t not for love! While youth lasts, I
may forget my country for a while. But what Athenian, in his graver
manhood, can think of Athens as she was, and be contented that he is
happy, while she is fallen?--fallen, and for ever?'

'And why for ever?'

'As ashes cannot be rekindled--as love once dead can never revive, so
freedom departed from a people is never regained. But talk we not of
these matters unsuited to thee.'

'To me, oh! thou errest. I, too, have my sighs for Greece; my cradle
was rocked at the foot of Olympus; the gods have left the mountain, but
their traces may be seen--seen in the hearts of their worshippers, seen
in the beauty of their clime: they tell me it is beautiful, and I have
felt its airs, to which even these are harsh--its sun, to which these
skies are chill. Oh! talk to me of Greece! Poor fool that I am, I can
comprehend thee! and methinks, had I yet lingered on those shores, had I
been a Grecian maid whose happy fate it was to love and to be loved, I
myself could have armed my lover for another Marathon, a new Plataea.
Yes, the hand that now weaves the roses should have woven thee the olive
crown!'

'If such a day could come!' said Glaucus, catching the enthusiasm of the
blind Thessalian, and half rising.--'But no! the sun has set, and the
night only bids us be forgetful--and in forgetfulness be gay--weave
still the roses!'

But it was with a melancholy tone of forced gaiety that the Athenian
uttered the last words: and sinking into a gloomy reverie, he was only
wakened from it, a few minutes afterwards, by the voice of Nydia, as she
sang in a low tone the following words, which he had once taught her:--

THE APOLOGY FOR PLEASURE

I

Who will assume the bays
That the hero wore?
Wreaths on the Tomb of Days
Gone evermore!
Who shall disturb the brave,
Or one leaf on their holy grave?
The laurel is vowed to them,
Leave the bay on its sacred stem!
But this, the rose, the fading rose,
Alike for slave and freeman grows.

II

If Memory sit beside the dead
With tombs her only treasure;
If Hope is lost and Freedom fled,
The more excuse for Pleasure.
Come, weave the wreath, the roses weave,
The rose at least is ours:
To feeble