony: A nation torn by faction, and enslaved, I have united, and by union saved. Where now is Sparta? Do ye dread her now? Now Thebes is proud and safe and great and high; · But when you raise a monument to me, V. He ceased. At once the crowds proclaim Their veneration for his name; They gather round, and shout and cry; Their acclamations rend the sky; And those who but an hour before Had come to hear his death-knell sound, Bow to the magic of the hour, And loud his praise resound. The distant hills the shout prolong, And echo back the gladsome cheer; THE FIRST OLYMPIAD OF THE CRADLE. WHEN, in the seven hundredth and seventy-sixth year before the Christian era, Iphitus, king of Elis, desired to assuage and centralize the feelings of the Grecians, he consulted the oracle of Delphi to know "by what means the anger of the gods, which threatened total destruction to Peloponnesus, through the endless hostilities of its new settlers, might be averted?" The oracle, like many other orators, having its speech ready "cut and dried," demanded the establishment of the Olympic Games to the honor and appeasement of the Hellenic Zeus, somewhat better known by his Roman alias of Jupiter. Now this old gentleman-who was chief of the stars in his day, had as many names as a Spanish pedigree, and doubtless would have given to the investigating committees of that day as much trouble to affix one on him, as has our Chief of Police to the modern committee-was represented as a stalwart old fellow, whiskered like Barnum's bearded woman, was a dreadful scamp, over-given to wine and women, and withal, held the pagan Greeks in as much vassalage and fear of their very lives, as though he had been a Jew and had intrusted money to them at three hundred per cent. Therefore King Iphitus black-mails the oracle, and behold—the Delphic organ speaks sensibly. And the words of the oracle went from mouth to mouth like a modern scandal, and its words were quoted in every state of Greece and the Peninsula. And on the banks of the gentle Alpheus, near Olympia, in the olive groves of Peloponnesian Elis, gathered the symmetrical Athenian, the simple. Arcadian, the delicate Corinthian, the Thessalian from the laureled banks of Peneus, the brave Spartan, and the rude Boeotian; hither came the strength and youth of Euboea, and Lesbos, and Ithaca, from Ægean and Ionian isles, and the pride of Messenia and Argolis, and all with music in their souls, strength in their arms, grace in their limbs, ambition in their hearts, and the immortality of Greece and homage to the all-potent Jupiter raging round all as "glory swathes a star," or an echo booming round the thunder that awakens it. Immortal is he who leaves this congress of the soul and strength of Greece with honor. Immortal the Herodotus who reads the history of Grecce to Grecians there! Immortal the Pindar whose dithyrambic measures outstrip in grace the flights of lithe-limbed and sure-footed Athenian! Immortal the athlete upon whose brow the coronal of wild olive leaves shall crown his prowess in the chariot, or dexterity with the javelin. Immortal are the olive leaves of Elis, and thrice immortal the brow that bears them. Those were great days surely; but little dreamed the bards of Greece that three thousand years in the future, and on the banks of an unheard-of river, and to the summons of a monarch, an oracle and a Jove not less powerful than theirs, would the Olympiad be revived, and prizes more costly than would have purchased both the groves of Elis and all the olives they ever grew, would fall into the laps of the youngest born of the younger children of the still young America. Little did they dream that all the cradles of a great nation would be rocked into commotion, and the whole juvenile portion visited with ups and downs, and see-saws multitudinous, in anxious preparation to be made game of at the inauguration of the first Olympiad of Gotham. But Barnum (whom the poets and historians of Greece never knew) is powerful and wise as King Iphitus of Elis. Nothing is safe when he needs a curiosity. Baboons shudder when he wants a Feejee or any other mermaid. No note of Swedish Nightingale is too high for him, nor dwarfish humanity too low, even though it be no bigger than his Thumb. A Peloponnesian crisis sat upon all things Gothamite. There were hard times, and political distractions, and presidential hungerings, and Poole Associations, and Baker hunts, and Archbishop Hughes discussions, and nunnery invasions, and liquor-law inundations, and brewer's rights and Catholic wrongs, and Know-Nothing somethings, and Virginia elections, and great excitements, as in Peloponnesus, springing from the new settlers," and such like, and other things manifold, which divided public attention from King Iphitus Barnum's style, title and dignity; and withal the Almighty Dollar, which was the Jupiter, with its many aliases of bills, quarters, dimes, and cents, ruled and awed the multitude. So the wise Barnum consults his oracle, the treasury box, which immediately, and in a voice of thunder suggests a Baby Show to appease the anger of the Jovian Dollar. The press, like the mouths of the Grecians, echo the demand; and lo! the cradles of the country surge to and fro like the waves of the ocean. The chubby proportions of Young America are patted and fatted, diapered and done up. Beyond the Alleghanies infantile Buckeyes are caverned within the mounds of pork padded on the cheek-bones of young Ohio. In the South-west, cribs are swaying, and lullabies sweet as the honey of Hymettus are buzzed and hummed to make young Hoosiers pleasant. The juvenile chivalry of Old Kentuck, like that of Old Virginny, never tires to admire grace of limb on the hobby-horse, which, in a pendulum flight, keeps right on, as though all the spurs of the Blue Ridge were plunging their granite rowels into the wooden bowels of the "never-ending, still beginning" steed. In vain Mas sachusetts mothers feed their darlings, who are entirely too cute to be made a show of. In vain will the babes of Pennsylvanian woods be made game of. But in general, the young bloods of all the States are in a state of plethora, more especially those of New-York, who, like the gentleman in plush at Sam Weller's soirée, are "wisibly swellin'." Everywhere ambitious mothers look on their little counterfeits, as Macbeth looked on the apparition, and, in the mind's eye, behold on their baby brows "The round and top of sovereignty," in the shape of hundred dollar bills. It is the feeding time of babydom, which, like barn-door fowl, are stuffed and then cooped up for the market. The date of the Olympiad approaches, and well it does, for the springs of cribs are worn threadbare and the wicker cradles have grown, like the babies, as broad as they are long. From all quarters they arrive, and unaccountable are the quarters paid to see them. The mammoth hog show dwindles in comparison, and even the great cattle exhibition of Rochester fails to exhibit half the number of visitors that thronged to the halls of Barnum, opposite the Christian temple of St. Paul, on the banks of the majestic Hudson, in the year of grace 1855, to witness the first Olympiad of Babydom. Oleaginous is the display, adding a pleasant mellowness to the masterspirit, who, like Shylock, chuckles over his pounds of flesh. Stentorian are the lungs of cherubim, and tenacious the grizzly fingers of cute matrons and old maids, who pinch the fatty protuberances until the prize child, like Shakspeare's Bottom, "roars again." So much for doing the lion's part. Nor is antique maidenhood satisfied, but pinch and pinch again to show that they are up to snuff. Various are the choral ebullitions, single, double, and treble. Anu hither come in amity and delight, the rich dowager and the fashionable beauty from the groves up town, the regal courtesan from the unblessed temples of Mercer, and the active artificer from Division. Here, too, meet the solid men of Wall, and the exquisite shadows of Broadway, the reckless chivalry of Bowery, and the tiny Titans who carry the news of the world into all the by-ways of this progressive capital. In the noise and clamor of delight, the great peace is restored. All meet as brothers-the brass band proclaims it, and the stars and stripes float proudly over all. To King Iphitus the Wise, may all praise be given. The nation is safe. While American mothers raise such children, and while such children thus early enter the lists of duty for the weal of the paternal roof, who fears the future? To Iphitus the praise be given. Great is Iphitus of Gotham. The Almighty Dollar is appeased. |