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Corn in 1640 was worth 4s. sterling, equal to nearly $2 50 now.

The following order contains the first notice of witchcraft upon the records of the General Court, although some faint foreshadowing of its terrible career was observed at Springfield a year or two previous.

"The Corte desire the Course weh hath been taken in England for discou❜y of

witches, by watching them a certaine time: It is orderd that the best & surest way may be forthwth be put in practice, to begin this night if it may be, being the 18th of the 3rd mo, [May,] & that the husband may be confined to a private roome, & be also then watched."-Vol. 2. 203. 1648.

A further account of this remarkable superstition, as well as many other topics, must be reserved for another article.

LETTERS OF PAREPIDEMUS.

NUMBER TWO.

Y DEAR SIR,-Do people in general,

MY

upon this side of the great water, read Homer? Virgil, I know, in some parts of the Union, is a lady's book; nor is there, I think, any ancient author that better deserves the honor. But the man's book, Homer? It is not every boy that learns Greek; and not all who learn Greek read through the whole forty-eight books of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Is Pope much studied? I should fancy not: and, indeed, though one is glad to hear any one say that he has, in the past tense, read that ingenious composition, it is not easy to bid any one, in the future, go and read it. And, if not Pope, whom can we recommend? Chapman is barbarous, dissonant, obsolete, incorrect. In Hobbes there are two good lines, well known, but they cannot be repeated too often

"And like a star upon her bosom, lay

His beautiful and shining golden head." (They are of Astyanax in the arms of his mother; and how that first of English prosaists was inspired with them remains a problem to all generations.) Cowper, who could read, however much enjoined to it? In short there neither is, nor has been, nor in all probability ever will be, any thing like a translation. And the whole Anglo-Saxon world of the future will, it is greatly to be feared, go forth upon its way, clearing forests, building clippers, weaving calicoes, and annexing Mexicos, accomplishing its natural manifest destiny, and subsiding into its primitive aboriginal ignorance. Accomplishing our manifest destiny! to be, that is, the "hewers of wood and drawers of water" to the human race in general; and then, peradventure, when the wood has all been hewn, and the water drawn, to cease to exist, to be effaced from the earth we have subdued

"Fear no more the heat of the sun,
Nor the furious winter's rages,
Thou thine earthly task hast done,
Homeward gone, and ta'en thy wages."

To cease to exist, to vanish, to give place. in short, to some nobler kind of men, in whose melodious and flexible form of speech the old Homer will have a chance of reappearing unimpaired, or possibly some new Homer singing the wrath of another Achilles and the wanderings of a wiser Ulysses.

Fiat voluntas! Let us go forward to our manifest destiny with content, or at least resignation, and bravely fill up the trench, which our nobler successors may thus be able to pass.

In the mean time, various attempts in Blackwood's Magazine, and elsewhere, have been made in the last few years at rendering Homer in modern English hexameter verse. We venture to pronounce them unsuccessful. It is not an easy thing to make readable English hexameters at all; not an easy thing even in the freedom of original composition, but a very hard one, indeed, amid the restrictions of faithful translation. Mr. Longfellow has gained, and has charmed, has instructed in some degree, and attuned the ears of his countrymen and countrywomen (in literature we may be allowed to say), upon both sides of the Atlantic, to the flow and cadence of this hitherto unacceptable measure. Yet, the success of Evangeline was owing, not more, we think, to the author's practised skill in versification than to' his judgment in the choice of his material. Even his powers, we believe, would fail to obtain a wide popularity for a translation even from a language so nearly akin to our own as the German. In Greek, where grammar, inflection, intonation, idiom, habit, character, and genius are all most alien, the task is very much more hopeless.

Moreover, in another point, it may be right to turn the Louise of Voss, and the Herman and Dorothea of Goethe into corresponding modern so-called hexameters. If the verse is clumsy in our

rendering, so was it to begin with in the original. If no high degree of elegance is attained, no high degree of elegance was there to be lost.

But in Greek there seems really hardly a reason for selecting this in preference to some readier, more native and popular form of verse. Certainly the easy flowing couplets of Chaucer, the melodious blank verse of Shakspeare, or some improved variety of ballad metre, such as Mr. Frere used in translating the Cid, would be, on the whole, not less like the original music of the Iliad and Odyssey than that which we listen to with pleasure in Evangeline, and read without much trouble in the Herman and Dorothea. Homer's rounding line, and Virgil's smooth verse, were both of them (after more puzzling about it than the matter deserves, I have convinced myself) totally unlike those lengthy, straggling, irregular, uncertain slips of prose mesurée which we find it so hard to measure, so easy to read in half-a-dozen ways, without any assurance of the right one, and which, since the days of Voss, the Gothic nations consider analogous to classic hexameter.

Lend me, if you can spare them for a moment or two, my dear sir, your ears, and tell me, honor bright, is

Conticuere omnes, intentique ora tenebant the same thing as

Hab' ich den Markt und die Strasse doch nicht so einsam geseben.

Were I to interpolate in a smooth passage of Evangeline a verse from the Georgics or the Æneid, would they go together?

Is the following a metrical sequence:

Thus, in the ancient time the smooth Virgilian verses Feli on the listening ear of the Roman princes and people.

Ut belli signum Laurenti Turnus ab arco.

There is one line, one example of the smooth Virgilian verses, which perhaps Mr. Longfellow would have allowed himself to use, and his readers consented to accept, as a real hexameter.

Spargens humida mella soporiferumque papaver, might, perhaps, have been no more objected to than

Tous les Bourgeois de Chartres et le carillon de Dunkerque.

Yet even this most exceptionable form, with its special aim at expressing, by an adaptation of sound to sense, the

Scattering of liquid honeys and soporiferous poppy, is a model of condensation, brevity, smoothness, and netteté, compared with that sprawling bit of rhythmical prose into which I have turned it.

But, we are going to be learned, my dear sir; so I release your kind ears, and

beg you will no longer trouble either yourself or them-but, some one, I foresee, of the numerous well-instructed future readers of this private correspondence will interpose with his or her objection, and will tell me, You read your Latin verse wrongly, you don't put the stress upon the ictus,-you should pronounce Virgil like Evangeline, Evangeline is the true hexameter; in Virgil the colloquial accent which you follow was lost in the accent of verse. The Romans of old read it, not Ut bélli signum Laurénti Túrnus ab árco,

but

Ut belli signúm.

O dear! and can you, courteous and wellinstructed reader, positively read your Georgics or Æneid in that way? Do you, as a habit, scan as you go along? Do you not feel it very awkward, must not the Romans also have felt it rather awkward, to pass so continually and violently from the ordinary to the sing-song accentuation? And if, as I think you must allow, there was some awkwardness in it, why is it that Virgil, and the other good versifiers, so constantly prefer that form of verse in which this awkwardness most appears? Why is

Spárgens húmida mélla, soporiférúmque papáver, where there is no such difficulty, a rare form, and "Ut bélli sígnum," where there is, a common and favorite one? Do you know? I shall venture to assert that in the Latin language, the system of accentuation was this, which enjoined the awkwardness you complain of; the separation, in general, of the colloquial and the metrical accent, the very opposite of that which we observe, who, unless the two coincide, think the verse bad. Enough of this, however.

Return, Alpheus, the dread voice is past-come back, my dear sir, we will talk no more prosody-only just allow me to recite to you a few verses of metaphrase, as they used to say, from the Odyssey; constructed as nearly as may be upon the ancient principle; quantity, so far as, in our forward-rushing, consonantcrushing, Anglo-savage enunciation-long and short can in any kind be detected, quantity attended to in the first place, and care also bestowed, in the second, to have the natural accents very frequently laid upon syllables which the metrical reading depresses.

The aged Nestor, sitting among his sons at Pylos, is telling Telemachus, who has come from Ithaca to ask tidings of his father, how, after the taking of Troy, the insolence and violence of the Achæans called down upon them the displeasure of the Father of the Gods and the stern blue

eyed virgin, his daughter. Agamemnon and Menelaus, flushed with wine, quarrelled openly in an assembly held at sunset, which broke up in disorder and tumult; the leaders, some of them, staying behind to please Agamemnon, others, drawing down their ships without delay and sailing off with Ulysses, came as far as Tenedos, and then turned again back. But I, says Nestor

But I, with my ships in a body, the whole that obeyed me,

Fled, well perceiving that wrath was rising against us, Tydides also fled with me, his company calling; Later, upon our track followed the yellow Menelaus; In Lesbos found us, debating there of the long voyage, Were we to sail, to wit, by this side of the rocky Chios,

Making far Psyrie-isle, Chios being kept to the larboard,

Or to the far side, Chios along by the windy Mimante.

Will this sort of thing please the modern ear? It is to be feared not. It is too late a day in this nineteenth century to introduce a new principle, however good, into modern European verse. We must be content perhaps, in this, as in other and higher matters, to take things as we find them, and make the best we can of them. You, I dare say, my dear sir, though perhaps no great lover of hexameters at all, will prefer to my labored Homerics the rough and ready Anglo-savage lines that follow. They render the prayer of Achilles when he is sending out Patroclus with the Myrmidons to check the victory of the Trojans.

Donončan, Pelasgican Zeus, up in heaven above us, King of Dodona, the stormy and cold, where thy Selli attend thee,

Barefoot, that wash not their feet, whose bed is the earth, thy expounders

Once when I prayed thee before, thou gavest me all my petition,

Gavest me honor, and greatly afflicted the host of Achaia;

Even so now too, Zens, fulfil my prayer and petition; I am myself staying here, alone in the midst of my vessels.

But I am sending my friend, and the Myrmidon people about him

Into the battle: 0 Zeus, Wide-Seer, accord to him honor,

Strengthen, embolden the heart in his breast; that Hector to-day may

See whether my companion has skill of his own for the battle,

Or is invincible only, when I too enter the onset. And when the might of his hand shall have driven the war from the galleys,

Then let him come back safe to me by the side of my vessels,

Unhurt, bringing me home my arms and all my companions.

So in his prayer he spoke; and the Zeus, the Counsellor, heard him:

Granted him half his desire; but half the Father denied him;

Granted him that his friend should drive the war and

the onset

Back from the galleys; denied him his safe return from the battle.

Here, in a milder mood, the poet for the conclusion of his first book, describes the "easy living" gods.

"So the live-long day they thus were unto the sunset Feasting; neither did heart lack ever a portion of

banquet,

Nor lack ever the lyre, sweet-toned, in the hand of Apollo,

Nor the muses, in turn singing sweetly with beautiful voices.

But as soon as the shining light of the sun had descended,

They, to lay them down, went every one to his chamber,

Where for each one a house the far-famed Worker with both hands,

Even Hephaestus, had made with the skill of his understanding.

Zeus also to his bed, the Olympian flasher of lightning, Where he was wont before, when slumber sweet came upon him

Thither gone-up was sleeping, the white-armed Heera beside him."

The best translations of Homer into this verse which I am acquainted with are those by Mr. Lockhart and Dr. Hawtrey in the little oblong-quarto collection of English Hexameters. Yet after all

-!

At any rate

My dear sir, here is a chapter, which, be it for better or worse, is

From beginning to end about hexameter verses; Could they but jingle a little, 'twere better, perhaps ; but the trouble

Really is endless, of hunting for rhymes that have all to be double.

Adieu, till the next time, when either in prose or in rhyme I

Haply may find something better to gossip about in a letter.

In the meanwhile, my dear sir, till writing again may beseem us,

I am, your faithful, obliged, and obedient,

PAREPIDEMUS.

FOR

ACADIE, AND THE BIRTH-PLACE OF EVANGELINE.

OR some time I had been possessed with a strong desire to visit Nova Scotia. Of this province, less perhaps is known than of any other in British America, so that this of itself was sufficient to awaken curiosity. But the pages of "Evangeline" which I had lately perused threw a new interest around Acadie. "Ah," thought I. "Evangeline no longer dwells in her peaceful home; those simple-hearted pea

sants have departed, and every trace of them has, without doubt, been effaced. But yet there remains the land which they reclaimed from the sea, and from the forest; their old haunts may still attract the traveller, and around the beautiful spot which they inhabited, some charms still may linger. I will visit this land," said I, 66 and see the home of the tender and lovely Evangeline."

Full of these thoughts, I left Boston,. and when I arrived at St. John, the blue shores of the other province, just visible above the horizon, drew me on with a stronger attraction. After spending three days in the city, I left for the town of Digby on the other side of the ba The distance was only forty miles, but the steamer in which it was my luck to embark, was so inconceivably slow, that eight hours were consumed on the passage. How would Americans endure this rate of speed? But after all, I thought, as I looked around on the Provincials who were my fellow-passengers, it seems fast enough for them. They were reclining lazily on the seats of the upper deck, and many had gone below to their berths. Although they were all large and healthy men, yet they seemed listless and dull, displaying none of that unwearied activity which always characterizes a citizen of our republic. The ennui which reigned supreme, presently seized upon me also, and after making desperate attempts to rid myself of it, I was finally compelled to succumb to its power. Sad and miserable I walked forward, and lighting a cigar, gave myself up to gloomy reflections. "Guess you've never been down East afore, mister," said a sharp, cracked voice behind me. It was not a particularly mirthful remark, but my melancholy vanished at once, and a kind fellow-feeling came over me; for, turning round, I recognized a fellow-countryman.

Reader, have you ever seen a Down East captain? If not, let me advise you to go at once in search of one, for he is an original. You will not have to travel far to find him. Go to the wharves at Boston or New-York, go to any seaport town, and you will see one. In fact, go where you will, east or west, north or south, to the wilds of Oregon, or the islands of the Pacific, and you will probably see him everywhere before you. The one before me was a type of his class. He seemed to have dressed himself in his holiday garb. His beaver was of the fashion of the last age. He had a frill shirt, whose collar turned over a glaring red and yellow cotton handkerchief, an extremely tight pair of pantaloons, a blue coat with brass buttons, the collar of which braced his head behind, and to crown all, a calf-skin vest. Having entered into conversation with him, I found that he was born in Eastport, and that his wife lived in Yarmouth, N. S. He had not seen her for three years, was on his way there now, and almost broke his pipe by letting it fall on the deck, while he gave a yell of delight at the thought of soon seeing his Mehitabel.

"A darn lazy set of fellows, them Provincials," said he, "they aint got the proper stuff in them. See them goin' off to their hammocks instead of stayin' on deck like men. They'll never make nothin'. They're too lazy."

"Do you know much about the provinces?" said I.

"Wal, a little.

I lived in Yarmouth three years arter I married, and got tired to death of the place, so I had to go. But it's a beautiful country; why, law bless you, I've seen some of the finest orchards and fields of corn thar that you could think of; and Jerusalem! sich medders! They have fish continewally swimmin' around them, wantin' so much to be caught, that they go up in millions into the rivers, and what do these people do? Precious little. They don't deserve the country. They're lazy!"

I let him run on thus for some time, and found much resemblance between his sayings and those of the great Samuel Slick.

"Do you think they will ever be annexed?

"I don't know. If they wur to be, the country in ten years would be all overrun with Yankees, and before the Provincials knew it their water powers and best lands would be put to some profit. And the villages, which are the thunderinest pooty places you ever see, would soon look a little lively."

"Ah well, Captain, they have not yet had time to develope themselves; wait a few years, and things will be different."

"Wait a few years! I guess we'll have to wait till eternity then. I bet my pipe agin a tenpenny nail, that they'll never become any thin' till they get some Yankees among them. The wust of the business is to see how they look down on us Yankees?"

"Look down on us?"

Be shoor they do! One Provincial thinks himself as good, and a trifle better, than two Yankees. I swow, Job himself would be riled to hear them. I haint no patience with them, and their talk about their old families, and loyalty, and--but blame it, my pipe's out. Good day, Mister."

The harbor of Digby is formed by the widening of the Annapolis River, which at this place has the appearance of a large lake. Here the river rushes into the bay, having burst its way through cliffs 1000 feet in height. This opening goes by the name of Digby Gut. It is a wild and sublime chasm in a chain of mountains, which seem to have been torn asunder by some convulsion of nature. So deep is the cleft, that in some places no bottom has

ever been reached with the sounding lead. At the base of a hill facing the water, and looking up the river, lies the town of Digby, appearing beautifully from the water, with its houses half hidden among trees. Multitudes of cherry-trees grow here; indeed, it may be said, that in no place in the world do cherries grow with greater profusion, or attain a greater degree of perfection than in Digby. There were also plum and peach trees, and great numbers of apple-trees, covered with their beautiful blossoms. The streets were clean and neat, sheltered in many places by shady trees. From the summit of the hill behind the town, the eye might roam over an enchanting landscape, from where, beneath the gazer, Digby lay embosomed among trees, along a fertile coast broken by the outlets of small rivers, to where, twenty miles away, the spires and church towers of Annapolis rose. The water before is always dotted with vessels, and from the lofty rocky bank on the right, you may occasionally hear a deep roaring sound, as some huge pine-tree thunders down the side of the mountain into the water below. I was delighted with this lovely town. But though I loved the quiet of this little spot, yet there seemed a sad want of energy and busy action. Every one was idle and listless. And there was another circumstance yet more surprising. Numbers of those beautiful ladies, for which Nova Scotia is still famous, might be seen riding and promenading, but no young men were there to attend to them. "Where were they?" I could not help inquiring. "Oh, they're all gone off to the States," was the answer, and this was always the reply to such a question. The "States" seems to be the only country in which the Nova Scotia youth think themselves able to prosper. But so beautiful was the country around me, so fertile the soil, so pleasing the manners of the people with whom I became acquainted, that I could not imagine what motives could induce one who was born here to leave his lovely home. Why can they not be as successful in this new country as in ours? The government is almost the same. people are of the same race, their manners and customs are precisely the same. The resources, whether mineral or vegetable, are unbounded. Myriads of fish inhabit these waters. Forests of ship-timber grow on these hills. Then, good heavens! why should a youth, with energy enough to succeed in another land, abandon his more attractive home, when there are so many ways in which one may with safety invest either capital or industry.

The

I left Digby after a stay of about a

week, during which time I had roamed through all those enchanting spots which are scattered around it in such profusion. "Ah," thought I, as I sat beneath the shade of some loft elms, fanned by the unceasing sea-breeze, "if all Nova Scotia reser es this place, how beautiful a land must it be! If Digby were in the United States, how thronged would be its quiet streets! With its beauties, and advantages for sea-bathing, which cannot be surpassed, in a short time it would be the most frequented watering-place in all America.”

Annapolis is a town of about the same size as Digby. It was founded by the French, and in their time, under the name of Port Royal, was the capital of the province. The town is very beautiful, and the country in its immediate vicinity is in a high state of cultivation, but there is nothing here of so striking a nature as the landscape at Digby. As I was in haste to see the birth-place of Evangeline, I soon left. There were no railroads here, and for this I was not sorry; for to me, a leisurely traveller, it was more pleasant to ride slowly, and see the country, than to be borne onward like the wind amid smoke, dust, and cinders. A coach was my conveyance, and, while riding along, I fancied myself living one hundred years ago, for every thing was this much behind the present age. The country beyond Annapolis is exceedingly rough. Such heaps of stones and rocks, such wildness and desolation, such obstacles in the way of cultivation, I never saw, except in the State of Rhode Island; but there the barrenness is that of the desert, while here it extends for but a few miles, and its ruggedness is that of a mountainous country.

A little old gentleman was sitting beside me. Suddenly he spoke—“ Dis mus be a ver strong land to bear de vate of such beg stones, Monsieur; he, he, he!"

I started and turned round in horror. Looking closely at him, I recognized him as a Frenchman, a native of the province. whom I had seen in the hotel at Digby a few days previously. "And have the Acadians, the honest, unsophisticated Aca dians, fallen so low? Will the descendant of those oppressed but noble-hearted men make a pun?" "Twas too true. But. after all, I felt an involuntary respect for him, an affection for him and his race. thought of the gentle Acadienne, Evangeline, and forgave his observation.

I

Entering into conversation with him, I found him to be well-informed about Nova Scotian politics; a relation of his was a member of the Provincial Parliament. Party strife, he informed me, ran very

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