wasteful son, in the days of his extravagance, had sold for an old song.

To Franz the pikeman had at once become extremely interesting, as he perceived that this was the very friend to whom the goblin in the castle of Rummelsburg had consigned him. Gladly could he have embraced the veteran, and in the first rapture called him friend and father; but he restrained himself, and found it more advisable to keep his thoughts about this piece of news to himself. So he said, "Well, this is what I call a circumstantial dream. But what didst thou do, old master, in the morning, on awakening? Didst thou not follow whither thy guardian angel beckoned thee?"

"Pooh," said the dreamer, "why should I toil, and have my labour for my pains? It was nothing, after all, but a mere dream. If my guardian angel had a fancy for appearing to me, I have had enow of sleepless nights in my time, when he might have found me waking. | But he takes little charge of me, I think, else I should not, to his shame, be going hitching here on a wooden leg."

Franz took out the last piece of silver he had on him: "There," said he, old father, take this other gift from me, to get thee a pint of wine for evening-cup; thy talk has scared away my ill-humour. Neglect not diligently to frequent this bridge; we shall see each other here, I hope, again."

The lame old man had not gathered so rich a stock of alms for many a day as he was now possessed of; he blessed his benefactor for his kindness, hopped away into a drinking-shop to do himself a good turn; while Franz, enlivened with new hope, hastened off to his lodging in the alley.

Next day he got in readiness everything that is required for treasure-digging. The unessential equipments, conjurations, magic formulas, magic-girdles, hieroglyphic characters, and such like, were entirely wanting; but these are not indispensable, provided there be no failure in the three main requisites-shovel, spade, and, before all, a treasure underground. The necessary implements he carried to the place a little before sunset, and hid them for the meanwhile in a hedge; and as to the treasure itself, he had the firm conviction that the goblin in the castle and the friend on the bridge would prove no liars to him. With longing impatience he expected the rising of the moon, and no sooner did she stretch her silver horns over the bushes than he briskly set to work, observing exactly everything the invalid had taught him; and happily accomplished the raising of the treasure without

meeting any adventure in the process, without any black dog having frightened him. or any bluish flame having lighted him to the spot.

Father Melchior, in providently burying this penny for a rainy day, had nowise meant that his son should be deprived of so considerable a part of his inheritance. The mistake lay in this. that death had escorted the testator out of the world in another way than said testator had expected. He had been completely convinced that he should take his journey, old and full of days, after regulating his temporal concerns with all the formalities of an ordinary sick-bed: for so it had been prophesied to him in his youth.

In consequence he purposed, when, according to the usage of the church, extreme unction should have been dispensed to him, to call his beloved son to his bed-side, having previously dismissed all by-standers, there to give him the paternal blessing, and by way of farewell memorial direct him to this treasure buried in the garden. All this, too, would have happened in just order, if the light of the good old man had departed like that of a wick whose oil is done; but as death had privily snuffed him out at a feast, he undesignedly took along with him his mammon secret to the grave; and almost as many fortunate concurrences were required before the secreted patrimony could arrive at the proper heir, as if it had been for warded to its address by the hand of Justice itself.

With immeasurable joy the treasure-digger took possession of the shapeless Spanish pieces. which, with a vast multitude of other fine: coins, the iron chest had faithfully preserved. When the first intoxication of delight had in some degree evaporated, he bethought him how the treasure was to be transported, safe and unobserved, into the narrow alley. The bur den was too heavy to be carried without help: thus, with the possession of riches, all the cares attendant on them were awakened. The new Croesus found no better plan than to intrust his capital to the hollow trunk of a tree that stood behind the garden, in a meadow; the empty chest he again buried under the rosebush, and smoothed the place as well as possible. In the space of three days the treasure had been faithfully transmitted by instalments from the hollow tree into the narrow alley; and now the owner of it thought he might with honour lay aside his strict incognito. He dressed himself with the finest; had his prayer displaced from the church, and required, instead of it, "A Christian thanksgiving for a traveller, on returning to his native town, after happily

arranging his affairs." He hid himself in a corner of the church, where he could observe the fair Meta, without himself being seen; he turned not his eye from the maiden, and drank from her looks the actual rapture which in foretaste had restrained him from the breakneck somerset on the bridge of the Weser. When the thanksgiving came in hand, a glad Sympathy shone forth from all her features, and the cheeks of the virgin glowed with joy. The customary greeting on the way homewards was so full of emphasis, that even to the third party who had noticed them it would have been intelligible.

Franz now appeared once more on the exchange; began a branch of trade which in a few weeks extended to the great scale; and as his wealth became daily more apparent, Neighbour Grudge, the scandal-chewer, was obliged to conclude, that in the cashing of his old debts he must have had more luck than sense. He hired a large house, fronting the Roland, in the market-place; engaged clerks and warehousemen, and carried on his trade unweariedly. Now the sorrowful populace of parasites again diligently handled the knocker of his door, appeared in crowds, and suffocated him with assurances of friendship and joy-wishings on his fresh prosperity; imagined they should once more catch him in their robber claws. Bat experience had taught him wisdom; he paid them in their own coin, feasted their false friendship on smooth words, and dismissed them with fasting stomachs; which sovereign means for scaring off the cumbersome brood of pickthanks and toad-eaters produced the intended effect, that they betook themselves elsewhither.

In Bremen, the remounting Melcherson had become the story of the day; the fortune which in some inexplicable manner he had realized, as was supposed, in foreign parts, was the subject-matter of all conversations at formal dinners, in the courts of justice, and at the exchange. But in proportion as the fame of his fortune and affluence increased, the contentedness and peace of mind of the fair Meta diminished. The friend in petto was now, in her opinion, well qualified to speak a plain word. Yet still his love continued dumb, and except the greeting on the way from church, he gave no tidings of himself. Even this sort of visit was becoming rarer; and such aspects were the sign not of warm, but of cold weather in the atmosphere of love. Jealousy, the baleful harpy, fluttered round her little room by night, and when sleep was closing her blue eyes, croaked many a dolorous presage into the

ear of the re-awakened Meta. "Forego the flattering hope of binding an inconstant heart, which, like a feather, is the sport of every wind. He loved thee, and was faithful to thee, while his lot was as thy own: like only draws to like. Now a propitious destiny exalts the changeful far above thee. Ah! now he scorns the truest thoughts in mean apparel, now that pomp, and wealth, and splendour dazzle him once more; and courts, who knows what haughty fair one that disdained him when he lay among the pots, and now with siren call allures him back to her. Perhaps her cozening voice has turned him from thee, speaking with false words: For thee, God's garden blossoms in thy native town: friend, thou hast now thy choice of all our maidens; choose with prudence, not by the eye alone. Of girls are many, and of fathers many, who in secret lie in wait for thee; none will withhold his darling daughter. Take happiness and honour with the fairest, likewise birth and fortune. councillor dignity awaits thee, where vote of friends is potent in the city.'

The

These suggestions of Jealousy disturbed and tormented her heart without ceasing: she reviewed her fair contemporaries in Bremen, estimated the ratio of so many splendid matches to herself and her circumstances, and the result was far from favourable. The first tidings of her lover's change of situation had in secret charmed her, not in the selfish view of becoming participatress in a large fortune; but for her mother's sake, who had abdicated all hopes of earthly happiness ever since the marriage project with neighbour Hop-King had made shipwreck. But now poor Meta wished that Heaven had not heard the prayer of the church, or granted to the traveller any such abundance of success, but rather kept him by the bread and salt which he would willingly have shared with her.

The

The fair half of the species are by no means calculated to conceal an inward care. Mother Brigitta soon observed the trouble of her daughter, and, without the use of any great penetration, likewise guessed its cause. talk about the re-ascending star of her former flax-negotiator, who was now celebrated as the pattern of an orderly, judicious, active tradesman, had not escaped her, any more than the feeling of the good Meta towards him; and it was her opinion that if he loved in earnest, it was needless to hang off so long, without explaining what he meant. Yet out of tenderness to her daughter, she let no hint of this discovery escape her, till at length poor Meta's heart became so full, that of her own accord

she made her mother the confidant of her sorrow, and disclosed to her its true origin. The shrewd old lady learned little more by this disclosure than she knew already. But it afforded opportunity to mother and daughter for a full, fair, and free discussion of this delicate affair. Brigitta made her no reproaches on the subject; she believed that what was done could not be undone, and directed all her eloquence to strengthen and encourage the dejected Meta to bear the failure of her hopes with a steadfast mind.

With this view she spelled out to her the extremely reasonable moral, a, b, ab; discoursing thus: "My child, thou hast already said a, thou must now say b too; thou hast scorned thy fortune when it sought thee, now thou must submit when it will meet thee no longer. Experience has taught me that the most confident hope is the first to deceive us. Therefore, follow my example; abandon the fair cozener utterly, and thy peace of mind will no longer be disturbed by her. Count not on any improvement of thy fate, and thou wilt grow contented with thy present situation. Honour the spinning-wheel, which supports thee; what are fortune and riches to thee when thou canst do without them?"

Close on this stout oration followed a loud humming symphony of snap-reel and spinningwheel, to make up for the time lost in speaking. Mother Brigitta was in truth philosophizing from the heart. After her scheme for the restoration of her former affluence had gone to ruin, she had so simplified the plan of her life that Fate could not perplex it any more. But Meta was still far from this philosophical centre of indifference; and hence this doctrine, consolation, and encouragement affected her quite otherwise than had been intended: the conscientious daughter now looked upon herself as the destroyer of her mother's fair hopes, and suffered from her own mind a thousand reproaches for this fault. Though she had never adopted the maternal scheme of marriage, and had reckoned only upon bread and salt in her future wedlock, yet on hearing of her lover's riches and spreading commerce, her diet-project had directly mounted to six plates; and it delighted her to think, that by her choice she should still realize her good mother's wish, and see her once more planted in her previous abundance.

This fair dream now vanished by degrees, as Franz continued silent. To make matters worse, there spread a rumour over all the city that he was furnishing his house in the most splendid fashion for his marriage with a rich

Antwerp lady, who was already on her way to Bremen. This Job's-news drove the lovely maiden from her last defence; she passed on the apostate sentence of banishment from her heart, and vowed from that hour never more to think of him; and as she did so, wetted the twining thread with her tears.

In a heavy hour she was breaking this vow, and thinking, against her will, of the faithless lover; for she had just spun off a rock of flax, and there was an old rhyme which had been taught her by her mother for encouragement to diligence:

Spin, daughterkin, spin,

Thy sweetheart's within!" which she always recollected when her rock was done; and along with it the memory of the deceitful necessarily occurred to her. In this heavy hour a finger rapped with a most dainty patter at the door. Mother Brigita looked forth: the sweetheart was without. Ar who could it be? Who else but neighbour Franz from the alley? He had decked him self with a gallant wooing-suit, and his welldressed, thick brown locks shook forth perfume. This stately decoration boded, at all events, something else than flax-dealing. Mother Bri gitta started in alarm; she tried to speak, but words failed her. Meta rose in trepidation from her seat, blushed like a purple rose, and was silent. Franz, however, had the power of utterance; to the soft adagio which he had in former days trilled forth to her, he now ap pended a suitable text, and explained his dumb love in clear words. Thereupon he made solemn application for her to the mother; ju tifying his proposal by the statement that the preparations in his house had been meant for the reception of a bride, and that this bride was the charming Meta.

Franz provided comfortably for old Timbertoe, lived happily with his wife, and found Brigitta the most tolerable mother-in-law that has ever been discovered.

WEEP NO MORE.

Weep no more, nor sigh, nor groan,
Sorrow calls no time that's gone:
Violets plucked, the sweetest rain
Makes not fresh nor grow again;
Trim thy locks, look cheerfully;
Fate's hidden ends eyes cannot see:
Joys as winged dreams fly fast,
Why should sadness longer last?
Grief is but a wound to woe;
Gentlest fair, mourn, mourn no mo.
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.

THE LAMENT OF TASSO.

BY LORD BYRON.

[Torquato Tasso, born at Sorrento, 1544; died at Rome, 25th April, 1595. The author of Jerusalem Delivered, and one of the most celebrated of the Italian poeta, was long confined, by order of the Duke Alfonso, in a part of the monastery of St. Anne, designed for Innatics. A traditionary story attributes this step to some extravagancy on the part of the poet, evincing an attachment to the Princess Leonora, the duke's sister, in whose praise he had written some impassioned verses. 1 The confinement is said to have aggravated a constitational disposition to madness. "At Ferrara," says Lord Byron, in his advertisement to the following poem, "are preserved the original MSS. of Tasso's Jerusalem and of Guarini's Pastor Fido, with letters of Tasso, one from Titian to Ariosto, and the inkstand and chair, the tomb and the house of the latter. But as misfortune has a greater interest with posterity, and little or none for the contemporary, the cell where Tasso was confined in the hospital of St. Anne attracts a more fixed attention than the residence or the monument of Ariosto.]

I.

Long years!-It tries the thrilling frame to bear,
And eagle spirit of a child of Song-
Long years of outrage, calumny, and wrong;
Imputed madness, prisoned solitude,

And the mind's canker in its savage mood,
When the impatient thirst of light and air
Parches the heart; and the abhorred grate,
Marring the sunbeams with its hideous shade,
Works through the throbbing eyeball to the brain,
With a hot sense of heaviness and pain;
And bare, at once, Captivity display'd
Stands scoffing through the never-opened gate,
Which nothing through its bars admits, save day,
And tasteless food, which I have eat alone
Till its unsocial bitterness is gone;
And I can banquet like a beast of prey,
Sullen and lonely, couching in the cave
Which is my lair, and—it may be-my grave.
All this bath somewhat worn me, and may wear,
But must be borne. I stoop not to despair;

Tasso's biographer, the Abate Serassi, has ascertained beyond doubt that the first cause of the poet's imprisonment was his desire to be occasionally or altogether free from servitude at the court of Alfonso. The suspicion of this desire, aggravated by a visit which Tasso made to Rome in 1575, caused the duke to refuse him admission to the court; and none of the many promises which had been given to him were fulfilled. Exasperated by this treatment, Tasso publicly uttered the wildest invectives against the duke and all the house of Este. He was thereupon consigned to prison. The silence of the Princess Leonora is attributed to her fear of the consequences to herself and her lover of any discovery of their passion. Tasso was released in 1586, and died in 1595. Byron wrote The Lament in 1817, after a day's visit to Ferrara.

For I have battled with mine agony,
And made me wings wherewith to overfly
The narrow circus of my dungeon wall,
And freed the Holy Sepulchre from thrall;
And revell'd among men and things divine,
And pour'd my spirit over Palestine,
In honour of the sacred war for Him,
The God who was on earth and is in heaven,
For he has strengthened me in heart and limb.
That through this sufferance I might be forgiven,
I have employed my penance to record
How Salem's shrine was won, and how adored.

II.

But this is o'er -my pleasant task is done:-
My long-sustaining friend of many years!
If I do blot thy final page with tears,
Know, that my sorrows have wrung from me noue.
But thou, my young creation! my soul's child!
Which ever playing round me came and smiled,
And wooed me from myself with thy sweet sight,
Thou too art gone-and so is my delight:
And therefore do I weep and inly bleed
With this last bruise upon a broken reed.
Thou too art ended-what is left me now?
For I have anguish yet to bear-and how?
I know not that-but in the innate force
Of my own spirit shall be found resource.

I have not sunk, for I had no remorse,

Nor cause for such: they called me mad-and why?

Oh Leonora ! wilt not thou reply?

I was indeed delirious in my heart

To lift my love so lofty as thou art;

But still my frenzy was not of the mind:

I knew my fault, and feel my punishment

Not less because I suffer it unbent.

That thou wert beautiful, and I not blind,
Hath been the sin which shuts me from mankind;
But let them go, or torture as they will,
My heart can multiply thine image still;
Successful love may sate itself away;
The wretched are the faithful; 'tis their fate
To have all feeling, save the one, decay,
And every passion into one dilate,
As rapid rivers into ocean pour;
But ours is fathomless, and hath no shore.

III.

Above me, hark! the long and maniac cry
Of minds and bodies in captivity.
And hark! the lash and the increasing howl,
And the half-inarticulate blasphemy!

There be some here with worse than frenzy foul,
Some who do still goad on the o'er-laboured mind,
And dim the little light that's left behind
With needless torture, as their tyrant will
Is wound up to the lust of doing ill:

With these and with their victims am I class'd,
'Mid sounds and sights like these long years have pass'd;
'Mid sights and sounds like these my life may close:
So let it be-for then I shall repose.

IV.

I have been patient, let me be so yet;

I had forgotten half I would forget,

But it revives-Oh! would it were my lot

To be forgetful as I am forgot!

Feel I not wroth with those who bade me dwell
In this vast lazar-house of many woes?

Where laughter is not mirth, nor thought the mind,
Nor words a language, nor even men mankind;
Where cries reply to curses, shrieks to blows,
And each is tortured in his separate hell-
For we are crowded in our solitudes-

Many, but each divided by the wall,

Which echoes Madness in her babbling moods;

While all can hear, none heed his neighbour's call-
None! save that One, the veriest wretch of all,
Who was not made to be the mate of these,
Nor bound between Distraction and Disease.
Feel I not wroth with those who placed me here?
Who have debased me in the minds of men,
Debarring me the usage of my own,
Blighting my life in best of its career,
Branding my thoughts as things to shun and fear?
Would I not pay them back these pangs again,
And teach them inward Sorrow's stifled groan?
The struggle to be calm, and cold distress,
Which undermines our Stoical success?
No!-still too proud to be vindictive--I
Have pardon'd princes' insults, and would die.
Yes, Sister of my Sovereign! for thy sake
I weed all bitterness from out my breast,
It hath no business where thou art a guest;
Thy brother hates-but I can not detest;
Thou pitiest not - but I can not forsake.

V.

Look on a love which knows not to despair,
But all unquench'd is still my better part,
Dwelling deep in my shut and silent heart,
As dwells the gathered lightning in its cloud,
Encompass'd with its dark and rolling shroud,
Till struck,-forth flies the all-ethereal dart!
And thus at the collision of thy name

The vivid thought still flashes through my frame,
And for a moment all things as they were
Flit by me; they are gone-I am the same.
And yet my love without ambition grew;
I knew thy state, my station, and I knew
A princess was no love-mate for a bard;
I told it not, I breathed it not, it was
Sufficient to itself, its own reward:
And if my eyes reveal'd it, they, alas!
Were punish'd by the silentness of thine,
And yet I did not venture to repine.
Thou wert to me a crystal-girded shrine,
Worshipped at holy distance, and around
Hallow'd and meekly kiss'd the saintly ground;
Not for thou wert a princess, but that Love
Had robed thee with a glory, and arrayed
Thy lineaments in beauty that dismay'd-

Oh! not dismay'd-but awed, like One above!
And in that sweet severity there was

A something which all softness did surpass-
I know not how-thy genius master'd mine-
My star stood still before thee:--if it were
Presumptuous thus to love without design,
That sad fatality hath cost me dear;
But thou art dearest still, and I should be
Fit for this cell, which wrongs me--but for thee.
The very love which lock'd me to my chain
Hath lighten'd half its weight; and for the rest,
Though heavy, lent me vigour to sustain,
And look to thee with undivided breast,
And foil the ingenuity of Pain.

VI.

It is no marvel-from my very birth
My soul was drunk with love,-which did pervade
And mingle with whate'er I saw on earth;
Of objects all inanimate I made
Idols, and out of wild and lonely flowers,
And rocks, whereby they grew, a paradise,
Where I did lay me down within the shade
Of waving trees, and dream'd uncounted hours,
Though I was chid for wandering; and the wise
Shook their white aged heads o'er me, and said,
Of such materials wretched men were made,
And such a truant boy would end in woe,
And that the only lesson was a blow;
And then they smote me, and I did not weep,
But cursed them in my heart, and to my haunt
Return'd and wept alone, and dream'd again
The visions which arise without a sleep.
And with my years my soul began to pant
With feelings of strange tumult and soft pain;
And the whole heart exhaled into One Want,
But undefined and wandering, till the day

I found the thing I sought-and that was thee;
And then I lost my being, all to be
Absorbed in thine; the world was past away;
Thou didst annihilate the earth to me!

VII.

I loved all solitude-but little thought
To spend I know not what of life, remote
From all communion with existence, save
The maniac and his tyrant;-had I been
Their fellow, many years ere this had seen
My mind like theirs corrupted to its grave.
But who hath seen me writhe, or heard me rave?
Perchance in such a cell we suffer more
Than the wreck'd sailor on his desert shore;
The world is all before him-mine is here,
Scarce twice the space they must accord my bier.
What though he perish, he may lift his eye.
And with a dying glance upbraid the sky;
I will not raise my own in such reproof,
Although 'tis clouded by my dungeon roof.