tous difficulty overcome. The obelisk arose majestically from the ground, and without the slightest accident.

The bell had resounded for the fiftieth time; the enormous mass had reached the edge of the pedestal; it must be lifted yet higher-raised, suspended in the air, in order to descend with a plomb upon its die..

The bell tolled, and the colossal slab remained balanced in the air upwards of twenty feet from the ground. Antonia ventured to cast a look towards her lover; her joy was ineffable at seeing hope depicted upon his countenance; but at the very moment whilst abandoning herself to the most delicious reverie, she fell back again into all the mortal agony of despair. She saw her beloved grow pale, and let the flag drop from his trembling hands. All beside herself, she rushed into his arms, the tears gushing from her eyes. This harrowing scene produced a sorrowful impression upon the spectators; there was not one among them who, from the bottom of his soul, did not curse the barbarous inflexibility of Sixtus.

An old carpenter who had placed himself beside the architect, furtively whispered to him :—

"Signior! I understand this business! the ropes are relaxing you fear lest they should break, and the enterprise fail: listen to me; behind the cathedral there is a horse waiting for you, fly!— your life!"

-save

"No!" replied Fontana, with a quivering voice; "I have given my word; I will not break it; I will stay and die!" What words can paint the despair of Antonia! her betrothed was there, near to her, with pale and distorted visage; his limbs trembling beneath him, and opposite stood the terrible functionary, who was soon about to end this horrible agony. Lost, and well nigh frantic,not knowing how to reanimate the failing powers of her lover, she shrieked almost mechanically

"Water! water!"

At the same instant, a sudden inspiration, a miraculous force, as it were, restored to the architect all his wonted energy! He raised his head erect, and cried with a loud voice,

in their hands, rushed up the ladders, and thoroughly soaked the cordage. Fontana was himself again, his energies seemed not only restored, but redoubled; he was to be seen at all points, giving his orders with that calmness, that presence of mind which, in the moment of a crisis, are the characteristics of superior minds. For the last time he waved his flag, casting at the same time a look towards his beautiful betrothed;-the bell recommenced tolling; and soon the giant monalithe descended majestically upon its pedestal !

The architect remained absorbed for a moment in a species of stupor, without the power of uttering a single word.

Antonia, overcome with ecstatic joy, fell upon her knees, raising her hands towards heaven.

The old artisan, trembling with emotion, seized the flag and attached it to a rope; a moment afterwards a crimson banner streamed like a bright meteor above the tapering summit of the obelisk.

At the same instant the bell of the capitol blended its silver tone with the humming peals of the other churches.

The populace no longer repressed its transports; thousands of voices shouted "viva Fontana! viva Lemaestro!"

In the midst of the general enthusiasm, arose an audible murmur:-" Here comes the pope! here comes Sixtus the Fifth !" Every head was turned towards the balcony of the cathedral. “Kneel, kneel!" repeated the crowd.

Sixtus the Fifth appeared upon the balcony, the tiara upon his head, and surrounded by all the eclat of pontificial power. He extended his hands over the prostrate populace, and gave it his benediction; and at that solemn moment the artillery of the castle of St. Angelo gave a detonating salvo.

When all was ended, a voice proceeding from the crowd, made itself heard ; "To the Vatican! let us carry Maestro Fontana to the Vatican!"

The enthusiastic people followed the advice, and despite his resistance, the maestro was carried in triumph, as far as the palace, in the arms of his fellowcitizens.

Antonia and the old carpenter remained motionless with surprise. All around eagerly hastened to execute the order; casks of water were quickly brought; the workmen, with pitchers

"You have worthily fulfilled your task; I will worthily recompense you! From to-day you are a Roman knight, and you have a pension of a thousand ducats from

the treasury;-I shall find means of employing your talents."

Fontana made obeisance and withdrew from the audience of the Holy Father in a state of mind more easily to be imagined than depicted.

Eight days afterwards he was the happy husband of the beautiful Antonia. A long prosperity was the reward for that terrible trial to which he was subjected.

SUTHERLAND, M.

THE EVENING WIND.

(For the Parterre.)

GUSTS of the Evening-come! come! Usher the dead Day to his tomb; Hollow and high your requiem pour, Now with a whisper, and then with a

roar.

Round the thick elm-boughs sweep, and sing;

In the Hall porch your wild chime ring; Howl through the village street, and

range

Round the striped gables of the Grange. Mysterious hiss in the old bell-wheel, That scowls so grim in the campanile ; Scud through the corbelled arch, with a groan,

Might challenge the belfry's loudest

tone;

And bid the old pollard-oak beware Of the tumble-down forge that's under his care!

And hold thy wake where the villagers do,

Where church-tower, cote, and granary too,

Piled irregular round, embrace A sloping, soft, and verdant space. There wail and whine most dismally,'Tis a mark of respect to the widowed sky!

But do it betimes, as the twilight pale Drops o'er the mourner a sacred veil, And garden and orchard, croft and wood,

Sympathize with her widowhood; Ay! do it betimes, for she 'll soon be gay,

Consoled by the Stars for the death of the Day! Whitenash, May 11th, 1835.

HORACE GUILFORD.

NOTES OF A READER.

ONCE upon a time angels dwelt among mankind, winnowing their way as they willed it, to the flowery earth, or to the blue domes of heaven. Often might their radiant forms be seen outstretched

on the green banks that girded the rivers, while they smiled and conversed with the sons and daughters of Adam.

Adoliah, the young wife of Normas, was as bashful as she was beautiful; and whenever the heavenly strangers alighted before their vine-bower, she welcomed them in with downcast eyes. Long and frequent were their visits, and pure and instructing the discourse with which they wiled away the happy hours. Still Adoliah had never gazed on their faces, for she deemed those eyes which confronted the hallowed brow of the Omnipotent, too holy for her to glance upon. But one afternoon in summer, while seated in the arbour with Normas and Solrembah, who belonged to the order of guardian angels, the full sun streamed upon her face, and the celestial visitor, who sat at the entrance of the bower, perceiving that its beams were overpowering, outspread his silver wings, and screened the heat from her lovely features. Hitherto her eyes had been wandering through the opening of the arbour, upon the roses and myrtles that grew around, or catching the gorgeous colours of some large butterfly, or splendid hummingbird, as they crossed each other in the sunshine.

But now that beautiful' wing, spreading fan-like, nearly obstructed her view, and she could not avoid gazing upon it, as its transparent featherings glittered in the sun-light. Long did she admire the fine net-work that appeared covered with blossoming silver, and then her eyes fell upon the snowy shoulder which vested its beautiful roundness in the softened shadow of that radiant pinion. That evening she watched the dove-like form of Solrembah, as he sped above the rosy hues of sunset, on his way to heaven, and that night she sighed, and wished that her Normas had wings. Still she loved her husband beyond every other object upon earth; but the angels she adored as sacred beings, which she could kneel to, and worship, as she bowed to her invisible Creator, and "Oh!" she said, "if Normas were as radiant, I would worship him too." Thus passed days, and she had now gazed times innumerable upon the celestial faces of her visitors; and when she stood hand in hand with her husband to sing the evening hymn, she wished that his voice was as musical as Solrembah's. But oh! it was a piteous wish, for then she deemed it would be more acceptable to her Maker. Still she loved Normas, although she sat

oftener beside the guardian angel in her bower than before time, and heard not all that her husband now said, for her ears drunk in the music of soft words which fell from the lips of the inhabitant of heaven. But now she found that the eye of Normas was not so bright as Solrembah's, and once wished, if her nature was pure enough, that she might accompany the angel to heaven. Wrong her not, yes, she longed for Normas to journey with her to the starry abodes, and never more to tread the dædal earth if he was like Solrembah.

Was not her love holy and disinte rested? How could she do otherwise than adore the superior beauty of the guardian angel? And was it not natural that she should wish for her Normas to have the same heavenly endowments? "Young and beautiful he is," she would say when alone, "fairer than any of the sons of Adam; but oh! his face is not so godlike as the angel's, and he has no wings to screen the sunbeams from me, like Solrembah; still, still I love him above all earthly beings, and would worship him were he an angel.'

Thus progressed Adoliah's love, thus grows the admiration we entertain for women of beauty and intellect: we follow the train of refined feelings, adore them as beings of a superior order, and glide along upon the smooth ice of Platonic sentiment, or like eagles we flap our pinions in the very heart of the thunder-cloud; but when we have admired the glowing lightning, and again rested upon the common earth, do we find our wings unscathed? Alas! no; though eagles, we are not cased in steel. Pure and unsullied may be our love for Normas, beyond that of any other earthly being; but oh! his words are not so musical, neither are his eyes so bright, nor has he silver wings, like Solrembah.

DIFFICULT CASE.

Doctor Radcliffe, the famous physician in Queen Anne's time, was eccentric, but kind-hearted, and many anecdotes of his singular temper are told. From his Life, we extract the following, which does him honour.

"Doctor Radcliffe was a favourite of the female sex. Among others, he attracted the notice of a lady of quality, whose individuality is now lost under the name of Lady Betty. She contrived to be out of order week after week, and, at last, fairly exhausted the patience of the doctor at being sent for on so many

trifling occasions. Whereupon he told her father, that it was his opinion that her ladyship stood more in need of a confessor than a physician, for he was convinced her mind was more distempered than her body. But it was in vain that the doctor was dull, and avoided his patient-he was at last informed, by the lady's maid, that he alone must be that confessor. Hereupon he gave his attendance to hear what she had to say, which made a discovery that struck him with amazement. How to answer her directly he knew not, for she had made a sort of ambiguous confession, which had only pointed out her great respect for a certain person without any name; he thereupon told her, that her case was somewhat difficult, but he did not doubt to ease her of all her anxieties, on that account, in a month's time.' Accordingly, the young lady formed an inconceivable joy to herself, but the doctor immediately laid the whole affair before the lord of her father, with a caution to him not to let the daughter know he was anywise apprised of it, since it was in his power to prevent her flinging herself away with a man beneath her, by a speedy contract of marriage with some person of equal extraction; this advice was readily embraced and gratefully acknowledged, and the lady, who is now living and one of the best of wives, was married within the time limited, to a nobleman who had made pretensions to her for several months before this discovery, which, at once, absolved the doctor of his promise, and showed his inviolable attachment to the reputation and interest of his friend and benefactor."

THE BLESSINGS OF WEDLOCK.

The relative positions of the bachelor and married man are happily contrasted in the following extract:

"Johnson's maxim, 'that if wedlock has many troubles, celibacy has no enjoyments, is unquestionable, if the celibacy be old celibacy. For it is the time that settles the argument. The paradise of bachelorship is youth, when life is enjoyment in itself; the purgatory is old age, when every thing instinctively grows tasteless. It is when man is the wearied traveller, the satur conviva, the struggler with the natural infirmities of years, that the superiority of marriage is felt in those simple supports and consolations, which make us forget our decline: those deep and faithful attachments, which have exchanged the ardour of passion, only for the fidelity of a bond of nature. The

old man is then no outcast, miserable, if he does not flutter in younger society, and ridiculous, if he does; no friendless and objectless hanger-on upon life, he has friends and occupation in his children; in their variety of mind, acquirement, pursuit, success, he has a living study of the heart, a revival of gentle thoughts and consecrated memories, cheered and animated by the still higher consciousness that he has given pleasure to his country, that he has bequeathed the noble gift of life and mind, to those who will honour his memory, when he is gone; that he has added to the virtuous, the intelligent, and the lovely, among mankind. surely worth more than the chance of some anxieties, to be able to say, when the world is closing on us, that we have not lived altogether in vain,"

NAVAL SONGS.

It is

[In an article at page 240, are omitted some remarks on Naval Songs, which are here subjoined :]—

THE sea,

"the battle and the breeze," and the rapid and manifold vicissitudes incident to the life of a sailor, furnish a bold and beautiful variety of subjects capable of being turned to good account in a song or ballad. Yet, somehow or other, Apollo does not much affect the quarter-deck. The ocean brine is too powerful for the waters of Castaly. Poesy in some sort suffers by a "seachange;" and the quantity to be extracted from a volume of genuine naval ditties is wofully disproportionate to the bulk of ryhme. Some of the best sea songs have been written by landsmen, and one great cause of their being so, is their comparative freedom from perplexing technicalities; for though a characteristic phrase may occasionally impart life and spirit to a production, yet a technicality, whether in marine or agricultural poetry, is a sore stumblingblock to the uninitiated. Now every line (or plank) of three-fourths of your nautical melodies is calked with them, independently of containing a much larger infusion of tar than tendernessof pitch than pathos. They abound, likewise, in an inordinate degree, in descriptions of tornadoes, and discharges of artillery-in slaughter and sudden death; and the sentiments correspond thereunto, being as rough as a hawser, -and as boisterous as a north-wester. Though admirably adapted to be growled out by the boatswain when the vessel is

--

scudding under double-reefed topsails, they would on land, and in a room, go off like a discharge of musketry. But, worse than all, is the minuteness of detail; the distressing particularity which ever pervades them. They are mere paraphrases of the log-book; and the due course and reckoning of the ship is most especially insisted on

"That time bound straight for Portugal,
Right fore and aft we bore;
But when we made Cape Ortugal,
A gale blew off the shore," &c.

Yet, after all, there are some noble things in this branch of the "service,” amply sufficient to redeem it from dis

like. Who is there that has not held his

breath when he has heard a rich deeptoned voice, commence Gay's glorious ballad

"All in the Downs the fleet lay moor'd;

The streamers waving in the wind!" and listened throughout with a quickened pulse, to that "plain unvarnished tale" of humble love and tenderness. There is much, too, to please any man, who is not over and above fastidious, in dozens of Dibdin's vigorous and hearty sketches of a sailor's hardships and enjoyments; to say nothing of Pearce and others of inferior note; but from your regular forecastle narratives, Apollo deliver us!

Things called "comic songs," to wit, "Four-and-twenty tailors all in a row," &c., are, in my mind, striking exemplifications of the depth of debasement of which the human intellect is susceptible.

In' whatever way America is, or may become renowned, she will probably never be a land of song; and for two or three reasons. There are already a sufficiency of standard songs in the world to answer all purposes; and she has imported an ample sufficiency to supply the varied tastes and caprices of her musical population. Moore's Melodies are as common in the cities of the west as in their native land; and those of Burns are no rarity. The geography of the country, too, is strikingly unfavourable for indigenous song. Nature has created the land in one of her most liberal and magnificent moods, and formed its features on a scale of grandeur that is impossible to grasp in this kind of writing. The ocean-lakes-the mighty rivers-the interminable forests the boundless prairies, are all epic rather than lyrical. How would it sound, either for rhyme

or reason,

"On the shores of Mississippi,

When the sweet spring-time did fall!"

The idea suggested is too vast. There is no snug endearing locality about such scenes; and as for "the sweet spring time," it never "falls" on a great proportion of the shores of rivers whose waters rise far towards the regions of eternal winter, and roll through every variety of climate, to those of everlast ing summer; while the smaller streams, which correspond in size to the "Nith," the "Dee," or "Bonnie Doon," are ruined by the general appellation of "crik" (creek), which is bestowed upon them; and to which some such euphonious title as Big Elk, Buffalo, or Otter, is usually prefixed. Besides, America is not rich in recollections of the past. No castles, grim, hoary and dilapidated, frown upon her heights; no gorgeous abbeys moulder in her verdant vales. The joys, and sorrows, and sufferings of humanity are, as yet, scarcely impressed upon her soil. She has no records of feudal strife, of faded greatness, and fond affection-of all tradition loves, and song delights in. Hope must, in some degree, be to her poets, what memory is to those of older lands. But the mind of the song-writer is reminiscent-not anticipative; and therefore it is, that with whatever species of fame and greatness America may enrich her brows, it is probable she will never, in one sense, be "worth an old song."

THE

WILLIAM COX.

FRIAR WITH THE GORY COWL.

(CONCLUDED).

The secret of this splendid discovery was in his breast alone; but having, as he said, no wish nor indeed use for such baubles, he promised on the following day to guide the young knight to the old chapel, and to make him master of its inestimable deposit; without making any stipulation to the advantage of himself or his order.

This marvellous and even suspicious omission was not regarded for an instant by the delighted Sir Edmund, who agreed to be at the ruined chapel soon after curfew on the ensuing night.

Meanwhile the wretched Bertha, who since the celebration of her fiancels had been strictly guarded from all intercourse with Sir Edmund Ferrers, had abandoned herself to despair; when one day, she was raised to the summit of wondering rapture and trembling hope, by the Carmelite of the castle, (who was also

confessor to Sir Oswald Raby,) who, repeating the intelligence he had already imparted to her lover, with some necessary alterations, appointed the ruined Saxon chapel, which stood on the verge of her father's domain, as the trystingplace on the following night, when, he declared, he would himself unite the lovers, put them in safe possession of the treasure, and enable them to fly to some place of security till the outwitted parents should be reconciled.

The Lady Bertha was found about three nights after these occurrences, stark dead and cold in the dismantled vaults of the old Saxon chapel; and stretched by her side, Sir Edmund, with his raiment torn, his body frightfully lacerated, and his mind lost in melancholy frenzy ; never opening his lips till the hour of his death, which rapidly ensued, when he told the strange tale, as far as I have now related it, but expired (ere he could explain its dreadful catastrophe) in strong convulsions, occasioned probably by the hideous remembrances that the tale brought to his mind.

As for the poor Carmelite, whom (it is needless to say), the Demon of the Gory Cowl had personated for diabolical ends, nothing would have saved him from tar-barrel and stake, but the universally appreciated excellence of his character, which had weight sufficient to show satisfactorily, even to Lord Ferrers himself, the monstrous improbability, that so holy and peaceable a character as Father Clement, could have been an agent in a transaction so horrible. As for the treasure, of which not a stiver was forthcoming, it was heartily surrendered to him of the Bloody Hood, and himself consigned with many a malediction to that penal place of abode which, from his frequent wanderings, he seemed to love so little.

As Sir Arthur Basset concluded his story, a murmur arose at that part of the fireside circle, where the strange friar had taken his seat; and, mingled exclamations of surprise and expressions of alarm, gradually spread through that motley cortege of Christmas revellers. It was not long ere they became sensible to a man, of the startling fact that the Dominican was no longer in the hall. How or when he had taken his silent departure, no one could tell; but if they might believe the evidence of their senses, gone he undoubtedly was, and there was the tall wooden chair he had occupied, now vacant and staring them full in the face, in all the elaborate dig