Will they return?

Ask of the phantoms pale
That haunt the hollow sky,
Ask of the fitful gale
That mourns and passes by,
Invoke the spirits' home,
Unsearchable, unseen--
Where do the wanderers roam?
Are they as they have been?

Silence is on the land,
No voice comes from the sea,
No spell can reach thy strand,
Thou dim Eternity!
Fled like the cloudy rack
With morning's early breath,
What night shall bring them back?
The night that brings us death!

* * * * *

STETE SUPER VIAS ANTIGUAS.

My heart lies buried with the past,
'Mid scenes where fleeting memory strays
And time its darkening shadows cast
O'er all the marks of by-gone days;
I look in vain for ancient ways--
The olden paths are worn and gone;
No friend that trod them here delays,
I pass benighted and alone.
Yet in this mist of life and mind,
Which ever dark and darker grows,
There is one living lamp enshrin'd,
Whose ray in deathless lustre glows.
That star-like light my God bestows
To break the deep sepulchral gloom;
Its beams Eternity disclose,
And show the garden round the tomb.

ENCOURAGEMENT OF LITERATURE.

In the concluding volume of the Life of Southey, just published by the
Harpers, is a letter from the poet in answer to one by Lord Brougham, on
the subject of the encouragement of literature by government. "Your
first question," writes Southey, "is, whether Letters would gain by the
more avowed and active encouragement of the Government?

"There are literary works of national importance which can only be
performed by co-operative labor, and will never be undertaken by that
spirit of trade which at present preponderates in literature. The
formation of an English Etymological Dictionary is one of those works;
others might be mentioned; and in this way literature might gain much by
receiving national encouragement; _but Government would gain a great
deal more by bestowing it. Revolutionary governments understand this: I
should be glad if I could believe that our legitimate one would learn it
before it is too late. I am addressing one who is a statesman as well as
a man of letters, and who is well aware that the time is come in which
governments can no more stand without pens to support them than without
bayonets._ They must soo