Page:Ainsworth's Magazine - Volume 1.djvu/41
A natural thought! most natural,
The fond desire to leave
Some record, than elaborate tomb
More fitting here, of those for whom
None would be left to grieve.
And so perhaps she caused to plant
These trees that selfsame day.
Traveller! I've dreamt my dream; grudge not
Iny tarriance in this quiet spot—
Pass peaceful on thy way.
C. S.
"Non usitatâ, nee tenui forar
Pennâ biformis per liquidum æthera Vates."
Novelty,—whither hast thou fled? Thou wine of curiosity, manna for the mind, old desire of philosophic Athens, vain hope of imperial Rome, toy of nations, queen of cosmopolites, thou mine of wealth,—where art thou? Paris is pining for thy needful pabulum, and plodding Londoners faint for a taste of their scarce, but sweet viaticum: we seize upon the papers with exulting hope, soon to lay them down in blank despair.—There are no news; stagnation broods upon the world we live in, and Novelty has flown into the AIR.
For, verily, about our dear old mother, this stale and superannuated earth, a man can think, speak, or write nothing new,—positively nothing.—When glorious Greece dressed her up in mythologic state—Agamemnon's Greece, not Otho's—she crowned the Cybele with turrets, maccessible as citadels of Lycia, secret as the towers of Otranto; a sceptre of dominion was fitted to the goddess's right hand, and her left hand wielded the master-key of mysteries; while a slumbering lion, terrible in passive strength, was the monarch's tawny footstool: Earth was then in her honeymoon, as the Sun's young wife, full of beauties unknown, of marvels unexplored. But now the withered beldame dotes, gossiping in garrulous antiquity for ever