and Alexander; the city of Epaminondas; and the plains of Platæa.

VII.

Near Athens there is a field, which has every delightful accompaniment. It lies in scenery, as beautiful to the imagination, as the most romantic fancy can require. Six mountains form an amphitheatre towards the sea; the river Charadrus flows across the plain; while ruins, columns and tombs, give additional interest to the whole. Can the name of this plain give an interest, superior to all the charms, which Nature has bestowed upon it? Read the inscription on yon column of marble, gentle stranger, and judge for thyself. It is the PLAIN of MARATHON ! And the tomb, which lies yonder, is the tomb of MILTIADES!

The man of abject soul in vain

Shall walk the Marathonian plain;

Or thrid the shadowy gloom,

That still invests the guardian pass,
Where stood sublime Leonidas,

Devoted to the tomb.

Wordsworth.

"I have visited the birth-places and the tombs of many excellent men," said Helvidius, "but there are three monuments I would traverse half the globe to visit. The first is that of KAMHI, Emperor of China, to whom Czar Peter the First sent an embassy in the year 1719, and whose reign was called the Tay Ping, or "the reign of great rest and peace." The second is that of PIASTUS, who from a peasant became a king; and who, from being the pride of the peasantry, became the glory of Poland. The third is that of WIL

LIAM DE PORSELET, the only Frenchman, who survived the massacre of the French in the island of Sicily. This plot was three years in forming, and executed in one night; the French being barbarously murdered, at Easter time, when the bells rung to vespers. The massacre lasted only two hours; and in the morning only one Frenchman remained in the whole island. This man was William de Porselet, who received the indulgence, because, while governor of a small town, he had recommended himself to the Sicilians, by his probity and humanity.

CHAPTER VIII.

When we visit the sepulchres of the good, or the monuments of the great,-which we never do but in reverential silence,-the same causes produce the same emotion. Leo Allatius1 made a pilgrimage to Bolissus, near Chios, for the purpose of visiting the ruins of a house, which tradition had assigned, the birthplace of Homer. He wept with his companions.

The Athenian dramatic writers were accustomed to recite their verses at the tomb of Æschylus: the Spartans held an annual festival in honour of Lycurgus for several centuries;-Longinus honoured the memory of Plato in the same manner; and Plutarch,visiting the tombs of Plato and Socrates, celebrated their anniversaries. How much more grateful must his feelings have been, than those arising to Alexander, when per

1 Leo Allatius de Patriâ Hom., c. xiii. Ess. on Homer, sect. i. p. 38.

forming rites at the tomb of Ajax!! Silius Italicus, whom we may style the Drayton of Italy, and who, in his latter years, retired into the country, and devoted himself to the study of philosophy and the cultivation of the Muses, and who possessed several villas, one of which belonged to Virgil, and another to Cicero, took a sensible pleasure, in annually visiting the tomb of the former';-that Plato of poets! as Lampridius calls him; and in performing funeral? rites in honour of his memory. Statius performed the same anuual ceremony.

At the same tomb, after the expiration of several centuries, Giovanni Boccacio resolved to quit the profession of a merchant, and to dedicate his life to poetry and literature. The tomb of Virgil!-Ah! who would hesitate to climb the summit of the Apennines, or descend the deepest cavern of Calabria, to pluck a flower, or steal a little dust, from the monument of Virgil?—That monument, inscribed with the names of so many kings, so many statesmen, and so many poets.

Hélas! je n'ai point vu ce séjour enchanté,

Ces beaux lieux où Virgile, &c. &c.

Alas! I've never roved those vales among,
Where Virgil whilom tun'd his sacred song;
Ent by the bard I swear, and muse sublime,
I'll go!-O'er Alps on Alps oppos'd I'll climb;
Full of his name, with all his frenzy fir'd,

There will I read the strains, those heavenly scenes inspired.

1 Diod. Sic. lib. xvii.

Anon. 1789.

2 Plin. lib. iii. ep. 21.

3 The Greeks and Romans frequently kept the anniversary of the death of their friends.-What an affecting instance is that in the Eneid, where Audromache observes this interesting ceremony.-Æn. lib. iii. 1. 301.

II.

At Kew, we neglect the palace, to pause over the tombs of Meyer, Zoffany, and Gainsborough; and, at Richmond, with what delight do we visit the monument of Thomson; and sit in the bower, in which he used to listen to the nightingales :

Remembrance oft shall haunt the shore,

When Thames in summer wreaths is drest;

And oft suspend the dashing oar,

To bid his gentle spirit rest.

On the Tyrrhene shore of Italy stand the ruins of three large temples, nearly entire. For nine hundred years, those ruins had not once been heard of. In the middle of the last century, however, they were discovered by accident: and roses, blooming upon the walls, first suggested the truth, that those temples were the only remaining vestiges of the ancient city of Pæstum. Polybius says, that Paulus Emilius destroyed seventy cities in Epirus: and yet the fate of all those cities combined does not excite our sympathy, so much as the fragments of this single one.

With what eagerness should we trace the grove, in which Virgil wrote the first line of his Pastorals; with what subdued melancholy should we enter the cave, in which Camöens composed the chief part of his Lusiad!"The angel grows up in divine knowledge," says Mùlòvi Manovi; "the brute in savage ignorance; and the son of man stands hesitating between the two."

In these associations the mind approximates to the nature of angels: for the soul seems to acquire a quality, beyond its general value, as the imagination lingers on the fragments of Italian temples; the glowing atmosphere of the Greek islands; the serene skies of Gascoigny and Languedoc; the recesses of Madagascar; the glens of the Andes; the walls of Memphis, and the pyramids of Giza; the caves of Ele phanta, and the prostrate columns of Palmyra.

Pompeii becomes more endeared to the memory, when the guide has pointed to the house, still standing, which once belonged to Sallust: and the time will, perhaps, one day come, when the tombs and birth-places of Scott, Wordsworth, and Southey; Crabbe, Bowles, Campbell, Montgomery, Bloomfield, and other British poets, will be visited with nearly an equal delight.

When Dupaty was at Frescati, the ancient Tusculum, his guide proposed to conduct him to the villas Pamphili, Ludovisi, and Moudragone." No," said he, "shew me the villa of Marcus Tullius Cicero !" It was no longer to be seen. And when Cicero himself arrived at Syracuse, he desired to be immediately led to the tomb of Archimedes. No one knew that such a tomb existed. They conducted him, however, to the place of sepulchres; and there, after some search, he discovered a small column, bearing the figures of a sphere and a cylinder, entirely concealed by brambles. The inscription was almost defaced.-"Thus," exclaims Tully, in his Tusculan Questions,1 "one of the

1 Lib. v. 3.