experienced the beneficent influence of grief and suffering. "Bleffed," fays England's greatest child of poefy

"Bleffed are the ufes of adverfity."

Shelley tells us that poets "learn in fuffering what they teach in fong;" and Wordsworth has uttered those melancholy lines:

"We poets in our youth begin in gladness,

Whereof in the end cometh despondency and madness.”

A young living poet has, in two verfes, fung exquifitely on this theme:

"The flowers live by the tears that fall

From the fad face of the skies;

And life would have no joys at all,

Were there no watery eyes.

"Love thou thy forrow; grief fhall bring

Its own relief in after years;

The rainbow-fee how fair a thing

God hath built up from tears!"*

And in one verse, itself a text for a thousand difcourses, Tennyson has given us the universal feeling on this matter:

"I hold it true whate'er befall;

I held it when I forrowed most'Tis better to have loved and loft, Than never to have loved at all."

Striking a deeper chord the great Goethe fings

"Who never ate his bread with tears,

Who never through night's gloomy hours

* Poems by Henry Sutton.

Weeping fat upon his bed,—

He knows you not, ye heavenly powers."

Such being the bleffed influence of forrow, we need not wonder that fome of the world's greatest books have been written in prifon. The cell of the poor fufferer has thus been converted into the palace of thought, and rendered more glorious by the halo which fuffering but triumphant genius has thrown around it, than is the throne of the most fuccefsful conqueror with which the world has been curfed or bleffed. Dearer to our memories, and dearer to the memories of all future generations, will the prifon-house of Boëthius be, than the palace of Theodoric, great in many respects as the Goth undoubtedly was. Who of us would not prefer seeing the cell in which Taffo was confined to all the fplendour of the court of Efte? And great and notable as were the life and deeds of Charles the Fifth, who of us would not rather make a pilgrimage to the prison of Cervantes, than to the Emperor's cloister at Valladolid? Silvio Pellico has made the Houfe of Hapfburgh a thing of fhame, and his narrow home of iron and ftone a more glorious fpot than the crimestained court of Vienna; Bedford gaol is dearer to our memories than Whitehall, and Bunyan has made a damp, miferable, and narrow cage more glorious than the throne upon which fat he of the

Bleffed Reftoration.

So true it is, my brave,

gallant Richard Lovelace, that

"Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;"

that a working-man, by trade a fhoemaker, fhall be imprisoned for Chartist riots, and fhall convert his cell into a temple for the Mufes, and fing his "Purgatory of Suicides," without let or hindrance. Truly a noble record of the power of the mind to make its own kingdom-a perennial teaching of the benign influence of forrow, and a glorious monument of genius are the world's Prifon Books. To fay fomewhat of the lives and works of the principal of these chained linnets is the purpose of the prefent little work. Of course we begin with the victim of Theodoric, the last claffic writer, the author of the "De Confolatione Philofophiæ."

BOËTHIUS,

AND HIS DE CONSOLATIONE PHILOSOPHIÆ.

THE grandeur of the Roman Empire was faft paffing away, and the Eternal City was at the mercy of the barbarians. Thrice had the Huns swept over the plains of Italy.

Twice had Alaric's

fierce hordes devastated that beautiful land, fince, alas, fo often devastated by other powers that would blush to be called barbaric. Rhadagafius had carried terror into every Roman home; and Alaric had, in 408, befieged the city itself. "The heaps of dead bodies, which there wanted space to bury, produced a peftilence. In vain the Senate endeavoured to negotiate an honourable capitulation. Alaric fcorned alike their money, their despair, their pride. When they spoke of their immense population, he burst out into laughter,— The thicker the hay, the eafier it is mown;' on his demand of an exorbitant ranfom, the Senate humbly inquired, What then do you leave us?' "Your lives!' replied the infulting Goth."* And * Milman's "Latin Christianity," vol. i. p. 98.

the mafters of the world had to imitate the example of our own degenerate Britons, and purchafe with their gold a peace which their arms were unable to compel. The ftreets of Rome rang with the terrible cry, "Fix the price for human flesh, "* fo great were the fufferings of the people. The influence and indomitable courage of Pope Leo alone averted a like fate from Rome, when the fiery Atila "declared his refolution of carrying his victorious arms to the gates of Rome."† Again was the city the prey of the barbarians, when, in 455, the Vandals under Genferic facked its houses, its temples, and its churches of all their poffeffions. The treasures with which piety, and fear, and fuperftition had fo liberally endowed the holy places were swept away. "The Christian churches, enriched and adorned by the prevailing fuperftition of the times, afforded more plentiful materials for facrilege, and the pious liberality of Pope Leo, who melted fix filver vases, the gift of Constantine, each of a hundred pounds weight, is an evidence of the damage which he attempted to repair. In the forty-five years that had elapfed fince the Gothic invafion, the pomp and luxury of Rome were

* Pone pretium carni humanæ.

+ Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," vol. vi. pp. 125-6.