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strumental against the happiness of their sessors, and against the glory and authority of Him who called them into existence!"

"The subject,” replied St. Clair,“is indeed affecting, and the associations connected with this city are very peculiar. The reflections which are urged upon the mind from hour to hour, are acting continually in directions the most opposite. It is a region the most productive of sentiment which, perhaps, the earth contains: the heart is ever at school, and the lessons are perpetually new. The moral anatomy of man is hourly exhibited. I sat down to-day before that noble statue in the Vatican. I caught illustrations of truth, force, beauty, dignity, and virtue, from the features and attitude of that mighty Apollo. I felt the impulse of a great and high model: it raised me above the ordinary level of human actions. I perceived that there were attainments which I had not reached; an excellence, an inspiration, which I had not seized; and I quitted the Vatican happier and firmer and more resolute than I had entered it. I admired the facility of art, and reverenced the abolute mind of the chisel. But afterwards, as if a cold shadow came across my heart, I recollected, that, while a few may have derived impressions of dignity

and of virtue from the works of sculpture, the general character of the art has been to degrade and sensualize the mind. When I have likewise felt all the glow and the happiness arising from bright and powerful illustrations beneath the divine pencil of Raphael, I have sighed to think that the delicacy and purity of domestic life have owed but little to the breathing efforts of the sister art. I have turned away my steps from that unmeasured depository of genius and of sentiment, and, gazing once more upon the eternal city beneath my feet, I have asked, with all the anxiety of an aching spirit, What has this land of loveliness and of taste done for man? From this temple of high beauty and of exquisite skill have any waters issued forth to heal the sickly places of the moral wilderness? Alas! is it not here that the slumbers of the soul are the most entire, that the despotism of ignorance is the most cruel, that the degradation of the intellect is the lowest, and the darkness of the heart the most unbroken and profound? Is it not here that the deep warning falls the loudest upon the startled ear; Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works which were done in thee had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have

repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes: Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment, than for thee!"

“Let us use these reflections," said St. Clair, "with wisdom, and with self-application. We owe much to Rome: it has spoken at least forcibly to our hearts. If it please God that we meet in a happier land, shall we not recur with warmth to the impressions of this? Shall we not often retrace in thought, and sit down in sadness beside Metella's tower, or before Pompey's majestic statue? Shall we not renew our pensive gaze, even to tears, over the holy beauty, the fragile tenderness, the meek delicacy of St. Cecilia's martyred form? Shall we not plant our feet upon the shores of the Tiber, and lose ourselves, like its hurrying waves, in the ocean of unfathomed imaginations? My brother, a high responsibility rests upon us. The past, the present, and the future pour in upon us their everlasting contributions. We stand upon the site of Rome, and speculate perhaps upon the destiny of millions. Let us meditate likewise upon our own. Let the character of God, my friend, assimilate our affections to his wishes, and our enjoyments to his purity. Let us anticipate

the day when the human ruins, desolate as they are, shall be rebuilt by the great Master's hand, and when the sorrows of earth shall be forgotten amidst the songs and the felicities of heaven!"

Arvendel grasped the hand of St. Clair; felt the value of his friendship; and quitted, perhaps for ever, the mighty remnants of a departed empire.

NAPLES.-POMPEII.

ARVENDEL had broken in upon the time originally allotted to Rome, by a visit to Naples. He was unwilling to quit Italy without having shared in the delight experienced by so many travellers on those beautiful shores of the Mediterranean. He arrived late, at the end of the first day's journey, at Terracina; and proceeded early the next morning to Naples. The aspect of the frontier towns of Itri and Fondi, as he entered the Neapolitan territories, greatly affected him. The squalid poverty, the dark and scowling looks of the inhabitants, appeared to pourtray a moral character on which genuine Christianity had scarcely shed a single ray. He had never before beheld the human species under an outward aspect so repulsive and wretched. The scene went to his very soul. It seemed the most fatal comment which he had read, upon the result of a religious and political system in combination to maintain an unchecked despotism over the human mind. The sun had nearly poured his last rays as he passed the