snare;

He led to the altar Gudruna the fair;
And now with her brother unconscious he
came,
Who dar'd the chaste hand of Brynhilda to
[claim.
But Gunnar the bold could not break through
the spell;
[fell:
The flame bicker'd high, on the ground as he
And Sigurd the glorious, the mighty, must lend
His valour to gain the fair prize for his friend.
All night there he tarried, but ever between
The maid and the knight lay his sword bright
and sheen ;

The morrow he rode to the battle afar,
And chang'd the maid's couch for the turmoil
of war.

His friend reaps the harvest his valour has won,
And claims the fair guerdon ere fall of the sun.
With pomp to the altar he leads the young
bride,
She deems him the knight who had lain by her
[side;
Forgotten the vows she had made in gay
France,

Ere Odin cast o'er her the magical trance.
With gorgeous carousal with dance and with

song,

With wassail his liegemen the nuptials prolong,
He revels in rapture and bliss through the
night,
And the swift hours are pass'd in the arms of
[delight:
But when the bright morning first dawn'd on
their bed,
The bride rais'd with anguish her grief-strick
[en head;
For the thoughts of the past rose with force,
and too late
[hard fate.

She remember'd young Sigurd, and curs'd her
Three days and three nights there in silence

she lay,

To sulleu despair and dark horror a prey.
She tasted no food, and to none she replied,
But spurn'd the sad bridegroom with hate
from her side.
[rejoice?
Shall the words of young Sigurd now bid her
Does she hear his known accents, and start at
his voice?

"Awake, fair Brynhilda, behold the bright
ray!

The flowers in the forest are laughing and gay.
Full long hast thou slept on the bosom of woe;
Awake, fair Brynhilda, and see the sun glow."

Concluded in our next.

And, like an angel, to the skies

Still seems to beckon me!
For me she liv'd, for me she sigh'd,
For me she wish'd to be a bride,
For me, in life's sweet morn she died
On fair Kirkconnell-Lee !

Where Kirtle-waters gently wind,
As Helen on my arm reclin'd,
A rival, with a ruthless mind,'

Took deadly aim at me:
My love, to disappoint the foe,
Rush'd in between me and the blow,
And now her corse is lying low,

On fair Kirkconnell-Lee!

276

I curse the hand by which she fell---
Though Heaven forbids my wrath to swell,
The fiend that made my heav'o a bell,

And tore my love from me
For if, where all the graces shine---
My Helen! all these charms were thine---
O! if on earth there's ought divine,
i
They center'd all in the e!

Ah! what avails it that, amain,
I clove th' assassin's head in twain !
No peace of mind, my Helen slain---
I see her spirit in the air---
No resting place for me!
I hear the shriek of wild despair,
When murder laid her bosom bare,
On fair Kirkconnell-Lee !

O! when I'm sleeping in my grave,
And o'er my head the rank weeds ware,
May He, who life and spirit gave,
Then from this world of doubts and sighs,
Unite my love and me!
My soul on wings of peace shall rise,
And, joining Helen in the skies,
Forget Kirkconnell-Lee !

New Mon. Meg

From the New Monthly Magazine.
BALLAD.

By Mr. C. P. WEBR.

H lady, buy these budding flow'rs,
For I am sad, and wet, and weary,---
I gather'd them ere break of day,
When all was tonely, still, and dreary
And long I've sought to sell them here,
To purchase clothes, and food, and dwelling,
For Valour's wretched orphan girls---

Poor me and my young sister Ellen!
Ah! those who tread life's thornless way,
May deem my wants require no aid,
In Fortune's golden sunshine basking,

They have no heart for woes like mine,
Because my lips are mute, unasking;
Each word, each look, is cold---repelling,
Yet once a crowd of flatt'rers fawn'd,
And Fortune smil'd on me and Ellen!
Oh buy my flower's! they're fair and fresh
As mine and morning's tears could keep

them;

To-morrow's sun shall see them dead,
And I shall scarcely live to weep them!
Yet this sweet bud, if nurs'd with care;
Soon into fulness would be swelling;
And nurtur'd by some gen'rous hand,
So might my little sister Ellen!
She's sleeping in the hollow tree,
Her only home---its leaves her bedding:

Poetry.

i

London Literary Information.

280

By some soft morn, and questing sweets in vain, Ere spring hath hung her blossoms on the bowers,

Swarm round the lonely violet's opening flowers.

As press'd th' exulting throngs with fren-
zied haste,

The timorous yield, the feebler are displaced;
Till columns blending from each adverse brink,
Yet Mercy, stretching from the foremost bands,
Contend, all raging at the wave to drink;

Yields the full helmet to the mother's hands:
Whose yearning love her own parch'd lip de-
nies,

To hush her fainting cherub's moaning cries.

LONDON

INTELLIGENCE IN LITERATURE, AND THE ARTS AND
SCIENCES.

A new printing press, or printing engine,
has recently excited the attention of the
typographical world. It is wrought by the
power of steam, and, with the aid of two or
three boys, perfects nearly a thousand sheets
per hour.
A common press, worked by two
men, takes off but two hundred and fifty im-
pressions on one side, and requires eight hours
to perfect a thousand sheets. Hence, three
boys in one hour, at a cost of six-pence, are
enabled, by this new application of the power
of steam, to perform the labour of two men
for eight hours, at a cost of eight shillings.
Such are the present capabilities of this engine;
but, as there is no limit to its required powers,
and the size of the form is no obstacle to its
perfect performance, it is proposed to take
impressions on double-demy, in which case
three boys, at six-pence, will, in one hour,
perform the labour of thirty-two men at
sixteen shillings! This engine is now at work
at a printing-office near Fleet-street, and
another on a similar, but less perfect, con-
struction, has for some time past beeh employ-
ed on a Morning Newspaper. In its general
analogy, this press is not unlike the rolling-
press of copper-plate printers. The forms,
being fixed on the carriage, are drawn under
a cylinder, on which the sheet being laid, and
the ink distributed by an arrangement of
rollers, the impression is taken on one side.
The sheet is then conveyed off by bands to a
second cylinder, around which it is carried on
the second form, and the reiteration is produced
in perfect register without the aid of points.
All the manual labour is performed by a boy
who lays the paper on the first cylinder, by
one who takes it off from the second cylinder,
and by a third who lays the sheets evenly on
the bank. As a further instance of economy
in the materials, we may mention, that the
waste steam from the copper is intended to be
carried in tubes round the entire suite of
offices, with a view to warm them. Of the
ingenuity displayed in the mechanism, and of
the ultimate successes of this apparatus, there
can be little doubt; but whether there is reason
to rejoice in the invention of any machinery,
which, in the present state of the country
diminishes the call for manual labour, may be
seriously doubted; particularly as political
economists have not yet agreed that workmen,
who in conseuequce become destitute, ought

to be provided for till they can qualify themselves for new employments.

A collection of Fairy Tales is about to be published by TABART,of the Juvenile Library. In Poetry, may be noticed a very promising small volume by Mr. NEELE; it is entitled, Odes and other Poems. The author is avowedly a disciple of Collins, and worthy to be so, though attempts in the line of pure abstraction are more than commonly critical, for, if not very good, they are unbearable, and but few are privileged to visit the world of shadows. Mr. Neele says that his is a bold attempt, but, like a man of true genius, he declines either apology or claim to indulgence. The world, he very justly observes, neither attends to the one or the other; and it is certain that, in reference to works of imagination, the world acts exactly as it ought to do. Mr. Neele is young, and, though this is his first performance, few first performances are so promising. An Ode to Despair is peculiarly fine; the same may be observed of one to Time. An Address to Allegory is also very bland, beautiful, and ingenious. In the mean time, this young and very promising poet must be informed of the positive opinion of most critics, that the walk he has chosen is more bounded than he imagines, and that the bard who excels in it can seldom fill volumes without having recourse to human hopes, fears, and affections.---Mon. M.

Mr. MURRAY has succeeded in fusing two Emeralds into one uniform mass, also two Sapphires into one, by the compressed mixture of the gaseous constituents of water in the oxibydrogene blow-pipe.

Mr. MURRAY had published in the contemporaneous number of the Philosophical Magazine, (with that of the Annals of Philosophy, in which Mr. EO. Sym alludes to the same phenomenon,) that flame is a hollw cone, and its interior might be seen by pressing the apex by means of a piece of glass.

Major RENNELL will soon publish a quarto volume of Illustrations of the History of the Expedition of the Younger Cyrus, and Retreat of the Ten Thousand Greeks, with explanatory maps.

There has lately been found, in a temple at Pompeia, a stone, on which are engraved the linear measures of the Romaus.

Wat Tyler, a Dramatic Poem, by Robert Southey, is publishen.

WH HEN I last bade you farewel, was on the frontiers of this wonderful country. I informed you that it

was our intention to traverse Switzerland

en pélerin: this project we did not aban

sistent and becoming cordiality of Protestants and Catholics. We breakfasted at the Verrières Suisse; and here it was that our hostess acquainted us with the existence of these feelings, sc amiable, so wise, so just, so orthodoxical!

I listened to her with more interest

when she acquainted me that she had don. been a resident of the valley of Travers From Pontarlier, a winding road con- nearly half a century—that she had a perducted us thro' a valley, which resembled fect recollection of Rousseau, who was no scenery that we had yet beheld, altho' once a visitor of these delightful scenesmany views in Franche Comté are truly that he had often frequented her house— Alpine; and, after passing the last vil- that he would enter it sometimes, and lage of France, called the Verrières de hastily desire to be shewn to a chamber Joux, we entered the first of Switzer- where he could remain undisturbed ; and land, called the Verrières Suisse. The that she conducted him, upon these occafrontier is indicated by a tree on the sions, to a room, the door of which she right-hand side of the road, and by a opened as she spoke: in this chamber he parapet-wall of stone, which runs up the often wrote, or rested himself during his mountain on the left. Perhaps a hundred rambles. and fifty yards do not divide these villa- As we advanced into the valley, the ges, yet are the residents of them separa- wildness and irregularity which characted, as wide as the poles asunder, by sen- terised the precipitous ascents on either timents and by religion-the Catholic side, disappeared; the sides of the mounbeing that of the Verrières de Joux, and tains became more smooth and verdant; the Protestant that of the Verrières Suisse. dark woods of spruce-fir hung on them, How incontrovertibly does this prove or covered their summits on our right; that the religion of an individual is not and these, excepting the hardy juniper, adopted as the result of wise and mature deliberation, but that it originates in birth, circumstance, or accident! Altho' the residents of a valley, where every object is calculated to exalt and humanize, yet do they hate each other with the conEng. Mag. Vol. I.

X

were their only decorations; but the opposite side of the vale, which is exposed to a southern sun, and a milder atmosphere, was, for the most part, richly adorned with ash, beech, hornbeam, and maple.

283]

Swiss Scenery.-The Valley of Travers.

[284

The scenery, as we continued our and beautiful! How frequently must route, underwent but little variation un- language fail when we are traversing til our near approach to St. Sulpice, mountains, forests and torrents! how when the valley almost closed, and a frequently must interjectional exclamanarrow winding road only was left be- tions intrude, and prove that the lips and tween the mountains, which here be- the pen are powerless when they attempt came rocky and almost perpendicular, to describe scenes like those of the valley and assumed forms of peculiar wildness. of Travers. On reading what I have The trees which accompanied us were written, I feel so conscious of the colourfew and small; scarcely any thing but less descriptions which I have attempted underwood broke the ruggedness of this to picture, that I almost regret the promise ravine. We seated ourselves on some which I had the rashness to make you in pieces of rock, which lay on the side of person; how unwise, how presumptuous, the road, and contemplated this scene of was I when I trusted that admiration savage nature.

would generate capacity, and that, by my sketches of Alpine scenery, I could make you, in imagination, the companion of my route!

A peasant now passed;--we requested him to direct as to the source of the Reuse, which we had reason to believe was not far distant: in a few minutes We had only to mention the name of we deviated from the road by a precipi- Rousseau-the descendants of his cotemtous descent on our left. The dashing poraries are well acquainted with the for of the water indicated our approach to mer residence of the philosopher; we the object of our curiosity, and we soon were conducted to it. The house has beheld the Reuse rushing into its foam- nothing to distinguish it; it is at present ing bed, from the base of two precipices the residence of an accoucheuse, who is of entire rock, of immense magnitude, highly respected throughout the valley, The sight and sound communicated a as much on account of her skill as the new feeling-deep-delicious-intense: benevolence of her disposition; her name since I have become a wanderer of the is Bossu. mountains, I have discovered that my love of nature, however ardent, was but which I experienced on beholding the It is not easy to express the feelings a childish affection, compared with the once cherished residence of Rousseau. Its maturity of passion which now transports appearance is as unobtrusive as the rest my existence. The Reuse, and the of the humble dwellings of this village: mountain-pass, were the first objects it is a corner-house; and the ascent to which deeply affected us on entering that part of it which Rousseau inhabited Switzerland. is by a flight of covered stairs, raised The valley now reassumed its verdure against one side of the house; at the top and beauty, and we passed the pretty of the staircase is the entrance to the village of Fleurier, on our way to Mo- apartments of Rousseau. The first room tiers, where Rousseau lived during three was appropriated to culinary purposes, years of his eventful life: it was from and the adjoining room to the kitchen, this retreat that he was driven by the to the right of the entrance, was the malice and persecution of the minister, chamber of the gouvernante, Therese. Montmollin, and those villagers who Opposite to the door of entrance is the "professed and called themselves Chris- room in which Rousseau slept and stutians," in consequence of the sentiments died, and in which were composed some contained in the Léttres écrites de la of his most celebrated productions: in Montagne. The situation of Motiers is this chamber is preserved the desk, condelightful; I do not wonder that "the sisting of a deal board, suspended by man of nature and oftruth" selected it- small hinges to the wall, at which he used in doing so, and publishing his Léttres to stand and write. The room, which had de la Montagne, he proved himself wor- been left almost unaltered, even in its thy of this appellation, and his sincerity furniture, since Rousseau's decease, has cost him almost his life. It must have been lately white-washed. At the top deeply afflicted him to quit this valley- of, and opposite, the covered staircase, all sounds, all objects, here, are quiescent leading to the apartments, is a gallery