ried. The letters he wrote while abroad, | His stories have little probability, coherence under the title of "Pencillings by the Way," first appeared in the New York Mirror. In 1835 he published Inklings of Adventure, a series of tales, which appeared originally in a London magazine under the signature of "Peter Slingsby." In 1837 he returned to the United States and retired to a pleasant seat on the Susquehanna, where he resided two years. Early in 1839 he became one of the editors of the Corsair, a literary gazette in New York, and in the autumn of the same year he went again to London, where, in the following winter, he published Loiterings of Travel, in two volumes, and Two Ways of Dying for a Husband. In 1840 appeared his Poems and Letters from Under a Bridge. About the same time he wrote the descriptive portions of some pictorial works on American scenery and Ireland. In 1843, with Mr. G. P. Morris, he revived the New York Mirror, which had been discontinued for several years, first as a weekly, then as a daily gazette, but withdrew from it upon the death of his wife, in 1844, and made another visit to England, where he published Dashes at Life with a Free Pencil, consisting of stories and sketches of European and American society. On his return to New York he issued his complete works, which filled a closely-printed imperial octavo volume of several hundred pages. In October, 1846, he married a daughter of the Hon. Mr. Gunnel and settled in New York, where he was associated with Mr. Morris as editor of the Home Journal, a weekly gazette of literature. Mr. Willis belonged to what has been styled the Venetian school in letters. There is no drawing, but much coloring, in his pictures. ALE est son of Ethelwolf, king of the West Saxons, and Osburga, daughter of Oslac the Goth, who inherited the blood of the subkings of the isle of Wight. At the age of five he was sent to Rome, where Leo IV. anointed him with the royal unction. When only twenty-two years of age, he found himself the monarch of a distracted kingdom. After several unfortunate battles with the Danes he disbanded his followers and wandered about the woods, and finally found shelter in the cottage of a herdsman named Denulf, at Athelney, in Somersetshire. Here occurred the interesting event which has pleased so many boys and girls-the burning of the cakes. Receiving information that Odun, earl of Devon, had obtained a victory over the Danes in Devonshire and had taken their magical standard, he disguised himself as a harper and obtained admission to the Danish camp, where his skill was so much admired that he was retained a considerable time, and was admitted to play before King Gorm, or Guthrum, and his chiefs. Having by these means gained a knowledge of his enemy, he collected his vassals and nobles, surprised the Danes at Eddington, and completely defeated them in May, 878. The king behaved with great magnanimity to his foes, giving up the kingdom of East Anglia to those of the Danes who embraced the Christian religion. He now put his kingdom into a state of defence and greatly increased his navy, and by his energy, activity, bravery and wisdom the country became exceedingly prosperous. He is said to have fought fifty-six battles by sea and land, although his valor as a warrior has excited less admiration than his wisdom as a legislator. He composed a body of statutes, instituted trial by jury, divided the kingdom into shires and tithings. He was so exact in his government that robbery was unheard of, and gold chains might be left in the highways untouched. He also formed a Parliament, which met in London twice a year. There was so little learning in his time that from the Thames to the Humber hardly a man could be found who understood Latin. To remedy this state of things, he invited learned men from all parts and endowed schools throughout the kingdom; and if, indeed, he was not the founder of the University of Oxford, he raised it to a reputation which it had never before enjoyed. Among other acts of munificence to that seat of learning, he founded University College. He himself was a learned prince, composed several works, translated the historical works of Orosius and Bede, some religious and moral treatises, perhaps Esop's fables and the Psalms of David, also the metres of Boëthius. He divided the twentyfour hours into three equal parts; one he devoted to the service of God, another to public affairs, and the third to rest and refreshment. In private life he was benevolent, pious, cheerful and affable; the story of his giving the poor beggar half his loaf TH friend of Milton, the Abdiel of a dark and corrupt age—“ faithful found among the faithless, faithful only he”—was born in Hull in 1820. He was educated at Cambridge. We know little more about the early days of our poet. When only twenty, he lost his father in remarkable circumstances. In 1640 he had embarked on the Humber in company with a youthful pair whom he was to marry at Barrow, in Lincolnshire. The weather was calm, but Marvell, seized with a sudden presentiment of danger, threw his staff ashore and cried out, "Ho for heaven!" A storm came on, and the whole company perished. In consequence of this sad event, the gentleman whose daughter was to have been married, conceiving that the father had sacrificed his life while performing an act of friendship, adopted young Marvell as his son. Owing to this he received a better education, and was sent abroad to travel. that at Rome he met and formed a friendship with Milton, then engaged on his immortal continental tour. It is said We find Marvell next at Constantinople as secretary to the English embassy at that court. We then lose sight of him till 1653, when he was engaged by the Protector to superintend the education of a Mr. Dutton at Eton. For a year and a half after Cromwell's death Marvell assisted Milton as Latin secretary to the Protector. Our readers are all familiar with the print of Cromwell and Milton seated together at the council-tablethe one the express image of active power and rugged grandeur, the other of thoughtful majesty and ethereal grace. Marvell might have been added as a third, and become the emblem of strong English sense and incorruptible integrity. A letter of Milton's was not long since discovered, dated February, 1652, in which he speaks of Marvell as fitted by his knowledge of Latin and his experience of teaching to be his assistant. He was not appointed, however, till 1657. In 1660 he became member for Hull, and was reelected as long as he lived. He was absent, however, from England for two years, in the beginning of the reign, in Germany and Holland. Afterward he sought leave from his constituents to act as ambassador's secretary to Lord Carlisle at the Northern courts, but from the year 1665 to his death his attention to his parliamentary duties was unremitting. He constantly corresponded with his constituents, and after the longest sittings he used to write out for their use a minute account of public proceedings ere he went to bed or took any refreshment. refreshment. He was one of the last members who received pay from the town he represented (two shillings a day was probably the sum), and his constituents were wont, besides, to send him barrels of ale as tokens of their regard. Marvell spoke little in the House, but his heart and vote were always in the right place. Even Prince Rupert continually consulted him, and was sometimes persuaded by him to support the popular side; and King Charles, having met him once in private, was so delighted with his wit and agreeable manners that he thought him worth trying to bribe. He sent Lord Danby to offer him a mark of His Majesty's consideration. Marvell, who was seated in a dingy room up several flights of stairs, declined the proffer, and, it is said, called his servant to witness that he had dined for three successive days on the same shoulder of mutton, and was not likely, therefore, to care for or need a bribe. When the treasurer was gone, he had to send a friend to borrow a guinea. Although a silent senator, Marvell was a copious and popular writer. He attacked Bishop Parker for his slavish principles in a piece entitled The Rehearsal Transposed, in which he takes occasion to vindicate and panegyrize his old colleague, Milton. His anonymous Account of the Growth of Arbitrary Power excited a sensation, and a reward was offered for the apprehension of the author and printer. Marvell had many of the elements of a first-rate political pamphleteer. He had wit of a most pungent kind, great though coarse fertility of fancy and a spirit of independence that nothing could subdue or damp. He was the undoubted ancestor of the Defoes, Swifts, Steeles, Juniuses and Burkes, in whom this kind of authorship reached its perfection, ceased to be fugitive and assumed classical rank. Marvell had been repeatedly threatened with assassination, and hence, when he died suddenly on the 16th of August, 1678, it was surmised that he had been removed by poison. The corporation of Hull voted a sum to defray his funeral expenses and for raising a monument to his memory, but, owing to the interference of the court through the rector of the parish, this votive tablet. was not at the time erected. He was buried in St. Giles-in-the-Fields. song "Out of the strong came forth sweetness," saith the Hebrew record; and so from the sturdy Andrew Marvell have proceeded such soft and lovely strains as "The Emigrants,' "The Nymph complaining for the Death of her Fawn," "Young Love," etc. The statue of Memnon became musical at the dawn, and the stern patriot whom no bribe could buy and no flattery melt is found sympathizing in with a boatful of banished Englishmen in the remote Bermudas, and inditing “Thoughts in a Garden," from which you might suppose that he had spent his life more with melons than with men, and was better acquainted with the motions of a beehive than with the contests of Parliament and the distractions of a most distracted age. It was said (not with thorough truth) of Milton that he could cut out a Colossus from a rock, but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones-a task which his assistant may be said to have performed in his stead, in his small but delectable copies SIR WILLIAM DRUMMOND. DRUMMOND, the first Scotch poet who wrote well in English, was born A. D. 1585 at Hawthornden (Southey), near Edinburgh. His father, Sir John Drummond, held a situation about the person of James VI. The poet in his youth studied law, but, relinquishing that profession, he retired to a life of ease and literature on his "delightful" patrimonial estate. His happiness was suddenly interrupted by the death of a lady to whom he was betrothed; he spent several years in seeking by travel a refuge from his sorrow. He married, late in life, Elizabeth Logan, attracted to her, it is said, by her re semblance to his first love. He was warmly attached to Charles I.; grief for the king's death, it is alleged, shortened his life. Drummond's works consist of sonnets, madrigals and religious and occasional poems; among the latter is the ludicrous Latin doggerel 'Polemo-Middinia." His sonnets are estimated by Hazlitt as the finest in the language, and approaching nearest to the Italian model. Drummond's fancy is luxuriant, but tinctured with frigid conceits. His versification is flowing and harmonious. Even Ben Jonson's arrogance condescended to "envy" the author of The Forth Feasting. He is the writer of a forgotten history of the Jameses. He died 1649. ERAT ERATOSTHENES. S. O. BEETON. FROM THE GERMAN OF CHRISTIAN C. J. BUNSEN. RATOSTHENES, next to Aristotle the most illustrious among Greek men of learning, and as far superior to him in the extent of his knowledge as inferior in grasp of intellect, was an African by birth, from the Greek colony of Cyrene. Strabo calls him and Callimachus the pride of that city; "for," he adds, "if there ever was a man who combined skill in the art of poetry and grammar-common to him and to Callimachus-with philosophy and general learning, Eratosthenes was that man." He reduced to a system two sciences, both of which he found in their infancy, geography and chronology. His calculation of the size of the globe, when submitted to the stricter test of modern science, proved the most correct hitherto made. His adjustment toward India and the Egyptians. The four principal races of South Africa," he only a well-regulated monarchical constitution, but also stately temples and royal palaces; the beams in their houses are arranged like those of the Egyptians." In his description of the southern promontory of Arabia, at Babelmandeb, he says, "Here must have stood the pillars of Sesostris inscribed with hieroglyphics." This he follows up with a detail of the campaign of that conqueror in those parts. Born in the 126th Olympiad, about 276 B. C.-in the early part, consequently, of the reign of Philadelphus-he succeeded, probably under Euergetes, to the honorable post of director of the Alexandrian Library, which he filled up to the time of his death, in his eightieth or eighty-second year, in the 146th Olympiad. of the leading points in Grecian history on the basis of the Olympic era-upward to the time of the Heraclidæ, and downward | remarked, according to Strabo, "have not to that of Alexander the Great-was, and continued to be, the groundwork of all the chronological researches of the old world. In geography he was the guide and authority of Strabo and Ptolemy; in chronology, of Apollodorus and the later calculators. He was the founder of historical criticism for the primitive ages of Greece. Lastly, he ventured to doubt the historical truth of the Homeric legend. "I will believe in it," said he, "when I have been shown the currier who made the wind-bags which Ulysses on his voyage homeward received from Eolus." The extent and depth of his geographical researches as known to us through Strabo prove that his historical inquiries were not limited to the world of Hellas, but in this latter department he is more especially distinguished as the first and greatest critical investigator of Egyptian antiquity. His remark upon the tyrant Busiris, as recorded by Strabo, and the ridicule with which he treated the pop ular Greek legend concerning him and his human sacrifices, may here be cited as peculiarly characteristic. "By Jupiter," said he, "there never was such a tyrant as Busirisnot even a king of that name." In two other passages of still greater importance in their critical bearing on Egyptian history, though hitherto little appreciated, he elucidates the historical connection between the native tribes of South Africa and Asia Translation of CHARLES H. COTTRELL. LIVE WHILE YOU LIVE. "LIVE while you live!" the epicure would say, "And seize the pleasures of the present day;" "Live while you live!" the sacred preacher "And give to God each moment as it flies.” PHILIP DODDridge. |