In a month after the ashes of Lesbia had been consigned to the tomb, those of Metazulis were laid beside them. The wealth of Metazulis was now the property of Erostratus, but could gold purchase peace for his anguished soul? Never was he seen to smile, and his solitary hours (and how few of his hours were not solitary?) were passed in grief and lamentation. The love of immortality remained inextinguishable in his breast, and he resolved upon an achievement which should give his name a place in the page of history; and in the moments of his phrenzy, he imagined that the name of Lesbia would appear in the record with his, and that this would be accepted by her shade as an atonement on his part, for the fate in which her love for him had involved her. In the middle of a dark and tempestuous night, he applied a torch to that temple, the boast of Ephesus, the wonder of the world! The Greek historians of after days asserted that the goddess was in Macedon attending to the birth of Alexander. Her fane was destroyed and reduced to a mass of blackened ruin. Erostratus unhesitatingly avowed himself the incendiary, and the rack could force no reply from him but the cry “I did it for immortality.” He was condemned to be burnt to death, and expired in the most dreadful torture, with a smile upon his countenance and the name of Lesbia upon his lips. The magistrates, lest his desire of an immortal memory should be gratified, denounced death upon all who should pronounce his name, that it might be blotted out forever.
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About twenty years subsequently, a citizen of Ephesus, and his friend from Athens, were walking upon the shore of the sea, a few miles from the former city. There were a number of young Ephesians exercising themselves in athletic sports upon the sands, at whom they looked for a while, and then passed on. After a few steps they stopped to examine something over which the sea was breaking near the shore. A few human bones blackened and mouldering met their gaze. “Near this spot,” said the Ephesian, “we burnt Erostratus.” “Who was he?” replied the Athenian, “I do not remember to have ever heard of him.” The Ephesian made no reply but hurried his friend on board a small fishing boat, and put to sea. It was long before the Athenian could obtain an explanation of this singular conduct from his agitated friend. The Ephesian at length reminded him of the edict, and avowed that the forbidden name had escaped his lip, and been overheard by the youths who were near them. A vessel bound to Greece picked them up. The Ephesian settled in Attica, never daring to return to his native country. The greater portion of the incidents recorded above were communicated by him to his friend, and the tale, corroborated by others, became well known throughout Greece; but at Ephesus, no one for centuries dared to utter the forbidden name of Erostratus.
BELLES OF WILLIAMSBURG.
[We have rather accidentally met with these two poems, The Belles of Williamsburg, and the Sequel to the Belles of Williamsburg, both written and circulated in that place in 1777. These pieces are believed to have been either composed by two different gentlemen, or to have been the joint production of both. As we cannot, however, assign to each his due share, we do not think ourselves at liberty to mention their names—which (although the authors in question are now no more,) are still distinguished names in Virginia.]