But while, like some gray stump, he He filled his basket full and gay,

THOUGHTS ON ORPHEUS.

On, the blessing upon and throughout the whole man, of the first real, warm, green light, and genial glow of Spring! Not as it is seen in towns, giving but a more brazen face to brick presumption, but as it steals gently upon the country, amid rocks and trees, into the deep shade, like a longmourned spirit returning re-embodied from the dead, bearing at once the twofold charm of earthly and Elysian loveliness. Such was Alcestis-Alcestis! the restored Alcestis! We have been reading the beautiful tale the volume of Euripides is open upon the now growing grass--our scholars, whose youthful, hopeful hearts, drew in from the gentle Greek generosity, and the sweet passion, even hence incipient, and soon ready to burst the bud, and open with the promise of perfect love our scholars have bounded away like young fawns stricken, not unconscious of the pleasing wound; and we, lying upon the sunny green, saw them upon the verge of the shade, the dark eye, as it were, of the deep dell before us-and a change came o'er them and us. Is it dream or vision? They have robed behind the trees, and bearded too-they present us with their tasks we take them graciously. So-they are signed, Euripides-Shakspeare Alcestis the Winter's Tale. Then two come up behind them, and look over their shoulders. We know them instinctively-Virgil and Ovid; and there leans the melancholy Orpheus beneath the caverned rock; and deep in its hollow are dimly seen Eurydice and Alcestis in parting embrace, and one with head averted, and in deeper shadow-Alcestis bending forwards, and half in a reflected mysterious light. Then came another, and took up the lyre which Orpheus had left unheeded beside him. He struck; it was Gluck's "Euridice:" "Che farò senza Euridice? dóve andrò senza il mio ben?" Oh, the heart-piercing sounds! Orpheus started up and rushed into the deepest wood, and the voice of his moaning was lost in the indistinct howling of the dimly moving tigers that followed the incantation of his wo. Then did the measure change

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to a dying sound; and Alcestis fell back in the shade, fainting upon the supporting arm of a scarce distinguishable figure; and the music was also Gluck's, "Le pur cara è a me la vita." We awoke the vision passed -Oh, that it would return!

But here is the most substantive presence of it still before us. Here lie the sun-lit pages worthy of such illumination-Euripides, Virgil, Ovid, Orpheus, Shakspeare; and, apart, what is this modest volume? Elton! His tale, too, is of Orpheus-it is a dream. We must, however, keep up our character of Master, and hear our class. The tale of Orpheus, is doubtless, the original of the plays. And how simple the story is! Ŏrpheus, a man-more, a poet-a husband-more, an adoring husbandloses his wife. Lyre in hand, he descends to the infernal regions, and by his art of song obtains the boon he seeks-her restoration, but upon the condition that he must not look back in the passage to the upper world. He is overcome by his love, and regards not the condition. He looks back, and she is lost to him-for ever! Here all is tragic, for Orpheus himself is torn to pieces by the Bacchants whose love he scorns. How could this tale have arisen but from a dream? how often does the blessedness of sleep restore !-Then the waking-the looking back-and what utter desolation is there of the heart! As Wordsworth says of his Lucy, "Oh! the difference to me," a fully exact translation of the passage in Euripides of the exclamation of the husband of Alcestis-roλù yap ro μεσον.

Admetus. σχῆμα δόμων, πῶς εἰσέλθω ;

Πῶς δ' οἰκήσων, μεταπίπτοντος Δαίμονος ; οι μοι· πολύ γαρ τὸ μέσον.

It is a domestic reality, and has sunk deep in all its possible wo into many a fond heart-thence how forlorn! There is not among ancient fables one of deeper interest, nor set off with greater variety in the picturesque developement of its scenery and action. The dramatic pieces of the Greek,