appreciating their own critical position, and the number and valour of the strangers, or in perceiving that whoever gained such powerful assistance must eventually vanquish their opponents, and therefore eagerly solicited the alliance of the Avars. The latter were not disinclined to avail themselves of an offer so conducive to their own designs. The destruction of the Gepida was the result of the union; and before ten years the Chagan of the Avars could boast that his camps were seated on the Danube and the Elbe. The Selavonic tribes had been thus successively oppressed by the Ostrogoths, and by the Huns and Bulgarians, yet, on the final retreat of Attila, they recovered a partial independence, until they were again harassed between the Longobards and the Gepidæ, when the Roxolani, the Jazyges, and the greater part of the Sclavi, collected into Dacia, on the northern shores of the Danube. This esta blishment in Dacia was probably among the reasons that induced Jus tinian to encourage the Avars, whose cruel devastations surpassed all that the wild tribes had ever suffered or inflicted. Many a Sclavonian name was obliterated from the earth; some of them were forcibly retained under the standard of the Chagan, and the more fortunate abandoned the Dacian dwellings, and fled from the Danube to the north, The retreating Sclavi passed the Hierassus, or Pruth, they lingered on the banks of the Denastris; but the memory of the persecuting Avars still urging their course, they gradually spread themselves to the Borysthenes, and wandering up that river, retraced the course down which their forefathers had once accompanied the victorious march of the Goths. They halted below the conflux of the first great tributary, and here they remained at a distance from the dreaded scourge, until, after a dark period of a century and a-half, they had so far emerged from their ancient rudeness as to resign the huts of the wilderness and to construct the nucleus of the city of Kief. But the great increase of the original colony, and the success which had attended their forced emi * Procopius, lib. iv. c. 25. gration, induced one tribe to seek a new settlement for their growing necessities, and to penetrate still further to the north. This tribe ascended the Borysthenes for four hundred miles to its septentrional source, and from thence continued its adventurous pilgrimage to the banks of the Volkoff, which it followed to the shores of Lake Ilmen. In this remote region its wanderings terminated, and the foundation of Novgorod the great has been a lasting memorial of the enterprise of the Roxolani, or "the 'Pas:"t For more than a hundred years, during which the dearth of records is but ill-supplied by the traditions of an illiterate people, we find that under various changes of fortune, consequent on the convulsions of a barbarous age, the settlers on the Volkoff, as well as their brethren on the Borysthenes or Dnieper, preserved their independence until the ninth century; and we can discover that shortly after the Roxolani had established themselves on the north of Lake Ilmen, they became involved in hostilities with the Ruotzi, the inhabitants of Ryssaland, who afterwards, however, became lastingly incorporated with them, when Ruric was invited to assume the sovereignty of the Novgorodians. But the Ruotzi, who possessed the modern districts of Petersburg and Revel, gained, at this period, but little advantage over the Sclavonian colony, being themselves defeated by the Varangians, or corsairs from Scandinavia, and driven back to their pri mitive territories on Lake Ladoga. Those Varangians were a warlike multitude of the Northmanni, or Normans, composed of Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians, who being perpetually in quest of adventures, gained from their exploits the ancient and renowned distinction of "sea kings." The Roxolani gladly received the Varangians as auxiliaries against the Ruotzi; but the corsairs, soon acquiring the dominion of a people they had protected, subjected their allies to vassalage and tribute, in common with the numerous aboriginal tribes of the northern mainland. The tyrannies and exactions of the sea-kings at length became so intolera ble, that the 'Pas entered into a league with the surrounding tribes, their companions in oppression, and by a vigorous and sudden effort defeated and expelled the Varangians. Immediately after, for the purposes of future defence and security, they formed themselves, in conjunction with those tribes, into a federative republic, of which they themselves would naturally be the most influential portion, having their rising city for the capital and centre of the state. But discordant nations of barbarians, ignorant and impatient of discipline or government, require the most dexterous management, and even the subsistence of a multitude, the greater part of whom had hitherto been supported by the precarious chances of the chase, must have always been a matter of considerable difficulty. The defects of a hasty organisation soon became visible; different and, perhaps, unfriendly tribes. did not easily amalgamate; dissimilar customs were not to be regulated by uniform laws; haughty and jealous chiefs could only be ruled by the steady hand of superior power; intestine divisions led to violence and contention; and the republic was threatened with ruin by its own disorders from within, and the consequent successes of its enemies from without. The Varangians especially took advantage of their calamities, and continually harassed them with their depredations, until Gostomisel, the most eminent of the Sclavonian leaders, prevailed on the confederation to call in unanimously their first and strongest enemies, the Ruotzi, and to offer the sovereignty of the Commonwealth to a prince of that nation, as being unconnected with their jealousies, and as a preponderating power, most likely to tranquillise and defend them. Their embassy was received by Ruric, the martial chief of the Ruotzi, who willingly accepted the offer of so materially extending his sway, and, A.D. 862,* he appeared, with his bro *Tooke, vol. i. p. 215. thers Sineus and Truvor, and the whole host of his warriors, at the mouth of the Volkoff. Ruric was immediately elected su preme ruler, and assumed the chief, or rather sole authority, as "Vilikie Kniæs," or Grand Prince, the peculiar title long borne by his descendants. Autocrat, indeed, might have applied to him, though self or sole ruler does not fully translate the Russian word "Samoderjetz, " compounded of "Sam," self, and "Derju," I hold, which would signify self holder, and may be better rendered by uncontrollable; but if the English language is "expressive and energetic," it is often inflexible. The sovereigns of Russia, however, were not styled by that high-sounding appellation of arbitrary power, nor even by the dignity of Czar, or of Emperor, for many succeeding ages. Thus was Ryssaland, from Riga to Archangel, added to Novgorod and the territories of the confederate tribes, which, extending to Kostroma, to Vladimir and Smolensko, have ever constituted "Russia Proper," or the dominions of the 'Pas, or Russians, though some have allowed a secondary claim to the Ruotzi, in originating the appellation of the subsequent empire. But the "Bertinian Annals" speak of the Novgorodians as Russians, at a date (839) long before the dynasty of Ruric; and though Mr. Tooke, in alluding to the emigration of the Dacian Sclavi to the Borysthenes, and from thence to the Volkoff (and particularly remarking, that under the name of Sclavonians were only known those who lived about Novgorod), is silent as to the name of the adventurous tribe; yet the geographer of Ravenna places the Roxolani or the 'Pas, on the shores of Lake Ilmen, A.D. 886. The 'Pws were identical with Russians to the Grecian annalist,† and the learned and accurate D'Anville gives the former to the latter for progenitors. †Theophilus Bayer, vili. p. 388. LADY CLARE. BY MARY C. F. MONCK. GOLDEN Autumn! ruddy Autumn! ardent-eyed and auburn-tressed, Down the mountains came he laughing-never brought he clearer skies, Oh, the splendour-laden dawnings of those lovely farewell days! Floating couches meet for fairies, sailed the thistle-down in air, Oh, the noons of warmth and fragrance! rich in more than Summer's bloom, Who could sigh for what had withered from the hedgerows and the bowers, Pale things born of fitful suns, and nursed by cold capricious showers, When the land was like a garden with the gorgeous Autumn flowers ? Dragon-flies of blue and opal, emerald, and yellow light, Through the green reeds quivering darted in their swift and headlong flight, And in thyme and purple heather hummed the bees from morn to night. From the vines upon the trellis heavy bloomy clusters swung, Hazel boughs, with ripe nuts laden, drooped above the orchard well, All the upland slopes were tawny with the fields of ripened corn, As if earth held none forlorn! and yet in hearing of their song, Her's are lordly halls and manors, oak-crowned hills and fertile meads- Fruits and blooms that never wither glow and ripen 'neath her tread, Silken hangings, fringed and tasselled deep with silver and with gold, All the treasures wealth can purchase scorned, unheeded round her lie, And she said, "All from the beggar to the monarch on his throne, "Beauty! choicest gift of heaven, queen of every heart on earth, "Would I were a peasant maiden, toiling for my daily bread, Seeking oft in vain for shelter where to screen my weary head, So that thou thy light of gladness on my lowly path didst shed. "Yet have I the thing men point at even I have dared to dream, "I, the dwarfish, the distorted, loving one whose noble name, "Oh, I would that heaven had made me poor and humble, if but fair! Lo! the forest and the river seem of bronze and molten gold, Round and red as blood in heaven the great harvest moon shines bright; Through the open oriel windows floateth in the breath of night, Freighted with the subtle odours that elude the noonday light. Throbbed the lady's burning forehead, aching feverishly and fast, Slowly, slowly from the shadows to the broad and clear moonlight, 'Neath her window through the lime-grove went they, they so fond and fair, And above them she, the heiress, she, the envied Lady Clare, Writhing like a lost soul gasping in the anguish of despair. Slowly, lingeringly, and softly, like two shadows, went they by ; Bowed with age, a white-haired woman standeth weeping at her side, VOL. XLVI. NO. CCLXXIV. 21 Ah! but love hath wondrous magic that can charm the heart to rest, "I have heard thy words, my darling, I have wept to know thy pain; "Ah, my nurseling and my treasure, life is never wholly bright, "Murmur not in thankless sorrow, lest the justice that denied "Thou hast wealth and power unshackled, and the world is full of woe, Where the wrong too often triumphs o'er the needy and the lowLike an angel sent in mercy, forth amid the sufferers go. "Sorrow hath a blessed errand, when it teaches us to seek "But the grief we nourish idly maketh hard the heart it fills; "Thou hast dreamed-youth has its visions, pining long, and sad, and sore, To behold its morning glories fade, the light of noon before; But be comforted and patient, once gone by, they come no more." Still the shortening days crept onward-death was brooding in the air- Now no longer idly dreaming, now no longer deaf and blind, Now in secret and in silence, like the blessed sun and rain, But as stronger grew the spirit, weaker, weaker, day by day, When the snowdrifts bent to breaking the tall pine's funereal crest, |