abominable heresy, and one of the few who have taken life from them to whom under God thou gavest it. Living thus and doing this thou couldst not be saved unless by a double repentance. Oh then, how doubly damned thou diest a heretic in creed! a murderer in heart! Murderer of a son, I will reconcile thee to thy Father." As the man of God proceeded, a temporary enthusiasm animated his features; the salvation of a sinner so far overcoming the apathy with which he usually looked on earthly things, as partly to dispel the sullenness which commonly wrapped his mind, in the same degree as you may suppose his solitary lamp to have illuminated the cold damp walls of his monastery, as he glided to vespers. With kindling animation he ran through his discourse, urging all the arguments that memory could supply, or imagination suggest, for the conversion of the sinner, or the terror of the heretic. "I thank thee for thy honest pains," said in answer the patient Calas," but the terms I accept not; though it might procure me a quiet death, it would not insure me a more peaceful grave. I thank my God, I am of a sect which does not think them damned who do not in all things like themselves; and I thank my conscience that it acquits me of the foul crime for which, if committed, damnation were my due." "Obstinate heretic !” muttered the father; and the second blow fell with a heavy hand. I had turned away not equal to the sight, when the din of the iron against the bone, and the groan which followed, convinced me it had been more violent than the first; in truth it had completely broken the leg at the tibia: so exquisite was the torture, that he fainted instantly, but as quickly recovered. He uttered no articulate complaint, and it was only by the painful compression of his lips, and the starting of his eye-balls, that the agony of his spirit could be discerned. But I must, my dear Spalingrier, pass quickly over this distressful tragedy, which was two hours in the acting. The blows occurred at regular intervals of fifteen minutes, with such direful effect that, after the eighth stroke, every joint in his body was dislocated, and every bone broken. He frequently fainted, and was as often recovered by the diabolical skill of his tormentor, who employed all the arts of the most practised physician to detain the last flickering beam of exhausted nature. I think he looked less horrible when engaged in the open functions of his office, crushing flesh and marrow, than when employing all the most refined arts of usual kindness for the prolongation of misery; nor can I ever forget the smile with which he ushered in returning sense after the eighth horrible interval. The stern disciple of La Trappe looked at the opening eyes of the tortured, and saw that in ten minutes they were to close for ever. He kneeled beside him, and conjured him to sever himself from his sin. The old man, with a voice firm as heretofore, turned himself, as far as he was able, to the confessor, "Think'st thou, my father," said he, "that it were worth my while for these shreds of being, these rags of existence," moving as he spoke his shattered right arm, "to throw myself impenitently into the furnace that ever burneth? Of what service is concealment now to me? it cannot conciliate the good-will of man, it must have already doubled the anger of God; it cannot bring me back to my family, and much I fear," said the good man, with the first tear I had seen him shed, "it will not save my family from following me. Of what service the further concealment ?""For Heaven's sake then," cried the monk in a voice tremulous with emotion, "confess and be saved for your last minute is counting." "Were my life to be granted me," continued Calas calmly, "what boon would it be? what, but to transport these fragments of a man to a more languishing couch? What, but to change this decisive physician for a tedious death-bed, and to barter the strokes of the iron for the loathsomeness of the gangrene? I wish not for this-I will make my dying confession."-" Do for God's sake," reiterated the friar. "But wilt thou trust to it utterly?" said Calas. "Though it were to contradict my firmest thoughts," replied the friar, stooping towards the dying man, "I would not doubt it." "I am innocent!" answered Calas, and grasping the friar's fingers in his clammy hand, he swooned away. A tear forced itself from between the sunken lids of the ecclesiastic, unused to such moisture since he had first stooped within his narrow cell; it stood upon his pale cheek for a moment as if doubting how to shape its course over so unknown a track, or as if frozen at its source by the severity of his brow. He shed but that one tear! but it was the widow's mite !-it was all he had! Lifting his eyes towards the magistrate, he muttered a request for the coup-de-grace. The magistrate nodded to the executioner, and Boucher again heaved his weapon, The weight of the iron and the force of the blood burst at once all the arteries of the stomach, and crushed the vertebræ: the blood gushed in torrents from his eyes, his mouth, his earsa gasp convulsed his frame-a groan-one gasp more-and he had ceased to suffer. The man of God eyed for a moment the bleeding visage, where blood had not quenched the gentle flame of resignation; then threw his look upwards, then downwards on the assembly, and, with finger slowly raised and voice of thrilling expression, declared-" A righteous soul has taken flight!”—“ Voilà l'ame du juste qui s'envole!" ON THE BIRTH-DAY OF THE PRINCESS VICTORIA. FROM the white cliffs of Dover to Pentland-firth, Rejoice for a queen had this morning birth: The politic Bess and the conquering Anne, Our green isle ruled with more might than man; From dark St. Michael to Orkneys' foam "Our sides untrod by a foeman's feet, Our tops where the cloud and the eagles meet, And the fairies dance to the charm'd pipe's sound, Is the meetest place where our Queen can be crown'd." 54 On the Birth-day of the Princess Victoria. From east to west, and from pole to pole I own thee Queen, and I yield me whole." O never, no never was maiden born To such glorious hopes: from the rustling corn, Sweet tongues were heard, saying-" Bless thee, child!" The green oak said to its neighbour the pine, "We'll bear her in triumph and rule o'er the brine, While wood can swim, and while winds can urge The bellying sails o'er the snoring surge While lads from Tweed, and Thames, and Shannon, Crown her and keep her the Queen of the Sea." Drop trembling and sigh-“ They are useless and vain." O fairest and gentlest, slight not my line, When thy name lends its lustre to verse more divine! In verse like thy glory triumphant and long On his gold look the miser and reckon it chaff The mother shall hold up at arm's-length her child, And bid it look on thee. The rude and the wild Grow gentle before thee, and aged men cry 66 Thank God we have seen thee before that we die!" : N. A SUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM IN THE HERMITAGE AT SIRMIONE. At all events Catullus undoubtedly inhabited this spot, and preferred it at a certain period to every other region. He could not have chosen a more delightful retreat.-Eustace's Italy. How beautiful! and did I think when leaning, in the summer that is gone, upon the green old gate of our village church-yard, with Catullus in my hand, and watching the golden light of a June evening glimmer upon the blades of grass hanging over the field-bird's nest, that in the coming June I should be standing in the same spot, and breathing the same air, and drinking in the same rich sunshine with him who christened Sirmio the loveliest of poet-homes! Time! thou bringest from thy vigil at the gates of Paradise a beauty upon thy wings, like the bloom of balmy flowers unto the bruised spirits of men! Sometimes beautiful exceedingly are thy path-ways upon the earth, when Memory walketh by thy side, and the brightness of her feet turneth into light the dark shadows of thy footsteps. Let me kneel down and worship thee. Man fleeth before thy face like an autumn-leaf, and the moss darkens around his name, and his palace moulders into his tombstone; but Nature liveth on in her joy and glory, the breath of God is in her nostrils, and his song remaineth upon her lips,-whether it be at morning-time, when her face waketh up all radiant with gladness from the bosom of the Deity, or in the evening, when her plumes, like the sun-set clouds along the Apennines stretching into the distance, are enfolding within their shadow the palaces and the graves of earth, as beneath the golden dome of a temple in the heavens. The light becomes a dim gloaming to my half-closed eyes, and the vineyards and the far-off villas of Verona, and the purple clouds upon the mountain-tops, are the phantasy of a summer sunset in Italy! The clouds are linked like the manycoloured wings of ten thousand immortals folded one over anotherone mighty testudo, upon which Apollo, like a Persian conqueror, walketh up into the battlements of heaven. How beautiful! and yet that green old gate! I seem to lean upon it once again; and the wild honeysuckle is falling about my feet, and the linnet is singing unseen close by my side amid the green stillness. Delightful was it to lie along by the hedge-rows in a May evening, with one hand upon the bridal hymn of Peleus and Thetis, and the other covering my eyes, when the air was gentle as the nestling of a bird to slumber; and my heart was so calm and holy, that the spirit of peace in its white raiment seemed to sit by my side: and I could hear the gnat bustling," as the enthusiast Keats called it, down in the deep grass, and the little wren shaking its moon-touched feathers among the fragrant leaves, as it looked forth upon the setting sun. And here was the villa of Catullus! I have wandered over Italy-the spirit's Holy Land. I have bathed my heart in her beauty even as in a fountain of rich perfume. I have garnered up in the garners of my memory all the voices of her music and her love. Now that I sit me down to transcribe these brief and imperfect records of thoughts and feelings, my eyes are covered with her remembrances as with a silver-woven curtain. I have sat in the Coliseum in the still moonlight, with no sound save the beating of my own heart, and the rustling of the pale ivy, as some bird, startled by the moving of my foot, stirred in its dwelling place. I have walked in the "Street of Tombs," with Byron impersonated in his poetry by my side, leading me" like a mysterious guide" through the ruins of the city, and ever and anon "turning the light of his dark lantern" upon the moss-grown and time-worn inscriptions. I know every grave in Rome and Florence. Oh, how often in the emerald-lighted nights of summer have I gathered thy joy and melody about me like a raiment, thou city of the Muses! Thy statues-thy living statues! Apollo the heaven-gazing, the golden-haired, with his limbs shining with vigor, as the Italian writer, from whom the author of the "Childe" was not ashamed to borrow, pictures them; and thy Venus, with her bosom where the bird of Paradise may build its nest, and sing on for ever. Thy pictures and thy statues are like the shadows of cherubim upon my spirit! Mine eyes are dark with the brightness of thy visions. Let me sit down here in the soft and balmy air, and think for a season. And here was thy villa, thou sweetest of the singers of the olden time; and here thy days might well roll along like the low-toned glidings of that silver water, which wandereth at "its own sweet will" before me2-friends, when thou hadst need of them, and solitude when thou didst desire it. Truly, I can pardon many of the crimes of the invader of Italy, for his gentle homage to the abiding place of Catullus. Napoleon is related to have deviated from the direct road in his way to Peschiara from Milan (when he was going to negociate the peace of Campo Formio) for the sake of visiting the peninsula of Sirmione. And upon another occasion, on the restoration of Mantua, the birth-place of the poet Virgil, the conqueror ordered an obelisk to be erected to the memory of the bard; and not only exempted the inhabitants from any contributions, but expressed a wish that they might be indemnified for any loss sustained by them during the continuance of the war. I could add many other instances of a like character, little known and less regarded. We cover the memorial of the mighty with the names of victories and of honors, and leave scarcely a corner, where the stone sinks into the green earth, for the commemoration of the purer impulses of the bosom. Surely it must have been on such an evening as this that Catullus composed his exquisite Marriage Song, beginning "Vesper adest." The Italian light seems to hang about every word. I will attempt a version, a very free one, of a few stanzas as I sit on this mossy stone. THE CHORUS OF YOUTHS. Vesper waketh; on the hills of heaven Breathing the light our hearts have sought so long: Linger beside the festal board no more The virgin cometh; come with lyre and song, Hymen! to whom the spirit's thousand hymns belong! 1 Gorius. The Lake Benacus: it is spoken of indifferently by the inhabitants as "Lago di Benaco," or 64 Lago di Garda." |