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flicting interests of the nations that sprung into existence and rose to power during her continuance; and, finally, her own interest in maintaining her position, rendered the establishment of military forces necessary to her being. Yet Venice was never the aggressor. No matter how corrupt her internal affairs may have been, in her intercourse with foreign nations she maintained a fair and openhanded justice. Her warlike operations are found to have invariably commenced in self-defense. Her wealth and prosperity provoked a general coalition of Europe against her, which she heroically and manfully resisted. The very fact of her being invariably on the side of truth and justice in her foreign wars, affords us one reason for her success, for "truth is mighty and will prevail."

The Crusades, too, exerted their influence in establishing the power of Venice. While this politico-religious mania was spreading throughout Europe, her coöperation was secured, though not perhaps from a noble self-devotion which characterized so many others. She found that her interests were too closely allied to the success or failure of this enterprise, for her to stand aloof. She saw with prophetic eye, the dismemberment of the Eastern Empire, and the consequent flood of spoils that would accrue to her; and in case of the occupation of Palestine by Christian Powers, she knew that her favorable situation would at once afford her ready access to the riches of the East. But her aid was to be bought, and the fourth Crusade was commenced by conquering Zara in Dalmatia, which was assigned to the Venetians as pay for their transports. From the pillage of Constantinople and the destruction of the Greek Empire, which resulted from this Crusade, the immense riches of the East were poured into the bosom of the Venetian republic. This epoch may be considered as the palmy days of Venetian history. Her star was now in the ascendant, and for three hundred years it shone with increasing splendor, until eclipsed by the unavoidable influence of external events.

But her glory was not to last. Continued prosperity has always been unknown in history, and Venice cannot boast of being an exception. Her decline and fall resulted not so much from the internal convulsions which so often prove the ruin of states, as from external events over which she had no control. Her commerce had given the first impulse to her prosperity; upon this was her foundation laid; and while that lucrative source of power remained to her, she could safely defy the machinations of her jealous enemies. But the progress of discovery could not be prevented; a new direction was given to research, and Venice failed to take the advantage of it which she ought. The discovery of the passage to India around the Cape of Good Hope, brought the Portuguese into competition with her, and prevented her monopolizing the Indian trade. The discovery of America also did much to decrease her commercial influence, by turning the attention of the civilized world to the inexhaustible resources of the Western Continent. But these discoveries were not inconsistent with the growth of her power: had Venice turned her immense wealth into this new channel of adventure and speculation, she might now have existed and rivaled the proudest of Europe's monarchies.

The wars of

But her resources were wasting from other causes. Charles V. and Francis I. acted as a leech upon the sickening body of the Venetian republic. Her wealth was diverted from its original channels, her losses aggravated, and her treasures consumed. Her declension from this time was slow, but sure. Her real decline and weakness was known only to herself. Her jealousy of foreigners, and the absolute impossibility of their informing themselves of her actual state, rendered her name respected at the very time when she was ready to fall from the slightest shock. The Turks too were gaining a fast hold upon her Eastern possessions. She was not able to withstand the continual encroachments of these semi-barbarians; nor did the confused state of Europe allow aid from other quarters. Yet she stood for some time as the bulwark of Christendom against their invasions. The defense of her last Eastern possessions was a struggle worthy of her former greatness; but it was only the transient resuscitation of her ancient splendor, which shone for a moment and disappeared. During the last century of her existence, the name of the Venetian republic was scarcely mentioned as one of the powers of Europe, and when the French entered her capital, they disclosed to the world the "baseless fabric" upon which her greatness rested.

D. H., JR.

MIDNIGHT.

THE busy world has sunk to rest,
Oppressed with toil and care,
And silence floats on noiseless wing
Through all the midnight air;
The wind scarce stirs the aspen leaf,
So gentle is its breath-

Heav'n, earth, and sky seem now alike,
The voiceless realm of death.

Oh! in the hush of this still hour,
What mem'ries round me throng,
That whisper to my aching heart
Sweetly as angel's song!

Though now the path of life is dark,

My heart with anguish wrung,

It soothes my spirit to recall

The years when I was young:

Though those who now attend my steps
Are formal all, and cold,

Yet in my heart's deep chambers dwell

The faithful friends of old.

So then though hope may take its flight,
And darkness shroud the sky,

I'll smooth my pathway to the tomb
With dreams of days gone by.

PERICLES.

SOME twenty-three hundred years ago, there was, on the peninsula of Greece, a little city, the capital of a small, rocky promontory. Its streets were narrow and crooked, its dwellings humble and plain. It had walls; but, compared with those of Babylon, they were but fences. It had public edifices; but they would have been small indeed, by the side of the pyramids and the catacombs. Yet on this little city the eyes of the world were fixed. The kings of the East had thought to add it to their vast domains. But their countless hosts fled in dismay from Marathon and Salamis. Yet Athens had prouder names than these. Her statesmen and her philosophers, her artists and her poets, had made conquests in the domains of mind, far nobler than the most brilliant displays of physical strength and courage. It was because its inhabitants were endowed with a manliness which could brook no disgrace, an energy which recognized no obstacle, an activity of mind which knew no limits, and a taste which clothed every thing with its own idea of perfection, that that nook of land was a charmed spot. It was this which clothed each sterile cliff around with associations which have ever since made them sacred; which converted the arid waste into the calm retreat of the Lyceum and the classic shades of Academus; and which has created models of art and taste of which the least alteration is a defect. Long did these noble qualities strive for the ascendency in their father-land, and when they were supplanted there, not even then did their influence cease, but they went forth to instruct and civilize every age and every clime. While reason can persuade and feeling stimulate, while liberty has advocates and truth followers, while taste and fancy can please, so long will the name of Athens and the age of Pericles be sacred to the statesman and the philosopher, the scholar and the artist.

We can well imagine the surprise of some curious traveler from Asia, who, impressed with the necessity of the power and grandeur of the Great King to the prosperity of the Persian empire, had come to admire this Ελλάς Ελλάδος, on learning that Athens needed no such august personification of her power. Persons were, indeed, chosen to perform her subordinate trusts, but all laws were passed and all cases decided by the Athenian people, or large assemblies chosen by lot from them. But he would soon learn that there was one who, though in the rank of a citizen, had, by the mightiest of all influences, the power of intellect, earned the title of Prince of Greece. The stranger might watch long on the road from his house to the council-chamber, without seeing him; but it was the only path he trod. And when he was pointed out to him, we can conceive with what incredulous surprise he would exclaim, Is that Pericles? But if he chanced to be in the Agora, when some great and doubtful measure called him to the Bema, then would he learn why his countrymen had called him the Olympian Jove.

But it was not there alone that he would find tokens of the power of this wonderful man. Whether he strolled through the Parthenon or gazed on the Propylæa, whether he listened at the Odeum or

watched the busy workmen on the Long Walls, every thing spake of Pericles. Nor was his power limited to Athens alone. The confederacy formed to resist Persian agression had gladly conferred the entire management of its affairs to the people over whom he had acquired the ascendency. They were arbiters of Greece, masters of the sea, the conquerors of Egypt, and the terror of Persia. Such were the Athenians as Pericles found them.

Thirty years have passed away. That land is no longer a stranger to the invader's footstep. Year after year have its fair fields been ravaged to its very walls. Those walls are crowded with an inactive, famishing populace, in whose ranks the pestilence is making fearful ravages. The orator can no longer rouse them by pointing towards Salamis, for they remember that they owe the safety of the Piraeus to the remissness of their foes; nor to Marathon, for the suburb of Acharnæ lies between, and there hostile troops have encamped, and hostile trumpets have breathed defiance, unrebuked.

Where now is Pericles? The plague has attacked him at last. His friends move anxiously around his dying bed. His career is at an end. But what is the account he can render of it? Say, Pericles, where are now those allies who would once have freely spent their blood and their treasure to defend the city whose interests they had identified with their own? Can it be, that, instead of strengthening this union, thou hast oppressed its members and squandered their resources, to cherish the pride and minister to the gratification of the Athenians, till they have called hostile states to their aid! And where is that noble-minded people who once called this land their own? Can it be, that whilst thou hast fed their arrogance, thou hast enervated their minds and inflamed their passions, by intoxicating them with amusements, and establishing premiums on idleness! Can it be, that to increase the momentary splendor of thy administration, thou hast done all this! Nay, could one man or one age effect it? But, alas! it was so. He had called them from the plow and the oar, to lounge in the Agora, or applaud at the theatre, till their taste had become vitiated and their judgment corrupt. He left them, the creatures of impulse, to murder their philosophers and banish their benefactors. Under the influence of his measures their spirit died away, till they, whose sires had sought the pyramids of Memphis and the walls of Babylon to find fields for the exercise of their restless valor, could scarcely be roused, by the tongue of Demosthenes, to defend their altars and their homes.

Had Pericles possessed other qualities of mind and heart, had he induced the Athenian people to incorporate subject states into their own, as another band of hardy, resolute men, on a neighboring peninsula, had learned to do, in that case, classic Athens, and not barbarian Rome, might have been the Mistress of the World. But, then, his administration would have been but as the faint dawn, forgotten amid the splendors of the succeeding day; and he chose rather to squander the resources at his command in giving to that administration a splendor which no succeeding prince or people could hope to equal; and he accomplished his purpose.

JOURNAL OF A DAY.

BY A FRESHMAN.

"Forsan et hæc olim meminisse juvabit."-VIRGIL.

SLEPT poorly last night, and was harrassed by horrible dreams. I thought myself transported to a distant part of the earth, and enrolled as an inhabitant of a city wholly made of glass. Every thing on which I cast my eyes was of the same material, except my fellowcitizens. We lived in glass houses, rode in glass carriages drawn by glass horses, wore glass clothes, and ate glass food. I was becoming quite contented with my novel situation, when I was informed that the city was at certain periods liable to the attacks of a terrible monster who resided in the neighborhood, and at the same time I learned that he had been recently preparing for an assault. A strange fear crept over me instantly, and I had hardly time to utter an exclamation of horror, before an apparition more frightful than any thing I had ever conceived burst on my vision. It was the being of whom I had just heard. Polyphemus,-described by Virgil in the words,

and again—

"Ipse arduus, altaque pulsat Sidera:"

"Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum," was a pigmy and an exquisite, in comparison with him.

But why attempt to describe what is indescribable! He rushed on swifter than the Shelbyville hurricane, of which I heard a Senior speak a few days before, prostrating every thing in his path. He seemed to be "berserker," which, as I am informed by a Senior, means one under the influence of a kind of phrenzy, " either arising from an excited imagination, or from the use of stimulating liquors." Imagine the innumerable worlds and systems, that circle in limitless space, composed of the materials of which our city was built-gravitation annihilated-the concussion, when these bodies met in their common centre, and were dashed each into an infinite number of atoms,—and you will have a faint conception of what occurred. Actuated, I suppose, by what my Senior friend calls the instinctive desire of selfpreservation, I sprung from the spot where I was, and—found myself standing (nudus et solus) on the floor of my sanctum, confronted by the end of a barber's pole, with a fresh breeze, seemingly from every point of the compass, blowing about me.

Popping into my coal-closet, I spent the next two hours in a delightful state (horresco referens) of anxiety. But, all remaining quiet, I ventured to crawl back to my couch, and was soon once more in the arms of Morbus. My sleep, however, was not sound. At one time I fancied myself in a confined room, where I was hanging up by my heels in the shape of a ham; and, through the dense smoke rolling up

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