CHAPTER VII.

The Mountain of the Two Lovers.

WE forget in what book it was, many years ago, that we read the story of a lover who was to win his mistress by carrying her to the top of a mountain, and how he did win her, and how they ended their days on the same spot.

We think the scene was in Switzerland; but the mountain, though high enough to tax his stout heart to the uttermost, must have been among the lowest. Let us fancy it a good lofty hill in the summer-time. It was, at any rate, so high, that the father of the lady, a proud noble, thought it impossible for a young man so burdened to scale it. For this reason alone, in scorn, he bade him do it, and his daughter should be his.

The peasantry assembled in the valley to witness so extraordinary a sight. They measured the mountain with their eyes; they communed with one another, and shook their heads; but all admired the young man; and some of his fellows, looking at their mistresses, thought they could do as much. The father was on horseback, apart and sullen, repenting that he had subjected his daughter even to the show of such a hazard; but he thought it would teach his inferiors a lesson. The young man (the son of a small land-proprietor, who had some pretensions to wealth, though none to nobility) stood, respectful-looking, but confident, rejoicing in his heart that he should win his mistress, though at the cost of a noble pain, which he could hardly think of as a pain, considering who it was that he was to carry. If he died for it, he should at least have had her in his arms, and have looked her in the face. To clasp her person in that manner was a pleasure which he contemplated with such transport as is known only to real lovers; for none others know how respect heightens the joy of dispensing with formality, and how the dis

pensing with the formality ennobles and makes grateful the respect.

The lady stood by the side of her father, pale, desirous, and dreading. She thought her lover would succeed, but only because she thought him in every respect the noblest of his sex, and that nothing was too much for his strength and valor. Great fears came over her nevertheless. She knew not what might happen, in the chances common to all. She felt the bitterness of being herself the burden to him and the task; and dared neither to look at her father nor the mountain. She fixed her eyes, now on the crowd (which nevertheless she beheld not), and now on her hand and her fingers' ends, which she doubled up towards her with a pretty pretence, the only deception she had ever used. Once or twice a daughter or a mother slipped out of the crowd, and coming up to her, notwithstanding their fears of the lord baron, kissed that hand which she knew not what to do with.

The father said, "Now, sir, to put an end to this mummery;" and the lover, turning pale for the first time, took up the lady.

The spectators rejoice to see the manner in which he moves off, slow but secure, and as if encouraging his mistress. They mount the hill; they proceed well; he halts an instant before he gets midway, and seems refusing something; then ascends at a quicker rate; and now being at the midway point, shifts the lady from one side to the other. The spectators give a great shout. The baron, with an air of indifference, bites the tip of his gauntlet, and then casts on them an eye of rebuke. At the shout the lover resumes his way. Slow but not feeble is his step, yet it gets slower. He stops again, and they think they see the lady kiss him on the forehead. The women begin to tremble, but the men say he will be victorious. He resumes again; he is half-way between the middle and the top; he rushes, he stops, he staggers; but he does not fall. Another shout from the men, and he resumes once more; two-thirds of the remaining part of the way are conquered. They are certain the lady kisses him on the forehead and on the eyes. The women burst into tears, and the stoutest men look pale. He ascends slowlier than ever, but seeming to be more sure.

He

halts, but it is only to plant his foot to go on again; and thus he picks his way, planting his foot at every step, and then gaining ground with an effort. The lady lifts up her arms, as if to lighten him. See! he is almost at the top; he stops, he struggles, he moves sideways, taking very little steps, and bringing one foot every time close to the other. Now he is all but on the top; he halts again; he is fixed; he staggers. A groan goes through the multitude. Suddenly, he turns full front towards the top; it is luckily almost a level; he staggers, but it is forward-Yes-every limb in the multitude makes a movement as if it would assist him:-see at last! he is on the top; and down he falls flat with his burden. An enormous shout! He has won he has won. Now he has a right to caress his mistress, and she is caressing him, for neither of them gets up. If he has fainted, it is with joy, and it is in her arms.

The baron put spurs to his horse, the crowd following him. Half-way he is obliged to dismount; they ascend the rest of the hill together, the crowd silent and happy, the baron ready to burst with shame and impatience. They reach the top. The lovers are face to face on the ground, the lady clasping him with both arms, his lying on each side.

"Traitor!" exclaimed the baron, "thou hast practised this feat before, on purpose to deceive me. Arise !"

"You cannot

expect it, sir," said a worthy man, who was rich enough to speak his mind: "Samson himself might take his rest after such a deed!"

"Part them!" said the baron.

Several persons went up, not to part them, but to congratulate and keep them together. These people look close; they kneel down; they bend an ear; they bury their faces upon them. "God forbid they should ever be parted more," said a venerable man; "they never can be." He turned his old face streaming with tears, and looked up at the baron:-"Sir, they are dead!"

CHAPTER VIII.

The True Story of Vertumnus and Pomona.

WEAK and uninitiated are they who talk of things modern as opposed to the idea of antiquity; who fancy that the Assyrian monarchy must have preceded tea-drinking; and that no Sims or Gregson walked in a round hat and trousers before the times of Inachus. Plato has informed us (and therefore everybody ought to know) that, at stated periods of time, everything which has taken place on earth is acted over again. There have been a thousand or a million reigns, for instance, of Charles the Second, and there will be an infinite number more: the toothache we had in the year 1811, is making ready for us some thousands of years hence; again shall people be wise and in love as surely as the May-blossoms re-appear; and again will Alexander make a fool of himself at Babylon, and Bonaparte in Russia.

Among the heaps of modern stories, which are accounted ancient, and which have been deprived of their true appearance, by the alteration of coloring and costume, there is none more decidedly belonging to modern times than that of Vertumnus and Pomona. Vertumnus was, and will be, a young fellow, remarkable for his accomplishments, in the several successive reigns of Charles the Second; and, I find, practised his story over in the autumn of the year 1680. He was the younger brother of a respectable family in Herefordshire; and from his genius at turning himself to a variety of shapes, came to be called, in after-ages, by his classical name. In like manner, Pomona, the heroine of the story, being the goddess of those parts, and singularly fond of their scenery and productions, the Latin poets, in after-ages, transformed her adventures according to their fashion, making her a goddess of mythology, and giving

her a name after her beloved fruits. Her real name was Miss Appleton. I shall therefore waive that matter once for all; and retaining only the appellation which poetry has rendered so pleasant, proceed with the true story.

Pomona was a beauty like her name, all fruit and bloom. She was a ruddy brunette, luxuriant without grossness; and had a spring in her step, like apples dancing on a bough. (I'd put all this into verse, to which it has a natural tendency; but I haven't time.) It was no poetical figure to say of her, that her lips were cherries, and her cheeks a peach. Her locks, in clusters about her face, trembled heavily as she walked. The color called Pomona-green was named after her favorite dress. Sometimes in her clothes she imitated one kind of fruit and sometimes another, philosophising in a pretty poetical manner on the common nature of things, and saying there was more in the similes of her lovers than they suspected. Her dress now resembled a burst of white blossoms, and now of red; but her favorite one was green, both coat and boddice, from which her beautiful face looked forth like a bud. To see her tending her trees in her orchard (for she would work herself, and sing all the while like a milk-maid) to see her I say tending the fruit-trees, never caring for letting her boddice slip a little off her shoulders, and turning way now and then to look up at a bird, when her lips would glance in the sunshine like cherries bedewed,—such a sight, you may imagine, was not to be had everywhere. The young clowns would get up in the trees for a glimpse of her, over the gardenwall; and swear she was like an angel in Paradise.

Everybody was in love with her. The squire was in love with her; the attorney was in love; the parson was particularly in love. The peasantry in their smock-frocks, old and young, were all in love. You never saw such a loving place in your life; yet somehow or other the women were not jealous, nor fared the worse. The people only seemed to have grown the kinder. Their hearts overflowed to all about them. Such toasts at the great house! The squire's name was Payne, which afterwards came to be called Pan. Pan, Payne (Paynim), Pagan, a villager. The race was so numerous, that countrygentlemen obtained the name of Paynim in general, as distin