JAMES BEATTIE.

James Beattie was born in Scotland in 1735, and was educated at Aberdeen. He was intended for the church, but gave up the study of divinity. and became a teacher of youth. He was afterwards professor of moral philosophy and logic in Marischal College, his alma mater. His prose works, especially his Essay on Truth, - an answer to the sceptical doctrines of Hume, - gained him great celebrity. Oxford conferred upon him his doctor's degree, the king gave him a pension of two hundred pounds, and Sir Joshua Reynolds painted his portrait with the allegorical accessories admired in that day. He is now chiefly remembered for The Minstrel, a poem in the Spenserian stanza, containing many pleasing natural scenes, with many excellent but rather prosy moral sentiments. He died in 1803. His poems, in one volume, are included in the British Poets.

THE HERMIT.

Ar the close of the day, when the hamlet is still,
And mortals the sweets of forgetfulness prove,
When nought but the torrent is heard on the hill,
And nought but the nightingale's song in the grove,
'Twas thus, by the cave of the mountain afar,
While his harp rung symphonious, a hermit began:
No more with himself or with nature at war,
He thought as a sage, though he felt as a man.

"Ah! why, all abandoned to darkness and woe,
Why, lone Philomela, that languishing fall?
For spring shall return, and a lover bestow,
And sorrow no longer thy bosom inthrall;
But, if pity inspire thee, renew the sad lay;
Mourn, sweetest complainer; man calls thee to mourn;
O, soothe him whose pleasures, like thine, pass away;
Full quickly they pass, but they never return.

"Now, gliding remote on the verge of the sky,
The moon, half extinguished, her crescent displays;
But lately I marked when majestic on high

She shone, and the planets were lost in her blaze.
Roll on, thou fair orb, and with gladness pursue
The path that conducts thee to splendor again;
But man's faded glory what change shall renew?
Ah, fool! to exult in a glory so vain!

"'Tis night, and the landscape is lovely no more;
I mourn, but, ye woodlands, I mourn not for you;

For morn is approaching, your charms to restore,
Perfumed with fresh fragrance, and glittering with dew;
Nor yet for the ravage of winter I mourn.
Kind nature the embryo blossom will save ;
But when shall spring visit the mouldering urn?
O, when shall it dawn on the night of the grave?

"'Twas thus, by the glare of false science betrayed,
That leads to bewilder, and dazzles to blind,

My thoughts wont to roam from shade onward to shade,
Destruction before me, and sorrow behind.

'O, pity, great Father of Light,' then I cried,
'Thy creature, who fain would not wander from thee;
Lo, humbled in dust, I relinquish my pride;

From doubt and from darkness thou only canst free.'

“And darkness and doubt are now flying away;

No longer I roam in conjecture forlorn.

So breaks on the traveller, faint and astray,

The bright and the balmy effulgence of morn.

See Truth, Love, and Mercy in triumph descending,

And nature all glowing in Eden's first bloom;

On the cold cheek of death smiles and roses are blending,

And beauty immortal awakes from the tomb."

[From The Minstrel.]

BUT who the melodies of morn can tell —

The wild brook, babbling down the mountain side;

The lowing herd; the sheepfold's simple bell;

The pipe of early shepherd, dim descried

In the lone valley; echoing far and wide,
The clamorous horn along the cliffs above;
The hollow murmur of the ocean tide;
The hum of bees, the linnet's lay of love,
And the full choir that wakes the universal grove?

The cottage curs at early pilgrim bark;
Crowned with her pail the tripping milkmaid sings;
The whistling ploughman stalks afield; and, hark!
Down the rough slope the ponderous wagon rings;
Through rustling corn the hare astonished springs;

Slow tolls the village clock the drowsy hour;
The partridge bursts away on whirring wings;
Deep mourns the turtle in sequestered bower,
And shrill lark carols clear from her aerial tower.

EDWARD GIBBON.

Edward Gibbon was born at Putney, county of Surrey, in 1737. He was educated partly at Oxford, and afterwards more thoroughly at Lausanne, in Switzerland. He sat for a time in Parliament, but made no figure there. The work to which he gave his life was the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The scholar will not need to be reminded that this is a vast work, to which all the learning of the ages has been made tributary, written in a noble style (though somewhat too ornate, and lacking variety), and without a rival in any part of its extended field. As the reader contemplates the marvellous narrative, in which nothing, however remote or obscure, is omitted, which depicts as well the movements of armies as the growth of legal science, the magnificence of barbaric rulers, and the manners of the humble poor, - the only sensation is that of wonder at such unexampled literary skill, such prodigious reading, such power of ranging topics in order, and such philosophic connection of events.

The Christian world objected, and probably with reason, to his account of the spread of the new religion in the old pagan empire, since he had treated it with coldly critical phrases; and the current editions of the History in question are now furnished with notes by the late Dean Milman and by M. Guizot, supplying omissions, and correcting what they deem misstatements in the text.

sanne.

During the last part of the time occupied in writing his History, Gibbon resided at LauThe work was completed in 1787, and the author went to London to attend to its publication. He then returned to Lausanne, where he lived until 1793. He died in London in January, 1794

THE OVERTHROW OF ZENOBIA.

[From the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.] AURELIAN had no sooner secured the person and provinces of Tetricus, than he turned his arms against Zenobia, the celebrated Queen of Palmyra and the East. Modern Europe has produced several illustrious women who have sustained with glory the weight of empire, nor is our own age destitute of such distinguished characters. But if we except the doubtful achievements of Semiramis, Zenobia is, perhaps, the only female whose superior genius broke through the servile indolence imposed on her sex by the climate and manners of Asia. She claimed her descent from the Macedonian kings of Egypt, equalled in beauty her ancestor Cleopatra, and far surpassed that princess in chastity and valor. Zenobia was esteemed the most lovely as well as the most heroic of her sex. She was of a dark complexion (for in speaking of a lady these trifles become important). Her teeth were of a pearly whiteness, and her large, black eyes sparkled with uncommon fire, tempered by the most