while it is still in Mr. Hastie's hands, on other
and still greater occasions. Campbell loved
to recite poetry over the silver punch-bowl
presented to him by the Glasgow students,
and we have seen the poet who wrote Ye
Mariners of England, sitting "like a prophet
in drink " over the grateful steam derived
from his favourite beverage. What sort of
duty is performed by the bowl at present is
unknown to us. The last time we saw the
Ettrick Shepherd's silver punch-bowl, it was
filled with strawberries and cream. But,
when this occurred, death, as Wordsworth
expresses, had closed the shepherd-poet's eyes.
It was never filled with so mild a mixture in
the poet's lifetime. To what base uses may
even punch-bowls come at last!

We must close our paper with a fact and an
admission. The fact is—the death, on the 5th
July, 1776, at the age of seventy-eight, of no
less a person than Mr. James Ashley, of
whom it was recorded on his grave-stone,
that " he was the first who retailed punch in
small quantities." Hang him for a rogue!
And our admission is said in a whisper: that
we have a sneaking preference for a jug of
punch over a bowl of punch. We know not
why.

ELEUSINIA:

Lines suggested by the Bas-reliefs on the Portland Vase;
the figures of which are supposed to be illustrative of
the Eleusinian Mysteries.

BLUE darkness, as of deep midsummer nights,
Rolls round this Vase before me; and I see
The grand, pale phantoms of an elder time
Fixed by consummate Art for evermore.

What naked man is this, that, fearfully,
Beneath a pillar'd portico moves on
Into the glimmering dusk? He, sick at heart
With the dull shows and wranglings of this life,
Would pass the magic Temple doors, and know
The faces of the glad Eternal Gods;
Would enter the majestic regions lying
Above the Olympic peaks, and gaze far down
The dazzling pits of Being, and the abyss
Where suns, and moons, and stars, without an end,
Boil upward like a. storm of sparkling dust
Upon a ceaseless wind. And he would hear
The swift and glassy spheres, Heaven over Heaven,
Their nine-fold crystal thunders modulate
To perfect music and sublime consent,
In-orbing all things with round harmony.
Yet, pausing as in doubt and natural fear
Of what those haunted boundaries may enclose,
He stands upon the threshold of two worlds,
And hears the voices calling either way.

Oh, floating Love! white star within the dark!
Clear herald of the morning! lead him on
Through the long silence and the mystical night
To where the Gods reveal themselves in flame,
And the great secret of the world lies bare.
Oh, beckoning Love! keep ever on thy path
With forward wings and backward looks, that he
May pass unfaltering the severe aspects
That gloom about the palace-doors of Jove;
And, entering, may behold, and yet still live,
The fountain of that elemental Life
Which is the essence of all forms and modes,
From the intensest star beyond the sun
To the dejected worm: that subtle spirit
Which from inert, cold matter, summons forth
The green enchantments of the Spring, and all
The richness of the harvest. Lead him on
Past the old satyr visages, whose eyes,
For ever upward cast, seem ever waiting
Some revelation of the hidden sense
Of Heaven's marmoreal hieroglyph. And thou
Fair shape of woman, whom the wise snake loves
To play with (like grey Knowledge twining round
The eternal youth of Beauty), hold him thus,
With thy kind hand upon his arm, until
His doubt and fear have flown, and he perceives
The inner throbbings of Elysian dawn
Pulse in the darkness, and the widening day
Silently open like a golden rose.

I turn the Vase, and see two watching shapes,
Female and male, who steadfastly regard,
With looks that breed a sense of quietness,
A languid woman sitting on a heap
Of rugged stones, beneath a large-leaved tree,
Close by a column; with one hand upthrown
Across the head; the other droopingly
Holding a drooping torch, whose flame, nigh spent,
Falters and faints upon the verge of dusk.
A waking sleep, with pageantries of dreams,
Holds her in trance; and all the tide of life
Is at an ebb. Oh, melancholy eyes!
Oh, empty eyes, from which the soul has gone
To see the far-off countries! still look thus
Over the wastes of Time, that we- may read
Thy owner's history written large and fair.

She, by long fasting and much solitude,
And by strong aspiration, has attain'd
To inward vision of the outward world;
Till, down the burning vistas of new sense
Her spirit, like a taper-dazzled moth,
Embalms itself in brightness, and is blown
In gusts of splendour round that central flame
Which lights the gross mass of the Universe,
As clouds are lit with sunrise. She has seen
The awful sanctities of Birth and Death
And Resurrection, and the hearts of things
"Oh, Light, and Love, and Majesty, and Power,
Whereto my soul has journeyed from afar!
The strength of thy perfections drinks me up,
As drops of feeble rain or feebler dew
Are caught into the sunbeams! I am drawn
Into the wind of thy swift orbit—swung
Round the vast circle of created forms;
A conscious atom in the conscious whole;
A portion of the never-resting scheme."

A FRENCH AUDIENCE.

IF the English visitor of Paris will take his
station on the Boulevard du Temple, as near
as possible to the Café du Géant, turn his
back on that favourite resort of the amateurs
of song and coffee, and look straight over the
way— or a little to the right—he will,
provided he make his observation somewhere
about six o'clock in the evening, witness a
spectacle, which he has certainly never seen in
his own metropolis, and probably not in any
other.