moment turned to stone, while they and their dwellings were doomed to remain, through the lapse of ages, precisely as they stood, as they looked, as they were, at the infliction of the stroke. The stillness of death - of death in every form of life, reigns within the walls, while the multitudes of people of all ages, ranks, and occupations, who seem to the visitor (if visitor ever enters there) at the first glance, in the full action of men, women, and children, hurrying to and fro about their business or their amusements, - the longer you gaze seem more and more fixed to the eye, till the beholder himself becomes almost petrified by sympathy. Sometimes however (and it is well for him, when his trance is so broken), a herd of antelopes, fleeing from a lion in full chase after them, rush through the open gates of the city, and bound along the streets, regardless of the apparent throngs of human beings wherever they turn, but whose motionless figures, through long familiarity, are to them as indifferent as so many unshapen fragments of rock. ·I must drop the veil here, both over the city of Minerva and the city of the Desert, which I have dared to bring into crude comparison with it: in contemplating either, imagination may have run riot in the labyrinths of reverie, mistaking phantoms for realities, and vain fancies for high thoughts. We return for a few moments to the straightforward path of historical retrospection.

The Decline of Greek Literature.

It has been already stated, that the period from Pisistratus to Philip of Macedon was the golden age of Grecian fame; literature and freedom flourishing together, and they ought never to be separated. Literature, when freedom is lost, becomes the most degraded and the most dangerous tool of despotism; while freedom without literature- that is, without knowledge, presents the most ferociously savage state of human society, if society can exist without a single bond of moral or civil restraint. If the Spartans were not such an iron race, it was because learning and philosophy, which they affected to despise, exercised an indirect but benign influence over them without betraying the secret of their

power.

From the division of the empire of Alexander the Great, when Greece fell under the dominion of one of his captains, though the Achaian league partially restored and maintained the republican spirit in some of the states, till the time when the whole country passed under the Roman yoke, from the death of Alexander to the reign of the Emperor Aurelian, may be styled the silver age of Greece. Many noble and illustrious names of the second order belong to this period. Then followed a brazen time, which may be brought as low as the reign of Heraclius, emperor of the East, in the seventh century of the Christian era. Thenceforward, a long series of iron years have rolled in heavy and hopeless burthen over

the field; the wild asses quench their thirst. By them shall the fowls of heaven have their habitation, which sing among the branches." The earth is represented as pouring forth from her lap the abundance of food for man and beast. The habits of various animals are accurately noted. The revolutions of the heavenly bodies, bringing day and night, and the change of seasons, are next reviewed, and celebrated in strains rivalling their own, when "the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." Afterwards the great and wide sea, in its depths, is disclosed, and exhibited as a world of enjoyment as infinitely extended as the endless diversities of its strange population of living things innumerable, "both great and small."

One passage, and but one more, must not be passed over, the picturesque reality of which will be perceived by all who have a heart to feel horror, or an eye to rejoice in beauty:-"Thou makest darkness, and it is night; wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep forth.-The young lions roar after their prey, and seek their meat from God.-The sun ariseth; they gather themselves together, and lay them down in their dens.-Man goeth forth unto his work and his labour until the evening.-O Lord! how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all."

The remaining unquoted passages of this Psalm are worthy of the foregoing, especially the verses which describe animal life, death, and resuscitation, by the breathing, withdrawing, or regenerating influence of that Divine Spirit, which at first "moved

upon the waters." Who, after reading the whole of this sublime strain, can forbear to exclaim with the royal Psalmist, at the close:-"Bless Thou the Lord, O my soul!" and then invoke all living to do the same"Praise ye the Lord."

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A

RETROSPECT OF LITERATURE, &c.

No II.

Literature of the Hindoos.

ALTHOUGH the modern Hindoos are generally distinguished by deplorable mental as well as bodily imbecility, they are the descendants of ancestors not less conspicuous both for intellectual and physical power. Learning is said to have flourished in India before it was cultivated in Egypt, and some have assumed that it was from beyond the Indus that the Nile itself was first visited with the orient beams of knowledge. The modern Hindoos, however, in their unutterable degradation, are only careful to preserve the monuments of their forefathers' glory and intelligence in the stupendous ruins, or, rather, in the imperishable skeletons of their temples, and in their sacred and scientific books. But the latter being wholly in the hands of the Brahmins, few of whom understand much of their contents, are impregnably sealed from the researches of the multitude.