founding disarray of his person-a rare spectacle of the ludicrous and the wonderful-has in a moment lived through all the feelings that can be experienced on the scaffold. Thousands there are, who, in his situation, would have been stretched senseless on the ground by the first shock; but his robust structure of nerves, and his firmness of spirit, bore up against this dreadful trial, and enabled him to drink up its horrors to the last drop. Scarcely is this scene over before he is led through ranks of innumerable spectators to the extremity of the parade; where a close carriage is in waiting. A silent glance commands him to enter it; and an escort of hussars attends him. Meantime, the report of what has just passed is spread through the whole city; every window is flung up, every street is crammed with anxious spectators, who follow the cavalcade, shouting and repeating his name, amidst tumultuous and conflicting outcries of scorn, of malicious exultation, and of commiseration more bitter than either. At length he clears the town; but here a fresh shock awaits him. Sideways from the high-way, the carriage turns up an unfrequented deso1late road-the road to the place of execution; close alongside of which, by express orders from the prince, he is slowly driven. From this place, after being made to suffer all the tortures of the last agony, he is conveyed back to a more public road. Seven dreadful hours of scorching heat, without refreshment and without human converse, he passes in this carriage, which, at last, about sun-set, halts at the place of his destination-the state-prison. Bereft of consciousness, mid-way between life and death, (for a twelve hours' fasting, and a burning thirst, had at length subdued even his colossal nature,) he is dragged out of the carriage; and, in a hideous subterranean vault, he first returns to his senses. The first object which presented itself to him, as life is again dawning upon his eyes, is a dreadful dungeon wall, feebly illuminated by a few rays from the moon, which penetrates downwards, through small crevices, to a depth of nineteen fathoms. By his side he finds a coarse loaf, together with a jug of water; and close to that, a bundle of straw for his bed. In this condition he remains up to the succeeding noon; when, at length, a trap-door VOL. VIII. opens in the middle of the tower, and two hands appear, by which food, such as he had found on the preceding night, is let down in a hanging basket. At this moment, for the first time during this whole frightful revolution of fortune, did pain and the anguish of suspense extort from him a question or two-Wherefore was he brought hither? What offence had he committed? But no answer from above; the hands vanish, and the trap-door closes. In this abode of misery, without a glance even at "the countenance divine" of man, without a sound from human voices, without any ray of light to interpret his awful destiny, fearful doubts and misgivings overshadowing alike the past and the future, cheered by no beams of "day or the warm light," with no refreshment of healthy breezes to his fainting spirits, inaccessible to help, shut out even and rejected from the sympathy of mankind, -in this abode did he number four hundred and ninety days of anguish ; registering them by the wretched loaves which at every noon-time, day after day, in mournful monotony, were let down into his dungeon. But one discovery, which he made in an early stage of his confinement, filled up the measure of his affliction. He recognized the place; he himself it was,-he,' and no other, was the man, who, but a few months ago, had rebuilt it, under the impulse of an ignoble revenge, in order to inflict a languishing imprisonment on a deserving officer, who had been so unfortunate as to incur his displeasure. With barbarous ingenuity he had himself suggested the means of aggravating the horrors of confinement in this dungeon; and no long time before, he had made a journey hither in person, for the purpose of inspecting the building and hastening its completion. As if to push his torments to the uttermost, it so fell out that the very officer for whom this prison had been constructed,-a worthy old colonel,— had just succeeded in office to the late commandant of the fortress, recently deceased, and in this way, from being the victim of his vengeance, had become master of his fate. Thus vanished from his eyes the last melancholy consolation of his misery-the privilege of feeling pity for himself, or of taxing his destiny, harshly as it might treat him, with any injustice. To the lively sense of his own sufferings were 3 B now added a bitter self-contempt, and the pain, which, to a proud spirit, is among the severest, of a conscious dependency upon the magnanimous forbearance of an enemy to whom he had himself shewn none. But that just man was too noble to allow himself a base revenge. Infinite was the pain which it cost his benignant mind to enforce against the prisoner those severities of treatment which his instructions enjoined him. Nevertheless, as an old soldier who had been accustomed to observe the letter of his orders with unquestioning fidelity, he had it not in his power to grant him any thing more than his pity. A more active assistant the unhappy man found in the chaplain of the garrison; who, moved by the sufferings of the prisoner, which had reached his ears but lately, and then only through some obscure and incoherent reports, instantly took a fixed resolution to do something for their alleviation. This venerable clergyman, whose name it is with regret that I suppress, thought that he could in no better way fulfil the duties of his pastoral office than by exerting its whole influence in behalf of a wretched man whom he had no other means of serving. Not being able to obtain leave of access to the prisoner from the commandant of the fortress, he repaired in person to the metropolis, there to urge his suit directly with the prince. He kneeled before his highness, and besought him to extend his mercy to the unhappy man; who, shut out as he was from the consolations of Christianity, privileges of humanity which the heaviest guilt could not cancel, was pining away in helpless desolation, and possibly not far from despair. With all that intrepidity and dignity which the conscious discharge of duty bestows, he prayed he demanded free entrance to the prisoner, as a son of affliction and of penitence, who belonged of right to him, and for whose soul's welfare he was answerable to God. The good cause in which he spoke made him eloquent; and, moreover, the first heat of the prince's displeasure time had already done something to soften. His prayer was granted, with full permission to cheer the prisoner by a visit of spiritual consolation. After an interval of sixteen months, the first human countenance that G-beheld was the countenance of his be nefactor. The solitary friend, who in this world was yet living for him, he was indebted for to his afflictions: his prosperity had gained him none. To him the visit of the chaplain was as the revelation of an angel. His feelings I do not undertake to describe. Be it sufficient to say, that from this day forward he shed milder tears, because to one human being he saw himself the object of compassion. But, for the chaplain, horror seized him upon his entrance into this murderous dungeon. His eyes were wandering about in search of a human creature; and, behold! from a corner opposite to him, which resembled rather the lair of a wild beast than the abode of any thing in human shape, crawled forth a creature that awoke a rueful and a shuddering pity. A ghastly and deathlike skeleton, all the hues of life perished from a face in which sorrow and despair had imprinted deep furrows,— beard and nails, through long neglect, grown to a hideous length,-clothes, from long use, half-rotted away,—and, from total want of ventilation, the very air about him thick, sickly and infectious;-such was the condition in which he found this darling of fortune; and even under such a condition his iron constitution had not given way. Transported with horror by such a spectacle, the chaplain hurried away upon the spot to the governor, for the purpose of extorting a second indulgence to the poor wretch, without which the first went for nothing. As the governor again excused himself, by pleading the express letter of his instructions, he nobly resolved upon a second journey to the capital, with the view of once more making a claim upon the prince's clemency.—There he protests solemnly, that, without violating the holy majesty of the sacrament, he never could bring himself to go through any sacred rites with the prisoner, unless some resemblance to the form of man were first of all restored to him. This petition was also granted to him; and, from this day, the prisoner drew his breath again in an atmosphere of hope. Several long years Gspent in this fortress; but, after the first summer of the new favourite had passed away, and others had succeeded to his post, who either thought more humanely, or who had no vengeance to wreak upon him, he spent them in a far more tolerable condition. At last, after a ten years' confinement, the day of his deliverance appeared; but no judicial investigation, no formal acquittal. He received his freedom as a boon at the hands of grace; and, at the same time, he was enjoined to quit the country for ever. recovering from a frightful dream. In no long time, G beheld himself again in possession of all his former dignities; and the prince put force upon his own feelings of secret aversion, in order to make him a brilliant amends for what was past. But could he also restore to him that heart which he had for ever untuned for the enjoyment of life? Could he give him back the years of hope? Or could he devise any happiness for the broken down old man, that could make but a semblance of reparation for that which he had stolen away from him in his early prime? the youth; but what he sought was in this world to be found no more. Each constrained himself to an air of cold and chearless confidence. But both hearts were for ever divided by shame and fear. To the prince that object could not be gratifying, which recalled to his remembrance his own cruel preAt this point, my information in re- cipitation; and, on his part, Ggard to his history, all of which I have could never more give back his affecbeen able to collect simply from oral tions to the author of his misfortunes. traditions, deserts me; and I find my- Comforted, nevertheless, and in tranself obliged to step over an interval of quillity, he now looked back upon the twenty years. During this period G-past with the feelings of one cheared on began his career anew, in a foreign military service; and here also it conducted him to the very same glittering eminence from which he had, in his native country, been so awfully precipitated. At length, Time, who brings about a slow but an inevitable retribution, took into his own hands the winding up of this affair. The years of passion were now passed away with the prince; and, as his hair began to whiten, human nature began to assert her power over his mind. Standing now on the brink of the grave, he felt an earnest yearning awakened in him towards the favourite of his youth. In order to make some reparation if possible to the grey-headed old man, for the afflictions which he had heaped upon the youth, he sent a message to the exile, couched in kind and affectionate terms, inviting him back to his home; towards which the heart of G had long since turned in secrecy with languishing desire. Touching was the interview of their re-union; fervent and flattering was the reception, as though they had been separated but yesterday. The prince perused, with a pensive eye, that countenance, whose lineaments were so familiar to him, and yet again so strange. And it seemed as if he were counting the furrows which he had himself imprinted there. With an eager scrutiny he sought in the face of the old man for the beloved features of For nineteen years G enjoyed this tranquil evening of his days. Neither misfortunes nor years had in him been able to wither the fire of passion, nor wholly to cloud the festal geniality of his spirit. In his seventieth year, he was still grasping at the shadow of a happiness, which he had actually possessed in his twentieth. Finally, he died, governor of the castle of * * * where state prisoners are confined. It will naturally be expected that towards these prisoners he would display a spirit of humanity, the value of which he must have learned so well how to appreciate in his own person. But, ales! no: he treated them with harshness and caprice; and a paroxysm of rage towards one of them stretched him in his coffin, when in his eightieth year. SAPPHIC ODE To the Evening Star. Clouds float around to honour thee, and Evening SOUTHEY. When from the blue sky traces of the daylight Homewards weary man plods from his labour ; Thou art the lover's star! thou to his fond heart Thou to the sad heart beacon art of solace- Star of the Mariner! when the dreary ocean On the dear cottage, where sit by the warm hearth, Steals like a zephyr. Farewell, thou bright Star! when woe and anguish Soon shall the day come, soon shall the night flee, Glitter'st through the storm, and, mid the blaze of morning, Thus through this dark earth holds on the good man, Soon the goal is won, and the star of his being STANZAS ON PARTING. Though we, beloved, now must part, And, though my thoughts may not refrain I would not have one gloomy thought, A |