Toward the north of Spain the enemy had rallied, and had won indeed the battle of Rio-Seco, but within a month were retreating in all directions. Antonio, bound by no other duties than those of a volunteer, acceded at last to the earnest and repeated wishes of his brother and cousin, that he would in this interval return to them. Don Luis said he would be a madman wherever he was, but might return if he liked it, both he and his guitar. On the first of August, 1808, the visitor passed again the threshold of his native home. Covered as he was with dust, he entered the apartment where the family were seated. The sun was setting, and the supper had just been taken off the table, excepting two small flasks of red and white wine, part of a water-melon, and some pomegranates. In fact, more was remaining than had been eaten or removed, not reckoning a radish of extraordinary length and tenuity, which the Señorita Iñes was twisting round her thumb. It was no waste; there was not any use for it; many things in the house were better to mend harness with. Moreover on the sideboard there were sundry yellow peaches, of such a size, weight, and hardness, that only a confident and rash invader would traverse the country in the season of their maturity, unless he had collected the most accurate information that powder was deficient in the arsenals.

At the dusty apparition, at the beard and whiskers never seen before, at the broad and belted shoulder, at the loud spurred boot, at the long and hurried stride toward the party, Don Luis stared; Don Ignacio stared; Doña Iñes cast her eyes on the ground, and said, ""Tis he!" The brother, whether he heard her or not, repeated the words, "'tis he!" and rushed into his arms. Don Luis himself rose slowly from his chair, and welcomed him. Iñes was the nearest to him, and seemed abashed.

"My cousin!" said Antonio, bending down to her, "I have yet to remove in part the name of coward," and, lifting her hand from her apron, he kissed the extremities of her fingers. "Brother!

quantity of water, and swallowed it at a draught. "What lady have you engulfed with that enormous gasp?" asked Iñes, with timid shyness; "will she never rise up, do you think, in judg ment against you?"

"Pray mix me the flask near you," said he, "in like manner as the last, and then perhaps I may answer you, my sweet cousin; but tell me, Iñes, whether I did not rasp your nails with my thirsty and hard lips?"

"Yes, and with that horrid brake above," said she, pouring out the wine and water, and offering it.

Don Luis all this time had kept his eyes constantly on his son, and began to prognosticate in him a valiant defender; then discovered, first in one feature, afterward in another, a resemblance to himself; and lastly, he was persuaded in his own mind, that he had been prejudiced and precipitate when he was younger. The spirit of hospitality was aroused by paternal love: he gave orders for a fowl to be killed instantaneously, even the hen on her nest rather than none, although the omelet might be thinner for it on the morrow. Such was the charm the gallant and gay Antonio breathed about the house. He was peculiarly pleased and gratified by the suavity of his father, not that he ever had doubted of his affection, but he had fancied that his own bois terous manners had rendered him less an object of solicitude. He had always been glad to see it be stowed on his brother, whose delicate health and sensitive nature so much required it.

No house in Spain, where few were happy then, contained four happier inmates. Ignacio, it is true, became thinner daily, and ceased after a time to join in the morning walks of his brother and Iñes; but he was always of the party when, returning from the siesta, they took up their guitars, and tuned each other's.

Were there ever two comely and sensitive young persons, possessing sweet voices, exercising them daily together, bending over the same book, expressing the same sentiment in its most pas sionate accents, were they ever long exempt from the gentle intrusion of one sweet stranger? Neither Iñes nor Antonio was aware of it: both would have smiled in the beginning, and both would have afterward been indignant at any such surmise. But revolutions in states effect no revo lutions in nature. The French, who changed everything else, left the human heart as they found it. Ignacio feared, but said nothing. Antonio too, although much later, was awakened to the truth, and determined on departure. And

now Ignacio was ashamed and grieved at his suspicions, and would have delayed his brother, who dissembled his observation of them; but the poor youth's health, always slender, had given way under them. For several days he had taken to his bed; fever had seized him, and had been subdued. But there is a rose which Death lays quietly on the cheek of the devoted, before the poppy sheds on it its tranquillising leaves: it had settled immoveably in the midst of Ignacio's smiles, smiles tranquilly despondent. Seldom did Antonio leave his bedside, but never had he yet possessed the courage to inquire the cause of those sighs and tears, which burst forth in every moment of silence, and then only. At length however he resolved on it, that he might assure him the more confidently of his recovery, having first requested Iñes that, whenever he was absent, she would supply his place.

"Can not we go together?" said she, disquieted. "No, señora!" answered he, with stern sadness, we can not. You owe this duty to the companion of your girlhood, to the bequeathed of your parents, to your betrothed!"

At that word sudden paleness overspread her countenance; her lips, which never before had lost their rich colour, faded and quivered; no reply could pass them, had any been ready: even the sigh was drawn suddenly back: not one escaped. In all that was visible she was motionless. But now with strong impulse she pressed both palms against her bosom, and turned away. The suddenness and the sound struck terror into the heart of Antonio. He laid his hand on her shoulder, and looked into her face. Tears glittered on the folds of the long black veil; and they were not the tears of Iñes. But now she also shed them. Alas! from how many and from what distant sources do they flow! Iñes went; she sobbed at the door, but she went. No song that evening, no book, no romance of love, no narrative of war: the French were as forgotten as the Moors.

Morning rose fresh and radiant: but the dim lavender on each side of the narrow pathway had all its dew upon it; the cistus was opening its daily flowers, with no finger to press down and attempt to smoothen the crumpled leaves; none to apply its viscous cup in playful malice against the trim ornament of a smiling lip. Nobody thought of looking for the large green lizard on the limestone by the twisted rosemary-bush, covered with as many bees as blossoms, and uprearing as many roots as branches above the prostrate wall. Nobody thought of asking "Did you ever know any creature who panted so quickly as that foolish lizard?.. I mean in battle." Nobody met the inquiry with, "Did you ever hear of any one who felt anything a little, a very little like it, at the cembalo?"

Antonio, at this early hour, was seated on the edge of his brother's bed, asking him, with kind dissimulation, what reason he could possibly have to doubt Iñes' love and constancy.

"At first," replied Ignacio, "she used to hold my hand, to look anxiously in my face, and to wipe away her tears that she might see it the more distinctly in this darkened chamber. Now she has forgotten to take my hand; she looks as often into my face, but not anxiously; not even inquiringly; she lets her tears rise and dry again; she never wipes them away, and seldom hides them. This at least is a change in her; perhaps no favourable one for me." Antonio thus answered him: "Ignacio, if we would rest at all, we must change our posture in grief as in bed. The first moments are not like the second, nor the second like the last. Be confident in her; be confident in me: within two hours you shall, I promise you, whether you will or not. Farewell, my beloved brother! You are weary; close but your eyes for sleep, and sleep shall come. I will not awaken you, even with glad tidings."

Folding his arms, he left the chamber with a firm step. Within two hours he entered it again; but how? Hateful as monastic life had ever appeared to him, ridiculous as he daily in Salamanca had called its institutions, indifferent and incredulous as he lately had become to many articles of the faith, having been educated under the tuition of a soldier, so free in his opinions as once to have excited the notice and questionings of the Inquisition, he went resolutely forth at daybreak, and prevailed on the superior of a monastic order to admit him into it at once, as its sworn defender. He returned in the vestments of that order, and entered the bedchamber in silence. His brother had slept, and was yet sleeping. He gently undrew the curtain, and stood motionless. Ignacio at last moved his elbow, and sighed faintly; he then rested on it a little, and raised his cheek higher on the pillow; it had lost the gift of rest; its virtues were departed from it; there was no cool part left. He opened his eyes and looked toward Antonio; then closed them, then looked again.

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Ignacio!" said Antonio softly, you see me; it is me you see, Ignacio!" The sick exhausted youth sighed again, and closing his hands, raised them up as if in prayer. This movement fully awakened him. He now opened his eyes in wonder on his brother, who pressed those raised hands within his, and kissed that brow which the fever had shortly left. Ignacio sighed deeply, and sank back again. The first words he uttered afterward were these:

"Oh Antonio! why could you not have waited? impetuous, impatient Antonio ! I might have seen you both from Paradise; I might have blest you from thence; from thence I might indeed. O God! O Virgin! O Mary, pure and true! pardon my ingratitude! Should love ever bear that bitter fruit? Forbid it, O host of Heaven! forbid it! it must not be."

"Brother! speak not so: it is accomplished," said Antonio; "and now can you doubt your bride?"

Iñes at this moment rushed into the chamber:

I PASSED two entire months in Germany, and like the people. On my way I saw Waterloo, an ugly table for an ugly game. At Innspruck I entered the church in which Andreas Hofer is buried. He lies under a plain slab, on the left, near the door. I admired the magnificent tomb of bronze, in the centre, surrounded by heroes, real and imaginary. They did not fight, tens against thousands; they did not fight for wives and children, but for lands and plunder: therefore they are heroes! My admiration for these works of art was soon satisfied, which perhaps it would not have been in any other place. Snow, mixed with rain, was falling, and was blown by the wind upon the tomb of Hofer. I thought how often he had taken advantage of such weather for his attacks against the enemies of his country, and I seemed to hear his whistle in the wind. At the little village of Landro (I feel a whimsical satisfaction in the likeness of the name to mine) the innkeeper was the friend of this truly great man.. the greatest man that Europe has produced in our days, excepting his true compeer, Kosciusko. Andreas Hofer gave him the chain and crucifix he wore three days before his death. You may imagine this man's enthusiasm, who, because I had said that Hofer was greater than king or emperor, and had made him a present of small value, as the companion and friend of that harmless and irreproachable hero, took this precious relic from his neck and offered it to me. By the order of Buonaparte, the companions of Hofer, eighty in number, were chained, thumbscrewed, and taken out of prison in couples, to see him shot. He had about him one thousand florins, in paper currency, which he delivered to his confessor, requesting him to divide it impartially among his unfortunate countrymen. The confessor, an Italian who spoke German, kept it, and never gave relief from it to any of them, most of whom were suffering, not only from privation of wholesome air, to which, among other privations, they never had been accustomed, but also from scantiness of nourishment and clothing. Even in Mantua, where, as in the rest of Italy, sympathy is both weak and silent, the lowest of the people were indignant at the sight of so brave a defender of his country, led into the public square to expiate a crime unheard of for many centuries in their nation. When they saw him walk forth, with unaltered countenance and firm step before them; when, stopping on the ground which was about to receive his blood, they heard him with unfaltering voice commend his soul and his country to the Creator; and, as if still under his own roof (a custom with him after the evening prayer), implore a blessing for his boys

VOL. II.

and his little daughter, and for the mother who had reared them up carefully and tenderly thus far through the perils of childhood; finally, when in a lower tone, but earnestly and emphatically, he besought pardon from the Fount of Mercy for her brother, his betrayer, many smote their breasts aloud; many, thinking that sorrow was shameful, lowered their heads and wept; many, knowing that it was dangerous, yet wept too. The people remained upon the spot an unusual time; and the French, fearing some commotion, pretended to have received an order from Buonaparte for the mitigation of the sentence, and publicly announced it. Among his many falsehoods, anyone of which would have excluded him for ever from the society of men of honour, this is perhaps the basest; as indeed of all his atrocities the death of Hofer, which he had ordered long before and appointed the time and circumstances, is, of all his actions, that which the brave and virtuous will reprobate the most severely. He was urged by no necessity, he was prompted by no policy: his impatience of courage in an enemy, his hatred of patriotism and integrity in all, of which he had no idea himself, and saw no image in those about him, outstripped his blind passion for fame, and left him nothing but power and celebrity.

The name of Andreas Hofer will be honoured by posterity far above any of the present age, and together with the most glorious of the last, Washington and Kosciusko. For it rests on the same foundation, and indeed on a higher basis. In virtue and wisdom their co-equal, he vanquished on several occasions a force greatly superior to his own in numbers and in discipline, by the courage and confidence he inspired, and by his brotherly care and anxiety for those who were fighting at his side. Differently, far differently, ought we to estimate the squanderers of human blood and the scorners of human tears. We also may boast of our great men in a cause as great; for without it they could not be so. We may look back upon our Blake; whom the prodigies of a Nelson do not eclipse, nor would he have wished (such was his generosity) to obscure it. Blake was among the founders of freedom; Nelson was the vanquisher of its destroyers; Washington was both; Kosciusko was neither; neither was Hofer. But the aim of all three was alike; and in the armoury of God are suspended the arms the two last of them bore; suspended for success more signal and for vengeance more complete.

I am writing this from Venice, which is among cities what Shakspeare is among men. He will give her immortality by his works, which neither her patron saint could do nor her surrounding sea.

HH