And in Abydos wait till he receive

The promised signal, his appointed guide,

When he must swim, not sail. Till they achieve
Love's celebration, rest is them denied.

Haste, Night! and canopy the bridegroom and the bride.
In veil of darkness Night ran up the sky,
Bringing on sleep, but not for Hero's lover;
He, where the swelling waves roared mightily,
For by the shore, stood waiting to discover
The lamentable lamp that lured him over-
To death at last. But Hero, seaward turning,
Perceived the gloom, and for her ocean-rover
Kindled the signal; but on his discerning

Its promised flame, he burned with love, as that was burning.
At first he trembled at the ringing roar

Of the mad surge, but with the soothing spell

Of hopeful words took courage;

"What is more

Cruel than love, or more implacable

Than ocean? in moist ruin this doth swell;

That in the heart, a blazing furnace, raves.

Fear not, my soul! why shouldst thou fear the hell

Of waters? Aphrodite from the waves

Sprung, and rules over them, sways our love-pains and saves.”

He then put off his vest with playful glee,

And twined it round his head; and from the shore
Plunged fearlessly into the surf o' the sea;
And where the signal shone, he hastened o'er
Ship, sail, and oars himself. But yet before
He reached his port, how oft the Sestian flower
Kept off the breezes with the robe she wore
From the trimmed lamp! It is her nuptial hour--
Leander comes at last, and now ascends her tower.

With a mute clasp she welcomed to her home
The panting youth, and to her chamber led,
While from his hair fast dropt the salt sea-foam :
She rubbed his limbs with rose-oil, and then led
Her lover to her virgin couch, and said,
Embracing him the while, and softly willing,
"Enough of brine and odours which it bred :
No bridegroom but thyself was ever willing

To run such risk, such toil none else but thou fulfilling.

"No longer lies our joy and us between

That envious sea-now lay thee down to rest."
Silence was there, and night drew round her screen;

Their nuptial troth was by no minstrel blest;

The bridal pair were in no hymn addrest;

No choir danced round them; and no torches lightened
About the genial bed; no marriage guest

Led the gay dance; nor hymeneal heightened

The joy, approving it; no parent's smile there brightened.

Silence arranged the couch, and Darkness drew
The curtains; paranymph and bridemaid none
Had they beside. Aurora ne'er did view
Leander lying, when the night was done,
In Hero's arms. He was already gone,-
Already wishing for the night again.
The wife at night, by day a virgin shone,
As thought her parents wise; while she was fain,
Of night, to welcome him who made their wisdom vain.

Thus they enjoyed awhile their furtive pleasure,
He to his bed-mate nightly swimming o'er;

But soon their life's bloom fell, and scant their measure
Of bridal hours. When came the winter frore,

And brought the cold blast and the whirlwind's roar,
Sharp gusts the bottom of the deep confounding,
And lashing up the main from shore to shore,
Whirling and rushing, roaring and rebounding,
The watery paths above and shaken depths astounding-
What time a desperate pilot, who no more
Amid the waters wild his course could hold,
Had run his ship upon a fork o' the shore;
Not then the tempest checked Leander bold,
For Hero's signal light her summons told.
Oh! cruel, faithless light of love! to scout him
On such a night! to plunge him in the cold

And hissing waves, that rudely toss and flout him!
Why could not Hero sleep, while winter raged, without him?
But love and fate compelled her; light of love,
Drawn by desire, she showed not, but the black
Torch-gloom of fate. The winds collected drove
Volumes of gusty darts upon the track

Of the sea-broken shore; but on the back
Of raving ocean lost Leander went.

The water stood in heaps; with fearful crack
The winds ran counter, and were madly blent,
Rushing from every side, in wildest minglement.
Wave upon wave! ocean with ether mixt!
Mighty the crash! How could Leander ride on
The monstrous whirl? Sore tost, he one while fixt
In prayer on Cypris, then on King Poseidon,
And e'en the fierce and frantic Boreas cried on,

Who then forgot his Atthis. Lover lorn!

None helped him, none! Love, whom he most relied on, Averted not his fate; tost, tumbled, torn,

By every counter wave he was at random borne.

He can no longer ply his hands or feet;

Drench'd with the brine, his strength is failing fast;
On him the cruel waves remorseless beat;
The lamp is now extinguished by the blast,
And with it his young life and love at last':
But while the waves his lifeless body drove,
How many a glance poor Hero seaward cast;
In vain into the gloom her glances rove;

Her anxious thoughts a pool of spectred troubles move.
The morning came, nor yet Leander came!
Upon the sea's broad back her glance was thrown,
If haply, missing that unfaithful flame,

He wandered there; but soon she spied him strown
A mangled corse below. She tore her gown,
And shrieked, and for Leander madly cried,
And from the tower fell whizzing headlong down.
Thus, on her husband dead sweet Hero died,

And who were joined in life, then death did not divide.

And wing sepes of fame is that, the reader possibly asks, which may sony try and populi i nevica wretice of romancer its priviere of kipamynab y, a meritva od men'? Let that reader first ask himself bow many smilinged selda there are which pass away and are forWhang-wings & thorandth part of the effort that produced them, subotad in a few words, might have lived for ever. It was the remark of un vid writer, that words harden into substances, while buding moulder away into it. Even Cæsar and Alexander weigh

little in comparison with Virgil and Homer. Now Crichton might have been a Cæsar or an Alexander, if he had had legions at his back; or, without the legions, if his youth had been allowed to ripen into age. The great principle of his being was a stirring and irrepressible activity. His learning was as prodigious as his accomplishments; but how, in the short six or seven years of his public life, could he have exhibited them to the admiration of Europe, if he had set to work in the fashion of the schoolmen? With a probable forecast of his early doom, he bethought himself of a different way. He made up for the brevity of his life by its brightness. He kindled all its fires at once. Resolved to abate no single particle of his brilliancy among the great men of his time, he rose at once to the topmost height of his possible achievements, careless whether he should fall among posterity, dark as a spent rocket, and recognizable by a few fragments of faded paper only. But what of that? What he designed to do, he did. He struck the blow he had desired to strike. And which of the Great Men has done more? How many have done lamentably less! We see the beauty and the learning of Crichton reflected back from the most intellectual minds of the greatest day that ever shone upon Scotland or Italy. What nobler mirror?

Justly Mr. Ainsworth remarks "It is from the effect produced upon his contemporaries, and such contemporaries, that we can form a just estimate of the extent of Crichton's powers. By them he was esteemed a miracle of learning-divinum planè juvenem: and we have an instance in our own times of a great poet and philosopher, whose published works scarcely bear out the high reputation he enjoyed for colloquial ability. The idolized friend of Aldus Manutius, of Lorenzo Massa, Giovanni Donati, and Sperone Speroni, amongst the most accomplished scholars of their age, the antagonist of the redoubted Arcangelus Mercenarius and Giacomo Mazzoni, men who had sounded all the depths of philosophy, could not have been other than an extraordinary person." The allusion to Coleridge here is not altogether out of place. Coleridge, like Crichton, though in a humbler sphere, preferred prompt payment to the tardy waiting for posterity. With both it was in some sort necessary that the effort and the applause should go together. To Coleridge, for instance, so strong had this habit of excessive talking become, even the certainty of seeing what he wrote in print the next day was too remote a stimulus for his imagination; and it was a constant practice of his to lay aside his pen in the middle of an article, if a friend happened to drop in upon him, and to finish the subject more effectually aloud, so that the approbation of his hearer and the sound of his own voice might be co-instantaneous. But what would Coleridge have done, if, besides having to write an article for the Courier, in which he was to unravel some transcendentalism about humanity and universal brotherhood into a slavish support of the Allies-(a difficult task we admit),—if, besides this, the ball-room, the ladies' chamber, the hunting-fields, the ridinghouse, the lists at the Louvre, and some profoundly learned controversies with the doctors of Navarre or Padua, had all, nearly at the same instant, awaited him? Poor Coleridge would have died at twenty, untouched by opium, and unknown, except by the admiring testimonies of his less accomplished contemporaries.

Mr. Ainsworth has omitted, by the by, a very characteristic, and,

-

we think, a very decisive opinion of Crichton, by the famous Joseph Scaliger. "He was a man of very wonderful genius," observes that laborious and self-satisfied person; " but he had something of the coxcomb about him. He wanted a little common sense.' Here is an unbiassed opinion. What Joseph means by the coxcombry is obvious enough. Why, thinks Joseph, should a scholar have cheerfulness of blood? All the women ran after Crichton,- a most indecorous thing, and a certain evidence of coxcombry to a person who cannot get a woman to run after him.- "Nor were the young unmarried ladies," as Sir Thomas Urquhart remarks in his jewel of a book," of all the most eminent places of Italy anything respected of one another, that had not either a lock of Crichtown's haire, or a copy of verses of his composing." Who doubts his coxcombry, or that it was other than a very delightful thing in him?

A want of common sense, in Scaliger's notion, was probably an over supply of modesty. Nothing is so remarkable in Crichton as the modesty which in him united with the most perfect confidence. He proved that a coxcomb and a confident man may possess the truest modesty. There is a charming anecdote told of him at a great levee of learned men in Padua, where, having exposed the errors, of the school of Aristotle with equal solidity, modesty, and acuteness, and perceiving that the enthusiasm of his audience was carrying them too far in admiration of himself, he suddenly changed his tone, assumed an extreme playfulness of manner, and declaimed in exquisite phrase upon the happiness of ignorance. Nothing could have been so perfectly devised to self-check any exuberance of pride. But in all things his modesty was remarkable, when taken in connexion with his extraordinary powers. Observe it in the circumstance of his melancholy death, where a romantic sense of what was due to his prince and master induced him to throw aside his unmatchable skill, and present himself naked and defenceless to the dagger of an assassin. This was not weakness in Crichton. Himself the descendant of rulers of the earth, of princes and bishops,- (shall we ever forget that perfect model of ecclesiastical fitness, Bishop George Crichton of Dunkeld, "a man nobly disposed, very hospitable, and a magnificent housekeeper, but in matters of religion not much skilled"?)-a weak and unmanly feeling would have given him presumption, not deference, would have thrown insult in the face of Gonzaga, and not ill-requited chivalry at his feet.

But what more need we say of Crichton? Have not three volumes of brilliant writing been just devoted to the delineation of two days of his matchlessly brilliant life? We may refer the reader, whether he is curious after the Admirable Crichton, or after his own amusement solely, to William Harrison Ainsworth's last romance. An expression of character equally poetic and dramatic, a rich glow of colouring which diffuses itself through every part of the work, and a generally easy and effective style, have secured for this book a high and permanent place in the literature of fiction.