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THE COURANT: A SOUTHERN LITERARY JOURNAL
219

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beauty crowned such as the Cyprian queen, of charms
renowned, might know surpassed her own. Why,
Parcæ, why doomed ye such matchless loveliness to die?
Did Pluto claim from earth another bride? or would
the queen of shades in envy hide such beauty from
the world? For never yet hath he whose oar doth
rule the Stygian tide, on his bleak shores, so fair a
spirit met!

"Why did the scythe of death strike down the flower
scarce opened to the sun? Age hath its hour to fade
and fall; the bleak north wind doth spare the gentle
stalk to sweep in ruin bare the mountain-cresting oak.
The tender vine sees not its blossoms ere their fruit de-
cline; nor doth their mother earth untimely mourn the
blighted buds her genial breast had borne to gladden
summer. Could'st thou not, O Death! have won some
elder prey whose failing breath might have redeemed
thy victim?

"Lo! how wail her babes their mother lost! the
youthful matrons ask her, and the sylvan vale whose
haunt she loved, and the luxuriant plain. Ye, who
adored her, breathe the last fond sigh o'er her fair
corpse! Clouds, weep your tributes here! Sun, veil
thy splendours. Pitying winds, reply! sweep a sad re-
quium o'er Alcestis' bier.

"Hide the pale cold face for ever from the gaze of
her lord; and remove the corse into the temple. Let
her be entombed in holy ground. Follow her, comrades,
and chaunt with me the solemn death-song. Let the
virtues of the lost one be the theme of the last lay her
parting spirit hears."

CHORUS.*
Daughter of Pelias! joyful be thy home,
Glorious thy lot in Pluto's realm of gloom,
Thou dweller in a cold and sunless dome!
The dark-haired god who makes the living mourn,
And he, the oarsman of that dreary tide,
Of all Earth's daughters know thee for the pride,
His bark o'er Acherontian waves hath borne!

Poets shall praise thee on the mountain lyre
Seven-stringed—and choral hymns, in tones of fire,
From countless minstrels shall thy name inspire!
In Sparta, when the Carnean month returns,
What time in Heaven the full-orbed moon doth reign;
In happy Athens—such the lofty strain
Thou parting leav'st for souls where genius burns!

Oh! would the power were mine to bring thee forth
From Stygian caves to bless the abodes of earth—
From black Cocytus of infernal birth,
With mighty oar across Hell's tide to sweep!
For thou, most loved of women! thou alone
For thy lord's failing life has given thine own—
Redeeming thus his spirit from the deep.

Light press the earth upon thy virtuous breast!
Ne'er be thy spouse in other arms caressed!
Else thy babes scorn, and Heaven deny him rest!
Thou, whom his sire, with age and sorrow white,
His hoary mother, trembling nigh the grave,
Refused with yielded life their son to save—
Their son, of youthful years the sole delight.

In youth's fresh prime, in beauty's sunny bloom,
Thou, self-devoted for another's doom,
Has past the darksome portals of the tomb!
So true a spouse, ye gods! on me bestow!
Thus in rare bliss, like some bright river's tide,
Serene the measure of my days should glide,
Unchecked by strife, unclouded e'er by woe!

Hath a new morning dawned? Who is't comes nigh,
rivalling Aurora, daughter of the sky? A form of
strength forth from the temple gate leads a veiled fair
one to Admetus' side; "Receive the bounty of relenting
Fate, Proserpine's gift, a new and lovely bride." One
look of scorn—another—she is known! "Alcestis! It
is she! my loved—mine own!"

"You might have thanked me for my trouble, Adme-
tus," said Hercules.

______________________________

THE NILE.—The great problem of the source of the
Nile, which has occupied the attention of the world
during so many ages, may now be considered as definite-
ly solved. Capt. Speke, who has just returned to Eng-
land from an extended tour in Central Africa, in com-
pany with Capt. Burton, discovered a lake, called by the
natives Nyanza, but by the Arabs Ukerewe, which ap-
pears to be the great reservoir of the Nile. It extends
from 2° 30' south to 3° 30' north latitude, lying across
the equator in east longitude 33°. Its waters are the
drainage of numerous hills, which surround it on almost
every side. The new lake washes out the Mountains of
the Moon, as at present existing in our atlases.

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* We trust the readers of Euripides will pardon us the use of the
Chorus in his tragedy of "Alcestis," which we have ventured to
translate, above.

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A SOUTHERN LITERARY JOURNAL 219
DESTINY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
The time seems fast approaching when the English
language will exercise over the other languages of the
world a predominance which our forefathers little dreamt
of. When Lord Bacon aimed at futurity in his writ-
igs, he set himself to write in Latin. "I do conceive,"
he says, "that the Latin volumes, being the universal
language, may last as long as books last." Milton--
"being content with these islands as my world "--con-
fined himself in his great works to the language of
these islands; "he cared not to be once named abroad,"
though perhaps he "might have attained to that," had
he desired it. So little was English literature known
in France two hundred years ago, that in certain direc-
tions given for the anangement of a library, all Eng-
lish books are passed over with the curt observation,
"vix metre transmittunt." According to Waller, it was
a crowning achievement of Cromwell's vast mind that
our language is spoken even "under the tropic.'' The
language of Britain crossed the sea long before its lite-
rature, for in Swift's time the literature is spoken of as
being still confined "to these two islands." Dr. John-
son, about a century ago, when applying to Britain a
passage in the "Somnium Scipionis" of Cicero--" omnis
enim terra quae colitur a vobis, angusta verticibus, lateri-
bus latior, parva quaedam insula est"---proceeded to
apply to our island the continuation of the same passage,
forbidding us to hope that its renown will ever pass the
stream of Ganges or the cliffs of Caucasus.

But one of our Elizabethan poets, the gentle Daniel,
who has been spoken of as the Atticus of his age, sur-
mised that better things were in store for us. After
lamenting that the speech of our " scarce-discovered
isle" is so little known to the rest of the world, he ex-
presses a wish as follows :

"Oh, that the ocean did not bound our style

Within these strict and narrow limits so;

But that the melody of our sweet isle

Might now be heard to Tiber, Arne and Po,

That they might know how far Thames does out-go

The music of declined Italy !"

Despairing of its gaining ground in Italy, he foresees
its triumph in America:

"Who knows whither we may vent

The treasures of our tongue? To what strange shores

This gain of our best glory may be sent,

T' enrich unknowing nations with our stores?

What worlds in the yet unformed Occident

May come refined with accents that are ours?"

The poet's aspirations are now fulfilled. Soon after
he wrote this passage the English language, was planted
on a narrow slip of land on the western continent; it
grew apace, and its prospects are now the most splendid
that the world has ever seen. The entire number of
persons who speak certain of the languages of Northern
Europe--languages of considerable literary repute---is
not equal to the number simply added every year, by
the increase of population, to those who speak the Eng-
lish language in England and America alone. There
are persons now living who will, in all probability, see
it the vernacular language of one hundred and fifty
millions of the earth's civilized population. Although
French is spoken by a considerable proportion of the
population in Canada, and although in the United States
there is, a large and tolerably compact body of German-
speaking Germans, these languages must gradually melt
away, as the Welsh and the Gaelic have melted away
before the English in our own island. The time will
speedily be here when a gigantic community in America
--besides rising and important colonies in Africa and
Australia---will speak the same language, and that the
language of a nation holding a high position among the
empires of Europe. When this time shall have ar-
rived, the other languages of Europe will be reduced to
the same relative position with regard to the predomi-
nant language as that in which the Basque stands to the
Spanish, or the Finnish to the Russian. For such pre-
dominance the English language possesses admirable
qualifications; standing, as it does, midway between the
Germanic and Scandinavian branches of the ancient
Tuetonic, and also uniting the Tuetonic with the Ro-
manic in a manner to which no other language has any
pretension. A prize was given in 1796 by the Academy
at Berlin for an essay on the comparison of fourteen
ancient and modern languages of Europe, and in that
essay the author, Jenisch, assigns the palm of general
excellence to the English; it has also been allowed by
other German critics that in regard to the qualifications
which it possesses for becoming a general interpreter of
tlte literature of Europe, not even their own language
can compete with it.--- Edinburgh Review.

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PRAYERS AT A WHIPPING.---In the early history of
Harvard University, corporal punishment was one of
the most common means of correction--the tutors chas-
tising the students at discretion. By the college annals
it appears that when one Thomas Sargeant was publicly
whipped in the hall, the exercises were opened and
closed with prayer!

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THE RHINE AND THE HUDSON.---Lord Morpeth, now
Earl Carlisle, in his "Diary in Turkish and Greek
Waters," thus contrasts the beauties of the Rhine and
the Hudson rivers :

"June 6.---Started at six to ascend the Rhine. I will
not invade the province of poets, tourists, and hand-
books, by any detail of its well-known scenery. I had
felt some curiosity to compare it with the Hudson. Even
apart from all association with history, legend and song,
every building on the Rhine, from castle to granary, is
essentially picturesque, while every building in the
United States, whatever its other more important char-
acteristics may be, is essentially the reverse. Then the
vineyards on the Rhine, though not strictly a beautiful
feature, give an air, or, at least, an idea, of genial ani-
mation to the steep slopes and narrow clefts in which
they are imbedded. So much on the side of the Rhine.
I am inclined to think that the natural sites and out-
lines of the Hudson are finer; but the great point of
superiority is the look of movement on the river itself;
every one of its varied reaches is sure of being at all
times spangled with white sails; whereas, I felt quite
astonished at the small appearance of traffic on the
Rhine. I had always looked upon it as the great high-
way of all the German nations, for the tolls of which
free cities and powerful leagues had competed, and
states and empires protocolled and fought; but one of
the large timber-rafts, and a few steamers of very nar-
row girth, were all that I saw to-day to compete with all
the life and business that swarm on the Hudson, the
Thames, or the Clyde. This is, no doubt, very much
owing to the swiftness of the current; but still, it de-
tracts sensibly from the animation of the landscape. I
I ought, in fairness, to add that it was a very undecora-
tive day. I landed at Biberich, and walked in the gar-
dens of the Grand Duke of Nassau, which are rather
pretty, with great bloom of flowers, but on a dead level,
and with much dirty-coloured water. In a pavilion, I
saw a very pretty statue of the first wife, a daughter of
the Grand Duke Michael, of Russia. I slept at Frank­fort,
at the Hotel de Russie."

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COSTLY BIBLE.--There is, in the possession of a lady
in London, a copy of Macklin's Bible, in fifty-four large
octavo volumes, illustrated with nearly seven thousand
engravings, from the age of Michael Angelo to that of
Reynolds and West. It also contains two hundred
original drawiugs by Doutherbourg. The prints and
etchings include the works of Raffaele, Albert Durer,
Callot, Rembrandt, and other masters, consisting of
representations of every fact, circumstance and object
mentioned in the Holy Scriptures. The most authentic
Scriptural atlases are also bound up with the volume, add
it contains designs of all plants, animals, fossils, etc., as
have been adduced in proof of a universal deluge. The
Bible was the property of the late Mr. Bowry, who
spent much money and time in the collection and ar-
rangement of the engravings, and is said to have de-
voted thirty years rendering it perfect. It was insured
for £3,000.

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AN OLD MAN'S SECRET.---An Italian bishop strug-
gled through great difficulties without repining, and
met with much opposition, without ever betraying the
least impatience. An intimate friend of his, who high-
ly admired these virtues, which he thought impossible
to imitate, one day asked the bishop if he could commu-
nicate his secret of being always easy ?

"Yes," replied the old man, "I can teach you my
secret with great facility; it consists in nothing more
than making a right use of my eyes."

His friend begged him to explaim himself.

"Most willingly," returned the bishop. "In what-
ever state I am, I first of all look up to heaven, and re-
member that my principal business here is to get there;
I then look down on the earth, and call to mind how
small a space I shall occupy in it when I come to be in-
terred; I then look abroad on the world, and observe
what multitudes there are who are, in all respects, more
unhappy than myself. Thus I learn where true happi-
ness is placed, where all our cares must end, and how
very little reason I have to repine or complain.''

[Exchange.
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OUR hopes, though they never happen, yet are some
kind of happiness; as trees, while they are still grow-
ing, please in the prospect, though they bear no fruit.

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NATURE knows no pause in progress and development,
and attaches her curse on all inaction.

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"CAUGHT in her own net," as the man said when he
saw one of the fair sex hitched in her crinoline.

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PROFUSION restores to the public the wealth which
avarice has detained from it for a time.

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When ill news comes too late to be serviceable to your
neighbour, keep it to yourself.