Thy strings adapt their varied strain
To every pleasure, every pain,
Which mortal tribes were born to prove;
And straight our passions rise or fall,
As, at the wind's imperious call,
The ocean swells, the billows move.

When midnight listens o'er the slumbering earth,
Let me, O Muse, thy solemn whispers hear:
When morning sends her fragrant breezes forth,
With airy murmurs touch my opening ear,
--AKENSIDE.


AESCHYLUS.

AEschylus, the first poet who rendered the drama illustrious,
and into whose character and writings the severe and ascetic
doctrines of Pythagoras entered largely, was born at Eleu'sis,
in Attica, in 525 B.C. He fought, as will be remembered, in the
combats of Marathon and Salamis, and also in the battle of Plataea.
He therefore flourished at the time when the freedom of Greece,
rescued from foreign enemies, was exulting in its first strength;
and his writings are characteristic of the boldness and vigor
of the age. In his works we find the fundamental idea of the
Greek drama--retributive justice. The sterner passions alone
are appealed to, and the language is replete with bold metaphor
and gigantic hyperbole. Venus and her inspirations are excluded;
the charms of love are unknown: but the gods--vast, majestic,
in shadowy outline, and in the awful sublimity of power-pass