And rest thy throbbing temples on my bosom,
As if it were thy mistress': nay, shrink not,
For I will tend you with a woman's care,

Boy though I be.
Saavedra. Ah ! leave.
Cynthio. Nay, now
Saavedra. O thou deep wilderness !

Tomb of our chivalry!-Ah, prythee leave,
Leave this unwelcome service; bind me not-
Spain, thou art fall’n !- I prythee, bind me not,
Fond boy, with cruel bands that keep life in ;
Rather enlarge my spirit with thy sword:
Death hath no features half so grim as these
Which blacken on the field; each several face
Seems to draw up the parched lips in scorn
Of cowardice; and every eyeball glares
Reproachful on the wretch who dared to live.

Wilt thou still bind?
Cynthio. Ah, my good lord, Spain's wounds :

The pride of old Castile shall rise again
With every drop I save; the Lion's mane
Shall bristle with each sinew I weave up
In this strong arm; and I do prophesy
Miramolin shall fall beneath it, and the Moor
Bathe the proud wreath he gather'd on this field,
In dark and bloody tears. Look up, look up,

This shall be so.
Saavedra. Dost think so, boy?
Cynthio. I know it;

Only look up, and let me bind thine arm:
Why here's red blood enough to drown a Moor,
Spent on the innocent flowers : keep it for battle,
When Spain shall need its spending. So, so, s0,-
What would thy gentle Arethusa say,
Were I to tell, her knight had bled to death,

Whilst I stood reckless by?
Saavedra. Oh, Arethuse!
Cynthio. She whom thou call'st thy love; with what true faith

Heav'n knows, not 1. Come, for thy country's sake,

If not for her's, live on. Saavedra. For Spain and her

I'll live. Come, bind; bind up mine arm, I

I have another life to give my country.
Cynthio. Ay, not for Arethuse.
Saavedra. For Arethuse and Spain,

My country and my love. But hark thee, Cynthio:

Wert thou not hurt i'the fight? Cynthio. A scratch, my lord ;

Here, just about the wrist.-
Saavedra. Nay, gentle boy,

I think 'twas near thy bosom; that fell Moor
Struck at thy helpless youth beneath mine arm;
I could not shield both Spain and thee at once :
Why wouldst thou follow me perversely so,
'Gainst my forbidding ? battle's not for thee,

Thou woman-boy!
Cynthio. Fain, fain to die with thee.
Saavedra. Sure thou wert wounded: Come, uncase thy breast;

I swear thou hast a wound. Cynthio. My lord, my lord,

Ope not my breast I am not wounded-no.

Sooth! I am not-
Saavedra. Thou’rt modest as a maid.

say :

But whence, then, all this blood staining thy vest?
Cynthio. O-from thine arm, thine own arm-
Saavedra. Bind it, then!

Ay, I will live for Spain: Come, bind it up:
For Spain and Arethusa: haughty Infidel,

Thy crest shall bow for this: Come, bind me, bind me ;
Thou wert not wont to be slow:-To live,

Till Paynim blood has paid back drop for drop,—
Ay, that were sweet;-to free the land! to make
The name of Roman Brutus less than mine!—

To wear the rose of honour on my crest,
And press the flower of beauty in my arms-

O Arethuse! O Spain! O Chivalry!—

Cynthio, thou sleep'st-bind me, I say: I swear

The Saracen shall rue-why dost not bind?

What! toil'd so soon? Wherefore dost grow so pale?

Doth my blood fright thee?

Cynthio. Ay, my lord, i' faith.

Saavedra. Why, thou speak'st faintly; art thou sick, my boy?

Droop not, sweet Cynthio

(Cynthio falls on his master's arm, and dies.)

O ye pitiful heav'ns!

Take not my boy, take not my faithful boy,
My faithful, generous boy, that staying mine,
Let his own life run out. O gentle lad!
Look up, and turn thy pretty eyes once more
On thy dear master. Ho! the wound, the wound!—

(Opening Cynthio's vest.)

His sweet breast's full of blood;-O sun and stars!
A woman, and her bosom's snow defiled
With streams of crimson gore!-unhelm, unhelm!
A maid has been my squire.—

(Taking off her helmet.)

O Arethuse!

These are thy golden locks! these are thy curls!
I know them by their brightness and their fall.—
Now roll, ye waves! chime on, ye teeming waves!
And keep the sullen cadence that ye owe,
Hoarse dirge for many a hero! my death-chorus !
Rave me a pleasant requiem.-Dead? art thou dead ?
Sweet Arethuse, my mistress and my page?-
Mere marble! See her delicate fingers, twined
Amongst her bands, hang listless o'er my arm :
Her beauteous head droops gently on my breast,
Like an untimely lily cropt in spring:

Ay, here's the high and crystal brow indeed,
O'er which these tresses spread their yellow waves;
The cheek, the neck, the bosom, once pure bloom,-
Now pale enough to need no monument.

O luckless Arethusa !

Was it for this, dear maid, thy happy bowers
Were all forsaken? did thy slender limbs
Endure the coarser garments of a boy,

For this ungrateful meed? For this, for this,
Was danger, toil, and calumny out-braved?
Battle, and blood, encounter'd by my side?
To die at last, so young, so true, so fair,
A death of cruel pain! Love, thou art strong,
Can'st make a hero of a tender girl,
And fearful woman brave! Dear Arethuse,
My faithful page, my mistress best-beloved,
Thus let me press thy bosom to my breast;
One kiss, the next shall welcome me to heav'n.
(Falls on his sword beside her.)

THE CURSE OF COLDENGAME.

"Remove not the old landmarks; and enter not into the fields of the
fatherless."-Proverbs, xxii. 10.

THERE is a part of Suffolk known by the name of the "dairy district," which, to the curious in the pastoral branch of domestic economy, presents all that is interesting in the care and pasturage of cows, and the production of the richest cheese and butter. When you pass from the land of the reap-hook and ploughshare into the region of natural grass and perpetual pasturage, you cannot be insensible that a corresponding change has taken place in the manners and bearing of the people. It is true you will find no vacant shep herds piping in the dale, nor meet with flocks which seem fond of any other melody save that of the running brooks, where the grass is abundant, and the wild yellow clover green and savoury. The herds of cows-the ring-straked, the speckled, and the spotted, seem a most laborious grass-devouring race, bearing no resemblance to those more favoured animals which browze with such delicacy of taste, and low so melodiously, over the bloomy fields of some of our pastoral bards. If they are not of a strict pastoral kind, and cannot claim descent from those flocks to which Apollo piped and Daphnis sang, they are nevertheless a fair and a stately breed-of the colour of the richest cream-with an appetite which seems uncloyed with the balmiest morsels of the fields, and with udders ample and distended, nearly touching the ground, and seeming ready to shed at every step the fragrant treasures they contain.

As you stand where the plough has stopt, and where the last ridges of grain are waving, you will see before you, as far as the eye can reach, a region of natural pastures, bounded by long ridges of sloping hills, intersected by several pure but dilatory streams, through the deepest of which a girl may wade, and over the broadest of which a man may leap; while some scattered remnants of old forests guard the whole from the full sweep of the northern blast. In some places the trees rise, tall and straight-in a less favoured spot they Dec. 1823.

grow squat and gnarled-while in many parts the sterility of the soil has tamed down alike the oak, the ash, the beech, and the elm; and there they flourish, in the company of holly and mountain ash,- a kind of better brushwood. In the green and winding avenues innumerable herds of cows browze, or lie by the sunny side of the woods, chewing the cud, and lowing for the approach of a bevy of bare-armed maidens, who ease them, at stated times, of their increasing and painful burthen. The whole land seems divided by the hand of nature-the landmarks of knolls, and streams, and woods, portion it out into many large and irregular farms, each with hall and cattlehouses, rows of hacks, and lines of open sheds. An hundred hinds and maidens-to borrow the round numbers in which pastoral dreamers deal -are at intervals going and returning, laden with the liquid ore out of which the treasures of the district are coined. The simile of a commonwealth of bees singing as they go and come, and storing up the riches of the fields, though far from new, applies with great propriety to a race of people who rival in industry and in melody those laborious and har monious insects.

When you advance into the country, and the sharp edge of curiosity is somewhat blunted, you will find leisure to observe that each subdivision of the district has a system of management peculiar to itself. In one place a scrupulous observance of old pastoral rules prevails; in another, the indiscreet goddess, Chance, seems to have acquired the mastery; while the thirst of gain predominates on a third division. It is of the division over which Mammon was then waving his banner that our story must speak; and as it must speak with a tongue some sixty years old, we may suppose ourselves wafted back to that period, and that we are looking for the first time over the immense patriarchal establishment of herds, and hinds, and bond women. In other lands the cows roamed at 2$

large, feeding in groupes by the oaks, and of a distant field grazed by

a brook-banks ; but here they stood numerous cows. fastened to rough wooden mangers, “ It is, indeed," said one, who had in rank succeeding rank, with cut all the tokens of the pastoral charge grass before them, and a moveable of souls about him, “ an ancient and fence of rods or reeds to protect a venerable place-tradition hesitates them from the wind. Many men about the date of its foundation, and and maidens attended to the filling certain of those sages, the antiquaries, or clearing of the mangers—or moved have written very learnedly and unthe fences, as the wind shifted, or intelligibly about it. In groping after knelt--or, to borrow a northern word, its date, they have filled their hands « hunkered” and filled their innumea with idle controversy, and, in a style rable pails with milk. Others at swollen with Norman and Saxon home, on the cool tiled floors of the names, have floundered on till they dairies, transformed, in many a reek- are stayed by the very reasonable ing pan, the new milked-milk into legend of the Wolf and St. Edmund's curds, pressed out the whey with head—and there have they halted their hands, and filled the cheese- for breath before they take another moulds, and placed them under the step up the dark stair of conjecture cheese-presses. Another department and absurdity.” “ It would perhaps presented some dozens of busy hands be presumptuous," said his compaextracting, with many a plunge and nion, who seemed, by his shrewd and pull, the butter from the cream- suspicious eye, to be one learned in washing it in cold spring water, and the law, “ while such a controversy dressing it out in all its attractions for pends, to offer the opinion of one so market. Over the whole, one or two simple as myself: but to eyes less inold, considerate, calculating female spired indeed than those through spirits presided, and seemed, by their which antiquaries look, the house smooth shining looks, and round seems of the age of Henry VII. plump forms, something like suitable The arms of the noble name of Benpersonifications of those savoury net may be seen very curiously carved commodities-butter and cheese. amid the interlacings of vine and ivý. · The house, or rather hall, to which leaves, while over it is the figure of all those herds and hinds belonged, a wolf couching with a human head merits some notice. It had been in between its paws, which it may be other times a dwelling of note. It either watching or devouring. The was built chiefly with beams of wise on those matters say it is the framed oak, richly carved in a deep wolf and the head of St. Edmundsharp old Saxon style, with high peak while the simple, and therefore une ends and latticed windows, and with wise, say it is the arms of the corpomany marks of original grandeur and ration of weavers — a wolf's head antique beauty about it. Those who with a shuttle in its mouth.” Are ye are anxious after day and date for all sure," said the divine, “that the the labours of man may obtain a leaves are those of the grape ?" “ As useful lesson in the controversy which sure," said the lawyer," as that then burned, and which still smoul- grapes never grow without leaves." ders, concerning the age of the hall. “Then," said the divine, “ this On that very morning in which a throws some light on an old boast, man somewhat curious about truth that the lands of Framlingham, that would desire to commence this de- now flow with milk, once flowed sultory but remarkable tale, it hap- with wine.” “ Ah! the old vine pened that the antiquity of the terraces of Framlingham," said the hall had engaged the attention of two lawyer, “ which, planted by the persons, who, summoned on other Romans, intoxicated the Saxons, and business, sat under the southern filled the monks with delight, and porch-way, side by side. From this the nuns with joy. Those were place they had a view of a wandering merry times, Mr. Horegrove; but stream-which had obtained the merry times never last long. And I name of the Larke, from emitting, as am afraid, after all, that this English it ran, a kind of melodious din among wine would feel sour to the fastidious its pebbles ; they had also a view of lips of the present generation." many clumps of very old and stately At this moment a female shriek