Bear witness, Greece, thy living page, THE ANCIENT ROMANS. There is something solemn and evidently providential in the unbroken advance, and ultimately boundless dominion of Rome._She held with an iron grasp the continents of Europe and the East; her military chain spread with unbroken links from Lebanon to Gaul, and from the Caspian to the Nile; her wealth and arts had called into being thousands of cities, no mean imitations of her own greatness; her institutions had diffused a universal repose, and the energy of government was exercised with a rapidity and precision never surpassed. The durability of her greatness was in proportion to the slowness of its growth and the solidity of its materials. Twelve centuries elapsed from the origin of Rome to its capture by the barbarians; and it required ten centuries more of corruption and decline to extinguish the brilliant empire of the East which had been regenerated by the genius of Constantine, in the matchless situation of Byzantium. The predominant feeling left on the mind after reading the history of Rome, is that she was pre-eminently skilled in the arts of conquest; and in establishing durable political ties, among the diversified nations under her sway, so as to comprise them all in one grand social net-work, which prepared the way for the subsequent spread of Christianity. But the history of the Romans also shows that they were a stern, relentless, and unfeeling people. Whilst there was a grandeur about all their public works, temples, baths, roads, aqueducts, sewers, defensive walls, and public arenas,in their private and social qualities there was little to admire. One half the population was in bondage; and their public amusements, modes of punishment, and treatment of captives, were generally cruel and barbarous. Adapted from Chambers's History of Rome. C THE DYING GLADIATOR. I see before me the gladiator lie : Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won. He heard it, but he heeded not; his eyes All this rushed with his blood. Shall he expire, And unavenged? Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire !-BYRON. ROME. Oh Rome! my country! city of the soul! What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see Whose agonies are evils of a day! A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay. The Niobe of nations! there she stands, Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow, Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress! The Goth, the Christian, time, war, flood, and fire, And up the steep barbarian monarchs ride, And say, "here was, or is," where all is doubly night? The double night of ages, and of her, Night's daughter, Ignorance, hath wrapt, and wrap The ocean hath its chart, the stars their map, Alas! the lofty city! and alas! The trebly hundred triumphs! and the day Alas for earth, for never shall we see That brightness in her eye she bore when Rome was free! BYRON. THE JEWS AND THE SCRIPTURES. The Jews were instrumentally the means of conveying to us our pure religion, as we owe to them the Bible, which is the repository of its historical facts and teachings. This wonderful book is the great auto-biography of human nature, from its infancy to its perfection. Whatever man has seen, and felt, and done in the great theatre of the world, is therein expressed with the simplicity and vividness of personal consciousness, in the happiest moments of inspiration which have fallen upon our race during the lapse of sixteen centuries. This volume stations us on a spot well selected as a watch-tower, from which we may overlook the history of the world, an angle of coast between the ancient continents of Asia and Africa, subtended by the newer line of European civilization. There we have a neighbouring view of every form of human life, and every variety of human character. The solitary shepherd on the plains of Assyria, watching the changing heavens until he worships them;-the patriarch pitching his tent on the nearer plain of Mamre;-the Arab or Ishmaelite, half-merchant and halfrobber, hurrying his fleet dromedaries across the sunny desert; the Phoenician commerce, gladdening the Mediterranean with its sails, or, on its way from India, spreading its wares on the streets of Jerusalem;-the sacerdotal grandeur of Egypt, and the vast magnificence of Nineveh the Great, and Babylon the Great-are all spread beneath our eye in vivid colours and quick transition ;all agents on this stage of providence, and all partaking in the trials and triumphs of humanity. If we inquire who were the men that have recorded its truths, vindicated its rights, and illustrated the excellence of its scheme-from the depth of ages comes forth the answer the Patriarch, the Prophet, the Apostle, and the Martyr. If we regard the literature of the Bible, we find-i words of Fenelon-that it surpasses the Greek classics in native simplicity, loveliness and grandeur. Homer himself never reached the sublimity of the Song of Moses, or of the book of Job and the prophecies of Isaiah. The passages describing the majesty and government of God, are unequalled in any language or in any age. No ode, either Greek or Latin, ever came up to the loftiness of some of the Psalms. What can be compared to the Lamentations of Jeremiah in pathos, or to the sweetness of those passages of Isaiah, in which he draws such a smiling image of Peace? Did space permit, we might also enumerate the peculiar excellencies of the other writers of Scripture, and especially those of the New Testament. The deep interest-attaching to the wide and various scenes described, and to the momentous truths inculcated,-gradually gathers itself to a single point-towards which all the conveying lines meet, and that is the Saviour. He indeed is the great central object, around which all the ages and events of the Bible are but an outlying circumference.-J. MARTINEAU, adap. JERUSALEM. Fallen is thy throne, O Israel! Lord, thou didst love Jerusalem; Till evil came and blighted Then sank the star of Solyma; "Go," said the Lord, "ye conquerors, For they are not the Lord's. Tell Zion's mournful daughter Shall hide but half her dead." But soon shall other pictured scenes When Zion's sun shall sevenfold shine And on her mountains beauteous stand "Salvation by the Lord's right hand!" MODERN CIVILIZATION FOUNDED ON THE ANCIENT. Our present mental light, like that of nature, is composed of distinct rays of various colours; and for each we are indebted to some one of past civilizations. Three of these stand out prominently from the rest, with regard to the mighty influence they have exercised over modern society; and each had a distinct mission assigned it by Providence. To the Greeks it has been given to develope the beautiful in art and literature, and the true in science and philosophy; to the Romans, jurisprudence and the municipal rule; but to the Jews it was assigned to teach the holiness of God and the salvation of man; or in the sublime words of one of their great poet-prophets,-announcing the mission of Sion to a world enslaved by sense, self and passion: "Behold darkness covereth the earth, But Jehovah riseth upon thee; Then the Gentiles shall come to thy light, And kings to the brightness of thy rising." Prospective Review, adap. KING WITLAF'S DRINKING-HORN. Witlaf, a king of the Saxons, Ere yet his last he breathed, To the merry monks of Croyland That, whenever they sat at their revels, They might remember the donor, So sat they once at Christmas, In their beards the red wine glistened |