I wot, when the Cid was aware of this, a woful man was he,
At dawn of day he came to pray, at the blessed Father's knee:
"Absolve, blessed Father, have pity upon me,

Absolve my soul, and penance I for my sin will dree."

"Who is the sinner," quoth the Pope, "that at my foot doth kneel ?" -"I am Rodrigo Diaz-a poor Baron of Castille."—

Much marvell'd all were in the hall, when that name they heard him say.

"Rise up, rise up," the Pope he said, "I do thy guilt away;

"I do thy guilt away," he said-" and my curse I blot it outGod save Rodrigo Diaz, my Christian champion stout ;

I trow, if I had known thee, my grief it had been sore,
To curse Ruy Diaz de Bivar, God's scourge upon the Moor."

ZARA'S EAR-RINGS.1

"My ear-rings! my ear-rings! they've dropt into the well, And what to say to Muça, I cannot, cannot tell."

"Twas thus Granada's fountain by, spoke Albuharez' daughter,"The well is deep, far down they lie, beneath the cold blue waterTo me did Muça give them, when he spake his sad farewell, And what to say when he comes back, alas! I cannot tell.

"My ear-rings! my ear-rings! they were pearls in silver set, That when my Moor was far away, I ne'er should him forget, That I ne'er to other tongue should list, nor smile on other's tale, But remember he my lips had kiss'd, pure as those ear-rings pale— When he comes back and hears that I have dropped them in the well,

Oh what will Muça think of me, I cannot, cannot tell.

"My ear-rings! my ear-rings! he'll say they should have been,
Not of pearl and of silver, but of gold and glittering sheen,
Of jasper and of onyx, and of diamond shining clear,
Changing to the changing light, with radiance insincere-
That changeful mind unchanging gems are not befitting well-
Thus will he think,-and what to say, alas! I cannot tell.

"He'll think when I to market went, I loiter'd by the way;
He'll think a willing ear I lent to all the lads might say;
He'll think some other lover's hand among my tresses noosed,
From the ears where he had placed them, my rings of pearl un-

loosed;

He'll think when I was sporting so beside this marble well,

My pearls fell in,-and what to say, alas! I cannot tell.

A Moorish ballad.

"He'll say I am a woman, and we are all the same;
He'll say I loved when he was here to whisper of his flame-
But when he went to Tunis my virgin troth had broken,
And thought no more of Muça, and cared not for his token.
My ear-rings! my ear-rings! oh! luckless, luckless well!
For what to say to Muça, alas! I cannot tell.

"I'll tell the truth to Muça, and I hope he will believe—
That I have thought of him at morning, and thought of him at eve;
That musing on my lover, when down the sun was gone,
His ear-rings in my hand I held, by the fountain all alone;
And that my mind was o'er the sea, when from my hand they fell,
And that deep his love lies in my heart, as they lie in the well.”

RIGHT HON. T. B. MACAULAY.

THE Right Hon. T. B. Macaulay is the author of historical ballads eloquent and powerful in expression. His "Lays of Rome" are intended to imitate the lost ballad literature on which Niebuhr supposes the early Roman History to be founded. They are four in number,-“Horatius," "Battle of the Lake Regillus," "Virginia," and "The Prophecy of Capys." The language, reflections, and imagery of the ballads, are made to correspond with the supposed condition of the Roman constitution, and the supposed state of civilization at the time of the incident selected. The Homeric minuteness and simplicity and fervour of these splendid poems are admirable. Mr Macaulay's prose works abound with the fervid eloquence that characterises his verse. His History of England, which has recently so exalted his reputation, in its pictorial passages, exhibits all the qualities of epic description.

THE BATTLE OF IVRY.1

Now glory to the Lord of Hosts, from whom all glories are!
And glory to our Sovereign Liege, King Henry of Navarre!
Now let there be the merry sound of music and of dance,
Through thy corn-fields green, and sunny vines, oh pleasant land
of France!

1 The progress of the Reformation in France, in the 16th century, led ultimately to mass: cres and civil wars. The Huguenots, as the Protestants were termed in the reign of Charles IX., were driven to insurrection, by the evident designs for their destruction formed by the infamous Queen Mother Catherine de Medici and the Duke of Guise. A treacherous proposal of pacification, to be cemented by the marriage of Margaret of France with Henry de Bourbon, Prince of Navarre (one of the near heirs of the French throne, whose family was the chief support of the Protestant party), allured the Huguenot leaders to Paris, only to be massacred on the Eve of St Bartholomew's day (Sept. 5) 1572. Henry of Navarre and his relative the Prince of Condé escaped only by apparently acceding to the demand to change their religion. Freed from his thraldom, Henry of Navarre headed his party, whom the massacre had irritated rather than crushed or intimidated; and a new proposed pacification caused the formation, under the auspices of Guise, of a "Holy Catholic League" for the extirpation of heresy. This confederacy the King Henry III. was forced to act with, though he saw that the ambition of the house of Guise was dangerous to his throne. Both parties sought the aid of foreign alliances, the Protestants

And thou Rochelle, our own Rochelle,1 proud city of the waters, Again let rapture light the eyes of all thy mourning daughters. As thou wert constant in our ills, be joyous in our joy,

For cold and stiff, and still, are they who wrought thy walls annoy. Hurrah! Hurrah! a single field hath turned the chance of war, Hurrah! Hurrah! for Ivry, and Henry of Navarre!

Oh! how our hearts were beating, when, at the dawn of day,
We saw the army of the League drawn out in long array ;
With all its priest-led2 citizens, and all its rebel peers,
And Appenzell's3 stout infantry, and Egmont's Flemish spears.
There rode the brood of false Lorraine, the curses of our land;
And dark Mayenne was in the midst, a truncheon in his hand:
And, as we looked on them, we thought of Seine's empurpled flood,
And good Coligni's hoary hair, all dabbled with his blood;
And we cried unto the living God, who rules the fate of war,
To fight for his own holy name, and Henry of Navarre.

The King is come to marshal us, all in his armour drest,
And he has bound a snow-white plume upon his gallant crest.
He looked upon his people, and a tear was in his eye;

He looked upon the traitors, and his glance was stern and high.
Right graciously he smiled on us, as rolled from wing to wing,
Down all our line, a deafening shout, "God save our Lord the
King;"

"And if my standard-bearer fall, as fall full well he may, For never saw I promise yet of such a bloody fray,

Press where ye see my white plume shine, amidst the ranks of war, And be your Oriflamme to-day the helmet of Navarrre.”

Elizabeth of England and the Protestant German princes; the Catholics that of Philip II. of Spain: Swiss auxiliaries served in both armies. The King at length refusing to follow the dangerous measures of the League, an assembly of that body proposed his deposition, and the election of the Cardinal de Bourbon to the throne. In these circumstances, the King resolved to extricate himself by treacherously procuring the assassination of Guise and his brother the Cardinal of Lorraine. The other brothers of the duke escaped to head their party with increased hatred. The King threw himself, for protection and aid, into the arms of his opponent Henry of Navarre. Both princes marched to besiege Paris, now garrisoned by the Duke of Mayenne, the brother of the murdered Guise. During the siege the French King was assassinated by the monk Jaques Clement (1589), it is supposed at the instigation of the Guise party, and Henry of Navarre was now the legal sovereign of France. The Catholics refused to acknowledge him, and the war in the neighbourhood of Paris continued. The Duke of Mayenne was at length totally defeated (1590) at Ivry, a village a few miles from Paris, near the junction of the Seine and Marne. The King renewed the siege of the capital; and eventually ascended the throne only by the sacrifice of his religion.

Rochelle was viewed as the Protestant capital; its capture in the next century (1628) by Cardinal Richelieu totally crushed the Huguenots as a political party.

2 The clergy were, as might have been expected, peculiarly violent against a Huguenot King; the pulpits of Paris rung with denunciations against the Man of Bearn;" the same epithet was applied to Charles I. of England.

3 Swiss Catholic mercenaries were in the camp of the League: Count Egmont had brought from the Spanish Low Countries, shortly before the battle, considerable re-inforcements to Mayenne.

See note 1, p. 490.

5 The venerable Admiral of France, who perished in the massacre of St Bartholomew. See note 4, p. 394.-The Orifamme (golden-flame) was a red taffeta banner cut into three points, each adorned with a green silk tassel." It was always displayed in the crisis of the battle. The proper royal standard of France was white with embroidered lilies; used immemorially, till Charles VI. substituted a blue flag with a white cross;

Hurrah! the foes are moving! Hark to the mingled din,
Of fife, and steed, and trump, and drum, and roaring culverin.
The fiery Duke is pricking fast across Saint André's1 plain,
With all the hireling chivalry of Guelders and Almayne.
Now by the lips of those ye love, fair Gentlemen of France,
Charge for the Golden Lilies,—upon them with the lance.
A thousand spurs are striking deep, a thousand spears in rest,
A thousand knights are pressing close behind the snow-white crest :
And in they burst, and on they rushed, while, like a guiding star,
Amidst the thickest carnage blazed the helmet of Navarre.

Now, God be praised! the day is ours-Mayenne hath turned his rein

D'Aumale hath cried for quarter-the Flemish Count is slain.
Their ranks are breaking like thin clouds before a Biscay gale;
The field is heaped with bleeding steeds, and flags, and cloven mail
And then we thought on vengeance, and, all along our van,
"Remember Saint Bartholomew," was passed from man to man.
But out spake gentle Henry, " No Frenchman is my foe:
Down, down with every foreigner, but let your brethren go."
Oh! was there ever such a knight, in friendship or in war,
As our Sovereign Lord, King Henry, the Soldier of Navarre!

Ho! maidens of Vienna ;3 Ho! matrons of Lucerne ;*

Weep, weep and rend your hair for those who never shall return. Ho! Philip, send, for charity, thy Mexican pistoles,

That Antwerp monks may sing a mass for thy poor spearmen's souls.

Ho! gallant nobles of the League, look that your arms be bright;
Ho! burghers of saint Genevieve, keep watch and ward to-night,
For our God hath crushed the tyrant, our God hath raised the
slave!

And mocked the counsel of the wise, and the valour of the brave.
Then glory to his holy name, from whom all glories are ;
And glory to our Sovereign Lord, King Henry of Navarre.

this banner was employed till Charles IX. resumed the White and Lilies. The revolutionary Tricolor united these three historical colours, red, blue, and white: red was the Burgundian, Parisian, and Oriflamme colour; blue was the colour of the "Chape" of St Martin of Tours; white, the royal colour, and that of "Our Lady." The white was resumed by the Bourbons in 1815. Fouche's remark to Louis XVIII. has been verified by subsequent history: "The Tricolor Flag," said he, is to your majesty what the Mass was to King Henry IV.:" implying that anything like a return to the ancient regime, even in symbols of the old monarchy, would cause a second expulsion of the Bourbon race from the throne.

The name of the battle-field.

The Catholic German powers, and especially Austria, from her Spanish connections, supported the League. Almayne (Germany), from the ancient confederacy of tribes, 41

lemanni.

See note 3.

See note 3, p. 491.

5 St Genevieve is the patron saint of Paris: the citizens were warm partizans of the Guise faction.

Lars Porsena of Clusium by the Nine Gods' he swore
That the great house of Tarquin should suffer wrong no more.
By the Nine Gods he swore it, and named a trysting day,
And bade his messengers ride forth,

East and west and south and north,
To summon his array.

East and west and south and north the messengers ride fast,
And tower and town and cottage have heard the trumpet's blast.
Shame on the false Etruscan who lingers in his home,
When Porsena of Clusium is on the march for Rome.

The horsemen and the footmen are pouring in amain
From many a stately market-place-from many a fruitful plain;
From many a lonely hamlet, which, hid by beech and pine,
Like an eagle's nest,3 hangs on the crest of purple Apennine;

From lordly Volaterræ, where scowls the far-famed hold
Piled by the hands of giants for god-like kings of old ;
From sea-girt Populonia, whose sentinels descry
Sardinia's snowy mountain-tops fringing the southern sky;

6

From the proud mart of Pisa, queen of the western waves,
Where ride Massilia's triremes, heavy with fair-haired slaves;

1 The last Roman king Tarquin, expelled in the year of the City 245 for the insolence and tyranny of his family, among other auxiliaries was promised the aid of the Etrurian Lucumo, Lars Porsena of Clusium, who seems, however, to have rather been influenced by ambitious views. The tale of this legendary war abounds in traditions of Roman magnanimity and courage (See Livy, ii. 10, 12); among these was the defence of the Sublician bridge almost single handed, by Horatius (surnamed Cocles, the One-eyed"), against the whole Tuscan army. When his resistance had given time to his countrymen to cut down the bridge behind him, he swam the Tiber amidst the darts of the enemy. This tradition is the subject of Mr Macaulay's first "Lay:" it is supposed to be sung about the period of the Gallic sack of Rome (B. c. 390), when the state was rent between contending factions, and when the “honest citizen" author might pine after "good old times," of which there were traditionary reminiscences.-Lars plur. Lartes), perhaps equivalent to the dignity Lord; Lares was applied to the Roman domestic tutelary deities. See note 1, p. 182. Clusium (Chiusi), in the vale of the Clanis Chiana), at this period the chief of the northern cities of Etruria: see Dennis' Etruria, vol. ii. p. 384, et seq.

The Novensiles, the nine "Lightning-shedding" gods of the Etrurians.-Dennis, i. 52. 3 Comp. "Celsae nidum Acherontiae," Hor. Odes, iii. 4, 14. According to Dennis, this description is not applicable to the Etruscan cities.-Dennis, i. p. xxx.

Dennis describes the situation of Volaterra as peculiarly meriting the epithet “lordly," "as it crowns the summit of a steep and lonely height. Volaterra was a city of "first importance, with a larger territory than belonged to any other city of the (Etruscan) Confederation;""we now see but the skeleton of her Titanic form.”—Dennis, ii. 141, &c. 5 Populonia, a colony of Volaterra, derived its consequence from its commerce and the strength of its semi-insulated position. The Sardinian mountains Dennis declares to be invisible from its heights.-Dennis, ii. 39.

6 Pisae (Pisa) was a splendid Pelasgian city, at the confluence of the Arnus (Arno) and Auser (Serchio), colonized by Rome about B. c. 180, on account of its excellent haven and facilities for shipbuilding. The commercial Pisa of the middle ages is so bright a vision as to throw into the shade the glories of her remoter antiquity:" it still retains its importance, and smiles in the garlands of ever-flourishing youth."-Dennis, ii. 87. Gallic and German slaves from Massilia (Marseilles) were imported in great numbers into Italy.