the winter, also, two men of shabby appearance, but plentifully supplied with money, had lingered for a while about the village of Stockbridge. Several years afterward, a criminal, about to be executed for a capital offence in Canada, confessed that he had been concerned in murdering a traveller in Stockbridge for the sake of his money. Nothing was ever discovered respecting the name or residence of the person murdered. Page 114. Chained in the market-place he stood, etc. The story of the African chief, related in this ballad, may be found in the African Repository for April, 1825. The subject of it was a warrior of majestic stature, the brother of Yarradee, king of the Solima nation. He had been taken in battle, and was brought in chains for sale to the Rio Pongas, where he was exhibited in the market-place, his ankles still adorned with the massy rings of gold which he wore when captured. The refusal of his captors to listen to his offers of ransom drove him mad, and he died a maniac. Page 125. THE CONJUNCTION OF JUPITER AND VENUS. This conjunction was said in the common calendars to have taken place on the 2d of August, 1826. This, I believe, was an error, but the apparent approach of the planets was sufficiently near for poetical purposes. Page 131. THE HURRICANE. This poem is nearly a translation from one by José Maria de Heredia, a native of the island of Cuba, who published at New York, about the year 1825, a volume of poems in the Spanish language. Page 133. WILLIAM TELL. Neither this, nor any of the other sonnets in the collection, with the exception of the one from the Portuguese, is framed according to the legitimate Italian model, which, in the author's opinion, possesses no peculiar beauty for an ear accustomed only to the metrical forms of our own language. The sonnets in this collection are rather poems in fourteen lines than sonnets. Page 134. The siim papaya ripens, etc. Papaya-papaw, custard-apple. Flint, in his excellent work on the Geography and History of the Western States, thus describes this tree and its fruit: “A papaw-shrub hanging full of fruits, of a size and weight so disproportioned to the stem, and from under long and rich-looking leaves, of the same yellow with the ripened fruit, and of an African luxuriance of growth, is to us one of the richest spectacles that we have ever contemplated in the array of the woods. The fruit contains from two to six seeds like those of the tamarind, except that they are double the size. The pulp of the fruit resembles egg-custard in consistence and appearance. It has the same creamy feeling in the mouth, and unites the taste of eggs, cream, sugar, and spice. It is a natural custard, too luscious for the relish of most people." Chateaubriand, in his Travels, speaks disparagingly of the fruit of the papaw; but on the authority of Mr. Flint, who must know more of the matter, I have ventured to make my Western lover enumerate it among the delicacies of the wilderness. Page 147. The surface rolls and fluctuates to the eye. The prairies of the West, with an undulating surface, rolling prairies, as they are called, present to the unaccustomed eye a singular spectacle when the shadows of the clouds are passing rapidly over them. The face of the ground seems to fluctuate and toss like billows of the sea. Page 147. The prairie-hawk that, poised on high, I have seen the prairie-hawk balancing himself in the air for hours together, apparently over the same spot; probably watching his prey. Page 148. These ample fields Nourished their harvests. The size and extent of the mounds in the valley of the Mississippi indicate the existence, at a remote period, of a nation at once populous and laborious, and therefore probably subsisting by agriculture. Page 149. The rude conquerors Seated the captive with their chiefs. Instances are not wanting of generosity like this among the North American Indians toward a captive or survivor of a hostile tribe on which the greatest cruel ties had been exercised. Page 151. SONG OF MARION'S MEN. The exploits of General Francis Marion, the famous partisan warrior of South Carolina, form an interesting chapter in the annals of the American Revolution. The British troops were so harassed by the irregular and successful warfare which he kept up at the head of a few daring followers, that they sent an officer to remonstrate with him for not coming into the open field and fighting “like a gentleman and a Christian." Page 158. MARY MAGDALEN. Several learned divines, with much appearance of reason, in particular Dr. Lardner, have maintained that the common notion respecting the dissolute life of Mary Magdalen is erroneous, and that she was always a person of excellent charCharles Taylor, the editor of "Calmet's Dictionary of the Bible," takes the same view of the subject. acter. The verses of the Spanish poet here translated refer to the "woman who had been a sinner," mentioned in the seventh chapter of St. Luke's Gospel, and who is commonly confounded with Mary Magdalen. Page 160. FATIMA AND RADUAN. This and the following poems belong to that class of ancient Spanish ballads, by unknown authors, called Romances Moriscos-Moriscan Romances or ballads. They were composed in the fourteenth century, some of them, probably, by the Moors, who then lived intermingled with the Christians; and they relate the loves and achievements of the knights of Granada. Page 162. LOVE AND FOLLY.-(FROM LA FONTAINE.) This is rather an imitation than a translation of the poem of the graceful French fabulist. Page 165. These eyes shall not recall thee, etc. This is the very expression of the original-No te llamarán mis ojos, etc. The Spanish poets early adopted the practice of calling a lady by the name of the most expressive feature of her countenance, her eyes. The lover styled his mistress "ojos bellos," beautiful eyes; "ojos serenos," serene eyes. Green eyes seem to have been anciently thought a great beauty in Spain, and there is a very pretty ballad by an absent lover, in which he addressed his lady by the title of 'green eyes;" supplicating that he may remain in her remembrance: Say, Love-for didst thou see her tears, etc. The stanza beginning with this line stands thus in the original; I am sorry to find so poor a conceit deforming so spirited a composition as this old ballad, but I have preserved it in the version. It is one of those extravagances which afterward became so common in Spanish poetry, when Gongora introduced the estilo culto, as it was called. Page 168. LOVE IN THE AGE OF CHIVALRY. This personification of the passion of Love, by Peyre Vidal, has been referred to as a proof of how little the Provençal poets were indebted to the authors of Greece and Rome for the imagery of their poems. Page 169. THE LOVE OF GOD.-(FROM THE PROVENÇAL OF BERNARD RASCAS.) The original of these lines is thus given by John of Nostradamus, in his Lives of the Troubadours, in a barbarous Frenchified orthography: "Touta kausa mortala una fes perirá, Fors que l'amour de Dieu, que tousiours durará. (Ou l'Escritura ment) lou fermament que branda, Prendra autra figura. Enfin tout perirá, Fors que l'Amour de Dieu, que touiours durará." Page 170. FROM THE SPANISH OF PEDRO DE CASTRO Y ANAYA. Las Auroras de Diana, in which the original of these lines is contained, is, notwithstanding it was praised by Lope de Vega, one of the worst of the old Spanish Romances, being a tissue of riddles and affectations, with now and then a little poem of considerable beauty. Page 183. EARTH. The author began this poem in rhyme. The following is the first draught of it as far as he proceeded, in a stanza which he found it convenient to abandon: A midnight black with clouds is on the sky; A shadow like the first original night Folds in, and seems to press me as I lie; No image meets the vainly wandering sight, And shot through rolling mists no starlight gleam |