SONNET-TO ITALY.

[Translated from the Italian of Filieaja.]

"Per servir sempre, o vincitrice o vinta."

BY DURANT DA PONTE, ESQ.

Italia! misery is thine unending,

For beauty's sweet though fatal gift hast thou! Yes! thou art beautiful, yet on thy brow Sorrow with loveliness is ever blending. Oh! might thy beauty less divinely glow!

No longer clasp thee may a stranger's arms! They love thee less who worship but thy charms; Thy sons are thine in death, in joy or woe, The frozen Alps pour on thy verdant plains

Their armed torrents like their rushing streams; Though Gallic blood the Po's dark waters stains, A foreign sword forever o'er thee gleamsA foreign vampyre thy existence drainsCONQUERED OR CONQUEROR, DOOMED TO SLAVERY'S

CHAINS.

THE HORRORS OF WAR.

BY MRS. MYRA CLARKE GAINES.

THE fact of a lady addressing a large audience, in a highly respectable and enlightened community, is, it must be admitted, a novel and uncommon scene; and, to those who know me, it is scarcely necessary to say, that I am quite inexperienced in the art of public speaking.

To some

it may appear strange that a lady should come forward in public, and address a mixed audience, and give her sentiments on a subject in which it cannot be supposed she has had any experience. Some, if not many, of my own sex may fancy that I am rather transgressing the boundaries of strict female reservedness, and, that it is wrong for a lady to speak in a public assembly. Were I alone and unprotected, it would scarcely comport with that delicacy which a female ought always to cultivate and maintain; but when I do it in the presence of my liege lord, to whom I am accountable for all my actions-and when it

is on War, a subject in which he has all his life been interested and concerned, (and what wife can be blamed in taking a deep interest in the affairs of her husband?) I should think that, were a jury selected from this highly respectable audience, and composed of some of even the most fastidious of my own sex, to try me for the act in which I am now engaged, I am confident the verdict would come in-acquitted.

I am not ignorant of the truth, that woman's province is the domestic circle; or, in the words of the immortal Milton, "She is to study household good, and good works in her husband to promote." Her's is the calm pursuits and gentle enjoyments of life: man's, that of enterprise and action. Man is to fill a wide and busy theatre, on a contentious world, while woman is destined by her Maker to move in a more peaceful sphere.

The strifes and contentions of men, in whatever manner they break out, and from whatever source they may spring, are always subjects of regret, and causes of grief and sorrow. Men are sprung from one common parent: they derived their existence from the same Father: and being so nearly related, the bonds of friendship and the ties of union and agreement should be strengthened and firmly cemented in every possible way:

good-will should be, in fact, a universal principle. Under these circumstances it must be painful to every person of common humanity and feelings, to reflect on the depravity of man, as displayed in the quarrels and contests which have been so common in every age, and in every part of the world. Who can paint the horrors of war? What pen can describe the wretchedness and sufferings experienced by thousands who, to satisfy the ambition and revenge of a few, were its unhappy victims? Permit me to lay before you only a few floating recollections on the Horrors of War, from the page of history, and you will see what a sight a field of battle must be.

Think of fifty or one hundred thousand human beings on each side prepared for slaughter, and patiently, or ardently, awaiting the signal which hurries them on to carnage, not only without remorse, but even when the excitation of the bloody business has begun with ardor and enthusiasm, although the cause of the contest has been, in not a few instances, unknown to their leaders. It is recorded that one million of Jews were slain at the destruction of Jerusalem. The Jews of Antioch, we know, destroyed one hundred thousand of their countrymen, and Probus caused seven hundred thousand Gauls to be slain. In the sixth

century, thirty thousand inhabitants of Constantinople were put to death. Ten centuries after, seventy-five thousand Huguenots, and sixty-five thousand Christians, in Croatia, were massacred. In Batavia twelve thousand Chinese were destroyed by the natives. The Arabs slew forty thousand people at Constantinople in the middle of the last century. The French Revolution, it is calculated by a learned writer, cost the lives of three mil lions of people; and many other such bloody transactions might be taken from the records of history. It is somewhere said that, during the last seven hundred years, there have been two hundred and sixty-six years of war between England and France, in which twenty-six millions of souls have been slain! Were it necessary, I could greatly extend the catalogue of thousands who, in ancient times, were carried off by that terrible Scourge-war. Yes, this very generation has witnessed the destruction of millions of our race. It has seen half a million of combatants marshaled in battle array around the walls of a Leipsic it has seen : a Borodino strown with eighty thousand bodies of the slain: and a Muscovy overspread with the wreck of the mightiest host of modern days.

In the invasion of the Burman Empire by the