before, showed how Portugal could be better defended, and we have now in the country one who understands it better than the Duke de Schomberg himself." There was so much truth in what L'Isle said, that Cranfield was obliged to yield up his impregnable fortress as a very fine thing in itself, but quite out of place. "I gather from your remarks," said Lady Mabel, "that Portugal has often had a foreigner at the head of its army." more wonderful than its present decay. Yet, that is lamentable, indeed, when the government, without striking a blow, could run away from the country on the approach of the invader." "It might have been called an act of deliberate wisdom," said L'Isle, "had it not been stamped with feebleness and cowardice in the execution. Resistance was hopeless against France united with Spain, its tool, and soon to be its victim. Yielding to the storm, left "Very often, indeed," answered the invaders without apology for L'Isle. "This same kingdom, which the plunder and atrocities the in spite of its narrow territory and French have since perpetrated on small population, had, through the the people. Nor was it a sudden enterprise of its rulers and the en- thought. As long ago as the beergy of the people, extended its ginning of the last century, a Porconquests in the East and the West; tuguese Secretary of State, seeing which in the sixteenth century had the defenceless condition of his thirty-two foreign kingdoms and country, urged that the King should four hundred and thirty garrisoned remove to Brazil, and fix his Court towns tributory to it, has now so at Rio Janeiro. He points out the much degenerated in its institu- dependant state of his country in tions and the character of the peo- Europe, and asks, 'What is Porple, that for two centuries it has tugal? A corner of land divided never been able to defend itself, or into three parts; one barren, one even make a decent showing in the belonging to the Church, and the field but by foreign aid and under other part not even producing grain a foreign leader. The Duke of enough for the inhabitants. Look Schomberg, Archduke Charles, the now at Brazil, and see what is Count de Lippe, the Prince of wanting! The soil is rich, the Waldeck. and other Germans, have climate delightful, the territory in turn led the army, and each had to reorganize it, and revive its discipline. Now, they rely on Berresford to train them for battle, and Wellington to lead them to victory. The Count de Lippe found the military character so sunk, that officers were often seen waiting at the tables of their colonels; and the sense of individual honour was so lost, that one of his first reforms was to insist on his officers fighting when insulted, if they would not be cashiered." "The former greatness of Portugal," said Lady Mabel, "is even boundless, and the city would soon become more flourishing than Lisbon. Here he might extend his commerce, make discoveries in the interior, and take the title of Emperor of the West.' In truth, the behaviour of the house of Braganza in this migration, contrasts well with the infamous conduct of the Spanish Bourbons." They had strolled on to the foot of a tower within the fort, and Cranfield led the party to the top to survey the panorama around them. The horizon was pretty equally divided between Portugal and Spain. On the North, close Once, when my Lord saw Phiat hand, rose the rugged Serra de lipon leaning against the parallel Portalegne, famous for its chesnut of the castle, sneering at the beforests; to the West was the fertile seiger's clumsy approaches, he so plain of Eastern Alemtejo, crossed far forgot himself, as to call for his by the enormous pile of the aque- holsters, that he might pistol the duct, and backed by the heights of contemptuous Frenchman on the Serra D'Ossa: to the South and East, spot." the valley of the Guadiana lay before them, with few marks of culture on the Spanish side; and the eye could range over the sheep pastured plains of Estremadura to the misty sides and blue tops of the sierras that shut them in on either hand. In the East, nine miles off, by the straight path the vulture makes, rose Badajoz, capped by its castle, and over looked by fort San Christoval on a high hill across the river. The fame of its sieges during this war, its stubborn defence and bloody fall within the year, drew the eyes of the ladies on it. L'Isle pulled out a field glass to aid them in inspecting it. When the Portuguese ladies got hold of it, they were as much delighted as children with a new toy, snatching it out of each other's hands, without allowing time for its deliberate use, and protesting against their Spanish neighbours being brought so near to them. "If they are so delighted at the powers of this little thing," said L'Isle, "what would they think of the glass Lord Wellington had put up in this tower during the siege of Badajoz ?" "Were its powers so great?" Mrs. Shortridge asked. "Did he, indeed ?" exclaimed Mrs. Shortridge; then laughing at herself for being quizzed for the moment, begged L'Isle to tell this to the Portuguese ladies, and see if they would not believe it. Meanwhile, Lady Mabel was gazing thoughtfully over the winding valley, which running towards them the South, indicating the course of from the East, turned abrubtly to the Guadiana, and on the wide plains of Estremadura baja, or the lower, to the blue sierras that walled it round. "This, then, is Spain," said she; "the land I have read of, dreamed of, and for the last four years, thought of more than even of my own." "And yet," said L'Isle, "you calling yourself a traveller, have been for months within sight of it, and have never set your foot on Spanish ground." "I blush to own it. But you, my self-appointed guide, should blush, too, at never having led me thither. Come, Mrs. Shortridge: these soldiers are too slow for us: let us take horse to-morrow, and make an inroad into Spain." "Willingly," said Mrs. Shortridge. "But let us take a strong party with us. We do not know how we might be received, should the Spaniards mistake us for Portuguese!" "Wonderful, according to rumour," answered L'Isle. "But I never had time to come from the "If a visit to Badajoz is your obtrenches to prove them. It is said ject," said Cranfield, "I offer myself to have brought Badajoz so near, as a guide. As I have been lately that you see how the French sol- engaged in repairing its shattered diers made their soup, and even walls, I may be useful in showing smell the garlick they put into it. you how to get in. Knowing, too, VOL. VI. 6 some of the Spanish officers there, I may in a parley induce them to come to terms." They now descended from the tower, and on leaving the fort, Lady Mabel led the party to headquarters, to take their luncheon there, while they planned their measures for to-morrow's expedition to Badajoz. To be Continued. SOUL-MUSIC. How it dulls All faculties, when, intensely wed to one, We do forget the uses of the rest, And make them subject to a mood that grows, Of thousand keys; that, touch'd to one accord, A dissonance; and the tone that mocks us ever,- -Beware of this; and give each proper key, And, in its proper place, will yield a tone As needful for the music, as the best! FRAGMENT. VIRTUE. Thus Treachery flies the honest shaft of Truth! So Virtue, like the fair white moon in heaven, Grows lovelier, from the cloud through which she breaks. EDITORS' TABLE. Leigh Hunt is dead. The last of that circle of wits, essayists and poets, who have made the nineteenth century illus trious, has left the earth he deemed so beautiful, and the delights of Nature he passionately loved, to join (let us hope) his friends and companions of other days in an immortal country. We think of the death of Leigh Hunt with feelings that can hardly be called melancholy. He had lived to the extremest verge of human existence, all the great objects of his life were fully accom plished, and had he sojourned much longer here, it might have been said of him, jects, composed upon a plan as original as it is attractive. This plan seems to have been suggested to the author by the habits of a certain African bird, (the CUCULUS INDICATOR of LINNEUS,) who aids the honey-hunters in the discovery of wild bees' nests. "It calls them with a cheerful cry which they answer, and on finding itself recognized, flies and hovers over a hollow tree containing the honey." Leigh Hunt in the collection of Miscellanies referred to, attempts the same kind office for the searcher in the realm of literature, which the little tropical bird fulfils for the seeker after honey. He discusses no question profoundly, but hovers about a hundred "Superfluous lags the veteran on the topics which promise to yield any stage." The literary career of Hunt, it is truly pleasant to contemplate. Though checkered by many sorrows and disappointments, the indomitable buoyancy of spirit which he possessed, enabled him often not only to rise above, but even to ridicule and despise them. He proved himself more especially a real philosopher in his manner of meeting his political troubles. It is well known that be voluntarily endured imprisonment for two years upon a charge of libelling the Government. It is the testimony of the friends who were permitted to see him during this period, that nothing could have been more admirable than the genial good nature and fortitude of the captive. He was incarcerated, he thought, for the sake of truth, and to judge from his conduct and manners, one would have believed," says a friend who visited him, that "Hunt rather liked it than otherwise." He composed while in prison, many of his ablest essays, several characteristic poems, and a number of translations, chiefly from the Italian. In this country, Leigh Hunt is best known by the papers published in the Indicator, and by his poems, the only complete edition of which ever issued, bears the imprint of Ticknor & Fields, of Boston. The Indicator is a collection of brief treatises on various sub sweets of thought or reflection. Suggesting the chief clues to these, he leaves the reader to follow them up according to his own pleasure. Hence the name of this curious work-The Indicator! There is no collection at all akin to it in the English language, which, to our view, contains an equal amount of wisdom, humour, sound philosophy and lucid narrative, drawn from many occult sources of information. It is in part a perfect store-house of legendary lore. To the poet especially, it presents any amount of what may be called the "raw material" of his art. Legends, drawn from the literature of many lands and ages, are presented in the garb of such delightful prose, that they may almost be said to set themselves to music. Among these may be mentioned, Godiva-majestically versified by Tennyson, Ronald of the Perfect Hand, The Daughter of Hypocrates, and the Hamadryad, the last of which forms the ground-work of Russell Lowell's beautiful poem, entitled Rhacus. As a specimen of Hunt's peculiar humour, compounded of quaintness, and an exquisite philosophical fancy, we would select the paper strangely headed An Earth upon Heaven, with which another miscellaneous collection of his (The Companion,) begins. "It is a pity," he remarks, in the course of this essay, "that none of the great ge niuses to whose lot it has fallen to describe a future state, has given us his own notions of heaven. Their accounts are all modified by the national theology; whereas, the Apostle himself has told us that we can have no conception of the blessings intended for us. Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, &c." After this, Dante's shining lights are poor. Milton's heaven, with the armed youth exercising themselves in military games, is worse. His best Paradise was on earth, and a very pretty heaven he made of it. For our own part, admitting and venerating as we do the notion of a heaven surpassing all human conception, we trust that it is no presumption to hope that the state mentioned by the Apostle is the final heaven, and that we may ascend and gradually accustom ourselves to the intensity of it, by others of a less super-human nature. Familiar as we are both with joy and sorrow, and accustomed to surprises, and strange sights of imagination, it is difficult to fancy even the delight of suddenly emerging into a new and boundless state of existence, where every thing is marvellous, and opposed to our experience. We could wish to take gently to it-to be loosed not entirely at once. Our song desires to be "a song of degrees." Earth and its capabilities-are these nothing? And are they to come to nothing? Is there no beautiful realization of the fleeting type that is shown us? No body to this shadow? No quenching to this taught and continued thirst? No arrival at these natural homes and resting places, which are so heavenly to our imaginations, even though they be built of clay, and are situate in the fields of our infancy? "We are becoming graver than we intended; but to return to our proper style-nothing shall persuade us, for the present, that Paradise Mount, in any pretty_village in England, has not an other Paradise Mount to correspond, in some less perishing region; that is to say, provided anybody had set his heart upon it-and that we shall not all be dining, and drinking tea, and complaining of the weather (we mean, for its not being perfectly blissful,) three hundred years hence, in some snug interlunar spot, or perhaps in the moon itself, seeing that it is our next visible neighbour, and shrewdly suspected of being hill and dale "It appears to us, that for a certain term of centuries, Heaven must consist of something of this kind. In a word, we cannot but persuade ourselves, that to realize everything that we have justly desired on earth, will be heaven;-we mean, for that period: and that afterwards, if we behave ourselves in a pro per pre-angelical manner, we shall go to another heaven, still better, where we shall realize all that we desired in our first. Of this latter we can as yet have no conception; but of the former, we think some of the items may be as follows: "Imprimis,—(not because friendship comes before love in point of degree, but because it precedes it, in point of time, as at school we have a male companion before we are old enough to have a female)—Imprimis, then, a friend. Ile will have the same tastes and inclinations as ourselves, with just enough difference to furnish argument without sharpness; and he will be generous, just, entertaining, and no shirker of his nectar. In short, he will be the best friend we have had upon earth. We shall talk together "of afternoons;" and when the Earth begins to rise (a great big moon, looking as happy as we know its inhabitants will be,) other friends will join us, not so emphatically our friends as he, but excellent fellows, all; and we shall read the poets, and have some sphere-music (if we please,) or renew one of our old earthly evenings, picked out of a dozen Christmases. "Item, a mistress. In heaven (not to speak it profanely) we know, upon the best authority, that people are "neither married nor given in marriage;" so that there is nothing illegal in the term. (By the way, there can be no clergymen there, if there are no official duties for them. We do not say, there will be nobody who has been a clergyman. Berkeley would refute that; and a hundred Welsh curates. But they would be no longer in orders. They would refuse to call themselves more Reverend than their neighbours). Item, then,a mistress; beautiful, of course,-an angelical expression,-a Peri, or Houri, or whatever shape of perfection you choose to imagine her, and yet retaining the likeness of the woman you loved best on earth; in fact, she herself, but completed; all her good qualities made perfect, and her defects taken away (with the exception of one or two charming little angelical peccadillos, which she can only get rid of in a post-future state;) good-tempered, laughing, serious, fond of everything about her without detriment to her special fondness for yourself, a great roamer in Elysian fields and forests, but not alone (they go in pairs there, as the jays and turtle-doves do with us;) but above all things, true; oh, so true, that you take her word as you would a diamond, nothing being more transparent, or solid, or precious. Between some divine poem, and meeting our friends of an evening, we should walk with her, or fly (for we should have |