Crot. Dally not further; 1 will know the reason That speeds thee to this journey.

Org. Reason, good sir?

I can yield many.

Crot. Give me one, a good one;

Such I expect, and ere we part must have:

Athens! Pray, why to Athens ?

FORD'S BROKEN HEART.

Go search romantic lands, where the near sun
Gives with unstinted boon ethereal flame;
Where the rude villager, his labor done,

In vein spontaneous chants some favored name.—
Explore those regions, where the flinty crest
Of wild Nevada ever gleams with snows;
Where, in the proud Alhambra's ruined breast,
Barbaric monuments of pomp repose.
There, of Numantian fire a swarthy spark
Still lightens in the sun-burnt native's eye;
The stately port, slow step, and visage dark,
Still mark enduring pride and constancy.
And, cherished still by that unchanging race,
Are themes for minstrelsy more high than thine;
Of strange traditions many a mystic trace,
Legend and vision, prophecy and sign;
Where wonders wild of Arabesque combine
With Gothic imagery of darker shade.

SCOTT'S DON RODERICK.

Oh, lovely Spain, renowned, romantic land!

BYRON'S CHILDE HAROLD.

THE PYRENEES.

be

"THE Pyrenees exist no longer:'-Such was the exulting declaration of Louis XIV., when a testament, extracted from the death-bed imbecility of the last of the male descendants of Charles V., stowed the crown of Spain and the Indies on a grandson of France. But the declaration was not less false in a political, than it was in a physical, sense. When Philip of Anjou crossed the Bidassoa, he ceased forever to be a Frenchman; he became naturalized among a people as different from those of his native land, as if oceans rolled between them, in place of a petty mountain streamlet; and his character, habits, policy,-all acquired a new complexion from those of the country, over which he was called to reign. It would have seemed that the blood of his grandmother, Maria Teresa of Spain, was alone poured into his veins, unmingled with a single drop from the Gallic stock of the Bourbons. The same punctilious and stately eti

quette, the same timid submission to the terrors of the church,the same uxorious subserviency to the dictation of his wife, which had come to be characteristics of the Austrian princes of Spain, seemed to infuse themselves into the soul of Philip, as incident to the throne he ascended. And it was not long ere the ties of a common origin and close relationship lost their hold upon the royal Houses of Spain and France. Nay, when little more than a century had elapsed from the entrance of Philip into Madrid, the two nations viewed each other with far more hostile sentiments, than even during the desperate wars of Francis and the Emperor. And while the Pyrenees remain still the great national barrier between the neighboring kingdoms, the Spanish people continue to be as peculiar, as unlike the French, as unlike the other nations of Europe, as they were when Cortes and Pizarro ravaged America, or when Philip II. reared the sombre masses of the Escorial among the snows and tempests of the Guadarrama.

I was deeply impressed with all the differences in question, the differences both in the moral and physical aspect of Spain,-when I passed over the little wooden bridge of the Bidassoa, and stood for the first time on the soil of Guipuzcoa. How wild and romantic seemed the aspect of the towering mountains around me,-how strange in costume, speech, and manner were the inhabitants of the border hamlets,--how full of the most inspiring

associations of the days of knighthood were the very names of the humble villages in that picturesque region!-For here every thing is instinct with the fame of Orlando, the flower of chivalry, Ariosto's Orlando. Here lie the rocks, which he hurled from the mountains, in the transports of love and jealousy, wherewith Angelica filled his soul.

Count Roland wandered through the bosky dell,
Until, as morning o'er the hill-tops rose,
He came, unconscious, to the gushing well,
Where, sculptured by Medoro's hand, he knows
The fatal words, which all too clearly tell

How false is she, for whom his bosom glows.
One glance of madness on the lines he threw,
And straight the enchanted Durindana drew.

Furious with passion, hatred, vengeance, rage,
He dashed his trenchant blade upon the rock,
Which, riven by the falchion's magic edge,

In splinters flew beneath its fearful shock:
'Twas grand, yet awful, to behold him wage
War with the mighty mountain's massive block,
Hurling its broken fragments madly round,
Till, spent with ire, he sank upon the ground.

The plain of Roncesvalles, where he perished,where the twelve peers of Charlemagne were defeated and slain by the mountaineers of Navarre, -is near at hand. Fontarabia, also, is situated just below; and it requires but slight effort of the imagination to fancy you hear

That told imperial Charlemagne,
How Paynim sons of swarthy Spain
Had wrought his champion's fall.

But all this, it may be said,-the achievements of Roland, the battle of Roncesvalles, and whatever charms may be attached to this romantic spot,-is the work of a baseless fiction, resting on no better authority than the fabulous chronicles of Archbishop Turpin and the legendary verses of the middle age. Be it so. What then, I demand, is history, that we should boast ourselves of it? I know there are men, who would strip the records of the past of every thing which renders them agreeable; who mistake scepticism for discernment, and a hypercritical scrutiny of the sources of historical information for wisdom. They would reduce the Scottish Wallace and William Tell to the condition of common outlaws; they would deprive Orlando and the Cid of their fame, and Bernardo del Carpio of his being; and they would teach us that the stories of Greek and Roman magnanimity, which delighted our youth, are little better than well-devised romances. Homer, if they may be credited, is but a creature of the imagination; and the siege of Troy, perhaps, only another chapter in the book of falsehoods, which commemorates the labors of Hercules and the exploits of Theseus.-It may be so, I repeat; but what better do such critics give us, in place of the examples of virtue and greatness we have been accustomed to admire?