age to age, till it has become so illustrious, and her exploits and character so frequently alluded to in history, in poetry, and in the arts, that it is obviously necessary to be acquainted with the traditions respecting her; though quite unnecessary to give implicit credit to the relation of events resting on such vague, remote, and doubtful testimony, that, if it be difficult to believe, it is impossible to confute them. The time at which Semiramis lived is a matter of dispute; and the authorities vary so extravagantly, that we are tempted to exclaim with Bryant, "What credit can possibly be given to the history of a person, the period of whose existence cannot be ascertained within 1500 years?" Yet, so universal a celebrity must surely have had some foundation in truth. According to Rollin, Semiramis flourished about 1950 years before the Christian era; that is, about 400 years after the flood, and nearly about the time of Abraham. Other chronologists, with far more probability, place her reign about 600 years later; thus making her nearly contemporary with Gideon, judge of Israel, and Theseus, king of Athens. She was born at Ascalon, in Syria, and was the wife of Menones, one of the generals of Ninus, king of Assyria. At the siege of Bactria, whither she accompanied her husband, she distinguished herself by her prudence and courage, and through her sagacity the city was at length taken, after a protracted siege. She discovered a weak part in the fortifications, and led some soldiers up a by-path by night, by which means the walls were scaled, and the city entered. Ninus, struck with her wisdom and her charms, entreated her husband to resign Semiramis to him, offering his daughter, the princess Sosana, in exchange, and threatening to put out the eyes of the husband if he refused. Menones, seeing the king resolved on his purpose, and the lady in all probability nothing loth, and unable to determine between the alternatives presented to him,-the loss of his eyes, or the loss of his wife,-hung himself in a fit of jealousy and despair, and Ninus immediately after married his widow. Semiramis became the mother of a son named Ninias, and the king, dying soon afterward, bequeathed to her the government of his empire during the minority of his son. We have another version of this part of the story of Semiramis, which has afforded a fine subject for poets and satirists. It is recorded that Ninus, in the extravagance of his dotage, granted to his young and beautiful queen the absolute sovereignty of his empire for a single day. He seated her on his regal throne, placed his signet on her finger, commanded the officers of state and courtiers to do her homage, himself setting the first example, and her decrees during that brief space of time were to be considered absolute and irrevocable. Semiramis, with equal subtlety and audacity, instantly took advantage of her delegated power, and ordered her husband to be first imprisoned and then strangled, a punishment which his folly would almost have deserved from any other hand. She declared herself his successor, and contrived to retain the supreme power during the remainder of her life. She was twenty years of age when she assumed the reins of empire, and resolved to immortalize her name by magnificent monuments and mighty enterprises. She is said to have founded the city of Babylon, or at least to have adorned it with such prodigious and splendid works that they ranked among the wonders of the world. When we read the accounts of the "Great Babylon," of its walls and brazen gates, its temples, bridges, and hanging gardens, we should be inclined to treat the whole as a magnificent fiction of poetry, if the stupendous monuments of human art and labor, still remaining in India and Upper Egypt, did not render credible the most extravagant of these descriptions, and prove on what a gigantic scale the ancients worked for immortality. We are also told, that among the edifices erected by her, was a mausoleum to the memory of the king, her husband, adjoining the great tower of Babel, and adorned with statues of massive gold. When Semiramis had completed the adornment of her capital by the most wonderful works of art, she undertook a progress through her vast empire, and every where left behind her glorious memorials of her power and her benevolence. It seems to have been an article of faith among all the writers of antiquity, that Assyria had never been so great and so prosperous as under the dominion of this extraordinary woman. She built enor mous aqueducts, connected the various cities by roads and causeways, in the construction of which she leveled hills and filled up valleys; and she was careful, like the imperial conqueror of modern times, to inscribe her name and the praises of her own munificence on all these monuments of her greatness. In one of these inscriptions she gives her own genealogy, in a long list of celestial progenitors; which shows that, like some other monarchs of the antique time, she had the weakness to disown her plebian origin, and wished to lay claim to a divine and fictitious parentage. "My father was Jupiter Belus; After reading this high sounding catalogue of grandfathers and great-grandfathers, it is amusing to recollect that Semiramis has left posterity in some doubt whether she herself ever had a real existence, and may not be, after all, as imaginary a personage as any of her shadowy, heaven-sprung ancestors. There is another of the inscriptions of Semiramis, which is in a much finer spirit. " 'Nature bestowed on me the form of a woman; my actions have surpassed those of the most valiant of men. I ruled the empire of Ninus, which stretched eastward as far as the river Hyhanam, southward to the land of incense and of myrrh, and northward to the country of the Scythians and the Sogdians. Before me no Assyrian had seen the great sea. I beheld with my own eyes four seas, and their shores acknowledged my power. I constrained the mighty rivers to flow according to my will, and I led their waters to fertilize lands that had been before barren and without inhabitants. I raised impregnable towers; I constructed paved roads in ways hitherto untrodden but by the beasts of the forest; and in the midst of these mighty works I found time for pleasure and for friendship." We are told that Semiramis was extremely active and vigilant in the administration of her affairs. One morning, as she was dressing, information was brought to her that a rebellion had broken out in the city; she immediately rushed forth, halfattired, her hair floating in disorder, appeased the tumultuous populace by her presence and her eloquence, and then returned to finish her toilette. Not satisfied with being the foundress of mighty cities, and sovereign over the greatest empire of the earth, Semiramis was ambitious of military renown. She subdued the Medes, the Persians, the Lybians, and the Ethiopians, and afterward determined to invade India. She is the first monarch on record who penetrated beyond the Indus, for the expedition of Bacchus is evidently fabulous. The amount of her army appears to us absolutely incredible. She is said to have assembled three millions of foot soldiers and five hundred thousand cavalry; and as the strength of the Indians consisted principally in the number of their elephants, she caused many thousand camels to be disguised and caparisoned like elephants of war, in hopes of deceiving and terrifying the enemy by this stratagem. Another historian informs us, that she constructed machines in the shape of elephants, and that these machines were moved by some mechanical contrivance, which was worked by a single man in the interior of each. The Indian king, or chief, whose name was Stabrobates, hearing of the stupendous armament which was moving against him, sent an ambassador to Semiramis, demanding who and what she was? and why, without any provocation, she was come to invade his dominions? To these very reasonable inquiries the Assyrian queen haughtily replied, "Go to your king, and tell him I will myself inform him who I am, and why I am come hither." Then, rushing onwards at the head of her swarming battalions, she passed the river Indus in spite of all opposition, and advanced far into the country, the people flying before her unresisting, and apparently vanquished. But having thus insidiously led her on till she was surrounded by hostile lands, and beyond the reach of assistance from her own dominions, the Indian monarch suddenly attacked her, overwhelmed her mock elephants by the power and weight of his real ones, and completely routed her troops, who fled in all directions. The queen herself was wounded, and only saved by the swiftness of her Arabian steed, which bore her across the Indus; and she returned to her kingdom with scarce a third of her vast army. We are not informed whether the disasters of this war cured Semiramis of her passion for military glory; and all the researches of antiquarians have not enabled us to distinguish the vague and poetical from the true, or at least the probable events in the remainder of her story. We have no account of the state of manners and morals during her reign; and of the progress of civilization we can only judge by the great works imputed to her. Among the various accounts of her death, the following is the most probable :-An oracle had foretold that Semiramis should reign until her son Ninias conspired against her; and after her return from her Indian expedition she discovered that Ninias had been plotting her destruction. She immediately called to mind the words of the oracle, and, without attempting to resist his designs, abdicated the throne at once, and retired from the world; or, according to others, she was put to death by her son, after a reign of fortytwo years. The Assyrians paid her divine honors under the form of a pigeon. 198 BIOGRAPHY. BRAINARD.-WHITTIER. There is a feeling of reverence associated with our reminiscences of departed worth and genius. It is too holy and deep for outward manifestation. It hovers closely around the heart, sweeping in secret the fine and hidden chords of our better sympathies. In contemplating the character of the subject of this sketch, I feel, in no ordinary degree, the peculiar delicacy of the task I have undertaken. It is like lifting the shroud from the still face of the dead, that the living may admire its yet lingering loveliness. I almost feel as if I were writing in the presence of the disembodied spirit of the departed ;—as if the eye of his modest and unpretending genius were following the pen which traces his brief history. John Gardiner Calkins Brainard, was born at New London, Connecticut, in October, 1796. He was the son of the late Hon. Jeremiah G. Brainard, formerly a judge of the Superior Court in that State. His preparatory studies were under the direction of his elder brother, who is at this time a highly respectable member of the Connecticut bar. He entered Yale College at the age of fifteen;—and soon gave evidence of the possession of a superior gift of intellect. His genius was not of that startling nature, which blazes out suddenly from the chaos of an unformed character, dazzling with its unexpected brilliance. It developed itself gradually and quietly. It was perceptible to others even before its possessor seemed conscious of its influence. Never intrusive, and always shrinking from competition, it called forth an admiration which had no alloy of envy. There was a modesty in the manifestations of his genius, a disinterestedness, at times almost approaching carelessness, which forbade the suspicion of rivalship, and which discovered no inclination to contend for those honors which all felt were within his grasp. During his residence at Yale College, he was a universal favorite. Although, even at that early period, something of the sadness which clouded his after life, occasionally gathered around him, he had all the cheerfulness of a happy child in the |