To desert mountains far away;

So will His follower do,

Steal from the throng to haunts untrod,
And commune there alone with God.

Night is the time for death:
When all around is peace,
Calmly to yield the weary breath,
From sin and suffering cease,

Think of Heaven's bliss, and give the sign
To parting friends. Such death be mine!

FRIENDS.

Friend after friend departs;

Who hath not lost a friend?
There is no. union here of hearts,
That finds not here an end.

Were this frail world our only rest,
Living or dying, none were blest.

Beyond the flight of time,

Beyond this vale of death,
There surely is some blessed clime
Where life is not a breath,
Nor life's affections transient fire,
Whose sparks fly upward to expire.

There is a world above

Where parting is unknownA whole eternity of love

Formed for the good alone; And faith beholds the dying here, Translated to that happier sphere.

Thus star by star declines,
Till all are passed away,

As morning high and higher shines
To pure and perfect day;

Nor sink those stars in empty night;

They hide themselves in heaven's own light.

ONTI, VINCENZO, an Italian poet; born near Ravenna, February 19, 1754; died at Milan, October 13, 1828. His father, a small landholder, destined him to agriculture, but he early distinguished himself in poetry and was sent to the University of Ferrara. The Cardinal Legate Borghese took him to Rome, where he was elected a member of the Arcadia, and made secretary to Luigi Braschi, the nephew of the Pope. In 1797 he went to Florence, and became secretary of the Directory of the Cisalpine Republic. The invasion of Suwarrow forced him to flee to France, where he was reduced to poverty. Returning to Italy after the battle of Marengo, he accepted a chair in the University of Pavia, which he held for three years. He was then called to Milan by Napoleon as assessor of the ministry of the interior, Court poet, knight of the Iron Crown, member of the Legion of Honor, and historiographer of the kingdom. When Napoleon was crowned King of Italy, in 1805, he celebrated the event by a poem of merit entitled Il Beneficio. He lost his offices at Napoleon's downfall, but was given a pension in 1815, because he had written, at the request of Milan, a poem in honor of the Emperor Francis Augustus, whom he described as "the wise, the just, the best of kings," who was "in war a whirlwind and in peace a zephyr." The Austrian Emperor said that Monti's muse was mercenary, and cringing favor." The poet's pension was cut off, and he was forced to live on the charity of wealthy patrons of literature. Monti's fame rests on the Bassvilliana, written on the model of Dante's Divina Commedia in four cantos, and in terza rima. It

is founded on the murder of the French minister, Ugo Bassville, whose soul is supposed to wander over the French provinces and to behold the desolation caused by the Revolution, the death of Louis XVI., and the restoration of the Bourbons. The most admired episode is that of the ascent of Louis XVI. into heaven from the scaffold. This poem was translated into English by the Rev. Henry Boyd, in 1805. Monti wore a coat of many colors; for after having eulogized Louis XVI. in the Bassvilliana, he calls him a tyrant, and treats his memory with disrespect in his Ode to Superstition. His other works include the poems. Bardo delle Selva Nera (1806); Spada di Federico, occasioned by the battle of Jena; Palingenesi, on the occupation of Spain by the French; Jerozamia; Api Panacridi, an idyl of the Nuptials of Cadmus ; an edition of Dante's Convito; a translation of the Satires of Juvenal, and Homer's Iliad, and many tragedies. A complete edition of his works was published in Milan (8 vols., 1825-27).

THE DEATH OF LOUIS XVI.

As when the sun uprears himself among
The lesser dazzling substances, and drives
His eager steed along the fervid curve

When in one only hue is painted all
The heavenly vault, and every other star
Is touched with pallor and doth veil its front,

So with sidereal splendor all aflame

Amid a thousand glad souls following,
High into Heaven arose that beauteous soul.

Smiled, as he passed them, the majestical,
Tremulous daughters of the light, and shook
Their glowing and dewy tresses as they moved.

He, among all with longing and with love
Beaming, ascended until he was come
Before the triune uncreated life.

There his flight ceases, there the heart, become
Aim of the threefold gaze divine, is stilled
And all the urgence of desire is lost;

There on his temples he receives the crown
Of living amaranth immortal, on
His cheek the kiss of everlasting peace.

And then we heard consonances and notes
Of an ineffable sweetness, and the orbs
Began again to move their starry wheels.

More swiftly yet the steeds that bore the day
Exulting flew, and with their mighty tread
Did beat the circuit of their airy way.

-The Bassvilliana; translation of
W. D. Howells.

THE SOUL'S DOOM.

Hell had been vanquished in the battle fought;
The spirit of the abyss in sullen mood
Withdrew, his frightful talons clutching naught;

He roared like lion famishing for food;
The Eternal he blasphemed, and, as he fled,
Loud hissed around his brow the snaky brood.

Then timidly each opening pinion spread
The soul of Bassville, on new life to look,
Released from members with his heart's blood red.

Then on the mortal prison, just forsook,
The soul turned sudden back to gaze awhile,
And, still mistrustful, still in terror shook.

But the blessed angel, with a heavenly smile,
Cheering the soul it had been his to win
In dreadful battle waged 'gainst demon vile,

Said, "Welcome, happy spirit to thy kin!
Welcome unto that company, fair and brave,
To whom in Heaven remitted is each sin!

"Fear not; thou art not doomed to sip the wave Of black Avernus, which who tastes, resigned All hope of change, becomes the demon's slave.

But Heaven's high justice, nor in mercy blind,
Nor in severity scrupulous to gauge
Each blot, each wrinkle of the human mind,

Has written on the adamantine page
That thou no joys of paradise may'st know,
Till punished be of France the guilty rage.

Meanwhile, the wounds, the immensity of woe
That thou has helped to work, thou penitent,
Contemplating with tears o'er earth must go:

Thy sentence, that thine eyes be ceaseless bent
Upon flagitious France, of whose offence

The stench pollutes the very firmament."

- The Bassvilliana; translation of HENRY BOYD.

JORDAN.

I see the paths of impious Palestine;

I see old Jordan, as each shore he laves,
Turbid and slow, toward the sea decline.

Here passed the ark o' th' covenant, and waves
Rolled backward reverent, and their secrets bared,
Leaving their gulfs and their profoundest caves.

Here folded all the flock, whose faith repaired To Him, that Shepherd whom the all-hoping one 'Midst woods and rocks to the deaf world declared. Him after labors long, the glorious Son,