game, though they did not expire like the swan, singing. In particular, there was a certain Saxon knight who ap peared as if from the clouds (as indeed, coming from England, and landing in Andalusia, he might without much metaphor be assumed to have done), and as thoroughly astonished the hosts of Ferdinand and Boabdil by the sportive prowess of his arm, as he perplexed them by his unpronounceable name. In the narrative of the worthy Cura de los Palacios, he figures as the Conde de ¡Escalas, or Escalay, in which the last English historian of Spain is so far from recognizing the original, that, rather than "give it up," he mildly suggests in a note, whether it might not be some "Earl of Calais," of whom the college of heralds trumpeteth not! This aerolite of Anglo-Saxon chivalry, so preposterously dropped upon the Iberian soil, was nothing less than one Scales, Earl of Rivers, who had brought the lance of a true knight-errant to the service of the sweet Queen Isabel and her doughty husband against the infidel, and mainly contributed to the taking of Loxa, in 1488. But, alas for human infirmity in matters of faith, where the heart gets entangled! Out of the odds and ends of history that have come down to us, and which record little more than the loss of the hero's two front teeth, up to which he was armed in a desperate encounter with the Moors, and a bon mot he good-humouredly perpetrated thereupon, romance stiches up a patchwork of its own, of imposing colours, and calls upon us to believe that it is the Englishman's own counterpane. Such as it is, let us spread it forth, referring to the incomparable Gil Perez as authority on the subject of love-bouquets; and at the same time borrowing one of his prettiest names. The following ballad-muy doloroso-we will call The Saron Lord and the I. "Sister, he comes!" the trembling Kaza cries. "Hark! through the trees his armour's stealthy clash! And, as he climbs, this pharos-taper's flash Lights on the jewel of his costly sash, And looks at us!" Daraxa only sighs, Pallid and speechless. VIII. "Speak, for thy sister! Is she false? Reply! Her latest letter was a bunch of roses- Lapped in their loveliness and truth— Why is she speechless?" IX. "Alas, Lord Escalay! in vain they A sadder, loftier bridal's now her choice. Then know her soul in its own purpose For ever speechless. X. "The tale's soon told. Our sire this morning said That by a craven Christian she was wooed. 'Craven? 'tis false!' she cried. Our parent's mood Chafed 'gainst this passionate raving of her blood; He cursed her with a father's curse,and fled As she fell, speechless. XI. "Now, hie thee hence. Ye part-it is decreed. Flee to thine altars, we will turn to ours. Upon Mahommed's shrine love's withered flowers Will less offend when watered by the showers Of hope abandoned for his holy creed, By her that's speechless." XII. "Not to be mine? Then farewell spear and Spain ! The Cross and Crescent in the lists I leave. No heart for either, since they both bereave Me of the hope to which my soul did cleave." So plunged he darkly down the cliffagain Leaving her speechless. And we now speak history-he did disappear, quit Spain, and did die, the same year, before "A petty fortress in a foreign land;" being killed at the battle of St. Albans, between the Bretons and the French; -whether, like Roland, because "he wished to fall," will probably, at this time of day, never be known. How dissimilar the characters of the Saxon and Arab! Spain was an in tervening link, and there the halfAfrican descendant of Ishmael had already bred out of some original characteristics. The Anglican knight probably bore beneath his armour the same haughty reserve and melancholy sentimentalism which invest with so peculiar a character of romance the English gentleman of the present day. He was doubtless difficult of access, both to persons and to passion; but to both, when he admitted them, lavishly open. Sluggish, possibly, on trivial occasions, he became nerved with the arrival of a great one; and rose, like some vessel of tonnage, with the wave which overwhelmed smaller and more cranky craft. Thus he would grow gradually in the estimation of those who overlooked him at first. This estimation would deepen into deference, and in all probability end in an unqualified submission to the indomitable and calm intensity of the Anglo-Norman nature. With what an eastern spring, on the contrary, would the mystic, lovesick, dreamy, examinate, fanciful Moor start, tiger-like, from his repose, and stand erect, aloft, terrific before our eyes, with blazing eye and whetted tooth, the individualised personation of his race, creed, and history! To dart from his divan, buckle his armour on his breast, thrust spurs into his mettled barb, and burst, like a black avalanche, from the Sierra Nevada upon the invading spears of a Cifuentes or an Aguilar, below in the "fresca y regalada vega," was but a single act. What a contrast to the "manœuvres of these degenerate days! Yet we have many advantages over the Moor on the score of celerity. To say nothing of better roads, more completely organised intelligence, &c., the metaphorical "shell jacket" is decidedly more easily put on than the great crustaceous reality of steel; nor could a helmet, with its clasps, bars, and visor, be readily donned with the speed of a foraging cap. Indeed armour must have been a difficulty in more ways than one. It was hard to pack up-a soldier's kit resembling a kitchen range. It was stiff work for a tailor, in case of needful repairs a screw loose instead of a stitch dropped. In the coldest winter it could neither have been convenient nor serviceable to wear two suits, the ordinary coat of armour and a great coat. Some, indeed, have been de scribed as clothed in "triple brass;" but this was more of a figure of speech, and applied usually to the forehead. Nor on the other hand was it easy to hang a breastplate loosely from the shoulders in the heat of summer, or cast it over the arm like a registered paletot when the blood rose too glowingly in the veins. To hear of men coopered up in casques accomplishing the extraordinary coups de main which modern science, activity, and undress might in vain attempt to rival, gives us humiliating ideas of our degeneracy. Antiquity was a coleopterous animal; un der its cases it concealed wings, and when the lady-bird was expected to crawl, behold, it flew ! But-O shade of Ahmed Abu Bekr Alrazi! whither have we too fluttered? Far from the gardens and graves of fertile and fatal Andalus, like that migratory insect do we find ourselves perched upon a branchy digression, reached by a flight which has borne us unheeding over the very flowers of chivalry! Fertile Fertile and fatal Andalus! for the seed of the spoilers-fatal to the name and nation of the spoiled! Now, over the rich and irrigated vegas of Boetican Iberia-rich by nature, irrigated by the banished Arab-wave the teeming products of the soil; cotton, cane, rice, orange, vines,-over which the characteristic Algarrobo and Adelfa spread their friendly shade. Upon this tierra caliente swarm the descendants of the conquerors, just tinged by the ineffaceable blood of ancient neighbour. hood and intercourse, mingling with the Andalusian sangre su, as the old Moorish gateway, tower, or fountain is found engaged in the walls of Catholic cathedrals or the palaces of hidalgos. To the present hour you can look neither at the population nor the edifices of southern Spain without the inseparable Moorish association; and that as, sociation is ever melancholy. Fatal Andalus! Fatal to the hopes, and happiness, and pride, and glory of the Moslem! Not a city, not a rock-built fortress but has its tale of dread and disaster; not a centre of ancient populousness that is not also a mound of bloody recollections. But, short as was the period during which the degraded Morisco was left to weep over the sepulchres of the ancestral Moor, he contrived to plant an immortal memory there, smiling in harmonious bloom, perennial as the tears that had watered the root. To this day we visit these graves, and find these flow. ers, fresh as when they were first planted, for they are the flowers of poesy. One of them-a mere weed— we have culled to put into the hands of the reader at parting. It refers to the fall of the once flourishing city of Baza, the exquisite gardens of which, a league in length, offered in the very labyrinth of their sweetness such an obstacle to the arms of the victorious Ferdinand. It is called INDEX TO VOL. XXXVII. Absentee, the, 131. Amari, Michele, History of the War of Anster, John, LL.D., Introductory Lec- Augustine, the, or Scenes from a Life, Babes in the Wood, the, reviewed, 555. Bombast, Specimens of, in celebrated Borrow, George, Lavengro, reviewed, Browne, Hablot Knight, Home Pic- Bunbury's, Miss, Evelyn, or a Journey Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, with Me- Butler, Rev. William Archer, Letters California, 99. Camoens, a Canzonet from, 668. Chambers, William and Robert, 177. Cheap Justice not low-priced Litiga- Christmas Eve, 672. Christmas with the Poets; a collection VOL. XXXVII.-NO, CCXXII. Clarendon, Lord, Policy of, in Ireland, Conversations with a late Author-Ba- Court Album, the; fourteen portraits of Daimoniac Possession, Oracles, and Easter Day, by Jonathan Freke Slings- Edwardes, Major Herbert B., a Year Emigrant's Farewell, the, to his Native Fairy Well, the, 669. Feltus, B. B.; Sonnets on Mary Queen Forefathers, our, a Yarn about, 519, Forsyth, William, the Rings, an Elegy, Ghost Stories of Chapelizod; the Vil- Gillies, R. P., Memoirs of a Literary Gleanings after the Spanish Arabs, Goethe's Conversations with Eckermann Gold, a Legendary Rhyme, illustrated Guarnerius, Tobias, a Psychological Hall, Mrs. S. C., Pilgrimages to Eng- Head, Sir Francis B., the Defenceless Incumbered Estates of Ireland, noticed, 299. Ireland, Lord Clarendon's Policy in, 136. Jack and the Giants, the Story of, illus- Kavanagh, Julia, Nathalie, a Tale, re- Kay, Joseph, the Social Condition and Trifles. By Linnæus Banks, 762. Legend, the, of Castle Gregory, 251. Lover, Samuel, Our Portrait Gallery, M'Carthy, D. F., Songs for the Season, Magrath, Mrs., a translation from the a. How is the Manager to please the XXV., A Passing Visit to Killala, Merivale, Rev. Charles, History of the Mind and be true to the end, 762. New Nation, the, 99. Olive, by the author of The Ogilvies, Our Garland for June; A Canzonet Paganini, Anecdotes of, 377. |