XXV.

And rivalry of charms, and love, and fame
Kindled such wrath in that proud woman's soul,
That, when the spark had found a vent to flame,
Nor policy nor mercy might controul
Its furious bursting, and she felt no shame
The smouldering torrent of her ire to roll
Full on the Lord's anointed, and begun
That work of sacrilege which hath undone
XXVI.

Old honour-which hath given men heart to ope
The sacred sluice of the rich blood of kings,
When uninspired prophets nurse mad hope

Which from impatient ignorance outsprings: And popular phrenzy's shroud doth envelope Man's quiet light of soul; and baser things Are lifted higher by the pluckers down, Irreverent of crosier and of crown.

XXXI.

She was nor glad nor sorrowing, proud nor cold;—
Yet did her sex, her station, and her creed
A mingled mild serenity unfold

Upon her forehead, when she knelt to bleed,
Such as became her nobly; less than bold-

And yet in nothing seemed she terrifiedAs were her life not much to be laid down, Being already stripped of her fair crown. XXXII.

But bitter curses be those lords upon,

Who saw, without one tear, that stroke descending,

O bitter be to them the parting groan

And ruffian be the grasp, their black souls rending; And for yon mild light that on Mary shone, Hope's vestal cheer with nature's anguish blending

May all the triple gloom that hell inherits Welcome, e'er life be sped, their shrinking spirits. XXXIII.

Yes-and upon the cruel cousin Queen,

Who bade that kindred royal blood be shed, Oh, yes! too well shall that dark curse be seenWhen madness o'er the horrid eye is spread Of the old tyraness-when imps, obscene

Laugh 'mid the hoary tangles of her head, And, fear faint reverence quenching, her slaves fly, And leave the screaming wretch alone to die.

bellissoit..

XXXVII.

But thou wast born a craven and a fool,
And it were wrong to heap on thy poor head
Such coals of vengeance. Who shall put to school
The heart that nature forms of stone and lead?
Could James become affectionate by rule?

Could tractates teach him to avenge his dead?
Could syllogystic pædagogues inspire
That lazy blood with man's best conscience-fire?
XXXVIII.

This pardon such as weaknesses may win,

Is from their brutal strength for ever barred, Who almost equalled thee in thy base sin,

From him the unrelenting savage, hard, And stern of frame-who stood with scornful grin, While tears-yea tears-that glorious visage marred,

Down lovelier cheeks their scalding course pursuing,
Than ever knew the stain of such bedewing.
XXXIX.

Virtues they had; most honest, most sincere,
Most upright-if you will, most orthodox ;
But oh they were a stubborn race, austere

As if their God had hewn them from the rocks;
And in that hour when Mary's glistening tear
Flashed vainly on the marble eye of Knox,
The ministering angels sighed-in ruth
That men of heart so cold should speak the truth.
XL.

And men that did inherit that cold mien,

Made it the cloak of purpose more impure, And they whose fathers dared insult a queen, Deemed fouler outrage still might be secure Beneath the same all-overshadowing screen

Of sanctity-and hypocrites demure, Trampled that Round which Mary's royal foe Had died with rage to think should come so low.

XLI.

For the wise reverence which a thousand fears Had sheltered in the bosom of the land, Withstood not the false wiles of those shrewd seers. And, as when the stream leaves some ancient strand, All bright and gay at first that strand appears,

Till soon the drooping plants and cracking sand Sigh for the freshening waters once again,So England, when she first threw off the reign

XLII.

Of her ancestral monarchs, deemed that she
Should be a greater England than of old;
But soon she learned what barren tyranny
Attests the passions of the vulgar bold,
When they usurp high places-like a sea,

Back then the healing waves of homage rolled, And England fain would wash from earth's record, The murderous doom of her discrowned lord.

For, even within the hearing of the hum
Of the fair city-death-like is the gloom
Of this old Abbey, their Mausoleum;

Hither, as unto some most lonely tomb,
With their still pipe of sadness the winds come
Whispering of ruin; and these flowers, whose
bloom

Still breathes in their untrodden garden, shew
Like bright weeds, that on graves in mockery grow.
XLVI.

Enter their dwelling; look upon their walls,
What lessons live on every pictured veil
Of tapestry! from each faded touch there falls
Faint echo of some old and tragic tale!
Lo! there of Wallace' horn the clear high calls
With panic cold his southern foes assail,
Couched in the Torwood; Torwood's deer aghast,
Drink with their forward ears the shrilly blast.

XLVII.

Here stands the Bruce, amidst the crimson eve,
With solemn gaze the weltering field surveying;
While some who did with him the work achieve,
Uplift their failing hands, devoutly praying
For his asserted crown: His ears receive
Their fervid words of love, in death displaying
Its potency; and half he seems to mourn,
Even in the very hour of Bannockburn.

XLVIII.

There where the Thunder, in his clouds revealed, Stoops as his coming rage the heath would crush, There, in the centre of the lowering field,

What storm of human wrath disturbs the hush Of the grim elements?" Yield thee, Percy, yield." "No-not to me-but to yon bracken bush.”. Oh! rich may be that briar in bloom and bud, For its deep root hath drunk the Douglas' blood.*

LETTERS FROM THE LAKES.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

I NEVER saw, in the works of the most poetical painters of Italy, any scene of the kind fit to be compared with the village of Ambleside. There really does not seem to be wanting, in that sweet reality, a single object of interest which the imagination would conjure up in its dreams of perfect rural beauty; while there is such harmony in the living picture-such a spirit, not of union only, but of unity itself, as would defy the powers of the most magical pencil. Accordingly, the neighbourhood of this village is haunted, during the summer months, by the best artists of England; and not only have all its grander outlines, but all its most secret nooks, been, year after year, a hundred times shadowed on the canvass. I had seen many of the finest of those paintings; yet, in spite of them all, the character of the country came upon me, on my first visit to it, with all the fresh-bursting brightness of novelty; and now that Ambleside and all its beauties are

"Part of my dreaming spirit's still domains,"

I feel that the best picture would do no more than merely recall to life a few of those images whose floating and multitudinous variety keeps a mountainous region, from sunrise to sunset, as magnificently changeable as the great sea itself.

This is the only spot in England to whose keeping I may say that I have given up my heart. A man almost feels unwilling, in a foreign country, to intrust his affections to any objects, however delightful they may be; for all the while that they are stealing away his love, he remembers how ransitory must be the season of his enjoyment; and surely it is a mournful thing to form friendships which we know must be broken off as soon as they are beginning to be a part of our existence. Some such feelings as these make me love this delightful village, perhaps more dearly, more intensely, than any native of England could do. The long summer-days VOL. IV.

are sailing slowly but surely by, and a melancholy almost painful now comes to me with the approach of twilighteach setting sun seems to leave a more mournful light upon the mountainsnight after night do I gaze on the still waters of Windermere with a profounder sadness-and when the bell of the church-tower tolls over the valley during the silence of nature, it seems to warn me of my departure from this beautiful little world, in which I have been so happy. Fairest of villages! never shall I forget any one of the days that I have past in thy bosom-any one of the placid evenings when I have returned from the distant glens into the homefelt joy of thy repose. I will love to speak of thee to those whom I love; and often and often will I think on thee, in those reveries when there seems no such thing as words, but the soul is filled with thoughts purer and more profound than can ever pass into utterance, with images brighter and more serene than ever shone over the face of the real world.

Do you smile, my dear friend, at my enthusiasm? You would not, had you been with me during the long day of delight that is now joining "the past's eternity." What caliph was it who said that he had enjoyed only nine days of happiness? Had they been all brightened into one, that one could not have so satisfied his heart, as mine has been with the Sabbath that is now sinking so beautifully with the setting sun. I feel delight prompting me to send away my soul unto my friend, and I will strive to bring back into one hour the lights and shadows of a day past in Paradise.

I rose just as the twilight of the short night shewed some faint symptoms of morning; and being uncertain in what direction my day's route was destined to lie, I walked up to the burial-ground on a mount immediately above the village, from which I could see the openings, or the general course of many vallies, and from which I resolved to start on my journey, in obedience to the strongest im

5 A

pulse that might come to me from the scenery around. There cannot be a more beautiful, a more cheerful place, than this churchyard. The church seems to have been lately built, and its simple and unpresuming tower, stands with a reverent and becoming grace among the groves and the mountains. Its tower is perfectly white; a colour which, though sometimes offensive in a landscape, seems to me, in such a case as this, associated with ideas of a pure, tranquil, and happy religion. In a huge and massy cathedral we require the solemnity of deep shadows, and our imaginations are not satisfied unless the walls are teeming, as it were, with past ages. There the colours that time has imprest must be touched only by the cloud or the sunshine. But the little chapel of the rural village ought to be of a far different character. There the house of God should stand in simple and gladsome beauty among the humbler dwellings of men-we rejoice to see the chapel smiling, not frowning, from its height, on those whose houses are clustered round it, as round a holy and a happy thing; and it is pleasant to observe how the cheerful and contented spirit of the peasantry expresses itself in the cheerful adornment of their places of worship. The lonesome chapel, at the head of some sequestered valley (and here I have seen many such), to which the shepherds flock from a distance, stands well in its solitude, in the brown colours of the rock that furnished its walls, and the 66 green radiance" of that beautiful slate-stone roof dug from the mountain that overshadows it. But in a more populous country, the pious gratitude of the human heart, ought not to suffer God's house to look dimmer in the sunshine than the cottages that surround it-and methinks, that the lovers of picturesque beauty, whom I have sometimes heard railing against these snow-white towers that crown the villages of the north of England, might read thoughts and feelings there that give them a more touching beauty than could ever be conferred on them by all the rules of art. Near to the churchtower stand two or three noble sycamore-trees, "themselves a grove. They were now, early as it was in the morning, all alive with the hum of bees a deep, continuous, happy, and busy music, that brought to me an

indescribable emotion, sitting, as I then was, on a tomb-stone, in that calm receptacle of the dead. As yet not a single wreath of smoke rose from the village below me; for, during the warm nights of summer, all the fires are allowed to expire-and the morning air gave me indeed a true feeling of that most expressive line, "The innocent brightness of the new-born day."

Nothing stirred among the still houses but some beautiful pigeons that, sitting on a roof below me, seemed anxious to catch the first light of the sun on their purple plumage-while from a thick grove of oak-trees that carried its dewy freshness into the very heart of the village, there came such merry music from a new-awakened choir of birds, happy in their first summer, that the green covert in which they sang seemed rending with the noise. The day before, a beautiful girl, who had died of a consumption (a fatal disease in this country), had been buried here-and I had witnessed the ceremony of interment. This young creature used daily to walk in the churchyard, and to look on the spot where she was to be buried. I had myself more than once seen her there, and received from her a languid smile. Her death had been so long foreseen that, when it happened, there was but little agitation of grief even among those by whom she was most dearly beloved-and the perfect resignation with which her gray-haired father laid her in the grave, told how long he must have watched, and hoped, and prayed, before his soul could so calmly let go, into utter darkness, the coffin that held his only child. The image of her pale and melancholy face past before me for a while, and for a while I was deaf to "all the melodies of morn,"--but the beauty of nature, now momently dawning into strength and brightness, overcame all mournful thoughts, and forced my heart into the expansion of happiness. The old gray and green tomb-stones sunk into the earth by the weight of forgetfulness-with their inscriptions obliterated by moss and lichens the newmade graves on which the daisies had scarcely had time to wither-and on which the dew-drops lay like the tears of recent grief-all brightened together in the presence of the joy of the morn