Fill high the bowl with Samian wine! Place me on Sunium's marbled steep, Where nothing save the waves and I There, swanlike, let me sing and die: NOTES.-Sappho was a Greek poetess living on the island of Lesbos, about 600 B. C. Delos is one of the Grecian Archipelago, and is of volcanic origin. The ancient Greeks believed that it rose from the sea at a stroke from Neptune's trident, and was moored fast to the bottom by Jupiter. It was the supposed birthplace of Phoebus, or Apollo. The island of Chios, or Scios, is one of the places which claim to be the birthplace of Homer. Teios, or Teos, a city in Ionia, is the birthplace of the Greek poet Anacreon. The Islands of the Blest, mentioned in ancient poetry, were imaginary islands in the west, where, it was believed, the favorites of the gods were conveyed without dying. At Marathon (490 B. C.), on the east coast of Greece, 11,000 Greeks, under the generalship of Miltiades, routed 110,000 Persians. The island of Salamis lies very near the Greek coast: in the narrow channel between, the Greek fleet almost destroyed (480 B. C.) that of Xerxes, the Persian king, who witnessed the contest from a throne on the mountain side. Thermopyla is a narrow mountain pass in Greece, where Leonidas, with 300 Spartans and about 1,100 other Greeks, held the entire Persian army in check until every Spartan, except one, was slain. Samos is one of the Grecian Archipelago, noted for its cultivation of the vine and olive. A Bacchanal was a disciple of Bacchus, the god of wine. Pyrrhus was a Greek, and one of the greatest generals of the world. The phalanx was an almost invincible arrangement of troops, massed in close array, with their shields overlapping one another, and their spears projecting; this form of military tactics was peculiar to the Greeks. Polycrates seized the island of Samos, and made himself tyrant: he was entrapped and crucified in 522 B. C. Chersonese is the ancient name for a peninsula. name of a promontory southeast of Athens. Sunium is the LII. NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. Charles Sprague, 1791-1875, was born in Boston, and received his education in the public schools of that city. For sixteen years he was engaged in mercantile pursuits, as clerk and partner. In 1820 he became teller in a bank; and, from 1825, he filled the office of cashier of the Globe Bank for about forty years. In 1829 he gave his most famous poem, "Curiosity," before the Phi Beta Kappa society, in Cambridge. An active man of business all his days, he has written but little either in prose or poetry, but that little is excellent in quality, graceful, and pleasing. The address from which this extract is taken, was delivered before the citizens of Boston, July 4th, 1825. NOT many generations ago, where you now sit, encircled with all that exalts and embellishes civilized life, the rank thistle nodded in the wind and the wild fox dug his hole unscared. Here lived and loved another race of beings. Beneath the same sun that rolls over your head, the Indian hunter pursued the panting deer; gazing on the same moon that smiles for you, the Indian lover wooed his dusky mate. Here the wigwam blaze beamed on the tender and helpless, and the council fire glared on the wise and daring. Now they dipped their noble limbs in your sedgy lakes, and now they paddled the light canoe along your rocky shores. Here they warred; the echoing whoop, the bloody grapple, the defying death song, all were here; and when the tiger strife was over, here curled the smoke of peace. Here, too, they worshiped; and from many a dark bosom went up a fervent prayer to the Great Spirit. He had not written his laws for them on tables of stone, but he had traced them on the tables of their hearts. The poor child of nature knew not the God of Revelation, but the God of the universe he acknowledged in everything around. He beheld him in the star that sank in beauty behind his lonely dwelling; in the sacred orb that flamed on him from his midday throne; in the flower that snapped in the morning breeze; in the lofty pine that defied a thousand whirlwinds; in the timid warbler that never left its native grove; in the fearless eagle, whose untired pinion was wet in clouds; in the worm that crawled at his feet; and in his own matchless form, glowing with a spark of that light, to whose mysterious source he bent in humble though blind adoration. And all this has passed away. Across the ocean came a pilgrim bark, bearing the seeds of life and death. The former were sown for you; the latter sprang up in the path of the simple native. Two hundred years have changed the character of a great continent, and blotted forever from its face a whole, peculiar people. Art has usurped the bowers of nature, and the anointed children of education have been too powerful for the tribes of the ignorant. Here and there a stricken few remain; but how unlike their bold, untamable progenitors. The Indian of falcon glance and lion bearing, the theme of the touching ballad, the hero of the pathetic tale is gone, and his degraded offspring crawls upon the soil where he walked in majesty, to remind us how miserable is man when the foot of the conqueror is on his neck. As a race they have withered from the land. Their arrows are broken, their springs are dried up, their cabins are in the dust. Their council fire has long since gone out on the shore, and their war cry is fast fading to the untrodden west. Slowly and sadly they climb the distant mountains, and read their doom in the setting sun. They are shrinking before the mighty tide which is pressing them away; they must soon hear the roar of the last wave which will settle over them forever. Ages hence, the inquisitive white man, as he stands by some growing city, will ponder on the structure of their disturbed remains, and wonder to what manner of persons they belonged. They will live only in the songs and chronicles of their exterminators. Let these be faithful to their rude virtues as men, and pay due tribute to their unhappy fate as a people. LIII. LOCHIEL'S WARNING. Thomas Campbell, 1777-1844, was a descendant of the famous clan of Campbells, in Kirnan, Scotland, and was born at Glasgow. At the age of thirteen he entered the university in that city, from which he graduated with distinction, especially as a Greek scholar; his translations of Greek tragedy were considered without parallel in the history of the university. During the first year after graduation, he wrote several poems of minor importance. He then removed to Edinburgh and adopted literature as his profession; here his "Pleasures of Hope" was published in 1799, and achieved immediate success. He traveled extensively on the continent, and during his absence wrote "Lochiel's Warning," "Hohenlinden," and other minor poems. In 1809 he published "Gertrude of Wyoming;" from 1820 to 1830 he edited the "New Monthly Magazine." In 1826 he was chosen lord rector of the University of Glasgow, to which office he was twice reëlected. He was active in founding the University of London. During the last years of his life he produced but little of note. He died at Boulogne, in France. During most of his life he was in straitened pecuniary circumstances, and ill-health and family afflictions cast a melancholy over his later years. His poems were written with much care, and are uniformly smooth and musical. Seer. LOCHIEL! Lochiel! beware of the day When the Lowlands shall meet thee in battle array! Proud Cumberland prances, insulting the slain, Oh, weep! but thy tears can not number the dead: Loch. Go preach to the coward, thou death-telling seer! Draw, dotard, around thy old wavering sight, Seer. Ha! laugh'st thou, Lochiel, my vision to scorn? But down let him stoop from his havoc on high! |