having thus compelled him to relax his hold, dashed him on the ground with a force that almost stunned him, and then with a superadded kick sent him away limping and howling; whereupon the fool, attacking him furiously with a stick, would certainly have finished him, had not his master descried his plight and come to his rescue. Meantime the young surgeon had carried Elsie into the house; for, as soon as she was rescued from the dog, she had fallen down in one of her fits, which were becoming more and more frequent of themselves, and little needed such a shock as this to increase their violence. He was dressing her arm when she began to recover; and when she opened her eyes, in a state of half-consciousness, the first object she beheld, was his face bending over her. Recall ing nothing of what had occurred, it seemed to her, in the dreamy condition in which the fit had left her, the same face, unchanged, which had once shone in upon her tardy spring-time, and promised to ripen it into summer. She forgot it had departed and left her in the wintry cold. And so she uttered wild words of love and trust; and the youth, while stung with remorse at his own neglect, was astonished to perceive the poetic forms of beauty in which the soul of the uneducated maiden burst into flower. But as her senses recovered themselves, the face gradually changed to her, as if the slow alteration of two years had been phantasmagorically compressed into a few moments; and the glow departed from the maiden's thoughts and words, and her soul found itself at the narrow window of the present, from which she could behold but a dreary country. From the street came the iambic cry of the fool, "Come hame, come hame." Tycho Brahe, I think, is said to have kept a fool, who frequently sat at his feet in his study, and to whose mutterings he used to listen in the pauses of his own thought. The shining soul of the astronomer drew forth the rainbow of harmony from the misty spray of words ascending ever from the dark gulf into which the thoughts of the idiot were ever falling. He beheld curious concurrences of words therein, and could read strange meanings from them-sometimes even received wondrous hints for the direction of celestial inquiry, from what, to any other, and it may be to the fool himself, was but a ceaseless and aimless babble. Such power lieth in words. It is not then to be wondered at that the sounds I have mentioned should fall on the ears of Elsie, at such a moment, as a message from God himself. This then-all this dreariness-was but a passing show like the rest, and there lay somewhere for her a reality-a home. The tears burst up from her oppressed heart. She received the message, and prepared to go home. From that time her strength gradually sank, but her spirits as steadily rose. The strength of the fool, too, began to fail, for he was old. He bore all the signs of age, even to the gray hairs, which betokened no wisdom. But one cannot say what wisdom might be in him, or how far he had not fought his own battle, and been victorious. Whether any notion of a continuance of life and thought dwelt in his brain, it is impossible to tell; but he seemed to have the idea that this was not his home; and those who saw him gradually approaching his end, might well anticipate for him a higher life in the world to come. He had passed through this world without ever awaking to such a consciousness of being as is common to mankind. He had spent his years like a weary dream through a long night,—a strange, dismal, unkindly dream; and now the morning was at hand. Often in his dream had he listened with sleepy senses to the ringing of the bell, but that bell would awake him at last. He was like a seed buried too deep in the soil, to which the light has never penetrated, and which, therefore, has never forced its way upwards to the open air, never experienced the resurrection of the dead. But seeds will grow ages after they have fallen into the earth; and, indeed, with many kinds, and within some limits, the older the seed before it germinates, the more plentiful the fruit. And may it not be believed of many human beings, that, the great Husbandman having sown them like seeds in the soil of human affairs, there they lie buried a life long; and only after the upturning of the soil by death, reach a position in which the awakening of their aspiration and the consequent growth become possible? Surely he has made nothing in vain. A violent cold and cough brought him at last near to his end, and hearing that he was ill, Elsie ventured one bright spring day to go to see him. When she entered the miserable room where he lay, he held out his hand to her with something like a smile, and muttered feebly and painfully, "I'm gaein' to the wow, nae to come back again." Elsie could not restrain her tears; while the old man, looking fixedly at her, though with meaningless eyes, muttered, for the last time, "Come hame! come hame!" and sank into a lethargy, from which nothing could rouse him, till, next morning, he was waked by friendly death from the long sleep of this world's night. They bore him to his favourite churchyard, and buried him within the site of the old church, below his loved bell, which had ever been to him as the cuckoo-note of a coming spring. Thus he at length obeyed its summons, and went home. Elsie lingered till the first summer days lay warm on the land. Several kind hearts in the village, hearing of her illness, visited her and ministered to her. Wondering at her sweetness and patience, they regretted they had not known her before. How much consolation might not their kindness have imparted, and how much might not their sympathy have strengthened her on her painful road! But they could not long have delayed her going home. Nor, mentally constituted as she was, would this have been at all to be desired. Indeed it was chiefly the expectation of departure that quieted and soothed her tremulous nature. It is true that a deep spring of hope and faith kept singing on in her heart, but this alone, without the anticipation of speedy release, could only have kept her mind at peace. It could not have reached, at least for a long time, the border land between body and mind, in which her disease lay. One still night of summer, the nurse who watched by her bedside heard her murmur through her sleep, "I hear it: come hamecome hame. I'm comin', I'm comin'-I'm gaein' hame to the wow, nae to come back.” She awoke at the sound of her own words, and begged the nurse to convey to her brother her last request, that she might be buried by the side of the fool, within the old church of RuthThen she turned her face to the wall, and in the morning was found quiet and cold. She must have died within a few minutes after her last words. She was buried according to her request and thus she too went home. ven. Side by side rest the aged fool and the young maiden; for the bell called them, and they obeyed; and surely they found the fire burning bright, and heard friendly voices, and felt sweet lips on theirs, in the home to which they went. Surely both intellect and love were waiting them there. Still the old bell hangs in the old gable; and whenever another is borne to the old churchyard, it keeps calling to those who are left behind, with the same sad, but friendly and unchanging voice-“Come hame! come hame! come hame!" "Thy sun shall no more go down; neither shall thy moon withdraw itself: for the LORD shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended."-Isaiah lx. 20. THE LAST DAY. BY ROBERT POLLOCK. In customed glory bright, that morn the sun No sign was there of change; all nature moved In wonted harmony; men as they met, In morning salutation, praised the day, And talked of common things: the husbandman Prepared the soil, and silver-tongued hope Promised another harvest; in the streets, Each wishing to make profit of his neighbour, Merchants assembling, spoke of trying times, Of bankruptcies and markets glutted full: Or, crowding to the beach, where, to their ear, The oath of foreign accent, and the noise Uncouth of trade's rough sons, made music sweet, Elate with certain gain, beheld the bark, Expected long, enriched with other climes, Into the harbour safely steer; or saw, Parting with many a weeping farewell sad, And blessing uttered rude, and sacred pledge, The rich laden carack, bound to distant shore; And hopefully talked of her coming back With richer fraught;-or sitting at the desk, In calculation deep and intricate, Of loss and profit balancing, relieved At intervals the irksome task with thought Of future ease, retired in villa snug. With subtile look, amid his parchments sate The lawyer, weaving his sophistries for court To meet at mid-day. On his weary couch Fat luxury, sick of the night's debauch, Lay groaning, fretful at the obtrusive beam That through his lattice peeped derisively. The restless miser had begun again To count his heaps; before her toilet stood The fair, and, as with guileful skill she decked Her loveliness, thought of the coming ball, By oath of deep damnation leagued to all The workmanship of fear, forged chains for man; Improvements vast;-and learned sceptics proved No sign of change appeared; to every man The earth came night, moonless and starless night. Stood still; and beasts of every kind stood still. Came fear and trembling;-none to his neighbour spoke; Husband thought not of wife; nor of her child And, as they stood and listened, chariots were heard As ox struck by the lifted axe, when nought Was feared, in all her entrails deeply groaned. A universal crash was heard, as if The ribs of nature broke, and all her dark Foundations failed;-and deadly paleness sate On every face of man, and every heart And in the heavens, robed in excessive light, Of immortality! Awake! arise! The God of judgment comes.-This said the voice;— And silence, from eternity that slept Beyond the sphere of the creating word, And all the noise of Time, awakening, heard Heaven heard, and earth, and farthest hell through all Her regions of despair;-the ear of Death Old men, that on their staff, bending had leaned, Crazy and frail; or sat, benumbed with age, In weary listlessness, ripe for the grave, Felt through their sluggish veins and withered limbs New vigour flow;-the wrinkled face grew smooth; Upon the head that time had razored bare, Rose bushy locks; and as his son in prime Of strength and youth, the aged father stood. Changing herself, the mother saw her son Grow up, and suddenly put on the form Of manhood;-and the wretch that begging sat Limbless, deformed, at corner of the way, Unmindful of his crutch, in joint and limb Arose complete;-and he that on the bed Of mortal sickness, worn with sore distress, Lay breathing forth his soul to death, felt now The tide of life and vigour rushing back; And looking up, beheld his weeping wife, And daughter fond, that o'er him bending stooped To close his eyes;-the frantic madman too, In whose confused brain reason had lost Her way, long driven at random to and fro, Grew sober, and his manacles fell off. The newly-sheeted corpse arose, and stared On those who dressed it;-and the coffined dead, That men were bearing to the tomb, awoke, And mingled with their friends;--and armies, which The trump surprised, met in the furious shock Of battle, saw the bleeding ranks, new fallen, Rise up at once, and to their ghastly cheeks Return the stream of life in healthy flow. And as the anatomist, with all his band Of rude disciples, o'er the subject hung, And impolitely hewed his way through bones And muscles of the sacred human form, The insult offered to his clay in death. That was the hour, long wished for by the good, of universal Jubilee to all The sons of bondage; from the oppressor's hand -From The Course of Time. ARNOLD OF UNDERWALDEN. in the year 1385, the inhabitants of the small hamlets scattered over the sides of Mont Pilate, in the district of Lucerne, were assembling at the mansion of old Eberard Oberhulde, situated on the green Alpe of Brundlen. There was a marriage to be solemnized; and among the ancient families of the mountain, affined as they had been in peace and in war, for many ages, no one could think of being absent at such a time from his neighbour's hall. It was, besides, the eve of the festival of one of their saints, an occasion on which the Catholic herdsman, in his piety, never failed to believe that an abstinence from his customary toil was a religious obligation not to be dispensed with lightly. From the pasturages, therefore, above and below the Brundlen Alpe, in every direction, were to be seen the gay and laughing groups, in their holiday dresses, hastening by various romantic pathways to the house of the bride's father. Old Eberard stood, in the fulness of his glee, under the shade of a venerable and wide-spreading elm before the door, welcoming the several comers, male and female, as became an ancient herdsman, with a hearty shake of the hand or a smack of the lips, that made the rocks around him ring again. At a little distance, protected from the sun by a cluster of walnuttrees, were the happy couple; the bride, who, in the dialect of the country, might be called a tolle jumpfer, or pretty girl, was surrounded by her half-demure, half-tittering maids; her hair flowing in two plaited tresses, decorated with ribands down to her feet; her dark stays neatly laced, forming a fine contrast to the snow-white hue of the sleeves of her under garment, which were turned up and fastened at the shoulders. The female guests wore each the glistening yellow birch hat, without crown, set smartly on one side, adorned with flowers, and tied under the chin with ribands. The fashion of their garments was that of the bride's, with this special exception, that their stays, A LEGEND OF THE SWISS CANTONS. From about the commencement of the fourteenth century, that portion of Switzerland anciently distinguished as the Waldstetten had been free from foreign domination. The brilliant and decisive victory achieved at Morgarten a few years after the revolution effected by Tell and his compatriots, had at length taught the house of Austria to respect the independence of the unconquerable freemen of Uri, Schwytz, and Underwald, and for the better part of a century the Austrian invaders had not presumed to disturb them in the enjoyment of their mountains, and valleys, and lakes. Meanwhile, the accession of several of the surrounding districts had given increased power and consequence to the Helvetic League. Lucerne had hastened to become a confederate; Zurich had followed, and Glarus, and Zug, and lastly the powerful canton of Berne. In the lapse of eight years the virtuous and hardy herdsman, and the honest and industrious burgher, still retained their simplicity of character, and had lost nothing of their invincible love of liberty: they were contented, unambitious, and happy; but regu-skirts, ribands, laces, and sashes were of various larly trained to the use of arms, and prepared at a moment's warning to meet the foe. Some petty fiefs of Austria still existed in several of the districts; and the archduke was ever ready to support his feudatories in their exactions and oppressions. Leopold, a prince in the prime of life, and of a bold and ambitious temper, was surrounded by a nobility warlike, ardent, and rapacious, and, as the vigilant and jealous republicans believed, waited but for a suitable occasion of making the effort to attach Switzerland as an appanage to his house. Such was the situation of the eight cantons, when, on the afternoon of a fine day in July, colours-blue, brown, black, red, green, and yellow; so that, when they stood up in double or triple row, with their full blooming faces, they looked like a beautiful bed of tulips. Florent, the happy hoch-ryter, or bridegroom, stood at a short distance from the bride in his martial equipment, it being indispensable in those days, that, before a youth took upon himself the charge of a family, he should manifest on the wedding-day that he was provided with arms to protect it. He stood erect, therefore, in cap and corselet; his sturdy sword buckled to his thigh, a pike in his hand, and a cross-bow, a battle-axe, and knotted club leaning against the tree behind him. The friends of the bridegroom, generally of stately and athletic frame, were, in dress, almost as multiform as the opposite sex, their doublets and hose puffed and striped with every tint of the rainbow, and in some instances the arms, and even the legs, of the same individual of no kindred colour. But scarcely had the person advanced near enough for the group to discover that he was a man of some sixty years of age, and of a frank and easy, and perhaps martial, deportment, when a new and striking object claimed their attention. "The lammer-geyer!" exclaimed several voices at once; "The lammer-geyer!" was echoed by almost every one present, in tones of alarm and apprehension; and that dreadful monster of the air, the lammer-geyer, or lamb-vulture, was seen high over the Peak, descending in his gigantic and fearful strength. A bouquetin, or mountain-goat, had been browsing upon the herbage of the lower region of the Peak, having left her young in a cavity above. With the instinct of a mother she per There was one, however, among the weddingguests whose appearance showed him to be of a superior stamp. Clad in the plainest habiliments, the character of his commanding exterior could not be for a moment mistaken. He seemed of middle age, and his countenance, usually grave, at times approached in its expression even to severity. But virtue and high resolve sat on his brow, and his unblench-ceived the danger that threatened them, and ing eye, full of meaning, spoke the language of a soul exclusively engrossed by grand and lofty thoughts. He was of Underwalden, one of those leading spirits to whom, in the hour of need, the everyday people of the world turn for succour and support, and, that hour passed, whom they not unfrequently cast off to "beggarly divorcement." Devotion to his country was his master passion, and while the political storm yet hung in the distance, he employed himself in occasional visits to the several districts of the union, wherever there were gather-round the horns of the dam, and, after a short ings of the people, for the purpose of inciting his countrymen, if that should be necessary, to preparation against its coming fury. hastened to their rescue. With inconceivable speed she leaped from crag to crag; where two parallel walls of rock arose close to each other, bounding from side to side in an upward course; or, incredible as it may seem, with successive leaps surmounting the naked perpendicular cliff. In a few moments she was with her young, her head, armed with its tremendous horns, guarding the entrance of the cave. The vulture stooped to his intended quarry, but failing to reach the young, fixed his iron talons struggle, dragged her half out of her recess. The bouquetin, an animal of immense strength, setting her short fore-feet against the protruding rocks, for a time kept up the desperate contest, till the fragment of a rock, hurled by the young stranger from above, struck the vulture, who, enraged, quitted his hold. The new assailant was now in evident danger, but the The greetings had been made, and the pleasantries passed, the priest was in attendance, and the ceremony was about to proceed, when a stranger was descried approaching across the plain from the base of the rock in front. "What guest comes from the Peak?" ex- glitter of his short couteau-de-chasse, as the claimed Martin of Hergottwald. "If I mistake not," said Eberard, "it is one of the strangers who stopped at my door to-day on their way to the Peak; and see," he added, "where his young companion appears high up the rock !” "Strangers! who are they? whence come they?" inquired the guest from Underwalden. "Of that I know but little," replied Eberard; "they are courteous and curious, but not equally communicative." "But do you not remember, father," observed the bride, blushing at the sound of her own voice, "that the younger stranger told us they resided at the castle of Gerisau?" "At Gerisau!" exclaimed the man of Underwalden, "they are Austrians then! Austrians!" he repeated in a lower voice, as he retired to the shelter of a tree and fixed his eyes earnestly on the approaching stranger. vulture approached, seemed to appal him. Infuriated, he darted off, and as he clove the air in rapid circles towards the plain, with his bearded neck bent downward, he seemed gazing upon the earth, as if desperately intent upon wreaking his vengeance on anything assailable. In the rear of the chalet, and but a short distance off, a girl had been playing among the shrubbery with a young child of about two years of age; but, yielding to her girlish curiosity, she had suffered herself to be attracted toward the crowd, and the child was for the instant forgotten. The scene we have described had occupied but a few moments, nor was the situation of the child remembered till the dreadful vulture was observed to pause in his flight, immediately over the garden. A shriek from the wretched nurse of the child was the first warning of the danger that impended; |