it to you if I had not tasted it: we are never quite safe from our enemies.

Tersitza. I have indeed: I would not have given | on the eastern coast. The Pasha of Negropont has threatened that, unless I lay down my arms he will bring such a force against me as shall crush me instantly.

Odysseus. My dear Tersitza! it was not very polite in you to offer me the milk before you had presented the wine to our guest.

Tersitza (aside to Odysseus). Alas! I know it. I can not be polite to him, though I wish it above all things, and think of nothing but of my failure in it. What an effect has a stranger in making one rude and unseemly! You never told me I was so before.

Odysseus. I never remarked it but in this one instance.

Tersitza. Oh! how badly do you see, my brother or how kind you are!

Odysseus. Come along with me, child!

Trelawny! I return to thee when I find that the women have taken their proper places of rest, and want nothing.

Tersitza. Brother!

thou art always.

Trelawny. Threats are useful only to the threatened the wise man has no will for them, and the strong man no occasion.

Odysseus. Rightly spoken. Our enemy is only our sentinel when he challenges as the pasha does.` I depart this night.

To thy science I commit the fortification of the cavern, to thy courage its defence. Whatever else is dear to me in the world I entrust to thee with the same confidence. Not last in the precious charge is thy own good name.

Andritzo, the father of Odysseus, was the chief of a village called Maieno, in Roumely, on the channel of Talanda. His property consisted of sheep and goats, and he led a wandering life, on the plains in winter, on the mountains in summer, principally those of Ptson and Parnassus. When he was about twenty years of age, a party of Turks having insulted the females of his family, a fray ensued: he drove them from his house with slaugh ter, set it on fire, and took refuge in the mountains. From that moment he became an outlaw, and joined a body of Klepts, then on Parnassus. He was distinguished for sagacity, courage, strength, and activity: qualities which his son Odysseus inherited without diminution. Tradition and Kleptic songs have preserved many extraordinary tales that of his prowess. Certain it is, he soon became chieftain of all the Klepts in Roumely, and raised a regular tribute, on the whole territory that extends from the gates of Athens to those of Yannina.

Discreet

Odysseus. What wouldst thou have?
Tersitza. I would ask something.
Odysseus. Be discreet, Tersitza!
Speak at once I grant it.
Tersitza. Grant what?
Odysseus. What you would ask.
Tersitza. Do you really now command
noble youth?

Odysseus. Is that all?

Tersitza. Tell me, tell me! Do tell me! Odysseus. Yes, my love! He has declared his resolution to obey my orders.

Tersitza. Oh! do command him then never more to ride between me and the edge of a precipice.. so terribly high, a brook seems only a long vine-tendril from it, and a fountain a glossy leaf: where the path is not level enough for any but the flattest stones to lie upon it (rounder would roll off), nor broad enough for the surest-footed beast to walk safely, though quite alone.

Odysseus. Thoughtless young man! why did he ride there?

Tersitza. I asked him myself the same question he said he rode there to admire the magnificence of the view.

Surely to look down on the peaks of rocks and the summits of pines, is not so pleasant as to lie back and see them one above another, from a tufted knoll of solid serpolet, where the lavender round about it does not prick our legs, because the roe has lain down and slept on it and broken its brittle stalks.

Tell him this: remind him the very first time you ride or walk together: and before you have gone far. He is seven years older than I am, or six at the least, and is not half so considerate and wise in many things.

Odysseus. I will speak to him now..

The power of the most ancient sovran families had a similar beginning.

His troops amounted to two thousand, scattered in small parties, and occupying a chain of well-fortified posts. For fifteen or sixteen years he repelled all attempts to subdue him; and after Ali Pasha had in vain tried every stratagem for his destruction, he entered into treaty with him, ceding to him the government of Livadia, together with a part of Roumely. But his hatred of the Turks was too before it: and on the declaration of war by Russia, he and profound to be erased: security, power, dominion, vanished his friend Lambro joined their forces with the Russian, who conferred on Andritzo the rank of general, and that

of admiral on Lambro. The admiral had the means of
escaping to Russia, when the empress lost sight of power
and glory in the lowest sensualities; and the general, after
many difficulties and dangers, reached Santa Maura, then
in possession of the Venetians, who, after pledging him
their protection, gave him up to the Turk. The Russian
court, with its usual indifference to human suffering, its
usual insensibility to honour, national and personal, and
its usual neglect of services no longer necessary to the ac-
complishment of its projects, forbore to interfere; and this
brave man, who had resigned a principality in the hopes
of delivering his country, died a slave in the bagnio at
His son however has lived to see the
Constantinople.
most infamous of men, the Venetian senate, reduced to the
same condition. May they never emerge from it! neither
they nor their descendants!

Andritzo left a beautiful widow, then only fifteen years of age, with an only son, Odysseus, born at Previsa. Ali Pasha did not visit the offences of the father on his family. On the contrary, he took them instantly under his protection; and when Odysseus was twelve years old, made him his pipe-bearer, an office of trust, confidence, and

Tersitza. Aside then.. for he would be angry distinction. He rose rapidly in preferment, by his fidelity

if he thought I said anything about him. Odysseus. I will call him then aside.

Tersitza. Let me go quite away first.

Odysseus. Trelawny! my presence is requisite

and courage, by his skill and enterprise; and at eighteen, Ali conferred on him the government which his father had holden, and which he himself retained till his death, excepting the short interval between the fall of Ali and the Greek revolution. Odysseus never deserted in any

D D

was intended, admitted into the fortress his own country. men, rather than the perfidious Gouras, who had already seized on the government of his benefactor.

Odysseus left one son, named Leonidas, born in Parnassus, a short time before his father's death.

By those who knew and lived with this chieftain, he is represented as a man incomparably good in all the rela tions of social and private life. He was ardent, and yet patient: he was confident in himself, yet modest toward everyone; venturing on such enterprises as seemed impossible to accomplish, and accomplishing them before the wonder at the undertaking had subsided. Appearing in different parts of Greece at nearly the same instant, and spreading the report by his emissaries that he was threatening the positions he perhaps had left behind them, his intentions and movements were unknown and unsuspected. Hence with five thousand men he slew twenty thousand of the enemy, and allowed them no leisure to fortify cities or throw up entrenchments.

extremity his early friend and patron, nor relaxed in his efforts to extricate him from the perils of his situation, but boldly broke through the blockade, and entered the fortress in person, with provisions and reinforcements. On its capitulation, he retired to Ithaca. Here a deputation was sent to him, hailing him as the descendant of their ancient king, and proposing to him in their enthusiasm the means of recovering his inheritance. Early intimation was given him, in this island, of the meditated insurrection of the Greeks. He landed in the gulf of Corinth, and, hastening to the mountains of Parnassus, raised the largest force that appeared in one body on any part of Greece, amounting to five thousand men, most of whom had fought under him for Ali Pasha. To quiet their consciences for acting against Mahometans, they were encouraged in the belief that he came to avenge the death of their old master; which among the Roumeliots and Albanians is considered a sacred duty. These, the first raised and the best disciplined troops in Greece, were slain for the most-part in the several hard and unequal battles of the first two campaigns; and it had become expedient to prepare some certain place of refuge for those who were remaining. Odysseus then fortified the great cavern in Parnassus. To this place he removed his wife Helena, his mother Acrivè, his sister Tersitza, and her little brother, committing to the courage and honour of Trelawny this sacred charge. Those who dreaded the establishment of a firm and orderly government, poured gold into the hands of Gouras. This leader had been pipe-bearer ten years to Odysseus, had been entrusted by him with the government of Athens, had been saved by him from the death-warrant of Ali; and now he hired ruffians and traitors to strangle him in his sleep. Odysseus perished in the Acropolis. One Whitcombe, an Englishman, aimed likewise at the life of By the machinations of Gouras fell the greatest captain Trelawny, and wounded him with a pistol from behind. of his country, at a time when Eubea was listening to his After two months of excruciating pain, his wounds growing counsels, and about to rise from her subjection. The blow daily worse, he left the cavern, appointing a Hungarian, by which he fell paralysed the arm of Freedom, and struck by name Camerone, to the chief command. Second to off the head from the body of Greece, leaving only a few him was a Turk: so that, if he were removed by assassina-places in the Peloponnese, inhabited by a people of untried tion, the crime would be fruitless to the perpetrator. After courage and doubtful faith. seven months Camerone was murdered; and the Turk, as

Enthusiastic and devoted in friendship, he thought other men sincere as himself, if they ever had sworn it, ignorant that these alone are dangerous. He had indeed some reason to expect, that ten years of kindness and of confidence, ten years laden with benefits, that rank, dignity, power, wealth, conferred by him on Gouras, would have ensured his fidelity to the last. Ali Tebelen, the most vigilant, acute, intuitive, intelligent, among the political men of our age (excepting the Ali of Egypt), warned him in vain against this villain, after he had pleaded for his life and had obtained his suit. The day will come, Odysseus! when thou wilt wish thy plea had been rejected. Insensible as he is to kindness and impatient of benefits, how will he bear to owe his life to thee? Never trust him after this'

CHAUCER, BOCCACCIO, AND PETRARCA.

Petrarca. You have kept your promise like an Englishman, Ser* Geoffreddo: welcome to Arezzo. This gentleman is Messer Giovanni Boccaccio, of whose unfinished Decameron, which I opened to you in manuscript, you expressed your admiration when we met at Florence in the spring.

Boccaccio. I was then at Certaldo, my native place, filling up my stories, and have only to regret that my acquaintance with one so friendly and partial to me has been formed so late.

How did Rome answer your expectation, sir? Chaucer. I had passed through Pisa; of which city the Campo Santo, now nearly finished, after half a century from its foundation, and the noble street along the Arno,+ are incomparably more beautiful than anything in Rome.

Petrarca. That is true. I have heard, however, some of your countrymen declare that Oxford is equal to Pisa, in the solidity, extent, and costliness of its structures.

Chaucer. Oxford is the most beautiful of our cities: it would be a very fine one if there were no houses in it.

Petrarca. How is that?

Chaucer. The lath-and-plaster white-washed houses look despicably mean under the colleges.

Boccaccio. Few see anything in the same point of view. It would gratify me highly, if you would tell me with all the frankness of your character and your country, what struck you most in the capital of the world,' as the vilest slaves in it call their great open cloaca.

Chaucer. After the remains of antiquity, I know not whether anything struck me more forcibly than the superiority of our English churches and monasteries.

Boccaccio. I do not wonder that yours should be richer and better built, although I never heard before that they are: for the money that is collected in Rome or elsewhere, by the pontiffs, is employed for the most part in the aggrandisement of their families. Messer Francesco, although he wears the habit of a churchman, speaks plainlier on these subjects than a simple secular, as I am, dares to do.

Petrarca. We may however, I trust, prefer the

beauty and variety of our scenery to that of most in the world. Tuscany is less diversified, and, excepting the mountains above Camaldoli and Laverna, less sublime, than many other parts of Italy; yet where does Nature smile with more contented gaiety than in the vicinity of Florence? Great part of our sea-coast along the Mediterranean is uninteresting; yet it is beautiful in its whole extent from France to Massa. Afterward there is not a single point of attraction till you arrive at Terracina. The greater part of the way round the peninsula, from Terracina to Pesaro, has its changes of charms: thenceforward all is flat again.

of what the guide asserted, and for teaching me the truth. I thought the fall of the Velinus not only the work of Nature, but the most beautiful she had ever made on earth. My prevention, in regard to the country about Rome, was almost as great, and almost as unjust to Nature, from what I had heard of it both at home and abroad. In the approach to the eternal city, she seems to have surrendered much of her wildness, and to have assumed all her stateliness and sedateness, all her awfulness and severity. The vast plain toward the sea abases the soul together with it; while the hills on the left, chiefly those of Tusculum and of Tibur, overshadow and almost overwhelm

Boccaccio. We can not travel in the most pictu-it with obscure remembrances, some of them deresque and romantic regions of our Italy, from the deficiency of civilisation in the people.

Chaucer. Yet, Messer Giovanni, I never journeyed so far through so enchanting a scenery as there is almost the whole of the way from Arezzo to Rome, particularly round Terni and Narni and Perugia.

Our master Virgil speaks of dreams that swarm upon the branches of one solitary elm. In this country more than dreams swarm upon every spray and leaf; and every murmur of wood or water comes from and brings with it inspiration. Never shall I forget the hour when my whole soul was carried away from me by the cataract of Terni, and when all things existing were lost to me in its stupendous waters. The majestic woods that bowed their heads before it; the sun that was veiling his glory in mild translucent clouds over the furthest course of the river; the moon, that suspended her orb in the very centre of it; seemed ministering Powers, themselves in undiminished admiration of the marvel they had been looking on through unnumbered ages. What are the works of man in comparison with this? What indeed, are the other works of Nature?

Petrarca. Ser Giovanni! this, which appears too great even for Nature, was not too great for man. Our ancestors achieved it. Curius Dentatus, in his consulate, forbade the waters of the Velinus to inundate so beautiful a valley, and threw them down this precipice into the Nar. When the traces of all their other victories, all their other labours, shall have disappeared, this work of the earlier and the better Romans shall continue to perform its office, shall produce its full effect, and shall astonish the beholder as it astonished him at its first completion.

:

scending from the heroic ages, others from an age more miraculous than the heroic, the Herculean infancy of immortal Rome. Soracte comes boldly forward, and stands alone. Round about, on every side, we behold an infinity of baronial castles, many moated and flanked with towers and bastions; many following the direction of the precipitous hills, of which they cover the whole summit. Tracts of land, where formerly stood entire nations, are now the property of some rude baron, descendant of a murderer too formidable for punishment, or of a robber too rich for it: and the ruins of cities, which had sunk in luxury when England was one wide forest, are carted off by a herd of slaves and buffaloes, to patch up the crevices of a fort or dungeon.

Boccaccio. Messer Francesco groans upon this, and wipes his brow.

Petrarca. Indeed I do.

Three years ago my fancy and hopes were inflamed by what I believed to be the proximity of regeneration. Cola Rienzi might have established good and equitable laws: even the Papacy, from hatred of the barons, would have countenanced the enaction of them, hoping at some future time to pervert and subjugate the people as before. The vanity of this tribune, who corresponded with kings and emperors, and found them pliable and ductile, was not only the ruin of himself and of the government he had founded, but threw down, beyond the chance of retrieving it, the Roman name.

Let us converse no more about it. I did my duty; yet our failure afflicts me, and will afflict me until my death. Jubilees, and other such mummeries, are deemed abundant compensation for lost dignity, lost power and empire, lost freeChaucer. I was not forgetful that we heard the dom and independence. We who had any hand story from our guide: but I thought him a in raising up our country from her abject state, boaster and now for the first time I learn that are looked on with jealousy by those wretches to any great power hath been exerted for any great whom cowardice and flight alone give the titles good. Roads were levelled for aggression, and and rewards of loyalty; with sneers and scorn by vast edifices were constructed either for pride or those who share among themselves the emolupolicy, to commemorate some victory, to rewardments of office; and, lest consolation be altogether the Gods for giving it, or to keep them in the same temper. There is nothing of which men appear to have been in such perpetual apprehension, as the inconstancy of the deities they worship.

Many thanks, Ser Francesco, for reminding me

wanting, with somewhat of well-meaning compassion, as weak misguided visionaries, by quiet good creatures who would have beslavered and adored us if we had succeeded.

The nation that loses her liberty is not aware

service to so brave and generous a master? Out then proceeded to the vicinity of another hamlet of my sight!"

called Sutton Colefield, in which country is a wellNever was the trick divulged by the friends of wooded and well-stocked chase, belonging to my Peter until after his death, which happened lately dread master the duke of Lancaster, who often at the battle of Cressy. While Peter was fighting taketh his sport therein. Here, unhappily for for his king and country, Sir Magnus resolved to the knight, were the keepers of the said chase display his wealth and splendour in his native hunting the red and fallow deer. The horse of land. He had heard of princes and other great the worshipful knight, having a great affection men travelling in disguise, and under names not for dogs, and inspirited by the prancing and belonging to them. This is easy of imitation: he neighing of his fellow-creatures about him, sprang resolved to try it: although at first a qualm of forward, and relaxed not any great matter of his conscience came over him on the part of the mettle before he reached the next forest of CanChristian name which his godfathers and god-nock, where the buck that was pursued pierced mothers had given him, but which however was so distinguishing, that he determined to lay it aside, first asking leave of three saints, paying three groats into the alms-box, saying twelve paternosters within the hour, and making the priest of the parish drunk at supper. He now gave it out by sound of horn, that he should leave Charlecote, and travel incognito through several parts of England. For this purpose he locked up the liveries of his valets, and borrowed for them from his tenants the dress of yeomanry. Three grooms rode forward in buff habiliments, with three led horses well caparisoned. Before noon he reached a small town called Henley in Arden, as his host at the inn-door told him, adding, when the knight dismounted, that there were scholars who had argued in his hearing, whether the name of Arden were derived from another forest so called in Germany, or from a puissant family which bore it, being earls of Warwick in the reign of Edward the Confessor. "It is the opinion of the abbot of Tewkesbury, and likewise of my very good master, him of Evesham," said the host, "that the Saxon earls brought over the name with them from their own country, and gave it to the wilder part of their dominions in this of ours."

"No such family now," cried the knight. "We have driven them out, bag and baggage, long ago, being braver men than they were."

A thought however struck him, that the vacant name might cover and befit him in this expedition; and he ordered his servants to call him Sir Nigel de Arden.

the thickets and escaped his enemies. In the village of Cannock was the knight, at his extremity, fain to look for other farriery than that which is exercised by the craft in Bromwicham, and upon other flesh than horseflesh, and about parts less horny than hoofs, however hardened be the same parts by untoward bumps and contusions. This farriery was applied by a skilful and discreet leech, while Sir Magnus opened his missal on his bed in the posture of devotion, and while a priest, who had been called in to comfort him, was looking for the penitential psalms of good king David, the only service (he assured Sir Magnus) that had any effect in the removal or alleviation of such sufferings.

When the host at Cannock heard the name of his guest, "'Sblood!" cried he to his son, "ride over, Emanuel, to Longcroft, and inform the worshipful youths, Humphrey and Henry, that one of their kinsmen is come over from the other side of Warwickshire to visit them, and has lost his way in the forest through a love of sport."

On his road into Rugeley, Emanuel met them together, and told them his errand. They had heard the horn as they were riding out, had joined the hunt, and were now returning home. Indignant at first that anyone should take the name of their family, they went on asking more and more questions, and their anger abated as their curiosity increased. Having an abundance of good-humour and of joviality in their nature, they agreed to act courteously, and turn the adventure into glee and joyousness. So they went back with Emanuel to his father's at Cannock, and were received by the townspeople with much deference and respect. The attendants of Sir Magnus observed it, and were earnest to see in what manner the adventure would terminate.

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Continuing his march northward, he protested that nothing short of the Trent (if indeed that river were not a fabulous one) should stop him; nay, by the rood, not even the Trent itself, if there were any bridge over it strong enough to bear a horse caparisoned, or any ford which he Go," said Humphrey, "and tell your master could see a herd of oxen, or a score of sheep fit Sir Nigel that his kinsmen are come to pay their for the butcher, pass across. Early on the second duty to him." The clergyman who had been morning he was nigh upon twenty miles from reading the penitential psalms, and had afterward home, at a hamlet we call Bromwicham, where be said mass, opened the chamber-door for them, and two or three furnaces, and sundry smiths, able to conducted them to Sir Magnus. They began make a horse-shoe in time of need, allowing them their compliments by telling him that, although drink and leisure. He commanded his steward the house at Longcroft was unworthy of their to disburse unto the elder of them one penny of kinsman's reception, in the absence of their father lawful coin, advising the cunning man to look... when they were interrupted by the knight, well and soberly at his steed's hoofs, and at those of the other steeds in his company; which being done, and no repairs being necessary, Sir Magnus

who cried aloud in a clear quaver, "Young gentlemen! I have no relative in these parts: I come from the very end of Warwickshire. Reverend