"the amorous vine

Doth with the fair and straight-limb'd elm entwine."

Gray finely alludes to its association with the yew in our village churchyards :

"Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,

Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep."

This use was probably borrowed from our Roman invaders, who planted the elm and cypress on the warrior's grave; and perhaps a still finer conception reconciled the practice to our Christian ancestors, who, from its being one of the first to bud in Spring, assumed it as an emblem of the resurrection.

The Rector-Trees are full of historic references. The great elmtree was lately standing, and probably still exists, under which Penn signed his treaty with the Indians. They are sometimes the source of more painful records. The great elm was long marked, near which Hooper the martyr used to preach, and in whose front he died. "Having reached," says the historian, "the spot where stood the preparations for his painful end, he knelt down, and spent about half an hour in prayer. Having prepared himself, he requested of the spectators to repeat the Lord's Prayer with him, and to pray for him while he should continue in the agonies of death. Instantly arose the voice of prayer, interrupted by sobs and groans, from every quarter of the crowded area. He then ascended to the stake, and irons were brought to fasten him to it. You need not,' says he, thus to trouble yourselves: I doubt not but God will vouchsafe me strength to abide the fire's extremity without bands.' A chain, however, for the waist he willingly allowed to be drawn around him, admitting that the frailty of his flesh might make him swerve from his position. He bore his agonies, which were prolonged for more than three-quarters of an hour, with admirable constancy, moving incessantly his lips in prayer." Those were the desperate works of desperate times, never to be renewed while liberty of conscience exists, sanctioned by the power of the laws.

6

The whole volume is a remarkably pleasing performance, printed in a very superior style, and decorated with a great number of beautiful drawings of the leaves and branches of trees, coloured with taste and skill.

The Colonel." Personal Memoirs and Correspondence of Colonel Charles Shaw." Public curiosity has been so much excited relative to the campaigns of the civil wars in Spain and Portugal, that any vigorous and faithful record will be received by the public as an important acquisition. In Colonel Shaw's two volumes we have the narrative of an intelligent writer, a gallant officer, and an individual whose rank and experience gave him the fullest opportunities of knowledge. His style is soldier-like-manly, clear, and straightforward. He speaks of himself and his services with a feeling natural to a man who knows their value. Colonel Shaw began his service in the 52nd regiment, one of the most distinguished in the British army. Of this corps he says justly, "What pleasing recollections arise in my mind when I think of that splendid regiment!-the high-minded, honourable, soldier-like feeling which actuated all the subalterns; the strict discipline, the gentlemanlike bearing of the commanding officers to their juniors,-all conspired

to make the 52nd the beau ideal of what soldiers ought to be." His military education had commenced in an excellent school; for no officer was allowed to do duty in the 52nd until he was completely drilled in every branch of it. The regimental regulation was six months, at six hours a-day; and at the end of this period every subaltern was perfected as a private and non-commissioned officer. His first experiment in service was to join the expedition to Holland in 1814. At the attack on the village of Merxem, an incident occurred interesting to the loyalty of an Englishman. "The regiment," says Colonel Shaw, " had removed to the left, and I was in the rear company, when a gentleman, dressed in a blue coat with white lining, came up. From his dress, I thought he was one of the commissariat; but remarking two musket-shots through his coat, I thought him a rather rash commissary. I even felt inclined to be offended when, addressing me in a loud, commanding tone, he asked 'What regiment is that?-who commands it?' That gentleman,' said I, pointing to Captain Diggle. Is he the commanding officer?' 'No; Colonel Gibbs commands.'

"It was odd that the men should have had the same idea of the mysterious stranger that I had myself. They, too, supposed he must be a commissary, and began muttering something about bread-bags better in the rear,' when my friend Captain Anderson, of the Artillery, suddenly rode up. What was my astonishment on seeing him salute Mr. Commissary Bread-bags in the most respectful fashion, saying at the same time, If your Royal Highness moves a little more to the left, you can have a little better view of the enemy: Sir Thomas Graham is in the steeple of the church.' In a whisper I asked Anderson 'What Royal Highness is this?' when he informed me it was the Duke of Clarence, who had landed from England the day before. The Duke's courage continued to be the talk of the army for some days; but I said little, thinking I had got into a scrape, by having mistaken his Royal Highness for a commissary."

The Doctor.--Military anecdotes have an unfailing charm for all men. The gallantry, promptitude, and adventure of soldiership make every thing belonging to it popular. The following is a capital anecdote :— Lieut.-Colonel Brown commanded the 28th at Barossa. He was said to have purposely allowed his regiment to be surrounded. Most officers would have felt nervous in such a situation; but it is reported that Brown addressed his men thus :-" Twenty-eighth, what confoundedly lucky fellows you are! This day you must be either extinguished ordistinguished! Do as you like." The 28th took their Colonel at his word; the rear rank faced to the right-about, and repulsed the enemy. And now the 28th wear the number of the regiment both in the front and back of their shakos.

On the disbanding of the battalion, in consequence of the peace, Colonel Shaw visited the Continent, travelled over the greater part of it on foot, and, on his return, had " the world before him where to choose."

In 1831, Don Pedro commenced his attack on Portugal. British volunteers joined him, and, amongst the rest, Shaw, who took service as a Captain of Marines, joined Don Pedro at Terceira, fought gallantly with him during the siege of Oporto, and, through a thousand hairbreadth escapes, arrived at the rank of Colonel, and Knight Commander of the Tower and Sword. The cessation of the Portuguese war sent him home again. He lingered for a while in England, probably much

in the condition of a racer when the Newmarket season is over, and he has nothing to think of but sheep and pasture; or if the gallant Colonel should regard the comparison as unworthy of his prowess, a panther, or royal tiger, suddenly stopped in the middle of his chase, and caged in a museum, to gaze at the passing world through his bars, for the remaining term of his natural life. But this fate was not for the soldier. Spain opened a new field for him, and he immediately took service in the Legion under Evans.

The Rector. It is impossible to think of Spain without regret for her national calamities. Perhaps if a kingdom were to be chosen in Europe, for its position, its extent, its external security, and its boundless resources, Spain would be the kingdom. The philosopher would see in it a population capable of every physical and intellectual advance; the statesman, a region capable of all but universal dominion; the soldier, a vast entrenched camp, impregnable by nature, and capable of pouring out its forces on the North, on Africa, and on the Mediterranean, almost without fear of retaliation. Henry the Fourth's well known phrase shows what strength even that most daring of French chevaliers ascribed to the position of Spain. "She is beyond invasion. Invade her with a great army, and you perish of famine; invade her with a small one, and you are beaten." Napoleon's idea was equally descriptive. "Peste !" said the universal invader, "what is to be done with a country where they can raise an army by ringing a bell?” Yet Spain, for the last three hundred years, has been but a subordinate in the European system. A spell has bound her; her blood has stagnated; her faculties, even though stimulated by the stings of the French lash, showed their power only in convulsion, and then lapsed again. The noble aid of England, the splendid evidence of the resistless strength which religion, freedom, and justice, can administer even to a small state, the knowledge that a career of glory, peace, and power, was open to her in following the example of her great auxiliary, scarcely awoke Spain. When the war was at an end, instead of turning her triumphs into public vigour, she sank into lethargy; instead of beating her swords and spears into the ploughshare and the sickle of a new and more ardent cultivation of the profuse luxuriance of her national means, she flung them away to rust on the unstirred surface of the moral soil; wrapped her limbs in public apathy, and left civilization to chance, which does nothing, and to time, which only corrupts and corrodes. Of all the nations of Europe, the most unfortunate is Spain.

The Barrister. And the most unfortunate will continue. Superstition has strangled her original energies. That superstition has yet found but one antagonist, Jacobinism; and the only difference of their triumphs must be, that, in the one case, she falls back into her ancient feebleness, and in the other, rushes into unnatural ferocity: that in the one, she lies like a mighty vessel without mast or helm, decaying on the surface of the ocean, and in the other, she sweeps along like a fire-ship, a terror to all, until it explodes, and is blown into fragments for ever. The horrors of her civil war even now are extinguishing all the sympathy of Europe;-King and usurper, Carlos and Christina, royalist and rebel, Biscayan and Castilian, are equally ferocious. The war reminds us more of a Negro insurrection or a Tartar invasion than of the hosSept.-VOL. LI. NO. CCI.

K

tility of civilized times. Unless Don Carlos shall speedily fall, or shall ascend the throne, every hour must add to the havoc of the country; the passions of the people must become still more infuriated; the roots of public prosperity must be cut up more and more; the blood of Spain must flow in torrents; till the living race sink into barbarians, and the land itself is given over to sterility, or its inheritance is transmitted to some nation unstained by the hideous atrocities of its old possessors.

The Colonel.-Shaw's letters are admirable. Since the days of Cæsar, the most difficult task of authorship has been to give anything like a distinct account of a battle. I have never seen writing more intelligible, animated, or expressive, than Shaw's descriptions of the affairs in the Oporto campaign, and the fights of the Legion in front of St. Sebastian. It is impossible to read them without a conviction that they are true to the letter. Two or three of his epistles to his family, previous to the attack on the Carlist lines, in May, 1836, show the temperament of the man. In one of them he distinctly declares that he conceives the attempt rash in the extreme; yet as there were counsellors in the camp who were for running their heads against stone walls, this brave man sacrifices his judgment, and takes his chance. I admit that he would have been braver still, if he had openly declared his dissent, and thus saved the Legion from the hazard of a ruinous defeat: but military reputation is a delicate thing, and it is easy to understand his dilemma. In one of his letters on this occasion, he says, "The French Consul, who is a great sportsman, and who knows the locale, has been explaining to me the nature of the ground, which he says is almost impassable without a few days' dry weather. I backed the General's opinion as to delay, as much as I could prudently do among officers, not one of whom knows me. I do not think some are aware of the danger of attacking such lines with men who have never seen a shot fired; but I now finish, in the hope that General Evans will decide for himself, and that we shall wait for more troops." On the next day he writes to the same brother the brief but resolute letter of a man determined to do his duty, but evidently thinking that all was going wrong :—

"MY DEAR GEORGE,-We go out to-morrow morning, I think very unnecessarily. However, as I expected, I have got what I think the post of honour, which, in all probability, will finish me. I am tired of everything, except the love that, living or dying, I shall always retain for those who are, and have been, so dear to me.

"Half-past twelve at night. Go out at two in the morning."

The attack took place, and in every point verified Colonel Shaw's prediction. The loss was great: the Legion was actually defeated after passing the first two lines; and nothing but the coming up of those troops for which he would have waited, decided even the imperfect success of the day. The arrival of the 4th and 8th regiments, and the cannonade of the steamers, alone drove the enemy from the third line. The Colonel was as true a prophet as he was a good soldier.

The Doctor.-Shaw's brief letter the day after the engagement is capital. "The steamer is detained; so I write to you once more. We had a terrible morning's work of it, the brigade having lost, in killed and wounded, about four hundred men and twenty-seven officers. How I escaped I know not. Kind Providence was my protector. My watch is smashed, the ball having cut through cloak, coat, and trowsers, and

only bruised me. A spent ball hit me on the chest, and my gaiter was cut across by another. We had dreadful lines to force-very steep, vomiting fire; and the clay, up to our ancles, made us so slow, that they picked us as they chose. The enemy not only behaved well behind their lines, but charged out, and twice or thrice put us for a moment in confusion. The officers had dreadful work. I gave orders to very many of different brigades, and almost all fell killed or wounded. But the enemy will not resist us again so boldly. I am very much fatigued and excited, and could cry."

Another letter follows, giving a long and most admirable detail of the whole action, in which nearly a thousand men and officers were sacrificed to the useless object of gaining half a mile in advance, and decorating the shoulders of General Evans with the order of Isabella.

The Barrister.-Another volume of Byron's Memoirs has appeared, printed with the same elegance as the former numbers of this series, and containing a still more amusing variety of the author's compositions. A good deal of Lord Byron's private penmanship was employed in indulging that spleen upon individuals, which his public labours lavished on man in general. One of his Lordship's antipathies was the race of poetic peasants, which have rather too thickly grown up of late years in our Parnassus. On one of those, the poetical shoemaker, Joseph Blackett, he wrote this epitaph:

"Stranger, behold interr'd together

The souls of learning and of leather.
Poor Joe is gone, but left his all;
You'll find his relics in a stall."

The Rector.-Another of his antipathies was the lady who was unfortunate enough to be his wife. His Lordship, in this point, was the reverse of Petrarch, who was platonically and poetically in love with another man's wife twenty years together, and probably long after he had forgotten every feature of her face. Lord Byron made verses on his wife to the last, long after he had forgotten every circumstance, but that she was his wife, and that writing about her gave him the air of an injured man. But his epigrams are ingenious;-for instance, that "On his Wedding Day :"

"This day, of all our days, has done

The worst for me and you;

'Tis just six years since we were one,
And five since we were two,"

He had touched the same thought the year before :-
"Here's a happy new year!-but, with reason,
I hope you'll permit me to say,

Wish me many returns of the season,

But as few as you please of the day."

The Colonel. It is singular, that though Lord Byron took up the style of a Reformer, and associated with some of the unfortunate patriots whose patriotism sent them to gaol or banishment, he was an Aristocrat in his heart. One of his epigrams shows his conception of the leading Reformer of his day-the now dead and gone William Cobbett :

"In digging up your bones, Tom Paine,

Will Cobbett has done well;

You visit him on earth again,
He'll visit you in