What boots it that the hills of Spain Shook 'neath his lordly tread-- That with the blood of her best sons, Her vallies' streams ran red? That over Moscow's battlements, His flag-folds he shook out-- That e'en the lofty pyramids Rang with his charging shout? He who subdu'd so many lands, Must now from England crave (Although she is his deadliest foe) What man last wants--a grave! For the Southern Literary Messenger. MR. WHITE,--You have published at page 199 of your January number, four outlandish-looking lines, with a hope that some one of your numerous readers may not only be able to inform your correspondent who furnished them, in what language they are written, but let him still further into the secret by giving their meaning. Happening to know a little of the Gaelic, I have no hesitation in saying that that is the tongue in which they are written; and further, I think I have succeeded, after a good deal of trouble, in discovering to a certainty that they are a translation of the first stanza of Sappho's celebrated Ode addressed "_To the Beloved Pair_," and commented upon at some length by Longinus, in the tenth section of his De Sublimitate. The stanza in question runs thus: [For want of proper type we cannot give it in the Greek.--_Ed._] Videtur mihi ille æqualis Diis Esse Vir, qui oppositus tibi Sedet, et prope te dulce loquentem audit Et rides amabiliter. Blest as the immortal Gods is he The youth who fondly sits by thee, And hears and sees thee all the while Softly speak and sweetly smile. An interesting critique upon the Ode, with the whole of Ambrose Philips' spirited translation of it, is to be met with in the two hundred and twenty-ninth number of the Spectator. Yours, &c. UDOCH. For the Southern Literary Messenger. THE FINE ARTS. No. II. ----If the painter saw Naught but the prose of things, and dared but draw The literal, aged, uninspiring truth, And saw not nature in her winged youth Her rainbow aspect, when she stands array'd In floods of sunshine and in nights of shade, What would he gain?--_Barry Cornwall_. In my last number, I undertook to show, that "uncultivated taste, is incapable of estimating excellence in art" and that, "the beautiful in nature, like philosophy and science, can only be comprehended by those who study it profoundly and observe it habitually." But those who think nature an unveiled beauty to be gazed upon by every wanton eye, or that the arts aspire no higher than the "prose of things;" those who are resolved to admire what they like, rather than learn to like that which is admirable, may spare themselves the trouble of reading this article,--as my object is, to instruct the teachable, to ramble with the lover of nature amidst the shades of rural life, and converse with the amateur of art, about all that is excellent in ancient or modern works.