and to recompense him for the evils which he had suffered. It received him as a citizen of the town, in the month of June, 1536; it gave him the house formerly inhabited by the Vicar-General, and assigned to him a pension of two hundred gold crowns, as long as he should sojourn in Geneva. He was admitted into the council of Two Hundred in 1537.

Bonnivard did not now cease to be useful; after having laboured to make Geneva free, he succeeded in making it tolerant. Bonnivard prevailed upon the council to accord to the Calvinists and peasants a sufficient time for examining the propositions which were made to them; he succeeded by his meekness. Christianity is always preached with success, when it is preached with charity.

Bonnivard was learned. His manuscripts, which are in the public library, prove that he had diligently studied the Latin classics, and that he had penetrated the depths of theology and history. This great man loved the sciences, and thought they would constitute the glory of Geneva; accordingly, he neglected nothing to establish them in this rising town. In 1551, he gave his library to the public; it was the commencement of our public library. And a portion of his books, are those rare and beautiful editions of the fifteenth century, which are seen in our collection. Finally, during the same year, this good patriot appointed the republic his heir, on condition that it would employ his wealth in supporting the college, the foundation of which was being projected.

It appears that Bonnivard died in 1570; but this cannot be certified, as an hiatus occurs in the Necrology, from the month of July 1570 to 1571.

SONNET ON CHILLON.

ETERNAL Spirit of the chainless Mind!
Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,
For there thy habitation is the heart-
The heart which love of thee alone can bind;
And when thy sons to fetters are consign'd-

To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom,
Their country conquers with their martyrdom,
And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind.
Chillon! thy prison is a holy place,

And thy sad floor an altar-for 'twas trod,
Until his very steps have left a trace

Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod,
By Bonnivard!-May none those marks efface!
For they appeal from tyranny to God.

THE PRISONER OF CHILLON.

I.

My hair is gray, but not with years,
Nor grew it white

In a single night,

As men's have grown from sudden fears:
My limbs are bow'd, though not with toil,
But rusted with a vile repose,

For they have been a dungeon's spoil,
And mine has been the fate of those
To whom the goodly earth and air
Are bann'd, and barr'd-forbidden fare;
But this was for my father's faith
I suffered chains and courted death;
That father perish'd at the stake
For tenets he would not forsake;
And for the same his lineal race
In darkness found a dwelling-place;
We were seven-who now are one,
Six in youth, and one in age,
Finish'd as they had begun,

Proud of Persecution's rage;
One in fire, and two in field,
Their belief with blood have seal'd;
Dying as their father died,

For the God their foes denied ;

Three were in a dungeon cast,

Of whom this wreck is left the last.

II.

There are seven pillars of Gothic mouli,
In Chillon's dungeons deep and old,
There are seven columns, massy and gray,
Dim with a dull imprison'd ray-
A sunbeam which hath lost its way,
And through the crevice and the cleft
Of the thick wall is fallen and left,
Creeping o'er the floor so damp.
Like a marsh's meteor lamp--

This is a beautiful poem; and we cannot help considering it the more so from there being nothing of the author's idiosyncrasy mingled with it a very rare circumstancs in Byron's writings !

Ludovico Sforza, and others.-The same is asserted of Marie Antoinette's, the wife of Louis XVI., though not in quite so short a period. Grief is said to have the same effect: to such, and not to fear, this change in hers was to be attributed.-B.

And in each pillar there is a ring,
And in each ring there is a chain;
That iron is a cankering thing,

For in these limbs its teeth remain,
With marks that will not wear away,
Till I have done with this new day,
Which now is painful to those eyes,
Which have not seen the sun to rise
For years I cannot count them o'er,
I lost their long and heavy sccre
When my last brother droop'd and died,
And I lay living by his side.

III.

They chain'd us each to a column stone,
And we were three-yet each alone:
We could not move a single pace,
We could not see each other's face,
But with that pale and livid light
That made us strangers in our sight;
And thus together-yet apart,
Fetter'd in hand, but pined in heart;
'Twas still some solace in the dearth
Of the pure elements of earth,
To hearken to each other's speech,
And each turn comforter to each
With some new hope, or legend old,
Or song heroically bold;

But even these at length grew cold.
Our voices took a dreary tone,
An echo of the dungeon-stone,

A grating sound-not full and free
As they of yore were wont to be;
It might be fancy-but to me
They never sounded like our own.

IV.

I was the eldest of the three,

And to uphold and cheer the rest I ought to do-and did-my best, And each did well in his degree.

The youngest, whom my father love Because our mother's brow was given To him-with eyes as blue as heaven, For him my soul was sorely moved; And truly might it be distress'd To see such bird in such a nest; For he was beautiful as day

(When day was beautiful to me As to young eagles, being free)— A polar day, which will not see A sunset till its summer's gone, Its sleepless summer of long light, The snow-clad offspring of the sun : And thus he was as pure and bright,

And in his natural spirit gay,

With tears for nought but others' ills,
And then they flow'd like mountain rille,
Unless he could assuage the woe
Which he abhorr'd to view below.

V.

The other was as pure of mind,
But form'd to combat with his kind;
Strong in his frame, and of a mood
Which 'gainst the world in war had stood,
And perish'd in the foremost rank
With joy :-but not in chains to pine:
His spirit wither'd with their clank,
I saw it silently decline-

And so perchance in sooth did mine;
But yet I forced it on to cheer
Those relics of a home so dear.
He was a hunter of the hills,

Had follow'd there the deer and wolf;
To him this dungeon was a gulf,
And fetter'd feet the worst of ills.

VI.

Lake Leman lies by Chillon's walls:

A thousand feet in depth below

Its massy waters meet and flow;

Thus much the fathom-line was sent
From Chillon's snow-white battlement,*

Which round about the wave enthralls:

A double dungeon wall and wave
Have made and like a living grave.
Below the surface of the lake
The dark vault lies wherein we lay,
We heard it ripple night and day;

Sounding o'er our heads it knock'd;
And I have felt the winter's spray

Wash through the bars when winds were high,
And wanton in the happy sky;

And then the very rock hath rock'd,
And I have felt it shake, unshock'd,

The Château de Chillon is situated between Clarens and Villeneuve, which last t at one extremity of the Lake of Geneva. On its left are the entrances of the Rhone, and opposite are the heights of Meillerie and the range of Alps above Boveret and St. Gingo. Near it, on a hill behind, is a torrent; below it, washing its walls, the lake has been fathomed to the depth of 800 feet (French measure); within it are a range of dungeons, in which the early reformers, and subsequently prisoners of state, were confined. Across one of the vaults is a beam black with age, on which we were informed that the condemned were formerly executed. In the cells are seven pillars, or, rather, eight, e being half merged in the wall; in some of these are rings for the fetters and the fettered: in the pavement the steps of Bonnivard have left their traces-he was confined here several years.

It is by this castle that Rousseau has fixed the catastrophe of his Heloise, in the rescue of one of her children by Julie from the water; the shock of which, and the illness produced by the immersion, is the cause of her death.

The château is large, and seen along the lake for a great distance. The walls are white.-B.

Because I could have smiled to see
The death that would have set me free.

VII.

I said my nearer brother pined,
I said his mighty heart declined,
He loathed and put away his food;
It was not that 'twas coarse and rude,
For we were used to hunter's faro,
And for the like had little care:
The milk drawn from the mountain goat
Was changed for water from the moat.
Our bread was such as captives' tears
Have moisten'd many a thousand years,
Since man first pent his fellow-men
Like brutes within an iron den:
But what were these to us or him?
These wasted not his heart or limb;
My brother's soul was of that mould
Which in a palace had grown cold,
Had his free breathing been denied
The range of the steep mountain's side;
But why delay the truth ?-he died.
I saw, and could not hold his head,
Nor reach his dying hand-nor dead,
Though hard I strove, but strove in vain,
To rend and gnash my bonds in twain.
He died-and they unlock'd his chain
And scoop'd for him a shallow grave
Even from the cold earth of our cave.
I begg'd them, as a boon, to iay
His corse in dust whereon the day
Might shine-it was a foolish thought,
But then within my brain it wrought,
That even in death his freeborn breast
In such a dungeon could not rest.
I might have spared my idle prayer-
They coldly laugh'd-and laid him ther
The flat and turfless earth above
The being we so much did love;
His empty chain above it leant,*
Such murder's fitting monument!

VIII.

But he, the favourite and the flower,
Most cherish'd since his natal hour,
His mother's image in fair face,
The infant love of all his race,
His martyr'd father's dearest thought,
My latest care, for whom I sought
To hoard my life, that his might be
Less wretched now, and one day free;

This is a fine image, however short