And never was there truer prophecy. Said they. The king, astonished at his His ill-got riches asked to see: So much for his magnificence. Befell those manufacturers of lies: The And script, mayhap with pebbles from the "O treasure sweet," said he, "that never drew The viper brood of envy's lies on you, I take you back, and leave this palace splendid, As some roused sleeper doth a dream that's ended. Forgive me, sire, this exclamation : In mounting up my fall I had foreseen, Yet loved the height too well; for who hath been, Of mortal race, devoid of all ambition ?" Translation of ELIZUR WRIGHT. ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE. And all the men and women merely players: Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms; Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel, And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school; and then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress' eyebrow; then a soldier, Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth; and then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lined, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, BEAUTY is but a vain and doubtful Full of wise saws and modern instances, good; A shining gloss that fadeth suddenly; And so he plays his part; the sixth age shifts There were none like him in those days— A voice of music, hair by which To haunt the sculptor's dream. But when I looked at him to-night No marble brow, no soul-lit orbs; I know full well he has not changed PUR PURSUING BEAUTY. URSUING beauty, men descry The distant shore, and long to prove Still richer in variety The treasures of the land of love. We women like weak Indians stand But she who trades with them is lost. With humble vows they first begin, Stealing unseen into the heart, But, by possession settled in, They quickly play another part. For beads and baubles we resign, And yet the tyrants will have more. Be wise, be wise, and do not try How he can court or you be won, For love is but discovery: When that is made, the pleasure's done. THOMAS SOUTHERNE. THE EARLY INHABITANTS OF MEXICO. FROM FRIEDRICH HEINRICH ALEXANDER, BARON VON HUMBOLDT. ROM the seventh to the thir- they could found metals and cut the hardest stones, and they had a solar year more perfect than that of the Greeks and Romans. The form of their government indicated that they were the descendants of a people who had experienced great vicissitudes in their social state. But where is the source of that cultivation? Where is the country from which the Toultecs and Mexicans issued? Tradition and historical hieroglyphics name Huehuetlapallan, Tollan and Aztlan as the first residence of these wandering nations. There are no remains of any ancient civilization of the human species to the north of the Rio Gila or in the northern regions travelled through by Hearne, Fiedler and Mackenzie, but on the north-west coast, between Nootka and Cook River, especially under the fifty-seventh degree of north lat primitive country, or whether they came originally from Asia or the northwest coast of America and traversed the savannas of Nabajoa and Moqui to arrive at the Rio Gila. The hieroglyphical tables of the Aztecs have transmitted to us the memory of the principal epochs of the great migrations among the Americans. This migration bears some analogy to that which in the fifth century plunged Europe in a state of barbar-itude, in Norfolk Bay and Cox Canal, the ism of which we yet feel the fatal effects in many of our social institutions. However, the people who traversed Mexico left behind them traces of cultivation and civilization. The Toultecs appeared first, in the year 648, the Chichimecks in 1170, the Nahualtecs in 1178, the Acolhues and Aztecs in 1196. The Toultecs introduced the cultivation of maize and cotton; they built cities, made roads and constructed those great pyramids which are yet admired, and of which the faces are very accurately laid out. They knew the use of hieroglyphical paintings; natives display a decided taste for hieroglyphical paintings. M. Fleurieu, a man of distinguished learning, supposes that these people might be the descendants of some Mexican colony which at the period of the conquest took refuge in those northern regions. This ingenious opinion will appear less probable if we consider the great distance which these colonists would have to travel, and reflect that the Mexican cultivation did not extend beyond the twentieth degree of latitude. I am rather inclined to believe that on the migration of the Toultecs |