And the myriad idols around me, and the legion of muttering priests-- The revels and rites unholy, the dark, unspeakable feasts-- What have they wrung from the silence? Hath even a Whisper come Of the secret--whence and whither? Alas! for the gods are dumb. Getting no light from the religious guides of his own country, he turns to the land where the English--the present rulers of India--dwell, and asks, IX. Shall I list to the word of the English, who come from the uttermost sea? "The secret, hath it been told you? and what is your message to me? It is naught but the wide-world story, how the earth and the heavens began-- How the gods are glad and angry, and a deity once was man. And so he gathers around him the mantle of doubt and despondency; he asks if life is, after all, but a dream and delusion, while ever and ever is forced upon him that other question, "Where shall the dreamer awake?" X. I had thought, "Perchance in the cities where the rulers of India dwell, Whose orders flash from the far land, who girdle the earth with a spell, They have fathomed the depths we float on, or measured the unknown main--" Sadly they turn from the venture, and say that the quest is vain. XI. Is life, then, a dream and delusion? and where shall the dreamer awake? Is the world seen like shadows on water? and what if the mirror break? Shall it pass as a camp that is struck, as a tent that is gathered and gone From the sands that were lamp-lit at eve, and at morning are level and lone? XII. Is there naught in the heaven above, whence the hail and the levin are hurled, But the wind that is swept around us by the rush of the rolling world-- The wind that shall scatter my ashes, and bear me to silence and sleep, With the dirge and the sounds of lamenting, and voices of women who weep? --The Cornhill Magazine. What a commentary on all this doubt and despondency are the meditations of the Christian, who, "sustained and soothed by an unfaltering trust," approaches his grave Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams! --BRYANT. * * * * * II. THE EARLIEST INHABITANTS OF GREECE.