gcls_courant_028 7

THE COURANT; A SOUTHERN LITERARY JOURNAL. 223

[Column 1]

ated with a finger." It would be easy to multiply these proofs,
but those which have been adduced will serve, I conceive, to
establish at least a high degree of probability, that the views of
Cicero in reference to an immortal existence beyond the grave,
were something more than an "airy speculation."

A few reflections upon [these] views may not be out of place.
Cicero lived before the era [of] Christinaity. The heathen world
was enveloped in superstition and idolatry ; and the wonder is,
not that he participated at all in the false opinions and silly
prejudices of his age, but that he was able to emancipate himself
from many of its most [pernicious] dogmas, and rise to a
conception of a purer virtue [and] a more heaven-born morality.
May we not say of him, as of Socrates and Plato, in the language
of Theodore Martin, that he had a measure of "that
Divine spirit which raised some of the ancient writers almost
to a level with the inspired authors of the books of our Faith!"
He could part with his dear friends, his beloved Cato, without
reference to the deeemed in the Cathedral City, be put without
violence into this mouth? "Then you will receive the comfort
of all your toil, and have joy for all your sorrow—in that place
you must wear crowns of gold, and enjoy the perpetual sight
and visions of the Holy One—then you shall serve him continually
with praise, with shouting and thanksgiving—there you
shall enjoy your friends again who have gone tither before
you." Who is not moved by the contrast echibited in Horace,
for example, who, though relieved of some of the grosser superstitions
of the heathen mythdogy, never advanced in his
religion and philosophy beyond the narrow boundaries of earth.
He mourns the death of Virgil, Tibbulus, Quinctius, and, above
all, the Macaenas, with a bitterness which nothing can assuage,
because the grave separated then for ever. Singula de nobis
anni praedantur euntes, says a writer of our own day, is a cheerless
reflection to a man who has no assured hope beyond the
present time. This common belief of the ancient heathen is
thus strikingly expressed in the lamentations of a Greek poet
over his friend:

"Man wakes no more : Man [peerless], valiant, wise,

Once chill'd by death, sleeps hopeless in the dust,

A long, unbroken, never-ending sleep."

If there be something in the meeting of Milton and Galileo
in Italy which can elevate the soul of the biographer to rapture,
if lofty the sublime was their conversation, what language
can describe the entrance into the Celestial City, "the
escort of the King's trumpeters clothed in white and shining
raiment, making the very Heavens to echo with their melodious
sound;" the re-union of friends ; the countless assembly of
prophets, and saints and martyrs ; the holy converse, and the
eternal, peaceful abiding in that lo[v?]ely Paradise, where the
temper "never more henceforth will dare set foot." This is
the special comfort of those who lie in the light of Christian
revelation ; a comfort, we believe, which has not been wholly
withheld from the enlightened heathen.

This common doctrine of the Christian faith is thus expressed
by Archbishop Whatley : "I am convinced that the
extension and perfection of friendship will constitute a great
part of the future happiness of the best. Many have lived in
various and distant ages and countries who have been, in their
characters, in the agrrement of their tastes and suitableness
of dispositions, perfectly adapted for friendships with each
other, but who, of course, could never meet in this world." I
am aware that the same eminent author and distinguished dignitary
of the Church has concluded that neither Plato nor
Cicero, nor any of the great men of antiquity, had any belief
in the doctrine of a future state. And he finds, as he conceives,
abundant proof in respect to the latter, in the correspondence
between himself and Servius Sulpicius, on occassion
of the death of his beloved daughter, Tullia. That the
heathen world had the same assured faith that is indulged in
the present day, is asserted by none ; for that would be tp
make the express relvation of the doctine idle and supererogatory.
I think, however, that the learned prelate has made
too much of the matter. It is true that the consolations offered
by Sulpicius are of a worldly character ; that they are exclusively
derived from the source of philosophy. But there is a
pregnant passage in his letter, which is not unworthy of mention.
"Apply to your private use those judicious precepts you
have administed to the public. [illegible] the dead retain any consciousness
of what is here transacted, your daughter's effection,
I am sure, was such, both to you and all her relations, that
she can by no means desire you should abandon yourself to
this excess of grief." But let it be remembered that this
affliction befel Cicero at a period of gloom and despondency ;
that he had been stripped to a great extent of his honours and
his dignities ; that he was "cut off from all those alleviating
occupations in which fortune and industry had qualified him
to engage," and that his great source of consolation was his
lovely and accomplished daughter." "While," says he, "I
was endeavouring to reconcile my mind to a patient endurance
of those ills, there was one to whose tender offices I could have
recourse, and in the sweetness of whose conversation I could

[Column 2]

discharge all the cares and anxiety of my heart. But this last
fatal stab to my peace has torn open the wounds which seemed
in some measure to have been tolerably healed." In this strain
he continues to mourn the death of his beloved Tullia.—
Crushed and overwhelmed by the weight of his private sorrows,
he leaves is own house, which can only remind him of
his terrible calamity, and betakes himself to the roof of his
friend Atticus, from which this letter was written. That for
the time he should have been so absorbed in his personal loss
as not to have looked to those higher consolations which he
had so impressively inculcated, is not to me very strange or
wonderful ; for such things not unfrequently occur even under
the full light of the Gospel.

I have now concluded what I had to say. If i have shown
that old age has its honours, its glories, its virtues, its advantages,
if, to any of your readers, I have taken away from its
weight of sorrows and calamities, I shall feel that I have rendered
an acceptable service. If I may be pardoned, I will add
that, like the great Roman, advancing years have directed my
attention to the subject. My life is now tinged with the hues
of autumn, and next, Winter, the last revolving season—old
age—will be upon me. Soon I shall have need for all its consolations,
and, thanks to Heaven, it is not without them.
"Then, blessings on the sages and the bards who, in the
strength of the trust that was within them, have feared not to
crown old age with a diadem of flowers and light! Shame on
the satirists, who, in their vain regret, and worse ingratitude,
have sought to strip it of all impulses of soul and sense, and
leave it a sorry shivering sight, almost too degrared for
pity's tears!" APPIUS.

PARRY & MCMILLAN have got out "An Inquiry into the Formation
of Washington's Address." The author, Horce Biney,
observes : "The writer's aim in this essay, has been certainty
in the facts, and accuracy in his deductions from them.
He has, therefore, scurpulously endeavored to avoid embelishment
in either of these respects, while he has been regardless
of it in any other. He hopes that the result will give
relief to the friends of Washington and to the friends of
Hamilton, who for the most part were the same persons while
the objects of their regard were living, some appearances to
the contrary notwithstanding. It cannot be denied that there
have been since, as there were in the previous day, several
appearances which have manifested greater favour to Washington
and less to Hamilton, independently of the preëminent
military and patriotic services of the former ; and that these
appearances still continue, and have been much enlarged ; but
perhaps with this distinction, that Washington is praised more
and followed less, while Hamilton is praised less, and at least
in the great mass of fsical, commerical, and judicial principles
and arrangements, which he recommend for the Treasury
and for the country, is followed more. But the probability,
nevertheless, is, that the friends of both, as supporters of the
same policy, are still the same persons. Their number will
increase, no doubt, from day to day, as these great men shall
become more thoroughly known by their writings, and more
impartially compared with others ; but it is to their friends
only, present and to come, that the writer can promise himself
to supply either facts or deductions in regard to the Farewell
Address, that will be of any considerable interest."

AN ORANGE GROVE.—The orange grove of Milis, in the Island
of Sardinia, has few rivals in Europe. Milis is a tract of
country overgrown with nothing else but orange trees : and the
fruit on the trees is not distributed throughout the branches,
interspersed among the verdure with a certain sparse and econmical
regularity ; it hangs in multitudinous clusters, dragging
to the ground the unhappy branch which is too weak to
support its weight. Neither are you to imagine a mere clump
of orange trees whose perfume you stop and snuff as a roadside
treat before you proced on your way, but must fancy a
wood, a veritable forest. As far as the eye can penetrate the
balmy regions, it meets with oranges in the middle distance,
and oranges upon the horizon. There is an abuse of vegetable
treasure. Your foor meets with an obstacle—it is a fruit,
which you would kick aside as if it were a stone. You want to indicate
some distant object—you pick up an orangea nd throw it
in a given direction without the slightest scruple. You gather
oe to taste ; good as it is, you eat a quarter are carelessly toss
the rest aside. The blossoms send forth clouds of perfume
which overthrow and intoxicate your senses. It is worth while
to visit this wood at the time of fruit gathering, which is effected
by the simplest of processes. A cloth is spread beneath
the tree ; a man perched amid the branches sends the fruit
tumbling down pel-mel. When piled in heaps three or four
feet in height, it sends forth an inconceivable aroma.

BRADDOCK'S SASH.—It is said that Braddock was borne off
the field in a "tumbril," says an exhcnage, and then put upon
a horse, but was at last carried in a hammock or litter. Doubtless
the latter was formed by his sash fastened to poles. This
sash has an interesting history. It was of red silk, very large
and very strong. In long after years, it is said to have come
into the possession of a gentleman in New Orleans, which is
probable enough ; for Braddockdied with no near relative to
reclaim it—fatherless, motherless, childless, and without brother
or sister. After the Mexican war of 1846 had begun, this
gentleman sent to sash to General Gaines, with the injunction
to present it to the General who should bear himself best in
the war. After the battle of Buena Vista, Gaines believed the
trophy had been won, and hastened to present it to General
Taylor. WIth reluctance, and, after much persuasion, he took
it, and put it in his military chest, and kept it till he died, on
the 9th day of July, 1850, the ninety-fifth anniversary of
Braddock's defeat—another of the sad and singular coincidences
with which our story of to-day abounds. It had wrought
in it "E. B., 1707," and had upon it stains of blood. Additional
proof of its authenticity is in the fact that Braddock's
father, whose name he bore, was a Brigadier General in the
Coldstreams in 1707.

[Column 3]

INTERESTING ITEMS.

"A PARAGRAPH has been going the rounds of the newspapers
lately, to the effect that Wm. Pitt is the only man of eminence
who has not tried his hand at poetry. It is a mistake. In Lord
Campbell's Lives of the Chief Justices of England, in the biography
of Lord Mansfield, it is stated that Mansfield and Pitt
were competitors for the poetical prize at College."—Exchange

The author of the paragraphy above has confounded the
father and the son. The Earl of Chatham, it is sufficiently
known, did versiculate some in his earlier days. But, nevertheless,
the younger Pitt had something to do with poetry, if a
certain story is true. It is related of him that, once upon a
time, having tarried long at the house with—we forget whom,
and will call him Bob, for short, they went to the House, and
on entering it, the "heaven-born," after staring wildly about,
exclaimed to his companion :

"I can not see the Speaker, Bob! can you?"
"Not see the Speaker, Billy! I see two—"

was the reply. If Pitt, then, didn't have a hand in one couplet
at least, no confidence is to be reposed in history.—Mercury.

THE TOMATO AS FOOD.—Dr. Bennet, a professor of some
celebrity, considers the tomato an invaluable article of diet,
and ascribes to it very important medical properties.

1st. That the tomato is one of the most powerful aperients of
the liver and other organs ; where calomel is indicated, it is
probably one of the most effective and least harmful remedial
agents known to the profession. 2d. That a chemical extract
will be obtained from it that will supersede the use of calomel
in the cure of disease. 3d. That he has successfully treated
diarrhoea with this article alone. 4th. That when used s an
article of diet it is almost sovereign for dyspepsia and indigestion.
5th. That it should be constantly used for daily food ;
either cooked, raw, or in the form of catsup, it is the most
healthy article now in use.

REWARDS FOR FIDELITY.— Never forsake a friend. When enemies
gather around ; when sickness falls on the heart ; when
the world is dark and cheerless, is the time to try true friend-
ship. THose who turn from the scene of distress betray their
hypocrisy, and prove that interest only moves them. If you
have a friend who loves you, who has studied your interest and
hapiness, be sure to sustain him in adversity. Let him feel
that his former kindness is appreciated, and that his love was
not thrown away. Real fidelity may be rare, but it exists
—in the heart. They only deny its worth and power who
never loved a friend, or laboured to make a friend happy.

THE Batavia Herald, speaking of a brass band lately organized
in that place, says that it "dicourseth music which, when
it comes floating on the soft air, mingled with the moonbeams of a
night like that of Saturday, is mellowed to the tone of the
gentlest heart." We have heard of all sorts of "mixes," from
a French soup to a Dutch stew, but never anything equal to
this Batavian—music and moonbeams are decidedly good.

IN the newly published Autobiography of Col. Crockett, that
eccentric personage records his remarking in a stump speech
that he "was willing to go with General Jackson in every
thing that believed was honest and right, but, further than
this I would go for him or any other man in the whole creation ;
that I would sooner be honestly or politically d———d
than hypocritically immortalized."

IN the days when every astrologer and every chemist was
seeking after the philosopher's stone, some monks, carelessly
making up their materials, by accident invented gunpowder.

Every body knows that Sir Isaac Newton's most important
discoveries concerning light and gravitation were the result of
accident ; and it was hastily scratching on a stone a memorandum
of some articles brought him by a washer-woman, that the
idea of lithography presented itself to the mind of Senefelder.

AGE OF SHEEP FOR MUTTON.—A late English writer says :—
"A sheep to be in high order for the palate of the epicure,
should not be killed earlier than five years old, at which age
the mutton will be rich and succulent, of a dark colour and full
of the richest gravy ; whereas, if not only two years old, it is
flabby, pale, and flavourless."

"WHAT a small kitchen! exclaimed Queen Elizabeth, after
going over a handsome mansion. "It is by having so small a
one that I am enabled to keep so large a house," replied the
owner.

IT is said that Tom Moore, one night while stopping at an
Inn in Scotland, was continually troubled by the landlady with
the request that he would write her epitaph. Accordingly at
night he gave impromptu as follows:

"Good Susan Blake in Royal state
Arrived at last at Heaven's Gate" —

and stopped, promising to finsih in the morning. The good
lady was in transports at this inscription, and treated Mr.
Moore with every possible attention. In the morning he was
about leaving, when the landlady reminded him he had not
finished the epitaph. "That is so," said he, and added:

"But Peter met her with a club,
And knocked her back to Belzebub."

It is said that Mr. Moore's horses were in motion just as he
had finished the last line.

EFFECTS OF GRIEF.—We know nothing about men's hair ; but
there is our friend Mrs. ———, of Biddle street—the lady who
has been just twenty-nine-years of age for the last fifteen years—
her husband died, you know, last winter, at which misfortune
her grief was so intense that he hair turned completely black
with twenty-four hours after the occurrence of that sad event.

LORD BACON beautifully said: "If a man be gracious to
strangers, it shews that he is a citizen of the world, and that
his heart is no island, cut off from other lands, but a continent
that joins them"

HEBREW SHEKEL.—Alfred Robinson, of Hartford, has in his
possession a Hebrew shekel, which is supposed to be more than
three thousand years old. They are worth $100 each.

THE poems of Hood are the songs of tenderness and sadness ;
but the solemn grandeur of Milton's verse is like the
melody of countless organs.