Fire Flies, &c. "QUAM multiplex cincindelarum diversitas noctu stellarum instar passim collucentium! Aliæ bruchi magnitudine alarum jactatione, aliæ solis ex oculis lucem vibrant, quæ libro legendo sufficiat. Quædam solis natibus splendorem edunt. Vermes quoque majusculi toto corpore coruscant. Ligna, arundines, arborum folia, plantarum radices, postquam computruere, in territoriis maxime humidis, adamantum, pyroporum, smaragdorum, chrysolithorum, rubinorum,&c. more lucem viridem, rubram, flavam, cæruleam noctu spargunt, mirumque in modum oculos oblectant."-DOBRIZHOFFER, tom. ii. p. 389. [Indian Woman's defence of Child-murder. ] AN Indian woman, who had just put to death her new-born daughter, thus defended herself to Gumella, after patiently listening to all his reproaches :-"Would to God! father, would to God that my mother, when she brought me into the world, had had love and compassion enough for me to have spared me all the pains which I have endured till this day, and am to endure till the end of my life! If my mother had buried me as soon as born, I should have been dead, but should not have felt death, and she would have exempted me from that death to which I am unavoidably subject, and as well as from sorrows that are as bitter. Think, father, what a life we Indian women endure among these Indians! they go with us with their bows and arrows, and that is all. We go laden with a basket, with a child hanging at the breast, and another in the basket. These go to kill a bird or a fish; we must dig the earth, and provide for all with the harvest. They return at night without any burden; we must carry roots to eat, maize for their chicha. Our husbands when they reach home, go talk with their friends; we must fetch wood and water to prepare their supper. They go to sleep; we must spend great part of the night in grinding maize, to make their drink. And what is the end | | of our watching! they drink the chicha, intoxicate themselves, beat us to a jelly, take us by the hair of the head, and trample us under foot. Would to God ! father, that my mother had buried me as soon as she bore me into the world! Thou knowest that all this is true, for it is what daily passes before your eyes; but our worst evil you do not understand, because you cannot feel it. After serving her husband like a slave, the poor Indian sees him at the end of twenty years take a girl for his wife, who is without understanding: he loves her, and though she beats our children and maltreats us, we cannot complain, for he cares nothing for us, and loves us no longer. The young wife rules everything, and treats us as her servants, and silences us, if we presume to speak, with the stick. Can then a woman procure a greater blessing for her daughter than to save her from all this, which is worse than death ! Would to God ! father, I say, that my mother had shown her love to me in burying me as soon as I was born; my heart would not have had so much to endure, nor my eyes so much to weep!" This he says he has translated literally from the Betoye language, as it was uttered to him. [Germ of the Tale of Paraguay.] A PARTY of Spaniards were gathering the herb of Paraquay on the south bank of the Rio Empalado,and having gathered all they could find, sent three of their number over the river, to see if any trees were on the other side. There were found a hut of the savages, and a plantation of maize. Terrified at supposing that the whole forest swarmed with savages; they lurked in their huts, and sent to the Reduction of S. Joachim, requesting that a Jesuit would come in search of these savages, and reduce them. Dobrizhoffer went with forty Indians, crost the Empalado, searched the woods as far as the Mondayěh miri, and on the third day traced out by a human footstep a little hovel containing a mother, a son in his twentieth, and a daughter in her fifteenth year. Being asked where the rest of their horde were, they replied, they were the only survivors! the small-pox had cut off all the rest. The youth had repeatedly searched the woods in hopes of finding a wife, but in vain. The Spaniards also for two years had been employed in that part of the country herb gathering and they confirmed his assertion, that it was utterly uninhabited. The missionary asked them to go with him to the Reduction: the mother made but one objection, she had tamed three boars, who were like dogs to her. If they got into a dry place, or should be exposed to the sun, having always lived in the thick shade, they would infallibly perish. "Hanc solicitudinem quæso, animo ejicias tuo, reposui; cordi mihi fore chara animalcula, nil dubites. Sole æstuante umbram, ubi ubi demum, captabimus. Neque lacunæ, amnes, paludes ubi refrigeruntur tua hæc corcula unquam deerunt." | venienced him terribly, for else he could climb trees like a monkey. All wore the hair loose. The man had neither bored his lip, nor wore any feathers. They had no earring, but they wore a string of wooden pyramidal beads, very heavy and very noisy. Dobrizhoffer asked if they were to frighten away the gnats, and gave a gay string of beads in their place. They were both tall and well made. The girl would have been called beautiful by any European; she was like a nymph or driad. They were rejoiced rather than terrified at the sight of Dobriz and his party. They spake Guarani, but as imperfectly as may be supposed. The man had never seen other woman; the girl never other man, for, just before her birth, her father had been killed by a tyger. The girl gathered fruits and wood, through thorns and reeds, in a dreadful country. Not to be alone at this employ. ment, she usually had a parrot on her shoulder, a monkey on her arm, fearless of tygers, though the place abounded with them (they knew her); yet tygers are there more dangerous than in the savannahs, where cattle are plenty. They were clothed, treated with especial kindness, and sent often to the woods, in hopes of saving their health, and few weeks as usual brought with it a severe seasoning, rheum, loss of spirit, appetite, and flesh. In a few months the mother died, a happy death, in full belief and faith of a happy hereafter. The maid withered like a flower, and soon followed her to the grave, and "nisi vehementissime fallor, ad cælum." Here they had lived in a place infested by all sorts of insects and reptiles, with nothing but muddy water for their drink. Alces (antas), deer, rabbits, birds, maize, the roots of the mandio tree, was their food. They spun the threads of the caraquata for their cloaths and hammocks. Honey was their dainty. The mother smoked through a reed; the son chawed. He had a shell for a knife. Sometimes he used a reed. But he had two bits of an old knife, no bigger each than his thumb, fastened with thread and wax to a wooden handle, which he wore in his girdle. With them he made his arrows and traps, and opened trees to get the honey. They had no vessels to boil anything, and therefore used the herb cold, gourds being their only cups or pots. The women both wore their hammock by day. The youth a man-high health, chearful and happy, content in delion (lacerna), girt with a cord, it was from his shoulders to the knee, and his gourd of tobacco hung from the girdle. Dobrizhoffer, not liking the girl's transparent dress, gave her a cloth, which she turbaned round her head. He gave the brother perizomata-drawers, which incon There was not a dry eye at her burial. The brother recovered; he also got through the small-pox remarkably well, and no fear was now entertained for him. He was in all acts of religion; every body loved him. An old Indian Christian with whom the youth lived, told Dobrizhoffer he thought him inclined to derangement, for every night he said his mother and sister came to him, and said, "Thee be baptized, for we are coming for you." Dobrizhoffer spoke to Feby. 16, 1814. HERBERT1 called me back this morning on Castrigg, near Tom's old lodging, to look at "something very curious." It was merely an icicle formed by the dripping of the water through a hollow bank, and reaching the road, so that it became a little pillar. The thing was not above three or four inches long, but I was repaid for the trouble of turning back, for it shaped itself presently into an allegorical vision::-a splendid hall, supported (chapterhouse like) by one central pillar, glittering like cut glass, and rendered 1 His wonderful boy, of whom he wrote to Neville White," The severest of all afflictions has fallen upon me. I have lost my dear son Herbert-my beautiful boy - beautiful in intellect and disposition: he who was everything which my heart desired. God's will be done!" -MS. Letter, 17th April, 1816. J. W. W. brilliant by a light within it, like Abdaldar's ring; but upon nearer inspection the pillar was of ice, and the light which gave its brilliance was all the while consuming it. Now as, væ mihi! the expected marriage of the princess must operate as a tax upon my poor brain, may I not thank Herbert and his icicle for a feasible and striking plan. Begin with such a vision ;—then answer the reproach for obtruding thoughts of mortality and death on such an occasion, and proceed in a high strain of religious philosophy, to show in what manner death, as it must be the last thing of life, becomes also the best. In this way William I. may best be introduced, and those of the ancestors of those whose names bear a fair report in history, or seem likely to be written in the book of life. Buonaparte's partizans. His sole excuse the specific madness which is produced by the possession of uncontrolled power. Causes of the Revolution. The sins of the fathers, &c. Henry IV.'s conformity perhaps a mortal blow to religion in France. Moral, political, and military profligacy. Practical reforms make men happier, better, and wiser. In the church abolish vows of celibacy, and confession. April 13. Begin with the Duke. "Quem virum," &c. Alexander, Frederic, Blucher, Platoff, and so end with the prince. COLLECTIONS FOR HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Astrea.1 AND POETRY. IR Philip Sidney tacked together the pastoral and the epic romance. D'Urfé has united them. He has done this with great skill, and involved the fates of his shepherds and his heroes, so as to form a well-constructed whole. This romance has one wearying and insupportable fault. Love questions after the Provençal fashion are continually arising; and set speeches are made pro and con, like the Plaidoyen Historiques of Tristan. It has also too much dialogue, which was thought very spiritual in its day, but which is dull and very worthless. very I have read Astrea in a detestable translation, in which there is not a single beauty of expression. These "persons of quality' never by any accident stumble upon one; every where you meet vulgarisms and barbarisms, French idioms and their own idiotisms. Here are some instances of a strange use of words. A lover has stabbed himself mortally! "he was at the last gasp, yet hearing the lamentation of his shepherdess, and knowing her voice, did call unto her. She, hearing a faint hollow voice, went towards him. Oh! heavens, how the sight of him did amuse her." Part i. p. 185. 'Southey read over the Astraa again in his latter days, with great delight. It was on his procuring an early edition of the original. J. W. W. A lover has resolved upon suicide: "and but for Olimborn, perhaps I had served my own turn; for he was so careful of me, that I could not do any thing to myself, but gave me so many diverting reasons to the conPart i. trary, that he kept me alive," &c. p. 417. An instance of extraordinary ignorance seems to mark this "person of quality" for throughout which he is spoken of in the fea woman. P. i. p. 12, is a picture of Saturn, minine gender, and called a hag. No man could be so uneducated as to have made these blunders. It appears too that she began to translate the book before she had read it, for p. 12, mention is made of the den of an old Mandrake. I marked this place with a note of astonishment and a Quid diabolus? but after a while it appeared that Mandragne is the name of a sorceress. This is probably the book in which Sterne found the tomb of the two lovers. What magic there is, is good; it is the central point to which every thing tends. All the strangers come to the fountain, or are sent by the oracle, and the whole is well managed. I scarcely ever read a work of fiction in which the events could so little be foreseen. La Fontaine valued this book above all others. except Marot and Rabelais; and here it was that he studied his rural de- | Frenchifying the manners of all ages, espescriptions. "This pastoral romance," says Gifford, "which once formed the delight of our grandmothers, is now never heard of, and would in fact exhaust the patience and weary the curiosity of the most modest and indefatigable devourer of morals at a watering place, or a boarding school."-B. J. vol. v. p. 394, &c. "Astrea," Gifford says, "bears a remote or allegorical allusion to the gallantries of the court of Henry IV."-Ibid. Pharamond. WHOEVER was the inventor of the French heroic romance, Calprenade is the writer who carried it to its greatest perfection. (Les Trois Siècles, tom. i. p. 230. Le seul nom,-le même genre.)1 It is the fault of the romances of chivalry that they contain so many adventures of the same character, one succeeding the other, which have no necessary connection with the main story, and which might be left out without affecting it; in fact they are in the main made up of these useless episodes. The fault of Calprenade is of an opposite character: he ran into the other extreme, and his three romances for variety of adventures and character, and for extent and intricacy of plot, are perhaps the most extraordinary works that have ever appeared. There is not one of them which would not furnish the plots for fifty tragedies, perhaps for twice the number, and yet all these are made into one whole. For this kind of invention, certainly he never has been equalled. cially in the abominable fashion of fine letter writing. Story is involved within story, like a nest of boxes; or they come one after another, so that you have always to go back to learn what has happened, and the main business seldom goes on; this was inevitable from the prodigious number of characters which were introduced. Pharamond was the romance which he composed with most care; but he did not live to finish it. Seven parts of the twelve he printed; the remainder were added by M. de Vaumoriere. The story is by no means so ably conducted as in the former part. I perceived the great inferiority before I knew the cause of it. Gyron le Courtoys. THE utter want of method in this book makes it appear as if it consisted of several metrical romances transposed. It begins with an adventure of Branor le Brun, an old knight above 120 years of age, who, though he had not borne arms for forty years, comes to Kamelot to try whether the knights of the present time were as good as those of his days. He stands quintain against Palamedes, Gavaine, and many others; but honours Tristan, Sir Lancelot, and King Arthur enough to take a spear against them, and overthrows them all like so many children. Then follows an adventure of Tristan and Palamedes, which is in Mort Arthur. Gyron now appears. He goes (wherefrom does not appear) to Maloane, the castle of his friend Danayn le Roux. The lady of Maloane twice tempts him, but in vain. They go to a tournament. Sir Lac, the friend of K. Meliadus, falls in love with the lady, and waylays her after the tournament, and wins her from her guard of twenty-five knights. tyron (who is all this while unknown, and leed supposed to be dead,) wins her then This evidently is the beginning and the fro him; but Sir Lac's love for her has end of an intended extract.-J. W. W. nov inflamed him, his heart gives way to The old romances gave true manner though they applied them to wrong times. but the anachronism was of little import Every thing in them was fiction. A double sin was committed by the French romancers in chusing historical groundwork, and in |