The robbers, finding their plans discovered, and the travellers prepared for their reception, had become open and furious in their attack. The princess's party had barricaded themselves in one suite of apartments, and repulsed the robbers from the doors and windows. Caspar had shown the generalship of a veteran, and the nephew of the princess the dashing valour of a young soldier. Their ammunition, however, was nearly exhausted, and they would have found it difficult to hold out much longer, when a discharge from the musketry of the gens-d'armes gave them the joyful tidings of succour. A fierce fight ensued, for part of the robbers were surprised in the inn, and had to stand siege in their turn; while their comrades made desperate attempts to relieve them from under cover of the neighbouring rocks and thickets.

I cannot pretend to give a minute account of the fight, as I have heard it related in a variety of ways. Suffice it to say, the robbers were defeated; several of them killed, and several taken prisoners; which last, together with the people of the inn, were either executed or sent to the galleys.

I picked up these particulars in the course of a journey which I made some time after the event had taken place. I passed by the very inn. It was then dismantled, excepting one wing, in which a body of gens-d'armes was stationed. They pointed out to me the shotholes in the window-frames, the walls, and the panels of the doors. There were a number of withered limbs dangling from the branches of a neighbouring tree, and blackening in the air, which I was told were the limbs of the robbers who had been slain and the culprits who had been executed. The whole place had a dismal, wild, forlorn look. "Were any of the princess's party killed?" inquired the Englishman. "As far as I can recollect, there were two or three." "Not the nephew, I trust?" said the fair Venetian. he hastened with the count to relieve the anxiety of the daughter by the assurances of victory. The young lady had been sustained throughout the interval of suspense by the very intensity of her feelings. The moment she saw her father returning in safety, accompanied by the nephew of the princess, she uttered a cry of rapture and fainted. Happily, however, she soon recovered, and what is more, was married shortly after to the young cavalier, and the whole party accompanied the old princess in her pilgrimage to Loretto, where her votive offerings may still be seen in the treasury of the Santa Casa."

"Oh no:

THE CURTIUS AND THE RUSSELL

In the proud Forum's central space Earth yawned-a gulf profound! And there, with awe on every face, Rome's bravest gather'd round; Each seeming, yet with startled ear, The Oracle's dread voice to hear.

Young CURTIUS on his war-horse sprung, 'Mid plaudits deep-not loud, For admiration check'd each tongue

In all the circling crowd:He gave his noble steed the rein! Earth's closing gulf entomb'd the twain!

Grant that the deed, if ever done,

Was chivalrous, and bold;

A loftier and a nobler one

Our history can unfold: Nor shall our heroine, meekly calm, To Rome's proud hero yield the palm.

The RUSSELL stood beside her lord
When evil tongues were rife;
And perjury, with voice abhorr'd,
Assail'd his fame and life:-
She stood there in the darkest hour
Of Tyranny's and Faction's power.1

No stern oracular behest

Her gentle courage gave; No plaudits, utter'd or suppress'd, Could she expect or crave; Duty, alone, her Delphic shrine, The only praise she sought-divine.

She sate at Guilt's tribunal bar
In Virtue's noblest guise:
Like a sweet, brightly-shining star
In night's o'erclouded skies:
Still, in that scene of hopeless strife,
Southampton's daughter, Russell's wife!

1 The poet here alludes to the following passage in the account of Lord Russell's trial:

"Lord Russell. May I have somebody write to help my memory?

"Mr. Attorney-general. Yes, a servant. "Lord Chief-justice. Any of your servants shall assist you in writing anything you please for you.

"Lord Russell. My WIFE is here, my lord, to do it."

Mr. Jeffrey, in reviewing Rogers' "Human Life" (Edin. Rev., No. 62), in which the above dialogue is quoted, says: "We know of nothing at once so pathetic and sublime as these few simple sentences. When we recollect who Russell and his wife were, and what a destiny was then impending, this one trait makes the heart swell almost to bursting."

Fearless in love, in goodness great,

She rose-her lord to aid;
And well might he intrust his fate
To one so undismayed,

Asking, with fond and grateful pride,
No help but that her love supplied.

Hers was no briefly-daring mood,
Spent on one fearful deed!
The gentle courage of the good

More lasting worth can plead;
And hers made bright in after years
The mother's toils, the widow's tears.

Woman of meek, yet fearless soul!
Thy memory aye shall live;
Nor soon shall history's varied scroll
A name more glorious give:-
What English heart but feels its claim
Far, far beyond the Roman's fame?

BERNARD BARTON.

THE INQUIRY.

Amongst the myrtles as I walked, Love and my sighs thus intertalk'd: "Tell me," said I, in deep distress, "Where I may find my shepherdess?"

MERDHIN.

[Harriet Martineau, born 12th June, 1802, at Norwich; died at Ambleside, 27th June, 1876. Her ancestors removed from France to England on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. In 1823 she issued her first book, Devotional Exercises for the Young; and subsequently produced numerous works of travel, history, biography, and fiction, besides essays and short tales illustrative of social and political economy. Amongst her chief productions are: Society in America; Retrospect of Western Travel; History of England during the Thirty Years' Peace; Biographical Sketches: The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte, freely translated and condensed; Tracts on Subjects relating to the Workingclasses; Mary Campbell, a tale; Deerbrook, the most popular of her works of fiction; Forest and Game-law Tales, from which the following tale is taken; and her Autobiography.]

There is reason to believe that, a thousand years ago, one of the prettiest rural districts in England was that which has since been called, with a mixture of compassion and contempt, the Fens. For a considerable extent south and south-west of the Wash wide rivers flowed between wooded islands, on whose rising grounds were erected the buildings suited to the character of the age and the locality;-here a monastery surrounded by orchards and vineyards; there the dwellings of the superintendents of the fisheries,-and elsewhere the lodges

Where dreary and sickly swamps afterwards extended from east to west, noble woods marked the undulations of the soil; and the waters which, some centuries later, bred ague and fever from their slime, then flowed and ebbed in their main channels, and were clear and wholesome in the stillest coves and recesses which afforded their tribute of eels to the monks, and permitted the formation of thick ice in its season.

A region so fair and fertile, lying near the east coast of our island, was, above every other, tempting to the Danes in their predatory visits of those days. Again and again did they burn the towns, pillage the estates, and lay waste the fields of the district: but the peculiar beauty of the scene was scarcely impaired. The orchards bloomed and bore fruit,-the forests spread their leafy shade,-and the waters abounded with fish, as if men were living in the peace of the religion they professed.

Thus it was when King Canute began his reign. Grentebrige (since called Cambridge) had been a second time burned by the Danes in A.D. 1010; and it had scarcely begun to rise

from its ruins when a great sea-flood, four years later, and then tempests and scarcity, discouraged the inhabitants from enterprise and industry. But the country districts showed scarcely any diminution of their beauty. The rising and the setting sun gleamed on the reaches of the rivers; and the stars were reflected in the still lagoons:-the thickets on Thorn-ey (Thorn Island) were blossomy and fragrant as ever in spring; and in autumn the heavy crops of ruddy apples on the orchard slopes promised an average brewing of cider. Under this beauty and promise, however, was hidden much hardship and hunger. Between the fear and the actual ravages of the Danes, the lands under tillage had been neglected or laid waste; and there was a scarcity, for years together, of wheat, barley, and beans. The former dwellers in our island, whether Saxons or Danes, had no notion of abstinence, except on fast-days. Their capacity for taking food was beyond anything that modern habits can give an idea of; and they went on with their four ample meals a day till their stores were exhausted, and they had to depend on their precarious fishing, fowling, and herbgathering.

This absence of prudence is easily accounted for when the insecurity of the times is considered. There was no inducement to form stores of grain or smoked meat when the "lord Danes" (as they were called by the people among whom they settled) entered every man's house, and used every man's possessions, at their own pleasure. In districts further inland than the Danes were accustomed to sit down for a season, and where fish was less of a resource than on the coast, men might more safely venture to have full cellars and barns, and even to wear and use articles of gold and silver: but near the shores, the desire of every householder was to appear to have nothing in his house. In this the Saxon householder was well supported by his wife and his retainers. From the owner himself down to his humblest herdsman, all had the knowledge that consequences so much worse than robbery of food and goods were to be dreaded when a "lord Dane" had set his foot on any threshold, that all were willing to leave as little temptation as possible to the enemy to visit them, and therefore to make away rapidly with the family provision, leaving the future to take care of itself.

Here and there an exception to such practice occurred: and stringent must be the reasons which could prevail against the sense of risks so fearful, and the natural tendency to improvidence which belonged to the times.

Merdhin, a farmer who lived in a half-cleared nook of Thorn-ey, and his wife Hildelitha, could not look on their young children, in times of threatened scarcity, without anxious thought how they were to be fed till the next harvest. Such provision as could be made without peril was made, of course. Everybody having a cow that could in any manner keepone, the numerous fasts requiring that all good Christians should command a milk diet, -Merdhin had his cows grazing in the wood; -not belled, lest the sound should attract any foe, but watched by some of the household. In the wood was also some poultry; and the children were early taught to go discreetly to work about feeding the fowls in a certain spot in the thicket,-that they might have only a certain space to search for eggs. A herd of swine under the oaks was a matter of course. But out of the covert little was to be seen. The hollowed blocks of wood in which the bees used to build were tumbled together on the south bank where they once stood in a row. The barn-doors stood wide,-a small heap of unthrashed barley in one corner, and a few beans in another, being all that remained from the last harvest. Within the house a hard cheese or two, and some salted pork, hanging from the rafters, were all the provision that met the eye of chance visitors. And when any party of travellers entered, and made suspicious inquiries how the household lived, they were shown the storehouse, where there was more salted pork and more hard cheese, and were told that eels and herbs all the year round, and herrings and crabs in their season, with an occasional porpoise, made out the family diet when the grain was all gone.

To dwellers in the house, however, it appeared very doubtful when the grain really was all gone. No one made very close inquiry; for all were willing that the young children of the family should be seen eating barley-cake, or even occasionally wheaten bread, while the elder members were satisfying their hunger with hard pease or insipid herbs. There might be some who understood the mystery; but they were discreet.

One winter night Merdhin and his wife had remained up till they believed every member of their household to be asleep; and then they arose in silence from the fireside, and went about what was evidently preconcerted business. Hildelitha fetched and lighted the household lantern,—a ponderous affair, though somewhat simplified from that which good King Alfred had invented, to save his fourhour candles from flaring and wasting. Merdhin

meanwhile softly opened the door; and forth | they went to a little stone-paved yard belong. ing to the neat-herd's hut, two hundred yards behind the family dwelling. They knew the neat-herd to be absent, he having gone to help the shepherd of the neighbouring monastery to secure his flock from the wolves, which were now becoming audacious through hunger, and dangerous to all animals that were abroad at night. As the wintry wind came from the opposite shore to set the leafless trees rustling in the thicket, it brought to Hildelitha's watchful ears the occasional bark of a dog; and a gleam from a far-off shepherd's fire now and then flickered for an instant on the ice which lay broad and still in the starlight.

Her husband calling to her to give him light, she stooped down within the low inclosure, so shading the lantern with her woollen garment as that the light should fall only on the spot before which her husband was kneeling.

With an iron bar he raised an oblong stone, and looked down into a hole thus disclosed. "All safe!" he whispered. "Now for the other!"

He removed a second stone, and smiled at the sight of the goodly wheat which lay heaped in the little pit before them. It had been parched, to prevent its sprouting in damp, or being spoiled by frost. It looked ready for the hand-mill and the girdle-plate; and Merdhin ladled out with great alacrity a sufficient quantity for the night's cooking.

"Are you not hungry already?" said he to his wife. "Does not the thought of a steaming cake warm one, even in this cutting wind? You will be hungry enough by the time you have done grinding and cooking, for you ate at supper no more than might serve as a pretence. I, for my part, supped as well as if I had expected some lord Dane to step in between us and our baking."

"Hush!" whispered the timid wife. "Speak of anybody rather than those whose ears are everywhere."

"They should have been cropped long ago,” said the husband, lowering his voice to a whisper, however. "And they would have been if we had had any one but the Unready over us. And the time may come yet if" He paused, and shovelled out one more bowlful of the grain.

'No, no," said Hildelitha. "The king is good now: he is kind and just—not like a Dane. Let us hope our wars and our changes are over." "I said 'if,"" replied Merdhin, as he rose to shift and replace the stone. "I was thinking how soon Canute would be tired of pretending

|

that the Danish raven is no raven but a dove. What say you?"

"I say that I can think of nothing now but. how my poor little Tecla will put out her hand for her breakfast in the morning when she sees what I bring her. I could not sup to-night for thinking of it."

"It was that very thought that made me sup so heartily," said Merdhin. "And now home, and to work."

And he was about to replace the second stone when a voice behind him said,

"Not so fast, friend. Empty your hoard while you have the lid up."

Merdhin snatched the lantern from his wife, and turned the light in the direction of the voice. Four faces, yellow in the dim gleam, appeared above the wall. All were smiling; but not so as to bring answering smiles.

"You see," said one of the strangers, "that we are double your number: moreover, we have not supped, well or ill. So out with more of your good wheat."

"The whole and no less," exclaimed another, leaping the wall.

Merdhin seized him by the throat; but his grasp was loosened in an instant by many hands.

"O master!" cried the trembling neat-herd, "I did not bring these strangers here of my own accord. They carried me off to show them where I lived. O my lords!" turning to the strangers, "I did not know of any grain hidden here.'

"No, or there would have been less by the measure of your appetite," observed one of the intruders.

The inferior men of the party would have compelled Merdhin to work as their servant in emptying his own stores; but their leader was more politic and better mannered. He ordered. one of his followers and the herdsman to assist the host, and even took a turn at the work himself. Meantime, two more attended Hildelitha home, to see that a good fire was prepared for cooking, and that she disturbed none of the household who could interfere with the comfort of the strangers.

A merry night they made of it: and an anxious night it was to the farmer and his family. The children trembled in their beds as the laughter and singing grew louder. The servants peeped in and peeped down through crevices in the wooden walls and ceiling; but they could not get a word with their master, who found himself a prisoner in his own hall; nor could they concert any effectual scheme of rescue or revenge among themselves. There

were no neighbours within the reach of many hours, except the monks, who could do no good in such a case. And there was nothing in the conduct of the strangers to rouse such anger as could defy all consequences. Hildelitha was treated with courtesy, and thanked for her exertions: and the host's health was pledged in his own ale and mead, whether or not he chose to return the greeting.

In the morning, when the leader of the party roused himself from the short sleep he had taken with his head on the board, he called for water, dashed it over his head and face till he was thoroughly awakened and cooled, ordered a clearance of all signs of revelry in the apartment, looking abroad meantime at the faint light which was breaking in the east, and then proceeded to hold a kind of court of his followers, over which he himself presided.

He caused Merdhin and his wife to be placed at the foot of what was now, in appearance, a judicial board.

"Do you know who we are?" was his first question to Merdhin.

"No: nor by what right you are here," the host roughly replied.

His wife laid her hand on his arm, and some members of the mock court began to look fierce.

"You ask only what I was about to explain to you," said the leader, courteously. "I am Hagen the Dane, a commissioner from the king, sent into these parts with my followers, to prepare for the making a great causeway from Peterborough through the low grounds -a work which shows the love of the king towards his subjects in this region, and which will prove to all men, a thousand years hence, the care of King Canute for his people.'

"

Hagen's followers raised a shout: and when the noise had subsided, Merdhin exclaimed,

"So it is true! A causeway complete from Peterborough, through those wide marshes! It will be a noble work, and a blessing to the country."

"And while the king is creating blessings for your country, you have not common hospitality to spare for his servants. You would have offered his commissioner nothing better than salt beef and herbs, with perhaps some dry pease, while you had a store of fine wheat for yourselves. Can you pretend to say that you would have given me any better food than you gave to some wayfarers last week if I had not come down upon you in the night?"

"We should not," replied Hildelitha. "The wheat was kept for our young children. As we

have seen this last night, hungry travellers may eat at a meal what would serve our children's needs till the spring fishing and the early greens."

Her voice trembled as she spoke. Hagen knew that this was not from fear, but from the thought of her children's needs.

'It must not be forgotten," said he, "that your children's children will have reason to bless the errand on which we come. And I must make it understood through all the region that every possible help and comfort is to be afforded to the king's messengers whenever they bring into it the honour of their presence. An example must be made of such inhospitality as yours."

"By what law?" asked Merdhin.

"I will tell you when you tell me by what law the king is obliged to give you a road through the marshes. But if you like, your penalty shall go under the name of service to the work. The wolves—"

"The wolves!" faintly exclaimed Hildelitha.

"The wolves are a hindrance to us," continued Hagen: "the survey in the marshy parts ought to be finished while the ice is hard; but packs of wolves beset us, and compel us to keep together in the day-time, and to return long distances every night. I have therefore determined that the penalty of each offence that comes under my eye shall be paid in wolves' tongues. You will therefore go out, within this hour, against the wolves, and deliver to me, within six weeks from this day, six score of wolves' tongues."

Merdhin flushed to the temples as he cried, "That is the punishment of the vilest criminals in our country; of those," he continued, looking fiercely round upon his oppressors, "who have robbed a friendly host, or murdered a weary traveller, or eaten the bread of young children. Such are the men," he cried, with raised voice and daring eye, "such are the men that ought to be sent out for wolves' tongues, and not I, who have a home and family to protect from such ruffians as I have said."

Again Hildelitha laid her hand on his arm. "Perhaps," said she, "my lord was not aware that the punishment is base among Saxons. He will not now press it."

"Call it service to the king's good work," said Hagen. "As for your home and family, the women and children shall be protected under the eye of the monks of Peterborough: and there, by the way, they will get good barley-meal, if they cannot have such fine