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Calling the wolf and wild-dog from their caves,
And the young lion from his forest hoar,
To glut their burning jaws with kings' and princes' gore.
Laocoon round thy splendid form are flung
Inextricable spires,-twin serpents chain
Thy mighty limbs,-like fire, the forky tongue
Shoots o'er thy brow, that writhes with more than pain;
Their plunging fangs thy patriot life blood drain,
Their volumes clasp thy sons, and all must die,-
But wrath and wrong are burning in thy brain,
Upon thy boys is fixed no father's eye;
"Tis cast on Heaven, in bold, accusing agony.
Beside him sinks a warrior on his shield,
Whose history the heart alone must tell!
Now, dim in eve-he looks, as on the field,
Where when he fell, his country with him fell.
Death sickens all his soul, the blood drops steal
Slow from his breast, congealing round the wound;
His strong arm shakes, his chest has lost its swell,
"Tis his last breath,-his eye-ball glares profound,
His heavy forehead glooms, bends, plunges to the ground!
Yet had the bold barbarian joy; if tears
For Roman slaughter could rejoice his soul.
Did he not hear the crashing of the spears?
When like a midnight tide, his warriors stole
Around the slumb'ring legions-till the roll
Of the wild forest-drum awoke the glen;
And every blow let loose a Roman soul.
So let them sting the lion in his den;
Chains and the spear are chaff, when Heaven gives hearts

to men!

Had not that with'ring lip quaff'd long and deep,
The cup that vengeance for the patriot fills;
When swords instinctive from their scabbards leap,
When the dim forests, and the mighty hill,
And the lone gushings of the mountain rills,
All utter to the soul a cry of shame;

And shame, like drops of molten brass, distils
On the bare head and bosom of the tame,

mingled here with individual temper. Czerni George took immediate refuge in Transylvania, and entered the Austrian service, where he was made a non-commissioned officer. He subsequently quarrelled with his captain, challenged, killed him; and fled to Servia. He was now but twentyremorseless hostility; by signal gallantry, perseverance, and five, yet he raised an insurrection; fought the Turks with talant embodied an army of his countrymen; bore down the Turks before him, beseiged Belgrade, and on the 1st of December, 1806, forced it to capitulate.

He was now master of a kingdom, was proclaimed generalissimo of Servia, repelled an attempt of the senate of nobles and ecclesiastics to repossess the government, and by proclamation declared himself "Supreme." The Mussulman power was awakened by this proximity of triumphant opposition, and an army of 50,000 men passed the Servian frontier. Czerni fought long and desperately on the banks of the Saave, but his small population gave way before the Russia and the Porte, Servia acknowledged herself tributary mass of the Turkish power. At the treaty of 1812, between to the Sultan. Czerni retired to Russia, and lived at Kisso. noff, in Bessarabia. In 1817, he had the rashness to return to Servia. He was taken in disguise near Belgrade, and immediately beheaded by order of the Pashaw. The object of his return is unascertained; it was said to be the possession of some treasure hidden during his day of success it was supposed by the Turks to be an attempt to feel his way to massacre once more. It might have been urged by the restlessness of a vigorous mind weary of inactivity; or by the nobler impulse of giving independence to his country, at a time when Europe was exulting in the overthrow of the French empire.

His appearance was striking and singular. He was boldly formed, and above the general stature. But the extraor." dinary length of his physiognomy, his sunken eyes, and his bald forehead, bound with a single black tress of hair, gave

Till the whole fetter'd man, heart, blood, and brain, is him a look rather Asiatic than European. It was his cusflame.

Then there were lightnings in that clouded eye,
And sounds of triumph in that heavy ear;
Aye, and that icy limb was bounding nigh,
Tracking the Roman with the bow and spear,
As through the livelong night the death-march drear
Pierced the deep forests o'er the slaughter grown;
Seeking for ancient chief and comrade dear,
Through wolf-torn graves and haggard piles of bone,
Along the rampart ruins, and marshy trenches strewn.
And what they sought they found, in wild weed robes,
Laid in the sepulchres that thunder ploughs.
They found the circle, where the thronging globes
Of German warriors held the night's carouse,
And groans of death, and magic's fearful vows
Startled the moon. Around the altars lay
The human hecatomb! in ghastly rows,
The leaders still unmix'd with meaner clay,
Tribune and consul stretch'd in white and wild decay.

But have I still forgot thee, loveliest far
Of all,-enchanting image of Love's queen?
Or did I linger but till yon blue star,

Thy star, should crown thee with its light serene?
There stands the goddess, by the Grecian seen

In the mind's lonely, deep idolatry;

When twilight o'er Cythera's wave of green,
Drew her rich curtain, and his upturn'd eye
Was burning with the pomp of earth, and sea, and sky.

We must give another poem of Croly's, with its introduction:

CZERNI GEORGE.

This man was one of the bold creations of wild countries and troubled times; beings of impetuous courage, iron strength, original talent, and doubtful morality. Civilization levels and subdues the inequalities of the general mind; barbarism shows, with the desolation, the grandeur of the wilderness, the dwarfed and the gigantic side by side, a thousand diminished and decaying productions overshadowed by one mighty effort of savage fertility.

Georges Petrowich was descended from a family of Servian nobles. His habitual name of Czerni (black) was given probably from the colour of his hair. His daring spirit first exhibited itself in an act of personal violence. When a boy, and ordered by a Turk to stand out of his way, or have his brains blown out, he shot the Turk on the spot. Hatred of the oppressors of his country was probably

tom to sit in silence for hours together; he could neither
read nor write, but he was a great warrior, and, for the time,
a deliverer of his country.

"Twas noon! a blood-red banner play'd
Above thy rampart porte, Belgrade;
From time to time the gong's deep swell
Rose thundering from the citadel;
And soon the trampling charger's din
Told of some mustering pomp within.
But all without was still and drear,
The long streets wore the hue of fear,
All desert but where some quick eye
Peer'd from the curtain'd gallery.
Or crouching slow from roof to roof,
The Servian glanced, then shrank aloof,
Eager, yet dreading to look on
The business to be that day done.
The din grew louder, crowding feet
Seem'd rushing to the central street;
'Twas fill'd the city's idle brood
Scatter'd before, few, haggard, rude:
Then come the Spahis bounding on
With kettle-drum and gonfalon;
And ever, at the cymbal's clash,
Upshook their spears the sudden flash,
Till, like a shatter'd, sable sail,

Wheel'd o'er their rear the black horse-tail,
All hurrying on, like men who yield,
Or men who seek some final field.

They lead a captive; the pacha
From his large eye draws back with awe ;
All tongues are silent in the group,
Who round that fearful stranger troop:
He still has homage, though his hands
Are straining in a felon's bands.
No Moslem he; his brow is bare,
Save one wild tress of raven hair,
Like a black serpent deeply bound,
Where once sat Servia's golden round,
His neck bends low, and many a stain
Of blood shows how it feels the chain;
A peasant's robe is o'er him flung,
A swordless sheath beside him hung;
He sits a charger, but a slave
Now holds the bridle of the brave.

And now they line the palace-square.
A splendid sight, as noon day's full glare
Pours on their proud caparison,

Arms rough with gold and dazzling stone,
Hore-nets, and shawls of Indian dye,
O'er brows of savage majesty.
But where's the fettered rider now?
A flag above, a block below,

An Ethiop headsman lowe 'ring near,
Show where must close his stern career.
A thousand eyes are fixed to mark
The fading of his eye's deep spark,
The quicken'd heaving of his breast;
But all within it is at rest:

There is no quivering nerve; his brow
Scarce bent upon the crowd below;
He stands in settled stately gloom,
A warrour's statue on his tomb.

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A trumpet rang;-the turban'd line
Clash'd up their spears, the headsman's sign.
Then, like the iron in the forge,

Blazed their dark visage, Czerni George!
He knew that trumpet's Turkish wail,
His guide through many a forest vale,
When, scattering like the hunted deer,
The Moslem felt his early spear;
He heard it when the Servian targe
Broke down the Delhi's desperate charge,
And o'er the fight his scimitar
Was like the flashing of a star:
That day, his courser to the knee
Was bathed in blood, and Servia free !
That day, before he sheathed his blade,
He stood a sovereign in Belgrade;
The field, the throne were on that eye,
Which wander'd now so wild and high.

*

The hour had waned; the sunbeam fell
Full on the palace pinnacle,
The golden crescent on its spire
Beam'd o'er a cross! his eye shot fire;
That cross was o'er the crescent set,
The day he won the coronet.
He dash'd away a tear of pride,
His hand was darted to his side,
No sword was there:-a bitter smile
Told the stern spirit's final thrill;
Yet all not agony; afar,

Mark'd he no cloud of northern war?
Swell'd on his prophet ear no clang
Of tribes that to their saddles sprang?
No Russian cannon's heavy hail
In vengeance smiting the Serail?
The whole was but a moment's trance,
That 'scaped the turban'd rabble's glance;
A sigh, a stride, a stamp the whole,
Time measures not the tides of soul.
He was absorb'd in dreams, nor saw
The hurried glare of the pashaw;
Nor saw the headsman's backward leap,
To give his axe the wider sweep.

Down came the blow;-the self-same smile
Was lingering on the dead lip still,
When 'mid the train the pikemen bore
The bloody head of the Pandour.

*

The night was wild, the atabal
Scarce echoed on the rampart wall;
Scarce heard the shrinking centinel,
The night-horn in that tempest's yell.
But forms, as shot the lightning's glare,
Stole silent through that palace square,
And thick and dim a weeping group
Seem'd o'er its central spot to stoop.
The storm a moment paused, the moon
Broad from a hurrying cloud rift shone;
It shone upon a headless trunk,

Raised in their arms; the moonbeam sunk,
And all was dimness; but the beat
Came sudden as of parting feet,
And sweet and solemn voices pined
In the low lapses of the wind.
"Twas like the hymn, when soldiers bear
A soldier to his sepulchre.

The lightning threw a shaft below,
The stately square was desert now.
Yet far, as far as eye could strain,
Was seen the remnant of a train;
A wavering shadow of a crowd,
That round some noble burden bow'd.
"Twas gone, and all was night once more,
Wild rain, and whirlwind's doubled roar.

UNCLE MOSELEY AND THE RAILROAD.

BY A COUNTRY COUSIN.

FROM Village sermons to city speechifications, no morality more trite or threadbare than the mutability of human affairs; yet, scarcely a blockhead of us all but expresses daily amazement at their ordinary changes of the times! We stare with idiotic wonder upon every new invention, nay, at every new combination of inventions long discovered. With fond retrospection, our eyes are ever fixed upon the past, and our feet, consequently, stumble over the molehills in our path. We ride through life, as it were, with our back to the horses.

But, though admitting that the world we live in is no longer the world lived in by our grandfathers, we are too apt to fancy that it has at length attained its acme of perfection; blind to the fact, that, in the eyes of our grandchildren, we shall one day become the same benighted, quizzical, old fogrums we presume to see in our predecessors; that we are but links in the great chain of humanity-perhaps of iron, perhaps only of packthread! During the laps of the present century, the first have become last and the last first.

The iron-fisted borough-owner has been stripped of his coat of mail. John Company has had his grinders extracted from him, tooth by tooth, like some rich Jew excruciated by the extortion of our early kings. Attainted peerages have been restored to the offspring of those whose rebel heads figured on Temple-bar; and the miracle of making the dumb speak has been renewed by the admission of Catholics into the most high court of parliament. These are changes which the first two apprenticeships of the present century certainly never expected would come to pass.

All these, however, are vicissitudes dependent on the vacillations of human opinion-a thing having far more than thirty-two points to its variability. The real miracle of the nineteenth century has been its conquest over time and space by the pace of steam. One fancies one has done enough in being thankful for the facility of dining one day in Dublin and the next in London, without considering the totally new computation introduced into all sorts and conditions of public and private affairs, by the power of pouncing on a national enemy in our war-steamers with the magic of a thought, or of stepping in our seven-leagued boots to look in upon our wife at Southampton, when she fondly fancies us, where she wishes us, at York.

We have taken the thing too easily. We do not sufficiently appreciate the marvel of having brought the mountain to Mahomet. Could Sir Walter Raleigh have been told that Virginia would ever be within a fortnight's sail of our island, so as to bring his pigtail to a fine market-could the wretched exiles who pined away their souls in the three presidences a century ago, convinced that, as the foundations of the round world are so fast that they cannot be moved, nothing would ever bring India nearer than a sixmonths' voyage to Leadenhall-street-been assured of monthly communication, they would have laughed their informant to scorn, as a mere dreamer of dreams.

Yet we have done all this. We have penetrated the mysteries of the land of Egypt; and think no more of steaming it from Blackwall to Smyrna, than the house of Hanover thought of crossing the channel!

Nor is it alone the bare fact to which we fail to attribute due importance: we have not yet established the new code of ethics that must eventually result from the change. People write letters to The Times newspaper about railroad legislation, but they take a one-sided view of the case. They do not perceive, that whereas Justice used formerly to be painted blind, she ought to have been represented lame; and that, by the blessing of rail-roads, she has recovered the use of her limbs; that she can henceforward not only overtake the fugitive malefactor and absconding bankrupt, but personally investigate abuses of which she was formerly content to listen to a garbled version. Outstripping the telegraph, she is on the spot where some evil deed has been done, before even an alarm is sounded. No further pillage in our colonies, no unjust stewards either abroad or at home. The eye of the master glances along the railroad, or the commissioners of our sovereign lady the queen come steaming it into the very heart of the mischief.

No more Alsatias in the world; no obscure nooks or

dirty corners. At home they are accessible to penny (and a disappointment in youth implies, of course, a disap. postage-abroad, to steam.

I am akin, however, to those who would fain that this subjugation of space and time had not occurred during their born days; and I only wish the reader were acquainted with my Uncle Moseley, in order to appreciate the nuisance it must have been to that churlish and ungenial individual, to find Moseley Hall brought within eight hours of the metropolis! My Uncle Mosely is the great man of our family; the bachelor elder brother of half a dozen brothers and sisters rash enough to have married, increased, and multiplied, and replenished the earth, with little enough to replenish their own empty pockets. The consequence is, that nobody's five thousand a year was ever thought so much of as uncle Moseley's-that is, in his own family. In my childhood, I used to hear this invisible uncle talked about among my elder cousins, till his riches assumed a vague and mysterious influence in my imagination. He was as some enchanter of the Arabian Tales, dwelling in an inaccessible cavern in a magic forest, surrounded by heaps of coined and uncoined gold, and caskets of jewels.

As I grew older, and occasionally overheard the complaints of poverty usual in large and necessitous families, accompanied with the invariable commentary of "But Uncle Moseley could make us all comfortable, if he chose! -Uncle Moseley does not spend a fifth part of his income, and might easily assist us without feeling it," my curiosity became more rational, till, by dint of questioning and surmising, I ascertained that this wealthy relative was an elderly squire, with a prodigious rent-roll, residing in the north, at our old family seat of Moseley Hall.

So far for matter of fact. But my fancy was soon set to work again by the descriptions I continued to extract of Moseley Hall. My mother loved, indeed, to talk of this home of her fancy. All the romance of her life was comprised within its venerable walls; and often by fire-light, when the day's tasks were done, did she indulge me with an account of the curious old moated manor, with its embayed windows, and battlements, and oaken parlours, and music-gallery, and family pictures, till I portrayed it to myself as something between Windsor Castle and Hampton Court, with a little touch of St. James's palace and Bridewell.

Mosely Hall was situated at two days' journey from London in summer, three in winter. But where was the use of measuring its distance from the metropolis, when no one ever progressed between the two? There might have been a great gulph intervening, profound as that which separated Lazarus in glory from Dives in misery-for any thing it mattered to the contrary; for Moseley Hall was situated at nine miles' distance from a market town; the market town itself being of so obscure and nerveless an order, that the one coach connecting it with the vitalities of the kingdom lumbered its way only twice a weak into the market place! And then the nine miles' cross-road,partly through lanes, partly through fields, with thirteen gates to open!-My mother declared, that in her girlhood, a journey to the market-town was talked of in the family as now we talk of a trip to the Rhine; and, till the death of my grandfather brought his widow and children to settle in town, she was accustomed to regard the extensive woodlands constituting a great portion of the Moseley estate much as Proserpine may have regarded the manifold redoubts of the Styx, dividing her from the breathing world.

It was, in fact, what the French call a pays perdu, like that surrounding La Trappe or the Boccage of La Vendée, having bad roads, and coppices intersected with what the language of the country graphically term "mires!" But the roads were good enough for the use of timber-trucks and the peasants constituting the sole inhabitants of the district; and, unless in very bad winters, the mires were seldom impassable-I was about to write it unfordable, for, truth to say, there nature seemed somewhat amphibious.

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ointment in love,) had rendered London distasteful to him, so that he had immured himself for life, like the sleeping beauty in the wood. Not that he slept away his time in the old hall. My uncle, it seems, was a scholar, who had bequeathed our family name to the university, and having fortunately been able to bestow the living of Moseley on a college chum, who had shared his college pursuits and college honours, they abided together in that northern desert almost like fellows of a college. The parsonage was an humble, low-browed, wide-hearthed habitation, scarcely two hundred yards distant from the hall-door; and with a mouldy old library of black-letter books for their morning's diversion, and a chess-board at the hall, and backgammon and cribbage-boards at the parsonage-what could they want more? In their friskier days, they used to go out angling or trolling together, and even of later years, had been known to enjoy a day's fishing in the canal of the old fashioned garden, or even in the moat of the Hall. But their day for field sports was past; their days for otium cum dignitate fully come. The old parson contented himself with his privilege of mumbling a couple of score of clodpoles to a comfortable sleep, twice in every Sabbath, and my uncle, who knew that the family coach was rotting in the coach-house, and that his best pair of punchy old greys had died of the asthma, was satisfied to toddle, on every sunny day, along the terrace of Moseley Hall, which commanded a fine empurpled perspective over a wooded plain, thirty miles in extent; getting an appetite for his dinner, while disputing with his deaf old friend some exploded theory of Aristotelian philosophy.

Such was the man who stood between three scattered but flourishing families of vigorous young Moseleys and five thousand a year! Few of us had ever seen him. Twice only had he visited London in our memory; and on each occasion, (one of these being to consult an aurist for his infirm Pylades,) two days of his week's sojourn were devoted to recovering from the fatigues of so terrible a journey, and two more to preparations for its renewal. He was on what are called "good terms" with his brothers— who were many years younger than himself; but he was never known to draw his purse-strings in their favour, or to answer the letters in which they annually announced to him the sprouting of their olive-branches. On coming to town, he apprised them of his arrival at the same obscure inn in the Adelphi he had frequented while at Oxford; and when they all arrived to visit him, (the married brothers and sisters, and their several progenies,) made all the efforts suggested by old-fashioned politeness to listen to a recapitu. lation of our names, and ticket them to the heads of each. It might be my fancy, but it struck me, at both these interviews, that Uncle Moseley took quite as much delight in decrying the family seat, as ever my poor mother had taken in exalting it. He spoke of Moseley Hall as damp, dreary, lonely, "remote, unfriended, melancholy, slowi For, after all, if he really found cause of discontent in the cawing of the rookery, or the mournful stillness of the surrounding woods, why abide there? The old Crœsus might have commanded a snuggery at Bath, or Brighton, or a mansion in London; and since he preferred banishment to this "Ultima Thule," this obscure stronghold of his forefathers, no need surely to murmur against its desolation? Yet to hear him talk, the bad roads of aforetime must have become ten times worse than ever, and the mires have deepened to morasses; while the gates intervening between the Hall and the market-town, had manifestly increased and multiplied as largely as the Moseley family. As to the green lanes, I could fancy, from his description, the boughs tangling, and the trees stooping to interlace their branches in order to circumvent the approach of travellers, like those of a fairy tale.

My general impression, in short, was, that the old seat was becoming daily more unapproachable; that the gallery of family pictures, and library of Elzevirs, and gray carp in the moat, might, perhaps, be as fine as ever; but that they were, and must remain, invisible to eyes profane, like those gems of purest ray serene," said to sparkle in the dark unfathomed caves of ocean, by those who have never been there to see.

The rudeness of the environs, however, served only to augment, in my vague ideas, the grandeur of the hall-the ogre's castle-the Suzerain's pleasant city of refuge from the savageness of the nature over which he held undisputed" sway. And my notions of its dignity were probably shared by Uncle Moseley, who was never known to quit the place. From the day of his accession to the throne of Moseley land, he had never deserted it. A disappointment in youth

Every now and then, indeed, there arrived (carriage duly paid by uncle Moseley,) from the Hall, hampers of hares,

pheasants, and partridges in autumn, wild ducks and bustards in winter; calculated to inspire the juniors of the family with shrewd suspicions that those woods described as dreary, were excellent preserves; and the moorland depicted as barren, a capital lounge for the sportsman. But this only tended to increase our dissatisfactions against our kinsman and his habitation; to which he was so careful not to invite us, out of consideration for the care, cost, and peril of such a journey. For terrible accidents had happened to that very heavy, heavy coach, in the memory of man; and posting was an outlay of ready money only compatable with headship of the Moseley clan!

And so, overmastered by the hopelessness of the case, we gave up troubling our heads about the matter; some of us beginning to regard the family sent as a mere historical legend-an apocryphal mansion-a castle in the air; or rather one of those bubbles of the earth, described by Macbeth. Such of us as had a pleasant lot of it, went on our way rejoicing, and remembered not uncle Moseley, even in our prayers. Such of us as had to wrestle with the bitterness of life, under articles to attorneys, or beclerked among the grimy smotherations of the city, occasionally wished him in a better place, albeit Moseley Hall was said to be a place so excellent.

My destinies, among the rest, were appointed in a far country. I obtained a mercantile appointment in one of the ports of the Levant; and enchanted with the novelties of an oriental life, and a new aspect of animate and inanimate nature, enjoyed my banishment almost more than it is safe to avow with the charge of ingratitude and heartlessness before one's eyes, in letters home. But though agreeably acclimatized among the palmettos, and having learnt to smoke like a Turk, I was not sorry when, at the end of a few years, a mission from my employers enabled me to revisit home.

I found the black hair of my dear mother of "a sable. silvered." I found the firm arm of my excellent father tremulous from disease: I found the little sisters I had left in pinafores, married, and with infants of their own upon their knees. I found one brother a diplomatized slayer of men, and another a privileged picker of pockets of the Middle Temple. But I found them all, thank God! open. armed to welcome me. The fatted calf was killed in all their houses in succession, so as to produce almost a surfeit of veal.

The only thing that appeared to me perfectly unaccount. able among the changes visible in my family, was the audacity with which they all talked of uncle Moseley, and the familiarity they all evinced with Moseley Hall. My brother Bob spoke of having just enjoyed a week's shooting there, as he would have talked, in former days, of making war on the sparrows in Hornsey Wood; and I literally overheard my mother advising my eldest sister to send down to the Hall for change of air, her eldest boy, who was recovering from the whooping cough! Another of my sisters had some fine orange-trees in her balcony, which she coolly informed me were always kept alive for her, during the winter, in the old greenhouse at Moseley.

"So you have, at length, scaled the wall, and accom. plished your entrance into the enchanted castle!" said I, addressing my sailor brother, the one nearest to myself in age and affections. "But surely you must find it some. what troublesome and expensive to profit so largely by my uncle's tardy hospitalities?"

"Troublesome? Expensive?" cried he. "We break. fast at home, and, at the cost of a dozen shillings, arrive there by luncheon time. Bless your soul! the Hull railroad cut through an angle of the old man's estate, and runs through his park. Moseley Hall is completely laid bare to the public. There is a station-house not a quarter of a mile from the door."

"How very convenient for my uncle," said I, musingly; " he used to complain of the difficulty of intercommunication

with town!"

A general chorus of laughter from my whole family, rewarded the observation.

"I wish you could have seen the old fox, when first unearthed?" exclaimed my sailor brother. "When the plan of the railway was first laid down, he was the only landed proprietor of the district who opposed it; and had he possessed a grain of parliamentary interest, I doubt

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whether the bill for its establishment would have been carried. During the progress of the works, he had two fits of the jaundice. For, while surveying the unsightly mounds of earth thrown up in the frightful paddock he calls a park, he foresaw exactly what has occurred, the incursions of the Picts and Scots; or, in plain English, the invasion of his sacred territory by his nephews and nieces! You may remember how the old crocodile used to weep, in days of yore, over his isolation; and lament over the impossibility of gathering us together under his kinsmanly wings? Faith, he has us now, with a vengeance! Moseley Hall is our hospital when sick; our tea-gardens, when gambolsome; our hunting-ground, when inclined for sport. There is no longer the smallest pretext for our exclusion! The sacred groves of Dodona are desecrated, and Moseley Hall become a public thoroughfare-a popular lounge! Two houses of public entertainment, an inn and ale-house, have (as is usually the case) tacked themselves to the skirts of the station-house; ay! and without so much as the civility of calling themselves the Moseley Arms! The place is, in short, a cake-house-pointed out to the junketers who picnic in the woods, as the rum ould seat of one Squire Moseley—a queer 'un—a cracky ould gentleman, in nankin shorts and gaiters, worth a power o' money, which he hasn't the heart to spend ! I promise you that, troublesome as you may suppose our numerous family to my uncle, we are by no means the greatest nuisance inflicted on him by the railroad!"

"It is rather hard," observed my barrister brother, with an air of magnanimous compassion," at Mr. Moseley's age, and having acquired settled habits of life, to find them so thoroughly overset! The old gentleman had composed his mind to solitude. He was of a philosophical turn. He loved argument and cribbage. The society of Mr. Rubric insured him both, and he asked no more. And now, to be broken in upon at all hours of the day-to have his venerable old mansion laid open to the espial of a station-house, and his hospitality subjected to the demand of his kinsfolk and acquaintances, every day of his life-nay, thrice on every day of his life-from year's end to year's end-is a severe trial! When he hears the shriek of the approaching train, he is never certain that it may not bring down upon him some poor relation; and the railway, which deposits along so many hundreds of miles, its fumes and dust, its noise and nuisance, appears to him constituted for the sole purpose of depositing visitors at the gates of Moseley Hall! To say nothing of accidents! At any hour of the day, some frightful explosion may convert this peaceful mansion into an infirmary; filling his spare beds with maimed and dying persons-and his hall with coroners' inquests and funeral array! Poor nervous old gentleman! how can he be expected to resign himself at once to a calamity so unfore. shown in the casting of his horoscope! As well might he have expected to see a volcano start up in his paddock, as this fearful arena for the combat of the elements-fire and water against earth and air!"

"Do not expect me to pity him," said I, in answer to this special pleading. "A main advantage of half these modern improvements consists in their triumph over individual selfishness. Is the well-being of this egotist, this human oyster, this useless member of the community, to be weighed against a benefit conferred on the united kingdom? A few hundred such churlish proprietors as uncle Moseley, and where would be the vaunted hospitality of old England? No, no! the old gentleman has been smoked out of a den which he had never the heart to render pleasant or profitable to other people!"

"I shall like to hear what you will say to his grievances while visiting at Moseley Hall!" cried my lawyer brother.

"I shall never visit it! There was a time when I would have given worlds for an invitation, and never received one. Why should I harass the old man for the sake of seeing it now, in its days of desecration, and stripped of all its colouring of romance?"

"I think I could tempt you to break your resolution!" observed my youngest sister. "I can promise you that the old family seat contains a picture connected with a story which

But, I forbear. My readers have, probably, heard enough of these family details. I can scarceley expect any, besides myself, to feel interested in the daily disappointment in love, of UNCLE MOSELEY.

TRAVELS have the looseness desirable for summer reading, and we covet new stuff, of this quality, at this season, more than any other. The following, written by the son of an English family of our acquaintance, will be relished. ||

NAZARETH.

It was just five o'clock when we came to Nazareth, which was not visible till we were immediately above it. The grey houses standing in the side of the hill, some of them covered with snow, as well as the heights above the city, gave it a most sombre appearance. I never looked upon a place of so melancholy an aspect. I could see into the convent from the road I was riding over, and in its court-yard were piled up heaps of snow. Some small houses had fallen down, and the stones having plumped into the snow, formed so many little fountainheads to the numerous streams that the thaw was melting through the streets; the only uncovered spot around being over the valley in front, dark and frowning, too abrupt apparently to retain the snow. It was the Mount of Precipi

tation.

The inhabitants seemed to be frozen. They sat without energy in their door-ways, and suffered the melting snow to wander as it listed. Small as the town is, I was nearly an hour before I reached the convent-gate. My horse fell three times; but, lodging firmly in the newly made gutters, I did not lose my seat. At length, however, we were all obliged to dismount, and waded and floundered on till, perfectly exhausted, we entered the gates of the anticipated "hospice." The vesper service was being performed; and the deep sound of the organ accompanying a full choir, echoed among the hills. All beside was still as death.

showed me into an exceedingly nice room, where supper was in a very short time brought to me. Hassan was treat. ed with equal ceremony; and while I enjoyed the monkish fare at the little wooden table with which the room was furnished, he, in a more congenial posture, despatched his mess cross-legged on the floor. I learned that the monks, after their meal, assembled in a chamber not very far from mine, for the purpose, as the servitor told me, of holding a conversazione. I took that opportunity, therefore, of paying my respects to the superiour. He was a Spaniard, of a most pleasing countenance and manner, and had not very long returned from South America. He had lately succeeded an Italian as head of the establishment, for it seems to be the privilege of these two countries to nominate in turn. He was seated on a sofa against the wall, while the bearded brothers were fixed in high-backed chairs at regular intervals round it. I could scarcely refrain from laughing as I entered, when each figure solemnly bowed its head towards me, and then relapsed into its former rigid position, as stiff and lifeless nearly as if fixed in a niche of one of its own catacombs in Europe.

Placing myself in a vacant seat on the sofa, by the side of the superior, I thanked him for the lodging I had found in the convent. He asked me the news from Europe, and chattered at such a rate about Spanish America, that I had very little occasion to speak. Coffee was handed round by a servitor in small Turkish cups, and immediately after it a prodigious bottle of aqua-vitæ went its tour, of which the reverend fathers partook with undisguised delight. The bell at length tolled eight, and away strode the statues, without exchanging a word, to meditate in their cells. The princi pal hoped that I would favour them with my company every evening during my stay.

My own chamber was cold enough, and I was very glad to seek warmth in my hard bed, and meditate in my turn upon the useless lives led by so many young men in so large and dreary an abode. The convent is large enough to contain a hundred: there are now upwards of twenty of every description. It is esteemed, I understand, the best built in the Holy Land; and the church has ever been pronounced the handsomest.

The inner door of the convent was closed. I passed through a small arch at the upper end of the court, and, raising a curtain, stood in the church. The monks were all on their knees, with their arms stretched in the manner of the Franciscans towards heaven. It was dusk, and no light came from without; but candles and lamps innumerable gave a rich colour to all around. The procession was over, and the monks were immoveable in prayer; their devoted attitudes, their bald heads and long beards, had a most im. posing effect. The solemn notes of the organ, which was impossible to quit the town, and very difficult to move about January 31.-The deep snow on the ground rendered it still played, the odour, and the handsome building itself, in it. I waded through the narrow streets, however, to with the sudden manner in which I had descended into it make a visit to the different spots, said to be still in exist. from the cold hills and the deep snow, had an air of myste-ence, which have been rendered sacred by their connexion ry about it, that seemed not of this earth. It was not pro- with the name and early life of our Saviour. The being in fane, I hope, in so holy a neighbourhood to remember the Nazareth itself, however, and the view of every hill and Scotch knight in the subterranean chapel of Engaddi: just valley round it, is sufficient to convey higher feelings, and such a surprise did it all seem to me! Beneath the altar, which stands in the centre of the church, was a flight of give birth to deeper veneration than the minutia preserved steps leading into a cave, over which a soft stream of light in the traditions of monks, and disfigured by their paltry was cast from several lamps that hung within it. I could decorations, can possibly do. I first went to Joseph's Shop, as it is called: it is now a small chapel, with a few wretchonly conjecture the characters of these evidently most cred places, for all the monks were so absorbed in their deed pictures hanging about it, where mass is occasionally performed in some state. The building that has an air of votions that I could not enquire. I do not think any one authenticity about it, is that called the Synagogue, which is perceived me. also a chapel; and, although the property of the Latin priests, the Greeks have the privilege of celebrating their form of worship within it. Some poor people, who had session of this only substantial refuge without the convent been driven from their homes by the snow, had taken pos walls, and had spread their carpets on the flags. A number of saints in very miserable daubs were hanging round the walls, among whom the most conspicuous was St. George: two coarse handkerchiefs with worked borders graced his frame, left there by pilgrims who had just passed, in fulfilment of the vow which these simple offerings had accomplished for them.

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At length they rose from their knees, and in a solemn procession, headed by the superiour, wound along the aisles; their heads bowed down, and their arms crossed upon their breasts. At certain parts of the church they paused, and, kneeling for a moment, touched the pavement with their foreheads, and again rising, moved on, till, all being finished, they gradually disappeared through a small door beneath the organ-loft; the last of the devout line closed it after him, and I was left alone in the church, doubtful almost whether

I had witnessed a scene of reality or not.

The supper bell of the convent, however, brought me to my senses, and I returned to seek its hospitality. A lay brother with a formidable bunch of keys received me in the long gallery of the building, and asked me of what country I was. I told him, and he replied, "Good! I hope you are not an American Englishman." I assured him I was a complete Englishman. "Have you any letters to the superiour?" was his next question," any recommendation ?" "None," was my answer, "but that I am exceedingly hungry, and too tired to remain longer in suspense; so pray give me shelter." "But you are not an American?" again said he," no missionary ?" I again declared that I was neither, and sat upon the window-seat to await his delibe

ration.

He left me for a moment, and, returning with a welcome,"

The most singular resort of the devout in Nazareth, however, is the stone termed "Mensa Christi," which stands in a small chamber, also a chapel : the wall is hung round with the certificates of the sacred nature of the relic, written in every language known throughout Christendom. It is recorded merely as a tradition of the church, but procures for all who say in a proper spirit an "Ave Maria" or " Pater Noster," seven years' plenary indulgence. It was upon this stone, the tradition says, that our Lord and his disciples supped before and after his resurrection.

The clearest water is drawn from a fountain not very far from the town, to which nearly all the women seem to flock, called after the Virgin, from the belief that she used

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