2. "Gaze on that arch above';
The glittering vault admire'.
Who taught those orbs to move'?
Who lit their ceaseless fire'?
Who guides the moon to run
In silence through the skies'?
Who bids that dawning sun

In strength and beauty rise'?

There view immensity'! behold! my God is there:
The sun', the moon', the stars', his majesty declare'.
3. "See where the mountains' rise;
Where thundering torrents' foam;
Where, veil'd in towering skies',
The eagle' makes his home;
Where savage nature dwells,
My God is present too';
Through all his wildest dells
His footsteps I pursue:

Ile rear'd those giant cliffs', supplies that dashing stream',
Provides the daily food which stills the wild bird's scream.
4. "Look on that world of waves,

Where finny nations glide;

Within whose deep, dark caves
The ocean-monsters hide:

His

power

is sovereign there,
To raise', to quell' the storm;

The depths his bounty share,
Where sport the scaly swarm:

Tempest and calms obey the same almighty voice

Which rules the earth and skies, and bids far worlds rejoice.
5. "No human thoughts can soar

Beyond his boundless might;
He swells the thunder's roar,
He spreads the wings of night.
Oh! praise his works divine'!
Bow down thy soul in prayer';
Nor ask for other sign

That God is every where:

The viewless Spirit'! He-immortal', holy', blest':

Oh! worship him in faith', and find eternal rest'!"-Anonymous.

PATERNAL AFFECTION.

Some feelings are to mortals given,

With less of earth in them than heaven;

And if there be a human tear

From passion's dross refined and clear,

A tear so limpid and so meek

It would not stain an angel's cheek,
'Tis that which pious fathers shed
Upon a dutcous daughter's head.--SCOTT.

PART XI.

HISTORICAL. ANCIENT HISTORY PRIOR TO THE CHRISTIAN ERA.

LESSON I.-EARLY GRECIAN HISTORY.

1. NEARLY all that is of interest and importance to us in the history of the world prior to the Christian era is embraced in the history of the Jews, and in Grecian and Roman history. To the Bible, chiefly, we are to look for the details of the former. Grecian history follows next in the order of time, beginning far back in the gloom of antiquity, with the supposed founding of Argos in the year 1856 before the Christian era, and extending down to the conquest of Greece by the Romans in the year 146 B.C. After this latter period, and during several centuries, the history of the then known world is absorbed in the overshadowing of, first, the Roman. republic, and, afterward, of the Roman empire.

2. All that is known of Grecian history during a period of more than a thousand years after the date arbitrarily assigned

for the founding of Argos, rests on no better basis than the songs and traditionary legends of bards and story-tellers. During this long period it is impossible to distinguish names and events, real and historical, from fictitious creations which so confound the human and the divine as to mock all attempts at elucidation. We must therefore set aside as merely pleasing fictions, to be classed with the legends of the gods, the stories of Ce'crops, and Cran'aus, and Dan'aus, the account of the Argonautic expedition, and the labors of Hercules; and even the beautiful story of Helen and the Trojan war, "the most splendid gem in the Grecian legends," is declared by the historian Grote to be "essentially a legend, and nothing more."

3. But out of this thousand years of darkness a something tangible and reliable has, nevertheless, been obtained, which may be dignified with the name of history-a history of what the people thought, though not of what they did. From fable, and legend, and tradition, we learn what was the religious belief of the early Greeks, and this has been embodied in what is called Grecian mythology.

4. The early Greeks, like all rude, uncultivated tribes, probably associated their earliest religious emotions with the char acter of surrounding objects, and ascribed its appropriate deity to every manifestation of power in the visible universe. Thus they had nymphs of the forests, rivers, meadows, and fountains, and gods and goddesses almost innumerable, some terrestrial, others celestial, according to the places over which they were supposed to preside, and rising in importance in proportion to the power they manifested. The foundation of this religion, like all others, was a belief in higher existences which have an influence over the destinies of mortals. The process by which the beings of Grecian mythology naturally arose out of the teeming fancies of the ardent Greek mind, is beautifully described by Wordsworth in the follow. ing lines.

LESSON II.-GRECIAN MYTHOLOGY.

1. IN that fair clime, the lonely herdsman, stretched
On the soft grass through half a summer's day,
With music lulled his indolent repose;

And in some fit of weariness, if he,

When his own breath was silent, chanced to hear
A distant strain, far sweeter than the sounds

Which his poor skill could make, his fancy fetch'd
Even from the blazing chariot of the sun

A beardless youth,* who touched a golden lute,
And filled the illumined groves with ravishment.
2. The nightly hunter, lifting a bright eye

Up toward the crescent moon, with grateful heart
Called on the lovely wanderer who bestow'd
That timely light to share his joyous sport.
And hence a beaming goddess, † with her nymphs,
Across the lawn, and through the darksome grove
(Not unaccompanied with tuneful notes
By echo multiplied from rock or cave),

Swept in the storm of chase, as moon and stars
Glance rapidly along the clouded heaven
When winds are blowing strong.

The traveler slaked
His thirst from rill or gushing fount, and thank'd
The Naiad. Sunbeams, upon distant hills
Gliding apace, with shadows in their train,
Might, with small help from fancy, be transformed
Into fleet Oreads§ sporting visibly.

3. The Zephyrs fanning, as they passed, their wings,
Lacked not for love fair objects, whom they wooed
With gentle whisper. Withered boughs grotesque,
Stripped of their leaves and twigs by hoary age,
From depth of shaggy covert peeping forth
In the low vale, or on steep mountain side;
And sometimes intermixed with stirring horns
Of the live deer, or goat's depending beard-
These were the lurking satyrs, ¶ a wild brood
Of gamesome deities; or Pan himself,

The simple shepherd's awe-inspiring God.**—WORDSWORTH.

LESSON III.- -THE PERSIAN WARS.

1. PASSING Over the "fabulous period" of Grecian history, which may be supposed to end about the time of the close of the supposed Trojan war, and the "uncertain period,

*This is Apollo, or the sun, the god of prophecy, archery, and music, represented as a youth in the perfection of manly strength and beauty. He bears a lyre in his hand, sometimes a bow, and a golden lute, with a golden quiver of arrows at his back.

+ Diana, the exact counterpart of her brother Apollo, was queen of the woods, and the goddess of hunting. Diana is one of the names under which the moon was worshiped. + The Naiads are represented as young and beautiful nymphs, who presided over rivers, brooks, springs, and fountains.

The Oreads, nymphs of the mountains, generally attended upon Diana, and accompanied her in hunting.

The Zephyrs were the genial west winds. They were brothers of the stars, and seldom visited the earth except during the shades of evening.

The Satyrs were represented like men, but with feet and legs of goats, short horns' on the head, and the whole body covered with thick hair.

**The horned and goat-footed Pan was the god of shepherds, and lord of the woods and mountains. What are called panic terrors were ascribed to Pan; as loud noises, whose causes could not easily be traced, were oftene t heard in mountainous regions, which were his favorite haunts.

which embraces an account of the institutions of Lycurgus, the Messenian wars, and the legislation of Solon, we come down to what is called the "authentic period," which begins with the causes that led to the first Persian war.

2. Dari'us, king of Persia, exasperated against Athens on account of the assistance which she had given to the Greek colonies of Asia Minor in their revolt against the Persian power, resolved upon the conquest of all Greece; but in the third year of the war, 490 B.C., his army, numbering a hundred thousand men, was defeated with great slaughter by a force of little more than ten thousand Greeks on the plains of Marathon.

3. Ten years later, Xerxes, the son and successor of Dari'us, opened the second Persian war by invading Greece in person, at the head of the greatest army the world has ever seen, and whose numbers have been estimated at more than two mill

ions of fighting men. This immense host, proceeding by the way of Thessaly, had arrived without opposition at the narrow defile of Thermopyla, between the mountains and the sea, where the Spartan Leonidas was posted with three hundred of his countrymen and some Thespian allies, in all less than a thousand men.

4. The Spartans were forbidden by their laws ever to flee from an enemy; they had taken an oath never to desert their standards; and Leonidas and his countrymen, and their few allies, prepared to sell their lives as dearly as possible. Bravely meeting the attack of the Persian host, and retreating into the narrowest of the pass as their numbers were thinned by the storm of arrows, and by the living mass that was hurled upon them, they fought with the valor of desperation until every one of their number had fallen.* A monument was afterward erected on the spot, bearing the following inscription: "Go, stranger, and tell at Lacedæmon that we died here in obedience to her laws."

* The story that Leonidas made a night attack, and penetrated nearly to the royal tent, as described by Croly in his well-known poem beginning,

"It was the wild midnight; a storm was on the sky,"

is a mere fiction, opposed to well-known history. For this reason we have not introduced it in our selections. The attack was commenced in the forenoon, and by the Persians. Historical fictions may be introduced without any impropriety where they fill up with probable events the gaps in history, but not where they are in opposition to history. Of the former character are most of the historical scenes in Shakspe..re.