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Lynch, with a more modest reserve, contents himself with describing what he saw, but offers no opinion on the subject.

From the Anglo-Saxon.

MOURNER, WEEP!

Heaviness may endure for a night, but joy cometh in

The southern shore presented a desolate mud the morning. flat, terminated by a range of lofty hills.

On one side, rugged and worn, was the salt mountain of Usdum, with its conspicuous pillar, which reminded us at least of the catastrophe of the plain; on the other were the lofty and barren cliffs of Moab, in one of the caves of which the fugitive Lot found shelter. To the south was an extensive flat, intersected by sluggish drains, with the high hills of Edom semi-girdling the salt plain where the Israelites repeatedly overthrew their enemies; and to the north was the calm and motionless sea, curtained with a purple mist, while, many fathoms deep in the slimy mud beneath it, lay embedded the ruins of the ill-fated cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. The glare of light was blinding to the eye, and the atmosphere difficult of respiration. No bird fanned with its wing the attenuated air through which the sun poured his scorching rays upon the mysterious element on which we floated, and which alone, of all the works of its Maker, contains no living thing within it.

Lieut. Lynch very properly named the northern extremity of this peninsula "Point Costigan," and its southern one "Point Molyneaux," as a tribute to the memories of the two gallant Englishmen who lost their lives in attempting to explore this sea.

The party spent twenty-two days on the Dead Sea, during which time they had carefully sounded it through its whole extent, determined its geographical position, taking the exact topography of its shores, ascertained the temperature, width, depth and velocity of its tributaries, collected specimens of every kind, and noted the winds, currents, changes of the weather and all atmospheric phenomena.

After an extensive tour in Palestine and Syria, which is described in a forcible and interesting manner, the expedition returned to this country in December last, a little more than a year from the time of its departure.

Our thanks are due to Lieut. Lynch for the gratification and instruction we have derived from the perusal of his very able volume, which bears the most emphatic testimony to his diligence, energy, fertility of invention, and devoted fidelity in the conduct of the expedition, as well as to the modesty, conscientiousness, and religious humanity of his personal character.

Narrative of the late Expedition to the Dead Sea, from a Diary by one of the Party. Edited by EDWARD P. MONTAGUE. Philadelphia Carey & Hart.

THIS is a superficial and common-place narrative of Lieut. Lynch's Expedition. It is wholly unworthy the honor of print.-N. Y. Tribune.

MOURNER, weep! at midnight hour
Pensive sadness need not hide;
Tears may flow when night-clouds lower-
None to mock them-none to chide!
Yet when brightly dawns the morrow,
And the joyous sunbeams play,
Mourner, cease those notes of sorrow,

Be thy night, too, changed to day!
Mourner, weep! the gay world's slumb'ring,
Grief and thou alone are waking;
Angels all thy woes are numb'ring,

Woes by man forgot, forsaken;
Yet when fringe of morning gladness
Skirts the gloomy robe of night,
Mourner, cease those notes of sadness,
Be thy darkness changed to light!
Mortal, weep! the night-cloud 's o'er thee,
Sin's dark tempest, sorrow's gloom;
Scarce yon moonlight tracks before thee
One rough pathway-to the tomb!-
Yet

press on when brightest dawning,
With immortal glories rife,
Shall have changed this night to morning,
Be thy death, too, changed to life!

From the Anglo-Saxon.

ODE UPON CONTENT.

AN UNPUBLISHED POEM BY JOHN EVELYN.

TELL me no more of future toys;
The mind the present only joys;
Those untouched treasures of the great
Afford, like painted fires, no heat.
Who thus thinks to augment his store
By using of it not, is poor.

He that enjoyeth what he hath, though small,
Whilst he has little, yet possesses all.

Who has procured the fruit of pain,
Possession renders poor again.
No prize the undying want suffices;
For passion still our bliss disguises,
Nor do the sweets which we acquire
Equal the pains of one desire.
Thus Avarice itself does still control,
By vexing first the body, then the soul.

Nature to her such motion lends
As to the proper object tends;
But man alone, whom passion blinds,
No centre to his circle finds;

Thus, whilst he's still another wooing,
Contributes to his own undoing.
Who then is with his little much sufficed
Has the whole universe epitomized.

Blest then were we whilst fields did give
Only conveniences to live-
Desires within ourselves confined,
Such as that age of gold designed-
Nor by to-morrow's thoughts were led,
Before the present day 's half dead;
For this by HAPPINESS is truly meant
Not to have all things, but TO BE CONTENT.

From Fraser's Magazine.

THE ANTHESPHORIA AT ATHENS.

slow-oh, in faith of love and beauty, it was a sight almost too fair for earth and earth's dull sons, It was the Anthesphoria at Athens-that flower this concourse of gentle Grecian women! Not festival which Greece yearly celebrated to com- Olympos' self might have scorned to hold them memorate Persephone's return from the dark world guests; not even the "well-tressed" goddesses— of Hades. It was a beautiful festival; one of the not Herè, with her large and queenly eyes; nor loveliest where all was lovely; rich in Hellenic Aphrodite, caressing, loving, kind; nor Artemis, combinations of youth and beauty and sunshine, so chaste and virginal; nor Athena, majestic, noflowers, music, love, and mirth; rich in gentle ble, serene; nor Hebe, with her rosy cheek; nor associations and tender memories, in bright hopes, Eôs, with her bounding step; not the silver-ankled and regrets so soft the heart could not wish them Thetis, nor the swift-footed Iris, might have disexchanged for even the pleasures of possession. It dained as attendant graces these beautiful women contained all the best elements of Grecian life, and of Athens. The hierophants knew what they did was one of the many charms by which the Hel- when they selected the canephorai for the public lene brought down to earth the blessedness of processions! They knew how much man owes to Olympos, and made his own the exquisite enjoy-externals for causes of belief; and they knew that ments of heaven. Less grave than the Adonia, beauty and its offspring, love, were the most powand less mystic than the Dionysia, but still con- erful of these causes. To be chosen canephor was taining a meaning in its ceremonies deeper than as if "beautiful" were stamped on the lintel of the mere form, the Anthesphoria was the darling a woman's door. It secured her reputation for festival of the women, and the one to which they loveliness, and filled her tablets with lovers; garcrowded the most willingly. lands were hung about her doors, and the threshold reeked with costly wine; the city echoed with her name; cups were emptied to her praises sung by the poets of a feast; her power was written on every wall, and her name inscribed on every tree, until Athens grew weary with the news that half a score of youths had fallen in love with some fair child seen as canephor at a procession!

Other states of Greece celebrated this feast with greater pomp of arrangement than did Athens; but none with more beauty. In Sicily, where, being the home of the loved and lost, her memory was dearer than elsewhere, it was one of the most important ceremonies of the year; for each state and each city honored its local deities above the general gods of the country, and made its sectional It was at the time when a large party, flowertraditions of more value than the myths of the laden, passed through the northern gate on the universal theocracy. The same procession-one road from the wooded village of Acharnæ, that of the flowers borne by women—was made else- | a dark-skinned, thoughtful man issued from one of where to the honor of other divinities; as to Here the narrow bye-streets, and met the women imat Argos, and to Aphrodite at Cnossus. And mediately in front. That he was a foreigner and beautiful, indeed, must it have been wherever prac- no Grecian, even of a distant state, the swart skin, tised! To see the maids and matrons crowding the thick lip, mild, but not so finely formed as the forth in the early spring-morning, while the air Hellenic-the long, almond-shaped eye, with its was fresh and the dew still lay sparkling on the heavy lid drooping more than the lids of the lively grass, themselves more bright, and fresh, and fair, Ionic people-the form more massive and less than the lustre flung by Eôs on her way; to see supple; all would have betrayed, had not the dress them, when out through the city-gates, throw been sufficiently strange to have at once marked aside that stately, grave reserve, with which, cov-him as an alien. It had nothing of the white ered as by a veil, they had walked through the simplicity of the plain linen kiton, nothing of the thronged town, and spread themselves about the unstudied grace of the chlamys, nothing of the fields in merry groups of youth and love; and grave majesty of the philosophic himation: it was then to watch their pliant forms bending, like sweet a rich dress, cumbersome by weight of adornment nymphs discovered, over the beds of fragrant and embroidery, but grand in its arrangement and flowers, plucking the loveliest to wreathe into gar- gorgeous in its colors. A striped and large headlands for the statue of the innocent Persephone. dress, from which hung down a heavy tassel of Then returning homewards, as the hours drew on many hues, depending low on the back; robes and the procession was about to be formed, their which covered breasts, arms, and body, not allowmirthfulness sobered into awe, and whispers ran ing even the hands to be seen, so great was his from each to each, and young eyes looking fear- scrupulousness of decency; a thick girdle, masfully round, when the bolder spoke of the dark sively embroidered and reaching to the knee; god's love, and wondered whether he were crouched chains and rings, ornaments for neck, arms, hands, behind the willow-tree yonder, listening to their ears, every part of the person or garments where voices, and perhaps meditating some second ravish-jewels could be scattered; completed a costume ment from earth; and then-the baskets filled, the which looked strange in the eyes of the Athegarlands wreathed, many a sandalled foot perfumed nian citizens. With them, a short, white robe, with the crushed rose leaves and the broken cycla- the kiton, with its simple bordering of one color, mens, and many a robe-hem dyed with the meadow- and that not often the gayest in hue, and the saffron and the purple orchis-they returned to loose scarf or chlamys thrown without other the town again, so sweetly grave, so gracefully order than its own gracefulness about the wearer,

sometimes fastened at the shoulder by a single jewel, or brooch of gold-their heads covered only by the wavy hair, in some leaf-crowned, the travellers wearing the petasos or round-brimmed cap; such was the fashion in Athens, at that time the most polished city in the world; then, as now, acknowledged the supreme in all matters of artistic taste. Not so luxurious as Corinth, not so gorgeous as Babylon, nor so stern as Laconia, it was the model of perfection, by its rare union of most bewitching beauty with extreme simplicity.

against the elaborate Corinthian pillar, all twined with creeping flowers as it was, musing long after the girls had passed, somewhat sadly, but not unkindly. While he stood there the door of the house opened within, and a young Athenian appeared on the marble threshold. Immediately behind him, and holding his hand clasped in both of hers, was a woman more beautiful, more divine, than anything the Egyptian had ever seen in dream or in reality. Not Aphrodite herself when she arose from ocean, wringing the salt seawater from her dripping tresses while couching low in the floating shell, appeared more exquisitely fair to the laughing loves and graces, and wandering nymphs, the awed Tritons, and the delighted gods ;-not Herè, when she laid herself among the flowers beneath the golden cloud on Ida; nor Artemis, when she turned in her high course and came down to the Cretan shepherd-boy slumbering in the cave;-not one of all looked more divine than did this bright creation of

Be that as it might, our dark-complexioned stranger walked through the streets of the violetcrowned in happy ignorance that any man of all this crowd could, even to himself, hold him lower. His head erect, his bearing dignified, his step firm, and all his movements stately, he passed through that gay and mobile crowd like one of the statues of the plain, endowed with life for a season only, but never with life's quick sensations. He was an Egyptian; and could a son of Khemi believe that the barbarian Greek, the child of his age-womanly perfection. Europa, Leda, Daphne, he himself the seer, the sage-could he believe in the superiority of him? Amun protect his own! such thought were blasphemy to the gods whose favorite he was!

Persephone; and thou, Arethusa with the flying feet; and thou, sweet Semele, lost by thy confidence in love; hapless Syrinx; and dearest Helen thou, ye all would have known as your equal in beauty Pythionica, the fairest woman in Athens !

"Yet once more, my Lysistrates!" she said, in a voice whose tones resembled the notes of a distant flute. "Does it need so many prayers from Pythionica, before Lysistrates will give her one hour more of his time? Thou knowest my faith in portents and presages, and thou hast heard my last night's dream. Cannot this determine thy hesitating will, or art thou so eager for thy chill Myrrha's snowy smiles? It is not well, Lysistrates, to show so openly thy preference for this girl; thou mightst spare me this pang among so many!"

He met the company of women thus returning from their flower gathering in the Attic fields; their veils drawn round to shade the sweet cheeks which blushed for very consciousness of beauty; their eyes downcast, or glancing upward at rare intervals, with a shy but fervid look; their gait graceful; all their movements undulating, with a motion as far removed from, and yet as like to, dancing as is the grave cadence of a chant to the gayer measure of an erotic hymn. Baskets in their hands, and flowers drooping round on all sides; in the braided hair of the younger, flowers also, freshly placed, giving to some a wild Bacchante expression, to others a modesty most heavenly, lighting up the dark eyes of this with a siren's witchery of love, veiling the white lids of that with a tenderer shade, enhancing to each her particular perfection, and making the world revere where it formerly only admired. The Egyptian thought of the young Isiac priestesses whom he had often seen tending the sacred serpents, feeding the holy ibis, dancing round the mother's altar, while singing slow hymns to the tinkling sistrum, and performing other and more mystic acts of their most mystic faith; and he inwardly contrasted these warm, young Ionic maids with the sterner serenity of his country's daughters. The phi-that beauty; to the calm, grave, mild Egyptian, losopher might prize the one, the man must love the other. But philosophy and love never yet went hand-in-hand; for must not the pale moon's cold beams be quenched in the fiery light of the sun? And so love quenches the cold reasonings of in-better self; a moment's indecision, when Pythiontellect.

He stepped aside, haughtily enough; as if to obliterate this act of condescension on its instant of performance; and the party glided by. He had entered within the portico of a small but well appointed house; and there he remained, leaning

The youth hesitated a moment, and in that moment the Egyptian turned. His was a face which impressed him even more, though not so favorably, as the glowing loveliness of his companion; yet seen thus, half turned away, half hidden in the gleaming tresses that strayed over her uncovered shoulder and lost themselves in the boy's convulsive grasp, it had as much of beauty as any face could well express. But not a beauty to be loved, only admired. The recklessness, the air of dissipation, the traces of unbridled passions, all these were so many scars on the perfection of

indelible scars. A moment's flush of manly pride to duty crossed that passionate brow; a moment's quiver of the lip eager for action, eager for renown, bespoke the transient waking of the

ica twined her arm round his smooth neck, and the pride and the manliness were gone-faded into a Sybaritic softness of pleasure. One eager pressure on that uncovered shoulder; one wild, swift smile of intoxication; and then the door closed, and they both reëntered the house.

An expression of contempt, and something in the Athenian's face seemed to change his deterlike disappointment, crossed the Egyptian's face; mination. There was so much manliness, sO but he pursued his walk through the streets of much life, and energy, and thought which had Athens. humanity as its object; so much vivacity, intellect, and affection, that he paused as if reading some pleasant poem, watching those changing features.

"Her dress not that of a wife, her age not that of a mother, nor her fondness the fondness of a sister, what place can she hold by the young man she has seduced from duty?" thought the Egyptian, looking round more than once at the flowerwreathed columns of that portico, hoping to see the door reopen to release its captive from the snares of love.

"Thy censure is just, Athenian," he said, gravely, though not with the same pride he had hitherto shown. "It is not right that the eagle should scoff at the small birds playing in the sunlight, when voluntarily he has descended from heaven to mingle in their sports. If I have borne myself too haughtily since I first visited Greece, it is because I have felt myself among children, not men; infants, and not equals to us, the sons of Khemi."

"And yet our country has produced children who may well stand beside thy men," answered the Greek, good-humoredly. "Their names will live as long as nature or art endures. What further immortality on earth can ye possess?" "These giant-children ?" "Solon, Thales Pythagoras

But Lysistrates forgot his duties as a citizen, his duties as an Athenian. He forgot his father's tomb, where the sacrifices to the manes of the dead were still unpaid; Myrrha, his young, pale, patient bride, he forgot with the rest; and only the deep blue eyes of his beloved mistress mirrored his remembrance or answered his desires. This was now the third day that Pythionica had held him thus enslaved, all Athens wondering where was Lysistrates, that neither at the gymnasium, nor at the agora, the Pnyx, nor the temples, had he been seen within the memory of man. And some talked of going to the magistrates and demanding a search for him; others to the Scythian bowman, the toxotoi, or city police, to look through their tents, lest by chance young Lysistrates were hidden there. But nor magistrate nor bowman knew the hiding place of the Athenian; and only some of the younger men, laughing loudly, spoke mysteriously of the Athe-adytum." nian Medeia, the enchantress of men.

The day advanced, and the Anthesphoria began. Even in the dark world of shadows Persephone perceived the odor of the fresh blossoms, reminding her of the day when she gathered them so unsuspectingly in the Sicilian fields, before the dread god had time to love her. Yes, to the very dead is the memory of love a blessing; and the sweet cares of affection can console the mute spirit in its tomb! Let not death be the severance of love; shown in other ways, but felt in all intensity, be ye sure that even in Hades itself is this the god of life!

Again the Egyptian mingled with the crowd; no, not so much mingled, as followed it apart, its judge and overlooker. Still maintaining his stately bearing, he viewed all that passed with a scorn so visible that an Athenian, who unperceived had been walking by his side for some time, laid his hand on the massive shoulder, saying

"Is so much contempt in a foreign land good, O stranger? Do eagles quit their rocks to scoff at the fertile plains? Do gods look down from Olympos only to contemn the world below? If not these, nor should an alien and a stranger in the favored land of Athene, the world-renowned museum of Greece!"

The Egyptian turned haughtily; with a hasty gesture repelling the hand laid so familiarly on him turning to answer harshly, annoyed that any should dare to thus address him; but something

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"Hold, Greek! argue for thyself, not me! I know but little of thy country's biography, yet it seems to me that I have heard these names as belonging to disciples of old Nile. Not to themselves, nor their gods, nor their fathers, did they owe their wisdom. What little they possessed came through a chink in the Egyptian

The Athenian's brow grew a shade more red; but he laughed the low, sweet, Ionic laugh, saying

"Our country is more youthful than thine; and therefore it is but just that ye should teach us. When we gave our gods their mundane life, men peopled the valley of the Nile; when Triptolemus sowed the first corn from the car of Demeter, art and science were in their zenith with ye. things the Halicarnassian teaches us; and he saw what he related."

These

"And may it not be that, far beyond that record of the beginning which each nation assumes to itself, lies a world of order? May it not be that life brought forth her myriads, and cities elder that the city of a Hundred Gates received their inhabitants, while yet Egypt and Greece were slumbering voids? Can we trace the first wakening of the infant day-god, or mark the moment when the child becomes a man? Nor the commencement, Greek, nor the transition? We may be children to the graybeards of an elder world, as ye are infants before us."

The Athenian wondered to see his companion's face become so beautiful in its grave solemnity, while thoughts, far deeper than had utterance, passed through his mind. There was something mysterious in this influence to the light-hearted Greek; and he looked into the dark face upturned to the heavens, with a feeling of awe he neither wished nor attempted to subdue.

"Under fear of the gods," he then said, breaking

the silence which had become painful to him, strewing the pedestals of the statues, and falling might there not have been coevals, though un-into their bosoms, hanging on the garments of equal?"

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What, in Greece and Egypt? No, friend! as little as between the gods and men; and they were not coeval, though unequal enough! The life of the Hellenes, when contrasted with that of the Egyptians, by itself would show where seniority as well as mastership existed. The love of gauds, and games, and sounding nothings, the engrossing interest of mere amusement, the levity ye call vivacity, the puerilities ye call artistic taste-all these mark the difference between ye and the grave worshippers of a god of silence, the Egyptian sons of Khem! I speak not in selflaudation, but in astonishment ;—astonishment that men can be found willing to live on the appearances of things, which ye prize so highly, and willing to accept them as realities."

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"Thy gods would explain it! Do ye believe that they are the men and women of passions and desires which ye paint them? Does Zeus steal men's wives? Was Aphrodite caught in the golden net of her spouse? Are all these things true or mythic?"

"An answer in recrimination: thy bulls, cows, swine, and leeks, thy crocodiles and thy cats, thy snakes and thy birds-are these fit gods?—these so far superior to the laughter-loving who won Ares to her embrace, or to the Zeus who gave Heracles to Alcmena? Art thou not quarrelling with the husk, when the core is but the same? So our philosophers also-of thine I know nothing, neither how much they profess, nor how much they believe-but do our sages credit these popular tales? No! To the artisan every myth may be a truth, but to the philosopher'

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the men, and on the tresses of young girls, and into the outstretched hands of children; filling the atmosphere with perfume and the music of sweet leaves rustling, in memory of love for the yet living Persephone. If Life was the key to the Egyptian, Love was the meaning of the Grecian, faith. They did not know that both were one.

The procession again formed itself, in order, now that the prayers and sacrifices were over, and the garlands hung about the figure for which they were twined; and down the steep of the Acropolis it wound past all its temples, statues, altars, trees, and flowers, through the gates, and down the broad steps flanked with glorious sculptures, until the maids and matrons forming it, once more stood by the swart Egyptian stranger and his guide.

Meidias looked at them coldly; too mature for boyish love, too busy for philosophic abstractions, he considered the train in the simple light of usefulness, and contemned because he did not understand. The women glanced wonderingly, seeing these two men standing there so idly when worship to the gods was going on and those who, not forming part of the procession, remained at home, peeping through their veils, as they crowded to the house-tops, spoke loudly in condemnation of their impiety. But the thunderbolt of Zeus lay cold, and the bow of Apollo was unstrung. Impious as they might be, the gods did not punish, and man had no right to judge. The women near at hand gave a softer sentence than those far away; but then, Meidias was a universal favorite among them for his gay, gallant bearing, his manly beauty, -to say nothing of his entertainments; and the stranger, too, though no Greek, was yet somewhat lovely to Athenian eyes; for he was dignified and well featured-and what female heart cannot the good graces of person touch?

But

Every truth is a myth. Thus would thy sentence have ended hadst thou not been standing beneath the shadow of thine own Parthenon! Of our worship but one word: if thou art wise, it As they slowly followed in the train of worshipwill suffice; if foolish, twenty would deafen thee. pers, discussing as men do discuss the utility and Nature has one mystery in the sea, the river, the meanings of what they saw, the Egyptian sudthe plain, the flower; in the human voice, the denly called his companion's attention to one of human eye; in beast, and bird, and reptile; in the procession, who for the first time now caught love, hate, and death-it is equally written, | his eye. She was a young girl, one of the caneequally inexplicable. And this mystery, in all its phorai, bearing her basket of flowers more graceenshrinements, has the ædes of Egypt striven to fully than even the most graceful of the women express, while veiling. Under every one of its about her. She was a true picture of youth, when forms is it there to be found; and the discrepancy most youthful and beautiful in its youth. of our outward worship is nullified by its secret through all the conventional calm and modesty of concordance." demeanor prescribed by.custom to Attic virgins, a world of love, and strength of will, and power of character, shone out through her blue eyes, and was depicted on her smooth but large forehead, where thought and feeling seemed conate. Her hair was braided loosely round her oval head, covering the upper part of an ear, which looked like a small sea-shell, so exquisite were its curves, A burst of music from the choristers accompany- and so delicate the faint pink lining to the pearly ing the procession, for the moment stopped all white: the color of the tresses was a deep rich further conversation; while a shower of buds fell brown, golden in the sunlight; her eyes were on the marble pavement, and down the broad steps, | large, the lids broad and thickly fringed; the ex

"And this mystery?" "Is Life."

The Egyptian spoke truth: this was the meaning of that strange worship in the Nile valley; then, as now, a world's wonder and a world's scandal, where the solution was not given with the riddle.

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