the Redeemer's blood should be my bride? The history of Abarbanel exemplified her mysterious words; they explained the significant sentence. Adora, indeed, was descended from those sacred kings whence at length the Holy Family came. How wonderful did all this appear! And I too, like herself and brother, was the representative of a sacerdotal line, not glorious as that of David, but equally ancient, and predestined to the same salvation when its sacrifice should be completed in me. It was necessary that I should be united to Adora, and be exalted by means of her holy nature to fitness for my righteous task-the work of leading a heathen procession of souls, the spirits of my race, out of Hades into the light of life. Ippolito, too, was to struggle with us to the common end, and all who should henceforth descend of our line were to be set apart for sacrifice.

Feelings which come and go, come vividly and entirely vanish-come in wretchedness and disappear in joy:-how ye chased me and released me by turns, and the end accomplished for me that mighty work which had else been left undone !

I was alone with Adora, and as I looked steadfastly at her I saw that she had started into a fresh phase of existence-saw at once the change which had been long advancing. She appeared in a new form of youth; the look of womanhood was strong upon her; the mind shone forth expressive of deep and vast intelligence. The will bespoke itself equal to the strangest and most wondrous of human destinies, while hope received its intonations from the remote-that stretching of a confident heart into many morrows, which augurs the coming of a future.

.

Her mind suddenly became active; she was to be seen in every part of the castle, now giving directions for arranging furniture, now herself placing books and curiosities in new places, or issuing commands for the conduct of the household. I was at a loss to conceive what these busy movements meant, when, standing nigh to her in her chamber, she started with wildest looks, wrung her hands, and held her breath, which at the moment reminded me of the vision in the robber's cave; for again I beheld the same expression of deep and tender anguish, the same strong effort to bear up against spiritual pangs. As the agony passed across her soul, I thus beheld its outward shadow: the head was thrown back, her long hair fell behind her dewy forehead, her features assumed a look of beauty such as I had never before beheld, and in the most animated language I read an annunciation which until then I had scarce dreamed of. It came upon me as a vision of the true St. Veronica with her face of suffering love, to behold which was to look upon woman the mother of all hope and sorrow in her utmost perfection, the priestess of Nature making sacrifice with love next to divine. The immortal death itself in all its majesty, such as only One has suffered throughout eternity, can be conceived and pictured by art from no other study than that of the mother who endures the utmost mortal pang to save her race from its ever-coming end in time-a pang which we must believe the Virgin herself suffered at the holy infant's birth.

THORNBURY'S LAYS AND LEGENDS.*

POETS and critics are doomed to perpetual hostility. Mr. Thornbury, arming himself with the weapons of the mighty Milton, does battle vigorously. "Who kills a man," he says, "kills a reasonable creature-God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, the image of God, as it were, in the eye. Alas! murderous critic, this is not all. Draco, we are told, punished the sin of which you are so often foully guilty with decapitation-too good a punishment for such a cavilling race of unbelievers— the loss of an empty head for the destruction of the produce of another's brains! Critics had better beware. The impressions of young innocents swaddled in white, and growing dusty on the booksellers' shelves, are suddenly endowed with belligerent life. They are condors to whom the critics are but chickens, and, to complete the iteration, are to be "branded on their narrow foreheads with the letter C, which the world knows stands for critic, craven, coward, cuckold, and a thousand other distateful names." The caitiff! If the Draconic law is abrogated, it is evidently no fault of the bard of Cortes and Pizarro. Like the poor, half-starved, badly-equipped adventurers, who, buoyed up by the certainty of conquest over feeble, effeminate, and despicable antagonists, leaped ashore from their wretched caravels to follow the dissolute Cortes or the cruel Pizarro, and "cleave deep lanes through the dark squadrons that barred their way to the golden cities," so does genius, proud of its power, and conscious of its superiority, throw down the gauntlet to the puny critic of the narrow forehead, and open the road to success and to fame immortal through whole ranks of prostrate quill-drivers!

"There are certain things," said old Le Bruyère, "in which mediocrity is insupportable: these are poetry, music, painting, and oratory." He might have added, also, war. A little war, according to a great military authority, is a most pernicious thing. Thus the poet should not only have a theme adequate to his own vehemence-he should not only humble the critics in advance, but he should also show the utter incompetency of all his predecessors, as well as the superiority of his subject, and the land of which he sings, over the descriptive powers of any who have hitherto ventured to approach so sacred a theme. Spain has its Ercilla, a soldier, who wrote an epic on the New World on his drum-head, "beautiful in parts, but, as a whole, of inferior water." "Proh pudor! we have nought but Southey's incomprehensible Madoc,' and Rogers's short poem, The Voyage of Columbus,' in which supernatural machinery is so strangely used." "Then, for history, till Irving's delightful abridgments, and Prescott's more ambitious work arrived in England, except Robertson's narrow view of the Conquest, we had nothing by which to measure it by our standard."

Having established his position, then, as the first opener (poetically at least) of the entrenchment-the first digger in this mental California; having summarily dismissed all previous labours, excepting a few Spanish tomes which reveal the gossiping and delightful chronicles of the old soldier of Cortes, Bernal Diez, Peter Martyr's "Classical Effusions,"

Lays and Legends; or, Ballads of the New World. By G. W. Thornbury.

Soli's "Poetical View of the Conquest of Mexico," and a few others; and having routed the whole army of snarling critics, it only remained for the poet to describe well himself, and to write naturally, strongly, and yet delicately. A slender capacity fancies that he is writing divinely; a clever man is satisfied if he expresses himself reasonably. The actions of heroes are great and admirable in themselves; all that is wanted is to depict them well and naturally with simple imagery, and clear, distinct expressions. True genius will never attempt to soar above, as it will disdain to sink below the truth. "Columbus," "The Battle of Tobasco," ," "The Tears of Cortes," "The Sorrowful Night," "The Murder of Pizarro," "The Death of Old Carbajal," "The Procession of the Dead," "The Descent of the Volcano,' are heroic incidents illustrative of the Conquest and of the New World alike, and they are told in heroic and simple language-that will live-despite all the difficulties the author has conjured up to combat with-spectres begot by his own warm and exuberant imagination, and which he may now lay happily in the dead sea or the Atlantic. To give an example of Mr. Thornbury's poetic taste and feeling, we must, however, turn to something more brief, although little less aspiring, than his great themes taken from the New World-a few characteristic stanzas on the "Battle of Hastings," suggested by the monkish chronicle of William of Malmesbury.

An angry man was the Bastard,

As he dashed his wine-cup down;
And darker grew his furrowed brow,
And darker grew his frown.
And he swore on the holy relics,

By the "brightness of the Lord!"

Till he'd hurled the nithering from his throne
He'd never sheathe the sword.

And he tore in twain his royal robe,
And doffed his father's crown;
And donned his blood-stained hauberk,
And his mantel of state laid down.
While the Norman barks are manning
He paces on the sand;

At the white rock walls of Britain
He shakes his armed hand.

On the eve of good St. Michael,
His ship with the crimson sail,
Like a falcon on its quarry
Flies swift before the gale.
Ah! still as the slain in battle
The realm of England lay;
But the doomed on the morrow
Are at the banquet gay.

Blithest of all is Harold,

His gem-bossed robe gleams bright,

Though a shroud shall wrap the monarch

Before to-morrow light.

There's bloody stains on every bow,

There's blood on every hand,

Dark, viewless shapes of terror

Move silent through the band.

A weary man was Harold-
Weary of foeman's slaughter,
Of press, and throng, and battle.
Down by dark Humber's water.
A panting vassal enters:

"The Norman's come," he cries.
"Begone," cried the jeering nobles,
"The Saxon villain lies."

"There's camped a host at Hastings
Of shaven priests in arms,

French pilgrims to some Saxon shrine,
Poor chanters of the psalms."

66

By Heaven!" cried crowned Harold,

"No women priests are these;

Arm for the shock of battle,

No time is this for ease."

*

From the one camp rang the shout and song
Into the midnight air;

From the other to the silent stars
Arose the pious prayer.

The night, the pure, calm night went by,
And morning dawned again;
With an eagle's glance the Bastard
Looked down upon the plain.

To the chanted hymn of Roland
The Norman host came on;
From his cloudy home of darkness
Came forth the golden sun.
Like eagles on untiring wing,
The gonfanels flew past,

Their shouts 'mid the spears' dark forest,
Moved liked a tempest blast.

All silent came the Saxon,

With gleaming weapon bare;
Dreadful as lull of tempest
Ere thunder shake the air.
Gay were the Norman spearmen
To leave the trenched camp;
High shone the sacred banner
Above their measured tramp.

With his gold-bound brow the Bastard
Shone fair with banded mail,
Like the ruddy flame from heaven
That gleams on shattered sail.
In the teeth of the bearded Saxon
Drove fast the arrow sleet,
Ne'er upon quilted gambazon
Did such a tempest beat.

And the slingers plied the leathern thong
As the billmen nearer drew;

Through the brave Kentish chosen van

A bloody lane they hew.

Mid Martel's band the Saxon axe

Hews through the painted shield,

And shouts, and yell, and shriek, and groan, from gory field.

Go up

Like a peasant churl fights Harold,
And Gurth is by his side;
Like some strong lusty swimmer

He stems the battle tide.

Ah! God, a shaft has pierced the brain
Of him who wears the crown;
Like a monarch to his slumber

He sinketh slowly down.

As if in grief for Harold,
The sun sinks to his rest,
Like a gore-bestained conqueror,
Far in the crimson west.

Throned on a heap of English dead,

Where reddest was the sod

Where Harold fell, the Bastard kneels,
To thank a gracious God!

And in a different vein-half humorous, half satirical-and yet of good buoyant poetic fancy, is the following

WARNINGE WORDE.

TO MY LOVING FRIEND, MASTER LAUNCELOT SPEEDWELL, 1612.

Take heed of what I telle thee now:

Trust not in star and broidered vest,
Beware dark eye and arched brow,
Beware of gently pouting breast:
Ah! thy good hand and thy good brain
Are worth the three-and three again.

Bright eyes are but the goblin's fire,
That leads the wandering wight astray;
Think not of French or Venice tire,
But hasten thee upon thy way,
For pilgrim that would reach a shrine
Must stay for nought-such heed be thine.

Believe not those who say that elf

Can speed thee in the ways of life;
Nought but the strivings of thyself,

Nor friend beside, nor child, nor wife.
Then give, my friend, the utmost heed
To what may serve thy dearest need;

For friends are but a sharpened reed
Against the desert lion's might,
As well go hew with blunted spade
At golden targe of wizard knight;
And never breathe a worde of love,
pray thee by the gods above.

I

For love's a thing that cannot fail

To leave thee when thou want'st it most,

In leaky pinnace face a gale,

Go rather brave the ice-wind's host;

When age needs care and softer smiles,
Pray where are love's once pleasing wiles?