dent abroad, he composed his story of "The Monk," a work more extravagant in its use of supernatural machinery than any previous English tale of modern times, and disfigured with licentious passages. The novel was published in 1795, and attracted much attention. A prosecution, it is said, was threatened on account of the peccant scenes and descriptions; to avert which, Lewis pledged himself to recall the printed copies, and to recast the work in another edition. The author continued through life the same strain of marvellous and terrific composition-now clothing it in verse, now infusing it into the scenes of a drama, and at other times expanding it into regular tales. His "Tales of Terror" (1799), " Tales of Wonder" (to which Sir Walter Scott contributed), "Romantic Tales" (1808), "The Bravo of Venice" (1804), and "Feudal Tyrants" (1806), both translated from the German, with numerous dramas, all bespeak the same parentage as "The Monk," and none of them excels it. His best poetry, as well as prose, is to be found in this novel; for like Mrs. Radcliffe, Lewis introduced poetical compositions into his tales; and his ballads (which we give) of "Alonzo the Brave " and "Durandarte" were as attractive as any of the adventures of Ambrosio the monk.]

Sad and fearful is the story
Of the Roncevalles fight:
On those fatal plains of glory
Perished many a gallant knight.

There fell Durandarte; never
Verse a nobler chieftain named ;
He, before his lips for ever
Closed in silence, thus exclaimed:

"Oh, Belerma! oh, my dear one,
For my pain and pleasure born;
Seven long years I served thee, fair one,
Seven long years my fee was scorn.

"And when now thy heart, replying
To my wishes, burns like mine,
Cruel fate, my bliss denying,
Bids me every hope resign.

"Ah! though young I fall, believe me, Death would never claim a sigh ; 'Tis to lose thee, 'tis to leave thee, Makes me think it hard to die!

Oh! my cousin, Montesinos,
By that friendship firm and dear,
Which from youth has lived between us,
Now my last petition hear.

"When my soul, these limbs forsaking, Eager seeks a purer air,

From my breast the cold heart taking, Give it to Belerma's care.

ALONZO THE BRAVE AND THE FAIR IMOGINE.

A warrior so bold, and a virgin so bright,
Conversed as they sat on the green;

They gazed on each other with tender delight:
Alonzo the brave was the name of the knight-
The maiden's, the Fair Imogine.

And, oh!" said the youth, "since to-morrow I go
To fight in a far-distant land,

Your tears for my absence soon ceasing to flow,
Some other will court you, and you will bestow
On a wealthier suitor your hand!"

"Oh! hush these suspicions," Fair Imogine said, "Offensive to love and to me;

For, if you be living, or if you be dead,

I swear by the Virgin that none in your stead Shall husband of Imogine be.

"If e'er I, by lust or by wealth led aside,
Forget my Alonzo the Brave,

God grant that, to punish my falsehood and pride,
Your ghost at the marriage may sit by my side,
May tax me with perjury, claim me as bride,
And bear me away to the grave!"

To Palestine hastened the hero so bold,

His love she lamented him sore;

But scarce had a twelvemonth elapsed, when, behold!
A baron, all covered with jewels and gold,
Arrived at Fair Imogine's door.

His treasures, his presents, his spacious domain,
Soon made her untrue to her vows;
He dazzled her eyes, he bewildered her brain;
He caught her affections, so light and so vain,
And carried her home as his spouse.

And now had the marriage been blest by the priest;
The revelry now was begun;

The tables they groaned with the weight of the feast, Nor yet had the laughter and merriment ceased, When the bell at the castle tolled-one.

Then first with amazement Fair Imogine found
A stranger was placed by her side:

His air was terrific; he uttered no sound

He spake not, he moved not, he looked not around-
But earnestly gazed on the bride.

His visor was closed, and gigantic his height,
His armour was sable to view;

All pleasure and laughter were hushed at his sight;
The dogs, as they eyed him, drew back in affright;
The lights in the chamber burned blue!

His presence all bosoms appeared to dismay;
The guests sat in silence and fear;

At length spake the bride-while she trembled: "I pray,
Sir knight, that your helmet aside you would lay,
And deign to partake of our cheer."

[Sir JAMES STEPHEN, born in London 1789, died at Coblentz 1859, was educated a barrister, appointed counsel to the Board of Trade, and under-Secretary of State, knighted in 1847, and became professor of modern history at Cambridge in 1849. He wrote many articles for the Edinburgh Review, marked by great eloquence and acumen. His "Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography," (from one of which we quote), appeared in 1849, and have passed through four editions. His "Lectures on the History of France," 2 vols., appeared in 1851.]

Weak and frail he may have been, but from the days of Paul of Tarsus to our own, the annals of mankind exhibit no other example of a soul borne onward so triumphantly through distress and danger, in all their most appalling aspects. He battled with hunger, and thirst, and nakedness, and assassination, and pursued his mission of love with ever increasing ardour, amidst the wildest war of the contending elements. At the island of Moro (one of the group of the Moluccas), he took his stand at the foot of a volcano; and as the pillar of fire threw up its wreaths to heaven, and the earth tottered beneath him, and the firmament was rent by falling rocks and peals of unintermitting thunder, he pointed to the fierce lightnings and river of molten lava, and called on the agitated crowd which clung to him for safety, to repent, and to obey the truth; but he also taught them that the sounds which racked their ears were the groans of the infernal world, and the sights which blasted their eyes an outbreak from the atmosphere of the place of torment. Repairing for the celebration of mass, to an edifice which he had consecrated for the purpose, an earthquake shook the building to its base. The terrified worshippers fled; but Xavier, standing in meek composure before the rocking altar, deliberately completed that mysterious sacrifice, with a faith, at least in this instance, enviable in the real presence, rejoicing, as he says in his description of the scene, to perceive that the demons of the island thus winged their flight before the archangel's sword, from the place where they had so long exercised their foul dominion. There is no schoolboy of our days who could not teach much unsuspected by Francis Xav. ier, of the laws which govern the material and the spiritual worlds. But we have not many doctors who know as much as he did of the nature of Him by whom the worlds of matter and of spirit were created; for he studied in the school of protracted martyrdom and active philanthropy, where are divulged secrets unknown and unimagined by the wisest and most learned of ordinary

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But his earthly toils and projects were now to cease forever. The angel of death appeared with a summons, for which, since death first entered our world, no man was ever more triumphantly prepared. It found him on board the vessel on the point of departing for Siam. At his own request he was removed to the shore, that he might meet his

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Stretched

end with the greater composure. on the naked beach, with the cold blasts of a Chinese winter aggravating his pains, be contended alone with the agonies of the fever which wasted his vital power. It was an agony and a solitude for which the happiest of the sons of men might well have exchanged the dearest society and the purest of the joys of life. It was an agony in which his still uplifted crucifix reminded him of a far more awful woe endured for his deliverance. It was a solitude thronged by blessed ministers of peace and consolation, visible in all their bright and lovely aspects to the now unclouded eye of faith, and audible to the dying martyr through the yielding bars of his mortal prison-house, in strains of exulting joy till then unheard and unimag ined. Tears burst from his fading eyes, tears of an emotion too big for utterance. In the cold collapse of death his features were for a brief moment irradiated as with the first beams of approaching glory. He raised himself on his crucifix; and exclaiming, In te, Domine speravi-non confundar in aeternum! he bowed his head and died. * He lived among men as if to show how little the grandeur of the human soul depends on mere intellectual power. It was his to demonstrate with what vivific rays a heart imbued with the love of God and man may warm and kindle the nations, however dense may be the exhalations through which the giant pursues his course from the one end of heaven to the other. Scholars criticised, wits ridiculed, prudent men admonished, and kings opposed him; but on moved Francis Xavier, borne onward by an impulse which crushed and scattered to the winds all such puny obstacles. In ten short years, as if mercy had lent him wings and faith an impenetrable armour, he traversed oceans, islands and continents, through a track equal to more than twice the circumference of our globe; everywhere preaching, disputing, baptizing, and founding Christian churches. There is at least one well-authenticated miracle in Xavier's story. It is, that any mortal man should have sustained such toils as he did; and have sustained them, too, not merely with composure, but as if in obedience to some indestructible exigency of his nature. "The Father Master Francis (the words are those of his associate, Melchior Nunez), when' laboring for the salvation of idolaters, seemed to act, not by any acquired power, by some natural instinct; for he could take

but as

neither pleasure nor even exist except in such employments. They were his repose; and when he was leading men to the knowledge and the love of God, however much he exerted himself, he never appeared to be making any effort."

be un

Seven hundred thousand converts, (for in these matters Xavier's eulogists are not parsimonious), are numbered as the fruits of his mission; nor is the extravagance so extreme if the word "conversion derstood in the sense in which they used it. Kings, Rajahs, and Princes were always, when possible, the first object of his care. Some such conquests he certainly made; and as the flocks would often follow their shepherds, and as the gate into the Christian fold was not made very strait, it may have been entered by many thousands and tens of thousands. But if Xavier taught the mighty of the earth, it was for the sake of the poor and miserable, and with them he chiefly dwelt.

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No man, however abject his condition, disgusting his maladies, or hateful his crimes, ever turned to Xavier without learning that there was at least one human heart on which he might repose with all the confidence of a brother's love. To his eye the meanest and the lowest reflected the image of Him whom he followed and adored; nor did he suppose that he could ever serve the Saviour of mankind so acceptably as by ministering to their sorrows and recalling them into the way of peace. It is easy to smile at his visions, to detect his errors, to ridicule the extravagant austerities of his life, and even to show how much his misguided zeal eventually counteracted his own designs. But with our philosophy, our luxuries, and our wider experience, it is not easy for us to estimate or to comprehend the career of such a man. Between his thoughts and our thoughts there is but little in common. Of our wisdom he knew nothing, and would have despised it if he had. Philanthropy was his passion; reckless daring his delight, and faith, glowing in meridian splendour, the sunshine in which he walked. He judged or felt (and who shall say that he judged or felt erroneously?) that the Church demanded an illustrious sacrifice, and that he was to be the victim; -that a voice which had been dumb for fifteen centuries must at length be raised again, and that to him that voice had been imparted--that a new Apostle must go forth to break up the incrustations of man's

long-hardened heart, and that to him that apostolate had been committed. So judging, or so feeling, he obeyed the summons of him whom he regarded as Christ's vicar on earth, and the echoes from no sublunary region, which the summons seemed to awaken in his bosom. In holding up to reverential admiration such self-sacrifices as his, slight, indeed, is the danger of stimulating an enthusiastic imitation. Enthusiasm! our pulpits distil their bland rhetoric against it; but where is it to be found? Do not our share markets, thronged even by the devout, overlay it-and our rich benefices extinguish it-and our pentecosts, in the dazzling month of May, dissipate it-and our stipendiary missions, and our mitres, decked, even in heathen lands, with jewels and with lordly titles-do they not, as so many lightning conductors, effectually divert it? There is indeed the lackadaisical enthusiasm of devotional experiences, and the sentimental enthusiasm of religious bazars, and the oratorical enthusiasm of charitable platforms, and the tractarian enthusiasm of certain well-beneficed ascetics; but in what, except the name, do they resemble the "God-in-us" enthusiasm of Francis Xavier-of Xavier the magnanimous, the holy, and the gay; the canonized saint, not of Rome only, but of universal Christendom; who, if at this hour there remained not a solitary Christian to claim and to rejoice in his spiritual ancestry, should yet live in hallowed and everlasting remembrance; as the man who has be queathed to these later ages, at once the clearest proof and the most illustrious example, that even amidst the enervating arfs of our modern civilization, the apostolic energy may still burn with all its primæval ardour in the human soul, when animated and directed by a power more than human.

SONG OF THE BELL.

[TRANSLATED BY S. A. ELIOT.]

Fastened deep in firmest earth,
Stands the mould of well-burnt clay.
Now we'll give the bell its birth;

Quick, my friends, no more delay!
From the heated brow

Sweat must freely flow,
If to your master praise be given :
But the blessing comes from Heaven.

With splinters of the dryest pine

Now feed the fire below;
Then the rising flame shall shine,
And the melting ore shall flow.
Boils the brass within,
Quickly add the tin;

That the thick metallic mass
Rightly to the mould may pass.

What with the aid of fire's dread power
We in the dark, deep pit now hide,
Shall, on some lofty, sacred tower,

Tell of our skill and form our pride. And it shall last to days remote,

Shall thrill the ear of many a race; Shall sound with sorrow's mournful note, And call to pure devotion's grace, Whatever to the sons of earth

Their changing destiny brings down, To the deep, solemn clang gives birth, That rings from out this metal crown.

See, the boiling surface, whitening,
Shows the whole is mixing well;
Add the salts the metal brightening,
Ere flows out the liquid bell.
Clear from foam or scum
Must the mixture come,
That with a rich metallic note
The sound aloft in air may float.

Now with joy and festive mirth

Salute that loved and lovely child, Whose earliest moments on the earth

Are passed in sleep's dominion mild. While on Time's lap he rests his head, The fatal sisters spin their thread;

A mother's love, with softest rays, Gilds o'er the morning of his days.But years with arrowy haste are fled, His nursery bonds he proudly spurns; He rushes to the world without; After long wandering, home he turns, Arrives a stranger and in doubt. There, lovely in her beauty's youth,

A form of heavenly mould he meets, Of modest air and simple truth;

The blushing maid he bashful greets. A nameless feeling seizes strong On his young heart. He walks alone; To his moist eyes emotions throng;

His joy in ruder sports has flown, He follows, blushing, where she goes; And should her smile but welcome him, The fairest flower, the dewy rose,

To deck her beauty seems too dim.
O tenderest passion! Sweetest hope!
The golden hours of earliest love!
Heaven's self to him appears to ope;

He feels a bliss this earth above.
O, that it could eternal last!
That youthful love were never past!

See how brown the liquid turns!
Now this rod I thrust within;
If it's glazed before it burns,
Then the casting may begin.

Quick, my lads, and steady,
If the mixture's ready!

When the strong and weaker blend,
Then we hope a happy end:
Whenever strength with softness joins,
When with the rough the mild combines,
Then all is union sweet and strong.
Consider, ye who join your hands,
If hearts are twined in mutual bands;
For passion's brief, repentance long
How lovely in the maiden's hair

The bridal garland plays!
And merry bells invite us there,

Where mingle festive lays.
Alas! that all life's brightest hours
Are ended with its earliest May!
That from those sacred nuptial bowers
The dear deceit should pass away!
Though passion may fly,

Yet love will endure
The flower must die,

The fruit to insure.
The man must without,
Into struggling life;
With toiling and strife;
He must plan and contrive;
Must be prudent to thrive ;
With boldness must dare,

Good fortune to share.