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The stainless soul that never dream'd of sin
Gives the gay sparkle to her eye, the smile
That plays around her roseate lip,—so pure,
So careless, and so trusting; though ingrained,
Cankered, and leperous, sunk, immers❜d in guilt,
The heart that knows not virtue would confess
That 't was enshrin'd within her spotless breast,
Like her of old, whom poets sing could stray
Securely through the desert wilderness
Amid the monsters of the wild, the fierce
And untam'd lion, the insatiate wolf,
And rav'ning tiger, Veronica dwells,
Unscath'd by the licentious tongues of men,
And more abandoned women; in a court
Where foul corruption steals, dark guilt has shrunk
Abash'd, and dare not touch her angel name.
Ang. This honest indignation binds thee still,
Still closer to my heart. Unhappy friend.
Would I could spare thee this calamity;
But honour, godlike honour, fires my soul,
And will not be restrain'd. Read, read, Geraldi;
I spoke not without proof.

Sforza.

The seal of Veronica.

Ang. (aside.)

It is the hand,

(Reads the letter.)

Ha! it works:

The subtle poison steals through all his veins,
And with his life-blood mingles. How his eyes
Drink up the fatal scroll. Paralyzed

And mute he stands.

Where is the hero now,

Who boldly fronted groves of hostile spears?

Stabb'd to the heart by a few foolish words.
Why this is luxury my panting soul
Never imagin'd; let me veil my joy:
If I betray my triumph, I shall mar
My well-constructed plot.

Sforza.

Where are the fiends

Who have invaded Heaven, and stolen the forms
Of angels, to deceive my trusting heart?

Oh! false fair devil! shameless wanton! thou,

Thou whom I called my friend, couldst thou too heap
Dishonour on my head, give to my arms,
My chaste embrace, thy spotted harlot? Heav'n,
Lend me thy lightning; 't is not common death
That will suffice my vengeance. Angelo,

I loved them both, how dearly, these hot tears
Will witness; from my burning eyes they burst
Like drops of melted iron from the breast
Of yon volcano.- -Oh! my Veronica!
Julian!-ye lovely phantoms of my brain!
Must, must I lose ye?

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Restrain my arm, than urge my gasping soul
To deeds of horror; limb from limb I'll tear
The dark apostate in her presence, sate
My rav'nous eyes upon her agonies:

Deface the beauty which has dared to cheat
The world with virtue's semblance: monuments
To future ages they shall stand, and leave
A dreadful lesson to posterity.

Ang. The night is waning fast; 't is now the hour
When from the palace garden Julian glides,
Tearing himself from Veronica's arms,

Mid fond complaints, sweet kisses, and hot tears.
Sforza. The palace garden say'st thou? it shall be
To both a grave. Come on, Prince Angelo,
And witness my revenge.

END OF THE SECOND SCENE.

[Exeunt.

ON THE ANTIQUITY OF HERALDRY.

THE land of Egypt, to which, as to a source, all the arts of civilized man may be traced back, is the parent country of Heraldry. History would sufficiently corroborate this assertion, were we not capable of establishing it by ocular demonstration. In short, a variety of extant monuments and paintings attest its existence in that country. The gods and the heroes of Egypt were distinguished, not only by particular vizors or masks, but by particular crests upon their helmets. The vizor of Osiris was a hawk; that of Hermes an Ibis; that of Horus a lion. For crests Osiris sometimes wore the lotus, at others two cylinders. Hermes, or Thoyt, was distinguished by two feathers; Horus by a serpent issuing from a disk; Isis by a disk between two horns; sometimes by a crocodile or a vulture. The three great deities had, besides, other symbols of a more mysterious nature. Osiris assumed the triangle, Isis the egg, and Thoyt the Tau. By the former, perhaps their mundane character was represented; by the latter their celestial. It would appear, however, that the votaries and priests of these deities assumed their distinguishing signs. The Tau, the triangle, and the oval, are seen in the hands of the priests, as the rosary is in the hands of the catholic and Indian monks. And, with regard to the crests and vizors, we are told

*

that the priests assumed them during initiation, and that thence the fable of Cerberus originated, and perhaps the barking of dogs at Eleusis. For the priests of Anubis, or grand Hierophants, wore dog-faced masks. In the cognate initiations of Mythra the votaries were certainly so masked; and thence their appellation of the wolves, the lions, the bulls, &c., of Mythra.

These representations seem to have originated the crests worn on the helmets of the heroic and feudal times. The sphinx and owl of Minerva are nearest at hand for exemplification.

I am not aware of any extant figure on Egyptian shields which will approximate to our armorial bearings; but the nature of the hieroglyphic language seems to require that the names of people should be pictorially represented, as is indeed the case in many instances of modern heraldry: and if a very common oval figure among the hieroglyphics be, as I suspect, a shield, the surmise is warranted by the figures inscribed. Indeed, the figure of a beetle, said to be worn by the Egyptian soldiery, is often observable in these ovals.

Let me explain by an example. The portrait taken by Denon from the Memnonium is generally supposed to be Memnon. Now the serpent issuing from his helmet implies the same as the name Memnon, or Memnun, the issuing or derived serpent.

One point, however, can be ascertained. The Egyptians certainly distinguished their cities and their tribes by armorial banners, of which representations are extant. Thus the standard of Leontopolis was a lion, of Lycopolis a wolf, &c.; and it is most likely that individuals were classed in the same manner.

The heraldry of the Egyptians seems naturally to have past to the Jews, so long their bondsmen. It is pretty evident that the twelve tribes distinguished themselves by the signs of the zodiac. This idea, revived by Sir William Drummond, is by no means new; nor does the supposed allusion to those signs by Jacob imply any thing impious, magical, or offensive to the Deity. Where could he search for any eternal monument of his blessing more apposite than the zodiac? The landmarks of earth are transitory; the ocean itself is liable to change: but the starry signs preserve for ever the magnificent character which they presented to the first man.

If we turn from Palestine to Greece, which drank from the

The fable of the Chimæra perhaps originated from heraldry. The lion, goat, and serpent, appear to have been three rebels of those names, and distinguished as the Lyons are now-a-days, and the Dracos and Capruses were formerly, by corresponding crests. They were quelled by Bellerophon, (Baal Arophon), the general of the archers. The Indians call each other by similar distinctions now-a-days, as bear, wolf, dog. An Indian helmet, with a dog's crest, is in the British Museum. The names of wolf, lion, fox, common among ourselves are relics of the same primitive distinctions. The words Chien and Canis are perhaps derivable from the priests of Anubis, who wore masks Ilke dogs'-heads, and who were called Cohen, or from Chna, Mercury himself. The words Cunning Cynang, King, are all traceable to the same root, implying superior wisdom.

breast of Egypt her taste and genius, the first proof of connexion in heraldry is not inapposite to the foregoing remarks. I mean the shield of Achilles, on which, among a variety of other objects, the zodiacal signs and planets appear to have been engraved.

Agamemnon, as appears from Homer, bore two serpents for his arms. The bull's-hide on the shield of Ajax, perhaps, suggested the assumption of animal hides as distinctions in shields in the time of the crusades. The shield of Ulysses seems to have been merely a coloured field without badge.

In the age which succeeded the heroic, the Grecians certainly distinguished individuals by armorial bearings. The shield of Nicias was very magnificent; it is recorded to have been purple, with a fressure or. His partner in the unfortunate Syracusan expedition, Lamachus, bore a gorgon head upon his shield ; while the symbol of Alcibiades resembled the quaint devices of the age of romance, and displays the character of that ambitious voluptuary. It was a Cupid darting a thunderbolt. Alexander adopted the horns of Ammon, rams'-horns for his crest. Attila those of a goat.

Neochorus, who slew Lysander, bore a dragon upon his shield, and thus realized the words of the Oracle to the Spartan chieftain: Fly from Oplites watery strand:

The earth-born serpent too beware.

Antiochus appears to have adopted the Pentalpha for his ensign. Mottos, also, were not unfrequent. The shield, which Demosthenes so pusillanimously threw away, was inscribed with the words "To Good Fortune."

was

Of Persian heraldry we can glean little information; but the modern arms of Persia (sol in dorso leonis) are evidently of Mithraic original. It is, however, curious that in the Persian bas-reliefs exhibited at Shapour, the standard there borne consists of three balls on the extremes of a cross, which afterwards assumed by the Lombards, and from them descended to the pawnbrokers, who anciently bore the same name. This was, no doubt, like the Tau, a mysterious symbol; and it is not unworthy remark, that the same figure entered into Saxon achievements, and is found upon both Saxon and British coins.

To prove that the Romans used heraldic distinctions on their shields, would be a supererogatory task; because we are assured that the thundering legion was designated by the symbol of a thunderbolt, and that in the earliest times different legions were represented by various animals. But their vases establish the point beyond dispute, as animals frequently appear on shields represented on them. There is one shield distinguished by a goat at the British Museum, which, if heraldic analogy avails, belonged perhaps to a person named Caprus. Augustus used Capricorn

for his armorial symbol, Cæsar an elephant, his name signifying that animal in the African language. But the most remarkable approximation of ancient and modern heraldry, is preserved in a coin of Dacle* in Sicily. It is a cross with a shell in the middle, wedges in the quarters, and precisely agrees with the armorial bearings of several Saxon kings.

Our Saxon ancestry appear to have adopted a more settled system of heraldry, if we except the Egyptians, than any of the foregoing nations, with whom it is very doubtful whether armorial bearings were transmitted from father to son. Most heralds deny the existence of hereditary distinctions before the Normans. Some indeed affirm, that heraldry as a science did not exist at all before they introduced it into England. One of these assertions may be true; but the latter position appears to be rash and untenable. Nevertheless, even the hereditary transmission is not lightly to be given up. The fact of Egyptian cities having heraldic bearings, argues something transmissible, and the same may be inferred from the symbols of the priesthood. So the Greek mode of applying the postfix to a name like the English Son, the Scotch Mac, and the Irish O, seems to imply a vocal mode of preserving the ancestral name in a family, agreeable to heraldic distinctions, the sound being analogous to the affixed crescent, mullet, rose, &c., employed to express a son by the rules of Heraldic art.

Thus the name Glaucus, or Green, might be expressed by a field vert. The name Peleus perhaps was derived from a pigeon. This might be easily expressed hieroglyphically, like the swallows (hirondelles), for Arundel, the lark (alerion), for Lorraine, or the eagles for the Egle family. The name Pelides, given, to Achilles, left the original distinctive and family appellations untouched on a system perfectly sympathizing with the pictorial distinctions of heraldry.

This is a field of speculation, which might be considerably widened. But to return to the Saxons, the charge of wanting the hereditary portion of heraldry, may be proved, as far as regards them, to be misplaced; because it is evident, from Saxon and Danish coins and other memorials, that the whole race of Danish and Saxon kings assumed the cross for their arms, with distinctions and additions according to their peculiar fancy. For instance, the ensign of Egbert was the cross. Edward I. added four martlets to it; Canute four griffins, Edward the Confessor, five martlets. Harold, as an interloper, dropped the martlets, which, however, were still retained by Edgar Atheling, when made Earl of Oxford.

The arms of Hengist it appears, were a horse, which his name signified, and it is from this that the Brunswick family derive that symbol.

* It is curious that the Dacre family bore a similar shell.

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