ADVERTISEMENT.

THE Poem of JACQUELINE is the production of a different author, and is added at the request of the writer of the former tale, whose wish and entreaty it was that it should occupy the first pages of the following volume; and he regrets that the tenacious courtesy of his friend would not permit

him to place it where the judgment of the reader, concurring with his own, will suggest its more appropriate station.

NOTE.

Canto I. page 3, line 1.

The Serfs are glad through Lara's wide domain.

«The reader is advertised that the name only of Lara being Spanish, and no circumstance of local or national description fixing the scene or hero of the poem to any country or age, the word Serf,' which could not be correctly applied to the lower classes in Spain, who were never vassals of the soil, has nevertheless been

employed to designate the followers of our fictitious chieftain."

LARA.

CANTO I.

I.

THE Serfs are glad through Lara's wide domain,

And Slavery half forgets her feudal chain;

He, their unhop'd, but unforgotten lord,
The long self-exiled chieftain is restored:
There be bright faces in the busy hall,

Bowls on the board, and banners on the wall;
Far chequering o'er the pictured window plays
The unwonted faggots' hospitable blaze;

And gay retainers gather round the hearth

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With tongues all loudness, and with eyes all mirth.

II.

The chief of Lara is returned again:

And why had Lara cross'd the bounding main?

Left by his sire, too young such loss to know,
Lord of himself;-that heritage of woe,

That fearful empire which the human breast
But holds to rob the heart within of rest!-
With none to check, and few to point in time
The thousand paths that slope the way to crime;
Then, when he most required commandment, then
Had Lara's daring boyhood govern❜d men.
It skills not, boots not step by step to trace

His youth through all the mazes of its race;

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