In Emerson, the Plato of the nineteenth century, the whole feeling of the Greek seems reflected in its most glorious development. Many of his poems clearly suggest the influence of his Greek teacher, as his Threnody" upon the death of his young son, and "The Sphinx in which these two stanzas ap

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pear:

To vision profounder

Man's spirit must dive;

His aye-rolling orb

At no goal will arrive ;

The heavens that now draw him

With sweetness untold,

Once found for new heavens
He spurneth the old.

Eterne alteration

Now follows, now flies,
And under pain, pleasure-
Under pleasure, pain lies.
Love works at the centre,
Heart-heaving alway;
Forth speed the strong pulses
To the borders of day.

Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe, the friend of Bishop Ken and of Dr. Isaac Watts, has left this allusion to preexistence in

A HYMN ON HEAVEN.

Ye starry mansions, hail! my native skies!
Here in my happy, preëxistent state
(A spotless mind) I led the life of Gods,
But passing, I salute you, and advance
To yonder brighter realms, allowed access.
Hail, splendid city of the almighty king,
Celestial salem, situate above, etc.

Some of the common church hymns glow with the enthusiasm of Platonic preëxistence, and are fondly sung by Christians without any thought that, while their idea is of Biblical origin, it has been nourished and perpetuated by the Greek sage, and directly implies reincarnation. For instance :

"I'm but a stranger, here, heaven is my home.
Heaven is my fatherland, heaven is my home."
"My Ain Countrie."

"This world where grief and sin abideth,
Is not the Christian's native clime."

"The home-land, blessed home-land.”

"Jerusalem, my happy home."

VI.

REINCARNATION AMONG THE ANCIENTS.

The ancient theologists and priests testify that the soul is conjoined to the body through a certain punishment, and that it is buried in this body as in a sepulchre. — PHILOLAUS, (a Pythagorean.)

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Search thou the path of the soul, whence she came, or what way, after serving the body, by joining work with sacred speed, thou shalt raise her again to the same state whence she fell. — ZOROASTER.

Death has no power th' immortal soul to slay,
That, when its present body turns to clay,
Seeks a fresh home, and with unlessened might
Inspires another frame with life and light.
So I myself (well I the past recall),
When the fierce Greeks begirt Troy's holy wall,
Was brave Euphorbus: and in conflict drear
Poured forth my blood beneath Atrides' spear.
The shield this arm did bear I lately saw
In Juno's shrine, a trophy of that war.

PYTHAGORAS, in DRYDEN'S Ovid.

He [Plato] spoke of Him

The lone, eternal One, who dwells above,

And of the soul's untraceable descent

From that high fount of spirit, through all the grades

Of intellectual being, till it mix

With atoms vague, corruptible and dark.

Nor yet ev'n thus, though sunk in earthly dross,

Corrupted all, nor its ethereal touch

Quite lost, but tasting of the fountain still

As some bright river, which has rolled along

Through meads of flowery light and mines of gold
When poured at length into the dusky deep
Disdains to take at once its briny taint,

But keeps unchanged awhile the lustrous tinge
Or balmy freshness of the scenes it left.

MOORE.