began afresh the erection of the ruined fortifications. Since then it has had lavished on it all the resources of skill and science. It is now, perhaps, one of the most impregnable military positions in the world.

OBERWÖRTH.

A few hundred yards higher up the Rhine than Coblentz and its companion Ehrenbreitstein, lies the lovely little island of Oberworth, or Magdalenenwörth, in the very centre of the river. This beautiful spot was formerly the site of a famous nunnery, founded early in the twelfth century (A. D. 1143): which was afterwards secularised, and subsequently destroyed on the cession of the left bank of the river to France, in the war of the first revolution.

Ages ago the following wild tradition respecting one of those hapless maidens, who died loving, but unmarried, within its walls, obtained wide currency in this vicinity.

THE DANCE O' THE DEAD.

was

The Freiherr von Metternich, who had his abode in Coblentz, early in the fourteenth century, a proud and a haughty noble; and he thought no youth, of all those in the neighbourhood, good. enough to aspire to his fair daughter's hand, or to enter into an alliance with his ancient family. But the pride of birth has been more than once abased by love; and the calculations of man have

too often failed to be deemed infallible. The lovely Ida was his only child; she was gentle as the morning; but her heart had long been bestowed upon a noble youth, who, according to the customs of chivalry, served her father as esquire until he should win his spurs, and receive the honourable accolade of knighthood. Gerbert, such was his name, loved her in return with a love almost surpassing that of woman.

Their wooing was unknown to the haughty Freiherr von Metternich, and equally hidden from him was their betrothal. Ida and Gerbert swore eternal faith to each other long before her jealous sire discovered their tender inclinations. A wroth man was he when he made the discovery.

"It shall not be," he spake to himself, as he paced the splendid apartments of his palace; "it shall never come to pass; she must be placed with the good nuns until she forget him: and he -I shall send him a journey-a long journey."

The proud man smiled suspiciously as he repeated the last words; and it was easy to see that he meditated something evil to the object of his soliloquy. In a moment more he summoned his most trusty retainer, and they retired to his closet to hold private conference together. That night the young Gerbert, all unsuspicious of the storm then gathering over his devoted head, was despatched to the neighbouring castle of Lahneck, on a mission to the provincial grand prior of the Knights Templars, who held his residence there; and in a few hours after his departure the fair Ida, his betrothed bride, was conveyed in silence and in secrecy to the shore of the

Rhine, and from thence transferred in a covered barque to the convent of Oberwörth.

The grand prior of the Templars sat in a lofty chamber of the Castle of Lahneck, as the youthful Gerbert was introduced to him by the obsequious servitor. He was a dark man, not young, nor yet old; but a heavy cloud-it might be of care, it might be of sorrow, it might be of crime, for his order had long acquired the character of unscrupulousness-rested on his furrowed brow, and gave a character of settled gloominess to his aspect. The burning sun of Palestine, which lent his cheek a darker hue, contributed also not a little to shadow the expression of his otherwise noble countenance. He sat alone, his head supported on his hands, his eye fixed on the ground; deep thought seemed to have taken full possession of all his faculties.

"I present you with this missive, sir;" spake Gerbert, approaching him, bending his knee submissively, "'tis from the Freiherr von Metternich, your ancient friend. "

The prior started at the words; the voice which uttered them sounded like an old familiar tone in his ear. He awoke from his reverie and looked on the youth; and again he started, as a man will do who beholds suddenly presented to his view the well-remembered traits of one long dead. He uttered no word in answer, however, but received the letter in silence from his hands. Hastily breaking the seal, he scanned the contents with intense eagerness, ever and anon looking up from the page to the face of

the intelligent youth, who stood reverentially before him awaiting his answer. "Your name?" he abruptly queried, before he had entirely finished the persual of the letter, "Your name?

-Speak!"

"Gerbert von Isenburg.

"Your mother's?"-asked the prior, with unwonted agitation.

"Guda von Isenburg," replied the youth.

"Alas! alas!" exclaimed the prior, whom the reply seemed to agitate beyond all reasonable measure, "Alas! alas! and wo is me! how may I forget the past. " As he spoke, he wiped away a burning teardrop which burst involuntarily from his suffused eye, and commenced to run its swift, scathing course adown his furrowed cheeks. "Alas! alas!"

He motioned Gerbert to sit beside him, when he had in some sort mastered his deep and unwonted emotion; and then he bade him listen. The youth obeyed without observation or comment; but he was sorely surprised, nothwithstanding, to see such a conflict of human feelings in the breast of one, the head of an order proverbially dead to every passion but that of an all-absorbing ambition.

"Know ye the contents of this missive, my son?" asked the prior: "Know ye aught of my correspondent's desire?"

youth; "I know I am no clerk to

46 Nay, sire," replied the naught of what it contains. read such cyphers; and it is no concern of mine, even an I were.

"But it is, my son," said the prior; "it is concern of yours, and of vital import to you too."

Gerbert looked amazed at the Templar: his eyes asked that which his tongue could not bring itself to inquire of him. "It

"Hear me, my son," pursued the prior, asks me to contrive against your life; it asks me to send you to the Holy Land, and to order it so there that you be placed in such a position of danger, that to survive, still less ever to return to our own fair land, would be utterly impossible. It requires me to do all this-villain that he is who asks it!"

The youth was quite thunderstruck at this dreadful intelligence; still the truth of a heart which of itself knew no guile, made him hesitate in giving implicit credence to such a foul accusation against his master. When, however, the prior read the letter to him, word for word -when he heard from the lips of that dignitary, the whole circumstances of his love for the fair Ida when he listened to the angry accents in which the tale of treachery was commented on by his newly found friend and when he saw the fire of indignant rage which lighted up the sunken eye of that warrior priest, he could not choose but believe it, and give up his whole soul to the horrid conviction,

-

"But he shall be disappointed," said the prior as he concluded the perusal, "he shall be disappointed. The child of Guda von Isenburg shall never suffer ill while I have a hand to avert it from him."

Gerbert bent his eye full upon the face of the speaker, until it met his glance; there was in the look which he gave him, something of anger, mixed up with much of natural astonishment.