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About Richards' weekly gazette. (Athens, Ga.) 1849-1850 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 16, 1850)
1 ‘’ terms, $2 Per Annum, in Adrance. Second Year, :% 40-Whole No, 90. % wwmm fiffiiLi ioimiui. —mmm m Mwmw&, m .aits irb scehcis, mb to cmml ffiMsma ■[ £2: £ i-2 1 -’ •; •-.;, I -j ■ For Richards’ Weekly Gazette. I THE STRANGER’S REQUIEM. ■ U;ir wanderer from thy boyhood's hearth, I To homes that made thee native there. — ■ Since Love, vouchsafed thee at thy birth, ■ Still came to bless thee everywhere; ■ Alas ! that Love, who welcomed fond. I Sliuuld still not find the strength to save, H Denied to keep, —all power—beyond ■ Thy couch to watch —to deck thy grave. ■ T'vcre vain to say that thou wert dear, V Where Worth and Virtue proudly shone; P| More vain, if wo could keep thee here, I To say thou haJ’st not from us gone ; I What l fe, and b*ve, and ait could do, K Were minister'd, alas! in vain— I With la tering hearts, we could but view, ■ Not share, or soothe, or stay thy pair . ■ I So calm and placid, sweet and clear, ■ Thine ey s last gentle meanings shone, I We kne%somc higher, happier sphere, ■ Already claimed thee for its own, II Vet Lit those sorrows fill each breast, ■ That still our selfish loss deplore, 11 And grieved to see the being bless'd, ■ That ever bless and our hearts before. I lllan. B| Charleston , S’ C. ■ For Richards’ Weekly Gazette. I MEMORY. | Ah! do not grieve that we forget! B Far happier, since, when all is known, B Memory is but a long regret, B That only t. 11s us we are lone; B A raour. ful wat her, day by day, B And hour by hour, that teacher wo ; B Unknown, till Hope has scar'd away— I Unlov’d, till Love himself is low ! this mni&miz a* &. -fev i ‘ 5 >^ : tv. . ■">-,& THE ASSIGNATION. BY EDGAR A. POE. “ Stay for mo ther'-! I will not f til To meet thee in that hollow vale ” [Extquy on the (tenth of his Wife, by Henry Kins. Bishop of Chiehester. 111-fated ami mysterious n an !—bewil dered in the brilliancy of thine own imagi nation, and fallen in the flames of thine own youth! Again in fancy I behold thee! Once more thy form hath risen be fore me—not—oh, not as thou art—in the cold valley and shadow, but as thou shouldst be —squandering away a life of magnifi cent meditation in that city of dim visions, thine own Venice, which is a star-beloved Elysium of the sea, and the wide windows of whose Palladian palaces look down with a deep and bitter meaning upon the secrets of her silent waters. Yes! 1 repeat it—as thou shouldst be. There arc surely other worlds than this —other thoughts than the thoughts of the multitude—other specula tions than the speculations of the sophist. Who, then, shull call thy conduct into question ! who blame thee for thy vision ary hours, or denounce those occupations as a wasting away of life, which were but the overflowings of thine everlasting ener gies? !t was at Venice, beneath the covered archway there called the Ponte di Sospiri, ‘bat I met for the third or fourth tune the person of whom 1 speak. It is with a confused recollection that I bring to mind the circumstances of that meeting. Yet I remember—ah ! how should I foiget ?—the •Jeep midnight, the Bridge of Sighs, the beauty of woman, and the Genius of Ro mance that stalked up and down the nar row canal. It was a night of unusual gloom. The great clock of the Piazza had sounded the fifth hour of the Italian evening. The square of the Campanile lay silent and de serted, a.id the lights ih the old Ducal I’al -3ce were dying fast away. I was return ing home from the Piazetta, by way of the Grand Canal. But as my gondola arrived opposite the mouth of the canal San Mar co, a female voice from its recesses broke suddenly upon the night, in one wild, hys- terical, and long-continued shriek. Start led at the sound, l sprang upon my feet; while the gondolier, letting slip his single oar, lost it in the pitchy darkness, beyond a chance of recovery, and we were conse quently left to the guidance of the current, which here sets from the greater into the smaller channel. Like some huge and sa ble-leathered condor, we were slowly drift ing down towards the Bridge of Sighs, when a thousand flambeaux flashing from the windows, and down the staircases, of the Ducal Palace, turned, all at once, that deep gloom into a livid and preternatural day. A child, slipping from the arms of its own mother, had fallen from an upper window of the lofty structure into the deep and dim canal. The quiet waters had clo sed placidly over their victim ; and, al though my own gondola was the only one in sight, many a stout swimmer, already in the stream, was seeking in vain upon the surface, the treasure which was to be found, 9-las ! only within the abyss. Upon the broad black marble flagstones at the en trance of the palace, and a few steps above the water, stood a figure, which none who then saw, can have ever since forgotten.— It was the Marchesa Aphrodite, the adora tion of all Venice, the gayest of the gay, the most iovely where all were beautiful, but still the young wife of the old and in triguing Mentoni, and the mother of that fair chill, her fitst and only one, who now, deep beneath the murky water, was think ing in bitterness of heart upon her sweet caresses, and exhausting its little life in sti uggles to call upon her name. She stood alone. Her small, bare and silvery feet gleamed in the black mirror of marble beneath her. Her hair, not as yet more than half loosened for the night from its ball-room array, clustered, amid a show er of diamonds, round and round her clas sical head, in curls like those of the young hyacinth. A snowy-white and gauze-lute drapery seemed to be nearly the sole cover ing to her delicate form ; but the mid-sum mer and midnight air was hot, suUen, and still, and no motion in the statue-like form itself, stirred even the folds of that raiment of very vapor which hung around it as the heavy marble hangs around the Niobe.— Vet—strange to say ! —her large lustrous eyes were not turned downwards upon that grave wherein her brightest hope lay bu ried, but riveted in a widely different direc tion ! The prison of the Old Republic is, 1 think, the stateliest building in all Ve nice—but how could that lady gaze so fix edly upon it, when beneath her lay stifling her own child ? Yon dark, gloomy niche, too, yawns right opposite her chamber window—what, then, could there be in it> shadows, in its architecture, in its ivy wreathed and solemn cornices, that the Marchesa di Mentoni had not wondered at a thousand times before 1 ! Nonsense! who does not remember that, at such a lime as this, the eye, like a shattered mirror, mul tiplies the images of its sorrow', and sees in innumerable far-off places, the wo which is close at hand ! Many steps above the Marchesa, and within the arch of the water-gate, stood, in full dress, the Satyr-like figure of Mentoni himself. He was occasionally occupied in thrumming a guitar, and seemed ennuye to the very death, as at intervals he gave di rections for the recovery of his child.— Stupified and aghast, I had myself no power to move from the upright position I had assumed upon first hearing the shriek, and must have presented to the eyes of the group a spectial and ominous appearance, as with pale countenance and rigid limbs! floated down among them in that funeral gondola. All efforts proved in vain. Many of the most energetic in the search were relaxing their exertions, and yielding to a gloomy sorrow. There seemed but little hope for the child; (how much less than for the mother!) but now, from the interior of that dark niche which has been already men tioned as forming a part of the Old Repub lican prison, and as fronting the lattice of the Marchesa, a figure, muffled in a cloak, stepped out within reach of the light, and, pausing a moment upon the verge of the giddy descent, plunged headlong into the canal. As, in an instant afterwards, he stood with the still living and breathing child within his grasp, upon the marble flagstones by the side of the Marchesa, his cloak, heavy with the drenching water, became unfastened, and, falling in folds about his feet, discovered to the wonder stricken spectators the graceful person of a very young man, with the sound of whose name the greater part of Europe was then ringing. No word spoke the deliverer. But the Marchesa! She will now receive her child she will press it to her heart—she will cling to its little form, and smother it with her caresses. Alas! another's arms have taken it from the stranger— another's arms have taken it away, and borne it afar off, unnoticed, into the palace ! And the Marchesa ! Her lip, her beautiful lip trembles : tears are gathering in her eyes —those eyes which, like Pliny’s acanthus, are “soft and almost liquid.’’ Yes! tears are gathering in those eyes—and see ! the entire woman thrills throughout the soul, and the statue has started into life! The pallor of the marble countenance, the swell ing of the marble bosom, the very purity of the marbleffeet, we behold suddenly flush ed over with a tide of ungovernable crim son ; and a slight shudder quivers about her delicate frame, as a gentle air at Napo li about the rich silver lilies in the grass. Why should this lady blush ! To this demand there is no answer, except that, having left, in the eager haste and terror of a mother’s heart, the privacy of her own boudoir, she has neglected to enthral her tiny feet in their slippers, and utterly for gotten to throw over her Venitian shoul ders that drapery which is their due.— What other possible reason could there have been for her so blushing! for the glance of those wild, appealing eyes! for the unusual tumult of that throbbing bo som! for the convulsive pressure of that trembling hand!—that hand which fell, as Mentoni turned into the palace, accident ally, upon the hand of the stranger.— What reason could there have been for the low, the singularly low, tone of those unmeaning w'ords which the lady uttered hurriedly in bidding him adieu! “Thou hast conquered,” she said, or the murmurs of the water deceived me ; “ thou hast con- j quered ; one hour after sunrise; we shall meet; so let it be!” The tumult had subsided, the lights had died away within the palace, and the stran ger, whom I now recognised, stood alone upon the flags. He shook with inconceiv ble agitation, and his eye glanced around in search of a gondola. [ could not do less than ofler him the service of my own; and he accepted the civility. Having ob tained an oar at the water-gate, we pro ceeded together to his residence, while he rapidly recovered his self-possession, and spoke of our former slight acquaintance in terms of great apparent cordiality. There are some subjects upon w hich 1 take pleasure in being minute. The per son of the stranger—let me call him by this title, who to all the world w'as still a stranger —the person of the stranger is one of these subjects. In height, he might have been below rather than above the medium ri/.e : allhough there were moments of in tense passion, when his frame actually ex panded and belied the assertion. The light, almost slender symme'ry of his figure, promised more of that ready activity which he evinced at the Bridge of Sighs, than of that Herculean strength which he has been known to wield without an effort, upon oc casions of more dangerous emergency. With the mouth and chin of a deity—sin gular, wild, full, liquid eyes, whose shad ows varied from pure hazel to intense and brilliant jet—and a profusion of curling black hair, from which a forehead of unu sual breadth gleamed forth at intervals, all light and ivory—his were features, than which, 1 have seen none more classically regular, except, perhaps, the marble ones of the Emperor Commodus. Yet his coun tenance was, nevertheless, one of those which all men have seen at some period of their lives, and have never afterwards seen again. It had no peculiar, it had no set tled, predominant expression, to be fasten ed upon the memory ; a countenance seen and instantly forgotten—but forgotten with a vague and never-ceasing desire of recall ing it to mind. Not that the spirit of each rapid passion failed, at any time, to throw its own distinct image upon the mirror of that face, but that the mirror, mirror-like, retained no vestige of the passion, when the passion had departed. Upon leaving him on the night of our adventure, he solicited me. in what I thought an urgent manner, to call upon him very early the next morning. Shortly after sun rise, 1 found myself, accordingly, at his Palazzo, one of those huge structures of gloomy, yet fantastic pomp, which tower above the waters of the Grand Canal in the vicinity of the Rialto. I was shown up a broad, winding staircase of mosaics, into an apartment whose unparalleled splendor burst through the opening door with an ac tual glare, making me blind and dizzy with luxurionsness. I knew my acquaintance to be wealthy. Report had spoken of his possessions in terms which I had even ventured to call terms of ridiculous exaggeration. But as f gazed about me, l could not bring myself to believe that the wealth of any subject in Europe could have supplied the prince ; ly magnificence which burned and blazed around. Although, as I say. the sun had arisen, I yet the room was still brilliantly lighted up. I judge from this circumstance, as well as from an air of exhaustion in the countenance of mv friend, that he had not retired to bed during the whole of the pre ceding night. In the architecture and em bellishments of the chamber, the evident design had been to dazzle and astound.—- Little attention had been .paid to the decora of what is technically called keeping, orto the proprieties of nationality. The ye wandered from object to object, and rested upon none—neither the grotesques of the Greek painters, nor the sculptures cf the best Italian days, nor the huge carvings of untutored Egypt. Rich draperies in every ’ part of the room trembled to the vibration ! of low, melancholy music, whose origin was not to be discovered. The senses were oppressed by mingled and conflicting per -1 fumes, reeking up from strange convolute ! censors, together with multitudinous flaring and flickering tongues of emerald and vio let fire. The rays of the newly-risen sun poured in upon the whole, through win dows formed each of a single pane of crim son-tinted glass. Glancing to and fro, in a thousand reflections, from curtains which rolled from their cornices like cataracts of molten silver, the beams of natural glory mingled at length fitfully with the artificial light, and lay weltering in subdued masses upon a carpet of rich, liquid-looking cloth of Chili gold. “Ha! ha! ha!—ha! ha! ha!” laughed the proprietor, motioning me to a seat as I entered the room, and throwing himself back at full length upon an ottoman. “I see,” said he, perceiving that I could not immediately reconcile myself to the bien seance of so singular a welcome—“l see you are astonished at my apartment, at my statues, my pictures, my originality of conception in architecture and upholstery ! absolutely drunk, eh, wijh my magnifi cence ! But pardon me, my dear sir, (here his tone of voice dropped to the very spirit of cordiality,) pardon me for my unchari table laughter. You appeared so utterly astonished. Besides, some things are so completely ludicious, that a man must laugh, or die. To die laughing, must be the most glorious of all glorious deaths ! Sir Thomas More—a very fine man was Sir Thomas More—Sir Thomas More died laughing, you remember. Also, in the Absurdities of Ravisius Textor, there is a long list of characters who came to the same magnificent end. Do you know, however.” continued he, musingly, “that at Sparta, (which is now l’alaeochori,) at Sparta, I say. to the west of the citadel, among a chaos of scarcely visible ruins, is a kind of socle , upon which are still legible the letters AHMA. They are undoubtedly part of TEAASMa. Now, at Sparta were a thousand temples and shrines to a thou sand diflerent divinities. How exceeding ly strange that the altar of Laughter should have survived all the oihers! But in the present instance,” he resumed, with a sin gular alteration of voice and manner, “I have no right to be merry at your expense. You might well haye been amazed. Eu rope cannot produce anything so fine as this, my little regal cabinet. My other apartments are by no means of the same order—mere ultras of fashionable insipidi ty. This is better than fashion—is it not! Yet this has but to be seen to become the rage—that is, with those who could aftbrd it at the cost of their entire patrimony. I have guarded, however, against any such profanation. With one exception, you aie the only human being besides tnyself and my valet, who has been admitted within the mysteries of these imperial precincts, since they have been bedtz/.ened as you see!” I bowed in acknowledgment—for the overpowering sense of splendor and per fume, and music, together with the unex pected eccentricity of his address and man ner, prevented me from expressing, in words, my appreciation of what I might have construed into a compliment. “Here,” he resumed,arising and leaning on my arm as he sauntered around the apartment, “ here are paintings from the Greeks to Cimabue, and from Cimabue to the present hour. Many are chosen, as you see. with little deference to the opin ions of Virtu. They are all, however, fit ting tapestry for a chamber such as this.— Here, too, are some chef d'auvres of the unknown great; and here, unfinished de signs by men, celebrated in their day, whose very names the perspicacity of the acade mies has left to silence and to me. What think you,” said he, turning abruptly as he spoke, “ what think you of this Madonna della Pieta !” •• It is Guido's own !” 1 said, with all the enthusiasm of my nature, for I had been poring intently over its surpassing loveliness. “It is Guido’s own! How could you have obtained it! She is un doubtedly in painting what the Venus is in sculpture.” “Ha!” said he thoughtfully, “the Ve nus, the beautiful Venus! the Venus of the Medici! she of the diminutive head and the gilded hair! Part of the left arm (here his voice dropped so as to be heard with difficulty,) and all the right, are resto rations; and in the coquetry of that right arm lies, I think, the quintessence of all affectation. Give me the Canova! The Apollo, too, is a copy—there can be no doubt of it—blind fool that 1 am, who can not behold the boasted inspiration of the Apollo! I cannot help—pity me! —I can not help preferring the Antinous. Was it not Socrates who said that the statuary found his statue in the block of marble! Then Michael Angelo was by no means original in his couplet— “ Non lial’ottimo arti.-ta alcun concetto Clie un lnarmo solo in se non circun criva ’ ” It has been, or should be, remarked, that, in the manner of the true gentleman, we are always aware of a difference from the.bearing of the vulgar, without being at once precisely able to determine in what such difference conists. Allowing the re mark to have applied in its full force to the outward demeanor of tny acquaintance, I felt it, on that eventful morning, still more fully applicable to his moral temperament and character. Nor can I better define that peculiarity of spirit which seemed to place him so essentially apart from all other hu man beings, than by calling it a habit of intense and continual thought, pervading even his most trivial actions—intruding upon his moments of dalliance, and inter weaving itself with his very flashes of merriment, like adders which writhe from out the eyes of the grinning masks in the cornices around the temples of Persepolis l could ni t help, however, repeatedly observing, through the mingled tone of levity and si rmnity with which he rapid ly descanted ipon matters of little impor tance, a cert:i ll air of trepidation—a de gree of nerve is unction in action and in speech—an i tquiet excitability of manner, which appeared to me at all times unac countahie, an I upon some occasions even filled me with alarm. Frequently, too, pausing in the middle of a sentence whose commencement he had apparently forgot ten, he seemed to be listening in the deep est attention, as if either in momentary ex pectation of a visiter, or to sounds which must have had existence in his imagina tion alone. It was during one of these reveries or pauses of apparent abstraction, that, in turning over a page of the poet and schol ar Politan’s beautiful tragedy, “The Or feo,” (the flrst native Italian tragedy,) which lay near me upon an ottoman, 1 discovered a passage underlined in pencil. It was a passage towards ttie end of the third act —a passage of the most heart-stir ring excitement —a passage w hich, although tainted with impurity, no man shall read without a thrill of novel emotion —no wo man without a sigh The whole page was blotted with fresh tears; and, upon the opposite interleaf, were the following English lines, written in a hand so very different from the peculiar characters of my acquaintance, that I had some difficul ty in recognising it as his own : Thou w as! that all to me, love, For which my soul did pine— A green isle in the sea, love, A fountain and a shrine, All wreathed w.th fairy Iruits and flowers ; And all the flowers were mine. Ah, dream too bright to last 1 Ah .Marry Hope, that didst arise, But to he overcast! A voice from out the Future cries, “ Onward !”—but o'er the Past (Dim gulf ) my spir t hovering lies, Mute—motionless —aghast! For nlas ! alas! with me The light of life is o'er “ No more —no more—no more,” (Such language holds the solemn sea To the sands upon the shore.) Shull bloom the thunder-blasted tree, Or the stricken eagle soar! Now all my hours arc trances ; And all my nightly dreams Are where thy dark eye glances, And whore thy footsteps gleams, In what ethereal danees, By what Italian streams. Alas! for that accursed time They bore thee o’er the billow. From Love to titled ago und crime, And an unholy pillow!— From m •, and t orn our misty clime, Where weeps the silver willow! That these lines were written in English —a language with which I had not be- lieved their author acquainted—aflorded me little matter for surprise. 1 was too well aware of the extent of his acquire ments, and of the singular pleasure he took in concealing them from observation, to be astonished at any similar discovery ; hut the place of date, I must confess, occasion ed me no little amazement. It had been originally written London, and afterwards carefully overscored —not, however, so ef fectually as to conceal the word from a scrutinizing eye. I say, this occasioned me no little amazement, for I well remem ber that, in a former conversation with my friend, I particularly inquiied if he had, at any time, met in London the Marchesa di Mentoni, (who for some years previous to her marriage had resided in that city,) when his answer, if I mistake not, gave me to understand that he had never visited the metropolis of Great Britain. I might as well here mention, that I have more than once heard, (without, of course, giv ing credit to a report involving so many im probabilities,) that the person of whom I speak, was, not only by birth, hut in edu cation, an Englishman. * * * * * “Theie is one painting,” said he, with out being aware of my notice of tile trage dy, “there is still one painting which you have not seen.” And throwing aside a drapery, he discovered a full-length por tiait of the Marchesa Aphrodite. Human art could have done no more ir. the delineation of her superhuman beauty. The same ethereal figure which stood be fore me the preceding night, upon the steps of the Ducal I’alace, stood before me once again. But in the expression of the coun tenance, which was beaming all over with smiles, there still lurked (incomprehensible anomaly!) that fitful stain of melancholy which will ever be found inseparable from the perfection of the beautiful. Her right arm lay folded over her bosom. With her left she pointed downward to a curiously fashioned vase. One small, fairy foot, alone visible, barely touched the earth; and, scarcely discernible in the brilliant atmosphere which seemed to encircle and enshrine her loveliness, floated a pair of the most delicately-imagined wings. My glance fell from the painting to the ligu r e of my friend, and the vigorous words of Chapman’s Hussy D’ Ambois, quivered in stinctively upon my lips : “ He is up There like a Homan statue ! He will staml Till Death hath inmle him marble!” “Come'” he said at length, turning to wards a table of richly enamelled and mas sive silver, upon which were a few goblets fantastically stained, together with two large Etruscan vases, fashioned in the same extraordinary model as that in the foreground of the portrait, and filled with what 1 supposed to be Johannisberget.— “Come,” he said abruptly, “ let us drink ! It is early—but let us drink. It is indeed early,” he continued musingly,as a cherub with a heavy golden hammer made the apartment ring with the first hour after sunrise: “it is indeed early—but what matters it? let us drink! Let us pour out an offering to yon solemn sun, which these gaudy lamps and censers are so eager to subdue!” And, having made me pledge him in a bumper, he swallowed in rapid succession several goblets of the wine. “To dream,” he continued, resuming the tone of his desultory conversation, as he held up to the rich light of a censer one of the magnificent vases, “to dream has been the businessof my life. I have there fore framed for myself, as you see, a bow er of dreams. In the heart of Venice could I have erected a better ? You behold around you, it is true, a medley of archi tectural embellishments. The chastity of Foma is offended by antedeluvian devices, and the sphynxes of Egypt are outstretch ed upon carpets of gold. Yet the effect is incongruous to the timid alone. Proprie ties of space, and especially of time, are the bugbears which terrify mankind from the contemplation of the magnificent. Once 1 was myself a decorist; hut that sublima tion of folly has palled upon my soul.— All this is now the fitter for my purpose. Like these arabesque censers,*my spirit is writhing in fire, and the delirium of this scene is fashioning me for the wilder vi sions of that land of real dreams whither I am now rapidly departing.” He here paused abruptly, bent Ms head to his bo som, and seemed to listen to a sound which I could not hear. At length, erecting his frame, he looked upwards, and ejaculated the lines of the Bishop of Chichester : “ Stay for me there ! I will not fail To meet thee in that hollow vale “ In the next instant, confessing the power of the wine, he threw himself at full-length upon an ottoman. A quick step was now heard upon the staircase, and a loud knock at the door rapully £iiecee;led. t was hasiening to an ticipate a second disturbance, when a page of Menloni’s household burst into the room, and faltered out ,in a voice choking with emotion, the incoherent words. “ My mistress! —my mistress! Poisoned!—poi soned! Oh, beautiful—oh, beautiful Aph rodite!” Bewildered, I flew to the ottoman, and endeavored to arouse the sleeper to a sense of the startling intelligence. But his limbs were rigid—his lips were livid--his lately beaming eyes were riveted in death. I staggered back towards the table—my hand fell upon a cracked and blackened goblet—and a consciousness of the entire and terrible truth flashed suddenly over my soul. flail !L a ® !B A IB TG MAIIOMET. [From Washington Irving’s “ Mahomet and his Successors.” PRODIGIES AT HIS BIRTH. At the moment of his coming into the world, a celestial light illumed the sur rounding country, and the new-born child, raising his eyes to heaven, exclaimed— “ God is great! There is no God but God, and I am his prophet.” Heaven and earth, we are assured, were agitated at his advent The Lake Sawa shrank back to its secret springs, leaving its borders dry ; while the Tigris, bursting its bounds, overflowed the neighboring lands. The palace of Khosru, the king of Persia, shook to its foundations, and seve ral of its towers were toppled to the earth. In that troubled night, the Kadhi, or Judge of Persia, beheld, in a dream, a ferocious camel conquered by an Arabian coarser. — He related his dream in the morning to the Persian monarch, and interpreted it to por tend danger from the quarter of Arabia. In the same eventful night, the sacred fire of Zoroaster, which, guarded by the Magi, had burned without interruption for upwards of a thousand years, was sudden ly extinguished, and all the idols in the world fell down. The demons, or evil genii, which lurk in the stars and signs of the zodiac, and exert a malignant influence over the children of men, were cast forth by the pure angels, and hurled, with their arch leaJer, Eblis, or Lucifer, into the depths of the sea. The relatives of the new-born child, say the like authorities, were filled with awe and wonder. His mother’s brother, an as trologer, cast his nativity, and predicted that he would rise to vast power, found an empire, ami establish anew faith among men. His grandfather, Abd al Motalleb, gave a feast to the principal Koreishites, the seventh day after his birth, at which he presented this child, as the dawning glory of their race, and gave him the name of Mahomet (or Muhamed,) indicative of his future renown. HIS MIRACLES. It is recorded by Al Maalem, an Arabian writer, that some of Mahomet's disciples at one time joined with the multitude in this cry for miracles, and besought him to prove, at once, the divinity of his mission, by turning the hill of Safa into gold. Be ing thus closely urged, he betook himself to prayer, and having finished, assured his followers that the angel Gabriel had ap peared to him, and informed him that, should God grant his prayer, and work the desiied miracle, all who disbelieved it would be ex terminated. In pity to the multitude, there fore, who appeared to be a stiff-necked gen eration,” he would not expose them to de struction : so the hill of Safa was permit ted to remain in its pristine state. Other Moslem writers assert that Ma homet departed from his self-prescribed rule, and wrought occasional miracles, when he found his hearers unusually slow of belief. Thus we are told that, at one time, in presence of a multitude, he called to him a bull, and look from his horns a scroll containing a chapter of the Koran, just sent down from Heaven. At another lime, while discoursing in public, a white dove hovered over him, and, alighting on his shoulder, appeared to whisper in his ear—being, as Ire said, a messenger from the Deity. On another occasion, he order-
