The ancients were loud in their praises of Alcæus. His poems were polished, full of vehemence and passion, sublime in their denunciations of tyranny and encomiums of freedom. Love and wine were two of his favorite topics; yet even his jovial pieces were pervaded by a loftiness of sentiment foreign to mere sensual songs. Among his most beautiful compositions were the odes to Sappho, whose love he once sought, but whose genius soared to greater heights than his. We take from Alcæus THE CONSTITUTION OF A STATE. “What constitutes a state? Not high-raised battlement or labored mound, Thick wall or moated gate; Not cities fair, with spires and turrets crowned: No:—Men, high-minded men, With powers as far above dull brutes endued, In forest, brake, or den, As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude— Men who their duties know, Know too their rights, and knowing, dare maintain; Prevent the long-aimed blow, And crush the tyrant, while they rend the chain.” SIR WILLIAM JONES. =The Lesbian Poetesses.=—Lesbos was the centre of lyric song. To its shores, the waves of ocean are fabled to have borne the lyre of Orpheus, which the people hung in Apollo’s temple: thus traditionally distinguished by fate, it became renowned as the home of Grecian poetesses. The Lesbian women were not confined to domestic duties, but were allowed to take part in public affairs. They founded societies for the cultivation of their literary tastes, and before all Greece vindicated the genius of their sex. And Lesbos was the very clime for poetry to ripen in. The love of the beautiful was fed on every side. The island was a paradise of groves and rivulets, of blossoms and perfumes. Among its olive-clad hills, at its fountains set in violets and fringed with fern, under its stately pines, and in its temples shining with ivory and gold, its poetesses received their inspiration. =Sappho.=—Greatest of these, and queen of her sex in intellectual endowments, was Sappho, “the Lesbian Nightingale,” “spotless, sweetly-smiling, violet-wreathed,” as Alcæus fondly described her, whom all Greece knew as _The Poetess_.