how much it must increase the effect of every murmur that broke the stillness. Just before day break, I desired Giovanni to take my horn, and give some of his best airs, in his best and most sonorous manner. The effect was grand beyond description, the sound echoed from rock to rock, from mountain to mountain, and seemed to extend for many miles up and down the river. For the last air he gave, with great propriety, "Tell me babbling echo, why," &c. after which I desired him to sing it; and how often since have I repeated the closing words of that beautiful song; From morn to night prolong the tale, Let it ring, let it ring, from vale to vale! Oh! thou wizard stream! how frequently shall I look back to the many delightful hours, days and weeks, which I have passed by thy tide! If streams are the haunts of faeries, how must thy enchanted borders be thronged by the light footed train! Yes, my friend, in the dull hours that future life may chance to bring with it, I shall often look back to these delicious scenes of enjoyment; or when sickness turns me pale, and imprisons me in the narrow precincts of a chamber, I will then court the faery sisterhood to weave for me anew those enchanted visions that so much captivated my imagination, whilst alternately gliding on the surface, or wandering on the margin of my favourite river! Letter from Europe. THE VIGIL. No. 1. Divitiis homines, an sint virtute beati ; HOR. To the recluse who calmly surveys the actions and pursuits of the world, it is a subject of wonder to contemplate the eagerness with which men pursue the phantom happiness. It is an ignis fatuus which all can touch yet none can describe. Though no two persons travel in the same path, yet every one believes that he has found the true road to this faery castle; and Hope, smiling and elastic, still beckons him foward, until he becomes the victim of delusion, and a long night of despair and old age succeeds the gay sunshine of infatuation and youth. That these disappointments generally arise from our adopting the passions instead of reason as a guide, is universally acknowledged. The obligations which we owe to each other as individuals are indelibly stamped upon our minds by an Omnipotent hand, and they are so clearly indicated to our apprehensions, that they are never infringed without a consciousness of the violation. Even the untutored savage of the wilderness conceals what he has stolen from another. But in this respect the great fault is that we do not tame the licentious extravagance of our dispositions to the practice of those duties, which we know ought to be performed. Enter a circle of fashionable society and observe how variously the persons are employed. The fire side is flanked by a crowd of coxcombs whose emulation is confined to the size of a watch seal or the cut of a coat. Some of them are clerks in compting houses, whose education has not been extended beyond the knowledge of figures and the mechanical use of a pen. In such persons these follies may be palliatedBut in general ther are probationary members of professions : where the gravity of reflection is expected to take the place of idlneess and frivolity instead of pushing forward with eagerness, to those stations in society which are the rewards of industry, of perseverance and of honesty, they "lie awake whole nights to carve the fashion of a new doublet," and spend the next day in displaying it in the streets. Yet these beings know no moments of infelicity, save when they are greeted by the unwelcome salutation of a dun, that monster abhorred by Gods and Men. In another part of the circle you may find an ancient spinster, who practised the seemingly reluctant assent at her toilet in the days of the revolution, and still plays the same arts upon the sons and grand-sons of its heroes. The occupation is as delightful now as it was then, because expectation still promises success. Nigh to her you may see another at a card table-in spite of her wrinkles you may read in her features the legible lines of some of the vilest passions that corrode our nature. She tells you, that it is an innocent amusement, and she only plays to pass away the time. But remark the eagerness with which she inspects the cards: see hope and fear and doubt alternately striving for the mastery on her pale cheek-with what anxiety she awaits her adversary's play: how quickly she grasps her portion of the pitiful stake, or with what indigmant eyes she beholds it swept inte the more successful purse of another! Follow her to the midnight embers of her own hearth. A husband, whose mind has been distracted through the day by the vexations of business, now sleeps, unconscious of the criminal extravagance of her whose comfort was the object of his toil. Does such a woman possess a single emotion of sensibility, and can she meditate without self réproach? Does she enjoy happiness? if she do, then have avarice and meanness lost their names, and vice no longer wears an hideous aspect. The reign of the Eumenides is revived, and libations of wine and honey shall again be poured upon the earth. Ah! no, deceive not thyself aged gambler, disease with his baleful breath will soon accost thee: thy honours will then avail thee nought, and thou wilt find that a phantom has won the odd trick. Health no longer waves her poppies o'er thy couch, and serenity cannot infuse her balm into thy mind.-Unhonoured will pass the solitary mọments of old age and no tear of regret shall bedew thy cold grave, WERE an old Athenian to be now raised from the dead and permitted to appear amongst us, one of the first questions perhaps that he would ask, would be,where are your philosophers? In what gardens do they promulgate wisdom? What tenets do they hold? Do they follow Socrates, Zeno, Plato, Epicurus or Aristotle? Or have they discovered new systems for attaining the chief good that escaped the discernment of these once renowned masters of wisdom. Our answer would no doubt fill him with surprize if not contempt. Philosophers! we should say, we have none. The only pursuit thought worthy of man amongst us, is that of wealth. We have long since found out the chief good, and we are all of one opinion that it is the acquisition of money. Do you seek our aged proficients in wisdom? Go to the exchange, the market and the forum. Do you seek the young living abstemiously, inhabiting huts covered with straw, confined to the limits of a garden, and passing the vigour of their youth in learning to be virtuous? Our's reason far differently. Youth is the season of gayety, of vigour, of licentiousness. Let us live while we live, say they. Let us enjoy every gratification in our power: nor think of wasting our prime in the dull pursuit of science or of virtue. Do you ask for our lyceums, our academies; do you wish to be led to the banks of a new Ilissus or Cephisus, to contemplate the seats of your ancestors, renovated here in all the lustre of ancient Greece. We have none such. We have neither sages to teach, nor pupils that would stop to hear, the art of becoming good and wise. Our rivers roll on in silence their billows to the ocean, nor are they ever invoked in their progress to listen to the harmony of the muses or to reverence the majesty of wisdom. However such language would astonish an Athenian of the age of Pericles, to us it appears nothing extraordinary. Fashions have changed with times, and opinions with circumstances; we indeed think it singular that there ever should have been a race of men such as the ancient philosophers, whose life and study was devoted to the pursuit of truth and the practice of virtue. In the environs of Athens, between the two rivers, Ilissus and Cephisus, were seated the gardens of these philosophers. Held by them as their inheritance, each of them with his scholars spent his life there, and on his death appointed an heir to his garden as regularly as a monarch does to his dominions.-Here, attended by crowds of young men, living on the plainest fare, and enduring themselves to abstinence and hardships, they pursued the delightful employment of searching into truth. They all variously enquiring for and practising according their different systems, that good which was chiefly worthy the attainment of a natural and dignified being such as man. Seated in the shade of these gardens they smiled at the pursuits of avarice and ambition. Free from the ravaging diseases of the mind, which destroy not less than those of the body, they attained an uncommon period of old age and |