If there is something majestic in the heathen myth, there are singular grace and beauty in the Christian tale, teaching, as it does, such a glorious doctrine; but it is surpassed in delicacy by the modern form which the same myth has assumed a form which is a real transformation, leaving the doctrine taught the same. It has been made into a romance by Hoffman, and is versified by Trinius. I may perhaps be allowed to translate with some freedom the poem of the latter: —

In an ancient shaft of Falun

Year by year a body lay,
God-preserved, as though a treasure,
Kept unto the waking day.

Not the turmoil, nor the passions,
Of the busy world o'erhead,
Sounds of war, or peace rejoicings,
Could disturb the placid dead.

Once a youthful miner, whistling,
Hewed the chamber, now his tomb:
Crash! the rocky fragments tumbled,
Closed him in abysmal gloom.

Sixty years passed by, ere miners
Toiling, hundred fathoms deep,
Broke upon the shaft where rested
That poor miner in his sleep.

As the gold-grains lie untarnished

In the dingy soil and sand,
Till they gleam and flicker, stainless,
In the digger's sifting hand;

As the gem in virgin brilliance
Rests, till ushered into day;

So uninjured, uncorrupted,

Fresh and fair the body lay.

And the miners bore it upward,
Laid it in the yellow sun;

Up, from out the neighboring houses,
Fast the curious peasants run.

"Who is he?" with eyes they question;
"Who is he?" they ask aloud;
Hush! a wizened hag comes hobbling,
Panting, through the wondering crowd.

As she flings her at his side: "John! the sweetheart of my girlhood, Here am I, am I, thy bride.

"Time on thee has left no traces,

Death from wear has shielded thee;

I am agéd, worn, and wasted,

O! what life has done to me!"

Then his smooth, unfurrowed forehead
Kissed that ancient withered crone;
And the Death which had divided

Now united them in one.

IJO

I

William Tell.

SUPPOSE that most people regard William

Tell, the hero of Switzerland, as an historical character, and visit the scenes made memorable by his exploits, with corresponding interest, when they undertake the regular Swiss round.

It is one of the painful duties of the antiquarian to dispel many a popular belief, and to probe the groundlessness of many an historical statement. The antiquarian is sometimes disposed to ask with Pilate, "What is truth?" when he finds historical facts crumbling beneath his touch into mythological fables; and he soon learns to doubt and question the most emphatic declarations of, and claims to, reliability.

Sir Walter Raleigh, in his prison, was composing the second volume of his History of the World. Leaning on the sill of his window, he meditated on the duties of the historian to mankind, when

suddenly his attention was attracted by a disturbance in the court-yard before his cell. He saw one man strike another whom he supposed by his dress to be an officer; the latter at once drew his sword, and ran the former through the body. The wounded man felled his adversary with a stick, and then sank upon the pavement. At this juncture the guard came up, and carried off the officer insensible, and then the corpse of the man who had been run through.

Next day Raleigh was visited by an intimate friend, to whom he related the circumstances of the quarrel and its issue. To his astonishment, his friend unhesitatingly declared that the prisoner had mistaken the whole series of incidents which had passed before his eyes.

The supposed officer was not an officer at all, but the servant of a foreign ambassador; it was he who had dealt the first blow; he had not drawn his sword, but the other had snatched it from his side, and had run him through the body before any one could interfere; whereupon a stranger from among the crowd knocked the murderer down with his stick, and some of the foreigners

belonging to the ambassador's retinue carried off

the corpse. The friend of Raleigh added that government had ordered the arrest and immediate trial of the murderer, as the man assassinated was one of the principal servants of the Spanish ambassador.

"Excuse me," said Raleigh, "but I cannot have been deceived as you suppose, for I was eye-witness to the events which took place under my own window, and the man fell there on that spot where you see a paving-stone standing up above the rest."

"My dear Raleigh," replied his friend, "I was sitting on that stone when the fray took place, and I received this slight scratch. on my cheek in snatching the sword from the murderer; and upon my word of honor, you have been deceived upon every particular.”

Sir Walter, when alone, took up the second volume of his History, which was in MS., and contemplating it, thought-"If I cannot believe my own eyes, how can I be assured of the truth of a tithe of the events which happened ages be