Concealment is implied by this name. According to the popu lar belief of the Cimbric peasants, she spreads plague and pestilence, and diffuses all evil whilst she rides by night on the threefooted horse of hell (Helhest). Hela and the war-wolves retained their empire in Normandy, although, after the Northmen of Hastings became the Normans of Rollo, they seem to have lost the memory of their ancient superstitions as rapidly as they forgot their northern tongue. From Hela was generated HELLEQUIN; a name in which, under the disguise of romance orthography, we can have no difficulty in recognizing HELA-KIÖN, the race of Hela; it was those whom Richard Fearnought, duke of Normandy, the son of Robert the Devil, encountered hunting and reveling in the forest. As the romance tells, Hellequin was a knight who wasted his gold in the wars which Charles Martel waged against the heathen Saracens. When the wars were ended, he and his lineage, not having wherewithal to sustain themselves, took to wicked courses. They spared neither virgin, nor widow, nor orphan; and the sufferers cried out to heaven for vengeance. When matters had come to this pass, it chanced that Hellequin fell sick, and died, and was in fearful danger of condemnation; but the good works which he had performed by waging war against the heathen Saracens availed him: and it was allotted as a penance to him and his lineage, that, dead as they were, they should wander by night throughout the world, in bitterness and toil. But the wild huntsman was not confined to the woods of Normandy. In the year 1598, when Henry IV. was hunting in the forest of Fontainebleau, he suddenly heard the baying of hounds and the notes of the horn, seemingly at the distance of half a league from the spot where he was placed; but as suddenly these distant sounds were close at hand. Henry ordered the Earl of Soissons to prick forward. We gather from the context that he guessed that the sounds were supernatural. Soissons obeyed; and as he advanced, he still heard the noises without being able to ascertain whence they proceeded; but a dark and gigantic figure appeared amongst the trees, and crying out 'M'entendez-vous?' instantly vanished. This story is remarkable for many reasons. Father Matthieu the Jesuit relates it in his Histoire de France et des Choses mémorables advenues durant sept années de paix du règne de Henry IV.' a work published in the lifetime of that Monarch, to whom it is dedicated. Matthieu was well acquainted with Henry, from whom, if Father Daniel is to be trusted, he obtained much infor mation. It has been supposed that the spectre was an assassin in pelan (A. S.) In the cognate dialects the root is found with scarcely any variation. Hence hell, that which is concealed or hidden or unseen, Aïdnç. disguise, disguise, and that the hand of Ravaillac would have been anticipated if the good king himself had approached near enough to receive the dagger. Whatever the real nature of the apparition may have been, it seems that Henry did not wish that the story should be discredited. ، Persons are not wanting,' Matthieu concludes, ، who would have ranked this adventure with the fables of Merlin and of Urganda, if the truth, as affirmed by so many eye-witnesses and earwitnesses, had not removed all doubts. The shepherds of the neighbourhood say that it was a spirit, whom they call the Grand Veneur, who hunts in this forest; but they hold that it is the hunt of St. Hubert, which is also heard in other places.' The spirit appeared not far from the entrance of the town, at a cross-road yet retaining the name of La Croix du Grand Veneur.' In ages of romance, a romantic immortality has been bestowed by popular loyalty on those heroes who commanded the admiration as well as the fondness of their countrymen. Those who had seen their King flushed with victory and leading on his warriors, or enthroned in majesty and wisdom, were almost reluctant to admit that he too could die. The pious cares which saved the royal corpse from the insulting victor, the chance which caused it to fester undistinguished amongst the meaner dead, contributed to nourish the longing hope that the royal warrior had yet been spared; and though withdrawn from mortal ken, they would believe, in the hour of suffering and distress, that he who had been the guardian of his people was still reserved on earth to fulfil a higher destiny. Greece revered her yet living Achilles in the white island; the Britons expected the awakening of Arthur entranced in Avalon; and almost in our days it was thought that Sebastian of Portugal would one day return and claim his usurped realms. Thus, also, the three founders of the Helvetic confederacy are thought to sleep in a cavern near the lake of Lucerne. The herdsmen call them the three Tells, and say that they lie there in their antique garb, in quiet slumber; and when Switzerland is in her utmost need, they will awaken and regain the liberties of the land. FREDERICK BARBAROSSA has obtained the same wild veneration. He was a monarch of extraordinary intellect. Anathematized as the enemy of the papal see, he was thought to favour the faith of Mahomet; whilst some suspected that he acknowledged no other deity save his Star, his ruling Fate: yet he was wise and valiant, and commanded the respect of his warlike subjects. Fre derick died in Apulia; he was the last sovereign of the Swabian dynasty; and so little was his death believed in the empire, that five impostors successively assumed his naine, and obtained credit with those who were discontented with the reign of Rodolph of Hapsburg. The false Fredericks were successively unmasked and AA punished, punished, yet the common people continued stubbornly to believe that Frederick was alive, and that he had warily and willingly abdicated the imperial crown. 'He is a wise man,' said they, and can read the stars; he is travelling in distant regions with his astrologers and his trusty companions, to avoid the evils which would have been his lot, had he remained on the throne;' and yet they trusted that he would re-appear when the good time should arrive. Obscure prophecies were circulated, which were even revived in the reign of Charles V. that Frederick was destined to unite the Eastern to the Western Empire. The Turks and heathens are to be defeated by his prowess in a dreadful battle near Cologne, and he is to regain the Holy land. Until the appointed time shall come, the Emperor is secluded in the castle of Kyffhausen, in the Hercynian forest, where he remains in a state not much unlike the description which Cervantes has given of the inhabitants of the cavern of Montesinos: he slumbers on his throne, his red beard has grown through the stone table on which his right arm reclines, or, as some say, it has grown round and round it. A variation of the same fable, coloured according to its locality, is found in Denmark, where it is said that Holger Danske, whom the French romances call Ogier the Dane, slumbers in the vaults beneath Cronenburgh castle. A villain was once allured by splendid offers to descend into the cavern and visit the half torpid hero. Ogier muttered to the visitor, requesting him to stretch out his hand. The villain presented an iron crow to Ogier, who grasped it, indenting the metal with his fingers. It is well!' quoth Ogier, who imagined that he was squeezing the hand of the stranger, and thus proving his strength and fortitude, there are yet men in Denmark.' Frederick Barbarossa listens willingly to music. It came to pass many years ago, that a consort' of travelling musicians thought it might answer well, were they to serenade the Emperor; and so, stationing themselves on the rock, they began to play a hunt's-up just when the church clock of the town of Tilleda struck the hour of twelve. At the second strain, lights were seen above on the crag, sparkling through the leaves and underwood, and flitting behind the thick trunks of the trees; and immediately afterwards the Emperor's daughter advanced gracefully towards the musicians: she beckoned them to follow her, the rocks opened, and the musicians marched into the cavern, sounding their pipes and tinkling their citterns. There was no lack of good cheer in the presence-chamber of the Emperor and they played on merrily till the dawning of the morning. Then the Emperor nodded graciously to the musicians, and his daughter presented each with a green branch, and dismissed them. The imperial donation gave little satisfaction to the poor musicians, but the awe inspired by his ghostly majesty compelled them to to accept it without murmuring; and when they found themselves in the open air again, all, except one, threw the branches scornfully away. The musician who kept his branch intended to preserve it merely as a memorial of the adventure; but when he reached his home it became heavy in his hand, rustling and glittering with metallic splendour, and every leaf was turned into a ducat of pure gold. When the others heard of his good fortune, they all went back to the rocks over which they had passed, and searched day after day for the treasure of which their destiny had deprived them; but they searched in vain. The Norman peasants believe that there is a flower which is called the herbe maudite-he who treads upon it continues walking round and round, imagining that he is proceeding onwards, though in fact he quits not the spot to which the magic root has bound him. This spell seems to bind us; for we find ourselves still in company with the goblins of the mine, whom we imagined we had left far behind us. The Emperor is, undoubtedly, to be identified with those capricious powers. In the middle ages the winning of these riches became the trade of those sages who are the prototypes of the Dousterswivel of our northern enchanter, and the employment of treasure-finding was a regular profession in the mining countries, where some traces of it still remain. Each of these adepts had his own mode of operating. One was the Theurgist; he prayed and fasted till the dream came upon him. He was a pious man, and his art was holy; and if the eager disciple sinned against faith or chastity, the inspiration fled, the treasure vanished. Guilt, guilt, my son! give 't the right name: no marvel When such affairs as these were managing. The natural magician smiled at the mystical devotee, whom he affected to treat either as the dupe of his own enthusiasm, or as an impostor. Trusting only to the secret powers of nature, he paced along with the divining rod of hazel* which turns in obedi ence, The employment of the divining rod when employed to discover ore or metal, was associated with many superstitious observances. The fact, however, of the discovery of water being effected by it when held in the hands of certain persons seems indubitable. The following narrative, which has been lately communicated to us by a friend residing in Norfolk, puts the subject in the clearest point of view. And we shall simply state that the parties, whose names are well known to many of our readers, are utterly incapable either of deceiving others, or of being deceived themselves. January 21st, 1818.-It is just fifty years since Lady N.'s attention was first called to this subject; she was then sixteen years old, and was on a visit with her family at a château in Provence, the owner of which wanted to find a spring to supply his house, and for that purpose had sent for a peasant, who could do so with a twig. The English party ridiculed the idea, but still agreed to accompany the man, who, after walking AA3 some ence, attracted by the effluvia from the metals concealed beneath the soil. These are delusions, thought a bolder sage who had been instracted in the secrets of Cornelius Agrippa: and he opened the sealed book which taught him to charm the mirror, in which were seen all things, however distant or hidden from mortal view, and he buried it by the side of the cross-road, where the carcass of the murderer was wasting on the wheel, or he opened the newly made grave and caused the eyes of the troubled corpse to shed their glare upon the surface of the polished chrystal. Telesms and pentacles, and constellated idols also lent their aid. Such were the implements of art belonging to an Italian or Spanish Cabalist.-We give the story as it was related to us many years ago by a right learned adept. This Cabalist ascertained that if he could procure a certain golden medal, to be worked into the shape of a winged man when the planets were in a proper aspect, the figure so formed would discover all secret treasures. After great pains, he was so fortunate as to ob some way, pronounced that he had arrived at the object of his search, and they accordingly dug and found him correct. He was quite an uneducated man, and could give no account of the faculty in him or of the means which he employed, but many "others, he said, could do the same. The English party now tried for themselves, but all in vain, till it came to the tum of Lady N, when, to her amazement and alarm, she found that the same faculty was in her, as in the peasant, and on her return to England she often exerted it, though in studious concealment. She was afraid lest she should be ridiculed, or should, perhaps, get the name of a witch, and in either case she thought that she should certainly never get a husband. Of late years her scruples began to wear away, and when Dr. HUTTON published Ozanam's researches in 1803, where the effect of the divining rod is treated as absurd (vol. iv. p. 260--7.) she wrote a long letter to him, signed X. Y. Z., stating the facts which she knew. The Doctor answered it, begging further information; Lady N, wrote again, and he, in his second letter, requested the name of his correspondent: that Lady N. also gave. A few years afterwards she went, at Dr. HUTTON's particular request, to see him at Woolwich, and she then shewed him the experiment, and discovered a spring in a field which he had lately bought near the New College, then building. This same field he has since sold to the College, and for a larger price in consequence of the spring. Lady N. this morning shewed the experiment to Lord G., Mr. S., and me, in the park at W. She took a thin, forked hazel twig, about 16 inches long, and held it by the end, the joint pointing downwards. When she came to a place where water was ouder the ground, the twig immediately bent, and the motion was more or less rapid as she approached or withdrew from the spring. When just over it, the twig turned so quick as to snap, breaking near her fingers, which by pressing it were indented, and heated, and almost blistered; a degree of agitation was also visible in her face. When she first made the experiment, she says this agitation was great, and to this hour she cannot wholly divest herself of it, though it gradually decreases. She repeated the trial several times in differeut parts of the park, and her statements were always accurate. Among those persons in England, who have the same faculty, she says she never knew it so strong in any as in Sir C. H. and Miss F. It is extraordinary that no effect is produced at a wellor ditch, or where earth does not interpose between the twig and the water. The exercise of the faculty is independent of any volition.' So far our narrator, in whom, we repeat, the most implicit confidence may be placed. The faculty so inherent in certain persons is evidently the same with that of the Spanish Zakeries, though the latter do not employ the hazel twig, |