During the sorrows of exile, we are happy to inform our readers, that both the poet and his friend Kyrnus had one source of consolation undisturbed :—

Οὐδὲν, Κύρν', ἀγαθῆς. 1223.
Kyrnus! of all good things in human life,
Nothing can equal goodness in a wife.
In our own case we prove the proverb true,
You vouch for me, my friend, and I for you.'

But these gentle influences availed not to allay resentment. The ferocious spirit of revenge which breathes at the close of the following extract shows the terrible effects of these feuds; the bloodthirsty passions which excited the Guelfs and Ghibellines of the old Grecian republics.

May Jove assist me to discharge the debt
Of kindness to my friends-and grant me yet
A further boon-revenge upon my foes!
With these accomplish'd-I could gladly close
My term of life-a fair requital made—
My friends rewarded, and my wrongs repaid!
Gratitude and revenge before I die,

Might make me deem'd almost a deity.
-Yet hear, O mighty Jove, and grant my prayer!
Relieve me from affliction and despair!

O take my life or grant me some redress,
Some foretaste of returning happiness.
Such is my state-I cannot yet descry
A chance of vengeance on mine enemy
The rude despoilers of my property.
Whilst I, like to a scar'd and hunted hound,
That scarce escaping, trembling, and half-drown'd,
Crosses a gulley swelled with wintry rain,
Have crept ashore, in feebleness and pain.
-Yet my full wish, to drink their very blood,
Some Power Divine, that watches for my good,
May yet accomplish. Soon may He fulfil

My righteous hope-my just and hearty will!'

As poetry, none of the verses are more beautiful than those in which Theognis deplores the mingled miseries of poverty and exile. We are glad to escape from the savage vehemence of the lines just quoted to the more gentle, contemplative, but affecting verses which follow :

*A μáкap. 1002. (Bekker.)
μάκαρ.

'Happy the man, with worldly wealth and ease,
Who, dying in good time, departs in peace:

Not

Not yet reduced to wander as a stranger,
In exile and distress and daily danger;
To fawn upon his foes, and risk the trial
Of a friend's faith, and suffer a denial.'

Ανδρ ̓ ἀγαθὸν.

Πάντων μεν μὴ φῦναι. 425.
'Not to be born, never to see the sun,
No worldly blessing is a greater one!
And the next best is speedily to die—
And lapp'd beneath a load of earth to lie.'
173.
'For noble minds the worst of miseries,
Worse than old age, or wearisome disease,
Is Poverty. From Poverty to flee,
From some tall precipice prone to the sea
It were a fair escape to leap below!
In Poverty, dear Kyrnus, we forego
Freedom in word and deed, body and mind
Action and thought are fetter'd and confin'd.
Let me then fly, dear Kyrnus! once again!
Wide as the limits of the land and main,

From these entanglements; with these in view
Death is the lighter evil of the two.'

The following fragment is perplexing. It appears to contain very distinct allusions to passing events, and to throw strong light on the character of the poet; but it is difficult to assign any probable period to which it relates. Mr. Frere considers it (very doubtfully) as belonging to the poet's residence in Sicily. It seems as if Theognis was engaged in the quarrels of some foreign city; for which he was not called upon, nor disposed to fight, and yet was ashamed to run away :

:

Εἰρήνη καὶ πλοῦτος. 881.

'Peace is my wish :-may peace and plenty crown
This happy land, the people and the town.

May peace remain. And may we never miss
Good cheer and merry meetings such as this!
Whether at home or here, all wars I hate,
All battles I detest and execrate.

Then never hurry forward! for we fight
Not for ourselves, nor for our country's right.
-But with the bawling herald, loud and clear,
Shouting a noisy summons in my ear,

And with my own good horse-for very shame
We must engage and join the bloody game.'

But brighter times were, at length, to arrive. At the close of

his exile, the poet seems to have found an hospitable reception in

Sparta,

Sparta, the head quarters of the great Doric aristocracies. His way of life, however, does not seem very strictly Spartan; the laws of Lycurgus were, perhaps, not enforced upon strangers. τέρπεο μοι. 1067; and πῖν' οἴνον. 875.

'Enjoy your time, my soul! Another race
Shall shortly fill the world, and take your place-
With their own hopes and fears, sorrow and mirth ;

I shall be dust the while, and crumbled earth.

But think not of it! Drink the racy wine

Of rich Taygetus, press'd from the vine
Which Theotimus in the sunny glen

(Old Theotimus, lov'd by gods and men)
Planted, and water'd from a plenteous source,
Teaching the wayward stream a better course :—
Drink it, and cheer your heart, and banish care—
A load of wine will lighten your despair.'

If

The concluding extracts show us our poet restored to his native city, where the aristocratic party gained at length a final triumph. From an allusion in this, and in another passage, undoubtedly genuine, Theognis lived to the time of the Persian invasion. so, according to the usual chronology, he must have been above eighty years old when he composed these spirited verses. We wish his accomplished translator as long a life, and a happy return to his native country.

Φοῖβε ἄναξ. 771; and Μήποτέ μοι. 787.
"You great Apollo, with its walls and towers
Fenc'd and adorn'd of old this town of ours.
Such favour in thy sight Alcathous won,
Of Pelops old the fair and manly son.
Now therefore in thy clemency divine,
Protect those very walls, our own and thine!
Guide and assist us, turn aside the boast
Of the destroying haughty Persian host.
So shall thy people each returning spring
Slay fatted hecatombs; and gladly bring
Fair gifts with chaunted hymns and lively song,
Dances and feasts, and happy shouts among;
Before thy altar, glorifying Thee,

In

peace and health and wealth, cheerful and free.
'Wide have I wander'd, far beyond the sea,
Even to the distant shores of Sicily;

To broad Euboea's plentiful domain,
With the rich vineyards in its planted plain;
And to the sunny wave and winding edge
Of fair Eurotas with its reedy sedge-
Where Sparta stands in simple majesty :
Among her manly rulers there was I;

Greeted

Greeted and welcom'd there and every where
With courteous entertainment-kind and fair;
Yet still my weary spirit would repine,
Longing again to view this land of mine.
Henceforward, no design nor interest
Shall ever move me but the first and best,
With learning's happy gift to celebrate,
Adorn and dignify ny native state.

The song, the dance, music and verse agreeing,
Will occupy my life and fill my being;
Pursuits of elegance and learned skill

(With good repute, and kindness, and good-will,
Among the wiser sort) will pass my time
Without an enemy, without a crime;

Harmless and just with ev'ry rank of men,
Both the free native and the denizen.'

ART. VI.—1. First and Second Report of the Commissioners of Inquiry into the State of the Irish Fisheries. 1836. 2. A Bill to regulate the Irish Fisheries (prepared and brought in by Lord Eliot and Mr. Solicitor-General for Ireland), ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 6 April, 1842. Received the Royal Assent 10th August, 1842.

A GLANCE at the map of Ireland will show the deep inden

tations of the arms of the sea between many a beaked promontory on the south-westerly portion, where it is most exposed to the breaching battery of the Atlantic; and, indeed, the western coast generally is much indented, and loftily precipitous. The south abounds in harbours and bays, but the eastern shore is, for the most part, flat, and presents but few inlets. The central district is occupied, with small interruption, by the great plain of limestone, which extends from Dublin Bay on the east to the Bay of Galway on the west, and from Sligo and Fermanagh northward, to Cork and Waterford southward. We need not dwell on the principal mountain-groups, which rise either on the outside of this plain, or appear in ridges insulated near its borders but we may observe that the Wicklow and Mount Leinster granite-range commences from the sea at Dublin, and extends to the south from the borders of Dublin and Wicklow into Carlow, terminating near the confluence of the rivers Barrow and Nore: from the flanks of this chain the slate-rocks run on one side into the eastern part of Kildare, and on the other to the sea, forming those portions of Wicklow which are most favourable

for

for culture, and nearly the whole of Wexford, interspersed, in the latter locality, with protruded masses of greenstone and quartz. That extensive mountain-district forming the Gaultees of Tipperary is insulated by the limestone, which, northward from Dingle Bay, is again laved by the sea, although throughout western Limerick and Clare it is overlaid by the great Munster coal-formation, from beneath which it again peeps out on the south side of Galway Bay. This limestone plain comprises no less than six coal-fields: - on the south-east is the district of Leinster or Castlecomer; on the south, that of Slieve Arda or Tipperary; the great Munster district runs through portions of Cork, Kerry, Limerick, and Clare counties on the south-west; on the north-west the Lough Allen district embraces the Shannon at its source; on the north are the Monaghan and Tyrone districts, and a small one occurs in Antrim at its north-eastern extremity. The quality of the coal varies much; that from the south is anthracite, or, as it is vernacularly termed, blind coal; but the coal worked in the country north of Dublin is bituminous.

The central district contains more than one million acres of bog, the greater portion of which lies west of the Shannon (Galway, Roscommon, Mayo), and the remainder, well known as the Bog of Allen, extends through various parts of King's County, Longford, Westmeath, and Kildare. One word with regard to these bogs; they are fringed by numerous ridges of limestone gravel, offering the unlimited means of improving and reclaiming them. Nor must it be concealed that the carboniferous limestone of this central plain is, in many places, buried under the upper splintery limestone, which generally gives a rugged, craggy surface, pierced with caverns and subterranean channels, through which the streams sink: but the greater part is unencumbered, and there the substratum of pure, carboniferous limestone supports a soil rich, racy, and sweet, spread over a surface whose gentle undulations give sure promise of fertility-fertility which is not confined to the central plain, but is shared by many of the districts lying beyond it.

The external districts, as they may be termed, are drained by rivers whose course is, for the most part, short, as might be expected from the mountain-groups that border the central plain. The principal of these rivers are, in Cork the Blackwater and the Lee; in Donegal and Derry the Foyle; in Antrim and Down the Bann and the Lagan; and, in Wexford, the Slaney.

But the rivers that drain the central district are longer in their course, flowing on till they pay a much more copious tribute to the sea. The central plain is divided by the Slieve Bloom chain and the Eskers longitudinally, and, of the two divisions, the

western