him!" murmured the cockswain to himself. As he yet spoke, the wreck of the Ariel yielded to an overwhelming sea, and, after a universal shudder, her timbers and planks gave way, and were swept towards the cliffs, bearing the body of the simple-hearted cockswain among the ruins.

WILLIAM WARE, 1797-1852.

WILLIAM WARE, the son of Rev. Henry Ware, D.D., the Hollis Professor of Divinity in Harvard University, was born in Hingham, Massachusetts, on the 3d of August, 1797, and graduated at Cambridge, in 1816. When he had finished his theological studies there, and had preached a short time at Northboro', Massachusetts, and Brooklyn, Connecticut, he was settled over the Unitarian congregation in Chambers Street, New York, in December, 1821, where he remained about sixteen years. Near the close of this period, he commenced, in the "Knickerbocker Magazine," the publication of those brilliant papers which, in 1836, were published under the title of "Zenobia, or the Fall of Palmyra, an Historical Romance," which gave him at once very high rank as a classical scholar and a classic author. In 1838, he published another volume of a similar character, entitled “Probus, or Rome in the Third Century," a sort of sequel to “Zenobia,” and now known under the title of "Aurelian." In 1841, he published "Julien, or Scenes in Judea,” in which he has described the most striking incidents in our Saviour's life-the work closing with an account of the crucifixion.

While these works were in the course of publication, he became the editor of the "Christian Examiner," having removed to Cambridge, Massachusetts. But, in consequence of ill health, he was obliged to give up all literary occupation, and he sailed for Europe in 1848. On his return, he gave a series of lectures in Boston, New York, and other places, upon the scenes he had visited, and, in 1851, published "Sketches of European Capitals." But his health had long been gradually failing, and he died on the 19th of February, 1852.

PALMYRA IN ITS GLORY.

I was still buried in reflection, when I was aroused by the shout of those who led the caravan, and who had attained the

summit of a little rising ground, saying, "Palmyra! Palmyra!" I urged forward my steed, and in a moment the most wonderful prospect I ever beheld-no, I cannot except even Rome-burst upon my sight. Flanked by hills of considerable elevation on the east, the city filled the whole plain below as far as the eye could reach, both toward the north and toward the south. This immense plain was all one vast and boundless city. It seemed to me to be larger than Rome. Yet I knew very well that it could not be-that it was not. And it was some time before I understood the true character of the scene before me, so as to separate the city from the country, and the country from the city, which here wonderfully interpenetrated each other, and so confound and deceive the observer. For the city proper is so studded with groups of lofty palm-trees, shooting up among its temples and palaces, and, on the other hand, the plain in its immediate vicinity is so thickly adorned with magnificent structures of the purest marble, that it is not easy, nay, it is impossible, at the distance at which I contemplated the whole, to distinguish the line which divided the one from the other. It was all city and all country, all country and all city. Those which lay before me I was ready to believe were the Elysian Fields. I imagined that I saw under my feet the dwellings of purified men and of gods. Certainly they were too glorious for the mere earth-born. There was a central point, however, which chiefly fixed my attention, where the vast Temple of the Sun stretched upwards its thousand columns of polished marble to the heavens, in its matchless beauty, casting into the shade every other work of art of which the world can boast. I have stood before the Parthenon, and have almost worshipped that divine achievement of the immortal Phidias. But it is a toy by the side of this bright crown of the Eastern capital. I have been at Milan, at Ephesus, at Alexandria, at Antioch; but in neither of those renowned cities have I beheld anything that I can allow to approach in united extent, grandeur, and most consummate beauty, this almost more than work of man. On each side of this, the central point, there rose upwards slender pyramids pointed obelisks-domes of the most graceful proportions, columns, arches, and lofty towers, for number and for form, beyond my power to describe. These buildings, as well as the walls of the city, being all either of white marble, or of some stone as white, and being everywhere in their whole extent interspersed, as I have already said, with multitudes of overshadowing palm-trees, perfectly filled and satisfied my sense of

beauty, and made me feel for the moment as if in such a scene I should love to dwell, and there end my days.

PALMYRA AFTER ITS CAPTURE AND DESTRUCTION.

On the third day after the capture of the city and the massacre of the inhabitants, the army of the "conqueror and destroyer" withdrew from the scene of its glory, and again disappeared beyond the desert. I sought not the presence of Aurelian while before the city, for I cared not to meet him drenched in the blood of women and children. But as soon as he and his legions were departed, we turned towards the city, as children to visit the dead body of a parent.

No language which I can use, my Curtius, can give you any just conception of the horrors which met our view on the way to the walls and in the city itself. For more than a mile before we reached the gates, the roads, and the fields on either hand, were strewed with the bodies of those who, in their attempts to escape, had been overtaken by the enemy and slain. Many a group of bodies did we notice, evidently those of a family, the parents and the children, who, hoping to reach in company some place of security, had all-and without resistance, apparently fallen a sacrifice to the relentless fury of their pursuers. Immediately in the vicinity of the walls, and under them, the earth was concealed from the eye by the multitudes of the slain, and all objects were stained with the one hue of blood. Upon passing the gates, and entering within those walls which I had been accustomed to regard as embracing in their wide and graceful sweep the most beautiful city of the world, my eye met nought but black and smoking ruins, fallen houses and temples, the streets choked with piles of still blazing timbers and the half-burned bodies of the dead. As I penetrated farther into the heart of the city, and to its better-built and more spacious quarters, I found the destruction to be lessthat the principal streets were standing, and many of the more distinguished structures. But everywhere-in the streetsupon the porticos of private and public dwellings-upon the steps and within the very walls of the temples of every faithin all places, the most sacred as well as the most common, lay the mangled carcasses of the wretched inhabitants. None, apparently, had been spared. The aged were there, with their bald or silvered heads-little children and infants-women, the young, the beautiful, the good-all were there slaughtered

in every imaginable way, and presenting to the eye spectacles of horror and of grief enough to break the heart and craze the brain. For one could not but go back to the day and the hour when they died, and suffer with these innocent thousands a part of what they suffered, when, the gates of the city giving way, the infuriated soldiery poured in, and with death written in their faces and clamoring on their tongues, their quiet houses were invaded, and, resisting or unresisting, they all fell together, beneath the murderous knives of the savage foe. What shrieks then rent and filled the air-what prayers of agony went up to the gods for life to those whose ears on mercy's side were adders' what piercing supplications that life might be taken and honor spared. The apartments of the rich and the noble presented the most harrowing spectacles, where the inmates, delicately nurtured and knowing of danger, evil, and wrong only by name and report, had first endured all that nature most abhors, and then there, where their souls had died, were slain by their brutal violators with every circumstance of most demoniac cruelty. Happy for those who, like Gracchus, foresaw the tempest and fled. These calamities have fallen chiefly upon the adherents of Antiochus; but among them, alas! were some of the noblest and most honored families of the capital. Their bodies now lie blackened and bloated upon their doorstones-their own halls have become their tombs. O, miserable condition of humanity! Why is it that to man have been given passions which he cannot tame, and which sink him below the brute! Why is it that a few ambitious are permitted by the Great Ruler, in the selfish pursuit of their own aggrandizement, to scatter in ruin, desolation, and death, whole kingdoms-making misery and destruction the steps by which they mount up to their seats of pride! O, gentle doctrine of Christ!-doctrine of love and of peace, when shall it be that I and all mankind shall know thy truth, and the world smile with a new happiness under thy life-giving reign!

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DANIEL WEBSTER, 1782-1852.

THIS most distinguished of all American statesmen and orators, the son of Ebenezer and Abigail Webster, was born in Salisbury, N. H., on the 18th of January, 1782. It was early remarked that he had

uncommon endowments for his age, and in his fourteenth year he was placed in Phillips' Exeter Academy, then under the care of Dr. Benjamin Abbott, to prepare for college. He stayed there but a few months, as the means of his father were very limited, and then was placed with Rev. Samuel Wood, of Boscawen, which is next to his native town. He entered Dartmouth College in 1797; and when he graduated in 1801, a high future was predicted for him by the more sagacious of his classmates. He immediately entered upon his legal studies, in his native place, in the office of Mr. Thompson, and completed them in the office of Governor Gore, of Boston. In 1805, he began practice in the village of Boscawen, whence he removed to Portsmouth, N. H., in September, 1807. Here he resided nine years, enjoying the friendship and profiting by the rivalry of such men as Samuel Dexter, Joseph Story, Jeremiah Smith, and Jeremiah Mason.

It was in the extra session of the Thirteenth Congress, that met in May, 1813, that Mr. Webster commenced his political career, having been chosen, in the previous November, a Representative from New Hampshire. He was placed on the Committee of Foreign Affairs, an evidence of the high estimation in which he was held, as our country was then at war with Great Britain. He delivered his maiden speech on the 10th of June, 1813, and almost immediately assumed a front rank amongst debaters. His speeches, chiefly on topics connected with the war, were even then characterized by masterly vigor, and by an uncommon acquaintance with constitutional learning, and the history and traditions of the government.

Having now found the arena of Portsmouth too limited, Mr. Webster removed to Boston, in August, 1816, and took the place which belonged to his commanding talent and legal eminence. In 1818, he made his brilliant and logical speech in the celebrated Dartmouth College case, which placed him among the very first jurists of the country. In 1820, he was elected a member of the Convention for revising the Constitution of Massachusetts. In December of the same year, he delivered his eloquent "Discourse" in commemoration of the Landing of the Pilgrims. Two years afterwards, he was re-elected to Congress from Boston; and but little more than a month after he took his seat, on the 19th of January, 1823, he made his celebrated speech on the Greek Revolution, which established his reputation as one of the first statesmen of his age. In this, as in his Plymouth oration, he showed his warm sympathies on the side of freedom. In 1825, he

So touching was the peroration of this speech, that it was said to draw tears from the eyes of a court little accustomed to allow human sympathies to affect the sternness and severity of the law.