All this, and, more endearing still than all,
Thy constant flow of love, that knew no fall,
Ne'er roughened by those cataracts and breaks,
That humor interposed too often makes;
All this still legible in Memory's page,
And still to be so to my latest age,
Adds joy to duty, makes me glad to pay
Such honors to thee as my numbers may;
Perhaps a frail memorial, but sincere,

Not scorned in heaven, though little noticed here.
Could Time, his flight reversed, restore the hours,
When, playing with thy vesture's tissued flowers,
The violet, the pink, and jessamine,

I pricked them into paper with a pin,

(And thou wast happier than myself the while, Wouldst softly speak, and stroke my head and smile), Could those few pleasant days again appear,

Might one wish bring them, would I wish them here?
I would not trust my heart;-the dear delight
Seems so to be desired, perhaps I might.
But no-what here we call our life is such,
So little to be loved, and thou so much,
That I should ill requite thee to constrain
Thy unbound spirit into bonds again.

Thou, as a gallant bark, from Albion's coast
(The storms all weathered and the ocean crossed)
Shoots into port at some well-havened isle,

Where spices breathe, and brighter seasons smile,
There sits quiescent on the floods, that show
Her beauteous form reflected clear below,
While airs impregnated with incense play
Around her, fanning light her streamers gay;

So thou, with sails how swift! hast reached the shore
Where temptests never beat nor billows roar;
And thy loved consort on the dangerous tide
Of life long since has anchored by thy side.
But me, scarce hoping to attain that rest,
Always from port withheld, always distressed-
Me howling blasts drive devious, tempest-tossed,
Sails ripped, seams opening wide, and compass lost;
And day by day some current's thwarting force
Sets me more distant from a prosperous course.

Yet, oh, the thought that thou art safe, and he!
That thought is joy, arrive what may to me.
My boast is not that I deduce my birth
From loins enthroned, and rulers of the earth;
But higher far my proud pretensions rise-
The son of parents passed into the skies.
And now, farewell!-Time unrevoked has run
His wonted course; yet what I wished is done,
By Contemplation's help, not sought in vain,
I seem to have lived my childhood o'er again;
To have renewed the joys that once were mine,
Without the sin of violating thine;

And, while the wings of fancy still are free,
And I can view this mimic show of thee,
Time has but half succeeded in his theft-
Thyself removed, thy power to soothe me left.

COX, SIR GEORGE WILLIAM, an English clergyman and historian, born in 1827. He was educated at Rugby and at Trinity College, Oxford, and entered Holy Orders in 1850. On the death of an uncle, Sir Edmund Cox, in 1877, he succeeded to the baronetcy. He is the author of Poems, Legendary and Historical (1850); Life of St. Boniface (1853); Tales from Greek Mythology, and The Great Persian War (1861); Tales of the Gods and Heroes (1862); Tales of Thebes and Argos (1863); A Manual of Mythology (1867); Latin and Teutonic Christendom and The Mythology of the Aryan Nations (1870); A History of Greece and The Crusades (1874); A General History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great (1877); History of the British Rule in India (1881); Introduction to the Science of Comparative Mythology and Folk-lore (1881); Lives of Greek Statesmen (1885); Life of Bishop Colenso (1888); The Church of England (1888). He also assisted in editing The Dictionary of Science, Literature and Art, and has contributed articles to the Encyclopædia Britannica.

CHARACTERISTICS OF GREEK MYTHOLOGY.

Living in a land of ice-bound fjords and desolate fells, hearing the mournful wail of the waving pine-branches, looking on the stern strife of frost and fire, witnessing year by year the death of the short-lived summer, the Northman was inured to sombre if not gloomy thought,

to the rugged independence of the country as opposed to the artificial society of a town. His own sternness was but the reflection of the land in which he lived; and it was reflected, in its turn, in the tales which he told, whether of the heroes or the gods. The Greek, dwelling in sunnier regions, where the interchange of summer and winter brought with it no feelings of overpowering gloom, exhibited in his words and songs the happiness which he experienced in himself. Caring less, perhaps, to hold communion with the silent mountains and the heaving sea, he was drawn to the life of cities, where he could share his joys and sorrows with his kinsmen. The earth was his mother: the gods who dwelt on Olympus had the likeness of men, without their pains or their doom of death. There Zeus sat on his golden throne, and beside him was the glorious Apollôn, not the deified man, but the sun-god invested with a human personality. But (with whatever modifications caused by climate and circumstances) both were inheritors of a common mythology, which with much that was beautiful and good united also much that was repulsive and immoral. Both, from the ordinary speech of their common forefathers, had framed a number of legends which had their gross and impure aspects, but for the grossness of which they were not (as we have seen), and could not be, responsible.

But if the mythology of the Greeks is in substance and in development the same as that of the North, they differed widely in their later history. That of the Greeks passed through the stages of growth, maturity, and decay, without any violent external repression. The mythical language of the earliest age had supplied them with an inexhaustible fountain of legendary narrative; and the tales so framed had received an implicit belief, which, though intense and unquestioning, could scarcely be called religious, and in no sense could be regarded as moral. And just because the belief accorded to it was not moral, the time came gradually when thoughtful men rose, through earnest effort (rather, we would say, through Divine guidance), to the conviction of higher and clearer truth. If even the Greek of the Heroic age found in his mythology neither a rule of life

nor the ideal of that Deity whom in his heart he really worshipped, still less would this be the case with the poets and philosophers of later times. To schylus Zeus was the mere name of a god whose actions were not those of the sons of Kronos; to Sophocles it made no difference whether he were called Zeus or by any other name as long as he might retain the conviction of His eternity and His righteousness. . . . Socrates might teach the strictest responsibility of man to a perfectly impartial judge even while he spoke of the mystical tribunal of Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aiakos. He was accused, indeed, of introducing new gods. This charge he denied, and with truth: but in no sense whatever was he a worshipper of the Olympian Zeus, or of the Phobos who smote the Pythian dragon.Mythology of the Aryan Nations.