The Pythagoreans derived the greatest consolation from that everchanging aspect of material objects, to swallowed it; another deluge would have overwhelmed it; or fire and thunderbolts would have fallen from heaven to destroy and consume it." From this period to that of Arcadius and Honorius,† the Jews became contemptible to all men :-from the east to the west; and to the very extremity of the known earth. Moses himself seems to have predicted this ruin: Thou shalt plant vineyards and dress them," says he, "but shalt neither drink the wine, nor gather the grapes.— *** Thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb, and a by-word among all the nations." It is curious, however, to observe, that when the city had been sometime rebuilt, and a large portion of it peopled with Christians, it was taken, during the reign of Heraclius, the sixty-first Emperor of the Roman succession, by Chosroes, king of the Persians; when he sold no less than 90,000 Christians to the Jews; who reeked their vengeance by inflicting upon them barbarities, scarcely to be paralleled in the history of the most savage nations. The associations, connected with this sublime city, would lead us into a field more hallowed, than I feel myself qualified to enter upon. I shall therefore merely remark, that a picture has been painted, within these few years, which, if I mistake not, exhibits a promise of future excellence, which England has hitherto been entirely unaccustomed to. I allude to HAYDON's picture of Christ's Entry into Jerusalem. West might well confess to me, one day, as I was observing him at work upon his celebrated picture of Christ Rejected, that there was an artist, he understood, rising amongst us, whose fame might, as far as he knew, eclipse them all. A magnanimity, worthy the genius of that amiable character! When I first saw this picture, I was far from being satisfied with the principal figure.-It was not a likeness! There was neither an imitation * De Bell. Judaic, lib. vi. c. 16. VOL. IV. which we have alluded. There is not a finer passage in all Ovid, than that wherein he makes his celebrated of Caracche, nor of Raphael :—it was neither of heaven nor of earth. But upon a more mature reflection, I became reconciled to the propriety of this apparent anomaly. And I now esteem it the most wonderful countenance, that was ever sketched by the hand of man. It could only have proceeded from a genius of the first pictorial order. In the portraits, however, there are two lasting errors :-and one of these the painter, with all the humility of true genius, confessed to me, one evening, in conversation, when I alluded to them. He has introduced Newton, Voltaire, and Wordsworth.-Wordsworth is a fine poet, -he is one of the true sons of Nature: but Milton-Milton ought to have represented the Christian cause in a picture like this.-But the great error is the anachronism.-It turns a real scene into an imaginary one. From a fine poetical picture to a fine picture of poetry: and this, too, from one of those, who, neglected and comparatively unknown, are far more worthy of being so, than many of those, who force their way to public notice by friendly criticisms, or criticisms written by themselves. -Indeed the neglected poetry of this country constitutes a mine of secret wealth, entirely without a parallel, either in France, Italy, Germany, or Spain. The mourner speechless and amazʼd, On that mysterious stranger gaz'd; If young he were, 'twas only seen From lines, that told what once had been ; As if the hand of time 1 Had smote him ere he reach'd his prime. Whate'er * The Widow of Nain. digression from Numa, to give a history of the natural and moral philosophy of Pythagoras': The founder of the Copernican system of astronomy and the Whate'er his being or his birth, His soul had never stoop'd to earth; Or shared or swayed his dwelling place : Held converse with itself alone. Which counts it glory to endure And knows not hope nor fear below; Oh, how shall mortal dare essay, And all that finite sense can deem There heaven in living lustre glow'd; There shone the SAVIOUR-there the GOD. Dale-the Widow of Nain. For a representation of a fine bust of this philosopher in the Vatican, vide Statue del Museo Pio Clementino. Tom. vi. pl. 26. greatest man, if we except Homer, Aristotle, and Newton, Bacon, Shakespeare, and Milton, that ever graced the annals of the human mind! The passage alluded to' was, doubtless, Beattie's prototype. Of chance or change, oh! let not man complain; For from the imperial dome, to where the swain All feel the force of fortune's fickle gale: Art, empire, earth itself, to change are doom'd; Beattie. The sea now separates Britain2 from France; Sicily from Italy; Terra-del-Fuego from Patagonia; Suma 1 Lib. xv. 1. 262. 2 The chalk cliffs of Calais in many essential points resemble those of the coast between Dover and Folkstone. Vide Phillips' paper read to the Geological Society, Nov. 6, 1818. In the time of Diodorus Siculus, Lib. v. s. 22, the shore was so shallow between the Isle of Wight and the main land, that at low water it was dry. The ports of Tornéa, Uléaborg, and others in the Northern Gulf of Finland, on the contrary, lose water every year :-while an old map of Heligoland* attests the evidence of temples, citadels, villages, rivers, and woods, now no longer in being. The recession of the sea on the coast of Chili is very evident. Even some way up the western declivities of the maritime mountains, grottoes are seen hung, as it were, with shells and spars. On the coast of Juana in Japan the sea is retiring, every year, from the great accumulation of shoal, mud, and sand-banks. Many parts of New Holland, too, exhibit evident marks of having been recently covered by the sea. Clarke, Scandinavia, 8. 4to. tra from Malacca; Haman from Quantong; Ceylon from the Carnatic; and the Island of Madagascar from the Continent of Africa. It is more than probable, that all these islands were separated from the main land by some vast convulsion of Nature; and Herodotus even conjectures, that all Thessaly was anciently an entire lake; while Pallas conceives that, in remote times, the Crimea was an island, and that the Black Sea surrounded it. Java, Sumatra, Bali, Sumbaya, and Parang are also believed to have formed one continent; and to have been separated by an earthquake2. Indeed almost all the Asiatic clusters may reasonably be supposed to have been severed from the Asiatic continent. Some have even supposed, that from the circumstance of similar bones having been found in the the alluvial soils of Cerigo, Cyprus, Italy, Sicily, Santorini, and Iceland, that the whole space from Iceland to Cerigo was anciently one entire continent. II. That the sea once covered the earth is clearly established by bones of animals, petrified fishes, strata of shells, and beds of vegetables, under those marine substances, having been found in many countries, in 1 Parang was separated from Sumbaya A. D. 297. Its separation is recorded in the Javan anuals. In 1506 there was a great earthquake in Java: in 1575 a great inundation and the appearance of a comet :—in 1586 another comet is recorded: and in 1594 and 1657 great eruptions of volcanoes. Raffles' History of Java, vol. ii. p. 232. 4to. |