And how the red, wild sparkles dimly burn It might be well, perhaps. But if, instead, That none of all the fires shall scorch and shred XIV. If thou must love me, let it be for naught ... "I love her for her smile, . . . her look, . . . her way For these things in themselves, beloved, may Thou may'st love on through love's eternity. Those who love the memory of Mrs. Browning may safely rest her fame upon the "Portuguese Sonnets." She had the highest and sweetest soul of her sex that was ever vocal to the ears of the world; and these particular utterances are unmatched except by the sonnets of Shakspeare. Whatever may be said of the ministries of suffering to the soul, it remains certain that love only opens its deepest fountains. Suffering is measurably an external appliance; is always resisted at first, then submitted to, and at last adopted, and its fierce husbandry allowed to work its "peaceable fruits." But love is from within outwards, and from first to last is spontaneous and imperious, subsidizing every power and faculty of the soul, emotive, instinctive, and intellectual. Nothing less than this is love. Under its influence even a man, guarded as he is by expediences, shows his best impulses and utters his best thoughts. Much more a woman, who thereby enters first, like a queen into her kingdom. The influence of Robert Browning upon his wife is plainly discernible in her later writings. Her entire being received an impulse from his congenial and manly spirit. She wrought heroically alone; but it is no depreciation of her powers to say that they needed contact with the masculine element through avenues of approach that were kindlier than criticism or admiration. With her physical renewing-primarily essential-she got accessions of hope and spiritual vigor. The grasp of her mind was strengthened and its vision widened as her love moulded itself upon his wisdom and appropriated its uses by the inexplicable intuitions of nature. She could never have written the magnificent paragraph which, at the risk of repetition— as, being the finest passage in her writings, it cannot fail to be cited by every critic-we are about to quote, unless she had been mated with such a soul as Robert Browning. It occurs in the conclusion of "Aurora Leigh:" I clung closer to his breast, As sword that, after battle, clings to sheath; The mystic motions which, in common moods, Exquisite plagiarism! And how sweetly the writer overlays Shakspeare's deep foundations, and, building from her heart thereon, interprets the starry harmonies: Look how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold; Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubim: Such harmony is in immortal souls; But while this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it. Love, born of God, the essential spark of Deity within us, when it awakes awakes like a prophet, discerns the eternal harmonies, discourses of the Invisible, and bears upward to its source. ART. V.-CARTHAGE AND HER REMAINS. Carthage and her Remains; being an Account of the Excavations and Researches on the Site of the Phoenician Metropolis in Africa, and other adjacent places. Conducted under the auspices of Her Majesty's Government. By Dr. N. DAVIS, F. R. G. S., etc. With Illustrations. 8vo,, pp. 504. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1861. On the fourth of January, 1859, while rambling over the ruins of Carthage with the author of this volume, the youthful Prince 'Alfred of England remarked, that what most impressed itself on his mind while reading Virgil was the part relating to Carthage. He is not alone in his experience. Eneas and Dido, with their loves and varying fortunes, Juno and Venus, with their schemes and rivalries, are a graceful group of memories gathered around the pillars of the infant empire, and are as quickly recalled as are the victories of Hannibal, or the terrible delenda est Carthago of the far-seeing and determined Cato. The poet tells of stately towers displacing shepherd's huts, the citadel of massive stones, the theater of deep foundations; but it is little we learn of Carthage from the historian. It is probable that a Phoenician colony existed at Carthage for four centuries prior to the arrival of Dido, by whom the city was embellished and the government more systematically organized. When Rome had no political or commercial importance beyond the shores of the Tiber, and two centuries before she had a ship of war afloat, Carthage could transport to Sicily, 'and 'put in the field, an army of three hundred thousand men. Her colonies in the islands of the Mediterranean and Atlantic, in Spain and Britain, and her commerce upon every sea, proved her enterprise and added to her power and wealth. She was a true daughter of that Tyre which furnished the architect of the temple of Jehovah, and, in alliance with the Jewish monarch, kept at sea a navy of Tarshish. She may have been, as Mr. Davis conjectures with much plausibility, the Tarshish primarily intended in Scripture, whence were shipped to the harbors of Palestine gold, silver, iron, tin, lead, ivory, 'apes, and peacocks, all of which were found in some of her possessions, or would inevitably flow thither as to a commercial center by the operations of trade. It is certain that Tarshish was a name belonging to this portion of Africa; the ancient name of Tunis, situated only ten miles from Carthage, was Tarsis; the oldest mosque at Tunis is known as the "Tarshish mosque;" a Punic inscription found at Nora, in Sardinia, an island colonized from Carthaginian Africa, asserts that "at Tarshish was the father of Sardinia exiled." It is further conjectured that this name was given by the first colonists as implying that they obtained the territory by conquest; that Dido substituted for it the name of Carthage, as implying possession by treaty with the legitimate proprietors; that when, by colonization and conquest, there came to be several places known as Tarshish, the Tarshish par excellence was in Africa, and identical with Ophir; and that the route from Ezion-Geber into the Mediterranean by the canal of Sesostris and the Nile, was better and more probable than that by the Cape of Good Hope and the Straits of Gibraltar. There can be no question respecting the artistic taste and skill of this people. Virgil testifies of the adornment of the public works. These descendants of Canaan, the son of Ham, had an extensive commerce and abundant wealth in the days of Phidias and Zeuxis. Victorious war then, as in more modern times, claimed as spoils the precious possessions of conquered cities; and so rich had Carthage become in works of art, that, after Scipio had restored to the nations then in alliance with Rome, the statues and paintings of which they had been plundered, there was, as Appian informs us, "nothing to be seen but statues, curiosities, and rare objects of an inestimable price." Of the extent of her literature we are doomed to ignorance. Pliny speaks of her libraries, which the Roman senate bestowed upon the petty kings of Africa. It would seem that, with the fall of the city, the very language of Dido and Hannibal perished. A few inscriptions on stones and coins have survived the general wreck, but they were undecipherable even by the learned until Scaliger discovered the key. A few lines in the Pœnulus of Plautus, neither Latin nor Greek, and thought by some critics to be no language at all, but a mere jargon put into the mouth of Hanno the Carthaginian, were conjectured by him to be Punic. The testimony of the fathers of the Church and ancient grammarians, who speak of the resemblance of the Hebrew and Phoenician tongues, was found to be true. Scaliger, Bochart, Gesenius, and other scholars succeeded in the construction of the alphabet of the language; and now whatever inscriptions yet remain may be read with tolerable accuracy. It is only by making the Hebrew the key to their rendering that any satisfactory results have been attained. Many words, preserved by Greek and Latin authors as Phonician, are found to exactly correspond with the Hebrew; and of ninety-four words in a tablet recently discovered at Marseilles, seventy-four are in the Old Testament. In 1837, Gesenius published his Scriptura Linguæque Phoenicia Monumenta, in which are all the words of the language then known, amounting in number to about one thousand, to which some additions have since been made, but to what extent we are not informed. So complete was the destruction of Carthage that her precise locality has been a subject of dispute, a few scattered and shapeless pieces of masonry her principal remains, and her name unknown to her present inhabitants. We know but little of her political system, her government, or her religion; of her social customs, her industry, the constitution of her armies and her commerce, we have but a few scattered hints; and it is chiefly by the achievements of her generals, and the wars which resulted in her overthrow, that the world is aware of her existence. We are glad, therefore, that Mr. Davis became sufficiently interested in the beautiful but unfortunate queen to feel an awakened enthusiasm as he first stood upon the site of the once famous city, which led to a study of Carthaginian history and language, and finally to excavations "for relics of the past," combined with some "digging into the minds and characters" of the present dwellers upon the soil. Successive visits had satisfied him that the oft-repeated assertion of the disappearance of the very ruins of the capital was untrue, and that they were only hidden by accumulations of earth. Having obtained the desired permission of the Bey of Tunis, he successfully applied to the Earl of Clarendon, then Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, for government aid in his projected enterprise, intending to deposit in the British Museum whatever |