the thirteenth century. Its author is not known.

Secondly, The lay of the Niebelungen is extremely interesting, as disproving, so far as analogy may avail to do so, the Wolfian theory above alluded to, of the composition of the Iliad out of a number of separate ballads. Lachmann has tried the same process of disintegration with the unknown Homer of his own country; but a sound-minded Englishman needs but to read the poem as it has been given us, for the first time, complete by Mr Lettsom,* in order to stand aghast at the extreme trouble which learned men in Germany often give themselves, in order to prove nonsense. "Nihil est tam absurdum quod non scripserit aliquis Germanorum."

Thirdly, As a poetical composition, the Lay of the Niebelungen will not bear comparison for a moment with the two great Greek works of the same class; it is even, in our opinion, inferior to its nearest modern counterpart, the Cid. The author of the Iliad possessed a soul as sunny and as fiery as those lovely islandfringed coasts that gave him birth; and in describing battles he rushes on himself to the charge, like some old

French-eating Marshal Blucher, the incarnation of the whirlwind of battle which he guides. Our German minstrel takes matters more easily, and, while his pen revels in blood, sits all the while in his easy chair, rocking himself delectably, and, like a true German, smoking his pipe. His quiet serene breadth is very apt to degenerate into Westphalian flats and sheer prosiness. When, again, he would be sublime and stirring, as in the bloody catastrophe, he is apt to overshoot the mark, and becomes horrible. His heroes are too gigantic, and do things with a touch of their finger which no Homeric hero would have dreamt of without the help of a god. The fancy, also, of the old German is very barren and monotonous, as compared with the wealthy Greek. similes are few; he has no richness of analogy. Nevertheless, the Niebelungen Lay remains for all Europe a very notable poem-for all lovers of popular poetry an indispensable study. Whatever else it wants, it has nature and health, simplicity and character about it; and these things are always pleasurable-sometimes, where a taint of vicious taste has crept in, your only curatives.

His

You are, I suppose, perfectly aware of what took place before Juggling Johnny was appointed steward of Squire Bull's household. The story is not a pretty one; and, for the sake of those who are dead and gone, I shall not enter into particulars. Suffice it that Johnny was installed in the superintendence of the under-servants' room through the influence of Dick Devilsdust, Old Hum, the superannuated Quack, Bendigo the fighting Quaker, and a lot more of the same set, who lived in the villages upon the Squire's property, and bore anything but goodwill to the steady and peaceable tenants. Dick Devilsdust, in particular, was a walking pestilence to himself. For some reason or other, which I could never fathom, he had imbibed a most intense hatred to the military, and never could set his eyes upon a Redcoat without being thrown into a horrible convulsion, and bellow ing like a bull at the sight of a Kilmarnock nightcap. As he grew up, he took to writing tracts between the intervals of weaving; and one of his first productions was an elaborate defence of Esquire North, who was then accused of having used harsh measures towards one of his tenantry. It is reported that Dick sent a copy of this pamphlet to the Esquire, with his humble compliments and so forth; but whether that be true or no, certain it is that he never received any thanks, or so much as a stiver's acknowledgment for having taken up cudgels against poles-an omission which, to the present day, he remembers with peculiar bitterness. So Dick thought it his best policy, as it really was, to turn his attention to the state of matters at home in Bullockshatch. Dick, you must know, dealt in a kind of cloth so utterly bad that no tenant on the estate would allow it to approach his skin. It was stamped all over with great flaring patterns of flamingos, parroquets, and popinjays, such as no Christian could

abide the sight of; and if you took one of his handkerchiefs to blow your nose with, the odds are that its texture was so flimsy that both your fingers came through. He was therefore obliged to sell it to people living beyond the estate-Jews, Turks, heretics, or infidels, he did not care whom, so that he could turn a penny; and some of those benighted creatures, having no other way of covering their nakedness, were content to take his rags, and to pay him handsomely for them. For all that, Dick was a discontented man. Did he meet a respectable tenant of Squire Bull going soberly with his family to church, when he, Dick, was pretending to jog to the meeting-house with his associates, (though Obadiah refused to certify that he was by any means a regular attender,) he would make mouths at the worthy man, and accost him thus :—

And so on

"So, sir! going to the tithe-cating parson's, I see-much good may it do ye. And if ye don't happen to have any particular sins this fine morning to repent of, I may as well remind ye that the quartern loaf is a farthing dearer than it ought to be just at the present time. Do you know what a locust is, you clod? You're a cankerworm, you base chawbacon!" he would go reviling the honest man, who had all the mind in the world to lay him on the broad of his back in the mud-and would have done it too, had it been a working week-day. Another while, Dick would send the bellman round the village, and having called a special meeting of weavers like himself, he would harangue them in some fashion like the following:

"Look'ye, my lads, I'm an independent man and a weaver, and I don't care a brass for Squire Bull. I've got a seat in the under-servants' room, and if I am not entitled to make a row at meal-times I don't know who is. I'll tell you a bit of my mind-you're the worst-used set

of fellows on the face of the earth, and if you have the least atom of pluck you won't stand it. Here are you obliged to take your flour from the Squire's tenantry, when you might get it cheaper if you went to the next town and bought it from Nick Frog, or Philip Baboon, or even Esquire North; though I consider his name an abomination, and would not give sixpence to save him from perdition. And then you have to find meal for Dragon the house-dog, and to victual some of the under servants; and it's no joke, I can tell yon, what they eat. If you stand this any longer, you are a set of jolterheads, and nincompoops, and asses, and slaves, and base cowardly coistrels. Why don't you get up a stir, rouse the villages, and alarm the tenantry a little? Rely upon it, they will come to reason soon enough if you give them a hint or two about the duck-pond or the pump; and for my own part, I don't mind telling them so in the servants' hall."

And so he would go on, raving and spouting, telling everybody that Squire Bull was a superannuated idiot, with not half the sense of his natural byeblow Jonathan-a chap whom Dick quoted on all occasionstill he got a kind of reputation as an itinerant orator; and the tag-rag-andbobtail would come from any distance, if they were certified that Devilsdust was to give tongue.

Now, as to the grievance that Dick complained of, there was none. The tenantry, as you know, were obliged to pay a pretty high rent to Squire Bull for their farms, and to keep up all sorts of watchmen and gamekeepers, and rural police-besides a night-patrol on the canal-not only for the general security of the estate, but for the order of the villages, which hatched the most turbulent, mischievous, and discontented crew that ever an estate was cursed with. When one of these fellows in the villages fell ill, the tenantry were_compelled to pay for his nursing and cure. When any of them were out of employment, and lounging about the market-place with their hands in their breeches' pocket, not knowing where to turn for a job, the tenantry, out of sheer goodness of heart, gave them a turn at ditching or draining;

and though they worked very ill they got fair wages. More than two-thirds of all the webs they wove-for some of them were really skilful artisans, and not mere botchers like Devilsdust -were taken by John Bull's tenantry: they paid almost no rent to the squire

in fact, they were a great deal too well treated, and this indulgence had turned their heads. They wanted now to have nothing to do with the tenantry beyond forcing them to take the same amount of cloth as before-and to get all their meat and bread from Frog, Baboon, North, Jonathan, and others, who lived off the estate, and who, they thought, would be uncommonly glad to take webs in exchange for provisions. None of these squires wanted webs, because their own villagers would have made a precious hullibaloo if they had introduced into their estates anything which was manufactured on the grounds of Mr Bull; but they made believe as if they would have no objections, at some future period, to meet the views of Devilsdust; and in the mean time, having a good deal of land which they wished to see properly tilled, they intimated to the villagers of Squire Bull, that they would have no objection whatever to sell them cattle and corn at a rate somewhat smaller than Bull's tenantry could afford.

This scheme never could have been carried into effect but for a difference in the servants' hall. It is of no use now raking up old matters. Carried it was, to the great disgust of the tenantry, and Juggling Johnny was appointed steward. To do the Juggler justice, he was not altogether in favour of the plan. But he could hardly help himself, as, without the assistance of Dick and his backers, he never would have got the keys; so, being an adroit little creature, and as clever at spinning a pirouette as an opera-dancer, he turned his back upon himself, declared that the tenantry were labouring under an antiquated fallacy, and that he would put all to rights in the twinkling of a bed-post. So, much against the convictions of the Squire, who knew him of old for as incapable a squirrel as ever cracked a rotten nut, he sat himself down at the head

of the table, and began to talk to the servants as though he were a second edition of Mahomet or the prophet Nixon.

And where do you think was Dick Devilsdust all this time? If you suppose that he was not looking after his own interest, you are consumedly mistaken. No sooner was the measure which swindled Squire Bull's tenantry carried in the servants' hall, than he went down to the country, called the villagers together, mounted upon an old sugar-barrel-which was now perfectly useless-and, brandishing a billy-roller in his hand, addressed them in the following terms :—

"Friends, Billy-roller men, and brothers! lend me your ears! The victory is won-we have done the trick! Cottonchester and the Mississippi are henceforward laid side by side. (Enormous cheering.) The devil take Bull's tenantry. (Applause.) They are dolts, asses, fools, idiots, chaw bacons, and Helots. Bull himself is a blockhead, and we must look after his affairs. We alone, and not the tenantry, are fit to do it. (Cheering.) And I am not going to stand any nonsense about police or house-dogs. (Vociferous applause.) We know very well why they are kept; and I, for one, have no notion of being interfered with. You understand me? (Cries of "We do!") Well, then, I'll tell you what it is-the Juggler hasn't behaved to me at all handsome in this matter. Not that I care about it one toss of a Brummagem farden; but I think they might have paid a little more respect to the voice of the villages. Howsom'dever, d'ye see, I don't mind the thing; only, as my health's a little shaken as it were with doing jobs of yours, I think a slight jaunt would do me good; and as I have been obliged to neglect my business, at an enormous sacrifice, on your account, perhaps you wouldn't consider it an unwarrantable liberty if I were just to send round the hat." So Devilsdust sent round the hat, and pocketed a lot of browns with some stray sixpences to boot-quite enough in fact to clear him in his projected jaunt, and something more. This subscription-being the first turned out so well that Bendigo the Quaker, who had been a strong

backer of Devilsdust, and, as some thought, was the cleverer fellow of the two, tried to get up a collection on his own account; but, I am sorry to say, made nothing of it. So Devilsdust, having pocketed the blunt, went out to take his holiday.

How do you think he used it? He made what he called a "Practical Tour" through the estates of Don Pedro, Don Ferdinando, Signor Macaroni, and Sultan Koran, advertising his wares everywhere, and entreating them to give him custom. Moreover, he lost no opportunity of abusing his landlord, John Bull, whom he held up everywhere to contempt as the most idiotical, prejudiced, pig-headed individual living. He said that there was but one way of promoting universal brotherhood among all the estates, and that was by admitting his, Dick Devilsdust's, wares free of duty. He pledged himself that, if this were done, there would be no more squabbles or lawsuits; and as he invariably spoke in a dialect which no one who heard him could understand, whilst he did not understand one word which was made in reply to his speeches, the effect, of course, was electric. He came back, swearing that there could be no more lawsuits, on account of his (Devilsdust's) enormous expected consignments; and that all Bullockshatch should unite as one man, to compel Squire Bull to dismiss every policeman, watchman, and bumbailiff in his service. As for poor Dragon, who had long been the terror of tramps and poachers, Dick proposed that he should be poisoned forthwith, or at all events starved to death; but he had not the smallest objection that his skin should be stuffed, and preserved as a specimen of an extinct animal.

Meanwhile Juggling Johnny, the new steward, set about regulating the affairs of the household as quietly as possible. The Juggler was not now quite so young as he once was, and, moreover, he had taken unto himself a wife; so that his wages became a matter of considerable importance to him, and he had no wish to do anything which might induce Squire Bull to give him warning. But he had difficult cards to play. You must know that the lower servants' room was