inflict the speediest and most deadly retribution on the heads of his persecutors. From this time he resolved to watch the motions of Valerio, to dog his footsteps wheresoever he went. Unsatisfied with any common mode of vengeance, he determined to make him feel the terrible destiny that hung over him; and with this view sought means to entrap him into his power. He took his station near where he knew his hated and successful rival was accustomed to pass on his to his own way Night by night he watched for him, (it was not a deed to be perpetrated by day,) till he should come by the entrance of the place he had fixed upon as the scene of the terrific catastrophe that was to close the gloomy tragedy of his life. This was a remote and dilapidated building, apart from the more frequented spots, and which he had engaged for his especial purpose. There, disguised and armed, he awaited the favourable moment to dart forth upon his foe, and drag him alive into its fatal precincts. It came, and swift as the winged vengeance of the thunderbolt, he seized upon his prey. Wounding him with a dagger in the neck, he then hurled him over the threshold, thrust a gag into his mouth, and bound him hand and foot with cords. The wound was not mortal, and under threat of instantly despatching him, he compelled Valerio to write an account to his Narcissa of his having met with a dreadful accident, and beseeching her to hasten to him, but wholly unaccompanied, as she valued his life. This he had conveyed to the lady with the utmost secrecy and despatch; and it was not long before she made her appearance, in extreme agitation and alarm. The door opened, and the features of the indignant Theodore met her startled gaze. She shrieked aloud, and attempted to retreat; but it was too late; firmly grasped by the arm of Theodore, she was hurried forward into the apartment where lay the form of Valerio, pale, wounded, and in bonds. What an object for his fond and distracted wife! She flew towards him; she threw her arms around him ; while bitter and piercing cries her arms around him ; while bitter and piercing cries attested the agony of her feelings. But Theodore, excited to the utmost pitch of rage and jealousy at the marks of love and tenderness she displayed, lost sight of his previous intentions of inflicting the lingering torments of separation he had prepared for them he rudely tore the weeping lady from her husband's arms, and after heaping upon her every epithet of scorn, and every indignity he thought could give a fresh pang to the soul of his once hated rival, he stabbed her before his eyes, and the next instant plunged the weapon still deeper into his own bosom. It would have been an act of mercy first to have freed her husband from the horrors of that sight; but he was left alive, as if by a refinement of the cruellest revenge, in a state of suffering and distraction not to be described. He was thus found by some of the police of the city, early in the ensuing morning; to whom, before breathing his last, he communicated the particulars of this horrid instance of infuriated love, despair, madness, and re venge. Poor Montalvan, to whom we are indebted for this thoroughly Spanish tragedy, is better known to the world as the biographer of Lope de Vega than as a dramatist or novelist, although he left behind him nearly a hundred comedies, plays of the Sword and Cloak, and Autos Sacramentales, besides several mixed novels. His plays are written for the most part after the manner of Lope de Vega, and, although they are deficient in the skill and finish by which the productions of that master of stage art are distinguished, they exhibit considerable versatility and boldness of invention. In addition to his other occupations, Montalvan was an ecclesiastic, enjoyed the title of Doctor, and held the office of notary to the Inquisition. THE LEGEND OF ST. CHRISTOPHER. WILLIAM WARNER, the author of this legend, is familiar to the lovers of old English poetry, by his famous poem called " Albion's England." With the public of his own day he was so popular that his great metrical history, cumbrous and unequal as it is, ran through no less than five editions during his lifetime, and a sixth within two or three years after. Like many other poets, however, of that age, who flourished upon the admiration of their contemporaries, Warner is almost unknown to the public of the present day. But it must be allowed that in most cases of this kind the judgment of posterity is unimpeachable. Mr. Ellis conjectures that Warner, who was a native of Oxfordshire, was born in 1558. He appears to have studied at Oxford, but to have left the university without taking out a degree. Coming up to London, he embraced the profession of an attorney of the Common Pleas; which he could scarcely have practised with much success, considering the extent of his literary labours. He finally removed into Amwell, in Hertfordshire, where he died suddenly in the night-time, in the year 1608-9. According to Scott, the Amwell poet, he maintained through life an "honest reputation." He wrote a work in prose, entitled "Syrinx, a sevenfold history;" and he is said to have been a translator of Plautus,-a circumstance which Warton either did not know or did not believe, since he makes no allusion to it in his summary of the translations of the sixteenth century. "Syrinx" was followed in a couple of years by "Albion's England," published in 1586, when the author, according to Ellis's supposition, was only twenty-eight years of age. The success of this publication was quite extraordinary; even the "Mirror for Magistrates," just then at the zenith of its popularity, was less esteemed, notwithstanding the care that had been bestowed upon its production. All the rhymers of the day crowded round the young author with extravagant eulogisms, designating him, by an incomprehensible stretch of flattery, as the English Virgil. Nothing could be more unfortunate than the selection of the name of Virgil as his model, except the still greater blunder of Dr. Percy, who compares him to Ovid. Mr. Campbell, repudiating these unlucky panegyrics, pronounces his poem to be nothing more than "an enormous ballad on the history, or rather on the fables appendant to the history of England; heterogeneous, indeed, like the Metamorphoses, but written with an almost doggrel simplicity." This description of "Albion's England" is so accurate as to supersede the necessity of any longer criticism upon a work never likely to be revived in print. The secret of its popularity may be easily traced to the numerous episodes with which it abounds, written with remarkable ease, vivacity, and grace. The versification, consisting of couplets of long lines of fourteen syllables, (broken up in the following specimen into quatrains) was well calculated to fascinate the car of the reader, who, in those days, was accustomed to the flowing style of the ballad. The story of "Argentile and Curan," republished in one or two modern collections, may be cited as a favourable illustration of the skill with which Warner adapted his verse to the prevailing taste. The description of Argentile, the king's daughter, is, upon the whole, one of the most striking passages: Suppose her beauty, Helen's like, or Helen's something less And every star consorting to a pure complexion guess; An even nose; on either side did shine a greyish eye; all, And such as neither wanton seem, nor wayward, melt nor gall, A nymph no tongue, no heart, no eye, might praise, might wish, might see, For life, for love, for form, more good, more worth, more fair than she; Yea, such a one as such was none, save only she was such; Of Argentile, to say the most, were to be silent much. It is rather a curious fact connected with "Albion's England," that its publication was interdicted by the Star Chamber; but for what reason is not known. The facility of Warner's invention is no less worthy of remark than the freedom of his verse. His episodes are interesting on account of the ingenuity with which their slight plots are constructed; even in the little legend that follows, there is pith enough to furnish materials for an Italian novel, similiar to those that came into fashion in the sixteenth century. THE LEGEND OF ST. CHRISTOPHER. There was a man of stature big, He, hearing that the emperor It chanc'd the devil was named-whereat When as, until he knew the cause, The Pagan would not rest. But when he heard his lord to fear And serve the devil did go. Of heaven or hell, God or the devil, He met (who soon is met) the devil; The servant, musing, questioned "One Christ," quoth he with dread, "I mind When doth a cross appear." "Then serve thyself!" the giant said, "That Christ to serve I'll seek!" For him he ask'd a hermit, who Advis'd him to be meek; By which, by faith, and works of alms, Then he, that scorn'd his service late HARDHAM'S No. 37.-This famous snuff derives its name from John Hardham, a native of Chichester, who died in the year 1772. He was bred to the employment of a lapidary or diamond cutter; but abandoned that for the business of a tobacconist. He was intimate with the wits and critics of his time, and wrote "The Fortune Tellers," a comedy, which was never acted. He was at once the patron and teacher of many candidates for histrionic fame, so that we are told, he was seldom without embryo Richards and Hotspurs strutting and bellowing in his dining-room, or the parlour behind his shop, which was at the Red Lion, near Fleet Market, in Fleet Street. The latter of these apartments was adorned with heads of most of the persons celebrated for dramatic excellence, and to these he frequently referred in the course of his instruc tions. The figures 37 seem to have been those which marked the number of his snuff shop. THE DRUDGE. BY MRS. GILLIES. DORCAS BELL was the youngest child of a humble family, which had gradually fallen lower and lower in the world, through the incidental calamities of frequent sickness, and occasional want of employment; yet Dorcas was fourteen years of age ere she left her home to go into the world in the capacity of a common servant. With pretensions as humble as her condition, she was not eligible to any but a servitude of a lowly grade, and such she met in the house of a small tradesman. To many of this class, more than to any other, adheres that servile, sordid feeling, which is incident to those whose position places them in the crouching attitude of dependance, and stimulates them with the desire for accumulation. Some years since, the period in which this story is laid, this class was tinctured with a deeper die of meanness than now -now that the lights of knowledge are being generally diffused, and the consciousness of common rights, spreading even to the counter and the court, makes "darkness visible," and counteracts the "caterpillar principle" in both. Into the family of Abel Barton, grocer and teadealer, Dorcas was admitted. There, amid ignorance, uncouthness, and some share of opulence, reigned the exterminating spirit of caste-that spirit which drives the wretched pariah beyond the pale of social communion-that spirit over which, when we see it mark the pagan, we mourn, but when we see it brand the Christian, we marvel! Dorcas came to the house of servitude from the house of mourning; not long before, her father had been called away, and the grave had just closed upon him as the world opened upon her. She came among strangers, not merely a stranger, but a degraded stranger; and a spirit already bowed by grief was soon bent yet lower by oppression. The home which she had left had, it is true, never afforded her any thing but hard fare and hard work; but there the cordial hand of equality had clasped her own, and the familiar voice of affection had spoken her name. In her master's house she was better clothed and better fed: but indifference, if not disdain, met her in every look; cold, if not unkind, command enjoined her duties; regardless, if not ungrateful, apathy received her services. With what zeal were these at first rendered! How eager she was to earn the sympathy for which every unsophisticated creature yearns! Nay, even the sophist and slave of lucre has a corner of his heart in which the heaven-lighted spark twinkles-for it cannot burn amid the anti-combustible material by which it is surrounded. How might the zeal of Dorcas have been nurtured and directed! How might her sympathies have been warmed and expanded! But in the eyes of her money-loving master she was a tool of toil, not a thing of life and feeling; to her yet narrower mistress, whose moral sphere was within the poor circle of her mercenary husband's; Dorcas was a drudge, goaded, not guided, through the unceasing round of household occupation; while the churlish, snappish voice, like the sound of the whip to which the negro starts, stimulated new exertions, or reproved occasional neglect. There existed in that house no idea that "The heart leaps kindly back to kindness," and that "The labour we delight in, physics pain." Duties which might have been disburthened of half their weight, and enlivened at the mere expense of a smile and a soft word, came day after day, with a wearying iteration upon Dorcas. Now, too, for the first time in her life she lived under ground. Her cottage home, lowly though it was, had no dungeon-keep for a domestic drudge; it stood upon a hill side, and the fresh winds, laden with the breath of rifled flowers, revelled in through the doors and windows. How is the disregard of mere humanity declared in all our social arrangements! Under-ground apartments for human habitation ought, even in the best houses, to brand a building with a Bastille character. Why should any portion of our fellow-creatures be doomed to breathe continually beneath the surface of the soil? Many a servant is worse off than the miner; for she lives all day, and sleeps at night, in a kitchen often dark, damp, and ill-ventilated; in a place which common sense and common feeling would assign to nothing but coals and tablebeer. Had crushed humanity any of the inflammability of the one, or the fermentability of even the other, this, and many other and more erroneous arrangements, would have made it burst and blaze forth with indignant resistance. In the midst of the moral desolation which surrounded Dorcas a beam at length appeared. Letitia, the youngest child of the family, came home from school for the holidays. This was a circumstance of no trifling importance to the feelings of Dorcas : a creature who, she hoped, would speak to her, would smile upon her, was arrived. These anticipations were at first in some degree realized: the child was full of news and high spirits, and scattered them somewhat at random; but it was not long ere she gave evidence of the narrow principle upon which her mind was being formed. Instead of being taught that every creature more useful than herself was essentially her superior-that every creature was, like herself, sensible to pleasure and to pain-that virtue consisted in promoting the one, and vice in producing the other-her mind held notions of an almost diametrically opposite tendency. Already, though little more than ten years old, she was pained that her father was a tradesman; was proud of an uncle because he was a professional man, and still prouder of an aunt, because she enjoyed an unearned income. The boarding-school cant of gentility, the circulating library cant of ro mance, had completely deranged her little head, and | kind of ground, some pretext for them; they met spoiled her young heart. False notions of happi- her openly, and after some fashion or other she reness to be drawn from admiration and distinction butted them. But the sarcasms to which she had employed her intellect; self-gratification engrossed just listened had been, in the instance of many of her feelings. Her weak, ignorant mother declared, the speakers, unprovoked, and those sarcasms were half in boast, half in lamentation, that "Letty was calculated to wound her self-love in the highest deresolved to be a lady, for that she would do nothing." gree. A few hours after this scene night closed in, It is a common notion among the utterly uncul- and Dorcas mounted to her garret. That place tivated that idleness and inutility are, with dress which had hitherto been the theatre of her prayers and self-indulgence, the constituents as well as the to heaven, and her tears for home, what thoughts privileges of gentility: a proof of the manner in and feelings did it witness now? Heart-burning which example operates upon the multitude. When rage and wishes for revenge. they see so little apparent connexion between real greatness and worldly greatness, who shall wonder that they mistake glare for glory, and prize a gilt carriage beyond an estimable character? Letitia, vain, selfish, and unfeeling, proceeded in the common course; that is, from viewing Dorcas with contempt she soon began to treat her with insult. Untaught to sympathize with suffering, she did not shrink from inflicting it; while the idea of participating a pleasure, especially with one who occupied an inferior rank in society, never even glanced into her mind. Many times, and in many ways, had the spirit of Dorcas been hurt. Sometimes a sigh-a teareven a song, expressed or dissipated the painful feeling; for humanity, unless greatly outraged, learns to accommodate itself to necessity. An accident at length occurred, which, in itself trifling, was far other in its consequences. A party had been invited, to afford Mrs. Barton an opportunity for exhibiting a handsome set of china: just as in another walk of life a party is invited for the exhibition of a splendid service of plate. While restoring this treasured tea-service to its depository Dorcas unfortunately broke one of the pieces. Letty was present when the accident occurred. The involuntary delinquent, pale and trembling, (alas, that feelings should be thus wasted!) entreated the child not to mention the circumstance, Dorcas assuring her that she would endeavour to match and replace the broken vessel. But the little tyrant, prompt to reprove, and eager to punish, flew off to the sittingroom with the news of the disaster. Dorcas cautiously followed her for the purpose of listening. Thus generative is evil: there never was a base act which became not the parent of many. Oppression produces deceit, and instigates vengeance; torture invites retaliation, and insult generates hatred. Dorcas heard the little tale-bearer tell her story, tell it amid attention and encouragement. First one, and then another, of the family sported some vulgar wit at the expense of Dorcas; her peculiarities of person-of manner-of speaking, were sneered at; on all sides rash, rude, illiberal opinions were freely vented; Dorcas was declared dull, stupid, lazy, ugly. When the conversation closed, Dorcas stole back to the kitchen, a creature strangely changed from what she had hitherto been. Reproach and insult she had continually met, but there was in general some The wind of a December night was howling down the grateless fire-place, and waved the ragged curtain hung before the casement. Dorcas seated herself on the foot of her stump bedstead, and placed her candlestick, with its glimmering bit of rush, upon an old chair, the only other article of furniture in the room. She did not shiver, as she was wont, with cold and discomfort: her mind was too busy to heed her body. The smart of her insulted feelings subsided in favour of the calmer power of thought; thought as to how those feelings might be satisfied-their revenge accomplished. Every kindly affection, every happy emotion, had started back into the far recesses of her spirit, which had now been for some time under a course of discipline that was gradually imposing on it a colder character than it had yet known. To avoid details, which only serve as examples for error too easily learned without, it is enough to say that Dorcas became a pilferer. Those who had ridiculed, despised, insulted her, she robbed. There appeared to her a principle of equity in this act. Thus she did not reason; thus it might rather be said she felt. Perhaps some such feeling has stilled the conscience of many a criminal. The high morality which teaches us to return good for evil is never learned in the school of ignorance and oppression. Want of knowledge, and an excess of the selfish feelings which had been so strongly excited, rendered Dorcas incapable of calculating remote consequences. She had her revenge in robbery, but her punishment in the dread of detection, which soon began to haunt her. She repented; if that may be termed repentance which writhes under the dread of the penalty incurred, not from remorse for the error committed. She had retaliated injury for injury, it is true; but so far had this been from bringing her satisfaction, that new misery was its fruitful consequences. The self-respect which at once told her that she did not deserve to meet the usage dealt to her, departed; and she bowed with a more acquiescent submission to insult in proportion as she felt self-debased. She grew suspicious and apprehensive, and repose of mind departed altogether. Detection came at last. It was a relief when it came. The anticipated evil is ever worse than the real one. In the latter case with present ruin comes the effort for present remedy; but the suspended calamity stimulates the imagination with horrors, which, like all phantoms, evade the power of reason. Dorcas was at first threatened with prosecution; | but this threat, from some cause or other, was not carried into effect: she was dismissed, with what was deemed a lighter punishment, privation of cha racter. Thus far there is nothing uncommon in the story of Dorcas; such events are of every-day occurrence, passing unknown or unnoted. How many may trace their introduction to misery from the conduct of some hard, exacting, unsympathizing task-mistress-from insulting, unfeeling, uninstructed children the rank germs of the moral upas whence they spring. These, by planting unnecessary thorns in the path of servitude, have continually driven victims to the wilderness; where the wolves wait to devour, and where the devoured are the denounced, not the devourers. Dorcas, dismissed from her master's house, stood in the streets of London, with little money-no credit-no friends, encompassed by its terrors and its temptations. To go home would be to burden those already bowed down; probably to meet "the unkindest cut of all," to behold the eye which had once beamed upon her with love clouded by contempt. Her thoughts were of the darkest character: despair appeared waiting to give her to destruction; or rather to that active despair that makes us "sin on because we have sinned." She paced to and fro between Blackfriars-bridge (which spans the sleeping place of many a suicide,) and that street of which the very stones are eloquent of human degradation, horror, and injury. She was very young; and how vital are all the feelings of the young! Her early impressions had been good, and their gracious spell was upon her heart. But Hope, the seraph-spirit, had folded her wings, and slept so profoundly that she seemed dead. Death, so unwelcome when he comes uncalled, is invoked as a friend by the friendless, as a refuge by the desolate. "What have I to live for?" groaned the unloved, unhomed, unpitied Dorcas, as she again turned with strengthening purpose to the bridge. She reached it—she paused again in dread or doubt; at that instant a little child, wild with terror, ran past her, weeping piteously; that cry turned the balance in favour of life and her fellow-creatures. She pursued the child, who had evidently strayed away from his home, or some guiding hand, and had, as the gloom of evening gathered, become conscious of his state. Dorcas took him in her arms, and the efforts which she made to soothe the violence of his grief suspended or subdued her own. The exhausted child bowed his head upon her neck, around which he had convulsively clasped his arms, and his tears ran on to her bosom, till, under the united influence of its warmth, his own weariness, and the pitying murmur of her voice, which lulled his ear, he fell into slumber. How simple is the manner in which Nature acts upon her creatures, and how powerful! The little one's tears had fallen upon the breast of Dorcas like rain on a tempestuous sea, and like that had subdued it to a calm. To feel a creature cling to "That the poor man alone, When he hears the poor moan, Of his morsel a morsel will give." This is easily accounted for; there is no sympathy but in similarity of circumstances. Dorcas passed the night in watching and tending the little foundling. It happened, fortunately for the work of regeneration going forward in the breast of Dorcas, that the infant was one of those affectionate little spirits who intuitively breathe of love; one who had been nurtured with gentle tones and soft caresses, and was prone to pay back to others the sweet wealth which had enriched himself. The next day the humble friend of Dorcas proposed to her to carry the little wanderer to the workhouse. But his kind preserver repelled the idea, avowing that if none ever appeared to claim him, that she would cherish him, and toil for him as her own; that she already felt how such a design had lightened the load at her heart; how much sweeter would be the morsel she earned if shared with a creature whom she loved, and who loved her. Hope had awakened, and she was full of sanguine expectation of obtaining employment as an occasional servant, as a laundress, or a needle-woman. Her hostess laughed, and went forth to her daily toil, having given Dorcas permission to remain a day or two in her lowly abode. This was the first day of hope, of peace, of liberty, of affection, that Dorcas had long known; and, notwithstanding limited resources and precarious prospects, her heart kept holiday. Her little companion appeared to be little more than two years old; he was able to tell her that his name was Arthur. She had made his toilet with all the care she could; had bestowed no small degree of attention on his curly hair; had about noon provided him with a bowl of bread and milk, with which she was feeding him with tender and expressive pleasure, when the door of the hovel opened, and a young, pale, graceful woman darted into the place, attended by the laundress. The child clamoured upon recognising his mother, and the dream which Dorcas had indulged was dissipated. But her heart was soon awakened to new feelings, as Mrs. Moreton, Arthur's mother, thanked her again and again for her tenderness to her child, which his appearance, and the manner in which Dorcas was found engaged, sufficiently attested. |