A TRAGIC STORY. FROM THE GERMAN OF ADELBERT VON CHAMISSO. "'s war Einer, dem's zu Herzen gieng." TH HERE lived a sage in days of yore He mused upon this curious case, Not dangling there behind him. Says he, "The mystery I've found: Then round and round, and out and in, The pigtail hung behind him. And though his efforts never slack, The pigtail hangs behind him. WILLIAM THACKERAY. THE DECLARATION. Hung like a twilight landscape, and all things Seemed hushed into a slumber. Isabel— Was leaning on her harp, and I had stayed To the cold breath of reason told my love. Earnestly on me. She had been asleep! N. P. WILLIS. ELOQUENCE SHOULD NOT SHIELD TREACHERY. DEMOSTHENES' IMPEACHMENT OF ESCHINES. BOUT his voice it ABOUT may be necessary to say something; for I hear that upon this also he very confidently relies, as if he can overpower you by his acting. I think, however, you would be committing a gross absurdity if, when he played the miseries of Thyestes and the men at Troy, you drove WAS late, and the gay company was and hissed him off the boards and nearly 'TWAS gone, And light lay soft on the deserted room Of orange-leaves and sweet verbena came stoned him to death, so that at last he desisted from his playing of third-rate parts, yet now that-not upon the stage, but in public and most important affairs of statehe has wrought infinity of evil, you should pay regard to him as a fine speaker. Heaven forbid! Do not you be guilty of any folly, but consider: if you are making trial | steamboats, its hotels, its innumerable commisof a herald, you should see that he has a sioners and valets, all depend upon strangers good voice, but if of an ambassador and un- for their employment. dertaker of public duties, that he is honest, that he demeans himself with spirit as your representative, like a fellow-citizen toward you; as I (for example) had no respect for Philip, but respected the prisoners, delivered them and never flinched, whereas the defendant crouched before him and sang the pæans, but you he disregarded. Further, when you see eloquence or a fine voice or any other such accomplishment in a man of probity and honorable ambition, you should all rejoice at it and encourage its display, for it is a common advantage to you all; but when you see the like in a corrupt and base man who yields to every temptation of gain, you should discourage and hear him with enmity and aversion; knavery, getting from you the reputation of power, is an engine against the state. You see what mighty troubles have fallen upon the state from what the defendant has got renown by. And other powers are tolerably independent, but that of speaking is crippled if you the hearers are unfavorable. Listen, then, to this man as to a venal knave who will not speak a syllable of truth. Translation of CHARLES RANN KENNEDY. The Descent from the Cross, the masterpiece of Rubens, hangs in the cathedral of Nôtre Dame, in which building are also preserved the Elevation of the Cross, the Assumption of the Virgin and the Resurrection, all by the same great master.and marked by the boldness of conception and strength of coloring that characterized his genius. The Descent from the Cross involves in the position of the prominent figures some of the greatest difficulties of the art, which are admirably surmounted by the painter. The head hanging languidly on the shoulder and the sinking of the body on one side are the impersonation of the heaviness of death. But the Crucifixion, by Vandyk, preserved in the Museum, struck me most forcibly; I could not repress indignation, sorrow-even tears— as I gazed upon the image of the Crucified stooping meekly and yielding his bleeding back to the strokes of the scourge, while the blue marks of the thong verged into blackness and the dark blood trickled from the fearful wounds. DR. J. P. DURBIN, AN ITALIAN DREAM. HAD been travelling for some days, resting very little in the night, and never in the day. The rapid and unbroken succession of novelties that had passed before came back like half formed dreams, and a crowd of objects wandered in the greatest confusion through my mind as I travelled on by a solitary road. At intervals some one among them would stop, as it were, in its restless flitting to and fro, and enable me to look at it quite steadily and behold it in full distinctness. After a few moments it would dissolve like a view in a magic-lantern, and while I saw some part of it quite plainly, and some faintly, and some not all, would show me another of the many places I had lately seen, lingering behind it and coming through it. This was no sooner visible than, in its turn, it melted into something else. At one moment I was standing again before the brown old rugged churches of Modena. As I recognized the curious pillars with grim monsters for their bases I seemed to see them standing by themselves in the quiet square at Padua, where there were the staid old university, and the figures, demurely gowned, grouped here and there in the open space about it. Then I was strolling in the outskirts of that pleasant city, admiring the unusual neatness of the dwelling-houses, gardens and orchards as I had seen them a few hours before. In their stead arose immediately the two towers of Bologna; and the most obstinate of all these objects failed to hold its ground a minute before the monstrous moated castle of Ferrara, which, like an illustration to a wild romance, came back again in the red sunrise, lording it over the solitary, grass-grown, withered town. In short, I had that incoherent but delightful jumble in my brain which travellers are apt to have and are indolently willing to encourage. Every shake of the coach in which I sat, half dozing in the dark, appeared to jerk some new recollection out of its place, and to jerk some other new recollection into it; and in this state I fell asleep. I was awakened after some time (as I thought) by the stopping of the coach. It was now quite night, and we were at the water-side. There lay here a black boat, with a little house or cabin in it of the same mournful color. When I had taken my seat in this, the boat was paddled by two men toward a great light lying in the distance on the sea. Ever and again there was a dismal sigh of wind. It ruffled the water and rocked the boat and sent the dark clouds flying before the stars. I could not but think how strange it was to be floating away at that hour, leaving the land behind and going on toward this light upon the sea. It soon began to burn brighter, and from being one light became a cluster of tapers, twinkling and shining out of the water as the boat approached toward them by a dreamy kind of track marked out upon the water. Some of these were empty; upon the sea by posts and piles. my We had floated on five miles or so over the dark water when I heard it rippling, in dream, against some obstruction near at hand. Looking out attentively, I saw through the gloom a something black and massive like a shore, but lying close and flat upon the water like a raft-which we were gliding past. The chief of the two rowers said it was a burial-place. Full of the interest and wonder which a cemetery lying out there in the lonely sea inspired, I turned to gaze upon it as it should recede in our path, when it was quickly shut out from my view. Before I knew by what or how, I found that we were gliding up a street-a phantom street-the houses rising on both sides from the water and the black boat gliding on beneath their windows. Lights were shining from some of these casements, plumbing the depth of the black stream with their reflected rays, but all was profoundly silent. So we advanced into this ghostly city, continuing to hold our course through narrow streets and lanes all filled and flowing with water. Some of the corners where our way branched off were so acute and narrow that it seemed impossible for the long, slender boat to turn them; but the rowers, with a low, melodious cry of warning, sent it skimming on without a pause. Sometimes the rowers of another black boat like our own echoed the cry, and, slackening their speed (as I thought we did ours), would come flitting past us like a dark shadow. Other boats, of the same sombre hue, were lying moored, I thought, to painted pillars, near to dark mysterious doors that opened straight in some, the rowers lay asleep; toward one I saw some figures coming down a gloomy archway from the interior of a palace, gayly dressed and attended by torch-bearers. It was but a glimpse I had of them; for a bridge so low and close upon the boat that it seemed ready to fall down and crush usone of the many bridges that perplexed the dream-blotted them out instantly. On we went, floating toward the heart of this strange place, with water all about us where never water was elsewhere, clusters of houses, churches, heaps of stately buildings, growing out of it, and everywhere the same extraordinary silence. Presently we shot across a broad and open stream; and passing, as I thought, before a spacious paved quay where the bright lamps with which it was illuminated showed long rows of arches and pillars of ponderous construction and great strength, but as light to the eye as garlands of hoarfrost or gossamer, and where, for the first time, I saw people walking, arrived at a flight of steps leading from the water to a large mansion, where, having passed through corridors and galleries innumerable, I lay down to rest, listening to the black boats stealing up and down below the window on the rippling water, till I fell asleep. The glory of the day that broke upon me in this dream-its freshness, motion, buoyancy, its sparkles of the sun in water, its clear blue sky and rustling air-no waking words can tell. But from my window I looked down on boats and barks; on masts, sails, cordage, flags; on groups of busy sailors working at the cargoes of these vessels; on wide quays strewed with bales, casks, merchandise of many kinds; on great ships lying near at hand in stately indolence; on islands crowned with gorgeous domes and turrets, and where golden crosses glittered in the light atop of wondrous churches springing from the sea. Going down upon the margin of the green sea rolling on before the door and filling all the streets, I came upon a place of such surpassing beauty and such grandeur that all the rest were poor and faded in comparison with its absorbing loveliness. It was a great piazza, as I thought, anchored, like all the rest, in the deep ocean. On its broad bosom was a palace, more majestic and magnificent in its old age than all the buildings of the earth in the high prime and fulness of their youth. Cloisters and galleries so light they might have been the work of fairy hands, so strong that centuries had battered them in vain, wound round and round this palace and infolded it with a cathedral gorgeous in the wild, luxuriant fancies of the East. At no great distance from its porch a lofty tower, standing by itself and rearing its proud head alone into the sky, looked out upon the Adriatic Sea. Near to the margin of the stream were two ill-omened pillars of red granite, one having on its top figure with a sword and shield; the other, a winged lion. Not far from these, again, a second tower-richest of the rich in all its decorations, even here where all was rich sustained aloft a great orb gleaming with gold and deepest blue, the twelve signs painted on it and a mimic sun revolving in its course around them; while above, two bronze giants hammered out the hours upon a sounding bell. An oblong square of lofty houses of the whitest stone, surrounded by a light and beautiful arcade, formed part of this enchanted scene, and here and there gay masts for flags rose tapering from the pavement of the unsubstantial ground. I thought I entered the cathedral and went in and out among its many arches, traversing its whole extent. A grand and dreamy structure, of immense proportions, golden with old mosaics, redolent of perfumes, dim with the smoke of incense, costly in treasure of precious stones and metals glittering through iron bars, holy with the bodies of deceased saints, rainbow-hued with windows of stained glass, dark with carved woods and colored marbles, obscure in its vast heights and lengthened distances, shining with silver lamps and winking lights, unreal, fantastic, solemn, inconceivable throughout. I thought I entered the old palace, pacing silent galleries and council-chambers where the old rulers of this mistress of the waters looked sternly out in pictures from the walls, and where her high-prowed galleys, still victorious on canvas, fought and conquered as of old. I thought I wandered through its halls of state and triumph, bare and empty now, and, musing on its pride and might extinct-for that was past, all past— heard a voice say, "Some tokens of its ancient rule and some consoling reasons for its downfall may be traced here yet!" I dreamed that I was led on then into some jealous rooms communicating with a prison near the palace, separated from it by a lofty bridge crossing a narrow street, and called, I dreamed, "The Bridge of Sighs." But first I passed two jagged slits in a stone wall, the lion's mouth-now toothless -where in the distempered horror of my sleep I thought denunciations of innocent men to the old wicked council had been |