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and listens, and wishes that light and the shapes of things would return anew to the world. Meantime the herald of the day ascended from Olympus, and the lightsome Taprobane saw already the glad sun. It was the hour when the earth is bedewed from the cool east, that Walter drew off from the slain, as victor, armour and arms, with their appurtenance. Their shirts of mail, and other pieces, he left to the bodies; only the bracelets, the clasps, the baldrics, and the swords, with helmet and hauberk, he took from them. Four horses he loaded with the spoil; his bride he placed on the fifth; then mounting the sixth himself, he rode foremost to his barrier, which he had first broken through. In the narrow path he cast his eyes around, and looks intently, and caught with his ear the wind and every breath, if he might hear any one treading or whispering near, or if the bridles or the bits of the haughty ones rang, or if the steeled hoof of the coming horses sounded. But all was silent. Then he let the loaded horses and the beloved maiden go forward with her treasure and he follows. They had advanced scarce fifty paces, when the maiden, from an impulse of fear, turning round, sees two armed riders descending impetuously a hill; and she calls to the youth to fly. He turns, knows them; and, nothing daunted, directs her to lead the Lion into the near wood, and conceal herself, while he mounts a hillock to await and greet the men who are approaching. She does so. And he, gathering up spear and shield, begins to prove his unknown steed, whether it be manageable to arms. The King, accompanied by the bold warrior, rushes madly. towards him; calling aloud, insulting, threatening, and defying him.

To him the warrior answers not: as one that heareth not, he hath turned him from the King unto Hagano. “With thee,” he cries," have I to speak. Hold! what hath changed so suddenly the trusted friend? He who but late at his departing seemed to tear himself so reluctantly from our embrace, falls now in arms upon us, on us who have in nothing ever done him wrong. Something other than this, I own, I had

, hoped from thee. When thou, methought, shouldst know that it was thy friend who returned from exile, thou wouldst of thy own accord hasten to meet him, greet him with honour, and, unasked, lovingly entertain him as thy guest, till thou shouldst let him depart in peace and safety unto his father's realm. Already did I devise with myself how I should bestow thy gifts, and said inwardly, Now, indeed, must! wander through many unknown regions; yet at the least do 1 fear, if Hagano be living, the hand of no Frank. I adjure thee by all the sports which, as boys, we learnt together, and in delightful unity pursued through our season of youth, whither is the celebrated friendship fled, which went with us in field, at home, which knew never bitterness nor grudge? for thy aspect was cause to me of the forgetting even of my father, and with thee my noble country seemed to me of lesser worth. Is it possible! dost thou in thy soul extinguish that oftplighted faith? O leave from strife and heavy wrong! Wage thou this war no more. To us be our unbroken covenant holy. If thou consent, thou goest hence increased in wealth, for I will fill thy broad shield with the rich red metal.” Then made Hagano ungentle answer. “ First thou usest force, then, Walter, then too late dost thou make pretence with seeming words of wisdom. It was thyself that didst violate our league. Though thou sawest me present, yet with thy fierce sword thou madest waste among my comrades and

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Thou canst never excuse thyself not to have known that I was there, for if thou mightest ill discern my face, yet my arms thou sawest, and from the armour couldst know the man. All else perchance I could have borne, had not one intolerable grief been added. A flower pleasant and beautiful, dear and precious to me; alas! a flower full of hope and promise, thy deadly steel like a scythe mowed down. For this do I accept neither price nor gift. But I will know if courage inhabit with thee. From thee do I require my nephew's blood; and in this place either I die, or obtain renown.”

So saying, he springs from his horse to the ground : Gunther and Walter do the same: all three prepared to fight on foot. Each stood and guarded himself from the coming blow. The heroes' limbs tremble under their shields. It was the second hour of the day when they began to fight; two armed men sworn against one. Some particulars of the fight are given, but by no means sufficient to fill up the whole time of the battle, which lasts seven hours. Hagano throws the first spear; it glances on Walter's upraised shield, and strikes deep into the ground. Gunther the overweening, with great bravery of countenance, but little strength, throws his the next; it lodges in the lower rim of the hero's shield, and is easily shaken off. They then attack him sword in hand, he defending bimself with his spear. After a while, Gunther imagines the regaining of his own lance by stealth, which the poet, who seems to conceive the weapon to have been forfeited, takes greatly amiss. The process of his theft is carefully detailed, though it is after all a maneuvre rather difficult to understand. He nearly succeeds, but just as he is making off with the recovered lance, Walter observes him, and plucks it back. Gunther has exposed himself in the attempt, and is on the point of falling a sacrifice to his temerity, when Hagano the mighty in arms comes to his aid, and, covering him with his shield, presents the naked edge of his cruel sword before Walter's face. The King being rescued, they now fight fairly forward till the ninth hour: by which time it seems as if they all began to think the amusement had lasted long enough.

A threefold deadly feeling smote them all :

The grief of fight; sore toil; the sun's strong heat. At length the single warrior reflects that if this is to continue, the two will inevitably tire him out: a new imagination crosses his mind, and he instantly takes his resolution. He makes a short impatient speech to Hagano, and springing up, throws his lance at him. It pierces shield, breast-plate, and slightly wounds the mighty body of the warrior. At the same moment he rushes impetuously with his drawn sword upon Gunther, dashes by his shield to the right, and, with an astonishing and puissant stroke, cleaves up shin, knee, and hip. The King falls over his shield at the feet of his terrible foe. The good liegeman Hagano turns pale on seeing the danger of his lord; and as Alpher's son raises his blood-thirsty sword for the last blow, heeding no longer his own pain, the hero thrusts his stooped bead before the furious stroke. The helmet of perfect temper and artifice, receives the blow in such wise that the sparkles flash out, and the sword, shivering against the impenetrable metal, glitters in fragments in the air and on the grass. Walter, overcome with rage, loses all his self-command, and impatiently flings from him the useless hilt, disdaining it, much

as it was graced with skilful workmanship and costly metal. But as, in casting it away, he stretched out his hand widely from him, Hagano, espying his advantage, hews it off at the wrist, rejoicing to deal him so swift a wound. The dreaded, the conquering right hand, so honoured by rulers, by nations, falls in the midst of its act. But the warlike man, who was not used to yield even to adverse fortune, whose strong spirit vanquished all suffering of his body, let neither his hope nor his countenance fall. He hides the mutilated arm behind his shield, and with the uninjured hand draws his dagger, which hung girded on the right side, to avenge his loss. With it he struck out the gallant Hagano's right eye, slit down face and lip, and reft him of half a dozen cheek-teeth.

These bloody feats end their warfare. Every one was summoned, by his wounds and his spent breath, to lay aside his weapons. For which of them could go free from this strife? When all was over, they looked about at their trophies. Here lay King Gunther's foot-there Walter's hand, and a little to one side, Hagano's quivering eye. This was all the division they made of the bracelets of the Huns. Twofor the third was lying-two sat in the grass, and staunched the streams of blood that gushed from them. Then Alpher's son called the fearful concealed maiden, who came forth and bound up their wounds. He then said, "Bring, Hiltegund, bring hither wine. Bear first the goblet to Hagano. He is a brave man in battle, did he only not prefer loyalty to right. Bring it next to me, because I have endured more than the others. And Gunther, because he is so slothful, and yet has dared to appear among men who wield arms with might, lithely and slackly as he wages war, Gunther shall drink the last.". The daughter of Herrick obeys his words. But Hagano, much as his bosom panted with thirst, spake, as she proffered him the goblet, "Give it, lady, give it first to thy lord and bridegroom; for Alpher's son, I must confess it, is braver than I. He towers above me, and the Frank warriors all in the fight."

The heroes, unvanquished in spirit, fatigued in their whole bodyHagano, and the thorny son of the King of Aquitaine, began, after so many a bout of war and bloody dealing, to engage over their full cups in an encounter of wit. The Frank is gamesome on the future lefthanded performances of his friend, and Walter makes as merry with the misfortune of the one-eyed Sicambrian, as he calls him. The raillery that passes speaks more for the stout heart of the warriors than for their talent at humour; but it derives some merit from the circumstances, and its strain is at least purely antique and original.

The story is here, abruptly, as it will appear to most readers, but undoubtedly on sufficient grounds, terminated. They now renew their bloody compact, meaning, apparently, their ancient compact, now sealed anew in blood. They lay the groaning King on his steed, and separate the Franks for Worms-the Prince of Aquitaine for his native land. Here he was splendidly welcomed, and, beloved by all, reigned, after the death of his parents, thirty years over his happy people. What wars he waged, how often he triumphed, the worn-out pen of the author refuses him to describe.

Thou that shalt read, forgive the chirping grasshopper, and think not so much on her hoarse voice as on her tender years, which forbid her yet to forsake the nest, and stretch her flight through the loftier atmosphere.

VOL. I. No. 1.-Museum.

C

FROM BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE,

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BRACEBRIDGE HALL.* There has sprung up in the present day a set of intolerable talkers, both in and out of print, whom if man have any regard to fame or fortune, he had best make enemies of at once. We know not a more degrading thing to a literary man, than to find patrons in such animals. Their slander is innocuous and unnoticed; but their praise is a horrible penalty, and the everlasting drivel of their commendation continues to drip, drip, drip, till every man of taste foregoes his old opinions of admiration in order to be at variance with such wretches.

We must confess, that owing to this cause, we had experienced some feelings of alienation from Geoffrey Crayon. We were weary of hearing “ Aristides called the Just;" and though ourselves had originated the cry, we felt greatly inclined to turn upon the yell of blind gapers at our heels, and put the idle band to the rout. But, alas! what is fame? Before our irksomeness had swelled into

any

passion, lo! Rumour and all her crew had, of themselves, turned tailhad given over their cheers and huzzas,--and seemed longing and lying in wait for the former object of their applause, that they might cry him down like over-rated coin. The inferior magazines and journals, too, began to show their spite, and the New Monthly kept haggling month after month at and about Washington Irving, in a manner quite sickening to behold.

Now, the fact is, that the critical works of respectability praised the Sketch Book with justice, but bestowed on it no very extraordinary commendation. It was the talkers, the blues, who took up the theme-elevated it to the skies, and who now seem hugely inclined to precipitate it from its height of fame. Indeed, the “bustling Botherbys,” never patronize an author beyond his first or second atteinpt. With them, Scott's last novel is sure to be vastly inferior to his former ones, and Byron's muse inevitably loses inspiration as she grows old. They delight in none but a new name—to be puffed for a day, and then abandoned to oblivion-a Cockney dramatist-or a versifying peasant. And Washington Irving, they no doubt think to treat after the same fashion. This resuscitated in us our dormant feelings of admiration ;—the tide of our esteem flowed, as that of the vulgar began to ebb, and we opened the volume before us with those old predilections for the author, which, we are happy to find, have not diminished in the perusal.

“ Bracebridge Hall," certainly does not possess the spirit of the Sketch Book. And the worthy family to whom we are introduced, and whose habits and peculiarities form the chief subject of the work, are on the whole rather dull. The lovers are insipid enough, the General as tiresome as his own Indian stories, Mr. Simon but shadow of the famed Will Wimble of the Spectator, and the old Gentleman himself, given as the model of an English Squire of the present day, is as much like one as a courtier in the doublet and hose of Elizabeth's days, with Euphuism in his mouth, is like a modern lord in wait

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Bracebridge Hall; or, The Humorists. By Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. 2 vols. 8vo. Murray, London, 1822.

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ing. The great blemish of the work indeed is, that it is drawn not from life, but from musty volumes, and presents a picture of habits no where to be met with, except among those whom our author has formerly ridiculed as diurnal visitants of the British Museum. He has here fallen under his own ban, and so palpably, that the essay on "Book-Making," in the Sketch Book, looks like a prospective quiz upon Bracebridge Hall. The Squire is too much given to falconry and archery for a gentleman of the nineteenth century; he quotes Nashe's "Quaternis," and Tusser's " Hundred Points of Good Husbandrie;" directs the school discipline to be ordered after Peacham and Roger Ascham; and his sports after Markham's "Gentleman's Academie," instead of "Beckford on Hunting." While the young ladies, with a taste equally black-letter, sing "old songs of Herrick, or Carew, or Suckling," instead of Rossini, or Tom Moore.

But for all this, there are redeeming beauties even in the portion of the work we censure. The pictures of English life, though fraught with the defects above mentioned, are at times exceedingly humorous and just." Ready-money Jack" is not bad, although he, as well as the Schoolmaster, &c. are inferior to the "John Bull," the " Stagecoachman," and other characters of the Sketch Book. The Radical is perhaps the best thing of the kind in these volumes.

Wary and timorous as the author evidently is in expressing a political opinion, it is evident that a just view of the dangers and tendencies of the times has not escaped him. Whenever he is betrayed into the discussion of a subject of importance, he writes with such warmth and good sense, that it is only to be regretted he is not oftener serious, and has not devoted his pen to a subject more worthy of him, than amiable and elegant trifling.

On the work are engrafted three tales; the first of which, "the Student of Salamanca," is but middling. The last, "Dolph Heyliger," by Diedrich Knickerbocker, is very good, in the style of " Rip Van Winkle," full of those pictures of North American life and scenery, to us so interesting and so new. The other tale, called "Annette Delarbre," is indeed exquisitely beautiful, and displays stronger powers over the pathetic than are evinced even by the Sketch Book. But our limits, we fear, will not allow us to do justice to its merits in the way of extract; and, indeed, such is the popularity of the author, that, like analyses of the Waverley Novels, quotations would be but tautology to a great portion of our readers.

Ere we part with the author, we would change a word with him as to the exertions he is making to produce amicable feelings between his native land and its parent country. Mr. Irving is evidently an amiable and a well-meaning man; and we like him the better for the goodnatured vanity which he betrays, in asserting that his philanthropic labours have been crowned with success. That England has of late evinced friendly sentiments towards America, there can be no doubt; but as those sentiments were chiefly marked by the reception of the Sketch Book, it is evident that they preceded that certainly talented work, and that the success of Mr. Irving's book was more owing to our liberal feelings, than our liberal feelings to Mr. Irving's book. "The primum mobile of the day," as Byron says, "is cant;" and the existing species most prevalent and most disgusting, is the cant of liberality. There is not a puny whipster that has paid his half-guinea to cross

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