The ancient sepulchres that rose
  Along the voiceless street
  Time’s myriad vistas seemed to close
  And bid life’s waves retreat,—­
  As if intrusive footsteps stole
  Beyond their mortal sphere,
  And felt the awed and eager soul
  Immortal comrades near.

  The moss-grown ramparts loom in sight
  Like warders of the deep,
  Where, flushed with evening’s amber light,
  The havened waters sleep;
  Unfurrowed by a Roman keel
  Or Carthaginian oar,
  The speared and burnished galleys now
  Their slumber break no more.

  But when the distant convent-bell,
  Ere Day’s last smiles depart,
  With mellow cadence pleading fell
  Upon my brooding heart,—­
  And Memory’s phantoms thick and fast
  Their fond illusions bred,
  From peerless spirits of the past,
  And wrecks of ages fled,—­

  Joy broke the spell; an emblem blest
  That lonely harbor cheered: 
  As if to greet her pilgrim guest,
  My country’s flag appeared! 
  Its radiant folds auroral streamed
  Amid that haunted air,
  And every star prophetic beamed
  With Freedom’s triumph there!

* * * * *

METHODS OF STUDY IN NATURAL HISTORY.

All important changes in the social and political condition of man, whether brought about by violent convulsions or effected gradually, are at once recognized as eras in the history of humanity.  But on the broad high-road of civilization along which men are ever marching, they pass by unnoticed the landmarks of intellectual progress, unless they chance to have some direct bearing on what is called the practical side of life.  Such an era marked the early part of our own century; and though at the time a thousand events seemed more full-freighted for the world than the discovery of some old bones at the quarry of Montmartre, and though many a man seemed greater in the estimation of the hour than the professor at the Jardin des Plantes who strove to reconstruct these fragments, yet the story that they told lighted up all the past, and showed its true connection with the present.  Cuvier, as one sees him in a retrospective glance at the wonderful period in which he lived, and which brought to the surface all its greatest elements,—­one among a throng of exceptional men, generals, soldiers, statesmen, as well as men of commanding intellect in literary and scientific pursuits,—­seems always standing at the meeting-point between the past and present.  His gaze is ever fixed upon the path along which Creation has moved, and, as he travels back, recovering step by step the road that has been lost to man in apparently impenetrable darkness and mystery, the light brightens and broadens before him, and seems to tempt him on into the dim regions where the great mystery of Creation lies hidden.