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the minister, in addressing them, rose by degrees into a strain of wild bnt resistless eloquence, and bent his piercing regard on the various characters around him, while the fine tones of his voice where echoed from precipice and shore. Then came forth the various passions and emotions of the heart without disguise, and the minister, whose enthusiasm kindled as he saw it prevail around him, and to whom sighs and wailings were sounds as delightful as are to the warrior the cries of the vanquished, became yet more wild and irresistable, and felt that the spirits of the people were chained and bowed in his grasp.

There was one, however, to whom this scene opened, for the first time, brighter hours and happier prospects. Apart from the rest of the multitude, and on the declivity of the hill, which he had reached with great difficulty, lay Williams. He was stretched on the earth, his arm resting on the rock, and feebly supporting his wearied head, and his pale counteance, bent with an impassioned expression on the man whose words seemed to enter his very soul. He trembled at the portrait drawn of the guilty; and his own rash deed, with its possible consequences, rushed over his thoughts: but by degrees his eye grew radiant with hope; a smile (long a stranger there) passed over his wasted features, and he burst into a passion of tears. A better impulse was given to the hopeless man ; and despair, that had previously marked him for her own, had fled for ever. That fearful strife of love, of jealously, and baffled desire, began to subside; its bitterness was taken away, and he even forgave the man who had spoiled him of the last and only hope of his existence. When the assembled multitude dispersed from the hill, Williams again sought his home, that no longer looked so sad to his eye. Henceforth his remaining days passed more tranquilly; and although he felt that " the silver cord and the golden chalice” of life were soon to be broken, he was resigned that it should be so, and looked onward as the captive gazes forth on the loveliness of lake and mountain that is spread around the wails of his cell. Death could have nothing so terrible as the war of the passions, which had torn his heart, but had now yielded to a mightier principle.

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So felt the unfortunate youth, whose soul grew happier as his strength wasted his silent and forsaken chamber became to him even a palace, peopled with the beautiful visions of his fervid imagination, that were drawn from another and brighter world: yet with these would often mingle an image of his dear but perjured Anne; it came before him with the same bright eyes, fair hair, and looks of tenderness, as in former days, and refused to depart.

It was towards the close of Autumn, the leaves had begun to fall from the trees; and Williams resolved to exert all his remaining strength, one fine evening, in order to reach the scene he had loved to visit in former years, and behold it once more ere he died. Every step along the path, as he slowly went, seemed dear to his memory, and he came at last to the glen that was to have been the place of his marriage happiness. His sunken looks brightened as he entered it, and looked on every spot, unchanged as on the day he last walked there with his intended wife. The cottage was tenantless, and the trees spread their shadows uselessly above, but the stream hurried loudly over its narrow bed, the sides of the hills were covered with verdure, and the small sandy beach below, on which the waves broke gently, glittered in the sun, as fair as ever. This was to have been their home: in the forsaken cottage Anne and himself were to have lived for years-and years of such tenderness and lasting attachment! So had they said and believed, the last time they had sat within its walls, and busied themselves in forming the little arrangements of their future establishment. It was on just such an evening as the present, as calm and silent

Williams strove to banish these recollections, and to fix his thoughts on higher and more enduring objects-but it might not be; his strength both of body and mind fell beneath the effort.-

The day had faded some time, and every object had begun to grow indistinct, when one of the inhabitants of the town, returning by chance through the glen, found the unfortunate young man lying lifeless on the bank beside the dwelling. His features were calm as in sleep;-in one hand was clasped a Bible; while the other, pressed on his heart, contained a small minature of the girl he had loved with an intenseness that men in his condition of life seldom feel.-Tales of the West.

THE VICTIM BRIDE.

BY W. H. HARRISON.

I saw her in her summer bow'r. and oh! upon my sight
Methought there never beam'd a form more beautiful and bright!
So young, so fair, she seem'd as one of those aerial things
That live but in the poet's high and wild imaginings;

Or like those forms we meet in dreams from which we wake, and weep
That earth has no creation like the figments of our sleep.

Her parent-loved he not his child above all earthly things!
As traders love the merchandise from which their profit springs;
Old age came by, with tott'ring step, and, for the sordid gold
With which the dotard urged his suit, the maiden's peace was sold.
And thus (for oh! her sire's stern heart was steel'd against her pray'r)
The hand he ne'er had gain'd from love, he won from her despair.

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I saw them through the church-yard pass, but such a nuptial train
I would not for the wealth of worlds should greet my sight again.
The bridemaids, each as beautiful as Eve in Eden's bow'rs,
Shed bitter tears upon the path they should have strewn with flow'rs.
Who had not deem'd that white-robed band the funeral array,
Of one an early doom had call'd from life's gay scene away?

The priest beheld the bridal group before the altar stand,

And sigh'd as he drew forth his book with slow reluctant hand:

He saw the bride's flow'r-wreathed hair, and mark'd her streaming eyes,
And deem'd it less a christian rite than a pagan sacrifice:

And when he call'd on Abraham's God to bless the wedded pair,

It seem'd a very mockery to breathe so vain a pray'r.

I saw the palsied bridegroom too, in youth's gay ensigns drest;

A shroud were fitter garment far for him than bridal vest;

I mark'd him when the ring was claim'd, 'twas hard to loose his hold,

He held it with a miser's clutch-it was his darling gold,

His shrivell'd hand was wet with tears she pour'd, alas! in vain,
And it trembled like an autumn leaf beneath the beating rain.

I've seen her since that fatal morn-her golden fetters rest
As e'en the weight of incubus, upon her aching breast.
And when the victor, Death, shall come to deal the welcome blow,
He will not find one rose to swell the wreath that decks his brow;
For oh! her cheek is blanch'd by grief which time may not assuage,-
Thus early Beauty sheds her bloom on the wintry breast of Age.

The Keepsake.

THE WANDERING MINSTRELS.

A Tale founded on Facts.

BY THE REV. F. A. COX, LL. D.

A REVERSE of fortune, the particulars of which it is not necessary to detail, ̈ reduced the parents of the two individuals of whom we are about to furnish a brief account, from comparative affluence to real poverty and an early tomb. Their orphan children were consequently cast upon the wide world ere the first seeds of a poor education had germinated in the mind, and under circumstances which inevitably associated them with very inferior society. Riccolto and Annette (such were their names respectively,) after having spent the period of childhood in their native place, in the immediate vicinity of Rome, acquired the musical skill, and finally adopted the vagrant habits of the wandering minstrels of Italy. Before, however, relating their adventures, it may be proper to advert to their profession; for such was formerly the high-sounding term applied to the subject.

During the middle ages, minstrelsy was in repute among all classes of the community; and it was well adapted to the romantic character and general habits of those times. Scarcely any country was to be found where this practice was not encouraged, and where it did not become both the means of advancing literature, and the instrument of political changes. At festivals, in abbeys, in great halls, and even in kings' palaces, minstrels were constantly present, for the purpose of celebrating heroic deeds. soothing by their wild airs the mournful heart, or inspiring with fresh hilarity the joyous one. As it was their business to operate on human passions, and to serve as the incidental-often unsuspected medium of intercourse between persons severed from each other by unpropitious circumstances; or to recount the feats of individual prowess, and of public warfare; it may easily be imagined that while they entertained or instructed others, they did not fail to enrich themselves. So well practised, indeed, were they in this art of self-advancement, that it was not unusual, at the period in question, to see the minstrel with his silver harp, and with his gold chains and rings of jewelry, sharing the best entertainment at the blazing hearth of our forefathers. Those who were not of the first class of eminence, and, therefore, unpatronized by the great, obtained subsistence by wandering from town to town, and village to village, to repeat the compositions of others, in the form of songs, ballads, and short stories of mingled fact and fiction. After the fourteenth century this profession declined in importance, till it was totally disregarded, and at length, in Eugland, absolutely proscribed. The general diffusion of knowledge has been unfavourable to this irregular kind of profession; but the universal love of entertainment, a certain indefinable attachment to the practices of antiquity, and especially the melodies of the Italian language, have contributed to perpetuate it, though in the humbler form, to modern times.

At the commencement of the French Revolution, when massacres and proscriptions were the order of the day,-when nothing was sacred, and no one safe, our minstrels crossed the Alps into France, and wandering along, in the imagined security of their lowliness and poverty, to the city of Lyons. which was at that period the abode of frenzy and anarchy. The slightest indiscretion, the most innocent conversation, even an ignorant omission of what had been prescribed, was sufficient to expose to the utmost danger before the tribunals of the day. Poor Riccolto, in spite of his foreign extraction, of his language, of his profession, of his sister's agony and his own tears, having been first inserted in the Register, (a book of an enormous size, and filled in every page with accusations and maledictions,) was dragged

to the Hotel de Ville, to make his appearance before the Provisional Commission. His crime was that of wearing a hat without a cockade!

On the day of his examination there were two or three accompanying prisoners, whom it may be worth while to notice, in order to show the spirit of those tribunals, and of the times. The courageous reply of one of them, the Cure of Amplepuy, was remarkable.-" Do you believe in a Hell?" was the question.-"How," said he, "could I entertain any doubt of it when I see what is passing here? Had I been incredulous before, when I came here I must necessarily have been convinced." Another alledged culprit, Mary Adrian, a girl of sixteen, clothing herself in a man's dress, performed, during the siege of the place, the dangerous and laborious service of an artilleryman. She was asked, "How came you to brave the danger, and fire the cannons against your country?"-"On the contrary," she replied;" it was to defend, and to save it from oppression." Another lass, of a pleasing appearance, like our minstrel did not, or would not, wear a cockade. She was asked the reason. "It is not the cockade itself," said she, “that I dislike; but as you wear it, to me it seems the signal of crimes." Lafaye gave a sign to the turnkey, who was placed behind her, to fix a cockade on her bonnet-"Go away," said he; "while you wear this you will be safe." The girl with great coolness immediately took it off, and addressed these few words in a dignified tone to the judges: "I return it to you;" and she instantly left the room and went to execution. At the same moment Riccolto was brought forward; but the same crime having been imputed to him, and the previous scene having produced great excitement, a nod from the presiding judge was, as in many other cases, a sufficient condemnation; and the turnkey, striking him upon the shoulder in the usual form, exclaimed, "Follow me!"

He then proceeded with his prisoner in silence along a little winding Etair-case, which led under the portico of the Hotel de Ville, through the arches which support the Grand Court, into the vaults below. At the first resting-place there was an open railing for a fence, where relatives and friends were continually seen full of alarming expectation, and making anxious inquiries. Here Riccolto had a momentary glance of his distracted sister, who, in utter disregard of every observer, and of the whole universe, addressed, upon her knees, a fervent prayer to the Author of life and death, intreating him to bestow the former, and avert the latter from her suffering brother. The inexorable man of office led him to the condemned cell, which exhibited a melancholy and terrific scene. There death presented itself in a thousand forms: nothing was seen but his image; nothing read but the decisions which rendered his approach certain; nothing written on the walls but imprecations, prayers, and tender adieus. In one obscure corner were traceable the following words: "In one hundred and thirty minutes I shall exist no more. I shall have seen death. Blessed event! Will it not bring me to rest?"-Another melancholy inscription to this effect, was just perceptible: "I am calm in my last hour. I thank thee for it, Supreme Author of life and death! I am perfectly well. I go, In one hour I shall be motionless, and my body cold as ice. My head, now full of thought, will be thrown into the pit! The blood which now warms my veins, will dye the ground. What then is life? What is death? I have only to wait a moment to know."-Near the door was written in pencil, "Cruel judges! you deceive yourselves in thinking to punish me. end of my days is the end of my sorrows, and ye are my truest friends!" Common misery and genuine sympathy formed a bond of union in this dreary abode. As soon as the officer had left Riccolto for execution, with a crowd of other condemned persons, they pressed around him with the faint hope of imparting some consolation. “Come,” said they, “come and take some supper with us: this is the last inn of life, and our journey is just

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ended!" Riccolto partook of the supper, such as it was, and retired to the darkest recess he could find, where, covering himself with the straw, exhausted nature at length lost in sleep the recollection of the sentence he was condemned to undergo. The morning brought with it the hour of execution. The prisoners were bound and led forth; but Riccolto was unperceived, forgotten, and left asleep in his melancholy nook. confusion, the bustle, the number, will account for this curious oversight. Among the victims of this fatal morning was a member of the municipality of Mornand, of the name of Laurenson. This person bore so striking a resemblance to poor Riccolto, that, looking at him as he was hurried by the grating, through her tear-streaming eyes, Annetto mistook his identity, and instantly followed, in agony, the gloomy train. Laurenson had received an energetic appeal on his behalf from the inhabitants of his commune; but as he had been assured of a release, he deemed it unnecessary to present that important document to the judges, and put the appeal into his pocket. Now, however, contrary to his just and joyous anticipations, he was cruelly bound, and marched forward to the guillotine. Palpitating with terror, and doubting whether he was really going to suffer, or whether it was only a frightful dream, he perceived that his appeal fell out of his pocket. A gendarme immediately picked it up. "Oh!" said the condemned man, "if the judges could but read it, I should not suffer; but, alas! I cannot convey it." The brave soldier quitted his ranks, broke through the crowd, ascended to the tribunals, presented the appeal, and obtained the authority to bring back the prisoner to the common hall. There was yet time a minute remained for Laurenson to live. Forty persons were at this time led to the guillotine, and the name of Laurenson had, by a singular casualty, or rather providence, been inserted last in the fatal roll. Already thirtynine had fallen; already was he, the last prisoner, bound to the fatal engine; when the gendarme rushed to the spot with breathless eagerness, vociferating, Stop !" He presented the order, and the prisoner was released: but he had become motionles with terror. It was believed he had actually expired; but life being at length restored, it was found to be worse than death, for reason was irrevocably gone. The poor sister of Riccolto fainted at the same moment, supposing that he, whom she had mistaken for her brother, had really undergone this sanguinary execution. Upon her recovery, as she was unable to obtain, and, in fact, discouraged from seeking any tidings of her brother, she fled from the dreadful spot for ever!

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We must now return to the dungeon, where he continued actually incarcerated. Upon waking from his long sleep of so many hours, he was overwhelmed with astonishment at his solitude; but resigning himself to the mysterious circumstance, the day passed on in darkness and silence and despair. The next was a Decade; no one was then judged, no one condemned, no one immured in the prison. The day following happened to be still a holiday, both for the judges and the executioner; while Riccolto, entirely forgotten, would have perished with hunger, had he not found some remnants of food which had been left behind by the former occupants of this dreary habitation. On the fourth day, the jailor brought another victim of revolutionary vengeance to this melancholy cell, when he was startled at the sight of a man. "Whence do you come?" exclaimed he, in the utmost agitation and alarm. "I have never gone out from this place," replied Riccolto, in a faint voice; "doubtless the companions of my misery have been led to execution. I was asleep; I heard nothing; they forgot to call me to follow them: it is my misfortune; I wish to live no longer; but this misfortune may, probably, be retrieved to-day, since I see you." The jailor instantly went up to the tribunal, and related the story. Riccolto was called and examined; his evidence was believed; and the singularity of his case induced even these infuriated monsters to set him at liberty.

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