and rebound, that the face of the heretic might be turned from the east. Fagots and heaps of straw were then piled up about him, and the fire was ready to be set. Another offer was made him to recant, which with a loud voice he rejected. The nobles of the empire withdrew, and the pile was lighted. As the wind caught the flames and wrapped them around him, the crowd could no longer see his face, but he was heard thrice to say, "Jesus, son of the living God, have pity on me!" The fire was kept up till every part of the body was consumed; the ashes were then scraped together and thrown into the Rhine. But the Bohemians hollowed out the ground where he was burned, and sent the precious earth to Prague.

The death of Jerome was delayed till the next spring. Worn out with the sufferings of a long imprisonment, his courage had given way, and he consented to recant. But he withdrew his abjuration, and, after undergoing an examination in which his firmness and eloquence were the admiration even of his enemies, he went to the stake, with a noble magnanimity worthy of the friend of Huss. Hear what Æneas Sylvius, afterwards Pope Pius II., says of the martyrs : They went to the stake as to a banquet. Not a word fell from them which showed the least faint-heartedness. the midst of the flames they sung hymns to the last gasp without ceasing. Never did any philosopher suffer death with so much constancy as they endured the fire."

In

The council were now at liberty to put the finishing stroke to the extinction of the Schism. Gregory having resigned, Benedict, untamable to the end, was deposed, and in 1417 a new pope was chosen by the title of Martin V. Some attempts towards a reformation of morals in the church were made, but to no great purpose, and this famous assembly dissolved in 1418. It owes its chief renown to the murder of Huss and Jerome; and Sigismund has been saved from oblivion by the violation of a solemn promise. Thus the virtues of the good are a perpetual judgment on the sins of the wicked. The city of Constance yet shows the cell in which Huss was confined, and the spot on which he stood to receive his sentence, the most interesting memorials of the great council.

The council during its session passed severe decrees against the communion in both kinds, which had been revived

afresh in Bohemia, and against the Hussites in general. But the two martyrs became saints in the eyes of their countrymen. The day of Huss's death was celebrated among them, and the seat which he used to occupy, before his pulpit, was hacked into splinters, to be carried away as a memorial of him. The terrible one-eyed Ziska arose, and a war of horrible violence and barbarity broke out, which hunted Sigismund almost to his grave.

The Roman church rallied after the council of Constance. Under favor of a powerful reaction, it sustained itself a century longer. Then came Luther, in the fulness of time, and accomplished what Wycliffe and Huss had in vain attempted before the hour was ripe. The battle was opened on the same ground, the immorality of the clergy and the sale of indulgences; but it did not end there.

ART. II.-P. VIRGILIUS MARO, qualem omni parte illustratum tertio publicavit CHR. GOTTL. HEYNE, cui SERVIUM pariter integrum et variorum Notas cum suis subjunxit N. E. LEMAIRE. Paris P. Didot, Sen. 1819.

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8vo. 8 vols. in 9.

LET not our readers suppose that we have undertaken to gild refined gold," or to say a word in praise of Heyne's Virgil. We might, however, recommend the edition of it named above as containing a more ample collection of critical and biographical materials than any other that we have seen. Its value, to the readers of the Georgics especially, is greatly enhanced by a very complete "Flora Virgiliana in French, in which the plants named by Virgil are identified, so far as is practicable, with plants known at the present time, and referred to their appropriate places, both in the Linnæan classification and under the natural orders. This is a department of inquiry which demands the services of a scientific botanist, and in which a mere lexicographer or critic might pursue his labors to little purpose. Many of the classical names of plants owe their origin to fabulous, remote, or ideal associations, and are employed by ancient writers to denote species or genera widely diverse from those which in

In some instances,

modern systems bear the same names. the same Latin word denotes two or more very different plants; in others, different tribes, now regarded as belonging to the same family, are marked by distinct generic names. Often the notices that can be collected from all antiquity with reference to a plant, perhaps too universally known to have been described in detail, are so vague, fragmentary, and incidental, as to render its identification a process like that by which Cuvier was wont to reconstruct the skeleton of an unknown animal from a single tooth.

As we have touched upon this topic, it may not be without interest to our readers for us to illustrate these remarks by two or three prominent instances of ambiguity, which the mere philologist, who was not also a botanist, would be inadequate to solve. The word lilium furnishes a case in point. Almost every translator spontaneously renders this lily, in whatever connection it is found; yet there can be no doubt that it is often employed to denote also some of the larger species of the Ornithogalum, or Star of Bethlehem. Vaccinium is another term which has divided critics. It is now used to denote the extensive family of shrubs of which our common varieties of whortleberry are well-known members. The word was undoubtedly applied to this class of plants on account of its imagined derivation from vacca, the whortleberry being the common growth of pastures. But in Virgil's second Eclogue, vaccinia nigra are placed in contrast with alba ligustra, which must needs denote the flower of the privet; for its berries are black. The usual symmetry of Virgil's comparisons, therefore, compels us to suppose that his vaccinium is a flower, not a fruit, and points to the Greek dxn9os as furnishing its etymology. Nor let it be objected to this interpretation, that the hyacinth is not black. There are varieties of it as black as any of the violet, and in the tenth Eclogue we have the verse,

"Et nigræ violæ sunt, et vaccinia nigra," which furnishes still further ground for regarding the vaccinium as a flower.

Of all the ancient names of plants, the lotus probably furnishes the broadest scope for botanical disquisition. It is a name given to no less than eleven trees, shrubs, and annuals, terrestrial and aquatic, of five different genera, belonging to as many different classes of the Linnæan system.

The French lexicographer, Noël, furnishes an amusing instance of carelessness in the floral department of his labors. The rosemary was designated in the Augustan age, as it is now, by the term ros marinus, from which it derives its English name. Virgil in his Culex uses the name in full, แ Liliaque, et roris non avia cura marini.”

In the second Georgic, he designates the same herb by ros simply:

"Vix humiles apibus casias roremque ministrat." Ovid also, in his Fasti, has the following verse:

"Pars thyma, pars rorem, pars meliloton, amant." With these verses before him, Noel not only omits rosemary [romarin] among the significations of ros, but when he comes to ros marinus he renders it eau de mer, thus sowing seawater among the laurels and lilies that decked the mosquito's funeral mound.

But it is not our present design to pursue this subject. Our chief purpose in this article is to attempt the solution of the problems presented by Virgil's fourth Eclogue. This is in every point of view a unique poem. The other Eclogues are little more than free translations from Theocritus, or the adaptation of materials derived from him to more recent personages or events. They indicate that stage of culture at which one wisely borrows, and learns, by the re-arrangement of preexisting materials, how in maturer years to shape and polish his own creations. They relate chiefly to the slender joys and sorrows of rustic life, and whatever in their subject-matter would demand a more elevated and ambitious treatment is gracefully indeed, but inexorably, brought down to the pastoral level. In the fourth, Virgil announces the purpose of a loftier song," paullo majora canamus." He forsakes the Sicilian Muses, as soon as he has invoked them, and sustains himself throughout in a strain immeasurably transcending the bucolic standard in dignity and grandeur. Very little of the imagery, and no portion of the general scheme, of the poem can be traced to his favorite Greek models. It is marked by the utmost purity of language and sentiment, and contains not so much as a cursory reference to the earthly passion of love, the great staple of pastoral poetry; while the rest of the Bucolics not only dwell continually upon that passion, but are mostly conversant with those of its unchaste and unnatural

developments which Christian civilization has delivered over to darkness and infamy. In fine, the fourth Eclogue is as much out of place among the other nine, as one of Moore's Sacred Melodies would be in a collection of his most licentious amatory or Bacchanalian songs. On the other hand, we trace in this remarkable poem much more than a general resemblance to the Hebrew prophets. The tone of coloring given to its approaching golden age irresistibly recalls similar descriptions in David, Isaiah, and Micah ; and with a slight change of proper names, and a few deviations from the literal rendering, we could easily translate it so that it would seem a paraphrase from the Old Testament. Indeed, those portions of Pope's Messiah drawn directly from it can be distinguished only by the most careful analysis from the parts for which he was indebted to the "Nymphs of Solyma."

This Eclogue has also, so far as we are apprised, the solitary distinction among the remains of classical poetry of being exclusively prophetical in its character. The ancient poets drew their inspiration mainly from the past. Their golden age lay in the infancy of time, and before the birth of Jupiter. Their better days were always in the remotest antiquity. The entire absence of hopefulness as to the fortunes of the race is a pervading characteristic of them all." Omnia fatis in pejus ruere," is their universal creed, hardly ever disowned, except when, in a fit of sycophancy, or to save his head, the poet assigns to the reigning tyrant some decisive influence on coming ages. The etymology of the Greek and Latin words synonymous with poet has no reference to the future, nonins and poeta meaning simply maker, and vates, i. e. pans, signifying merely speaker at the outset, though in process of time it came to designate the prophet as well as the poet.

Their

Far otherwise was the case with the Hebrews. language has no word corresponding to our word poet; but ', prophet, a word derived from a root denoting the bringing forth of what is still hidden, was applied to every author, whether in prose or poetry, who transcended the scope of the mere annalist. This same designation was also employed to denote their religious teachers and their minstrels, in which latter sense only was it that Saul was "among the prophets.' Now language is history; and a well-ascertained philological fact may always be taken as a stenographic