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+Project Gutenberg's Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies, by Washington Irving
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies
+
+Author: Washington Irving
+
+Posting Date: October 8, 2012 [EBook #8571]
+Release Date: July, 2005
+First Posted: July 24, 2003
+Last Updated: December 7, 2005
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOLFERT'S ROOST AND MISCELLANIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, David Widger
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+WOLFERT'S ROOST
+
+AND
+
+MISCELLANIES
+
+BY
+
+WASHINGTON IRVING
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+CHRONICLE OF WOLFERT'S ROOST
+
+SLEEPY HOLLOW
+
+BIRDS OF SPRING
+
+RECOLLECTIONS OF THE ALHAMBRA
+
+ABENCERRAGE
+
+ENCHANTED ISLAND
+
+ADELANTADO OF THE SEVEN CITIES
+
+NATIONAL NOMENCLATURE
+
+DESULTORY THOUGHTS ON CRITICISM
+
+SPANISH ROMANCE
+
+LEGEND OF DON MUIO SANCHO DE HINOJOSA
+
+COMMUNIPAW
+
+CONSPIRACY OF THE COCKED HATS
+
+LEGEND OF COMMUNIPAW
+
+BERMUDAS, THE
+
+PELAYO AND THE MERCHANT'S DAUGHTER
+
+KNIGHT OF MALTA
+
+LEGEND OF THE ENGULPHED CONVENT
+
+
+
+
+COUNT VAN HORN WOLFERT'S ROOST
+
+AND
+
+MISCELLANIES.
+
+
+A CHRONICLE OF WOLFERT'S ROOST.
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
+
+Sir: I have observed that as a man advances in life, he is subject to
+a kind of plethora of the mind, doubtless occasioned by the vast
+accumulation of wisdom and experience upon the brain. Hence he is apt to
+become narrative and admonitory, that is to say, fond of telling long
+stories, and of doling out advice, to the small profit and great
+annoyance of his friends. As I have a great horror of becoming the
+oracle, or, more technically speaking, the "bore," of the domestic
+circle, and would much rather bestow my wisdom and tediousness upon the
+world at large, I have always sought to ease off this surcharge of the
+intellect by means of my pen, and hence have inflicted divers gossiping
+volumes upon the patience of the public. I am tired, however, of writing
+volumes; they do not afford exactly the relief I require; there is too
+much preparation, arrangement, and parade, in this set form of coming
+before the public. I am growing too indolent and unambitious for any
+thing that requires labor or display. I have thought, therefore, of
+securing to myself a snug corner in some periodical work where I might,
+as it were, loll at my ease in my elbow-chair, and chat sociably with
+the public, as with an old friend, on any chance subject that might pop
+into my brain.
+
+In looking around, for this purpose, upon the various excellent
+periodicals with which our country abounds, my eye was struck by the
+title of your work--"THE KNICKERBOCKER." My heart leaped at the sight.
+DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER, Sir, was one of my earliest and most valued
+friends, and the recollection of him is associated with some of the
+pleasantest scenes of my youthful days. To explain this, and to show how
+I came into possession of sundry of his posthumous works, which I
+have from time to time given to the world, permit me to relate a
+few particulars of our early intercourse. I give them with the more
+confidence, as I know the interest you take in that departed worthy,
+whose name and effigy are stamped upon your title-page, and as they will
+be found important to the better understanding and relishing divers
+communications I may have to make to you.
+
+My first acquaintance with that great and good man, for such I may
+venture to call him, now that the lapse of some thirty years has
+shrouded his name with venerable antiquity, and the popular voice has
+elevated him to the rank of the classic historians of yore, my first
+acquaintance with him was formed on the banks of the Hudson, not far
+from the wizard region of Sleepy Hollow. He had come there in the course
+of his researches among the Dutch neighborhoods for materials for his
+immortal history. For this purpose, he was ransacking the archives of
+one of the most ancient and historical mansions in the country. It was
+a lowly edifice, built in the time of the Dutch dynasty, and stood on a
+green bank, overshadowed by trees, from which it peeped forth upon the
+Great Tappan Zee, so famous among early Dutch navigators. A bright
+pure spring welled up at the foot of the green bank; a wild brook came
+babbling down a neighboring ravine, and threw itself into a little woody
+cove, in front of the mansion. It was indeed as quiet and sheltered a
+nook as the heart of man could require, in which to take refuge from the
+cares and troubles of the world; and as such, it had been chosen in old
+times, by Wolfert Acker, one of the privy councillors of the renowned
+Peter Stuyvesant.
+
+This worthy but ill-starred man had led a weary and worried life,
+throughout the stormy reign of the chivalric Peter, being one of those
+unlucky wights with whom the world is ever at variance, and who are kept
+in a continual fume and fret, by the wickedness of mankind. At the time
+of the subjugation of the province by the English, he retired hither in
+high dudgeon; with the bitter determination to bury himself from the
+world, and live here in peace and quietness for the remainder of his
+days. In token of this fixed resolution, he inscribed over his door the
+favorite Dutch motto, "Lust in Rust," (pleasure in repose.) The mansion
+was thence called "Wolfert's Rust"--Wolfert's Rest; but in process of
+time, the name was vitiated into Wolfert's Roost, probably from its
+quaint cock-loft look, or from its having a weather-cock perched on
+every gable. This name it continued to bear, long after the unlucky
+Wolfert was driven forth once more upon a wrangling world, by the
+tongue of a termagant wife; for it passed into a proverb through the
+neighborhood, and has been handed down by tradition, that the cock of
+the Roost was the most hen-pecked bird in the country.
+
+This primitive and historical mansion has since passed through many
+changes and trials, which it may be my lot hereafter to notice. At the
+time of the sojourn of Diedrich Knickerbocker it was in possession of
+the gallant family of the Van Tassels, who have figured so conspicuously
+in his writings. What appears to have given it peculiar value, in his
+eyes, was the rich treasury of historical facts here secretly hoarded
+up, like buried gold; for it is said that Wolfert Acker, when he
+retreated from New Amsterdam, carried off with him many of the records
+and journals of the province, pertaining to the Dutch dynasty; swearing
+that they should never fall into the hands of the English. These, like
+the lost books of Livy, had baffled the research of former historians;
+but these did I find the indefatigable Diedrich diligently deciphering.
+He was already a sage in year's and experience, I but an idle stripling;
+yet he did not despise my youth and ignorance, but took me kindly by the
+hand, and led me gently into those paths of local and traditional lore
+which he was so fond of exploring. I sat with him in his little chamber
+at the Roost, and watched the antiquarian patience and perseverance
+with which he deciphered those venerable Dutch documents, worse than
+Herculanean manuscripts. I sat with him by the spring, at the foot of
+the green bank, and listened to his heroic tales about the worthies of
+the olden time, the paladins of New Amsterdam. I accompanied him in his
+legendary researches about Tarrytown and Sing-Sing, and explored with
+him the spell-bound recesses of Sleepy Hollow. I was present at many of
+his conferences with the good old Dutch burghers and their wives, from
+whom he derived many of those marvelous facts not laid down in books
+or records, and which give such superior value and authenticity to his
+history, over all others that have been written concerning the New
+Netherlands.
+
+But let me check my proneness to dilate upon this favorite theme; I may
+recur to it hereafter. Suffice it to say, the intimacy thus formed,
+continued for a considerable time; and in company with the worthy
+Diedrich, I visited many of the places celebrated by his pen. The
+currents of our lives at length diverged. He remained at home to
+complete his mighty work, while a vagrant fancy led me to wander about
+the world. Many, many years elapsed, before I returned to the parent
+soil. In the interim, the venerable historian of the New Netherlands
+had been gathered to his fathers, but his name had risen to renown. His
+native city, that city in which he so much delighted, had decreed all
+manner of costly honors to his memory. I found his effigy imprinted upon
+new-year cakes, and devoured with eager relish by holiday urchins; a
+great oyster-house bore the name of "Knickerbocker Hall;" and I narrowly
+escaped the pleasure of being run over by a Knickerbocker omnibus!
+
+Proud of having associated with a man who had achieved such greatness,
+I now recalled our early intimacy with tenfold pleasure, and sought to
+revisit the scenes we had trodden together. The most important of
+these was the mansion of the Van Tassels, the Roost of the unfortunate
+Wolfert. Time, which changes all things, is but slow in its operations
+upon a Dutchman's dwelling. I found the venerable and quaint little
+edifice much as I had seen it during the sojourn of Diedrich. There
+stood his elbow-chair in the corner of the room he had occupied;
+the old-fashioned Dutch writing-desk at which he had pored over the
+chronicles of the Manhattoes; there was the old wooden chest, with the
+archives left by Wolfert Acker, many of which, however, had been fired
+off as wadding from the long duck gun of the Van Tassels. The scene
+around the mansion was still the same; the green bank; the spring beside
+which I had listened to the legendary narratives of the historian; the
+wild brook babbling down to the woody cove, and the overshadowing locust
+trees, half shutting out the prospect of the great Tappan Zee.
+
+As I looked round upon the scene, my heart yearned at the recollection
+of my departed friend, and I wistfully eyed the mansion which he had
+inhabited, and which was fast mouldering to decay. The thought struck me
+to arrest the desolating hand of Time; to rescue the historic pile from
+utter ruin, and to make it the closing scene of my wanderings; a quiet
+home, where I might enjoy "lust in rust" for the remainder of my days.
+It is true, the fate of the unlucky Wolfert passed across my mind; but
+I consoled myself with the reflection that I was a bachelor, and that I
+had no termagant wife to dispute the sovereignty of the Roost with me.
+
+I have become possessor of the Roost! I have repaired and renovated it
+with religious care, in the genuine Dutch style, and have adorned and
+illustrated it with sundry reliques of the glorious days of the New
+Netherlands. A venerable weathercock, of portly Dutch dimensions,
+which once battled with the wind on the top of the Stadt-House of New
+Amsterdam, in the time of Peter Stuyvesant, now erects its crest on
+the gable end of my edifice; a gilded horse in full gallop, once the
+weathercock of the great Vander Heyden Palace of Albany, now glitters in
+the sunshine, and veers with every breeze, on the peaked turret over
+my portal; my sanctum sanctorum is the chamber once honored by the
+illustrious Diedrich, and it is from his elbow-chair, and his identical
+old Dutch writing-desk, that I pen this rambling epistle.
+
+Here, then, have I set up my rest, surrounded by the recollections of
+early days, and the mementoes of the historian of the Manhattoes, with
+that glorious river before me, which flows with such majesty through his
+works, and which has ever been to me a river of delight.
+
+I thank God I was born on the banks of the Hudson! I think it an
+invaluable advantage to be born and brought up in the neighborhood of
+some grand and noble object in nature; a river, a lake, or a mountain.
+We make a friendship with it, we in a manner ally ourselves to it for
+life. It remains an object of our pride and affections, a rallying
+point, to call us home again after all our wanderings. "The things which
+we have learned in our childhood," says an old writer, "grow up with our
+souls, and unite themselves to it." So it is with the scenes among which
+we have passed our early days; they influence the whole course of our
+thoughts and feelings; and I fancy I can trace much of what is good and
+pleasant in my own heterogeneous compound to my early companionship with
+this glorious river. In the warmth of my youthful enthusiasm, I used to
+clothe it with moral attributes, and almost to give it a soul. I admired
+its frank, bold, honest character; its noble sincerity and perfect
+truth. Here was no specious, smiling surface, covering the dangerous
+sand-bar or perfidious rock; but a stream deep as it was broad, and
+bearing with honorable faith the bark that trusted to its waves. I
+gloried in its simple, quiet, majestic, epic flow; ever straight
+forward. Once, indeed, it turns aside for a moment, forced from its
+course by opposing mountains, but it struggles bravely through them, and
+immediately resumes its straightforward march. Behold, thought I, an
+emblem of a good man's course through life; ever simple, open, and
+direct; or if, overpowered by adverse circumstances, he deviate into
+error, it is but momentary; he soon recovers his onward and honorable
+career, and continues it to the end of his pilgrimage.
+
+Excuse this rhapsody, into which I have been betrayed by a revival of
+early feelings. The Hudson is, in a manner, my first and last love; and
+after all my wanderings and seeming infidelities, I return to it with a
+heart-felt preference over all the other rivers in the world. I seem
+to catch new life as I bathe in its ample billows and inhale the pure
+breezes of its hills. It is true, the romance of youth is past, that
+once spread illusions over every scene. I can no longer picture an
+Arcadia in every green valley; nor a fairy land among the distant
+mountains; nor a peerless beauty in every villa gleaming among the
+trees; but though the illusions of youth have faded from the landscape,
+the recollections of departed years and departed pleasures shed over it
+the mellow charm of evening sunshine.
+
+Permit me, then, Mr. Editor, through the medium of your work, to
+hold occasional discourse from my retreat with the busy world I have
+abandoned. I have much to say about what I have seen, heard, felt, and
+thought through the course of a varied and rambling life, and some
+lucubrations that have long been encumbering my portfolio; together with
+divers reminiscences of the venerable historian of the New Netherlands,
+that may not be unacceptable to those who have taken an interest in his
+writings, and are desirous of any thing that may cast a light back upon
+our early history. Let your readers rest assured of one thing, that,
+though retired from the world, I am not disgusted with it; and that if
+in my communings with it I do not prove very wise, I trust I shall at
+least prove very good-natured.
+
+Which is all at present, from
+
+Yours, etc.,
+
+GEOFFREY CRAYON.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
+
+Worthy Sir: In a preceding communication, I have given you some brief
+notice of Wolfert's Roost, the mansion where I first had the good
+fortune to become acquainted with the venerable historian of the New
+Netherlands. As this ancient edifice is likely to be the place whence
+I shall date many of my lucubrations, and as it is really a very
+remarkable little pile, intimately connected with all the great epochs
+of our local and national history, I have thought it but right to give
+some farther particulars concerning it. Fortunately, in rummaging a
+ponderous Dutch chest of drawers, which serves as the archives of the
+Roost, and in which are preserved many inedited manuscripts of Mr.
+KNICKERBOCKER, together with the precious records of New-Amsterdam,
+brought hither by Wolfert Acker at the downfall of the Dutch dynasty,
+as has been already mentioned, I found in one corner, among dried
+pumpkin-seeds, bunches of thyme, and pennyroyal, and crumbs of new-year
+cakes, a manuscript, carefully wrapped up in the fragment of an old
+parchment deed, but much blotted, and the ink grown foxy by time, which,
+on inspection, I discovered to be a faithful chronicle of the Roost. The
+hand-writing, and certain internal evidences, leave no doubt in my
+mind, that it is a genuine production of the venerable historian of the
+New-Netherlands, written, very probably, during his residence at the
+Roost, in gratitude for the hospitality of its proprietor. As such, I
+submit it for publication. As the entire chronicle is too long for the
+pages of your Magazine, and as it contains many minute particulars,
+which might prove tedious to the general reader, I have abbreviated and
+occasionally omitted some of its details; but may hereafter furnish
+them separately, should they seem to be required by the curiosity of an
+enlightened and document-hunting public. Respectfully yours, GEOFFREY
+CRAYON.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A CHRONICLE OF WOLFERT'S ROOST.
+
+FOUND AMONG THE PAPERS OF THE LATE DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER.
+
+About five-and-twenty miles from the ancient and renowned city of
+Manhattan, formerly called New-Amsterdam, and vulgarly called New-York,
+on the eastern bank of that expansion of the Hudson, known among
+Dutch mariners of yore, as the Tappan Zee, being in fact the great
+Mediterranean Sea of the New-Netherlands, stands a little old-fashioned
+stone mansion, all made up of gable-ends, and as full of angles and
+corners as an old cocked hat. Though but of small dimensions, yet, like
+many small people, it is of mighty spirit, and values itself greatly on
+its antiquity, being one of the oldest edifices, for its size, in the
+whole country. It claims to be an ancient seat of empire, I may rather
+say an empire in itself, and like all empires, great and small, has had
+its grand historical epochs. In speaking of this doughty and valorous
+little pile, I shall call it by its usual appellation of "The Roost;"
+though that is a name given to it in modern days, since it became the
+abode of the white man.
+
+Its origin, in truth, dates far back in that remote region commonly
+called the fabulous age, in which vulgar fact becomes mystified, and
+tinted up with delectable fiction. The eastern shore of the Tappan Sea
+was inhabited in those days by an unsophisticated race, existing in all
+the simplicity of nature; that is to say, they lived by hunting and
+fishing, and recreated themselves occasionally with a little tomahawking
+and scalping. Each stream that flows down from the hills into the
+Hudson, had its petty sachem, who ruled over a hand's-breadth of forest
+on either side, and had his seat of government at its mouth. The
+chieftain who ruled at the Roost, was not merely a great warrior, but a
+medicine-man, or prophet, or conjurer, for they all mean the same thing,
+in Indian parlance. Of his fighting propensities, evidences still
+remain, in various arrowheads of flint, and stone battle-axes,
+occasionally digged up about the Roost: of his wizard powers, we have a
+token in a spring which wells up at the foot of the bank, on the
+very margin of the river, which, it is said, was gifted by him with
+rejuvenating powers, something like the renowned Fountain of Youth in
+the Floridas, so anxiously but vainly sought after by the veteran Ponce
+de Leon. This story, however, is stoutly contradicted by an old Dutch
+matter-of-fact tradition, which declares that the spring in question was
+smuggled over from Holland in a churn, by Femmetie Van Slocum, wife of
+Goosen Garret Van Slocum, one of the first settlers, and that she took
+it up by night, unknown to her husband, from beside their farm-house
+near Rotterdam; being sure she should find no water equal to it in the
+new country--and she was right.
+
+The wizard sachem had a great passion for discussing territorial
+questions, and settling boundary lines; this kept him in continual feud
+with the neighboring sachems, each of whom stood up stoutly for his
+hand-breadth of territory; so that there is not a petty stream nor
+ragged hill in the neighborhood, that has not been the subject of long
+talks and hard battles. The sachem, however, as has been observed, was a
+medicine-man, as well as warrior, and vindicated his claims by arts
+as well as arms; so that, by dint of a little hard fighting here, and
+hocus-pocus there, he managed to extend his boundary-line from field
+to field and stream to stream, until he found himself in legitimate
+possession of that region of hills and valleys, bright fountains and
+limpid brooks, locked in by the mazy windings of the Neperan and the
+Pocantico. [Footnote: As every one may not recognize these boundaries
+by their original Indian names, it may be well to observe, that the
+Neperan is that beautiful stream, vulgarly called the Saw-Mill River,
+which, after winding gracefully for many miles through a lovely valley,
+shrouded by groves, and dotted by Dutch farm-houses, empties itself
+into the Hudson, at the ancient drop of Yonkers. The Pocantico is that
+hitherto nameless brook, that, rising among woody hills, winds in many a
+wizard maze through the sequestered banks of Sleepy Hollow. We owe it to
+the indefatigable researches of Mr. KNICKERBOCKER, that those beautiful
+streams are rescued from modern common-place, and reinvested with their
+ancient Indian names. The correctness of the venerable historian may be
+ascertained, by reference to the records of the original Indian grants
+to the Herr Frederick Philipsen, preserved in the county clerk's office,
+at White Plains.]
+
+This last-mentioned stream, or rather the valley through which it flows,
+was the most difficult of all his acquisitions. It lay half way to the
+strong-hold of the redoubtable sachem of Sing-Sing, and was claimed by
+him as an integral part of his domains. Many were the sharp conflicts
+between the rival chieftains for the sovereignty of this valley, and
+many the ambuscades, surprisals, and deadly onslaughts that took place
+among its fastnesses, of which it grieves me much that I cannot furnish
+the details for the gratification of those gentle but bloody-minded
+readers of both sexes, who delight in the romance of the tomahawk and
+scalping-knife. Suffice it to say that the wizard chieftain was at
+length victorious, though his victory is attributed in Indian tradition
+to a great medicine or charm by which he laid the sachem of Sing-Sing
+and his warriors asleep among the rocks and recesses of the valley,
+where they remain asleep to the present day with their bows and
+war-clubs beside them. This was the origin of that potent and drowsy
+spell which still prevails over the valley of the Pocantico, and which
+has gained it the well-merited appellation of Sleepy Hollow. Often, in
+secluded and quiet parts of that valley, where the stream is overhung by
+dark woods and rocks, the ploughman, on some calm and sunny day as
+he shouts to his oxen, is surprised at hearing faint shouts from the
+hill-sides in reply; being, it is said, the spell-bound warriors, who
+half start from their rocky couches and grasp their weapons, but sink to
+sleep again.
+
+The conquest of the Pocantico was the last triumph of the wizard sachem.
+Notwithstanding all his medicine and charms, he fell in battle in
+attempting to extend his boundary line to the east so as to take in the
+little wild valley of the Sprain, and his grave is still shown near the
+banks of that pastoral stream. He left, however, a great empire to his
+successors, extending along the Tappan Zee, from Yonkers quite to Sleepy
+Hollow; all which delectable region, if every one had his right, would
+still acknowledge allegiance to the lord of the Roost--whoever he might
+be. [Footnote: In recording the contest for the sovereignty of Sleepy
+Hollow, I have called one sachem by the modern name of his castle or
+strong-hold, viz.: Sing-Sing. This, I would observe for the sake
+of historical exactness, is a corruption of the old Indian name,
+O-sin-sing, or rather O-sin-song; that is to say, a place where any
+thing may be had for a song--a great recommendation for a market town.
+The modern and melodious alteration of the name to Sing-Sing is said to
+have been made in compliment to an eminent Methodist singing-master, who
+first introduced into the neighborhood the art of singing through the
+nose. D. K.]
+
+The wizard sachem was succeeded by a line of chiefs, of whom nothing
+remarkable remains on record. The last who makes any figure in history
+is the one who ruled here at the time of the discovery of the country by
+the white man. This sachem is said to have been a renowned trencherman,
+who maintained almost as potent a sway by dint of good feeding as his
+warlike predecessor had done by hard fighting. He diligently cultivated
+the growth of oysters along the aquatic borders of his territories, and
+founded those great oyster-beds which yet exist along the shores of the
+Tappan Zee. Did any dispute occur between him and a neighboring sachem,
+he invited him and all his principal sages and fighting-men to a solemn
+banquet, and seldom failed of feeding them into terms. Enormous heaps of
+oyster-shells, which encumber the lofty banks of the river, remain as
+monuments of his gastronomical victories, and have been occasionally
+adduced through mistake by amateur geologists from town, as additional
+proofs of the deluge. Modern investigators, who are making such
+indefatigable researches into our early history, have even affirmed that
+this sachem was the very individual on whom Master Hendrick Hudson and
+his mate, Robert Juet, made that sage and astounding experiment so
+gravely recorded by the latter in his narrative of the voyage: "Our
+master and his mate determined to try some of the cheefe men of the
+country whether they had any treacherie in them. So they took them down
+into the cabin and gave them so much wine and aqua vitae that they
+were all very merrie; one of them had his wife with him, which sate so
+modestly as any of our countrywomen would do in a strange place. In the
+end one of them was drunke; and that was strange to them, for they
+could not tell how to take it." [Footnote: See Juet's Journal, Purchas
+Pilgrim.]
+
+How far Master Hendrick Hudson and his worthy mate carried their
+experiment with the sachem's wife is not recorded, neither does the
+curious Robert Juet make any mention of the after-consequences of this
+grand moral test; tradition, however, affirms that the sachem on landing
+gave his modest spouse a hearty rib-roasting, according to the connubial
+discipline of the aboriginals; it farther affirms that he remained a
+hard drinker to the day of his death, trading away all his lands, acre
+by acre, for aqua vitae; by which means the Roost and all its domains,
+from Yonkers to Sleepy Hollow, came, in the regular course of trade and
+by right of purchase, into the possession of the Dutchmen.
+
+Never has a territorial right in these new countries been more
+legitimately and tradefully established; yet, I grieve to say, the
+worthy government of the New Netherlands was not suffered to enjoy this
+grand acquisition unmolested; for, in the year 1654, the local Yankees
+of Connecticut--those swapping, bargaining, squatting enemies of the
+Manhattoes--made a daring inroad into this neighborhood and founded a
+colony called Westchester, or, as the ancient Dutch records term it,
+Vest Dorp, in the right of one Thomas Pell, who pretended to have
+purchased the whole surrounding country of the Indians, and stood ready
+to argue their claims before any tribunal of Christendom.
+
+This happened during the chivalrous reign of Peter Stuyvesant, and it
+roused the ire of that gunpowder old hero; who, without waiting to
+discuss claims and titles, pounced at once upon the nest of nefarious
+squatters, carried off twenty-five of them in chains to the Manhattoes,
+nor did he stay his hand, nor give rest to his wooden leg, until he had
+driven every Yankee back into the bounds of Connecticut, or obliged
+him to acknowledge allegiance to their High Mightinesses. He then
+established certain out-posts, far in the Indian country, to keep an eye
+over these debateable lands; one of these border-holds was the Roost,
+being accessible from New Amsterdam by water, and easily kept supplied.
+The Yankees, however, had too great a hankering after this delectable
+region to give it up entirely. Some remained and swore allegiance to the
+Manhattoes; but, while they kept this open semblance of fealty, they
+went to work secretly and vigorously to intermarry and multiply, and by
+these nefarious means, artfully propagated themselves into possession of
+a wide tract of those open, arable parts of Westchester county, lying
+along the Sound, where their descendants may be found at the present
+day; while the mountainous regions along the Hudson, with the valleys
+of the Neperan and the Pocantico, are tenaciously held by the lineal
+descendants of the Copperheads.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The chronicle of the venerable Diedrich here goes on to relate how that,
+shortly after the above-mentioned events, the whole province of the New
+Netherlands 'was subjugated by the British; how that Wolfert Acker, one
+of the wrangling councillors of Peter Stuyvesant, retired in dudgeon to
+this fastness in the wilderness, determining to enjoy "lust in rust" for
+the remainder of his days, whence the place first received its name of
+Wolfert's Roost. As these and sundry other matters have been laid before
+the public in a preceding article, I shall pass them over, and resume
+the chronicle where it treats of matters not hitherto recorded:
+
+Like many men who retire from a worrying world, says DIEDRICH
+KNICKERBOCKER, to enjoy quiet in the country, Wolfert Acker soon found
+himself up to the ears in trouble. He had a termagant wife at home,
+and there was what is profanely called "the deuce to pay," abroad. The
+recent irruption of the Yankees into the bounds of the New Netherlands,
+had left behind it a doleful pestilence, such as is apt to follow the
+steps of invading armies. This was the deadly plague of witchcraft,
+which had long been prevalent to the eastward. The malady broke out at
+Vest Dorp, and threatened to spread throughout the country. The Dutch
+burghers along the Hudson, from Yonkers to Sleepy Hollow, hastened to
+nail horseshoes to their doors, which have ever been found of sovereign
+virtue to repel this awful visitation. This is the origin of the
+horse-shoes which may still be seen nailed to the doors of barns and
+farmhouses, in various parts of this sage and sober-thoughted region.
+
+The evil, however, bore hard upon the Roost; partly, perhaps, from its
+having in old times been subject to supernatural influences, during the
+sway of the Wizard Sachem; but it has always, in fact, been considered a
+fated mansion. The unlucky Wolfert had no rest day nor night. When the
+weather was quiet all over the country, the wind would howl and whistle
+round his roof; witches would ride and whirl upon his weathercocks, and
+scream down his chimneys. His cows gave bloody milk, and his horses
+broke bounds, and scampered into the woods. There were not wanting evil
+tongues to whisper that Wolfert's termagant wife had some tampering
+with the enemy; and that she even attended a witches' Sabbath in Sleepy
+Hollow; nay, a neighbor, who lived hard by, declared that he saw her
+harnessing a rampant broom-stick, and about to ride to the meeting;
+though others presume it was merely flourished in the course of one of
+her curtain lectures, to give energy and emphasis to a period. Certain
+it is, that Wolfert Acker nailed a horse-shoe to the front door, during
+one of her nocturnal excursions, to prevent her return; but as she
+re-entered the house without any difficulty, it is probable she was
+not so much of a witch as she was represented. [Footnote: HISTORICAL
+NOTE.--The annexed extracts from the early colonial records, relate to
+the irruption of witchcraft into Westchester county, as mentioned in the
+chronicle:
+
+"JULY 7, 1670.--Katharine Harryson, accused of witchcraft on complaint of
+Thomas Hunt and Edward Waters, in behalf of the town, who pray that she
+may be driven from the town of Westchester. The woman appears before
+the council.... She was a native of England, and had lived a year in
+Weathersfield, Connecticut, where she had been tried for witchcraft,
+found guilty by the jury, acquitted by the bench, and released out of
+prison, upon condition she would remove. Affair adjourned.
+
+"AUGUST 24.--Affair taken up again, when, being heard at large, it was
+referred to the general court of assize. Woman ordered to give security
+for good behavior," etc.
+
+In another place is the following entry:
+
+"Order given for Katharine Harryson, charged with witchcraft, to leave
+Westchester, as the inhabitants are uneasy at her residing there, and
+she is ordered to go off."]
+
+After the time of Wolfert Acker, a long interval elapses, about which
+but little is known. It is hoped, however, that the antiquarian
+researches so diligently making in every part of this new country, may
+yet throw some light upon what may be termed the Dark Ages of the Roost.
+
+The next period at which we find this venerable and eventful pile rising
+to importance, and resuming its old belligerent character, is during the
+revolutionary war. It was at that time owned by Jacob Van Tassel, or Van
+Texel, as the name was originally spelled, after the place in Holland
+which gave birth to this heroic line. He was strong-built, long-limbed,
+and as stout in soul as in body; a fit successor to the warrior sachem
+of yore, and, like him, delighting in extravagant enterprises and hardy
+deeds of arms. But, before I enter upon the exploits of this worthy cock
+of the Boost, it is fitting I should throw some light upon the state of
+the mansion, and of the surrounding country, at the time.
+
+The situation of the Roost is in the very heart of what was the
+debateable ground between the American and British lines, during the
+war. The British held possession of the city of New York, and the island
+of Manhattan on which it stands. The Americans drew up toward the
+Highlands, holding their headquarters at Peekskill. The intervening
+country, from Croton River to Spiting Devil Creek, was the debateable
+land, subject to be harried by friend and foe, like the Scottish borders
+of yore. It is a rugged country, with a line of rocky hills extending
+through it, like a back bone, sending ribs on either side; but among
+these rude hills are beautiful winding valleys, like those watered by
+the Pocantico and the Neperan. In the fastnesses of these hills,
+and along these valleys, exist a race of hard-headed, hard-handed,
+stout-hearted Dutchmen, descendants of the primitive Nederlanders. Most
+of these were strong whigs throughout the war, and have ever remained
+obstinately attached to the soil, and neither to be fought nor bought
+out of their paternal acres. Others were tories, and adherents to the
+old kingly rule; some of whom took refuge within the British lines,
+joined the royal bands of refugees, a name odious to the American ear,
+and occasionally returned to harass their ancient neighbors.
+
+In a little while, this debateable land was overrun by predatory bands
+from either side; sacking hen-roosts, plundering farm-houses, and
+driving off cattle. Hence arose those two great orders of border
+chivalry, the Skinners and the Cowboys, famous in the heroic annals of
+Westchester county. The former fought, or rather marauded, under the
+American, the latter under the British banner; but both, in the hurry of
+their military ardor, were apt to err on the safe side, and rob friend
+as well as foe. Neither of them stopped to ask the politics of horse or
+cow, which they drove into captivity; nor, when they wrung the neck of
+a rooster, did they trouble their heads to ascertain whether he were
+crowing for Congress or King George.
+
+While this marauding system prevailed on shore, the Great Tappan Sea,
+which washes this belligerent region, was domineered over by British
+frigates and other vessels of war, anchored here and there, to keep an
+eye upon the river, and maintain a communication between the various
+military posts. Stout galleys, also, armed with eighteen-pounders, and
+navigated with sails and oars, cruised about like hawks, ready to pounce
+upon their prey.
+
+All these were eyed with bitter hostility by the Dutch yeomanry along
+shore, who were indignant at seeing their great Mediterranean ploughed
+by hostile prows; and would occasionally throw up a mud breast-work on a
+point or promontory, mount an old iron field-piece, and fire away at the
+enemy, though the greatest harm was apt to happen to themselves from the
+bursting of their ordnance; nay, there was scarce a Dutchman along the
+river that would hesitate to fire with his long duck gun at any British
+cruiser that came within reach, as he had been accustomed to fire at
+water-fowl.
+
+I have been thus particular in my account of the times and neighborhood,
+that the reader might the more readily comprehend the surrounding
+dangers in this the Heroic Age of the Roost.
+
+It was commanded at the time, as I have already observed, by the stout
+Jacob Van Tassel. As I wish to be extremely accurate in this part of
+my chronicle, I beg that this Jacob Van Tassel of the Roost may not be
+confounded with another Jacob Van Tassel, commonly known in border story
+by the name of "Clump-footed Jake," a noted tory, and one of the refugee
+band of Spiting Devil. On the contrary, he of the Roost was a patriot of
+the first water, and, if we may take his own word for granted, a thorn
+in the side of the enemy. As the Roost, from its lonely situation on the
+water's edge, might be liable to attack, he took measures for defence.
+On a row of hooks above his fire-place, reposed his great piece of
+ordnance, ready charged and primed for action. This was a duck, or
+rather goose-gun, of unparalleled longitude, with which it was said he
+could kill a wild goose, though half-way across the Tappan Sea. Indeed,
+there are as many wonders told of this renowned gun, as of the enchanted
+weapons of the heroes of classic story.
+
+In different parts of the stone walls of his mansion, he had made
+loop-holes, through which he might fire upon an assailant. His wife was
+stout-hearted as himself, and could load as fast as he could fire; and
+then he had an ancient and redoubtable sister, Nochie Van Wurmer, a
+match, as he said, for the stoutest man in the country. Thus garrisoned,
+the little Roost was fit to stand a siege, and Jacob Van Tassel was the
+man to defend it to the last charge of powder.
+
+He was, as I have already hinted, of pugnacious propensities; and, not
+content with being a patriot at home, and fighting for the security of
+his own fireside, he extended his thoughts abroad, and entered into a
+confederacy with certain of the bold, hard-riding lads of Tarrytown,
+Petticoat Lane, and Sleepy Hollow, who formed a kind of Holy
+Brotherhood, scouring the country to clear it of Skinner and Cow-boy,
+and all other border vermin. The Roost was one of their rallying points.
+Did a band of marauders from Manhattan island come sweeping through the
+neighborhood, and driving off cattle, the stout Jacob and his compeers
+were soon clattering at their heels, and fortunate did the rogues esteem
+themselves if they could but get a part of their booty across the lines,
+or escape themselves without a rough handling. Should the mosstroopers
+succeed in passing with their cavalcade, with thundering tramp and dusty
+whirlwind, across Kingsbridge, the Holy Brotherhood of the Roost would
+rein up at that perilous pass, and, wheeling about, would indemnify
+themselves by foraging the refugee region of Morrisania.
+
+When at home at the Roost, the stout Jacob was not idle; but was prone
+to carry on a petty warfare of his own, for his private recreation and
+refreshment. Did he ever chance to espy, from his look-out place, a
+hostile ship or galley anchored or becalmed near shore, he would take
+down his long goose-gun from the hooks over the fire-place, sally
+out alone, and lurk along shore, dodging behind rocks and trees, and
+watching for hours together, like a veteran mouser intent on a rat-hole.
+So sure as a boat put off for shore, and came within shot, bang! went
+the great goose-gun; a shower of slugs and buck-shot whistled about the
+ears of the enemy, and before the boat could reach the shore, Jacob had
+scuttled up some woody ravine, and left no trace behind. About this
+time, the Roost experienced a vast accession of warlike importance, in
+being made one of the stations of the water-guard. This was a kind of
+aquatic corps of observation, composed of long, sharp, canoe-shaped
+boats, technically called whale-boats, that lay lightly on the water,
+and could be rowed with great rapidity. They were manned by resolute
+fellows, skilled at pulling an oar, or handling a musket. These lurked
+about in nooks and bays, and behind those long promontories which run
+out into the Tappan Sea, keeping a look-out, to give notice of the
+approach or movements of hostile ships. They roved about in pairs;
+sometimes at night, with muffled oars, gliding like spectres about
+frigates and guard-ships riding at anchor, cutting off any boats that
+made for shore, and keeping the enemy in constant uneasiness. These
+mosquito-cruisers generally kept aloof by day, so that their harboring
+places might not be discovered, but would pull quietly along, under
+shadow of the shore, at night, to take up their quarters at the Roost.
+Hither, at such time, would also repair the hard-riding lads of the
+hills, to hold secret councils of war with the "ocean chivalry;" and in
+these nocturnal meetings were concerted many of those daring forays, by
+land and water, that resounded throughout the border.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The chronicle here goes on to recount divers wonderful stories of the
+wars of the Roost, from which it would seem, that this little warrior
+nest carried the terror of its arms into every sea, from Spiting Devil
+Creek to Antony's Nose; that it even bearded the stout island of
+Manhattan, invading it at night, penetrating to its centre, and burning
+down the famous Delancey house, the conflagration of which makes such a
+blaze in revolutionary history. Nay more, in their extravagant daring,
+these cocks of the Roost meditated a nocturnal descent upon New York
+itself, to swoop upon the British commanders, Howe and Clinton, by
+surprise, bear them off captive, and perhaps put a triumphant close to
+the war!
+
+All these and many similar exploits are recorded by the worthy Diedrich,
+with his usual minuteness and enthusiasm, whenever the deeds in arms of
+his kindred Dutchmen are in question; but though most of these warlike
+stories rest upon the best of all authority, that of the warriors
+themselves, and though many of them are still current among the
+revolutionary patriarchs of this heroic neighborhood, yet I dare not
+expose them to the incredulity of a tamer and less chivalric age,
+Suffice it to say, the frequent gatherings at the Roost, and the hardy
+projects set on foot there, at length drew on it the fiery indignation
+of the enemy; and this was quickened by the conduct of the stout Jacob
+Van Tassel; with whose valorous achievements we resume the course of the
+chronicle.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THIS doughty Dutchman, continues the sage DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER, was
+not content with taking a share in all the magnanimous enterprises
+concocted at the Roost, but still continued his petty warfare along
+shore. A series of exploits at length raised his confidence in his
+prowess to such a height, that he began to think himself and his
+goose-gun a match for any thing. Unluckily, in the course of one of his
+prowlings, he descried a British transport aground, not far from shore,
+with her stern swung toward the land, within point-blank shot. The
+temptation was too great to be resisted; bang! as usual, went the great
+goose-gun, shivering the cabin windows, and driving all hands forward.
+Bang! bang! the shots were repeated. The reports brought several
+sharp-shooters of the neighborhood to the spot; before the transport
+could bring a gun to bear, or land a boat, to take revenge, she was
+soundly peppered, and the coast evacuated. This was the last of Jacob's
+triumphs. He fared like some heroic spider, that has unwittingly
+ensnared a hornet, to his immortal glory, perhaps, but to the utter ruin
+of his web.
+
+It was not long after this, during the absence of Jacob Van Tassel on
+one of his forays, and when no one was in garrison but his stout-hearted
+spouse, his redoubtable sister, Nochie Van Wurmer, and a strapping negro
+wench, called Dinah, that an armed vessel came to anchor off the Roost,
+and a boat full of men pulled to shore. The garrison flew to arms, that
+is to say, to mops, broom-sticks, shovels, tongs, and all kinds of
+domestic weapons; for, unluckily, the great piece of ordnance, the
+goose-gun, was absent with its owner. Above all, a vigorous defence was
+made with that most potent of female weapons, the tongue. Never did
+invaded hen-roost make a more vociferous outcry. It was all in vain. The
+house was sacked and plundered, fire was set to each corner, and in a
+few moments its blaze shed a baleful light far over the Tappan Sea. The
+invaders then pounced upon the blooming Laney Van Tassel, the beauty of
+the Roost, and endeavored to bear her off to the boat. But here was the
+real tug of war. The mother, the aunt, and the strapping negro wench,
+all flew to the rescue. The struggle continued down to the very water's
+edge; when a voice from the armed vessel at anchor, ordered the spoilers
+to let go their hold; they relinquished their prize, jumped into their
+boats, and pulled off, and the heroine of the Roost escaped with a mere
+rumpling of the feathers.
+
+The fear of tiring my readers, who may not take such an interest as
+myself in these heroic themes, induces me to close here my extracts from
+this precious chronicle of the venerable Diedrich. Suffice it briefly to
+say, that shortly after the catastrophe of the Roost, Jacob Van Tassel,
+in the course of one of his forays, fell into the hands of the British;
+was sent prisoner to New York, and was detained in captivity for
+the greater part of the war. In the mean time, the Roost remained a
+melancholy ruin; its stone walls and brick chimneys alone standing,
+blackened by fire, and the resort of bats and owlets. It was not until
+the return of peace, when this belligerent neighborhood once more
+resumed its quiet agricultural pursuits, that the stout Jacob sought the
+scene of his triumphs and disasters; rebuilt the Roost, and reared again
+on high its glittering weather-cocks.
+
+Does any one want further particulars of the fortunes of this eventful
+little pile? Let him go to the fountain-head, and drink deep of historic
+truth. Reader! the stout Jacob Van Tassel still lives, a venerable,
+gray-headed patriarch of the revolution, now in his ninety-fifth year!
+He sits by his fireside, in the ancient city of the Manhattoes, and
+passes the long winter evenings, surrounded by his children, and
+grand-children, and great-grand-children, all listening to his tales of
+the border wars, and the heroic days of the Roost. His great goose-gun,
+too, is still in existence, having been preserved for many years in a
+hollow tree, and passed from hand to hand among the Dutch burghers, as a
+precious relique of the revolution. It is now actually in possession of
+a contemporary of the stout Jacob, one almost his equal in years, who
+treasures it up at his house in the Bowerie of New-Amsterdam, hard by
+the ancient rural retreat of the chivalric Peter Stuyvesant. I am not
+without hopes of one day seeing this formidable piece of ordinance
+restored to its proper station in the arsenal of the Roost. Before
+closing this historic document, I cannot but advert to certain notions
+and traditions concerning the venerable pile in question. Old-time
+edifices are apt to gather odd fancies and superstitions about them, as
+they do moss and weather-stains; and this is in a neighborhood a little
+given to old-fashioned notions, and who look upon the Roost as somewhat
+of a fated mansion. A lonely, rambling, down-hill lane leads to it,
+overhung with trees, with a wild brook dashing along, and crossing
+and re-crossing it. This lane I found some of the good people of the
+neighborhood shy of treading at night; why, I could not for a long time
+ascertain; until I learned that one or two of the rovers of the Tappan
+Sea, shot by the stout Jacob during the war, had been buried hereabout,
+in unconsecrated ground.
+
+Another local superstition is of a less gloomy kind, and one which I
+confess I am somewhat disposed to cherish. The Tappan Sea, in front of
+the Roost, is about three miles wide, bordered by a lofty line of waving
+and rocky hills. Often, in the still twilight of a summer evening, when
+the sea is like glass, with the opposite hills throwing their purple
+shadows half across it, a low sound is heard, as of the steady, vigorous
+pull of oars, far out in the middle of the stream, though not a boat
+is to be descried. This I should have been apt to ascribe to some boat
+rowed along under the shadows of the western shore, for sounds are
+conveyed to a great distance by water, at such quiet hours, and I can
+distinctly hear the baying of the watch-dogs at night, from the farms on
+the sides of the opposite mountains. The ancient traditionists of the
+neighborhood, however, religiously ascribed these sounds to a judgment
+upon one Rumbout Van Dam, of Spiting Devil, who danced and drank late
+one Saturday night, at a Dutch quilting frolic, at Kakiat, and set off
+alone for home in his boat, on the verge of Sunday morning; swearing he
+would not land till he reached Spiting Devil, if it took him a month of
+Sundays. He was never seen afterward, but is often heard plying his oars
+across the Tappan Sea, a Flying Dutchman on a small scale, suited to
+the size of his cruising-ground; being doomed to ply between Kakiat and
+Spiting Devil till the day of judgment, but never to reach the land.
+
+There is one room in the mansion which almost overhangs the river, and
+is reputed to be haunted by the ghost of a young lady who died of love
+and green apples. I have been awakened at night by the sound of oars and
+the tinkling of guitars beneath the window; and seeing a boat loitering
+in the moonlight, have been tempted to believe it the Flying Dutchman of
+Spiting Devil, and to try whether a silver bullet might not put an end
+to his unhappy cruisings; but, happening to recollect that there was a
+living young lady in the haunted room, who might be terrified by the
+report of fire-arms, I have refrained from pulling trigger.
+
+As to the enchanted fountain, said to have been gifted by the wizard
+sachem with supernatural powers, it still wells up at the foot of the
+bank, on the margin of the river, and goes by the name of the Indian
+spring; but I have my doubts as to its rejuvenating powers, for though
+I have drank oft and copiously of it, I cannot boast that I find myself
+growing younger.
+
+GEOFFREY CRAYON.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+SLEEPY HOLLOW.
+
+BY GEOFFREY CRAYON, GENT.
+
+HAVING pitched my tent, probably for the remainder of my days, in the
+neighborhood of Sleepy Hollow, I am tempted to give some few particulars
+concerning that spell-bound region; especially as it has risen to
+historic importance under the pen of my revered friend and master, the
+sage historian of the New Netherlands. Beside, I find the very existence
+of the place has been held in question by many; who, judging from its
+odd name and from the odd stories current among the vulgar concerning
+it, have rashly deemed the whole to be a fanciful creation, like the
+Lubber Land of mariners. I must confess there is some apparent cause for
+doubt, in consequence of the coloring given by the worthy Diedrich to
+his descriptions of the Hollow; who, in this instance, has departed
+a little from his usually sober if not severe style; beguiled, very
+probably, by his predilection for the haunts of his youth, and by a
+certain lurking taint of romance whenever any thing connected with the
+Dutch was to be described. I shall endeavor to make up for this amiable
+error on the part of my venerable and venerated friend by presenting the
+reader with a more precise and statistical account of the Hollow; though
+I am not sure that I shall not be prone to lapse in the end into the
+very error I am speaking of, so potent is the witchery of the theme.
+
+I believe it was the very peculiarity of its name and the idea of
+something mystic and dreamy connected with it that first led me in my
+boyish ramblings into Sleepy Hollow. The character of the valley seemed
+to answer to the name; the slumber of past ages apparently reigned over
+it; it had not awakened to the stir of improvement which had put all the
+rest of the world in a bustle. Here reigned good, old long-forgotten
+fashions; the men were in home-spun garbs, evidently the product of
+their own farms and the manufacture of their own wives; the women were
+in primitive short gowns and petticoats, with the venerable sun-bonnets
+of Holland origin. The lower part of the valley was cut up into small
+farms, each consisting of a little meadow and corn-field; an orchard
+of sprawling, gnarled apple-trees, and a garden, where the rose, the
+marigold, and the hollyhock were permitted to skirt the domains of the
+capacious cabbage, the aspiring pea, and the portly pumpkin. Each had
+its prolific little mansion teeming with children; with an old hat
+nailed against the wall for the housekeeping wren; a motherly hen, under
+a coop on the grass-plot, clucking to keep around her a brood of vagrant
+chickens; a cool, stone well, with the moss-covered bucket suspended
+to the long balancing-pole, according to the antediluvian idea of
+hydraulics; and its spinning-wheel humming within doors, the patriarchal
+music of home manufacture.
+
+The Hollow at that time was inhabited by families which had existed
+there from the earliest times, and which, by frequent intermarriage, had
+become so interwoven, as to make a kind of natural commonwealth. As
+the families had grown larger the farms had grown smaller; every new
+generation requiring a new subdivision, and few thinking of swarming
+from the native hive. In this way that happy golden mean had been
+produced, so much extolled by the poets, in which there was no gold and
+very little silver. One thing which doubtless contributed to keep up
+this amiable mean was a general repugnance to sordid labor. The sage
+inhabitants of Sleepy Hollow had read in their Bible, which was the only
+book they studied, that labor was originally inflicted upon man as a
+punishment of sin; they regarded it, therefore, with pious abhorrence,
+and never humiliated themselves to it but in cases of extremity. There
+seemed, in fact, to be a league and covenant against it throughout
+the Hollow as against a common enemy. Was any one compelled by dire
+necessity to repair his house, mend his fences, build a barn, or get in
+a harvest, he considered it a great evil that entitled him to call in
+the assistance or his friend? He accordingly proclaimed a 'bee' or
+rustic gathering, whereupon all his neighbors hurried to his aid like
+faithful allies; attacked the task with the desperate energy of lazy men
+eager to overcome a job; and, when it was accomplished, fell to eating
+and drinking, fiddling and dancing for very joy that so great an amount
+of labor had been vanquished with so little sweating of the brow.
+
+Yet, let it not be supposed that this worthy community was without its
+periods of arduous activity. Let but a flock of wild pigeons fly across
+the valley and all Sleepy Hollow was wide awake in an instant.
+The pigeon season had arrived. Every gun and net was forthwith in
+requisition. The flail was thrown down on the barn floor; the spade
+rusted in the garden; the plough stood idle in the furrow; every one was
+to the hillside and stubble-field at daybreak to shoot or entrap the
+pigeons in their periodical migrations.
+
+So, likewise, let but the word be given that the shad were ascending the
+Hudson, and the worthies of the Hollow were to be seen launched in boats
+upon the river setting great stakes, and stretching their nets like
+gigantic spider-webs half across the stream to the great annoyance
+of navigators. Such are the wise provisions of Nature, by which she
+equalizes rural affairs. A laggard at the plough is often extremely
+industrious with the fowling-piece and fishing-net; and, whenever a man
+is an indifferent farmer, he is apt to be a first-rate sportsman. For
+catching shad and wild pigeons there were none throughout the country to
+compare with the lads of Sleepy Hollow.
+
+As I have observed, it was the dreamy nature of the name that first
+beguiled me in the holiday rovings of boyhood into this sequestered
+region. I shunned, however, the populous parts of the Hollow, and sought
+its retired haunts far in the foldings of the hills, where the Pocantico
+"winds its wizard stream" sometimes silently and darkly through solemn
+woodlands; sometimes sparkling between grassy borders in fresh, green
+meadows; sometimes stealing along the feet of rugged heights under
+the balancing sprays of beech and chestnut trees. A thousand crystal
+springs, with which this neighborhood abounds, sent down from the
+hill-sides their whimpering rills, as if to pay tribute to the
+Pocantico. In this stream I first essayed my unskilful hand at angling.
+I loved to loiter along it with rod in hand, watching my float as it
+whirled amid the eddies or drifted into dark holes under twisted roots
+and sunken logs, where the largest fish are apt to lurk. I delighted
+to follow it into the brown accesses of the woods; to throw by my
+fishing-gear and sit upon rocks beneath towering oaks and clambering
+grape-vines; bathe my feet in the cool current, and listen to the summer
+breeze playing among the tree-tops. My boyish fancy clothed all nature
+around me with ideal charms, and peopled it with the fairy beings I
+had read of in poetry and fable. Here it was I gave full scope to my
+incipient habit of day dreaming, and to a certain propensity, to weave
+up and tint sober realities with my own whims and imaginings, which has
+sometimes made life a little too much like an Arabian tale to me, and
+this "working-day world" rather like a region of romance.
+
+The great gathering-place of Sleepy Hollow in those days was the church.
+It stood outside of the Hollow, near the great highway, on a green bank
+shaded by trees, with the Pocantico sweeping round it and emptying
+itself into a spacious mill-pond. At that time the Sleepy Hollow
+church was the only place of worship for a wide neighborhood. It was
+a venerable edifice, partly of stone and partly of brick, the latter
+having been brought from Holland in the early days of the province,
+before the arts in the New Netherlands could aspire to such a
+fabrication. On a stone above the porch were inscribed the names of the
+founders, Frederick Filipsen, a mighty patroon of the olden time, who
+reigned over a wide extent of this neighborhood and held his seat of
+power at Yonkers; and his wife, Katrina Van Courtlandt, of the no less
+potent line of the Van Courtlandts of Croton, who lorded it over a great
+part of the Highlands.
+
+The capacious pulpit, with its wide-spreading sounding-board, were
+likewise early importations from Holland; as also the communion-table,
+of massive form and curious fabric. The same might be said of a
+weather-cock perched on top of the belfry, and which was considered
+orthodox in all windy matters, until a small pragmatical rival was set
+up on the other end of the church above the chancel. This latter bore,
+and still bears, the initials of Frederick Filipsen, and assumed great
+airs in consequence. The usual contradiction ensued that always exists
+among church weather-cocks, which can never be brought to agree as to
+the point from which the wind blows, having doubtless acquired, from
+their position, the Christian propensity to schism and controversy.
+
+Behind the church, and sloping up a gentle acclivity, was its capacious
+burying-ground, in which slept the earliest fathers of this rural
+neighborhood. Here were tombstones of the rudest sculpture; on which
+were inscribed, in Dutch, the names and virtues of many of the first
+settlers, with their portraitures curiously carved in similitude of
+cherubs. Long rows of grave-stones, side by side, of similar names,
+but various dates, showed that generation after generation of the same
+families had followed each other and been garnered together in this last
+gathering-place of kindred.
+
+Let me speak of this quiet grave-yard with all due reverence, for I owe
+it amends for the heedlessness of my boyish days. I blush to acknowledge
+the thoughtless frolic with which, in company with other whipsters, I
+have sported within its sacred bounds during the intervals of worship;
+chasing butterflies, plucking wild flowers, or vying with each other
+who could leap over the tallest tomb-stones, until checked by the stern
+voice of the sexton.
+
+The congregation was, in those days, of a really rural character. City
+fashions were as yet unknown, or unregarded, by the country people
+of the neighborhood. Steam-boats had not as yet confounded town with
+country. A weekly market-boat from Tarry town, the "Farmers' Daughter,"
+navigated by the worthy Gabriel Requa, was the only communication
+between all these parts and the metropolis. A rustic belle in those days
+considered a visit to the city in much the same light as one of our
+modern fashionable ladies regards a visit to Europe; an event that may
+possibly take place once in the course of a lifetime, but to be hoped
+for, rather than expected. Hence the array of the congregation was
+chiefly after the primitive fashions existing in Sleepy Hollow; or if,
+by chance, there was a departure from the Dutch sun-bonnet, or the
+apparition of a bright gown of flowered calico, it caused quite a
+sensation throughout the church. As the dominie generally preached by
+the hour, a bucket of water was providently placed on a bench near the
+door, in summer, with a tin cup beside it, for the solace of those who
+might be athirst, either from the heat of the weather, or the drouth of
+the sermon.
+
+Around the pulpit, and behind the communion-table, sat the elders of the
+church, reverend, gray-headed, leathern-visaged men, whom I regarded
+with awe, as so many apostles. They were stern in their sanctity, kept
+a vigilant eye upon my giggling companions and myself, and shook a
+rebuking finger at any boyish device to relieve the tediousness of
+compulsory devotion. Vain, however, were all their efforts at vigilance.
+Scarcely had the preacher held forth for half an hour, on one of his
+interminable sermons, than it seemed as if the drowsy influence of
+Sleepy Hollow breathed into the place; one by one the congregation sank
+into slumber; the sanctified elders leaned back in their pews, spreading
+their handkerchiefs over their faces, as if to keep off the flies; while
+the locusts in the neighboring trees would spin out their sultry summer
+notes, as if in imitation of the sleep-provoking tones of the dominie.
+
+I have thus endeavored to give an idea of Sleepy Hollow and its church,
+as I recollect them to have been in the days of my boyhood. It was in
+my stripling days, when a few years had passed over my head, that I
+revisited them, in company with the venerable Diedrich. I shall never
+forget the antiquarian reverence with which that sage and excellent man
+contemplated the church. It seemed as if all his pious enthusiasm for
+the ancient Dutch dynasty swelled within his bosom at the sight.
+The tears stood in his eyes, as he regarded the pulpit and the
+communion-table; even the very bricks that had come from the mother
+country, seemed to touch a filial chord within his bosom. He almost
+bowed in deference to the stone above the porch, containing the names
+of Frederick Filipsen and Katrina Van Courtlandt, regarding it as the
+linking together of those patronymic names, once so famous along the
+banks of the Hudson; or rather as a key-stone, binding that mighty Dutch
+family connexion of yore, one foot of which rested on Yonkers, and the
+other on the Groton. Nor did he forbear to notice with admiration, the
+windy contest which had been carried on, since time immemorial, and with
+real Dutch perseverance, between the two weather-cocks; though I could
+easily perceive he coincided with the one which had come from Holland.
+
+Together we paced the ample church-yard. With deep veneration would
+he turn down the weeds and brambles that obscured the modest brown
+grave-stones, half sunk in earth, on which were recorded, in Dutch, the
+names of the patriarchs of ancient days, the Ackers, the Van Tassels,
+and the Van Warts. As we sat on one of the tomb-stones, he recounted to
+me the exploits of many of these worthies; and my heart smote me, when I
+heard of their great doings in days of yore, to think how heedlessly I
+had once sported over their graves.
+
+From the church, the venerable Diedrich proceeded in his researches up
+the Hollow. The genius of the place seemed to hail its future historian.
+All nature was alive with gratulation. The quail whistled a greeting
+from the corn-field; the robin carolled a song of praise from the
+orchard; the loquacious catbird flew from bush to bush, with restless
+wing, proclaiming his approach in every variety of note, and anon would
+whisk about, and perk inquisitively into his face, as if to get a
+knowledge of his physiognomy; the wood-pecker, also, tapped a tattoo on
+the hollow apple-tree, and then peered knowingly round the trunk, to
+see how the great Diedrich relished his salutation; while the
+ground-squirrel scampered along the fence, and occasionally whisked his
+tail over his head, by way of a huzza!
+
+The worthy Diedrich pursued his researches in the valley with
+characteristic devotion; entering familiarly into the various cottages,
+and gossiping with the simple folk, in the style of their own
+simplicity. I confess my heart yearned with admiration, to see so great
+a man, in his eager quest after knowledge, humbly demeaning himself
+to curry favor with the humblest; sitting patiently on a three-legged
+stool, patting the children, and taking a purring grimalkin on his lap,
+while he conciliated the good-will of the old Dutch housewife, and drew
+from her long ghost stories, spun out to the humming accompaniment of
+her wheel.
+
+His greatest treasure of historic lore, however, was discovered in an
+old goblin-looking mill, situated among rocks and waterfalls, with
+clanking wheels, and rushing streams, and all kinds of uncouth noises.
+A horse-shoe, nailed to the door to keep off witches and evil spirits,
+showed that this mill was subject to awful visitations. As we approached
+it, an old negro thrust his head, all dabbled with flour, out of a hole
+above the water-wheel, and grinned, and rolled his eyes, and looked like
+the very hobgoblin of the place. The illustrious Diedrich fixed upon
+him, at once, as the very one to give him that invaluable kind of
+information never to be acquired from books. He beckoned him from his
+nest, sat with him by the hour on a broken mill-stone, by the side of
+the waterfall, heedless of the noise of the water, and the clatter
+of the mill; and I verily believe it was to his conference with this
+African sage, and the precious revelations of the good dame of the
+spinning-wheel, that we are indebted for the surprising though true
+history of Ichabod Crane and the headless horseman, which has since
+astounded and edified the world.
+
+But I have said enough of the good old times of my youthful days; let me
+speak of the Hollow as I found it, after an absence of many years,
+when it was kindly given me once more to revisit the haunts of my
+boyhood. It was a genial day, as I approached that fated region. The
+warm sunshine was tempered by a slight haze, so as to give a dreamy
+effect to the landscape. Not a breath of air shook the foliage. The
+broad Tappan Sea was without a ripple, and the sloops, with drooping
+sails, slept on its grassy bosom. Columns of smoke, from burning
+brush-wood, rose lazily from the folds of the hills, on the opposite
+side of the river, and slowly expanded in mid-air. The distant lowing
+of a cow, or the noontide crowing of a cock, coming faintly to the ear,
+seemed to illustrate, rather than disturb, the drowsy quiet of the
+scene.
+
+I entered the hollow with a beating heart. Contrary to my apprehensions,
+I found it but little changed. The march of intellect, which had
+made such rapid strides along every river and highway, had not yet,
+apparently, turned down into this favored valley. Perhaps the wizard
+spell of ancient days still reigned over the place, binding up the
+faculties of the inhabitants in happy contentment with things as they
+had been handed down to them from yore. There were the same little farms
+and farmhouses, with their old hats for the housekeeping wren; their
+stone wells, moss-covered buckets, and long balancing poles. There were
+the same little rills, whimpering down to pay their tributes to the
+Pocantico; while that wizard stream still kept on its course, as of old,
+through solemn woodlands and fresh green meadows: nor were there wanting
+joyous holiday boys to loiter along its banks, as I have done; throw
+their pin-hooks in the stream, or launch their mimic barks. I watched
+them with a kind of melancholy pleasure, wondering whether they were
+under the same spell of the fancy that once rendered this valley a fairy
+land to me. Alas! alas! to me every thing now stood revealed in its
+simple reality. The echoes no longer answered with wizard tongues; the
+dream of youth was at an end; the spell of Sleepy Hollow was broken!
+
+I sought the ancient church on the following Sunday. There it stood, on
+its green bank, among the trees; the Pocantico swept by it in a deep
+dark stream, where I had so often angled; there expanded the mill-pond,
+as of old, with the cows under the willows on its margin, knee-deep in
+water, chewing the cud, and lashing the flies from their sides with
+their tails. The hand of improvement, however, had been busy with the
+venerable pile. The pulpit, fabricated in Holland, had been superseded
+by one of modern construction, and the front of the semi-Gothic
+edifice was decorated by a semi-Grecian portico. Fortunately, the two
+weather-cocks remained undisturbed on their perches at each end of the
+church, and still kept up a diametrical opposition to each other on all
+points of windy doctrine.
+
+On entering the church the changes of time continued to be apparent. The
+elders round the pulpit were men whom I had left in the gamesome frolic
+of their youth, but who had succeeded to the sanctity of station of
+which they once had stood so much in awe. What most struck my eye was
+the change in the female part of the congregation. Instead of the
+primitive garbs of homespun manufacture and antique Dutch fashion,
+I beheld French sleeves, French capes, and French collars, and a
+fearful-fluttering of French ribbands.
+
+When the service was ended I sought the church-yard, in which I had
+sported in my unthinking days of boyhood. Several of the modest brown
+stones, on which were recorded in Dutch the names and virtues of the
+patriarchs, had disappeared, and had been succeeded by others of white
+marble, with urns and wreaths, and scraps of English tomb-stone poetry,
+marking the intrusion of taste and literature and the English language
+in this once unsophisticated Dutch neighborhood.
+
+As I was stumbling about among these silent yet eloquent memorials of
+the dead, I came upon names familiar to me; of those who had paid
+the debt of nature during the long interval of my absence. Some, I
+remembered, my companions in boyhood, who had sported with me on the
+very sod under which they were now mouldering; others who in those days
+had been the flower of the yeomanry, figuring in Sunday finery on the
+church green; others, the white-haired elders of the sanctuary, once
+arrayed in awful sanctity around the pulpit, and ever ready to rebuke
+the ill-timed mirth of the wanton stripling who, now a man, sobered by
+years and schooled by vicissitudes, looked down pensively upon their
+graves. "Our fathers," thought I, "where are they!--and the prophets,
+can they live for ever!"
+
+I was disturbed in my meditations by the noise of a troop of idle
+urchins, who came gambolling about the place where I had so often
+gambolled. They were checked, as I and my playmates had often been, by
+the voice of the sexton, a man staid in years and demeanor. I looked
+wistfully in his face; had I met him any where else, I should probably
+have passed him by without remark; but here I was alive to the traces of
+former times, and detected in the demure features of this guardian of
+the sanctuary the lurking lineaments of one of the very playmates I have
+alluded to. We renewed our acquaintance. He sat down beside me, on one
+of the tomb-stones over which we had leaped in our juvenile sports, and
+we talked together about our boyish days, and held edifying discourse
+on the instability of all sublunary things, as instanced in the scene
+around us. He was rich in historic lore, as to the events of the last
+thirty years and the circumference of thirty miles, and from him I
+learned the appalling revolution that was taking place throughout the
+neighborhood. All this I clearly perceived he attributed to the boasted
+march of intellect, or rather to the all-pervading influence of steam.
+He bewailed the times when the only communication with town was by the
+weekly market-boat, the "Farmers' Daughter," which, under the pilotage
+of the worthy Gabriel Requa, braved the perils of the Tappan Sea. Alas!
+Gabriel and the "Farmer's Daughter" slept in peace. Two steamboats now
+splashed and paddled up daily to the little rural port of Tarrytown. The
+spirit of speculation and improvement had seized even upon that once
+quiet and unambitious little dorp. The whole neighborhood was laid out
+into town lots. Instead of the little tavern below the hill, where
+the farmers used to loiter on market days and indulge in cider and
+gingerbread, an ambitious hotel, with cupola and verandas, now crested
+the summit, among churches built in the Grecian and Gothic styles,
+showing the great increase of piety and polite taste in the
+neighborhood. As to Dutch dresses and sun-bonnets, they were no longer
+tolerated, or even thought of; not a farmer's daughter but now went to
+town for the fashions; nay, a city milliner had recently set up in the
+village, who threatened to reform the heads of the whole neighborhood.
+
+I had heard enough! I thanked my old playmate for his intelligence, and
+departed from the Sleepy Hollow church with the sad conviction that I
+had beheld the last lingerings of the good old Dutch times in this once
+favored region. If any thing were wanting to confirm this impression,
+it would be the intelligence which has just reached me, that a bank is
+about to be established in the aspiring little port just mentioned. The
+fate of the neighborhood is therefore sealed. I see no hope of averting
+it. The golden mean is at an end, The country is suddenly to be deluged
+with wealth. The late simple farmers are to become bank directors and
+drink claret and champagne; and their wives and daughters to figure in
+French hats and feathers; for French wines and French fashions commonly
+keep pace with paper money. How can I hope that even Sleepy Hollow can
+escape the general inundation? In a little while, I fear the slumber of
+ages will be at end--the strum of the piano will succeed to the hum of
+the spinning-wheel; the trill of the Italian opera to the nasal quaver
+of Ichabod Crane; and the antiquarian visitor to the Hollow, in the
+petulance of his disappointment, may pronounce all that I have recorded
+of that once favored region a fable.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE BIRDS OF SPRING.
+
+BY GEOFFREY CRAYON, GENT.
+
+My quiet residence in the country, aloof from fashion, politics, and the
+money market, leaves me rather at a loss for important occupation, and
+drives me to the study of nature, and other low pursuits. Having few
+neighbors, also, on whom to keep a watch, and exercise my habits of
+observation, I am fain to amuse myself with prying into the domestic
+concerns and peculiarities of the animals around me; and, during the
+present season, have derived considerable entertainment from certain
+sociable little birds, almost the only visitors we have, during this
+early part of the year.
+
+Those who have passed the winter in the country, are sensible of the
+delightful influences that accompany the earliest indications of spring;
+and of these, none are more delightful than the first notes of the
+birds. There is one modest little sad-colored bird, much resembling a
+wren, which came about the house just on the skirts of winter, when not
+a blade of grass was to be seen, and when a few prematurely warm days
+had given a flattering foretaste of soft weather. He sang early in the
+dawning, long before sun-rise, and late in the evening, just before the
+closing in of night, his matin and his vesper hymns. It is true, he sang
+occasionally throughout the day; but at these still hours, his song was
+more remarked. He sat on a leafless tree, just before the window, and
+warbled forth his notes, free and simple, but singularly sweet, with
+something of a plaintive tone, that heightened their effect. The first
+morning that he was heard, was a joyous one among the young folks of my
+household. The long, deathlike sleep of winter was at an end; nature
+was once more awakening; they now promised themselves the immediate
+appearance of buds and blossoms. I was reminded of the tempest-tossed
+crew of Columbus, when, after their long dubious voyage, the field birds
+came singing round the ship, though still far at sea, rejoicing them
+with the belief of the immediate proximity of land. A sharp return of
+winter almost silenced my little songster, and dashed the hilarity of
+the household; yet still he poured forth, now and then, a few plaintive
+notes, between the frosty pipings of the breeze, like gleams of sunshine
+between wintry clouds.
+
+I have consulted my book of ornithology in vain, to find out the name
+of this kindly little bird, who certainly deserves honor and favor far
+beyond his modest pretensions. He comes like the lowly violet, the most
+unpretending, but welcomest of flowers, breathing the sweet promise of
+the early year.
+
+Another of our feathered visitors, who follows close upon the steps of
+winter, is the Pe-wit, or Pe-wee, or Phoebe-bird; for he is called by
+each of these names, from a fancied resemblance to the sound of his
+monotonous note. He is a sociable little being, and seeks the habitation
+of man. A pair of them have built beneath my porch, and have reared
+several broods there for two years past, their nest being never
+disturbed. They arrive early in the spring, just when the crocus and
+the snow-drop begin to peep forth. Their first chirp spreads gladness
+through the house. "The Phoebe-birds have come!" is heard on all sides;
+they are welcomed back like members of the family, and speculations are
+made upon where they have been, and what countries they have seen
+during their long absence. Their arrival is the more cheering, as it is
+pronounced, by the old weather-wise people of the country, the sure sign
+that the severe frosts are at an end, and that the gardener may resume
+his labors with confidence.
+
+About this time, too, arrives the blue-bird, so poetically yet truly
+described by Wilson. His appearance gladdens the whole landscape.
+You hear his soft warble in every field. He sociably approaches your
+habitation, and takes up his residence in your vicinity. But why should
+I attempt to describe him, when I have Wilson's own graphic verses to
+place him before the reader?
+
+  When winter's cold tempests and snows are no more,
+  Green meadows and brown furrowed fields re-appearing:
+  The fishermen hauling their shad to the shore,
+  And cloud-cleaving geese to the lakes are a-steering;
+  When first the lone butterfly flits on the wing,
+  When red glow the maples, so fresh and so pleasing,
+  O then comes the blue-bird, the herald of spring,
+  And hails with his warblings the charms of the season.
+
+  The loud-piping frogs make the marshes to ring;
+  Then warm glows the sunshine, and warm glows the weather;
+  The blue woodland flowers just beginning to spring,
+  And spice-wood and sassafras budding together;
+  O then to your gardens, ye housewives, repair,
+  Your walks border up, sow and plant at your leisure;
+  The blue-bird will chant from his box such an air,
+  That all your hard toils will seem truly a pleasure.
+
+  He flits through the orchard, he visits each tree,
+  The red flowering peach, and the apple's sweet blossoms;
+  He snaps up destroyers, wherever they be,
+  And seizes the caitiffs that lurk in their bosoms;
+  He drags the vile grub from the corn it devours,
+  The worms from the webs where they riot and welter;
+  His song and his services freely are ours,
+  And all that he asks is, in summer a shelter.
+
+  The ploughman is pleased when he gleams in his train,
+  Now searching the furrows, now mounting to cheer him;
+  The gard'ner delights in his sweet simple strain,
+  And leans on his spade to survey and to hear him.
+  The slow lingering school-boys forget they'll be chid,
+  While gazing intent, as he warbles before them,
+  In mantle of sky-blue, and bosom so red,
+  That each little loiterer seems to adore him.
+
+The happiest bird of our spring, however, and one that rivals the
+European lark, in my estimation, is the Boblincon, or Boblink, as he is
+commonly called. He arrives at that choice portion of our year, which,
+in this latitude, answers to the description of the month of May, so
+often given by the poets. With us, it begins about the middle of May,
+and lasts until nearly the middle of June. Earlier than this, winter is
+apt to return on its traces, and to blight the opening beauties of
+the year; and later than this, begin the parching, and panting, and
+dissolving heats of summer. But in this genial interval, nature is in
+all her freshness and fragrance: "the rains are over and gone, the
+flowers appear upon the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come,
+and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land." The trees are now in
+their fullest foliage and brightest verdure; the woods are gay with the
+clustered flowers of the laurel; the air is perfumed by the sweet-briar
+and the wild rose; the meadows are enamelled with clover-blossoms; while
+the young apple, the peach, and the plum, begin to swell, and the cherry
+to glow, among the green leaves.
+
+This is the chosen season of revelry of the Boblink. He comes amidst the
+pomp and fragrance of the season; his life seems all sensibility and
+enjoyment, all song and sunshine. He is to be found in the soft bosoms
+of the freshest and sweetest meadows; and is most in song when the
+clover is in blossom. He perches on the topmost twig of a tree, or on
+some long flaunting weed; and as he rises and sinks with the breeze,
+pours forth a succession of rich tinkling notes; crowding one upon
+another, like the outpouring melody of the skylark, and possessing the
+same rapturous character. Sometimes he pitches from the summit of a
+tree, begins his song as soon as he gets upon the wing, and flutters
+tremulously down to the earth, as if overcome with ecstasy at his own
+music. Sometimes he is in pursuit of his paramour; always in full
+song, as if he would win her by his melody; and always with the same
+appearance of intoxication and delight.
+
+Of all the birds of our groves and meadows, the Boblink was the envy of
+my boyhood. He crossed my path in the sweetest weather, and the sweetest
+season of the year, when all nature called to the fields, and the rural
+feeling throbbed in every bosom; but when I, luckless urchin! was doomed
+to be mewed up, during the livelong day, in that purgatory of boyhood, a
+school-room. It seemed as if the little varlet mocked at me, as he flew
+by in full song, and sought to taunt me with his happier lot. Oh, how
+I envied him! No lessons, no tasks, no hateful school; nothing but
+holiday, frolic, green fields, and fine weather. Had I been then more
+versed in poetry, I might have addressed him in the words of Logan to
+the cuckoo:
+
+  Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green,
+  Thy sky is ever clear;
+  Thou hast no sorrow in thy note,
+  No winter in thy year.
+
+  Oh! could I fly, I'd fly with thee;
+  We'd make, on joyful wing,
+  Our annual visit round the globe,
+  Companions of the spring!
+
+Farther observation and experience have given me a different idea of
+this little feathered voluptuary, which I will venture to impart, for
+the benefit of my school-boy readers, who may regard him with the same
+unqualified envy and admiration which I once indulged. I have shown him
+only as I saw him at first, in what I may call the poetical part of his
+career, when he in a manner devoted himself to elegant pursuits
+and enjoyments, and was a bird of music, and song, and taste, and
+sensibility, and refinement. While this lasted, he was sacred from
+injury; the very school-boy would not fling a stone at him, and the
+merest rustic would pause to listen to his strain. But mark the
+difference. As the year advances, as the clover-blossoms disappear, and
+the spring fades into summer, his notes cease to vibrate on the ear. He
+gradually gives up his elegant tastes and habits, doffs his poetical and
+professional suit of black, assumes a russet or rather dusty garb, and
+enters into the gross enjoyments of common, vulgar birds. He becomes a
+bon-vivant, a mere gourmand; thinking of nothing but good cheer, and
+gormandizing on the seeds of the long grasses on which he lately swung,
+and chaunted so musically. He begins to think there is nothing like "the
+joys of the table," if I may be allowed to apply that convivial phrase
+to his indulgences. He now grows discontented with plain, every-day
+fare, and sets out on a gastronomical tour, in search of foreign
+luxuries. He is to be found in myriads among the reeds of the Delaware,
+banqueting on their seeds; grows corpulent with good feeding, and soon
+acquires the unlucky renown of the ortolan. Whereever he goes, pop! pop!
+pop! the rusty firelocks of the country are cracking on every side;
+he sees his companions falling by the thousands around him; he is
+the _reed-bird_, the much-sought-for tit-bit of the Pennsylvanian
+epicure.
+
+Does he take warning and reform? Not he! He wings his flight still
+farther south, in search of other luxuries. We hear of him gorging
+himself in the rice swamps; filling himself with rice almost to
+bursting; he can hardly fly for corpulency. Last stage of his career,
+we hear of him spitted by dozens, and served up on the table of the
+gourmand, the most vaunted of southern dainties, the _rice-bird_ of the
+Carolinas.
+
+Such is the story of the once musical and admired, but finally sensual
+and persecuted Boblink. It contains a moral, worthy the attention of all
+little birds and little boys; warning them to keep to those refined
+and intellectual pursuits, which raised him to so high a pitch of
+popularity, during the early part of his career; but to eschew all
+tendency to that gross and dissipated indulgence, which brought this
+mistaken little bird to an untimely end.
+
+Which is all at present, from the well-wisher of little boys and little
+birds,
+
+GEOFFREY CRAYON.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+RECOLLECTIONS OF THE ALHAMBRA.
+
+BY THE AUTHOR OF THE SKETCH-BOOK.
+
+During a summer's residence in the old Moorish palace of the Alhambra,
+of which I have already given numerous anecdotes to the public, I used
+to pass much of my time in the beautiful hall of the Abencerrages,
+beside the fountain celebrated in the tragic story of that devoted
+race. Here it was, that thirty-six cavaliers of that heroic line were
+treacherously sacrificed, to appease the jealousy or allay the fears of
+a tyrant. The fountain which now throws up its sparkling jet, and sheds
+a dewy freshness around, ran red with the noblest blood of Granada,
+and a deep stain on the marble pavement is still pointed out, by the
+cicerones of the pile, as a sanguinary record of the massacre. I have
+regarded it with the same determined faith with which I have regarded
+the traditional stains of Rizzio's blood on the floor of the chamber of
+the unfortunate Mary, at Holyrood. I thank no one for endeavoring to
+enlighten my credulity, on such points of popular belief. It is like
+breaking up the shrine of the pilgrim; it is robbing a poor traveller of
+half the reward of his toils; for, strip travelling of its historical
+illusions, and what a mere fag you make of it!
+
+For my part, I gave myself up, during my sojourn in the Alhambra, to all
+the romantic and fabulous traditions connected with the pile. I lived in
+the midst of an Arabian tale, and shut my eyes, as much as possible, to
+every thing that called me back to every-day life; and if there is any
+country in Europe where one can do so, it is in poor, wild, legendary,
+proud-spirited, romantic Spain; where the old magnificent barbaric
+spirit still contends against the utilitarianism of modern civilization.
+
+In the silent and deserted halls of the Alhambra; surrounded with the
+insignia of regal sway, and the still vivid, though dilapidated traces
+of oriental voluptuousness, I was in the strong-hold of Moorish story,
+and every thing spoke and breathed of the glorious days of Granada,
+when under the dominion of the crescent. When I sat in the hall of the
+Abencerrages, I suffered my mind to conjure up all that I had read of
+that illustrious line. In the proudest days of Moslem domination, the
+Abencerrages were the soul of every thing noble and chivalrous. The
+veterans of the family, who sat in the royal council, were the foremost
+to devise those heroic enterprises, which carried dismay into the
+territories of the Christians; and what the sages of the family devised,
+the young men of the name were the foremost to execute. In all services
+of hazard; in all adventurous forays, and hair-breadth hazards; the
+Abencerrages were sure to win the brightest laurels. In those noble
+recreations, too, which bear so close an affinity to war; in the tilt
+and tourney, the riding at the ring, and the daring bull-fight; still
+the Abencerrages carried off the palm. None could equal them for the
+splendor of their array, the gallantry of their devices; for their noble
+bearing, and glorious horsemanship. Their open-handed munificence made
+them the idols of the populace, while their lofty magnanimity, and
+perfect faith, gained them golden opinions from the generous and
+high-minded. Never were they known to decry the merits of a rival, or to
+betray the confidings of a friend; and the "word of an Abencerrage" was
+a guarantee that never admitted of a doubt.
+
+And then their devotion to the fair! Never did Moorish beauty consider
+the fame of her charms established, until she had an Abencerrage for a
+lover; and never did an Abencerrage prove recreant to his vows. Lovely
+Granada! City of delights! Who ever bore the favors of thy dames more
+proudly on their casques, or championed them more gallantly in the
+chivalrous tilts of the Vivarambla? Or who ever made thy moon-lit
+balconies, thy gardens of myrtles and roses, of oranges, citrons, and
+pomegranates, respond to more tender serenades?
+
+I speak with enthusiasm on this theme; for it is connected with the
+recollection of one of the sweetest evenings and sweetest scenes that
+ever I enjoyed in Spain. One of the greatest pleasures of the Spaniards
+is, to sit in the beautiful summer evenings, and listen to traditional
+ballads, and tales about the wars of the Moors and Christians, and the
+"buenas andanzas" and "grandes hechos," the "good fortunes" and "great
+exploits" of the hardy warriors of yore. It is worthy of remark, also,
+that many of these songs, or romances, as they are called, celebrate
+the prowess and magnanimity in war, and the tenderness and, fidelity in
+love, of the Moorish cavaliers, once their most formidable and hated
+foes. But centuries have elapsed, to extinguish the bigotry of the
+zealot; and the once detested warriors of Granada are now held up by
+Spanish poets, as the mirrors of chivalric virtue.
+
+Such was the amusement of the evening in question. A number of us were
+seated in the Hall of the Abencerrages, listening to one of the most
+gifted and fascinating beings that I had ever met with in my wanderings.
+She was young and beautiful; and light and ethereal; full of fire, and
+spirit, and pure enthusiasm. She wore the fanciful Andalusian dress;
+touched the guitar with speaking eloquence; improvised with wonderful
+facility; and, as she became excited by her theme, or by the rapt
+attention of her auditors, would pour forth, in the richest and
+most melodious strains, a succession of couplets, full of striking
+description, or stirring narration, and composed, as I was assured, at
+the moment. Most of these were suggested by the place, and related to
+the ancient glories of Granada, and the prowess of her chivalry. The
+Abencerrages were her favorite heroes; she felt a woman's admiration of
+their gallant courtesy, and high-souled honor; and it was touching and
+inspiring to hear the praises of that generous but devoted race, chanted
+in this fated hall of their calamity, by the lips of Spanish beauty.
+
+Among the subjects of which she treated, was a tale of Moslem honor, and
+old-fashioned Spanish courtesy, which made a strong impression on me.
+She disclaimed all merit of invention, however, and said she had merely
+dilated into verse a popular tradition; and, indeed, I have since found
+the main facts inserted at the end of Conde's History of the Domination
+of the Arabs, and the story itself embodied in the form of an episode in
+the Diana of Montemayor. From these sources I have drawn it forth, and
+endeavored to shape it according to my recollection of the version of
+the beautiful minstrel; but, alas! what can supply the want of that
+voice, that look, that form, that action, which gave magical effect to
+her chant, and held every one rapt in breathless admiration! Should this
+mere travestie of her inspired numbers ever meet her eye, in her stately
+abode at Granada, may it meet with that indulgence which belongs to her
+benignant nature. Happy should I be, if it could awaken in her bosom
+one kind recollection of the lonely stranger and sojourner, for
+whose gratification she did not think it beneath her to exert those
+fascinating powers which were the delight of brilliant circles; and who
+will ever recall with enthusiasm the happy evening passed in listening
+to her strains, in the moon-lit halls of the Alhambra.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+GEOFFREY CRAYON.
+
+THE ABENCERRAGE.
+
+A SPANISH TALE.
+
+On the summit of a craggy hill, a spur of the mountains of Ronda, stands
+the castle of Allora, now a mere ruin, infested by bats and owlets, but
+in old times one of the strong border holds of the Christians, to keep
+watch upon the frontiers of the warlike kingdom of Granada, and to hold
+the Moors in check. It was a post always confided to some well-tried
+commander; and, at the time of which we treat, was held by Rodrigo de
+Narvaez, a veteran, famed, both among Moors and Christians, not only for
+his hardy feats of arms, but also for that magnanimous courtesy which
+should ever be entwined with the sterner virtues of the soldier.
+
+The castle of Allora was a mere part of his command; he was Alcayde, or
+military governor of Antiquera, but he passed most of his time at this
+frontier post, because its situation on the borders gave more frequent
+opportunity for those adventurous exploits which were the delight of the
+Spanish chivalry. His garrison consisted of fifty chosen cavaliers, all
+well mounted and well appointed: with these he kept vigilant watch
+upon the Moslems; patrolling the roads, and paths, and defiles of the
+mountains, so that nothing could escape his eye; and now and then
+signalizing himself by some dashing foray into the very Vega of Granada.
+
+On a fair and beautiful night in summer, when the freshness of the
+evening breeze had tempered the heat of day, the worthy Alcayde sallied
+forth, with nine of his cavaliers, to patrol the neighborhood, and
+seek adventures. They rode quietly and cautiously, lest they should be
+overheard by Moorish scout or traveller; and kept along ravines and
+hollow ways, lest they should be betrayed by the glittering of the full
+moon upon their armor. Coming to where the road divided, the Alcayde
+directed five of his cavaliers to take one of the branches, while he,
+with the remaining four, would take the other. Should either party be in
+danger, the blast of a horn was to be the signal to bring their comrades
+to their aid.
+
+The party of five had not proceeded far, when, in passing through a
+defile, overhung with trees, they heard the voice of a man, singing.
+They immediately concealed themselves in a grove, on the brow of a
+declivity, up which the stranger would have to ascend. The moonlight,
+which left the grove in deep shadow, lit up the whole person of the
+wayfarer, as he advanced, and enabled them to distinguish his dress and
+appearance with perfect accuracy. He was a Moorish cavalier, and his
+noble demeanor, graceful carriage, and splendid attire showed him to
+be of lofty rank. He was superbly mounted, on a dapple-gray steed, of
+powerful frame, and generous spirit, and magnificently caparisoned.
+His dress was a marlota, or tunic, and an Albernoz of crimson damask,
+fringed with gold. His Tunisian turban, of many folds, was of silk and
+cotton, striped, and bordered with golden fringe. At his girdle hung a
+scimitar of Damascus steel, with loops and tassels of silk and gold. On
+his left arm he bore an ample target, and his right hand grasped a long
+double-pointed lance. Thus equipped, he sat negligently on his steed, as
+one who dreamed of no danger, gazing on the moon, and singing, with a
+sweet and manly voice, a Moorish love ditty.
+
+Just opposite the place where the Spanish cavaliers were concealed, was
+a small fountain in the rock, beside the road, to which the horse turned
+to drink; the rider threw the reins on his neck, and continued his song.
+
+The Spanish cavaliers conferred together; they were all so pleased with
+the gallant and gentle appearance of the Moor, that they resolved not to
+harm, but to capture him, which, in his negligent mood, promised to be
+an easy task; rushing, therefore, from their concealment, they thought
+to surround and seize him. Never were men more mistaken. To gather up
+his reins, wheel round his steed, brace his buckler, and couch his
+lance, was the work of an instant; and there he sat, fixed like a castle
+in his saddle, beside the fountain.
+
+The Christian cavaliers checked their steeds and reconnoitered him
+warily, loth to come to an encounter, which must end in his destruction.
+
+The Moor now held a parley: "If you be true knights," said he, "and seek
+for honorable fame, come on, singly, and I am ready to meet each in
+succession; but if you be mere lurkers of the road, intent on spoil,
+come all at once, and do your worst!"
+
+The cavaliers communed for a moment apart, when one, advancing singly,
+exclaimed: "Although no law of chivalry obliges us to risk the loss of a
+prize, when clearly in our power, yet we willingly grant, as a courtesy,
+what we might refuse as a right. Valiant Moor! defend thyself!" So
+saying, he wheeled, took proper distance, couched his lance, and putting
+spurs to his horse, made at the stranger. The latter met him in mid
+career, transpierced him with his lance, and threw him headlong from his
+saddle. A second and a third succeeded, but were unhorsed with equal
+facility, and thrown to the earth, severely wounded. The remaining
+two, seeing their comrades thus roughly treated, forgot all compact of
+courtesy, and charged both at once upon the Moor. He parried the thrust
+of one, but was wounded by the other in the thigh, and, in the shock and
+confusion, dropped his lance. Thus disarmed, and closely pressed, he
+pretended to fly, and was hotly pursued. Having drawn the two cavaliers
+some distance from the spot, he suddenly wheeled short about, with
+one of those dexterous movements for which the Moorish horsemen are
+renowned; passed swiftly between them, swung himself down from his
+saddle, so as to catch up his lance, then, lightly replacing himself,
+turned to renew the combat.
+
+Seeing him thus fresh for the encounter, as if just issued from his
+tent, one of the cavaliers put his lips to his horn, and blew a blast,
+that soon brought the Alcayde and his four companions to the spot.
+
+The valiant Narvaez, seeing three of his cavaliers extended on the
+earth, and two others hotly engaged with the Moor, was struck with
+admiration, and coveted a contest with so accomplished a warrior.
+Interfering in the fight, he called upon his followers to desist, and
+addressing the Moor, with courteous words, invited him to a more equal
+combat. The latter readily accepted the challenge. For some time, their
+contest was fierce and doubtful; and the Alcayde had need of all his
+skill and strength to ward off the blows of his antagonist. The Moor,
+however, was exhausted by previous fighting, and by loss of blood. He
+no longer sat his horse firmly, nor managed him with his wonted skill.
+Collecting all his strength for a last assault, he rose in his stirrups,
+and made a violent thrust with his lance; the Alcayde received it upon
+his shield, and at the same time wounded the Moor in the right arm; then
+closing, in the shock, he grasped him in his arms, dragged him from his
+saddle, and fell with him to the earth: when putting his knee upon his
+breast, and his dagger to his throat, "Cavalier," exclaimed he, "render
+thyself my prisoner, for thy life is in my hands!"
+
+"Kill me, rather," replied the Moor, "for death would be less grievous
+than loss of liberty." The Alcayde, however, with the clemency of the
+truly brave, assisted the Moor to rise, ministered to his wounds with
+his own hands, and had him conveyed with great care to the castle of
+Allora. His wounds were slight, and in a few days were nearly cured; but
+the deepest wound had been inflicted on his spirit. He was constantly
+buried in a profound melancholy.
+
+The Alcayde, who had conceived a great regard for him, treated him more
+as a friend than a captive, and tried in every way to cheer him, but in
+vain; he was always sad and moody, and, when on the battlements of
+the castle, would keep his eyes turned to the south, with a fixed and
+wistful gaze.
+
+"How is this?" exclaimed the Alcayde, reproachfully, "that you, who were
+so hardy and fearless in the field, should lose all spirit in prison? If
+any secret grief preys on your heart, confide it to me, as to a friend,
+and I promise you, on the faith of a cavalier, that you shall have no
+cause to repent the disclosure."
+
+The Moorish knight kissed the hand of the Alcayde. "Noble cavalier,"
+said he "that I am cast down in spirit, is not from my wounds, which are
+slight, nor from my captivity, for your kindness has robbed it of all
+gloom; nor from my defeat, for to be conquered by so accomplished and
+renowned a cavalier, is no disgrace. But to explain to you the cause of
+my grief, it is necessary to give you some particulars of my story; and
+this I am moved to do, by the great sympathy you have manifested toward
+me, and the magnanimity that shines through all your actions."
+
+"Know, then, that my name is Abendaraez, and that I am of the noble but
+unfortunate line of the Abencerrages of Granada. You have doubtless
+heard of the destruction that fell upon our race. Charged with
+treasonable designs, of which they were entirely innocent, many of
+them were beheaded, the rest banished; so that not an Abencerrages was
+permitted to remain in Granada, excepting my father and my uncle, whose
+innocence was proved, even to the satisfaction of their persecutors. It
+was decreed, however, that, should they have children, the sons should
+be educated at a distance from Granada, and the daughters should be
+married out of the kingdom.
+
+"Conformably to this decree, I was sent, while yet an infant, to be
+reared in the fortress of Cartama, the worthy Alcayde of which was an
+ancient friend of my father. He had no children, and received me into
+his family as his own child, treating me with the kindness and affection
+of a father; and I grew up in the belief that he really was such. A few
+years afterward, his wife gave birth to a daughter, but his tenderness
+toward me continued undiminished. I thus grew up with Xarisa, for so
+the infant daughter of the Alcayde was called, as her own brother, and
+thought the growing passion which I felt for her, was mere fraternal
+affection. I beheld her charms unfolding, as it were, leaf by leaf, like
+the morning rose, each moment disclosing fresh beauty and sweetness.
+
+"At this period, I overheard a conversation between the Alcayde and his
+confidential domestic, and found myself to be the subject. 'It is time,'
+said he, 'to apprise him of his parentage, that he may adopt a career
+in life. I have deferred the communication as long as possible, through
+reluctance to inform him that he is of a proscribed and an unlucky
+race.'
+
+"This intelligence would have overwhelmed me at an earlier period, but
+the intimation that Xarisa was not my sister, operated like magic, and
+in an instant transformed my brotherly affection into ardent love.
+
+"I sought Xarisa, to impart to her the secret I had learned. I found her
+in the garden, in a bower of jessamines, arranging her beautiful hair by
+the mirror of a crystal fountain. The radiance of her beauty dazzled
+me. I ran to her with open arms, and she received me with a sister's
+embraces. When we had seated ourselves beside the fountain, she began to
+upbraid me for leaving her so long alone.
+
+"In reply, I informed her of the conversation I had overheard. The
+recital shocked and distressed her. 'Alas!' cried she, 'then is our
+happiness at an end!'
+
+"'How!' exclaimed I; 'wilt thou cease to love me, because I am not thy
+brother?'
+
+"'Not so,' replied she; 'but do you not know that when it is once known
+we are not brother and sister, we can no longer be permitted to be thus
+always together?'
+
+"In fact, from that moment our intercourse took a new character. We
+met often at the fountain among the jessamines, but Xarisa no longer
+advanced with open arms to meet me. She became reserved and silent, and
+would blush, and cast down her eyes, when I seated myself beside her. My
+heart became a prey to the thousand doubts and fears that ever attend
+upon true love. I was restless and uneasy, and looked back with regret
+to the unreserved intercourse that had existed between us, when we
+supposed ourselves brother and sister; yet I would not have had the
+relationship true, for the world.
+
+"While matters were in this state between us, an order came from the
+King of Granada for the Alcayde to take command of the fortress of Coyn,
+which lies directly on the Christian frontier. He prepared to remove,
+with all his family, but signified that I should remain at Cartama. I
+exclaimed against the separation, and declared that I could not be
+parted from Xarisa. 'That is the very cause,' said he, 'why I leave thee
+behind. It is time, Abendaraez, that thou shouldst know the secret of
+thy birth; that thou art no son of mine, neither is Xarisa thy sister.'
+'I know it all,' exclaimed I, 'and I love her with tenfold the
+affection of a brother. You have brought us up together; you have made
+us necessary to each other's happiness; our hearts have entwined
+themselves with our growth; do not now tear them asunder. Fill up the
+measure of your kindness; be indeed a father to me, by giving me Xarisa
+for my wife.'
+
+"The brow of the Alcayde darkened as I spoke. 'Have I then been
+deceived?' said he. 'Have those nurtured in my very bosom, been
+conspiring against me? Is this your return for my paternal
+tenderness?--to beguile the affections of my child, and teach her to
+deceive her father? It was cause enough to refuse thee the hand of my
+daughter, that thou wert of a proscribed race, who can never approach
+the walls of Granada; this, however, I might have passed over; but never
+will I give my daughter to a man who has endeavored to win her from me
+by deception.'
+
+"All my attempts to vindicate myself and Xarisa were unavailing. I
+retired in anguish from his presence, and seeking Xarisa, told her of
+this blow, which was worse than death to me. 'Xarisa,' said I, 'we
+part for ever! I shall never see thee more! Thy father will guard thee
+rigidly. Thy beauty and his wealth will soon attract some happier rival,
+and I shall be forgotten!'
+
+"Xarisa reproached me with my want of faith, and promised me eternal
+constancy. I still doubted and desponded, until, moved by my anguish and
+despair, she agreed to a secret union. Our espousals made, we parted,
+with a promise on her part to send me word from Coyn, should her
+father absent himself from the fortress. The very day after our secret
+nuptials, I beheld the whole train of the Alcayde depart from Cartama,
+nor would he admit me to his presence, or permit me to bid farewell
+to Xarisa. I remained at Cartama, somewhat pacified in spirit by this
+secret bond of union; but every thing around me fed my passion, and
+reminded me of Xarisa. I saw the windows at which I had so often beheld
+her. I wandered through the apartment she had inhabited; the chamber in
+which she had slept. I visited the bower of jessamines, and lingered
+beside the fountain in which she had delighted. Every thing recalled her
+to my imagination, and filled my heart with tender melancholy.
+
+"At length, a confidential servant brought me word, that her father
+was to depart that day for Granada, on a short absence, inviting me to
+hasten to Coyn, describing a secret portal at which I should apply, and
+the signal by which I would obtain admittance.
+
+"If ever you have loved, most valiant Alcayde, you may judge of the
+transport of my bosom. That very night I arrayed myself in my most
+gallant attire, to pay due honor to my bride; and arming myself against
+any casual attack, issued forth privately from Cartama. You know the
+rest, and by what sad fortune of war I found myself, instead of a happy
+bridegroom, in the nuptial bower of Coyn, vanquished, wounded, and a
+prisoner, withing the walls of Allora. The term of absence of the father
+of Xarisa is nearly expired. Within three days he will return to Coyn,
+and our meeting will no longer be possible. Judge, then, whether I
+grieve without cause, and whether I may not well be excused for showing
+impatience under confinement."
+
+Don Rodrigo de Narvaez was greatly moved by this recital; for, though
+more used to rugged war, than scenes of amorous softness, he was of a
+kind and generous nature.
+
+"Abendaraez," said he, "I did not seek thy confidence to gratify an idle
+curiosity. It grieves me much that the good fortune which delivered thee
+into my hands, should have marred so fair an enterprise. Give me thy
+faith, as a true knight, to return prisoner to my castle, within three
+days, and I will grant thee permission to accomplish thy nuptials."
+
+The Abencerrage would have thrown himself at his feet, to pour out
+protestations of eternal gratitude, but the Alcayde prevented him.
+Calling in his cavaliers, he took the Abencerrage by the right hand, in
+their presence, exclaiming solemnly, "You promise, on the faith of a
+cavalier, to return to my castle of Allora within three days, and render
+yourself my prisoner?" And the Abencerrage said, "I promise."
+
+Then said the Alcayde, "Go! and may good fortune attend you. If
+you require any safeguard, I and my cavaliers are ready to be your
+companions."
+
+The Abencerrage kissed the hand of the Alcayde, in grateful
+acknowledgment. "Give me," said he, "my own armor, and my steed, and
+I require no guard. It is not likely that I shall again meet with so
+valorous a foe."
+
+The shades of night had fallen, when the tramp of the dapple-gray steed
+sounded over the drawbridge, and immediately afterward the light clatter
+of hoofs along the road, bespoke the fleetness with which the youthful
+lover hastened to his bride. It was deep night when the Moor arrived at
+the castle of Coyn. He silently and cautiously walked his panting steed
+under its dark walls, and having nearly passed round them, came to the
+portal denoted by Xarisa. He paused and looked around to see that he was
+not observed, and then knocked three times with the butt of his lance.
+In a little while the portal was timidly unclosed by the duenna of
+Xarisa. "Alas! senor," said she, "what has detained you thus long? Every
+night have I watched for you; and my lady is sick at heart with doubt
+and anxiety."
+
+The Abencerrage hung his lance, and shield, and scimitar against the
+wall, and then followed the duenna, with silent steps, up a winding
+stair-case, to the apartment of Xarisa. Vain would be the attempt to
+describe the raptures of that meeting. Time flew too swiftly, and the
+Abencerrage had nearly forgotten, until too late, his promise to return
+a prisoner to the Alcayde of Allora. The recollection of it came to him
+with a pang, and suddenly awoke him from his dream of bliss. Xarisa
+saw his altered looks, and heard with alarm his stifled sighs; but her
+countenance brightened, when she heard the cause. "Let not thy spirit be
+cast down," said she, throwing her white arms around him. "I have the
+keys of my father's treasures; send ransom more than enough to satisfy
+the Christian, and remain with me."
+
+"No," said Abendaraez, "I have given my word to return in person, and
+like a true knight, must fulfil my promise. After that, fortune must do
+with me as it pleases."
+
+"Then," said Xarisa, "I will accompany thee. Never shall you return a
+prisoner, and I remain at liberty."
+
+The Abencerrage was transported with joy at this new proof of devotion
+in his beautiful bride. All preparations were speedily made for their
+departure. Xarisa mounted behind the Moor, on his powerful steed; they
+left the castle walls before daybreak, nor did they pause, until they
+arrived at the gate of the castle of Allora, which was flung wide to
+receive them.
+
+Alighting in the court, the Abencerrage supported the steps of his
+trembling bride, who remained closely veiled, into the presence of
+Rodrigo de Narvaez. "Behold, valiant Alcayde!" said he, "the way in
+which an Abencerrage keeps his word. I promised to return to thee a
+prisoner, but I deliver two captives into your power. Behold Xarisa,
+and judge whether I grieved without reason, over the loss of such a
+treasure. Receive us as your own, for I confide my life and her honor to
+your hands."
+
+The Alcayde was lost in admiration of the beauty of the lady, and the
+noble spirit of the Moor. "I know not," said he, "which of you surpasses
+the other; but I know that my castle is graced and honored by your
+presence. Enter into it, and consider it your own, while you deign to
+reside with me."
+
+For several days the lovers remained at Allora, happy in each other's
+love, and in the friendship of the brave Alcayde. The latter wrote a
+letter, full of courtesy, to the Moorish king of Granada, relating the
+whole event, extolling the valor and good faith of the Abencerrage, and
+craving for him the royal countenance.
+
+The king was moved by the story, and was pleased with an opportunity of
+showing attention to the wishes of a gallant and chivalrous enemy; for
+though he had often suffered from the prowess of Don Rodigro de Narvaez,
+he admired the heroic character he had gained throughout the land.
+Calling the Alcayde of Coyn into his presence, he gave him the letter to
+read. The Alcayde turned pale, and trembled with rage, on the perusal.
+"Restrain thine anger," said the king; "there is nothing that the
+Alcayde of Allora could ask, that I would not grant, if in my power. Go
+thou to Allora; pardon thy children; take them to thy home. I receive
+this Abencerrage into my favor, and it will be my delight to heap
+benefits upon you all."
+
+The kindling ire of the Alcayde was suddenly appeased. He hastened to
+Allora; and folded his children to his bosom, who would have fallen at
+his feet. The gallant Rodrigo de Narvaez gave liberty to his prisoner
+without ransom, demanding merely a promise of his friendship. He
+accompanied the youthful couple and their father to Coyn, where their
+nuptials were celebrated with great rejoicings. When the festivities
+were over, Don Rodrigo de Narvaez returned to his fortress of Allora.
+
+After his departure, the Alcayde of Coyn addressed his children: "To
+your hands," said he, "I confide the disposition of my wealth. One of
+the first things I charge you, is not to forget the ransom you owe to
+the Alcayde of Allora. His magnanimity you can never repay, but you can
+prevent it from wronging him of his just dues. Give him, moreover, your
+entire friendship, for he merits it fully, though of a different faith."
+
+The Abencerrage thanked him for his generous proposition, which so truly
+accorded with his own wishes. He took a large sum of gold, and enclosed
+it in a rich coffer; and, on his own part, sent six beautiful horses,
+superbly caparisoned; with six shields and lances, mounted and embossed
+with gold. The beautiful Xarisa, at the same time, wrote a letter to the
+Alcayde, filled with expressions of gratitude and friendship, and sent
+him a box of fragrant cypress-wood, containing linen, of the finest
+quality, for his person. The valiant Alcayde disposed of the present
+in a characteristic manner. The horses and armor he shared among the
+cavaliers who had accompanied him on the night of the skirmish. The
+box of cypress-wood and its contents he retained, for the sake of the
+beautiful Xarisa; and sent her, by the hands of a messenger, the sum
+of gold paid as a ransom, entreating her to receive it as a wedding
+present. This courtesy and magnanimity raised the character of the
+Alcayde Rodrigo de Narvaez still higher in the estimation of the Moors,
+who extolled him as a perfect mirror of chivalric virtue; and from that
+time forward, there was a continual exchange of good offices between
+them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE ENCHANTED ISLAND.
+
+BY THE AUTHOR OF THE SKETCH-BOOK.
+
+  Break, Phantsie, from thy cave of cloud,
+  And wave thy purple wings,
+  Now all thy figures are allowed,
+  And various shapes of things.
+  Create of airy forms a stream;
+  It must have blood and nought of phlegm;
+  And though it be a walking dream,
+  Yet let it like an odor rise
+  To all the senses here,
+  And fall like sleep upon their eyes,
+  Or music on their ear.--BEN JONSON.
+
+"There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our
+philosophy," and among these may be placed that marvel and mystery of
+the seas, the island of St. Brandan. Every school-boy can enumerate and
+call by name the Canaries, the Fortunate Islands of the ancients; which,
+according to some ingenious speculative minds, are mere wrecks and
+remnants of the vast island of Atalantis, mentioned by Plato, as having
+been swallowed up by the ocean. Whoever has read the history of those
+isles, will remember the wonders told of another island, still more
+beautiful, seen occasionally from their shores, stretching away in the
+clear bright west, with long shadowy promontories, and high, sun-gilt
+peaks. Numerous expeditions, both in ancient and modern days, have
+launched forth from the Canaries in quest of that island; but, on their
+approach, mountain and promontory have gradually faded away, until
+nothing has remained but the blue sky above, and the deep blue water
+below. Hence it was termed by the geographers of old, Aprositus, or the
+Inaccessible; while modern navigators have called its very existence in
+question, pronouncing it a mere optical illusion, like the Fata Morgana
+of the Straits of Messina; or classing it with those unsubstantial
+regions known to mariners as Cape Flyaway, and the Coast of Cloud Land.
+
+Let not, however, the doubts of the worldly-wise sceptics of modern days
+rob us of all the glorious realms owned by happy credulity in days of
+yore. Be assured, O reader of easy faith!--thou for whom I delight to
+labor--be assured, that such an island does actually exist, and has,
+from time to time, been revealed to the gaze, and trodden by the feet,
+of favored mortals. Nay, though doubted by historians and philosophers,
+its existence is fully attested by the poets, who, being an inspired
+race, and gifted with a kind of second sight, can see into the mysteries
+of nature, hidden from the eyes of ordinary mortals. To this gifted race
+it has ever been a region of fancy and romance, teeming with all kinds
+of wonders. Here once bloomed, and perhaps still blooms, the famous
+garden of the Hesperides, with its golden fruit. Here, too, was the
+enchanted garden of Armida, in which that sorceress held the Christian
+paladin, Rinaldo, in delicious but inglorious thraldom; as is set forth
+in the immortal lay of Tasso. It was on this island, also, that Sycorax,
+the witch, held sway, when the good Prospero, and his infant daughter
+Miranda, were wafted to its shores. The isle was then
+
+  ---"full of noises,
+  Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not."
+
+Who does not know the tale, as told in the magic page of Shakspeare?
+
+In fact, the island appears to have been, at different times, under the
+sway of different powers, genii of earth, and air, and ocean; who made
+it their shadowy abode; or rather, it is the retiring place of old
+worn-out deities and dynasties, that once ruled the poetic world,
+but are now nearly shorn of all their attributes. Here Neptune and
+Amphitrite hold a diminished court, like sovereigns in exile. Their
+ocean-chariot lies bottom upward, in a cave of the island, almost a
+perfect wreck, while their pursy Tritons and haggard Nereids bask
+listlessly, like seals about the rocks. Sometimes they assume a shadow
+of their ancient pomp, and glide in state about the glassy sea; while
+the crew of some tall Indiaman, that lies becalmed with flapping sails,
+hear with astonishment the mellow note of the Triton's shell swelling
+upon the ear, as the invisible pageant sweeps by. Sometimes the quondam
+monarch of the ocean is permitted to make himself visible to mortal
+eyes, visiting the ships that cross the line, to exact a tribute from
+new-comers; the only remnant of his ancient rule, and that, alas!
+performed with tattered state, and tarnished splendor.
+
+On the shores of this wondrous island, the mighty kraken heaves his
+bulk, and wallows many a rood; here, too, the sea-serpent lies coiled
+up, during the intervals of his much-contested revelations to the
+eyes of true believers; and here it is said, even the Flying Dutchman
+finds a port and casts his anchor, and furls his shadowy sail, and
+takes a short repose from his eternal wanderings.
+
+Here all the treasures lost in the deep are safely garnered. The caverns
+of the shores are piled with golden ingots, hexes of pearls, rich bales
+of oriental silks; and their deep recesses sparkle with diamonds, or
+flame with carbuncles. Here, in deep bays and harbors, lies many a
+spell-bound ship, long given up as lost by the ruined merchant. Here,
+too, its crew, long bewailed as swallowed up in ocean, lie sleeping in
+mossy grottoes, from age to age, or wander about enchanted shores and
+groves, in pleasing oblivion of all things.
+
+Such are some of the marvels related of this island, and which may serve
+to throw some light on the following legend, of unquestionable truth,
+which I recommend to the entire belief of the reader.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_THE ADELANTADO OF THE SEVEN CITIES_.
+
+A LEGEND OF ST. BRANDAN.
+
+In the early part of the fifteenth century, when Prince Henry of
+Portugal, of worthy memory, was pushing the career of discovery along
+the western coast of Africa, and the world was resounding with reports
+of golden regions on the main land, and new-found islands in the ocean,
+there arrived at Lisbon an old bewildered pilot of the seas, who had
+been driven by tempests, he knew not whither, and who raved about an
+island far in the deep, on which he had landed, and which he had found
+peopled with Christians, and adorned with noble cities.
+
+The inhabitants, he said, gathered round, and regarded him with
+surprise, having never before been visited by a ship. They told him they
+were descendants of a band of Christians, who fled from Spain when that
+country was conquered by the Moslems. They were curious about the state
+of their fatherland, and grieved to hear that the Moslems still held
+possession of the kingdom of Granada. They would have taken the old
+navigator to church, to convince him of their orthodoxy; but, either
+through lack of devotion, or lack of faith in their words, he declined
+their invitation, and preferred to return on board of his ship. He was
+properly punished. A furious storm arose, drove him from his anchorage,
+hurried him out to sea, and he saw no more of the unknown island.
+
+This strange story caused great marvel in Lisbon and elsewhere. Those
+versed in history, remembered to have read, in an ancient chronicle,
+that, at the time of the conquest of Spain, in the eighth century, when
+the blessed cross was cast down, and the crescent erected in its place,
+and when Christian churches were turned into Moslem mosques, seven
+bishops, at the head of seven bands of pious exiles, had fled from the
+peninsula, and embarked in quest of some ocean island, or distant land,
+where they might found seven Christian cities, and enjoy their faith
+unmolested.
+
+The fate of these pious saints errant had hitherto remained a
+mystery, and their story had faded from memory; the report of the old
+tempest-tossed pilot, however, revived this long-forgotten theme; and
+it was determined by the pious and enthusiastic, that the island thus
+accidentally discovered, was the identical place of refuge, whither the
+wandering bishops had been guided by a protecting Providence, and where
+they had folded their flocks.
+
+This most excitable of worlds has always some darling object of
+chimerical enterprise: the "Island of the Seven Cities" now awakened as
+much interest and longing among zealous Christians, as has the renowned
+city of Timbuctoo among adventurous travellers, or the North-east
+Passage among hardy navigators; and it was a frequent prayer of the
+devout, that these scattered and lost portions of the Christian family
+might be discovered, and reunited to the great body of Christendom.
+
+No one, however, entered into the matter with half the zeal of Don
+Fernando de Ulmo, a young cavalier of high standing in the Portuguese
+court, and of most sanguine and romantic temperament. He had recently
+come to his estate, and had run the round of all kinds of pleasures and
+excitements, when this new theme of popular talk and wonder presented
+itself. The Island of the Seven Cities became now the constant subject
+of his thoughts by day and his dreams by night; it even rivalled his
+passion for a beautiful girl, one of the greatest belles of Lisbon, to
+whom he was betrothed. At length his imagination became so inflamed on
+the subject, that he determined to fit out an expedition, at his own
+expense, and set sail in quest of this sainted island. It could not be
+a cruise of any great extent; for according to the calculations of the
+tempest-tossed pilot, it must be somewhere in the latitude of the
+Canaries; which at that time, when the new world was as yet undiscovered,
+formed the frontier of ocean enterprise. Don Fernando applied to the
+crown for countenance and protection. As he was a favorite at court, the
+usual patronage was readily extended to him; that is to say, he received
+a commission from the king, Don Ioam II., constituting him Adelantado,
+or military governor, of any country he might discover, with the single
+proviso, that he should bear all the expenses of the discovery and pay a
+tenth of the profits to the crown.
+
+Don Fernando now set to work in the true spirit of a projector. He sold
+acre after acre of solid land, and invested the proceeds in ships, guns,
+ammunition, and sea-stores. Even his old family mansion in Lisbon was
+mortgaged without scruple, for "he looked forward to a palace in one of
+the Seven Cities of which he was to be Adelantado." This was the age of
+nautical romance, when the thoughts of all speculative dreamers were
+turned to the ocean. The scheme of Don Fernando, therefore, drew
+adventurers of every kind. The merchant promised himself new marts of
+opulent traffic; the soldier hoped to sack and plunder some one or other
+of those Seven Cities; even the fat monk shook off the sleep and sloth
+of the cloister, to join in a crusade which promised such increase to
+the possessions of the church.
+
+One person alone regarded the whole project with sovereign contempt
+and growling hostility. This was Don Ramiro Alvarez, the father of the
+beautiful Serafina, to whom Don Fernando was betrothed. He was one of
+those perverse, matter-of-fact old men who are prone to oppose every
+thing speculative and romantic. He had no faith in the Island of the
+Seven Cities; regarded the projected cruise as a crack-brained freak;
+looked with angry eye and internal heart-burning on the conduct of his
+intended son-in-law, chaffering away solid lands for lands in the moon,
+and scoffingly dubbed him Adelantado of Lubberland. In fact, he had
+never really relished the intended match, to which his consent had been
+slowly extorted by the tears and entreaties of his daughter. It is true
+he could have no reasonable objections to the youth, for Don Fernando
+was the very flower of Portuguese chivalry. No one could excel him at
+the tilting match, or the riding at the ring; none was more bold and
+dexterous in the bull-fight; none composed more gallant madrigals in
+praise of his lady's charms, or sang them with sweeter tones to the
+accompaniment of her guitar; nor could any one handle the castanets
+and dance the bolero with more captivating grace. All these admirable
+qualities and endowments, however, though they had been sufficient to
+win the heart of Serafina, were nothing in the eyes of her unreasonable
+father. O Cupid, god of Love! why will fathers always be so
+unreasonable!
+
+The engagement to Serafina had threatened at first to throw an obstacle
+in the way of the expedition of Don Fernando, and for a time perplexed
+him in the extreme. He was passionately attached to the young lady; but
+he was also passionately bent on this romantic enterprise. How should
+he reconcile the two passionate inclinations? A simple and obvious
+arrangement at length presented itself: marry Serafina, enjoy a portion
+of the honeymoon at once, and defer the rest until his return from the
+discovery of the Seven Cities!
+
+He hastened to make known this most excellent arrangement to Don Ramiro,
+when the long-smothered wrath of the old cavalier burst forth in a storm
+about his ears. He reproached him with being the dupe of wandering
+vagabonds and wild schemers, and of squandering all his real possessions
+in pursuit of empty bubbles. Don Fernando was too sanguine a projector,
+and too young a man, to listen tamely to such language. He acted with
+what is technically called "becoming spirit." A high quarrel ensued; Don
+Ramiro pronounced him a mad man, and forbade all farther intercourse
+with his daughter, until he should give proof of returning sanity by
+abandoning this mad-cap enterprise; while Don Fernando flung out of
+the house, more bent than ever on the expedition, from the idea of
+triumphing over the incredulity of the gray-beard when he should return
+successful.
+
+Don Ramiro repaired to his daughter's chamber the moment the youth had
+departed. He represented to her the sanguine, unsteady character of her
+lover and the chimerical nature of his schemes; showed her the propriety
+of suspending all intercourse with him until he should recover from his
+present hallucination; folded her to his bosom with parental fondness,
+kissed the tear that stole down her cheek, and, as he left the chamber,
+gently locked the door; for although he was a fond father, and had a
+high opinion of the submissive temper of his child, he had a still
+higher opinion of the conservative virtues of lock and key. Whether the
+damsel had been in any wise shaken in her faith as to the schemes of her
+lover, and the existence of the Island of the Seven Cities, by the sage
+representations of her father, tradition does not say; but it is certain
+that she became a firm believer the moment she heard him turn the key in
+the lock.
+
+Notwithstanding the interdict of Don Ramiro, therefore, and his
+shrewd precautions, the intercourse of the lovers continued, although
+clandestinely. Don Fernando toiled all day, hurrying forward his
+nautical enterprise, while at night he would repair, beneath the
+grated balcony of his mistress, to carry on at equal pace the no less
+interesting enterprise of the heart. At length the preparations for the
+expedition were completed. Two gallant caravels lay anchored in the
+Tagus, ready to sail with the morning dawn; while late at night, by the
+pale light of a waning moon, Don Fernando sought the stately mansion of
+Alvarez to take a last farewell of Serafina. The customary signal of a
+few low touches of a guitar brought her to the balcony. She was sad at
+heart and full of gloomy forebodings; but her lover strove to impart to
+her his own buoyant hope and youthful confidence. "A few short months,"
+said he, "and I shall return in triumph. Thy father will then blush at
+his incredulity, and will once more welcome me to his house, when
+I cross its threshold a wealthy suitor and Adelantado of the Seven
+Cities."
+
+The beautiful Serafina shook her head mournfully. It was not on those
+points that she felt doubt or dismay. She believed most implicitly in
+the Island of the Seven Cities, and trusted devoutly in the success of
+the enterprise; but she had heard of the inconstancy of the seas, and
+the inconstancy of those who roam them. Now, let the truth be spoken,
+Don Fernando, if he had any fault in the world, it was that he was a
+little too inflammable; that is to say, a little too subject to take
+fire from the sparkle of every bright eye: he had been somewhat of a
+rover among the sex on shore, what might he not be on sea? Might he
+not meet with other loves in foreign ports? Might he not behold some
+peerless beauty in one or other of those seven cities, who might efface
+the image of Serafina from his thoughts?
+
+At length she ventured to hint her doubts; but Don Fernando spurned at
+the very idea. Never could his heart be false to Serafina! Never could
+another be captivating in his eyes!--never--never! Repeatedly did he
+bend his knee, and smite his breast, and call upon the silver moon to
+witness the sincerity of his vows. But might not Serafina, herself, be
+forgetful of her plighted faith? Might not some wealthier rival present,
+while he was tossing on the sea, and, backed by the authority of her
+father, win the treasure of her hand? Alas, how little did he know
+Serafina's heart! The more her father should oppose, the more would she
+be fixed in her faith. Though years should pass before his return, he
+would find her true to her vows. Even should the salt seas swallow him
+up, (and her eyes streamed with salt tears at the very thought,) never
+would she be the wife of another--never--never! She raised her beautiful
+white arms between the iron bars of the balcony, and invoked the moon as
+a testimonial of her faith.
+
+Thus, according to immemorial usage, the lovers parted, with many a vow
+of eternal constancy. But will they keep those vows? Perish the doubt!
+Have they not called the constant moon to witness?
+
+With the morning dawn the caravels dropped down the Tagus and put
+to sea. They steered for the Canaries, in those days the regions of
+nautical romance. Scarcely had they reached those latitudes, when a
+violent tempest arose. Don Fernando soon lost sight of the accompanying
+caravel, and was driven out of all reckoning by the fury of the storm.
+For several weary days and nights he was tossed to and fro, at the mercy
+of the elements, expecting each moment to be swallowed up. At length,
+one day toward evening, the storm subsided; the clouds cleared up, as
+though a veil had suddenly been withdrawn from the face of heaven, and
+the setting sun shone gloriously upon a fair and mountainous island,
+that seemed close at hand. The tempest-tossed mariners rubbed their
+eyes, and gazed almost incredulously upon this land, that had emerged so
+suddenly from the murky gloom; yet there it lay, spread out in lovely
+landscapes; enlivened by villages, and towers, and spires, while the
+late stormy sea rolled in peaceful billows to its shores. About a league
+from the sea, on the banks of a river, stood a noble city, with lofty
+walls and towers, and a protecting castle. Don Fernando anchored off
+the mouth of the river, which appeared to form a spacious harbor. In a
+little while a barge was seen issuing from the river. It was evidently
+a barge of ceremony, for it was richly though quaintly carved and gilt,
+and decorated with a silken awning and fluttering streamers, while a
+banner, bearing the sacred emblem of the cross, floated to the breeze.
+The barge advanced slowly, impelled by sixteen oars, painted of a bright
+crimson. The oarsmen were uncouth, or rather antique, in their garb, and
+kept stroke to the regular cadence of an old Spanish ditty. Beneath the
+awning sat a cavalier, in a rich though old-fashioned doublet, with an
+enormous sombrero and feather. When the barge reached the caravel, the
+cavalier stepped on board. He was tall and gaunt, with a long, Spanish
+visage, and lack-lustre eyes, and an air of lofty and somewhat pompous
+gravity. His mustaches were curled up to his ears, his beard was forked
+and precise; he wore gauntlets that reached to his elbows, and a Toledo
+blade that strutted out behind, while, in front, its huge basket-hilt
+might have served for a porringer.
+
+Thrusting out a long spindle leg, and taking off his sombrero with a
+grave and stately sweep, he saluted Don Fernando by name, and welcomed
+him, in old Castilian language, and in the style of old Castilian
+courtesy.
+
+Don Fernando was startled at hearing himself accosted by name, by an
+utter stranger, in a strange land. As soon as he could recover from his
+surprise, he inquired what land it was at which he had arrived.
+
+"The Island of the Seven Cities!"
+
+Could this be true? Had he indeed been thus tempest-driven upon the very
+land of which he was in quest? It was even so. The other caravel, from
+which he had been separated in the storm, had made a neighboring port of
+the island, and announced the tidings of this expedition, which came to
+restore the country to the great community of Christendom. The whole
+island, he was told, was given up to rejoicings on the happy event; and
+they only awaited his arrival to acknowledge allegiance to the crown of
+Portugal, and hail him as Adelantado of the Seven Cities. A grand fête
+was to be solemnized that very night in the palace of the Alcayde or
+governor of the city; who, on beholding the most opportune arrival of
+the caravel, had despatched his grand chamberlain, in his barge of
+state, to conduct the future Adelantado to the ceremony.
+
+Don Fernando could scarcely believe but that this was all a dream.
+He fixed a scrutinizing gaze upon the grand chamberlain, who, having
+delivered his message, stood in buckram dignity, drawn up to his full
+stature, curling his whiskers, stroking his beard, and looking down upon
+him with inexpressible loftiness through his lack-lustre eyes. There was
+no doubting the word of so grave and ceremonious a hidalgo.
+
+Don Fernando now arrayed himself in gala attire. He would have launched
+his boat, and gone on shore with his own men, but he was informed the
+barge of state was expressly provided for his accommodation, and, after
+the fête, would bring him back to his ship; in which, on the following
+day, he might enter the harbor in befitting style. He accordingly
+stepped into the barge, and took his seat beneath the awning. The grand
+chamberlain seated himself on the cushion opposite. The rowers bent to
+their oars, and renewed their mournful old ditty, and the gorgeous, but
+unwieldy barge moved slowly and solemnly through the water.
+
+The night closed in, before they entered the river. They swept along,
+past rock and promontory, each guarded by its tower. The sentinels at
+every post challenged them as they passed by.
+
+"Who goes there?"
+
+"The Adelantado of the Seven Cities."
+
+"He is welcome. Pass on."
+
+On entering the harbor, they rowed close along an armed galley, of the
+most ancient form. Soldiers with cross-bows were stationed on the deck.
+
+"Who goes there?" was again demanded.
+
+"The Adelantado of the Seven Cities."
+
+"He is welcome. Pass on."
+
+They landed at a broad flight of stone steps, leading up, between two
+massive towers, to the water-gate of the city, at which they knocked for
+admission. A sentinel, in an ancient steel casque, looked over the wall.
+"Who is there?"
+
+"The Adelantado of the Seven Cities."
+
+The gate swung slowly open, grating upon its rusty hinges. They entered
+between two rows of iron-clad warriors, in battered armor, with
+cross-bows, battle-axes, and ancient maces, and with faces as
+old-fashioned and rusty as their armor. They saluted Don Fernando in
+military style, but with perfect silence, as he passed between their
+ranks. The city was illuminated, but in such manner as to give a more
+shadowy and solemn effect to its old-time architecture. There were
+bonfires in the principal streets, with groups about them in such
+old-fashioned garbs, that they looked like the fantastic figures that
+roam the streets in carnival time. Even the stately dames who gazed from
+the balconies, which they had hung with antique tapestry, looked more
+like effigies dressed up for a quaint mummery, than like ladies in their
+fashionable attire. Every thing, in short, bore the stamp of former
+ages, as if the world had suddenly rolled back a few centuries. Nor was
+this to be wondered at. Had not the Island of the Seven Cities been for
+several hundred years cut off from all communication with the rest of
+the world, and was it not natural that the inhabitants should retain
+many of the modes and customs brought here by their ancestors?
+
+One thing certainly they had conserved; the old-fashioned Spanish
+gravity and stateliness. Though this was a time of public rejoicing, and
+though Don Fernando was the object of their gratulations, every thing
+was conducted with the most solemn ceremony, and wherever he appeared,
+instead of acclamations, he was received with profound silence, and the
+most formal reverences and swayings of their sombreros.
+
+Arrived at the palace of the Alcayde, the usual ceremonial was repeated.
+The chamberlain knocked for admission.
+
+"Who is there?" demanded the porter.
+
+"The Adelantado of the Seven Cities."
+
+"He is welcome. Pass on."
+
+The grand portal was thrown open. The chamberlain led the way up a vast
+but heavily moulded marble stair-case, and so through one of those
+interminable suites of apartments, that are the pride of Spanish
+palaces. All were furnished in a style of obsolete magnificence. As they
+passed through the chambers, the title of Don Fernando was forwarded on
+by servants stationed at every door; and every where produced the most
+profound reverences and courtesies. At length they reached a magnificent
+saloon, blazing with tapers, in which the Alcayde, and the principal
+dignitaries of the city, were waiting to receive their illustrious
+guest. The grand chamberlain presented Don Fernando in due form, and
+falling back among the other officers of the household, stood as usual
+curling his whiskers and stroking his forked beard.
+
+Don Fernando was received by the Alcayde and the other dignitaries with
+the same stately and formal courtesy that he had every where remarked.
+In fact, there was so much form and ceremonial, that it seemed difficult
+to get at any thing social or substantial. Nothing but bows, and
+compliments, and old-fashioned courtesies. The Alcayde and his courtiers
+resembled, in face and form, those quaint worthies to be seen in the
+pictures of old illuminated manuscripts; while the cavaliers and dames
+who thronged the saloon, might have beep taken for the antique figures
+of gobelin tapestry suddenly vivified and put in motion.
+
+The banquet, which had been kept back until the arrival of Don Fernando,
+was now announced; and such a feast! such unknown dishes and obsolete
+dainties; with the peacock, that bird of state and ceremony, served up
+in full plumage, in a golden dish, at the head of the table. And then,
+as Don Fernando cast his eyes over the glittering board, what a vista of
+odd heads and head-dresses, of formal bearded dignitaries, and stately
+dames, with castellated locks and towering plumes!
+
+As fate would have it, on the other side of Don Fernando, was seated the
+daughter of the Alcayde. She was arrayed, it is true, in a dress that
+might have been worn before the flood; but then, she had a melting black
+Andalusian eye, that was perfectly irresistible. Her voice, too, her
+manner, her movements, all smacked of Andalusia, and showed how female
+fascination may be transmitted from age to age, and clime to clime,
+without ever losing its power, or going out of fashion. Those who know
+the witchery of the sex, in that most amorous region of old Spain, may
+judge what must have been the fascination to which Don Fernando
+was exposed, when seated beside one of the most captivating of its
+descendants. He was, as has already been hinted, of an inflammable
+temperament; with a heart ready to get in a light blaze at every
+instant. And then he had been so wearied by pompous, tedious old
+cavaliers, with their formal bows and speeches; is it to be wondered at
+that he turned with delight to the Alcayde's daughter, all smiles, and
+dimples, and melting looks, and melting accents? Beside, for I wish to
+give him every excuse in my power, he was in a particularly excitable
+mood, from the novelty of the scene before him, and his head was almost
+turned with this sudden and complete realization of all his hopes and
+fancies; and then, in the flurry of the moment, he had taken frequent
+draughts at the wine-cup, presented him at every instant by officious
+pages, and all the world knows the effect of such draughts in giving
+potency to female charms. In a word, there is no concealing the matter,
+the banquet was not half over, before Don Fernando was making love,
+outright, to the Alcayde's daughter. It was his cold habitude,
+contracted long before his matrimonial engagement. The young lady hung
+her head coyly; her eye rested upon a ruby heart, sparkling in a ring on
+the hand of Don Fernando, a parting gage of love from Serafina. A blush
+crimsoned her very temples. She darted a glance of doubt at the
+ring, and then at Don Fernando. He read her doubt, and in the giddy
+intoxication of the moment, drew off the pledge of his affianced bride,
+and slipped it on the finger of the Alcayde's daughter.
+
+At this moment the banquet broke up. The chamberlain with his lofty
+demeanor, and his lack-lustre eyes, stood before him, and announced that
+the barge was waiting to conduct him back to the caravel. Don Fernando
+took a formal leave of the Alcayde and his dignitaries, and a tender
+farewell of the Alcayde's daughter, with a promise to throw himself at
+her feet on the following day. He was rowed back to his vessel in the
+same slow and stately manner, to the cadence of the same mournful old
+ditty. He retired to his cabin, his brain whirling with all that he had
+seen, and his heart now and then giving him a twinge as he recollected
+his temporary infidelity to the beautiful Serafina. He flung himself on
+his bed, and soon fell into a feverish sleep. His dreams were wild and
+incoherent. How long he slept he knew not, but when he awoke he found
+himself in a strange cabin, with persons around him of whom he had no
+knowledge. He rubbed his eyes to ascertain whether he were really awake.
+In reply to his inquiries, he was informed that he was on board of a
+Portuguese ship, bound to Lisbon; having been taken senseless from a
+wreck drifting about the ocean.
+
+Don Fernando was confounded and perplexed. He retraced every thing
+distinctly that had happened to him in the Island of the Seven Cities,
+and until he had retired to rest on board of the caravel. Had his vessel
+been driven from her anchors, and wrecked during his sleep? The people
+about him could give him no information on the subject. He talked to
+them of the Island of the Seven Cities, and of all that had befallen him
+there. They regarded his words as the ravings of delirium, and in their
+honest solicitude, administered such rough remedies, that he was fain to
+drop the subject, and observe a cautious taciturnity.
+
+At length they arrived in the Tagus, and anchored before the famous city
+of Lisbon. Don Fernando sprang joyfully on shore, and hastened to his
+ancestral mansion. To his surprise, it was inhabited by strangers; and
+when he asked about his family, no one could give him any information
+concerning them.
+
+He now sought the mansion of Don Ramiro, for the temporary flame kindled
+by the bright eyes of the Alcayde's daughter had long since burnt itself
+out, and his genuine passion for Serafina had revived with all its
+fervor. He approached the balcony, beneath which he had so often
+serenaded her. Did his eyes deceive him? No! There was Serafina herself
+at the balcony. An exclamation of rapture burst from him, as he raised
+his arms toward her. She cast upon him a look of indignation, and
+hastily retiring, closed the casement. Could she have heard of his
+flirtation with the Alcayde's daughter? He would soon dispel every doubt
+of his constancy. The door was open. He rushed up-stairs, and entering
+the room, threw himself at her feet. She shrank back with affright, and
+took refuge in the arms of a youthful cavalier.
+
+"What mean you, Sir," cried the latter, "by this intrusion?"
+
+"What right have you," replied Don Fernando, "to ask the question?"
+
+"The right of an affianced suitor!"
+
+Don Fernando started, and turned pale. "Oh, Serafina! Serafina!" cried
+he in a tone of agony, "is this thy plighted constancy?"
+
+"Serafina?--what mean you by Serafina? If it be this young lady you
+intend, her name is Maria."
+
+"Is not this Serafina Alvarez, and is not that her portrait?" cried Don
+Fernando, pointing to a picture of his mistress.
+
+"Holy Virgin!" cried the young lady; "he is talking of my
+great-grandmother!"
+
+An explanation ensued, if that could be called an explanation, which
+plunged the unfortunate Fernando into tenfold perplexity. If he might
+believe his eyes, he saw before him his beloved Serafina; if he might
+believe his ears, it was merely her hereditary form and features,
+perpetuated in the person of her great-granddaughter.
+
+His brain began to spin. He sought tho office of the Minister of Marine,
+and made a report of his expedition, and of the Island of the Seven
+Cities, which he had so fortunately discovered. No body knew any thing
+of such an expedition, or such an island. He declared that he had
+undertaken the enterprise under a formal contract with the crown, and
+had received a regular commission, constituting him Adelantado. This
+must be matter of record, and he insisted loudly, that the books of the
+department should be consulted. The wordy strife at length attracted the
+attention of an old, gray-headed clerk, who sat perched on a high stool,
+at a high desk, with iron-rimmed spectacles on the top of a thin,
+pinched nose, copying records into an enormous folio. He had wintered
+and summered in the department for a great part of a century, until he
+had almost grown to be a piece of the desk at which he sat; his memory
+was a mere index of official facts and documents, and his brain was
+little better than red tape and parchment. After peering down for a time
+from his lofty perch, and ascertaining the matter in controversy, he
+put his pen behind his ear, and descended. He remembered to have heard
+something from his predecessor about an expedition of the kind in
+question, but then it had sailed during the reign of Don Ioam II., and
+he had been dead at least a hundred years. To put the matter beyond
+dispute, however, the archives of the Torve do Tombo, that sepulchre of
+old Portuguese documents, were diligently searched, and a record was
+found of a contract between the crown and one Fernando de Ulmo, for the
+discovery of the Island of the Seven Cities, and of a commission secured
+to him as Adelantado of the country he might discover.
+
+"There!" cried Don Fernando, triumphantly, "there you have proof, before
+your own eyes, of what I have said. I am the Fernando de Ulmo specified
+in that record. I have discovered the Island of the Seven Cities, and am
+entitled to be Adelantado, according to contract."
+
+The story of Don Fernando had certainly, what is pronounced the best
+of historical foundation, documentary evidence; but when a man, in the
+bloom of youth, talked of events that had taken place above a century
+previously, as having happened to himself, it is no wonder that he was
+set down for a mad man.
+
+The old clerk looked at him from above and below his spectacles,
+shrugged his shoulders, stroked his chin, reascended his lofty stool,
+took the pen from behind his ears, and resumed his daily and eternal
+task, copying records into the fiftieth volume of a series of gigantic
+folios. The other clerks winked at each other shrewdly, and dispersed to
+their several places, and poor Don Fernando, thus left to himself, flung
+out of the office, almost driven wild by these repeated perplexities.
+
+In the confusion of his mind, he instinctively repaired to the mansion
+of Alvarez, but it was barred against him. To break the delusion under
+which the youth apparently labored, and to convince him that the
+Serafina about whom he raved was really dead, he was conducted to her
+tomb. There she lay, a stately matron, cut out in alabaster; and there
+lay her husband beside her; a portly cavalier, in armor; and there
+knelt, on each side, the effigies of a numerous progeny, proving that
+she had been a fruitful vine. Even the very monument gave proof of the
+lapse of time, for the hands of her husband, which were folded as if in
+prayer, had lost their fingers, and the face of the once lovely Serafina
+was noseless.
+
+Don Fernando felt a transient glow of indignation at beholding this
+monumental proof of the inconstancy of his mistress; but who could
+expect a mistress to remain constant during a whole century of absence?
+And what right had he to rail about constancy, after what had passed
+between him and the Alcayde's daughter? The unfortunate cavalier
+performed one pious act of tender devotion; he had the alabaster nose of
+Serafina restored by a skilful statuary, and then tore himself from the
+tomb.
+
+He could now no longer doubt the fact that, somehow or other, he had
+skipped over a whole century, during the night he had spent at the
+Island of the Seven Cities; and he was now as complete a stranger in his
+native city, as if he had never been there. A thousand times did he
+wish himself back to that wonderful island, with its antiquated banquet
+halls, where he had been so courteously received; and now that the once
+young and beautiful Serafina was nothing but a great-grandmother in
+marble, with generations of descendants, a thousand times would he
+recall the melting black eyes of the Alcayde's daughter, who doubtless,
+like himself, was still flourishing in fresh juvenility, and breathe a
+secret wish that he were seated by her side.
+
+He would at once have set on foot another expedition, at his own
+expense, to cruise in search of the sainted island, but his means were
+exhausted. He endeavored to rouse others to the enterprise, setting
+forth the certainty of profitable results, of which his own experience
+furnished such unquestionable proof. Alas! no one would give faith to
+his tale; but looked upon it as the feverish dream of a shipwrecked
+man. He persisted in his efforts; holding forth in all places and
+all companies, until he became an object of jest and jeer to the
+light-minded, who mistook his earnest enthusiasm for a proof of
+insanity; and the very children in the streets bantered him with the
+title of "The Adelantado of the Seven Cities."
+
+Finding all his efforts in vain, in his native city of Lisbon, he took
+shipping for the Canaries, as being nearer the latitude of his former
+cruise, and inhabited by people given to nautical adventure. Here he
+found ready listeners to his story; for the old pilots and mariners of
+those parts were notorious island-hunters and devout believers in all
+the wonders of the seas. Indeed, one and all treated his adventure as a
+common occurrence, and turning to each other, with a sagacious nod of
+the head, observed, "He has been at the Island of St. Brandan."
+
+They then went on to inform him of that great marvel and enigma of
+the ocean; of its repeated appearance to the inhabitants of their
+islands; and of the many but ineffectual expeditions that had been made
+in search of it. They took him to a promontory of the island of Palma,
+from whence the shadowy St. Brandan had oftenest been descried, and they
+pointed out the very tract in the west where its mountains had been
+seen.
+
+Don Fernando listened with rapt attention. He had no longer a doubt that
+this mysterious and fugacious island must be the same with that of
+the Seven Cities; and that there must be some supernatural influence
+connected with it, that had operated upon himself, and made the events
+of a night occupy the space of a century.
+
+He endeavored, but in vain, to rouse the islanders to another attempt at
+discovery; they had given up the phantom island as indeed inaccessible.
+Fernando, however, was not to be discouraged. The idea wore itself
+deeper and deeper in his mind, until it became the engrossing subject of
+his thoughts and object of his being. Every morning he would repair to
+the promontory of Palma, and sit there throughout the live-long day, in
+hopes of seeing the fairy mountains of St. Brandan peering above the
+horizon; every evening he returned to his home, a disappointed man, but
+ready to resume his post on the following morning.
+
+His assiduity was all in vain. He grew gray in his ineffectual attempt;
+and was at length found dead at his post. His grave is still shown in
+the island of Palma, and a cross is erected on the spot where he used
+to sit and look out upon the sea, in hopes of the reappearance of the
+enchanted island.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NATIONAL NOMENCLATURE.
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
+
+Sir: I am somewhat of the same way of thinking, in regard to names, with
+that profound philosopher, Mr. Shandy, the elder, who maintained that
+some inspired high thoughts and heroic aims, while others entailed
+irretrievable meanness and vulgarity; insomuch that a man might sink
+under the insignificance of his name, and be absolutely "Nicodemused
+into nothing." I have ever, therefore, thought it a great hardship for a
+man to be obliged to struggle through life with some ridiculous or
+ignoble _Christian_ name, as it is too often falsely called, inflicted
+on him in infancy, when he could not choose for himself; and would give
+him free liberty to change it for one more to his taste, when he had
+arrived at years of discretion.
+
+I have the same notion with respect to local names. Some at once
+prepossess us in favor of a place; others repel us, by unlucky
+associations of the mind; and I have known scenes worthy of being the
+very haunt of poetry and romance, yet doomed to irretrievable vulgarity,
+by some ill-chosen name, which not even the magic numbers of a Halleck
+or a Bryant could elevate into poetical acceptation.
+
+This is an evil unfortunately too prevalent throughout our country.
+Nature has stamped the land with features of sublimity and beauty; but
+some of our noblest mountains and loveliest streams are in danger of
+remaining for ever unhonored and unsung, from bearing appellations
+totally abhorrent to the Muse. In the first place, our country is
+deluged with names taken from places in the old world, and applied to
+places having no possible affinity or resemblance to their namesakes.
+This betokens a forlorn poverty of invention, and a second-hand spirit,
+content to cover its nakedness with borrowed or cast-off clothes of
+Europe.
+
+Then we have a shallow affectation of scholarship: the whole catalogue
+of ancient worthies is shaken out from the back of Lempriere's Classical
+Dictionary, and a wide region of wild country sprinkled over with the
+names of the heroes, poets, and sages of antiquity, jumbled into the
+most whimsical juxtaposition. Then we have our political god-fathers;
+topographical engineers, perhaps, or persons employed by government to
+survey and lay out townships. These, forsooth, glorify the patrons that
+give them bread; so we have the names of the great official men of the
+day scattered over the land, as if they were the real "salt of the
+earth," with which it was to be seasoned. Well for us is it, when these
+official great men happen to have names of fair acceptation; but wo unto
+us, should a Tubbs or a Potts be in power: we are sure, in a little
+while, to find Tubbsvilles and Pottsylvanias springing up in every
+direction.
+
+Under these melancholy dispensations of taste and loyalty, therefore,
+Mr. Editor, it is with a feeling of dawning hope, that I have lately
+perceived the attention of persons of intelligence beginning to be
+awakened on this subject. I trust if the matter should once be taken
+up, it will not be readily abandoned. We are yet young enough, as a
+country, to remedy and reform much of what has been done, and to release
+many of our rising towns and cities, and our noble streams, from names
+calculated to vulgarize the land.
+
+I have, on a former occasion, suggested the expediency of searching out
+the original Indian names of places, and wherever they are striking and
+euphonious, and those by which they have been superseded are glaringly
+objectionable, to restore them. They would have the merit of
+originality, and of belonging to the country; and they would remain as
+reliques of the native lords of the soil, when every other vestige had
+disappeared. Many of these names may easily be regained, by reference to
+old title deeds, and to the archives of states and counties. In my own
+case, by examining the records of the county clerk's office, I have
+discovered the Indian names of various places and objects in the
+neighborhood, and have found them infinitely superior to the trite,
+poverty-stricken names which had been given by the settlers. A beautiful
+pastoral stream, for instance, which winds for many a mile through one
+of the loveliest little valleys in the state, has long been known by the
+common-place name of the "Saw-mill River." In the old Indian grants, it
+is designated as the Neperan. Another, a perfectly wizard stream, which
+winds through the wildest recesses of Sleepy Hollow, bears the hum-drum
+name of Mill Creek: in the Indian grants, it sustains the euphonious
+title of the Pocantico.
+
+Similar researches have released Long-Island from many of those paltry
+and vulgar names which fringed its beautiful shores; their Cow Bays, and
+Cow Necks, and Oyster Ponds, and Mosquito Coves, which spread a spell of
+vulgarity over the whole island, and kept persons of taste and fancy at
+a distance.
+
+It would be an object worthy the attention of the historical societies,
+which are springing up in various parts of the Union, to have maps
+executed of their respective states or neighborhoods, in which all the
+Indian local names should, as far as possible, be restored. In fact,
+it appears to me that the nomenclature of the country is almost of
+sufficient importance for the foundation of a distinct society; or
+rather, a corresponding association of persons of taste and judgment, of
+all parts of the Union. Such an association, if properly constituted and
+composed, comprising especially all the literary talent of the country,
+though it might not have legislative power in its enactments, yet
+would have the all-pervading power of the press; and the changes in
+nomenclature which it might dictate, being at once adopted by elegant
+writers in prose and poetry, and interwoven with the literature of the
+country, would ultimately pass into popular currency.
+
+Should such a reforming association arise, I beg to recommend to its
+attention all those mongrel names that have the adjective _New_ prefixed
+to them, and pray they may be one and all kicked out of the country.
+I am for none of these second-hand appellations, that stamp us a
+second-hand people, and that are to perpetuate us a new country to the
+end of time. Odds my life! Mr. Editor, I hope and trust we are to live
+to be an old nation, as well as our neighbors, and have no idea that
+our cities, when they shall have attained to venerable antiquity, shall
+still be dubbed _New_-York, and _New_-London, and _new_ this and _new_
+that, like the Pont-Neuf, (the New Bridge,) at Paris, which is the
+oldest bridge in that capital, or like the Vicar of Wakefield's horse,
+which continued to be called "the colt," until he died of old age.
+
+Speaking of New-York, reminds me of some observations which I met with
+some time since, in one of the public papers, about the name of our
+state and city. The writer proposes to substitute for the present names,
+those of the State of Ontario, and the CITY OF MANHATTAN. I concur in
+his suggestion most heartily. Though born and brought up in the city of
+New-York, and though I love every stick and stone about it, yet I do
+not, nor ever did, relish its name. I like neither its sound nor its
+significance. As to its _significance_, the very adjective _new_ gives
+to our great commercial metropolis a second-hand character, as if
+referring to some older, more dignified, and important place, of which
+it was a mere copy; though in fact, if I am rightly informed, the whole
+name commemorates a grant by Charles II. to his brother, the duke of
+York, made in the spirit of royal munificence, of a tract of country
+which did not belong to him. As to the _sound_, what can you make of it,
+either in poetry or prose? New-York! Why, Sir, if it were to share the
+fate of Troy itself; to suffer a ten years' siege, and be sacked and
+plundered; no modern Homer would ever be able to elevate the name to
+epic dignity.
+
+Now, Sir, ONTARIO would be a name worthy of the empire state. It bears
+with it the majesty of that internal sea which washes our northwestern
+shore. Or, if any objection should be made, from its not being
+completely embraced within our boundaries, there is the MOHEGAN, one
+of the Indian names for that glorious river, the Hudson, which would
+furnish an excellent state appellation. So also New-York might be called
+Manhatta, as it is named in some of the early records, and Manhattan
+used as the adjective. Manhattan, however, stands well as a substantive,
+and "Manhattanese," which I observe Mr. COOPER has adopted in some of
+his writings, would be a very good appellation for a citizen of the
+commercial metropolis.
+
+A word or two more, Mr. Editor, and I have done. We want a NATIONAL
+NAME. We want it poetically, and we want it politically. With the
+poetical necessity of the case I shall not trouble myself. I leave it to
+our poets to tell how they manage to steer that collocation of words,
+"The United States of North America," down the swelling tide of song,
+and to float the whole raft out upon the sea of heroic poesy. I am now
+speaking of the mere purposes of common life. How is a citizen of this
+republic to designate himself? As an American? There are two Americas,
+each subdivided into various empires, rapidly rising in importance. As a
+citizen of the United States? It is a clumsy, lumbering title, yet still
+it is not distinctive; for we have now the United States of Central
+America; and heaven knows how many "United States" may spring up under
+the Proteus changes of Spanish America.
+
+This may appear matter of small concernment; but any one that has
+travelled in foreign countries must be conscious of the embarrassment
+and circumlocution sometimes occasioned by the want of a perfectly
+distinct and explicit national appellation. In France, when I have
+announced myself as an American, I have been supposed to belong to one
+of the French colonies; in Spain, to be from Mexico, or Peru, or some
+other Spanish-American country. Repeatedly have I found myself involved
+in a long geographical and political definition of my national identity.
+
+Now, Sir, meaning no disrespect to any of our co-heirs of this great
+quarter of the world, I am for none of this coparceny in a name that is
+to mingle us up with the riff-raff colonies and off-sets of every nation
+of Europe. The title of American may serve to tell the quarter of the
+world to which I belong, the same as a Frenchman or an Englishman may
+call himself a European; but I want my own peculiar national name to
+rally under. I want an appellation that shall tell at once, and in a
+way not to be mistaken, that I belong to this very portion of America,
+geographical and political, to which it is my pride and happiness to
+belong; that I am of the Anglo-Saxon race which founded this Anglo-Saxon
+empire in the wilderness; and that I have no part or parcel with any
+other race or empire, Spanish, French, or Portuguese, in either of the
+Americas. Such an appellation, Sir, would have magic in it. It would
+bind every part of the confederacy together as with a keystone; it would
+be a passport to the citizen of our republic throughout the world.
+
+We have it in our power to furnish ourselves with such a national
+appellation, from one of the grand and eternal features of our country;
+from that noble chain of mountains which formed its back-bone, and ran
+through the "old confederacy," when it first declared our national
+independence. I allude to the Appalachian or Alleghany mountains. We
+might do this without any very inconvenient change in our present
+titles. We might still use the phrase, "The United States," substituting
+Appalachia, or Alleghania, (I should prefer the latter,) in place of
+America. The title of Appalachian, or Alleghanian, would still announce
+us as Americans, but would specify us as citizens of the Great Republic.
+Even our old national cypher of U. S. A. might remain unaltered,
+designating the United States of Alleghania.
+
+These are crude ideas, Mr. Editor, hastily thrown out to elicit the
+ideas of others, and to call attention to a subject of more national
+importance than may at first be supposed.
+
+Very respectfully yours,
+
+Geoffrey Crayon.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+DESULTORY THOUGHTS ON CRITICISM.
+
+"Let a man write never so well, there are now-a-days a sort of persons
+they call critics, that, egad, have no more wit in them than so many
+hobby-horses: but they'll laugh at you, Sir, and find fault, and censure
+things, that, egad, I'm sure they are not able to do themselves; a sort
+of envious persons, that emulate the glories of persons of parts, and
+think to build their fame by calumniation of persons that, egad, to my
+knowledge, of all persons in the world, are in nature the persons that
+do as much despise all that, as--a--In fine, I'll say no more of 'em!"
+-REHEARSAL.
+
+All the world knows the story of the tempest-tossed voyager, who, coming
+upon a strange coast, and seeing a man hanging in chains, hailed it with
+joy, as the sign of a civilized country. In like manner we may hail, as
+a proof of the rapid advancement of civilization and refinement in
+this country, the increasing number of delinquent authors daily gibbeted
+for the edification of the public.
+
+In this respect, as in every other, we are "going ahead" with
+accelerated velocity, and promising to outstrip the superannuated
+countries of Europe. It is really astonishing to see the number of
+tribunals incessantly springing up for the trial of literary offences.
+Independent of the high courts of Oyer and Terminer, the great quarterly
+reviews, we have innumerable minor tribunals, monthly and weekly, down
+to the Pie-poudre courts in the daily papers; insomuch that no culprit
+stands so little chance of escaping castigation, as an unlucky author,
+guilty of an unsuccessful attempt to please the public.
+
+Seriously speaking, however, it is questionable whether our national
+literature is sufficiently advanced, to bear this excess of criticism;
+and whether it would not thrive better, if allowed to spring up, for
+some time longer, in the freshness and vigor of native vegetation. When
+the worthy Judge Coulter, of Virginia, opened court for the first time
+in one of the upper counties, he was for enforcing all the rules and
+regulations that had grown into use in the old, long-settled counties.
+"This is all very well," said a shrewd old farmer; "but let me tell you,
+Judge Coulter, you set your coulter too deep for a new soil."
+
+For my part, I doubt whether either writer or reader is benefited by
+what is commonly called criticism. The former is rendered cautious and
+distrustful; he fears to give way to those kindling emotions, and brave
+sallies of thought, which bear him up to excellence; the latter is made
+fastidious and cynical; or rather, he surrenders his own independent
+taste and judgment, and learns to like and dislike at second hand.
+
+Let us, for a moment, consider the nature of this thing called
+criticism, which exerts such a sway over the literary world. The pronoun
+we, used by critics, has a most imposing and delusive sound. The reader
+pictures to himself a conclave of learned men, deliberating gravely and
+scrupulously on the merits of the book in question; examining it page by
+page, comparing and balancing their opinions, and when they have united
+in a conscientious verdict, publishing it for the benefit of the world:
+whereas the criticism is generally the crude and hasty production of
+an individual, scribbling to while away an idle hour, to oblige a
+book-seller, or to defray current expenses. How often is it the
+passing notion of the hour, affected by accidental circumstances; by
+indisposition, by peevishness, by vapors or indigestion; by personal
+prejudice, or party feeling. Sometimes a work is sacrificed, because
+the reviewer wishes a satirical article; sometimes because he wants
+a humorous one; and sometimes because the author reviewed has become
+offensively celebrated, and offers high game to the literary marksman.
+
+How often would the critic himself, if a conscientious man, reverse his
+opinion, had he time to revise it in a more sunny moment; but the press
+is waiting, the printer's devil is at his elbow; the article is wanted
+to make the requisite variety for the number of the review, or the
+author has pressing occasion for the sum he is to receive for the
+article, so it is sent off, all blotted and blurred; with a shrug of
+the shoulders, and the consolatory ejaculation: "Pshaw! curse it! it's
+nothing but a review!"
+
+The critic, too, who dictates thus oracularly to the world, is perhaps
+some dingy, ill-favored, ill-mannered varlet, who, were he to speak by
+word of mouth, would be disregarded, if not scoffed at; but such is the
+magic of types; such the mystic operation of anonymous writing; such the
+potential effect of the pronoun we, that his crude decisions, fulminated
+through the press, become circulated far and wide, control the opinions
+of the world, and give or destroy reputation.
+
+Many readers have grown timorous in their judgments since the
+all-pervading currency of criticism. They fear to express a revised,
+frank opinion about any new work, and to relish it honestly and
+heartily, lest it should be condemned in the next review, and they stand
+convicted of bad taste. Hence they hedge their opinions, like a gambler
+his bets, and leave an opening to retract, and retreat, and qualify,
+and neutralise every unguarded expression of delight, until their very
+praise declines into a faintness that is damning.
+
+Were every one, on the contrary, to judge for himself, and speak his
+mind frankly and fearlessly, we should have more true criticism in the
+world than at present. Whenever a person is pleased with a work, he may
+be assured that it has good qualities. An author who pleases a variety
+of readers, must possess substantial powers of pleasing; or, in other
+words, intrinsic merits; for otherwise we acknowledge an effect, and
+deny the cause. The reader, therefore, should not suffer himself to be
+readily shaken from the conviction of his own feelings, by the sweeping
+censures of pseudo critics. The author he has admired, may be chargeable
+with a thousand faults; but it is nevertheless beauties and excellencies
+that have excited his admiration; and he should recollect that taste
+and judgment are as much evinced in the perception of beauties among
+defects, as in a detection of defects among beauties. For my part, I
+honor the blessed and blessing spirit that is quick to discover and
+extol all that is pleasing and meritorious. Give me the honest bee, that
+extracts honey from the humblest weed, but save me from the ingenuity
+of the spider, which traces its venom, even in the midst of a
+flower-garden.
+
+If the mere fact of being chargeable with faults and imperfections is to
+condemn an author, who is to escape? The greatest writers of antiquity
+have, in this way, been obnoxious to criticism. Aristotle himself has
+been accused of ignorance; Aristophanes of impiety and buffoonery;
+Virgil of plagiarism, and a want of invention; Horace of obscurity;
+Cicero has been, said to want vigor and connexion, and Demosthenes to
+be deficient in nature, and in purity of language. Yet these have all
+survived the censures of the critic, and flourished on to a glorious
+immortality. Every now and then the world is startled by some new
+doctrines in matters of taste, some levelling attacks on established
+creeds; some sweeping denunciations of whole generations, or schools of
+writers, as they are called, who had seemed to be embalmed and canonized
+in public opinion. Such has been the case, for instance, with Pope, and
+Dryden, and Addison, who for a time have almost been shaken from their
+pedestals, and treated as false idols.
+
+It is singular, also, to see the fickleness of the world with respect
+to its favorites. Enthusiasm exhausts itself, and prepares the way
+for dislike. The public is always for positive sentiments, and new
+sensations. When wearied of admiring, it delights to censure; thus
+coining a double set of enjoyments out of the same subject. Scott and
+Byron are scarce cold in their graves, and already we find criticism
+beginning to call in question those powers which held the world in magic
+thraldom. Even in our own country, one of its greatest geniuses has
+had some rough passages with the censors of the press; and instantly
+criticism begins to unsay all that it has repeatedly said in his praise;
+and the public are almost led to believe that the pen which has so often
+delighted them, is absolutely destitute of the power to delight!
+
+If, then, such reverses in opinion as to matters of taste can be so
+readily brought about, when may an author feel himself secure? Where is
+the anchoring-ground of popularity, when he may thus be driven from his
+moorings, and foundered even in harbor? The reader, too, when he is to
+consider himself safe in admiring, when he sees long-established altars
+overthrown, and his household deities dashed to the ground!
+
+There is one consolatory reflection. Every abuse carries with it its
+own remedy or palliation. Thus the excess of crude and hasty criticism,
+which has of late prevailed throughout the literary world, and
+threatened to overrun our country, begins to produce its own antidote.
+Where there is a multiplicity of contradictory paths, a man must make
+his choice; in so doing, he has to exercise his judgment, and that is
+one great step to mental independence. He begins to doubt all, where all
+differ, and but one can be in the right. He is driven to trust to his
+own discernment, and his natural feelings; and here he is most likely
+to be safe. The author, too, finding that what is condemned at one
+tribunal, is applauded at another, though perplexed for a time, gives
+way at length to the spontaneous impulse of his genius, and the dictates
+of his taste, and writes in the way most natural to himself. It is thus
+that criticism, which by its severity may have held the little world of
+writers in check, may, by its very excess, disarm itself of its terrors,
+and the hardihood of talent become restored.
+
+G.C.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+SPANISH ROMANCE.
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
+
+Sir: I have already given you a legend or two drawn from ancient Spanish
+sources, and may occasionally give you a few more. I love these old
+Spanish themes, especially when they have a dash of the Morisco in them,
+and treat of the times when the Moslems maintained a foot-hold in the
+peninsula. They have a high, spicy, oriental flavor, not to be found in
+any other themes that are merely European. In fact, Spain is a country
+that stands alone in the midst of Europe; severed in habits, manners,
+and modes of thinking, from all its continental neighbors. It is a
+romantic country; but its romance has none of the sentimentality of
+modern European romance: it is chiefly derived from the brilliant
+regions of the East, and from the high-minded school of Saracenic
+chivalry.
+
+The Arab invasion and conquest brought a higher civilization and
+a nobler style of thinking into Gothic Spain. The Arabs were a
+quick-witted, sagacious, proud-spirited, and poetical people, and were
+imbued with oriental science and literature. Wherever they established a
+seat of power, it became a rallying place for the learned and ingenious;
+and they softened and refined the people whom they conquered. By
+degrees, occupancy seemed to give them a hereditary right to their
+foothold in the land; they ceased to be looked upon as invaders, and
+were regarded as rival neighbors. The peninsula, broken up into a
+variety of states, both Christian and Moslem, became for centuries
+a great campaigning ground, where the art of war seemed to be the
+principal business of man, and was carried to the highest pitch of
+romantic chivalry. The original ground of hostility, a difference of
+faith, gradually lost its rancor. Neighboring states, of opposite
+creeds, were occasionally linked together in alliances, offensive and
+defensive; so that the cross and crescent were to be seen side by side
+fighting against some common enemy. In times of peace, too, the noble
+youth of either faith resorted to the same cities, Christian or Moslem,
+to school themselves in military science. Even in the temporary truces
+of sanguinary wars, the warriors who had recently striven together in
+the deadly conflicts of the field, laid aside their animosity, met at
+tournaments, jousts, and other military festivities, and exchanged the
+courtesies of gentle and generous spirits. Thus the opposite races
+became frequently mingled together in peaceful intercourse, or if any
+rivalry took place, it was in those high courtesies and nobler acts
+which bespeak the accomplished cavalier. Warriors of opposite creeds
+became ambitious of transcending each other in magnanimity as well as
+valor. Indeed, the chivalric virtues were refined upon to a degree
+sometimes fastidious and constrained; but at other times, inexpressibly
+noble and affecting. The annals of the times teem with illustrious
+instances of high-wrought courtesy, romantic generosity, lofty
+disinterestedness, and punctilious honor, that warm the very soul to
+read them. These have furnished themes for national plays and poems, or
+have been celebrated in those all-pervading ballads which are as the
+life-breath of the people, and thus have continued to exercise an
+influence on the national character which centuries of vicissitude and
+decline have not been able to destroy; so that, with all their faults,
+and they are many, the Spaniards, even at the present day, are on many
+points the most high-minded and proud-spirited people of Europe.
+It is true, the romance of feeling derived from the sources I have
+mentioned, has, like all other romance, its affectations and extremes.
+It renders the Spaniard at times pompous and grandiloquent; prone to
+carry the "pundonor," or point of honor, beyond the bounds of sober
+sense and sound morality; disposed, in the midst of poverty, to affect
+the "grande caballero," and to look down with sovereign disdain upon
+"arts mechanical," and all the gainful pursuits of plebeian life; but
+this very inflation of spirit, while it fills his brain with vapors,
+lifts him above a thousand meannesses; and though it often keeps him in
+indigence, ever protects him from vulgarity.
+
+In the present day, when popular literature is running into the low
+levels of life and luxuriating on the vices and follies of mankind, and
+when the universal pursuit of gain is trampling down the early growth
+of poetic feeling and wearing out the verdure of the soul, I question
+whether it would not be of service for the reader occasionally to turn
+to these records of prouder times and loftier modes of thinking, and to
+steep himself to the very lips in old Spanish romance.
+
+For my own part, I have a shelf or two of venerable, parchment-bound
+tomes, picked up here and there about the peninsula, and filled with
+chronicles, plays, and ballads, about Moors and Christians, which I keep
+by me as mental tonics, in the same way that a provident housewife has
+her cupboard of cordials. Whenever I find my mind brought below par by
+the commonplace of every-day life, or jarred by the sordid collisions
+of the world, or put out of tune by the shrewd selfishness of modern
+utilitarianism, I resort to these venerable tomes, as did the worthy
+hero of La Mancha to his books of chivalry, and refresh and tone up my
+spirit by a deep draught of their contents. They have some such effect
+upon me as Falstaff ascribes to a good Sherris sack, "warming the blood
+and filling the brain with fiery and delectable shapes."
+
+I here subjoin, Mr. Editor, a small specimen of the cordials I have
+mentioned, just drawn from my Spanish cupboard, which I recommend to
+your palate. If you find it to your taste, you may pass it on to your
+readers.
+
+  Your correspondent and well-wisher,
+  GEOFFREY CRAYON.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LEGEND OF DON MUNIO SANCHO DE HINOJOSA.
+
+BY THE AUTHOR OF THE SKETCH-BOOK.
+
+In the cloisters of the ancient Benedictine convent of San Domingo, at
+Silos, in Castile, are the mouldering yet magnificent monuments of the
+once powerful and chivalrous family of Hinojosa. Among these, reclines
+the marble figure of a knight, in complete armor, with the hands pressed
+together, as if in prayer. On one side of his tomb is sculptured in
+relief a band of Christian cavaliers, capturing a cavalcade of male and
+female Moors; on the other side, the same cavaliers are represented
+kneeling before an altar. The tomb, like most of the neighboring
+monuments, is almost in ruins, and the sculpture is nearly
+unintelligible, excepting to the keen eye of the antiquary. The story
+connected with the sepulchre, however, is still preserved in the old
+Spanish chronicles, and is to the following purport.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In old times, several hundred years ago, there was a noble Castilian
+cavalier, named Don Munio Sancho de Hinojosa, lord of a border castle,
+which had stood the brunt of many a Moorish foray. He had seventy
+horsemen as his household troops, all of the ancient Castilian proof;
+stark warriors, hard riders, and men of iron; with these he scoured the
+Moorish lands, and made his name terrible throughout the borders. His
+castle hall was covered with banners, and scimitars, and Moslem helms,
+the trophies of his prowess. Don Munio was, moreover, a keen huntsman;
+and rejoiced in hounds of all kinds, steeds for the chase, and hawks for
+the towering sport of falconry. When not engaged in warfare, his delight
+was to beat up the neighboring forests; and scarcely ever did he ride
+forth, without hound and horn, a boar-spear in his hand, or a hawk upon
+his fist, and an attendant train of huntsmen.
+
+His wife, Donna Maria Palacin, was of a gentle and timid nature, little
+fitted to be the spouse of so hardy and adventurous a knight; and many
+a tear did the poor lady shed, when he sallied forth upon his daring
+enterprises, and many a prayer did she offer up for his safety.
+
+As this doughty cavalier was one day hunting, he stationed himself in a
+thicket, on the borders of a green glade of the forest, and dispersed
+his followers to rouse the game, and drive it toward his stand. He had
+not been here long, when a cavalcade of Moors, of both sexes, came
+prankling over the forest lawn. They were unarmed, and magnificently
+dressed in robes of tissue and embroidery, rich shawls of India,
+bracelets and anklets of gold, and jewels that sparkled in the sun.
+
+At the head of this gay cavalcade, rode a youthful cavalier, superior
+to the rest in dignity and loftiness of demeanor, and in splendor of
+attire; beside him was a damsel, whose veil, blown aside by the breeze,
+displayed a face of surpassing beauty, and eyes cast down in maiden
+modesty, yet beaming with tenderness and joy.
+
+Don Munio thanked his stars for sending him such a prize, and exulted at
+the thought of bearing home to his wife the glittering spoils of these
+infidels. Putting his hunting-horn to his lips, he gave a blast that
+rung through the forest. His huntsmen came running from all quarters,
+and the astonished Moors were surrounded and made captives.
+
+The beautiful Moor wrung her hands in despair, and her female attendants
+uttered the most piercing cries. The young Moorish cavalier alone
+retained self-possession. He inquired the name of the Christian knight,
+who commanded this troop of horsemen. When told that it was Don Munio
+Sancho de Hinojosa, his countenance lighted up. Approaching that
+cavalier, and kissing his hand, "Don Munio Sancho," said he, "I have
+heard of your fame as a true and valiant knight, terrible in arms, but
+schooled in the noble virtues of chivalry. Such do I trust to find you.
+In me you behold Abadil, son of a Moorish Alcayde. I am on the way to
+celebrate my nuptials with this lady; chance has thrown us in your
+power, but I confide in your magnanimity. Take all our treasure and
+jewels; demand what ransom you think proper for our person, but suffer
+us not to be insulted or dishonored."
+
+When the good knight heard this appeal, and beheld the beauty of the
+youthful pair, his heart was touched with tenderness and courtesy.
+"God forbid," said he, "that I should disturb such happy nuptials. My
+prisoners in troth shall ye be, for fifteen days, and immured within
+my castle, where I claim, as conqueror, the right of celebrating your
+espousals."
+
+So saying, he despatched one of his fleetest horsemen in advance, to
+notify Donna Maria Palacin of the coming of this bridal party; while he
+and his huntsmen escorted the cavalcade, not as captors, but as a guard
+of honor. As they drew near to the castle, the banners were hung out,
+and the trumpets sounded from the battlements; and on their nearer
+approach, the draw-bridge was lowered, and Donna Maria came forth
+to meet them, attended by her ladies and knights, her pages and her
+minstrels. She took the young bride, Allifra, in her arms, kissed her
+with the tenderness of a sister, and conducted her into the castle. In
+the mean time, Don Munio sent forth missives in every direction, and had
+viands and dainties of all kinds collected from the country round; and
+the wedding of the Moorish lovers was celebrated with all possible state
+and festivity. For fifteen days, the castle was given up to joy and
+revelry. There were tiltings and jousts at the ring, and bullfights, and
+banquets, and dances to the sound of minstrelsy. When the fifteen days
+were at an end, he made the bride and bridegroom magnificent presents,
+and conducted them and their attendants safely beyond the borders. Such,
+in old times, were the courtesy and generosity of a Spanish cavalier.
+
+Several years after this event, the King of Castile summoned his nobles
+to assist him in a campaign against the Moors. Don Munio Sancho was
+among the first to answer to the call, with seventy horsemen, all
+staunch and well-tried warriors. His wife, Donna Maria, hung about his
+neck. "Alas, my lord!" exclaimed she, "how often wilt thou tempt thy
+fate, and when will thy thirst for glory be appeased?"
+
+"One battle more," replied Don Munio, "one battle more, for the honor of
+Castile, and I here make a vow, that when this is over, I will lay by my
+sword, and repair with my cavaliers in pilgrimage to the sepulchre of
+our Lord at Jerusalem." The cavaliers all joined with him in the vow,
+and Donna Maria felt in some degree soothed in spirit: still, she saw
+with a heavy heart the departure of her husband, and watched his banner
+with wistful eyes, until it disappeared among the trees of the forest,
+
+The King of Castile led his army to the plains of Almanara, where they
+encountered the Moorish host, near to Ucles. The battle was long and
+bloody; the Christians repeatedly wavered, and were as often rallied by
+the energy of their commanders. Don Munio was covered with wounds, but
+refused to leave the field. The Christians at length gave way, and the
+king was hardly pressed, and in danger of being captured.
+
+Don Munio called upon his cavaliers to follow him to the rescue. "Now is
+the time," cried he, "to prove your loyalty. Fall to, like brave men!
+We fight for the true faith, and if we lose our lives here, we gain a
+better life hereafter."
+
+Rushing with his men between the king and his pursuers, they checked the
+latter in their career, and gave time for their monarch to escape; but
+they fell victims to their loyalty. They all fought to the last gasp.
+Don Munio was singled out by a powerful Moorish knight, but having been
+wounded in the right arm, he fought to disadvantage, and was slain. The
+battle being over, the Moor paused to possess himself of the spoils of
+this redoubtable Christian warrior. When he unlaced the helmet, however,
+and beheld the countenance of Don Munio, he gave a great cry, and smote
+his breast. "Woe is me!" cried he: "I have slain my benefactor! The
+flower of knightly virtue! the most magnanimous of cavaliers!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While the battle had been raging on the plain of Salmanara, Donna Maria
+Palacin remained in her castle, a prey to the keenest anxiety. Her eyes
+were ever fixed on the road that led from the country of the Moors, and
+often she asked the watchman of the tower, "What seest thou?"
+
+One evening, at the shadowy hour of twilight, the warden sounded his
+horn. "I see," cried he, "a numerous train winding up the valley. There
+are mingled Moors and Christians. The banner of my lord is in the
+advance. Joyful tidings!" exclaimed the old seneschal: "my lord returns
+in triumph, and brings captives!" Then the castle courts rang with
+shouts of joy; and the standard was displayed, and the trumpets were
+sounded, and the draw-bridge was lowered, and Donna Maria went forth
+with her ladies, and her knights, and her pages, and her minstrels, to
+welcome her lord from the wars. But as the train drew nigh, she beheld a
+sumptuous bier, covered with black velvet, and on it lay a warrior, as
+if taking his repose: he lay in his armor, with his helmet on his head,
+and his sword in his hand, as one who had never been conquered, and
+around the bier were the escutcheons of the house of Hinojosa.
+
+A number of Moorish cavaliers attended the bier, with emblems of
+mourning, and with dejected countenances: and their leader cast himself
+at the feet of Donna Maria, and hid his face in his hands. She beheld in
+him the gallant Abadil, whom she had once welcomed with his bride to
+her castle, but who now came with the body of her lord, whom he had
+unknowingly slain in battle!
+
+The sepulchre erected in the cloisters of the Convent of San Domingo was
+achieved at the expense of the Moor Abadil, as a feeble testimony of his
+grief for the death of the good knight Don Munio, and his reverence for
+his memory. The tender and faithful Donna Maria soon followed her lord
+to the tomb. On one of the stones of a small arch, beside his sepulchre,
+is the following simple inscription: "_Hic jacet Maria Palacin, uxor
+Munonis Sancij de Finojosa_:" Here lies Maria Palacin, wife of Munio
+Sancho de Hinojosa.
+
+The legend of Don Munio Sancho does not conclude with his death. On the
+same day on which the battle took place on the plain of Salmanara, a
+chaplain of the Holy Temple at Jerusalem, while standing at the outer
+gate, beheld a train of Christian cavaliers advancing, as if in
+pilgrimage. The chaplain was a native of Spain, and as the pilgrims
+approached, he knew the foremost to be Don Munio Sancho de Hinojosa,
+with whom he had been well acquainted in former times. Hastening to the
+patriarch, he told him of the honorable rank of the pilgrims at the
+gate. The patriarch, therefore, went forth with a grand procession of
+priests and monks, and received the pilgrims with all due honor. There
+were seventy cavaliers, beside their leader, all stark and lofty
+warriors. They carried their helmets in their hands, and their faces
+were deadly pale. They greeted no one, nor looked either to the right or
+to the left, but entered the chapel, and kneeling before the Sepulchre
+of our Saviour, performed their orisons in silence. When they had
+concluded, they rose as if to depart, and the patriarch and his
+attendants advanced to speak to them, but they were no more to be seen.
+Every one marvelled what could be the meaning of this prodigy. The
+patriarch carefully noted down the day, and sent to Castile to learn
+tidings of Don Munio Sancho de Hinojosa. He received for reply, that
+on the very day specified, that worthy knight, with seventy of his
+followers, had been slain in battle. These, therefore, must have been
+the blessed spirits of those Christian warriors, come to fulfil their
+vow of a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. Such was
+Castilian faith, in the olden time, which kept its word, even beyond the
+grave.
+
+If any one should doubt of the miraculous apparition of these phantom
+knights, let him consult the History of the Kings of Castile and Leon,
+by the learned and pious Fray Prudencio de Sandoval, Bishop of Pamplona,
+where he will find it recorded in the History of the King Don Alonzo
+VI., on the hundred and second page. It is too precious a legend to be
+lightly abandoned to the doubter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+COMMUNIPAW.
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
+
+Sir: I observe, with pleasure, that you are performing from time to time
+a pious duty, imposed upon you, I may say, by the name you have adopted
+as your titular standard, in following in the footsteps of the venerable
+KNICKERBOCKER, and gleaning every fact concerning the early times of the
+Manhattoes which may have escaped his hand. I trust, therefore, a few
+particulars, legendary and statistical, concerning a place which
+figures conspicuously in the early pages of his history, will not be
+unacceptable. I allude, Sir, to the ancient and renowned village of
+Communipaw, which, according to the veracious Diedrich, and to equally
+veracious tradition, was the first spot where our ever-to-be-lamented
+Dutch progenitors planted their standard and cast the seeds of empire,
+and from whence subsequently sailed the memorable expedition under
+Oloffe the Dreamer, which landed on the opposite island of Manhatta,
+and founded the present city of New-York, the city of dreams and
+speculations.
+
+Communipaw, therefore, may truly be called the parent of New-York; yet
+it is an astonishing fact, that though immediately opposite to the great
+city it has produced, from whence its red roofs and tin weather-cocks
+can actually be descried peering above the surrounding apple orchards,
+it should be almost as rarely visited, and as little known by the
+inhabitants of the metropolis, as if it had been locked up among the
+Rocky Mountains. Sir, I think there is something unnatural in this,
+especially in these times of ramble and research, when our citizens are
+antiquity-hunting in every part of the world. Curiosity, like charity,
+should begin at home; and I would enjoin it on our worthy burghers,
+especially those of the real Knickerbocker breed, before they send their
+sons abroad to wonder and grow wise among the remains of Greece and
+Rome, to let them make a tour of ancient Pavonia, from Weehawk even
+to the Kills, and meditate, with filial reverence, on the moss-grown
+mansions of Communipaw. Sir, I regard this much neglected village as one
+of the most remarkable places in the country. The intelligent traveller,
+as he looks down upon it from the Bergen Heights, modestly nestled among
+its cabbage-gardens, while the great flaunting city it has begotten is
+stretching far and wide on the opposite side of the bay, the intelligent
+traveller, I say, will be filled with astonishment; not, Sir, at the
+village of Communipaw, which in truth is a very small village, but at
+the almost incredible fact that so small a village should have produced
+so great a city. It looks to him, indeed, like some squat little
+dame, with a tall grenadier of a son strutting by her side; or some
+simple-hearted hen that has unwittingly hatched out a long-legged
+turkey.
+
+But this is not all for which Communipaw is remarkable. Sir, it is
+interesting on another account. It is to the ancient province of
+the New-Netherlands and the classic era of the Dutch dynasty, what
+Herculaneum and Pompeii are to ancient Rome and the glorious days of the
+empire. Here every thing remains in statu quo, as it was in the days of
+Oloffe the Dreamer, Walter the Doubter, and the other worthies of the
+golden age; the same broad-brimmed hats and broad-bottomed breeches;
+the same knee-buckles and shoe-buckles; the same close-quilled caps
+and linsey-woolsey short-gowns and petticoats; the same implements and
+utensils and forms and fashions; in a word, Communipaw at the present
+day is a picture of what New-Amsterdam was before the conquest. The
+"intelligent traveller" aforesaid, as he treads its streets, is struck
+with the primitive character of every thing around him. Instead of
+Grecian temples for dwelling-houses, with a great column of pine boards
+in the way of every window, he beholds high peaked roofs, gable ends
+to the street, with weather-cocks at top, and windows of all sorts and
+sizes; large ones for the grown-up members of the family, and little
+ones for the little folk. Instead of cold marble porches, with
+close-locked doors and brass knockers, he sees the doors hospitably
+open; the worthy burgher smoking his pipe on the old-fashioned stoop in
+front, with his "vrouw" knitting beside him; and the cat and her kittens
+at their feet sleeping in the sunshine.
+
+Astonished at the obsolete and "old world" air of every thing around
+him, the intelligent traveller demands how all this has come to pass.
+Herculaneum and Pompeii remain, it is true, unaffected by the varying
+fashions of centuries; but they were buried by a volcano and preserved
+in ashes. What charmed spell has kept this wonderful little place
+unchanged, though in sight of the most changeful city in the universe?
+Has it, too, been buried under its cabbage-gardens, and only dug out
+in modern days for the wonder and edification of the world? The reply
+involves a point of history, worthy of notice and record, and reflecting
+immortal honor on Communipaw.
+
+At the time when New-Amsterdam was invaded and conquered by British
+foes, as has been related in the history of the venerable Diedrich, a
+great dispersion took place among the Dutch inhabitants. Many, like the
+illustrious Peter Stuyvesant, buried themselves in rural retreats in the
+Bowerie; others, like Wolfert Acker, took refuge in various remote
+parts of the Hudson; but there was one staunch, unconquerable band that
+determined to keep together, and preserve themselves, like seed corn,
+for the future fructification and perpetuity of the Knickerbocker race.
+These were headed by one Garret Van Horne, a gigantic Dutchman, the
+Pelayo of the New-Netherlands. Under his guidance, they retreated across
+the bay and buried themselves among the marshes of ancient Pavonia, as
+did the followers of Pelayo among the mountains of Asturias, when Spain
+was overrun by its Arabian invaders.
+
+The gallant Van Horne set up his standard at Communipaw, and invited
+all those to rally under it, who were true Nederlanders at heart, and
+determined to resist all foreign intermixture or encroachment. A strict
+non-intercourse was observed with the captured city; not a boat ever
+crossed to it from Communipaw, and the English language was rigorously
+tabooed throughout the village and its dependencies. Every man was sworn
+to wear his hat, cut his coat, build his house, and harness his horses,
+exactly as his father had done before him; and to permit nothing but the
+Dutch language to be spoken in his household.
+
+As a citadel of the place, and a strong-hold for the preservation and
+defence of every thing Dutch, the gallant Van Horne erected a lordly
+mansion, with a chimney perched at every corner, which thence derived
+the aristocratical name of "The House of the Four Chimneys." Hither he
+transferred many of the precious reliques of New-Amsterdam; the great
+round-crowned hat that once covered the capacious head of Walter the
+Doubter, and the identical shoe with which Peter the Headstrong kicked
+his pusillanimous councillors down-stairs. St. Nicholas, it is said,
+took this loyal house under his especial protection; and a Dutch
+soothsayer predicted, that as long as it should stand, Communipaw would
+be safe from the intrusion either of Briton or Yankee.
+
+In this house would the gallant Van Home and his compeers hold frequent
+councils of war, as to the possibility of re-conquering the province
+from the British; and here would they sit for hours, nay, days, together
+smoking their pipes and keeping watch upon the growing city of New-York;
+groaning in spirit whenever they saw a new house erected or ship
+launched, and persuading themselves that Admiral Van Tromp would one
+day or other arrive to sweep out the invaders with the broom which he
+carried at his mast-head.
+
+Years rolled by, but Van Tromp never arrived. The British strengthened
+themselves in the land, and the captured city flourished under their
+domination. Still, the worthies of Communipaw would not despair;
+something or other, they were sure, would turn up to restore the power
+of the Hogen Mogens, the Lord States-General; so they kept smoking and
+smoking, and watching and watching, and turning the same few thoughts
+over and over in a perpetual circle, which is commonly called
+deliberating. In the mean time, being hemmed up within a narrow compass,
+between the broad bay and the Bergen hills, they grew poorer and poorer,
+until they had scarce the wherewithal to maintain their pipes in fuel
+during their endless deliberations.
+
+And now must I relate a circumstance which will call for a little
+exertion of faith on the part of the reader; but I can only say that if
+he doubts it, he had better not utter his doubts in Communipaw, as it is
+among the religious beliefs of the place. It is, in fact, nothing more
+nor less than a miracle, worked by the blessed St. Nicholas, for the
+relief and sustenance of this loyal community.
+
+It so happened, in this time of extremity, that in the course of
+cleaning the House of the Four Chimneys, by an ignorant housewife who
+knew nothing of the historic value of the reliques it contained, the old
+hat of Walter the Doubter and the executive shoe of Peter the Headstrong
+were thrown out of doors as rubbish. But mark the consequence. The good
+St. Nicholas kept watch over these precious reliques, and wrought out of
+them a wonderful providence.
+
+The hat of Walter the Doubter falling on a stercoraceous heap of
+compost, in the rear of the house, began forthwith to vegetate. Its
+broad brim, spread forth grandly and exfoliated, and its round crown
+swelled and crimped and consolidated until the whole became a prodigious
+cabbage, rivalling in magnitude the capacious head of the Doubter. In a
+word, it was the origin of that renowned species of cabbage known, by
+all Dutch epicures, by the name of the Governor's Head, and which is to
+this day the glory of Communipaw.
+
+On the other hand, the shoe of Peter Stuyvesant being thrown into the
+river, in front of the house, gradually hardened and concreted, and
+became covered with barnacles, and at length turned into a gigantic
+oyster; being the progenitor of that illustrious species known
+throughout the gastronomical world by the name of the Governor's Foot.
+
+These miracles were the salvation of Communipaw. The sages of the place
+immediately saw in them the hand of St. Nicholas, and understood their
+mystic signification. They set to work with all diligence to cultivate
+and multiply these great blessings; and so abundantly did the
+gubernatorial hat and shoe fructify and increase, that in a little time
+great patches of cabbages were to be seen extending from the village of
+Communipaw quite to the Bergen Hills; while the whole bottom of the
+bay in front became a vast bed of oysters. Ever since that time this
+excellent community has been divided into two great classes: those who
+cultivate the land and those who cultivate the water. The former have
+devoted themselves to the nurture and edification of cabbages, rearing
+them in all their varieties; while the latter have formed parks and
+plantations, under water, to which juvenile oysters are transplanted
+from foreign parts, to finish their education.
+
+As these great sources of profit multiplied upon their hands, the worthy
+inhabitants of Communipaw began to long for a market at which to
+dispose of their superabundance. This gradually produced once more an
+intercourse with New-York; but it was always carried on by the old
+people and the negroes; never would they permit the young folks, of
+either sex, to visit the city, lest they should get tainted with foreign
+manners and bring home foreign fashions. Even to this day, if you see an
+old burgher in the market, with hat and garb of antique Dutch fashion,
+you may be sure he is one of the old unconquered race of the "bitter
+blood," who maintain their strong-hold at Communipaw.
+
+In modern days, the hereditary bitterness against the English has lost
+much of its asperity, or rather has become merged in a new source of
+jealousy and apprehension: I allude to the incessant and wide-spreading
+irruptions from New-England. Word has been continually brought back to
+Communipaw, by those of the community who return from their trading
+voyages in cabbages and oysters, of the alarming power which the Yankees
+are gaining in the ancient city of New-Amsterdam; elbowing the genuine
+Knickerbockers out of all civic posts of honor and profit; bargaining
+them out of their hereditary homesteads; pulling down the venerable
+houses, with crow-step gables, which have stood since the time of the
+Dutch rule, and erecting, instead, granite stores, and marble banks; in
+a word, evincing a deadly determination to obliterate every vestige of
+the good old Dutch times.
+
+In consequence of the jealousy thus awakened, the worthy traders from
+Communipaw confine their dealings, as much as possible, to the genuine
+Dutch families. If they furnish the Yankees at all, it is with inferior
+articles. Never can the latter procure a real "Governor's Head," or
+"Governor's Foot," though they have offered extravagant prices for the
+same, to grace their table on the annual festival of the New-England
+Society.
+
+But what has carried this hostility to the Yankees to the highest pitch,
+was an attempt made by that all-pervading race to get possession of
+Communipaw itself. Yes, Sir; during the late mania for land speculation,
+a daring company of Yankee projectors landed before the village; stopped
+the honest burghers on the public highway, and endeavored to bargain
+them out of their hereditary acres; displayed lithographic maps,
+in which their cabbage-gardens were laid out into town lots: their
+oyster-parks into docks and quays; and even the House of the Four
+Chimneys metamorphosed into a bank, which was to enrich the whole
+neighborhood with paper money.
+
+Fortunately, the gallant Van Hornes came to the rescue, just as some of
+the worthy burghers were on the point of capitulating. The Yankees were
+put to the rout, with signal confusion, and have never since dared to
+show their faces in the place. The good people continue to cultivate
+their cabbages, and rear their oysters; they know nothing of banks, nor
+joint stock companies, but treasure up their money in stocking-feet, at
+the bottom of the family chest, or bury it in iron pots, as did their
+fathers and grandfathers before them.
+
+As to the House of the Four Chimneys, it still remains in the great and
+tall family of the Van Hornes. Here are to be seen ancient Dutch corner
+cupboards, chests of drawers, and massive clothes-presses, quaintly
+carved, and carefully waxed and polished; together with divers thick,
+black-letter volumes, with brass clasps, printed of yore in Leydon and
+Amsterdam, and handed down from generation to generation, in the family,
+but never read. They are preserved in the archives, among sundry old
+parchment deeds, in Dutch and English, bearing the seals of the early
+governors of the province.
+
+In this house, the primitive Dutch holidays of Paas and Pinxter
+are faithfully kept up; and New-Year celebrated with cookies and
+cherry-bounce; nor is the festival of the blessed St. Nicholas
+forgotten, when all the children are sure to hang up their stockings,
+and to have them filled according to their deserts; though, it is said,
+the good saint is occasionally perplexed in his nocturnal visits, which
+chimney to descend.
+
+Of late, this portentous mansion has begun to give signs of dilapidation
+and decay. Some have attributed this to the visits made by the young
+people to the city, and their bringing thence various modern fashions;
+and to their neglect of the Dutch language, which is gradually becoming
+confined to the older persons in the community. The house, too, was
+greatly shaken by high winds, during the prevalence of the speculation
+mania, especially at the time of the landing of the Yankees. Seeing how
+mysteriously the fate of Communipaw is identified with this venerable
+mansion, we cannot wonder that the older and wiser heads of the
+community should be filled with dismay, whenever a brick is toppled
+down from one of the chimneys, or a weather-cock is blown off from a
+gable-end.
+
+The present lord of this historic pile, I am happy to say, is calculated
+to maintain it in all its integrity. He is of patriarchal age, and is
+worthy of the days of the patriarchs. He has done his utmost to increase
+and multiply the true race in the land. His wife has not been inferior
+to him in zeal, and they are surrounded by a goodly progeny of children,
+and grand-children, and great-grand-children, who promise to perpetuate
+the name of Van Horne, until time shall be no more. So be it! Long may
+the horn of the Van Hornes continue to be exalted in the land! Tall as
+they are, may their shadows never be less! May the House of the Four
+Chimneys remain for ages, the citadel of Communipaw, and the smoke of
+its chimneys continue to ascend, a sweet-smelling incense in the hose of
+St. Nicholas!
+
+With great respect, Mr. Editor,
+
+Your ob't servant,
+
+HERMANUS VANDERDONK.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+CONSPIRACY OF THE COCKED HATS.
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
+
+Sir: I have read with great satisfaction the valuable paper of your
+correspondent, Mr. HERMANUS VANDERDONK, (who, I take it, is a descendant
+of the learned Adrian Vanderdonk, one of the early historians of the
+Nieuw-Nederlands,) giving sundry particulars, legendary and statistical,
+touching the venerable village of Communipaw and its fate-bound citadel,
+the House of the Four Chimneys. It goes to prove what I have repeatedly
+maintained, that we live in the midst of history and mystery and
+romance; and that there is no spot in the world more rich in themes for
+the writer of historic novels, heroic melodramas, and rough-shod epics,
+than this same business-looking city of the Manhattoes and its environs.
+He who would find these elements, however, must not seek them among the
+modern improvements and modern people of this moneyed metropolis, but
+must dig for them, as for Kidd the pirate's treasures, in out-of-the-way
+places, and among the ruins of the past.
+
+Poetry and romance received a fatal blow at the overthrow of the ancient
+Dutch dynasty, and have ever since been gradually withering under the
+growing domination of the Yankees. They abandoned our hearths when the
+old Dutch tiles were superseded by marble chimney-pieces; when brass
+andirons made way for polished grates, and the crackling and blazing
+fire of nut-wood gave place to the smoke and stench of Liverpool coal;
+and on the downfall of the last gable-end house, their requiem was
+tolled from the tower of the Dutch church in Nassau-street by the old
+bell that came from Holland. But poetry and romance still live unseen
+among us, or seen only by the enlightened few, who are able to
+contemplate this city and its environs through the medium of tradition,
+and clothed with the associations of foregone ages.
+
+Would you seek these elements in the country, Mr. Editor, avoid all
+turnpikes, rail-roads, and steamboats, those abominable inventions by
+which the usurping Yankees are strengthening themselves in the land, and
+subduing every thing to utility and common-place. Avoid all towns and
+cities of white clapboard palaces and Grecian temples, studded with
+"Academics," "Seminaries," and "Institutes," which glisten along our
+bays and rivers; these are the strong-holds of Yankee usurpation; but if
+haply you light upon some rough, rambling road, winding between stone
+fences, gray with moss, and overgrown with elder, poke-berry, mullein,
+and sweet-briar, with here and there a low, red-roofed, whitewashed
+farm-house, cowering among apple and cherry trees; an old stone church,
+with elms, willows, and button-woods, as old-looking as itself, and
+tombstones almost buried in their own graves; and, peradventure, a small
+log school-house at a cross-road, where the English is still taught with
+a thickness of the tongue, instead of a twang of the nose; should you,
+I say, light upon such a neighborhood, Mr. Editor, you may thank your
+stars that you have found one of the lingering haunts of poetry and
+romance.
+
+Your correspondent, Sir, has touched upon that sublime and affecting
+feature in the history of Communipaw, the retreat of the patriotic band
+of Nederlanders, led by Van Horne, whom he justly terms the Pelayo of
+the New-Netherlands. He has given you a picture of the manner in which
+they ensconced themselves in the House of the Four Chimneys, and awaited
+with heroic patience and perseverance the day that should see the flag
+of the Hogen Mogens once more floating on the fort of New-Amsterdam.
+
+Your correspondent, Sir, has but given you a glimpse over the threshold;
+I will now let you into the heart of the mystery of this most mysterious
+and eventful village.
+
+  Yes, sir, I will now--"unclasp a secret book;
+  And to your quick conceiving discontents,
+  I'll read you matter deep and dangerous,
+  As full of peril and adventurous spirit,
+  As to o'er walk a current, roaring loud,
+  On the unsteadfast footing of a spear."
+
+Sir, it is one of the most beautiful and interesting facts connected
+with the history of Communipaw, that the early feeling of resistance to
+foreign rule, alluded to by your correspondent, is still kept up. Yes,
+sir, a settled, secret, and determined conspiracy has been going on
+for generations among this indomitable people, the descendants of the
+refugees from New-Amsterdam; the object of which is to redeem their
+ancient seat of empire, and to drive the losel Yankees out of the land.
+
+Communipaw, it is true, has the glory of originating this conspiracy;
+and it was hatched and reared in the House of the Four Chimneys; but it
+has spread far and wide over ancient Pavonia, surmounted the heights of
+Bergen, Hoboken, and Weehawk, crept up along the banks of the Passaic
+and the Hackensack, until it pervades the whole chivalry of the country
+from Tappan Slote in the north to Piscataway in the south, including the
+pugnacious village of Rahway, more heroically denominated Spank-town.
+
+Throughout all these regions a great "in-and-in confederacy" prevails,
+that is to say, a confederacy among the Dutch families, by dint of
+diligent and exclusive intermarriage, to keep the race pure and to
+multiply. If ever, Mr. Editor, in the course of your travels between
+Spank-town and Tappan Slote, you should see a cosey, low-eaved
+farm-house, teeming with sturdy, broad-built little urchins, you may set
+it down as one of the breeding places of this grand secret confederacy,
+stocked with the embryo deliverers of New-Amsterdam.
+
+Another step in the progress of this patriotic conspiracy, is the
+establishment, in various places within the ancient boundaries of the
+Nieuw-Nederlands, of secret, or rather mysterious associations, composed
+of the genuine sons of the Nederlanders, with the ostensible object of
+keeping up the memory of old times and customs, but with the real object
+of promoting the views of this dark and mighty plot, and extending its
+ramifications throughout the land.
+
+Sir, I am descended from a long line of genuine Nederlanders, who,
+though they remained in the city of New-Amsterdam after the conquest,
+and throughout the usurpation, have never in their hearts been able to
+tolerate the yoke imposed upon them. My worthy father, who was one of
+the last of the cocked hats, had a little knot of cronies, of his own
+stamp, who used to meet in our wainscoted parlor, round a nut-wood fire,
+talk over old times, when the city was ruled by its native burgomasters,
+and groan over the monopoly of all places of power and profit by the
+Yankees. I well recollect the effect upon this worthy little conclave,
+when the Yankees first instituted then New-England Society, held their
+"national festival," toasted their "father land," and sang their foreign
+songs of triumph within the very precincts of our ancient metropolis.
+Sir, from that day, my father held the smell of codfish and potatoes,
+and the sight of pumpkin pie, in utter abomination; and whenever the
+annual dinner of the New-England Society came round, it was a sore
+anniversary for his children. He got up in an ill humor, grumbled and
+growled throughout the day, and not one of us went to bed that night,
+without having had his jacket well trounced, to the tune of "The Pilgrim
+Fathers."
+
+You may judge, then, Mr. Editor, of the exaltation of all true patriots
+of this stamp, when the Society of Saint Nicholas was set up among us,
+and intrepidly established, cheek by jole, alongside of the society of
+the invaders. Never shall I forget the effect upon my father and his
+little knot of brother groaners, when tidings were brought them that the
+ancient banner of the Manhattoes was actually floating from the window
+of the City Hotel. Sir, they nearly jumped out of their silver-buckled
+shoes for joy. They took down their cocked hats from the pegs on which
+they had hanged them, as the Israelites of yore hung their harps upon
+the willows, in token of bondage, clapped them resolutely once more upon
+their heads, and cocked them in the face of every Yankee they met on the
+way to the banqueting-room.
+
+The institution of this society was hailed with transport throughout the
+whole extent of the New-Netherlands; being considered a secret foothold
+gained in New-Amsterdam, and a flattering presage of future triumph.
+Whenever that society holds its annual feast, a sympathetic hilarity
+prevails throughout the land; ancient Pavonia sends over its
+contributions of cabbages and oysters; the House of the Four Chimneys is
+splendidly illuminated, and the traditional song of St. Nicholas, the
+mystic bond of union and conspiracy, is chaunted with closed doors, in
+every genuine Dutch family.
+
+I have thus, I trust, Mr. Editor, opened your eyes to some of the grand
+moral, poetical, and political phenomena with which you are surrounded.
+You will now be able to read the "signs of the times." You will
+now understand what is meant by those "Knickerbocker Halls," and
+"Knickerbocker Hotels," and "Knickerbocker Lunches," that are daily
+springing up in our city and what all these "Knickerbocker Omnibuses"
+are driving at. You will see in them so many clouds before a storm; so
+many mysterious but sublime intimations of the gathering vengeance of a
+great though oppressed people. Above all, you will now contemplate
+our bay and its portentous borders, with proper feelings of awe and
+admiration. Talk of the Bay of Naples, and its volcanic mountains! Why,
+Sir, little Communipaw, sleeping among its cabbage gardens, "quiet as
+gunpowder," yet with this tremendous conspiracy brewing in its bosom is
+an object ten times as sublime (in a moral point of view, mark me) as
+Vesuvius in repose, though charged with lava and brimstone, and ready
+for an eruption.
+
+Let me advert to a circumstance connected with this theme, which
+cannot but be appreciated by every heart of sensibility. You must have
+remarked, Mr. Editor, on summer evenings, and on Sunday afternoons,
+certain grave, primitive-looking personages, walking the Battery, in
+close confabulation, with their canes behind their backs, and ever and
+anon turning a wistful gaze toward the Jersey shore. These, Sir, are the
+sons of Saint Nicholas, the genuine Nederlanders; who regard Communipaw
+with pious reverence, not merely as the progenitor, but the destined
+regenerator, of this great metropolis. Yes, Sir; they are looking with
+longing eyes to the green marshes of ancient Pavonia, as did the poor
+conquered Spaniards of yore toward the stern mountains of Asturias,
+wondering whether the day of deliverance is at hand. Many is the time,
+when, in my boyhood, I have walked with my father and his confidential
+compeers on the Battery, and listened to their calculations and
+conjectures, and observed the points of their sharp cocked hats evermore
+turned toward Pavonia. Nay, Sir, I am convinced that at this moment, if
+I were to take down the cocked hat of my lamented father from the peg on
+which it has hung for years, and were to carry it to the Battery, its
+centre point, true as the needle to the pole, would turn to Communipaw.
+
+Mr. Editor, the great historic drama of New-Amsterdam, is but half
+acted. The reigns of Walter the Doubter, William the Testy, and Peter
+the Headstrong, with the rise, progress, and decline of the Dutch
+dynasty, are but so many parts of the main action, the triumphant
+catastrophe of which is yet to come. Yes, Sir! the deliverance of
+the New-Nederlands from Yankee domination will eclipse the far-famed
+redemption of Spain from the Moors, and the oft-sung conquest of Granada
+will fade before the chivalrous triumph of New-Amsterdam. Would that
+Peter Stuyvesant could rise from his grave to witness that day!
+
+Your humble servant,
+
+ROLOFF VAN RIPPER.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+P. S. Just as I had concluded the foregoing epistle, I received a piece
+of intelligence, which makes me tremble for the fate of Communipaw.
+I fear, Mr. Editor, the grand conspiracy is in danger of being
+countermined and counteracted, by those all-pervading and
+indefatigable Yankees. Would you think it, Sir! one of them has actually
+effected an entry in the place by covered way; or in other words, under
+cover of the petticoats. Finding every other mode ineffectual, he
+secretly laid siege to a Dutch heiress, who owns a great cabbage-garden
+in her own right. Being a smooth-tongued varlet, he easily prevailed on
+her to elope with him, and they were privately married at Spank-town!
+The first notice the good people of Communipaw had of this awful event,
+was a lithographed map of the cabbage garden laid out in town lots, and
+advertised for sale! On the night of the wedding, the main weather-cock
+of the House of the Four Chimneys was carried away in a whirlwind! The
+greatest consternation reigns throughout the village!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A LEGEND OF COMMUNIPAW.
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER MAGAZINE.
+
+Sir: I observed in your last month's periodical, a communication from
+a Mr. VANDERDONK, giving some information concerning Communipaw. I
+herewith send you, Mr. Editor, a legend connected with that place; and
+am much surprised it should have escaped the researches of your very
+authentic correspondent, as it relates to an edifice scarcely less fated
+than the House of the Four Chimneys. I give you the legend in its crude
+and simple state, as I heard it related; it is capable, however, of
+being dilated, inflated, and dressed up into very imposing shape and
+dimensions. Should any of your ingenious contributors in this line feel
+inclined to take it in hand, they will find ample materials, collateral
+and illustrative, among the papers of the late Reinier Skaats, many
+years since crier of the court, and keeper of the City Hall, in the
+city of the Manhattoes; or in the library of that important and utterly
+renowned functionary, Mr. Jacob Hays, long time high constable, who,
+in the course of his extensive researches, has amassed an amount of
+valuable facts, to be rivalled only by that great historical collection,
+"The Newgate Calendar."
+
+Your humble servant,
+
+BARENT VAN SCHAICK.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_GUESTS FROM GIBBET-ISLAND_.
+
+A LEGEND OF COMMUNIPAW.
+
+Whoever has visited the ancient and renowned village of Communipaw,
+may have noticed an old stone building, of most ruinous and sinister
+appearance. The doors and window-shutters are ready to drop from their
+hinges; old clothes are stuffed in the broken panes of glass, while
+legions of half-starved dogs prowl about the premises, and rush out and
+bark at every passer-by; for your beggarly house in a village is most
+apt to swarm with profligate and ill-conditioned dogs. What adds to the
+sinister appearance of this mansion, is a tall frame in front, not
+a little resembling a gallows, and which looks as if waiting to
+accommodate some of the inhabitants with a well-merited airing. It is
+not a gallows, however, but an ancient sign-post; for this dwelling, in
+the golden days of Communipaw, was one of the most orderly and peaceful
+of village taverns, where all the public affairs of Communipaw were
+talked and smoked over. In fact, it was in this very building that
+Oloffe the Dreamer, and his companions, concerted that great voyage of
+discovery and colonization, in which they explored Buttermilk Channel,
+were nearly shipwrecked in the strait of Hell-gate, and finally landed
+on the Island of Manhattan, and founded the great city of New-Amsterdam.
+
+Even after the province had been cruelly wrested from the sway of their
+High Mightinesses, by the combined forces of the British and Yankees,
+this tavern continued its ancient loyalty. It is true, the head of the
+Prince of Orange disappeared from the sign; a strange bird being painted
+over it, with the explanatory legend of "DIE WILDE GANS," or The Wild
+Goose; but this all the world knew to be a sly riddle of the landlord,
+the worthy Teunis Van Gieson, a knowing man in a small way, who laid
+his finger beside his nose and winked, when any one studied the
+signification of his sign, and observed that his goose was hatching, but
+would join the flock whenever they flew over the water; an enigma which
+was the perpetual recreation and delight of the loyal but fat-headed
+burghers of Communipaw.
+
+Under the sway of this patriotic, though discreet and quiet publican,
+the tavern continued to flourish in primeval tranquillity, and was
+the resort of all true-hearted Nederlanders, from all parts of Pavonia;
+who met here quietly and secretly, to smoke and drink the downfall of
+Briton and Yankee, and success to Admiral Van Tromp.
+
+The only drawback on the comfort of the establishment, was a nephew of
+mine host, a sister's son, Yan Yost Vanderscamp by name, and a real
+scamp by nature. This unlucky whipster showed an early propensity to
+mischief, which he gratified in a small way, by playing tricks upon the
+frequenters of the Wild Goose; putting gunpowder in their pipes, or
+squibs in their pockets, and astonishing them with an explosion, while
+they sat nodding round the fire-place in the bar-room; and if perchance
+a worthy burgher from some distant part of Pavonia had lingered until
+dark over his potation, it was odds but that young Vanderscamp would
+slip a briar under his horse's tail, as he mounted, and send him
+clattering along the road, in neck-or-nothing style, to his infinite
+astonishment and discomfiture.
+
+It may be wondered at, that mine host of the Wild Goose did not turn
+such a graceless varlet out of doors; but Teunis Van Gieson was an
+easy-tempered man, and, having no child of his own, looked upon his
+nephew with almost parental indulgence. His patience and good-nature
+were doomed to be tried by another inmate of his mansion. This was a
+cross-grained curmudgeon of a negro, named Pluto, who was a kind of
+enigma in Communipaw. Where he came from, nobody knew. He was found one
+morning, after a storm, cast like a sea-monster on the strand, in front
+of the Wild Goose, and lay there, more dead than alive. The neighbors
+gathered round, and speculated on this production of the deep; whether
+it were fish or flesh, or a compound of both, commonly yclept a merman.
+The kind-hearted Teunis Van Gieson, seeing that he wore the human form,
+took him into his house, and warmed him into life. By degrees, he showed
+signs of intelligence, and even uttered sounds very much like language,
+but which no one in Communipaw could understand. Some thought him a
+negro just from Guinea, who had either fallen overboard, or escaped from
+a slave-ship. Nothing, however, could ever draw from him any account
+of his origin. When questioned on the subject, he merely pointed to
+Gibbet-Island, a small rocky islet, which lies in the open bay, just
+opposite to Communipaw, as if that were his native place, though every
+body knew it had never been inhabited.
+
+In the process of time, he acquired something of the Dutch language,
+that is to say, he learnt all its vocabulary of oaths and maledictions,
+with just words sufficient to string them together. "Donder en
+blicksen!" (thunder and lightning,) was the gentlest of his
+ejaculations. For years he kept about the Wild Goose, more like one of
+those familiar spirits, or household goblins, that we read of, than
+like a human being. He acknowledged allegiance to no one, but performed
+various domestic offices, when it suited his humor; waiting occasionally
+on the guests; grooming the horses, cutting wood, drawing water; and all
+this without being ordered. Lay any command on him, and the stubborn
+sea-urchin was sure to rebel. He was never so much at home, however,
+as when on the water, plying about in skiff or canoe, entirely alone,
+fishing, crabbing, or grabbing for oysters, and would bring home
+quantities for the larder of the Wild Goose, which he would throw down
+at the kitchen door, with a growl. No wind nor weather deterred him from
+launching forth on his favorite element: indeed, the wilder the weather,
+the more he seemed to enjoy it. If a storm was brewing, he was sure to
+put off from shore; and would be seen far out in the bay, his light
+skiff dancing like a feather on the waves, when sea and sky were all
+in a turmoil, and the stoutest ships were fain to lower their sails.
+Sometimes, on such occasions, he would be absent for days together. How
+he weathered the tempest, and how and where he subsisted, no one
+could divine, nor did any one venture to ask, for all had an almost
+superstitious awe of him. Some of the Communipaw oystermen declared that
+they had more than once seen him suddenly disappear, canoe and all, as
+if they plunged beneath the waves, and after a while come up again, in
+quite a different part of the bay; whence they concluded that he could
+live under water like that notable species of wild duck, commonly called
+the Hell-diver. All began to consider him in the light of a foul-weather
+bird, like the Mother Carey's Chicken, or Stormy Petrel; and whenever
+they saw him putting far out in his skiff, in cloudy weather, made up
+their minds for a storm.
+
+The only being for whom he seemed to have any liking, was Yan Yost
+Vanderscamp, and him he liked for his very wickedness. He in a manner
+took the boy under his tutelage, prompted him to all kinds of mischief,
+aided him in every wild, harum-scarum freak, until the lad became the
+complete scapegrace of the village; a pest to his uncle, and to every
+one else. Nor were his pranks confined to the land; he soon learned to
+accompany old Pluto on the water. Together these worthies would cruise
+about the broad bay, and all the neighboring straits and rivers; poking
+around in skiffs and canoes; robbing the set-nets of the fishermen;
+landing on remote coasts, and laying waste orchards and water-melon
+patches; in short, carrying on a complete system of piracy, on a small
+scale, Piloted by Pluto, the youthful Vanderscamp soon became acquainted
+with all the bays, rivers, creeks, and inlets of the watery world around
+him; could navigate from the Hook to Spiting-devil on the darkest night,
+and learned to set even the terrors of Hell-gate at defiance.
+
+At length, negro and boy suddenly disappeared, and days and weeks
+elapsed, but without tidings of them. Some said they must have run away
+and gone to sea; others jocosely hinted, that old Pluto, being no other
+than his namesake in disguise, had spirited away the boy to the nether
+regions. All, however, agreed in one thing, that the village was well
+rid of them.
+
+In the process of time, the good Teunis Van Gieson slept with his
+fathers, and the tavern remained shut up, waiting for a claimant, for
+the next heir was Yan Yost Vanderscamp, and he had not been heard of for
+years. At length, one day, a boat was seen pulling for the shore, from a
+long, black, rakish-looking schooner, that lay at anchor in the bay. The
+boat's crew seemed worthy of the craft from which they debarked. Never
+had such a set of noisy, roistering, swaggering varlets landed in
+peaceful Communipaw. They were outlandish in garb and demeanor, and were
+headed by a rough, burly, bully ruffian, with fiery whiskers, a copper
+nose, a scar across his face, and a great Flaunderish beaver slouched on
+one side of his head, in whom, to their dismay, the quiet inhabitants
+were made to recognize their early pest, Yan Yost Vanderscamp. The rear
+of this hopeful gang was brought up by old Pluto, who had lost an
+eye, grown grizzly-headed, and looked more like a devil than ever.
+Vanderscamp renewed his acquaintance with the old burghers, much against
+their will, and in a manner not at all to their taste. He slapped them
+familiarly on the back, gave them an iron grip of the hand, and was hail
+fellow well met. According to his own account, he had been all the world
+over; had made money by bags full; had ships in every sea, and now meant
+to turn the Wild Goose into a country seat, where he and his comrades,
+all rich merchants from foreign parts, might enjoy themselves in the
+interval of their voyages. Sure enough, in a little while there was a
+complete metamorphose of the Wild Goose. From being a quiet, peaceful
+Dutch public house, it became a most riotous, uproarious private
+dwelling; a complete rendezvous for boisterous men of the seas, who came
+here to have what they called a "blow out" on dry land, and might be
+seen at all hours, lounging about the door, or lolling out of the
+windows; swearing among themselves, and cracking rough jokes on every
+passer-by. The house was fitted up, too, in so strange a manner:
+hammocks slung to the walls, instead of bedsteads; odd kinds of
+furniture, of foreign fashion; bamboo couches, Spanish chairs; pistols,
+cutlasses, and blunderbusses, suspended on every peg; silver crucifixes
+on the mantel-pieces, silver candle-sticks and porringers on the
+tables, contrasting oddly with the pewter and Delf ware of the original
+establishment. And then the strange amusements of these sea-monsters!
+Pitching Spanish dollars, instead of quoits; firing blunderbusses out of
+the window; shooting at a mark, or at any unhappy dog, or cat, or pig,
+or barn-door fowl, that might happen to come within reach.
+
+The only being who seemed to relish their rough waggery, was old Pluto;
+and yet he led but a dog's life of it; for they practised all kinds of
+manual jokes upon him; kicked him about like a foot-ball; shook him by
+his grizzly mop of wool, and never spoke to him without coupling a curse
+by way of adjective to his name, and consigning him to the infernal
+regions. The old fellow, however, seemed to like them the better, the
+more they cursed him, though his utmost expression of pleasure never
+amounted to more than the growl of a petted bear, when his ears are
+rubbed.
+
+Old Pluto was the ministering spirit at the orgies of the Wild Goose;
+and such orgies as took place there! Such drinking, singing, whooping,
+swearing; with an occasional interlude of quarrelling and fighting. The
+noisier grew the revel, the more old Pluto plied the potations, until
+the guests would become frantic in their merriment, smashing every thing
+to pieces, and throwing the house out of the windows. Sometimes, after a
+drinking bout, they sallied forth and scoured the village, to the dismay
+of the worthy burghers, who gathered their women within doors, and would
+have shut up the house. Vanderscamp, however, was not to be rebuffed.
+He insisted on renewing acquaintance with his old neighbors, and on
+introducing his friends, the merchants, to their families; swore he was
+on the look-out for a wife, and meant, before he stopped, to find
+husbands for all their daughters. So, will-ye, nil-ye, sociable he was;
+swaggered about their best parlors, with his hat on one side of his
+head; sat on the good wife's nicely-waxed mahogany table, kicking his
+heels against the carved and polished legs; kissed and tousled the young
+vrouws; and, if they frowned and pouted, gave them a gold rosary, or a
+sparkling cross, to put them in good humor again.
+
+Sometimes nothing would satisfy him, but he must have some of his old
+neighbors to dinner at the Wild Goose. There was no refusing him, for
+he had got the complete upper-hand of the community, and the peaceful
+burghers all stood in awe of him. But what a time would the quiet,
+worthy men have, among these rake-hells, who would delight to astound
+them with the most extravagant gunpowder tales, embroidered with all
+kinds of foreign oaths; clink the can with them; pledge them in deep
+potations; bawl drinking songs in their ears; and occasionally fire
+pistols over their heads, or under the table, and then laugh in their
+faces, and ask them how they liked the smell of gunpowder.
+
+Thus was the little village of Communipaw for a time like the
+unfortunate wight possessed with devils; until Vanderscamp and his
+brother merchants would sail on another trading voyage, when the Wild
+Goose would be shut up, and every thing relapse into quiet, only to be
+disturbed by his next visitation.
+
+The mystery of all these proceedings gradually dawned upon the tardy
+intellects of Communipaw. These were the times of the notorious
+Captain Kidd, when the American harbors were the resorts of piratical
+adventurers of all kinds, who, under pretext of mercantile voyages,
+scoured the West Indies, made plundering descents upon the Spanish Main,
+visited even the remote Indian Seas, and then came to dispose of their
+booty, have their revels, and fit out new expeditions, in the English
+colonies.
+
+Vanderscamp had served in this hopeful school, and having risen to
+importance among the bucaniers, had pitched upon his native village and
+early home, as a quiet, out-of-the-way, unsuspected place, where he and
+his comrades, while anchored at New York, might have their feasts, and
+concert their plans, without molestation.
+
+At length the attention of the British government was called to these
+piratical enterprises, that were becoming so frequent and outrageous.
+Vigorous measures were taken to check and punish them. Several of
+the most noted freebooters were caught and executed, and three of
+Vanderscamp's chosen comrades, the most riotous swash-bucklers of the
+Wild Goose, were hanged in chains on Gibbet-Island, in full sight of
+their favorite resort. As to Vanderscamp himself, he and his man Pluto
+again disappeared, and it was hoped by the people of Communipaw that he
+had fallen in some foreign brawl, or been swung on some foreign gallows.
+
+For a time, therefore, the tranquillity of the village was restored;
+the worthy Dutchmen once more smoked their pipes in peace, eying, with
+peculiar complacency, their old pests and terrors, the pirates, dangling
+and drying in the sun, on Gibbet-Island.
+
+This perfect calm was doomed at length to be ruffled. The fiery
+persecution of the pirates gradually subsided. Justice was satisfied
+with the examples that had been made, and there was no more talk of
+Kidd, and the other heroes of like kidney. On a calm summer evening, a
+boat, somewhat heavily laden, was seen pulling into Communipaw. What
+was the surprise and disquiet of the inhabitants, to see Yan Yost
+Vanderscamp seated at the helm, and his man Pluto tugging at the oars!
+Vanderscamp, however, was apparently an altered man. He brought home
+with him a wife, who seemed to be a shrew, and to have the upper-hand of
+him. He no longer was the swaggering, bully ruffian, but affected the
+regular merchant, and talked of retiring from business, and settling
+down quietly, to pass the rest of his days in his native place.
+
+The Wild Goose mansion was again opened, but with diminished splendor,
+and no riot. It is true, Vanderscamp had frequent nautical visitors, and
+the sound of revelry was occasionally overheard in his house; but every
+thing seemed to be done under the rose; and old Pluto was the only
+servant that officiated at these orgies. The visitors, indeed, were
+by no means of the turbulent stamp of their predecessors; but quiet,
+mysterious traders, full of nods, and winks, and hieroglyphic signs,
+with whom, to use their cant phrase, "every thing was smug." Their ships
+came to anchor at night in the lower bay; and, on a private signal,
+Vanderscamp would launch his boat, and accompanied solely by his man
+Pluto, would make them mysterious visits. Sometimes boats pulled in at
+night, in front of the Wild Goose, and various articles of merchandise
+were landed in the dark, and spirited away, nobody knew whither. One of
+the more curious of the inhabitants kept watch, and caught a glimpse of
+the features of some of these night visitors, by the casual glance of
+a lantern, and declared that he recognized more than one of the
+freebooting frequenters of the Wild Goose, in former times; from whence
+he concluded that Vanderscamp was at his old game, and that this
+mysterious merchandise was nothing more nor less than piratical plunder.
+The more charitable opinion, however, was, that Vanderscamp and his
+comrades, having been driven from their old line of business, by the
+"oppressions of government," had resorted to smuggling to make both ends
+meet.
+
+Be that as it may: I come now to the extraordinary fact, which is the
+butt-end of this story. It happened late one night, that Yan Yost
+Vanderscamp was returning across the broad bay, in his light skiff,
+rowed by his man Pluto. He had been carousing on board of a vessel,
+newly arrived, and was somewhat obfuscated in intellect, by the liquor
+he had imbibed. It was a still, sultry night; a heavy mass of lurid
+clouds was rising in the west, with the low muttering of distant
+thunder. Vanderscamp called on Pluto to pull lustily, that they might
+get home before the gathering storm. The old negro made no reply, but
+shaped his course so as to skirt the rocky shores of Gibbet-Island. A
+faint creaking overhead caused Vanderscamp to cast up his eyes, when,
+to his horror, he beheld the bodies of his three pot companions and
+brothers in iniquity dangling in the moonlight, their rags fluttering,
+and their chains creaking, as they were slowly swung backward and
+forward by the rising breeze.
+
+"What do you mean, you blockhead!" cried Vanderscamp, "by pulling so
+close to the island?"
+
+"I thought you'd be glad to see your old friends once more," growled the
+negro; "you were never afraid of a living man, what do you fear from the
+dead?"
+
+"Who's afraid?" hiccupped Vanderscamp, partly heated by liquor, partly
+nettled by the jeer of the negro; "who's afraid! Hang me, but I would be
+glad to see them once more, alive or dead, at the Wild Goose. Come, my
+lads in the wind!" continued he, taking a draught, and flourishing the
+bottle above his head, "here's fair weather to you in the other world;
+and if you should be walking the rounds to-night, odds fish! but I'll be
+happy if you will drop in to supper."
+
+A dismal creaking was the only reply. The wind blew loud and shrill, and
+as it whistled round the gallows, and among the bones, sounded as if
+there were laughing and gibbering in the air. Old Pluto chuckled to
+himself, and now pulled for home. The storm burst over the voyagers,
+while they were yet far from shore. The rain fell in torrents, the
+thunder crashed and pealed, and the lightning kept up an incessant
+blaze. It was stark midnight, before they landed at Communipaw.
+
+Dripping and shivering, Vanderscamp crawled homeward. He was completely
+sobered by the storm; the water soaked from without, having diluted and
+cooled the liquor within. Arrived at the Wild Goose, he knocked timidly
+and dubiously at the door, for he dreaded the reception he was to
+experience from his wife. He had reason to do so. She met him at the
+threshold, in a precious ill humor.
+
+"Is this a time," said she, "to keep people out of their beds, and to
+bring home company, to turn the house upside down?"
+
+"Company?" said Vanderscamp, meekly; "I have brought no company with me,
+wife."
+
+"No, indeed! they have got here before you, but by your invitation; and
+blessed-looking company they are, truly!"
+
+Vanderscamp's knees smote together. "For the love of heaven, where are
+they, wife?"
+
+"Where?--why, in the blue-room, up-stairs, making themselves as much at
+home as if the house were their own."
+
+Vanderscamp made a desperate effort, scrambled up to the room, and threw
+open the door. Sure enough, there at a table, on which burned a light as
+blue as brimstone, sat the three guests from Gibbet-Island, with halters
+round their necks, and bobbing their cups together, as if they were
+hob-or-nobbing, and trolling the old Dutch freebooter's glee, since
+translated into English:
+
+ "For three merry lads be we,
+  And three merry lads be we;
+  I on the land, and thou on the sand,
+  And Jack on the gallows-tree."
+
+Vanderscamp saw and heard no more. Starting back with horror, he missed
+his footing on the landing-place, and fell from the top of the stairs to
+the bottom. He was taken up speechless, and, either from the fall or the
+fright, was buried in the yard of the little Dutch church at Bergen, on
+the following Sunday.
+
+From that day forward, the fate of the Wild Goose was sealed. It was
+pronounced a _haunted house_, and avoided accordingly. No one inhabited
+it but Vanderscamp's shrew of a widow, and old Pluto, and they were
+considered but little better than its hobgoblin visitors. Pluto grew
+more and more haggard and morose, and looked more like an imp of
+darkness than a human being. He spoke to no one, but went about
+muttering to himself; or, as some hinted, talking with the devil, who,
+though unseen, was ever at his elbow. Now and then he was seen pulling
+about the bay alone, in his skiff, in dark weather, or at the approach
+of night-fall; nobody could tell why, unless on an errand to invite more
+guests from the gallows. Indeed it was affirmed that the Wild Goose
+still continued to be a house of entertainment for such guests, and that
+on stormy nights, the blue chamber was occasionally illuminated, and
+sounds of diabolical merriment were overheard, mingling with the howling
+of the tempest. Some treated these as idle stories, until on one such
+night, it was about the time of the equinox, there was a horrible uproar
+in the Wild Goose, that could not be mistaken. It was not so much
+the sound of revelry, however, as strife, with two or three piercing
+shrieks, that pervaded every part of the village. Nevertheless, no one
+thought of hastening to the spot. On the contrary, the honest burghers
+of Communipaw drew their night-caps over their ears, and buried their
+heads under the bed-clothes, at the thoughts of Vanderscamp and his
+gallows companions.
+
+The next morning, some of the bolder and more curious undertook to
+reconnoitre. All was quiet and lifeless at the Wild Goose. The door
+yawned wide open, and had evidently been open all night, for the storm
+had beaten into the house. Gathering more courage from the silence and
+apparent desertion, they gradually ventured over the threshold. The
+house had indeed the air of having been possessed by devils. Every thing
+was topsy-turvy; trunks had been broken open, and chests of drawers and
+corner cupboards turned inside out, as in a time of general sack and
+pillage; but the most woful sight was the widow of Yan Yost Vanderscamp,
+extended a corpse on the floor of the blue-chamber, with the marks of a
+deadly gripe on the wind-pipe.
+
+All now was conjecture and dismay at Communipaw; and the disappearance
+of old Pluto, who was no where to be found, gave rise to all kinds of
+wild surmises. Some suggested that the negro had betrayed the house to
+some of Vanderscamp's bucaniering associates, and that they had decamped
+together with the booty; others surmised that the negro was nothing more
+nor less than a devil incarnate, who had now accomplished his ends, and
+made off with his dues. Events, however, vindicated the negro from this
+last imputation. His skiff was picked up, drifting about the bay, bottom
+upward, as if wrecked in a tempest; and his body was found, shortly
+afterward, by some Communipaw fishermen, stranded among the rocks of
+Gibbet-Island, near the foot of the pirates' gallows. The fishermen
+shook their heads, and observed that old Pluto had ventured once too
+often to invite Guests from Gibbet-Island.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE BERMUDAS.
+
+A SHAKSPERIAN RESEARCH: BY THE AUTHOR OF THE SKETCHBOOK.
+
+"Who did not think, till within these foure yeares, but that these
+islands had been rather a habitation for Divells, than fit for men to
+dwell in? Who did not hate the name, when hee was on land, and shun the
+place when he was on the seas? But behold the misprision and conceits of
+the world! For true and large experience hath now told us, it is one of
+the sweetest paradises that be upon earth."--"A PLAINE DESCRIPT. OF THE
+BARMUDAS:" 1613.
+
+In the course of a voyage home from England, our ship had been
+struggling, for two or three weeks, with perverse headwinds, and a
+stormy sea. It was in the month of May, yet the weather had at times
+a wintry sharpness, and it was apprehended that we were in the
+neighborhood of floating islands of ice, which at that season of the
+year drift out of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, and sometimes occasion the
+wreck of noble ships.
+
+Wearied out by the continued opposition of the elements, our captain at
+length bore away to the south, in hopes of catching the expiring breath
+of the trade-winds, and making what is called the southern passage. A
+few days wrought, as it were, a magical "sea change" in every thing
+around us. We seemed to emerge into a different world. The late dark and
+angry sea, lashed up into roaring and swashing surges, became calm and
+sunny; the rude winds died away; and gradually a light breeze sprang up
+directly aft, filling out every sail, and wafting us smoothly along on
+an even keel. The air softened into a bland and delightful temperature.
+Dolphins began to play about us; the nautilus came floating by, like a
+fairy ship, with its mimic sail and rainbow tints; and flying-fish, from
+time to time, made their short excursive flights, and occasionally fell
+upon the deck. The cloaks and overcoats in which we had hitherto wrapped
+ourselves, and moped about the vessel, were thrown aside; for a summer
+warmth had succeeded to the late wintry chills. Sails were stretched as
+awnings over the quarter-deck, to protect us from the mid-day sun. Under
+these we lounged away the day, in luxurious indolence, musing, with
+half-shut eyes, upon the quiet ocean. The night was scarcely less
+beautiful than the day. The rising moon sent a quivering column of
+silver along the undulating surface of the deep, and, gradually climbing
+the heaven, lit up our towering top-sails and swelling main-sails, and
+spread a pale, mysterious light around. As our ship made her whispering
+way through this dreamy world of waters, every boisterous sound on board
+was charmed to silence; and the low whistle, or drowsy song of a sailor
+from the forecastle, or the tinkling of a guitar, and the soft warbling
+of a female voice from the quarter-deck, seemed to derive a witching
+melody from the scene and hour. I was reminded of Oberon's exquisite
+description of music and moonlight on the ocean:
+
+ --"Thou rememberest
+  Since once I sat upon a promontory,
+  And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back,
+  Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
+  That the rude sea grew civil at her song?
+  And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
+  To hear the sea-maid's music."
+
+Indeed, I was in the very mood to conjure up all the imaginary beings
+with which poetry has peopled old ocean, and almost ready to fancy
+I heard the distant song of the mermaid, or the mellow shell of the
+triton, and to picture to myself Neptune and Amphitrite with all their
+pageant sweeping along the dim horizon.
+
+A day or two of such fanciful voyaging brought us in sight of the
+Bermudas, which first looked like mere summer clouds, peering above the
+quiet ocean. All day we glided along in sight of them, with just wind
+enough to fill our sails; and never did land appear more lovely. They
+were clad in emerald verdure, beneath the serenest of skies: not an
+angry wave broke upon their quiet shores, and small fishing craft,
+riding on the crystal waves, seemed as if hung in air. It was such a
+scene that Fletcher pictured to himself, when he extolled the halcyon
+lot of the fisherman:
+
+  Ah! would thou knewest how much it better were
+  To bide among the simple fisher-swains:
+  No shrieking owl, no night-crow lodgeth here,
+  Nor is our simple pleasure mixed with pains.
+  Our sports begin with the beginning year;
+  In calms, to pull the leaping fish to land,
+  In roughs, to sing and dance along the yellow sand.
+
+In contemplating these beautiful islands, and the peaceful sea
+around them, I could hardly realize that these were the "still vexed
+Bermoothes" of Shakspeare, once the dread of mariners, and infamous in
+the narratives of the early discoverers, for the dangers and disasters
+which beset them. Such, however, was the case; and the islands derived
+additional interest in my eyes, from fancying that I could trace in
+their early history, and in the superstitious notions connected with
+them, some of the elements of Shakspeare's wild and beautiful drama of
+the Tempest. I shall take the liberty of citing a few historical facts,
+in support of this idea, which may claim some additional attention from
+the American reader, as being connected with the first settlement of
+Virginia.
+
+At the time when Shakspeare was in the fulness of his talent, and
+seizing upon everything that could furnish aliment to his imagination,
+the colonization of Virginia was a favorite object of enterprise among
+people of condition in England, and several of the courtiers of the
+court of Queen Elizabeth were personally engaged in it. In the year
+1609 a noble armament of nine ships and five hundred men sailed for the
+relief of the colony. It was commanded by Sir George Somers, as admiral,
+a gallant and generous gentleman, above sixty years of age, and
+possessed of an ample fortune, yet still bent upon hardy enterprise, and
+ambitious of signalizing himself in the service of his country.
+
+On board of his flag-ship, the Sea-Vulture, sailed also Sir Thomas
+Gates, lieutenant-general of the colony. The voyage was long and
+boisterous. On the twenty-fifth of July, the admiral's ship was
+separated from the rest, in a hurricane. For several days she was driven
+about at the mercy of the elements, and so strained and racked, that her
+seams yawned open, and her hold was half filled with water. The storm
+subsided, but left her a mere foundering wreck. The crew stood in the
+hold to their waists in water, vainly endeavoring to bail her with
+kettles, buckets, and other vessels. The leaks rapidly gained on them,
+while their strength was as rapidly declining. They lost all hope of
+keeping the ship afloat, until they should reach the American coast; and
+wearied with fruitless toil, determined, in their despair, to give up
+all farther attempt, shut down the hatches, and abandon themselves to
+Providence. Some, who had spirituous liquors, or "comfortable waters,"
+as the old record quaintly terms them, brought them forth, and shared
+them with their comrades, and they all drank a sad farewell to one
+another, as men who were soon to part company in this world.
+
+In this moment of extremity, the worthy admiral, who kept sleepless
+watch from the high stern of the vessel, gave the thrilling cry of
+"land!" All rushed on deck, in a frenzy of joy, and nothing now was to
+be seen or heard on board, but the transports of men who felt as if
+rescued from the grave. It is true the land in sight would not, in
+ordinary circumstances, have inspired much self-gratulation. It could be
+nothing else but the group of islands called after their discoverer, one
+Juan Bermudas, a Spaniard, but stigmatized among the mariners of those
+days as "the islands of devils!" "For the islands of the Bermudas," says
+the old narrative of this voyage, "as every man knoweth that hath heard
+or read of them, were never inhabited by any Christian or heathen
+people, but were ever esteemed and reputed a most prodigious and
+inchanted place, affording nothing but gusts, stormes, and foul weather,
+which made every navigator and mariner to avoide them, as Scylla and
+Charybdis, or as they would shun the Divell himself." [Footnote: "A
+Plaine Description of the Barmudas."]
+
+Sir George Somers and his tempest-tossed comrades, however, hailed them
+with rapture, as if they had been a terrestrial paradise. Every sail was
+spread, and every exertion made to urge the foundering ship to land.
+Before long, she struck upon a rock. Fortunately, the late stormy winds
+had subsided, and there was no surf. A swelling wave lifted her from off
+the rock, and bore her to another; and thus she was borne on from rock
+to rock, until she remained wedged between two, as firmly as if set upon
+the stocks. The boats were immediately lowered, and, though the shore
+was above a mile distant, the whole crew were landed in safety.
+
+Every one had now his task assigned him. Some made all haste to unload
+the ship, before she should go to pieces; some constructed wigwams of
+palmetto leaves, and others ranged the island in quest of wood and
+water. To their surprise and joy, they found it far different from the
+desolate and frightful place they had been taught, by seamen's stories,
+to expect. It was well-wooded and fertile; there were birds of various
+kinds, and herds of swine roaming about, the progeny of a number that
+had swam ashore, in former years, from a Spanish wreck. The island
+abounded with turtle, and great quantities of their eggs were to be
+found among the rocks. The bays and inlets were full of fish; so tame,
+that if any one stepped into the water, they would throng around him.
+Sir George Somers, in a little while, caught enough with hook and line
+to furnish a meal to his whole ship's company. Some of them were so
+large, that two were as much as a man could carry. Crawfish, also,
+were taken in abundance. The air was soft and salubrious, and the sky
+beautifully serene. Waller, in his "Summer Islands," has given us a
+faithful picture of the climate:
+
+  "For the kind spring, (which but salutes us here,)
+  Inhabits these, and courts them all the year:
+  Ripe fruits and blossoms on the same trees live;
+  At once they promise, and at once they give:
+  So sweet the air, so moderate the clime,
+  None sickly lives, or dies before his time.
+  Heaven sure has kept this spot of earth uncursed
+  To shew how all things were created first."
+
+We may imagine the feelings of the shipwrecked marines on finding
+themselves cast by stormy seas upon so happy a coast; where abundance
+was to be had without labor; where what in other climes constituted the
+costly luxuries of the rich, were within every man's reach; and where
+life promised to be a mere holiday. Many of the common sailors,
+especially, declared they desired no better lot than to pass the rest of
+their lives on this favored island.
+
+The commanders, however, were not so ready to console themselves
+with mere physical comforts, for the severance from the enjoyment of
+cultivated life, and all the objects of honorable ambition. Despairing
+of the arrival of any chance ship on these shunned and dreaded islands,
+they fitted out the long-boat, making a deck of the ship's hatches,
+and having manned her with eight picked men, despatched her, under
+the command of an able and hardy mariner, named Raven, to proceed to
+Virginia, and procure shipping to be sent to their relief.
+
+While waiting in anxious idleness for the arrival of the looked-for
+aid, dissensions arose between Sir George Somers and Sir Thomas Gates,
+originating, very probably, in jealousy of the lead which the nautical
+experience and professional station of the admiral gave him in the
+present emergency. Each commander, of course, had his adherents:
+these dissensions ripened into a complete schism; and this handful
+of shipwrecked men, thus thrown together, on an uninhabited island,
+separated into two parties, and lived asunder in bitter feud, as men
+rendered fickle by prosperity instead of being brought into brotherhood
+by a common calamity.
+
+Weeks and months elapsed, without bringing the looked-for aid from
+Virginia, though that colony was within but a few days' sail. Fears were
+now entertained that the long-boat had been either swallowed up in
+the sea, or wrecked on some savage coast; one or other of which most
+probably was the case, as nothing was ever heard of Raven and his
+comrades.
+
+Each party now set to work to build a vessel for itself out of the cedar
+with which the island abounded. The wreck of the Sea-Vulture furnished
+rigging, and various other articles; but they had no iron for bolts, and
+other fastenings; and for want of pitch and tar, they payed the seams of
+their vessels with lime and turtle's oil, which soon dried, and became
+as hard as stone.
+
+On the tenth of May, 1610, they set sail, having been about nine months
+on the island. They reached Virginia without farther accident, but found
+the colony in great distress for provisions. The account they gave of
+the abundance that reigned in the Bermudas, and especially of the herds
+of swine that roamed the island, determined Lord Delaware, the governor
+of Virginia, to send thither for supplies. Sir George Somers, with his
+wonted promptness and generosity, offered to undertake what was still
+considered a dangerous voyage. Accordingly, on the nineteenth of June,
+he set sail, in his own cedar vessel of thirty tons, accompanied by
+another small vessel, commanded by Captain Argall.
+
+The gallant Somers was doomed again to be tempest-tossed. His companion
+vessel was soon driven back to port, but he kept the sea; and, as usual,
+remained at his post on deck, in all weathers. His voyage was long and
+boisterous, and the fatigues and exposures which he underwent, were too
+much for a frame impaired by age, and by previous hardships. He arrived
+at Bermudas completely exhausted and broken down.
+
+His nephew, Captain Mathew Somers, attended him in his illness with
+affectionate assiduity. Finding his end approaching, the veteran called
+his men together, and exhorted them to be true to the interests of
+Virginia; to procure provisions with all possible despatch, and hasten
+back to the relief of the colony.
+
+With this dying charge, he gave up the ghost, leaving us nephew and crew
+overwhelmed with grief and consternation. Their first thought was to
+pay honor to his remains. Opening the body, they took out the heart and
+entrails, and buried them, erecting a cross over the grave. They then
+embalmed the body, and set sail with it for England; thus, while paying
+empty honors to their deceased commander, neglecting his earnest wish
+and dying injunction, that they should return with relief to Virginia.
+
+The little bark arrived safely at Whitechurch, in Dorsetshire, with its
+melancholy freight. The body of the worthy Somers was interred with the
+military honors due to a brave soldier, and many volleys were fired
+over his grave. The Bermudas have since received the name of the Somer
+Islands, as a tribute to his memory.
+
+The accounts given by Captain Mathew Somers and his crew of the
+delightful climate, and the great beauty, fertility, and abundance of
+these islands, excited the zeal of enthusiasts, and the cupidity of
+speculators, and a plan was set on foot to colonize them. The Virginia
+company sold their right to the islands to one hundred and twenty of
+their own members, who erected themselves into a distinct corporation,
+under the name of the "Somer Island Society;" and Mr. Richard More was
+sent out, in 1612, as governor, with sixty men, to found a colony: and
+this leads me to the second branch of this research.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_THE THREE KINGS OF BERMUDA_.
+
+AND THEIR TREASURE OF AMBERGRIS.
+
+At the time that Sir George Somers was preparing to launch his
+cedar-built bark, and sail for Virginia, there were three culprits among
+his men, who had been guilty of capital offences. One of them was shot;
+the others, named Christopher Carter and Edward Waters, escaped. Waters,
+indeed, made a very narrow escape, for he had actually been tied to a
+tree to be executed, but cut the rope with a knife, which he had
+concealed about his person, and fled to the woods, where he was joined by
+Carter. These two worthies kept themselves concealed in the secret parts
+of the island, until the departure of the two vessels. When Sir George
+Somers revisited the island, in quest of supplies for the Virginia
+colony, these culprits hovered about the landing-place, and succeeded in
+persuading another seaman, named Edward Chard, to join them, giving him
+the most seductive pictures of the ease and abundance in which they
+revelled.
+
+When the bark that bore Sir George's body to England had faded from the
+watery horizon, these three vagabonds walked forth in their majesty and
+might, the lords and sole inhabitants of these islands. For a time their
+little commonwealth went on prosperously and happily. They built a
+house, sowed corn, and the seeds of various fruits; and having plenty
+of hogs, wild fowl, and fish of all kinds, with turtle in abundance,
+carried on their tripartite sovereignty with great harmony and much
+feasting. All kingdoms, however, are doomed to revolution, convulsion,
+or decay; and so it fared with the empire of the three kings of Bermuda,
+albeit they were monarchs without subjects. In an evil hour, in their
+search after turtle, among the fissures of the rocks, they came upon a
+great treasure of ambergris, which had been cast on shore by the ocean.
+Beside a number of pieces of smaller dimensions, there was one great
+mass, the largest that had ever been known, weighing eighty pounds, and
+which of itself, according to the market value of ambergris in those
+days, was worth about nine or ten thousand pounds!
+
+From that moment, the happiness and harmony of the three kings of
+Bermuda were gone for ever. While poor devils, with nothing to share
+but the common blessings of the island, which administered to present
+enjoyment, but had nothing of convertible value, they were loving and
+united: but here was actual wealth, which would make them rich men,
+whenever they could transport it to a market.
+
+Adieu the delights of the island! They now became flat and insipid. Each
+pictured to himself the consequence he might now aspire to, in civilized
+life, could he once get there with this mass of ambergris. No longer a
+poor Jack Tar, frolicking in the low taveriis of Wapping, he might roll
+through London in his coach, and perchance arrive, like Whittington, at
+the dignity of Lord Mayor.
+
+With riches came envy and covetousness. Each was now for assuming the
+supreme power, and getting the monopoly of the ambergris. A civil war at
+length broke out: Chard and Waters defied each other to mortal combat,
+and the kingdom of the Bermudas was on the point of being deluged with
+royal blood. Fortunately, Carter took no part in the bloody feud.
+Ambition might have made him view it with secret exultation; for if
+either or both of his brother potentates were slain in the conflict,
+he would be a gainer in purse and ambergris. But he dreaded to be left
+alone in this uninhabited island, and to find himself the monarch of
+a solitude: so he secretly purloined and hid the weapons of the
+belligerent rivals, who, having no means of carrying on the war,
+gradually cooled down into a sullen armistice.
+
+The arrival of Governor More, with an overpowering force of sixty men,
+put an end to the empire. He took possession of the kingdom, in the
+name of the Somer Island Company, and forthwith proceeded to make a
+settlement. The three kings tacitly relinquished their sway, but stood
+up stoutly for their treasure. It was determined, however, that they
+had been fitted out at the expense, and employed in the service, of the
+Virginia Company; that they had found the ambergis while in the service
+of that company, and on that company's land; that the ambergis,
+therefore, belonged to that company, or rather to the Somer Island
+Company, in consequence of their recent purchase of the island, and all
+their appurtenances. Having thus legally established their right, and
+being moreover able to back it by might, the company laid the lion's paw
+upon the spoil; and nothing more remains on historic record of the Three
+Kings of Bermuda, and their treasure of ambergris.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The reader will now determine whether I am more extravagant than most
+of the commentators on Shakspeare, in my surmise that the story of Sir
+George Somers' shipwreck, and the subsequent occurrences that took place
+on the uninhabited island, may have furnished the bard with some of the
+elements of his drama of the Tempest. The tidings of the shipwreck, and
+of the incidents connected with it, reached England not long before the
+production of this drama, and made a great sensation there. A narrative
+of the whole matter, from which most of the foregoing particulars are
+extracted, was published at the time in London, in a pamphlet form, and
+could not fail to be eagerly perused by Shakspeare, and to make a vivid
+impression on his fancy. His expression, in the Tempest, of "the still
+vext Bermoothes," accords exactly with the storm-beaten character of
+those islands. The enchantments, too, with which he has clothed the
+island of Prospero, may they not be traced to the wild and superstitious
+notions entertained about the Bermudas? I have already cited two
+passages from a pamphlet published at the time, showing that they
+were esteemed "a most _prodigious_ and _inchanted_ place," and the
+"habitation of divells;" and another pamphlet, published shortly
+afterward, observes: "And whereas it is reported that this land of the
+Barmudas, with the islands about, (which are many, at least a hundred,)
+are inchanted and kept with evil and wicked spirits, it is a most idle
+and false report." [Footnote: "Newes from the Barmudas;" 1612.]
+
+The description, too, given in the same pamphlets, of the real beauty
+and fertility of the Bermudas, and of their serene and happy climate, so
+opposite to the dangerous and inhospitable character with which they had
+been stigmatized, accords with the eulogium of Sebastian on the island
+of Prospero:
+
+"Though this island seem to be desert, uninhabitable, and almost
+inaccessible, it must needs be of subtle, tender, and delicate
+temperance. The air breathes upon us here most sweetly. Here is every
+thing advantageous to life. How lush and lusty the grass looks! how
+green!"
+
+I think too, in the exulting consciousness of ease, security, and
+abundance felt by the late tempest-tossed mariners, while revelling in
+the plenteousness of the island, and their inclination to remain there,
+released from the labors, the cares, and the artificial restraints of
+civilized life, I can see something of the golden commonwealth of honest
+Gonzalo:
+
+  "Had I plantation of this isle, my lord,
+  And were the king of it, what would I do?
+  I' the commonwealth I would by contraries
+  Execute all things: for no kind of traffic
+  Would I admit; no name of magistrate;
+  Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,
+  And use of service, none; contract, succession,
+  Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none:
+  No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil:
+  No occupation; all men idle, all.
+
+  All things in common, nature should produce,
+  Without sweat or endeavor: Treason, felony,
+  Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine,
+  Would I not have; but nature should bring forth,
+  Of its own kind, all foizon, all abundance,
+  To feed my innocent people."
+
+But above all, in the three fugitive vagabonds who remained in
+possession of the island of Bermuda, on the departure of their comrades,
+and in their squabbles about supremacy, on the finding of their
+treasure, I see typified Sebastian, Trinculo, and their worthy companion
+Caliban:
+
+  "Trinculo, the king and all our company being drowned,
+we will inherit here."
+
+  "Monster, I will kill this man; his daughter and I will be king and
+queen, (save our graces!) and Trinculo and thyself shall be viceroys."
+
+I do not mean to hold up the incidents and characters in the narrative
+and in the play as parallel, or as being strikingly similar: neither
+would I insinuate that the narrative suggested the play; I would only
+suppose that Shakspeare, being occupied about that time on the drama of
+the Tempest, the main story of which, I believe, is of Italian origin,
+had many of the fanciful ideas of it suggested to his mind by the
+shipwreck of Sir George Somers on the "still vext Bermothes," and by the
+popular superstitions connected with these islands, and suddenly put in
+circulation by that event.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PELAYO AND THE MERCHANT'S DAUGHTER.
+
+BY THE AUTHOR OF THE SKETCH-BOOK.
+
+It is the common lamentation of Spanish historiographers, that, for an
+obscure and melancholy space of time immediately succeeding the conquest
+of their country by the Moslems, its history is a mere wilderness of
+dubious facts, groundless fables, and rash exaggerations. Learned men,
+in cells and cloisters, have worn out their lives in vainly endeavoring
+to connect incongruous events, and to account for startling
+improbabilities, recorded of this period. The worthy Jesuit, Padre
+Abarca, declares that, for more than forty years during which he had
+been employed in theological controversies, he had never found any so
+obscure and inexplicable as those which rise out of this portion of
+Spanish history, and that the only fruit of an indefatigable, prolix,
+and even prodigious study of the subject, was a melancholy and
+mortifying state of indecision. [Footnote: PADRE PEDRO ABARCA. Anales
+de Aragon, Anti Regno, F2.] During this apocryphal period, flourished
+PELAYO, the deliverer of Spain, whose name, like that of William
+Wallace, will ever be linked with the glory of his country, but linked,
+in like manner, by a bond in which fact and fiction are inextricably
+interwoven.
+
+The quaint old chronicle of the Moor Rasis, which, though wild and
+fanciful in the extreme, is frequently drawn upon for early facts by
+Spanish historians, professes to give the birth, parentage, and whole
+course of fortune of Pelayo, without the least doubt or hesitation. It
+makes him a son of the Duke of Cantabria, and descended, both by father
+and mother's side, from the Gothic kings of Spain. I shall pass over the
+romantic story of his childhood, and shall content myself with a scene
+of his youth, which was spent in a castle among the Pyrenees, under
+the eye of his widowed and noble-minded mother, who caused him to be
+instructed in everything befitting a cavalier of gentle birth. While the
+sons of the nobility were revelling amid the pleasures of a licentious
+court, and sunk in that vicious and effeminate indulgence which led
+to the perdition of unhappy Spain, the youthful Pelayo, in his rugged
+mountain school, was steeled to all kinds of hardy exercise. A great
+part of his time was spent in hunting the bears, the wild boars, and the
+wolves, with which the Pyrenees abounded; and so purely and chastely was
+he brought up, by his good lady mother, that, if the ancient chronicle
+from which I draw my facts may be relied on, he had attained his
+one-and-twentieth year, without having once sighed for woman!
+
+Nor were his hardy contests confined to the wild beasts of the forest.
+Occasionally he had to contend with adversaries of a more formidable
+character. The skirts and defiles of these border mountains were often
+infested by marauders from the Gallic plains of Gascony. The Gascons,
+says an old chronicler, were a people who used smooth words when
+expedient, but force when they had power, and were ready to lay their
+hands on every thing they met. Though poor, they were proud; for there
+was not one who did not pride himself on being a hijo-dalgo, or the son
+of somebody.
+
+At the head of a band of these needy hijodalgos of Gascony, was one
+Arnaud, a broken-down cavalier. He and four of his followers were well
+armed and mounted; the rest were a set of scamper-grounds on foot,
+furnished with darts and javelins. They were the terror of the border;
+here to-day and gone to-morrow; sometimes in one pass, sometimes in
+another. They would make sudden inroads into Spain, scour the roads,
+plunder the country, and were over the mountains and far away before a
+force could be collected to pursue them.
+
+Now it happened one day, that a wealthy burgher of Bordeaux, who was a
+merchant, trading with Biscay, set out on a journey for that province.
+As he intended to sojourn there for a season, he took with him his
+wife, who was a goodly dame, and his daughter, a gentle damsel, of
+marriageable age, and exceeding fair to look upon. He was attended by a
+trusty clerk from his comptoir, and a man servant; while another servant
+led a hackney, laden with bags of money, with which he intended to
+purchase merchandise.
+
+When the Gascons heard of this wealthy merchant and his convoy passing
+through the mountains, they thanked their stars, for they considered
+all peaceful men of traffic as lawful spoil, sent by providence for the
+benefit of hidalgos like themselves, of valor and gentle blood, who
+lived by the sword. Placing themselves in ambush, in a lonely defile, by
+which the travellers had to pass, they silently awaited their coming. In
+a little while they beheld them approaching. The merchant was a fair,
+portly man, in a buff surcoat and velvet cap. His looks bespoke the good
+cheer of his native city, and he was mounted on a stately, well-fed
+steed, while his wife and daughter paced gently on palfreys by his side.
+
+The travellers had advanced some distance in the defile, when the
+Bandoleros rushed forth and assailed them. The merchant, though but
+little used to the exercise of arms, and unwieldy in his form, yet made
+valiant defence, having his wife and daughter and money-bags at hazard.
+He was wounded in two places, and overpowered; one of his servants was
+slain, the other took to flight.
+
+The freebooters then began to ransack for spoil, but were disappointed
+at not finding the wealth they had expected. Putting their swords to the
+breast of the trembling merchant, they demanded where he had concealed
+his treasure, and learned from him of the hackney that was following,
+laden with, money. Overjoyed at this intelligence, they bound their
+captives to trees, and awaited the arrival of the golden spoil.
+
+On this same day, Pelayo was out with his huntsmen among the mountains,
+and had taken his stand on a rock, at a narrow pass, to await the
+sallying forth of a wild boar. Close by him was a page, conducting a
+horse, and at the saddle-bow hung his armor, for he was always prepared
+for fight among these border mountains. While thus posted, the servant
+of the merchant came flying from the robbers. On beholding Pelayo, he
+fell on his knees, and implored his life, for he supposed him to be
+one of the band. It was some time before he could be relieved from his
+terror, and made to tell his story. When Pelayo heard of the robbers,
+he concluded they were the crew of Gascon hidalgos, upon the scamper.
+Taking his armor from the page, he put on his helmet, slung his buckler
+round his neck, took lance in hand, and mounting his steed, compelled
+the trembling servant to guide him to the scene of action. At the same
+time he ordered the page to seek his huntsmen, and summon them to his
+assistance.
+
+When the robbers saw Pelayo advancing through the forest, with a single
+attendant on foot, and beheld his rich armor sparkling in the sun, they
+thought a new prize had fallen into their hands, and Arnaud and two of
+his companions, mounting their horses, advanced to meet him. As they
+approached, Pelayo stationed himself in a narrow pass between two rocks,
+where he could only be assailed in front, and bracing his buckler, and
+lowering his lance, awaited their coming.
+
+"Who and what are ye," cried he, "and what seek ye in this land?"
+
+"We are huntsmen," replied Arnaud, "and lo! our game runs into our
+toils!"
+
+"By my faith," replied Pelayo, "thou wilt find the game more readily
+roused than taken: have at thee for a villain!"
+
+So saying, he put spurs to his horse, and ran full speed upon him. The
+Gascon, not expecting so sudden an attack from a single horseman, was
+taken by surprise. He hastily couched his lance, but it merely glanced
+on the shield of Pelayo, who sent his own through the middle of his
+breast, and threw him out of his saddle to the earth. One of the other
+robbers made at Pelayo, and wounded him slightly in the side, but
+received a blow from the sword of the latter, which cleft his skull-cap,
+and sank into his brain. His companion, seeing him fall, put spurs to
+his steed, and galloped off through the forest.
+
+Beholding several other robbers on foot coming up, Pelayo returned to
+his station between the rocks, where he was assailed by them all at
+once. He received two of their darts on his buckler, a javelin razed his
+cuirass, and glancing down, wounded his horse. Pelayo then rushed forth,
+and struck one of the robbers dead: the others, beholding several
+huntsmen advancing, took to flight, but were pursued, and several of
+them taken.
+
+The good merchant of Bordeaux and his family beheld this scene with
+trembling and amazement, for never had they looked upon such feats of
+arms. They considered Don Pelayo as a leader of some rival band of
+robbers; and when the bonds were loosed by which they were tied to
+the trees, they fell at his feet and implored mercy. The females were
+soonest undeceived, especially the daughter; for the damsel was struck
+with the noble countenance and gentle demeanor of Pelayo, and said to
+herself: "Surely nothing evil can dwell in so goodly and gracious a
+form."
+
+Pelayo now sounded his horn, which echoed from rock to rock, and was
+answered by shouts and horns from various parts of the mountains. The
+merchant's heart misgave him at these signals, and especially when he
+beheld more than forty men gathering from glen and thicket. They were
+clad in hunters' dresses, and armed with boar-spears, darts, and
+hunting-swords, and many of them led hounds in long leashes. All this
+was a new and wild scene to the astonished merchant; nor were his fears
+abated, when he saw his servant approaching with the hackney, laden with
+money-bags; "for of a certainty," said he to himself, "this will be too
+tempting a spoil for these wild hunters of the mountains."
+
+Pelayo, however, took no more notice of the gold than if it had been
+so much dross; at which the honest burgher marvelled exceedingly. He
+ordered that the wounds of the merchant should be dressed, and his own
+examined. On taking off his cuirass, his wound was found to be but
+slight; but his men were so exasperated at seeing his blood, that
+they would have put the captive robbers to instant death, had he not
+forbidden them to do them any harm.
+
+The huntsmen now made a great fire at the foot of a tree, and bringing
+a boar which they had killed, cut off portions and roasted them, or
+broiled them on the coals. Then drawing forth loaves of bread from their
+wallets, they devoured their food half raw, with the hungry relish of
+huntsmen and mountaineers. The merchant, his wife, and daughter, looked
+at all this, and wondered, for they had never beheld so savage a repast.
+
+Pelayo then inquired of them if they did not desire to eat; they were
+too much in awe of him to decline, though they felt a loathing at the
+thought of partaking of this hunter's fare; but he ordered a linen cloth
+to be spread under the shade of a great oak, on the grassy margin of a
+clear running stream; and to their astonishment, they were served, not
+with the flesh of the boar, but with dainty cheer, such as the merchant
+had scarcely hoped to find out of the walls of his native city of
+Bordeaux.
+
+The good burgher was of a community renowned for gastronomic prowess:
+his fears having subsided, his appetite was now awakened, and he
+addressed himself manfully to the viands that were set before him. His
+daughter, however, could not eat: her eyes were ever and anon stealing
+to gaze on Pelayo, whom she regarded with gratitude for his protection,
+and admiration for his valor; and now that he had laid aside his helmet,
+and she beheld his lofty countenance, glowing with manly beauty,
+she thought him something more than mortal. The heart of the gentle
+donzella, says the ancient chronicler, was kind and yielding; and had
+Pelayo thought fit to ask the greatest boon that love and beauty could
+bestow--doubtless meaning her fair hand--she could not have had the
+cruelty to say him nay. Pelayo, however, had no such thoughts: the love
+of woman had never yet entered his heart; and though he regarded the
+damsel as the fairest maiden he had ever beheld, her beauty caused no
+perturbation in his breast.
+
+When the repast was over, Pelayo offered to conduct the merchant and
+his family through the defiles of the mountains, lest they should be
+molested by any of the scattered band of robbers. The bodies of the
+slain marauders were buried, and the corpse of the servant was laid upon
+one of the horses captured in the battle. Having formed their cavalcade,
+they pursued their way slowly up one of the steep and winding passes of
+the Pyrenees.
+
+Toward sunset, they arrived at the dwelling of a holy hermit. It was
+hewn out of the living rock; there was a cross over the door, and before
+it was a great spreading oak, with a sweet spring of water at its foot.
+The body of the faithful servant who had fallen in the defence of his
+lord, was buried close by the wall of this sacred retreat, and the
+hermit promised to perform masses for the repose of his soul. Then
+Pelayo obtained from the holy father consent that the merchant's wife
+and daughter should pass the night within his cell; and the hermit made
+beds of moss for them, and gave them his benediction; but the damsel
+found little rest, so much were her thoughts occupied by the youthful
+champion who had rescued her from death or dishonor.
+
+Pelayo, however, was visited by no such wandering of the mind; but,
+wrapping himself in his mantle, slept soundly by the fountain under the
+tree. At midnight, when every thing was buried in deep repose, he was
+awakened from his sleep and beheld the hermit before him, with the beams
+of the moon shining upon his silver hair and beard.
+
+"This is no time," said the latter, "to be sleeping; arise and listen to
+my words, and hear of the great work for which thou art chosen!"
+
+Then Pelayo arose and seated himself on a rock, and the hermit continued
+his discourse.
+
+"Behold," said he, "the ruin of Spain is at hand! It will be delivered
+into the hands of strangers, and will become a prey to the spoiler. Its
+children will be slain or carried into captivity; or such as may escape
+these evils, will harbor with the beasts of the forest or the eagles of
+the mountain. The thorn and bramble will spring up where now are seen
+the cornfield, the vine, and the olive; and hungry wolves will roam in
+place of peaceful flocks and herds. But thou, my son! tarry not thou
+to see these things, for thou canst not prevent them. Depart on a
+pilgrimage to the sepulchre of our blessed Lord in Palestine; purify
+thyself by prayer; enroll thyself in the order of chivalry, and prepare
+for the great work of the redemption of thy country; for to thee it will
+be given to raise it from the depth of its affliction."
+
+Pelayo would have inquired farther into the evils thus foretold, but the
+hermit rebuked his curiosity.
+
+"Seek not to know more," said he, "than heaven is pleased to reveal.
+Clouds and darkness cover its designs, and prophecy is never permitted
+to lift up but in part the veil that rests upon the future."
+
+The hermit ceased to speak, and Pelayo laid himself down again to take
+repose, but sleep was a stranger to his eyes.
+
+When the first rays of the rising sun shone upon the tops of the
+mountains, the travellers assembled round the fountain beneath the tree
+and made their morning's repast. Then, having received the benediction
+of the hermit, they departed in the freshness of the day, and descended
+along the hollow defiles leading into the interior of Spain. The good
+merchant was refreshed by sleep and by his morning's meal; and when he
+beheld his wife and daughter thus secure by his side, and the hackney
+laden with his treasure close behind him, his heart was light in his
+bosom, and he carolled a chanson as he went, and the woodlands echoed to
+his song. But Pelayo rode in silence, for he revolved in his mind the
+portentous words of the hermit; and the daughter of the merchant ever
+and anon stole looks at him full of tenderness and admiration, and deep
+sighs betrayed the agitation of her bosom.
+
+At length they came to the foot of the mountains, where the forests and
+the rocks terminated, and an open and secure country lay before the
+travellers. Here they halted, for their roads were widely different.
+When they came to part, the merchant and his wife were loud in thanks
+and benedictions, and the good burgher would fain have given Pelayo the
+largest of his sacks of gold; but the young man put it aside with a
+smile. "Silver and gold," said he, "need I not, but if I have deserved
+aught at thy hands, give me thy prayers, for the prayers of a good man
+are above all price."
+
+In the mean time the daughter had spoken never a word. At length she
+raised her eyes, which were filled with tears, and looked timidly at
+Pelayo, and her bosom throbbed; and after a violent struggle between
+strong affection and virgin modesty, her heart relieved itself by words.
+
+"Senor," said she, "I know that I am unworthy of the notice of so noble
+a cavalier; but suffer me to place this ring upon a finger of that hand
+which has so bravely rescued us from death; and when you regard it, you
+may consider it as a memorial of your own valor, and not of one who is
+too humble to be remembered by you."
+
+With these words, she drew a ring from her finger and put it upon the
+finger of Pelayo; and having done this, she blushed and trembled at her
+own boldness, and stood as one abashed, with her eyes cast down upon the
+earth.
+
+Pelayo was moved at the words of the simple maiden, and at the touch of
+her fair hand, and at her beauty, as she stood thus trembling and in
+tears before him; but as yet he knew nothing of woman, and his heart was
+free from the snares of love. "Amiga," (friend,) said he, "I accept thy
+present, and will wear it in remembrance of thy goodness;" so saying, he
+kissed her on the cheek.
+
+The damsel was cheered by these words, and hoped that she had awakened
+some tenderness in his bosom; but it was no such thing, says the grave
+old chronicler, for his heart was devoted to higher and more sacred
+matters; yet certain it is, that he always guarded well that ring.
+
+When they parted, Pelayo remained with his huntsmen on a cliff, watching
+that no evil befell them, until they were far beyond the skirts of the
+mountain; and the damsel often turned to look at him, until she could no
+longer discern him, for the distance and the tears that dimmed her eyes.
+
+And for that he had accepted her ring, says the ancient chronicler, she
+considered herself wedded to him in her heart, and would never marry;
+nor could she be brought to look with eyes of affection upon any other
+man; but for the true love which she bore Pelayo, she lived and died a
+virgin. And she composed a book which treated of love and chivalry,
+and the temptations of this mortal life; and one part discoursed of
+celestial matters, and it was called "The Contemplations of Love;"
+because at the time she wrote it, she thought of Pelayo, and of his
+having accepted her jewel and called her by the gentle appellation of
+"Amiga." And often thinking of him in tender sadness, and of her never
+having beheld him more, she would take the book and would read it as
+if in his stead; and while she repeated the words of love which it
+contained, she would endeavor to fancy them uttered by Pelayo, and that
+he stood before her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE KNIGHT OF MALTA.
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER
+
+
+SIR: In the course of a tour which I made in Sicily, in the days of my
+juvenility, I passed some little time at the ancient city of Catania,
+at the foot of Mount Ætna. Here I became acquainted with the Chevalier
+L----, an old Knight of Malta. It was not many years after the time that
+Napoleon had dislodged the knights from their island, and he still wore
+the insignia of his order. He was not, however, one of those reliques of
+that once chivalrous body, who had been described was "a few worn-out
+old men, creeping about certain parts of Europe, with the Maltese cross
+on their breasts;" on the contrary, though advanced in life, his form
+was still light and vigorous; he had a pale, thin, intellectual visage,
+with a high forehead, and a bright, visionary eye. He seemed to take a
+fancy to me, as I certainly did to him, and we soon became intimate,
+I visited him occasionally, at his apartments, in the wing of an old
+palace, looking toward Mount Ætna. He was an antiquary, a virtuoso, and
+a connoisseur. His rooms were decorated with mutilated statues, dug up
+from Grecian and Roman ruins; old vases, lachrymals, and sepulchral
+lamps. He had astronomical and chemical instruments, and black-letter
+books, in various languages. I found that he had dipped a little in
+chimerical studies and had a hankering after astrology and alchymy. He
+affected to believe in dreams and visions, and delighted in the fanciful
+Rosicrucian doctrines. I cannot persuade myself, however, that he really
+believed in all these: I rather think he loved to let his imagination
+carry him away into the boundless fairy land which they unfolded.
+
+In company with the chevalier, I took several excursions on horseback
+about the environs of Catania, and the picturesque skirts of Mount Etna.
+One of these led through a village, which had sprung up on the very
+tract of an ancient eruption, the houses being built of lava. At one
+time we passed, for some distance, along a narrow lane, between two high
+dead convent walls. It was a cut-throat-looking place, in a country
+where assassinations are frequent; and just about midway through it,
+we observed blood upon the pavement and the walls, as if a murder had
+actually been committed there.
+
+The chevalier spurred on his horse, until he had extricated himself
+completely from this suspicious neighborhood. He then observed, that it
+reminded him of a similar blind alley in Malta, infamous on account of
+the many assassinations that had taken place there; concerning one
+of which, he related a long and tragical story, that lasted until
+we reached Catania. It involved various circumstances of a wild and
+supernatural character, but which he assured me were handed down in
+tradition, and generally credited by the old inhabitants of Malta.
+
+As I like to pick up strange stories, and as I was particularly struck
+with several parts of this, I made a minute of it, on my return to my
+lodgings. The memorandum was lost, with several others of my travelling
+papers, and the story had faded from my mind, when recently, in perusing
+a French memoir, I came suddenly upon it, dressed up, it is true, in a
+very different manner, but agreeing in the leading facts, and given upon
+the word of that famous adventurer, the Count Cagliostro.
+
+I have amused myself, during a snowy day in the country, by rendering it
+roughly into English, for the entertainment of a youthful circle round
+the Christmas fire. It was well received by my auditors, who, however,
+are rather easily pleased. One proof of its merits is that it sent
+some of the youngest of them quaking to their beds, and gave them very
+fearful dreams. Hoping that it may have the same effect upon your
+ghost-hunting readers, I offer it, Mr. Editor, for insertion in your
+Magazine. I would observe, that wherever I have modified the French
+version of the Story, it has been in conformity to some recollection of
+the narrative of my friend, the Knight of Malta.
+
+Your obt. servt.,
+
+GEOFFREY CRAYON.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_THE GRAND PRIOR OF MINORCA,_
+
+A VERITABLE GHOST STORY.
+
+  "Keep my wits, heaven! They say spirits appear
+  To melancholy minds, and the graves open!"--FLETCHER.
+
+About the middle of the last century, while the Knights of Saint John of
+Jerusalem still maintained something of their ancient state and sway in
+the Island of Malta, a tragical event took place there, which is the
+groundwork of the following narrative.
+
+It may be as well to premise, that at the time we are treating of,
+the order of Saint John of Jerusalem, grown excessively wealthy, had
+degenerated from its originally devout and warlike character. Instead
+of being a hardy body of "monk-knights," sworn soldiers of the cross,
+fighting the Paynim in the Holy Land, or scouring the Mediterranean, and
+scourging the Barbary coasts with their galleys, or feeding the poor,
+and attending upon the sick at their hospitals, they led a life of
+luxury and libertinism, and were to be found in the most voluptuous
+courts of Europe. The order, in fact, had become a mode of providing
+for the needy branches of the Catholic aristocracy of Europe. "A
+commandery," we are told, was a splendid provision for a younger
+brother; and men of rank, however dissolute, provided they belonged
+to the highest aristocracy, became Knights of Malta, just as they did
+bishops, or colonels of regiments, or court chamberlains. After a brief
+Residence at Malta, the knights passed the rest of their time in their
+own countries, or only made a visit now and then to the island. While
+there, having but little military duty to perform, they beguiled their
+idleness by paying attentions to the fair.
+
+There was one circle of society, however, into which they could not
+obtain currency. This was composed of a few families of the old Maltese
+nobility, natives of the island. These families, not being permitted
+to enroll any of their members in the order, affected to hold no
+intercourse with its chevaliers; admitting none into their exclusive
+coteries but the Grand Master, whom they acknowledged as their
+sovereign, and the members of the chapter which composed his council.
+
+To indemnify themselves for this exclusion, the chevaliers carried their
+gallantries into the next class of society, composed of those who held
+civil, administrative, and judicial situations. The ladies of this class
+were called _honorate_, or honorables, to distinguish them from the
+inferior orders; and among them were many of superior grace, beauty, and
+fascination.
+
+Even in this more hospitable class, the chevaliers were not all equally
+favored. Those of Germany had the decided preference, owing to their
+fair and fresh complexions, and the kindliness of their manners: next
+to these came the Spanish cavaliers, on account of their profound and
+courteous devotion, and most discreet secrecy. Singular as it may seem,
+the chevaliers of France fared the worst. The Maltese ladies dreaded
+their volatility, and their proneness to boast of their amours, and
+shunned all entanglement with them. They were forced, therefore, to
+content themselves with conquests among females of the lower orders.
+They revenged themselves, after the gay French manner, by making the
+"honorate" the objects of all kinds of jests and mystifications; by
+prying into their tender affairs with the more favored chevaliers, and
+making them the theme of song and epigram.
+
+About this time, a French vessel arrived at Malta, bringing out a
+distinguished personage of the order of Saint John of Jerusalem,
+the Commander de Foulquerre, who came to solicit the post of
+commander-in-chief of the galleys. He was descended from an old and
+warrior line of French nobility, his ancestors having long been
+seneschals of Poitou, and claiming descent from the first counts of
+Angouleme.
+
+The arrival of the commander caused a little uneasiness among the
+peaceably inclined, for he bore the character, in the island, of being
+fiery, arrogant, and quarrelsome. He had already been three times at
+Malta, and on each visit had signalized himself by some rash and deadly
+affray.
+
+As he was now thirty-five years of age, however, it was hoped that time
+might have taken off the fiery edge of his spirit, and that he might
+prove more quiet and sedate than formerly. The commander set up an
+establishment befitting his rank and pretensions; for he arrogated to
+himself an importance greater even than that of the Grand Master. His
+house immediately became the rallying place of all the young French
+chevaliers. They informed him of all the slights they had experienced or
+imagined, and indulged their petulant and satirical vein at the expense
+of the honorate and their admirers. The chevaliers of other nations soon
+found the topics and tone of conversation at the commander's irksome and
+offensive, and gradually ceased to visit there. The commander remained
+the head of a national _clique_, who looked up to him as their model.
+If he was not as boisterous and quarrelsome as formerly, he had become
+haughty and overbearing. He was fond of talking over his past affairs of
+punctilio and bloody duel. When walking the streets, he was generally
+attended by a ruffling train of young French cavaliers, who caught his
+own air of assumption and bravado. These he would conduct to the scenes
+of his deadly encounters, point out the very spot where each fatal lunge
+had been given, and dwell vaingloriously on every particular.
+
+Under his tuition, the young French chevaliers began to add bluster and
+arrogance to their former petulance and levity; they fired up on the
+most trivial occasions, particularly with those who had been most
+successful with the fair; and would put on the most intolerable
+drawcansir airs. The other chevaliers conducted themselves with all
+possible forbearance and reserve; but they saw it would be impossible to
+keep on long, in this manner, without coming to an open rupture.
+
+Among the Spanish cavaliers was one named Don Luis de Lima Vasconcellos.
+He was distantly related to the Grand Master; and had been enrolled at
+an early age among his pages, but had been rapidly promoted by him,
+until, at the age of twenty-six, he had been given the richest Spanish
+commandery in the order. He had, moreover, been fortunate with the fair,
+with one of whom, the most beautiful honorata of Malta, he had long
+maintained the most tender correspondence.
+
+The character, rank, and connexions of Don Luis put him on a par with
+the imperious Commander de Foulquerre, and pointed him out as a leader
+and champion to his countrymen. The Spanish chevaliers repaired to him,
+therefore, in a body; represented all the grievances they had sustained,
+and the evils they apprehended, and urged him to use his influence with
+the commander and his adherents to put a stop to the growing abuses.
+
+Don Luis was gratified by this mark of confidence and esteem on the part
+of his countrymen, and promised to have an interview with the Commander
+de Foulquerre on the subject. He resolved to conduct himself with
+the utmost caution and delicacy on the occasion; to represent to
+the commander the evil consequences which might result from the
+inconsiderate conduct of the young French chevaliers, and to entreat him
+to exert the great influence he so deservedly possessed over them, to
+restrain their excesses. Don Luis was aware, however, of the peril that
+attended any interview of the kind with this imperious and fractious
+man, and apprehended, however it might commence, that it would terminate
+in a duel. Still, it was an affair of honor, in which Castilian dignity
+was concerned; beside, he had a lurking disgust at the overbearing
+manners of De Foulquerre, and perhaps had been somewhat offended by
+certain intrusive attentions which he had presumed to pay to the
+beautiful honorata.
+
+It was now Holy Week; a time too sacred for worldly feuds and passions,
+especially in a community under the dominion of a religious order; it
+was agreed, therefore, that the dangerous interview in question should
+not take place until after the Easter holidays. It is probable, from
+subsequent circumstances, that the Commander de Foulquerre had some
+information of this arrangement among the Spanish chevaliers, and was
+determined to be beforehand, and to mortify the pride of their champion,
+who was thus preparing to read him a lecture. He chose Good Friday for
+his purpose. On this sacred day, it is customary in Catholic countries
+to make a tour of all the churches, offering up prayers in each. In
+every Catholic church, as is well known, there is a vessel of holy water
+near the door. In this, every one, on entering, dips his fingers, and
+makes therewith the sign of the cross on his forehead and breast. An
+office of gallantry, among the young Spaniards, is to stand near the
+door, dip their hands in the holy vessel, and extend them courteously
+and respectfully to any lady of their acquaintance who may enter; who
+thus receives the sacred water at second hand, on the tips of her
+fingers, and proceeds to cross herself, with all due decorum. The
+Spaniards, who are the most jealous of lovers, are impatient when this
+piece of devotional gallantry is proffered to the object of their
+affections by any other hand: on Good Friday, therefore, when a lady
+makes a tour of the churches, it is the usage among them for the
+inamorato to follow her from church to church, so as to present her the
+holy water at the door of each; thus testifying his own devotion, and at
+the same time preventing the officious services of a rival.
+
+On the day in question, Don Luis followed the beautiful honorata, to
+whom, as has already been observed, he had long been devoted. At the
+very first church she visited, the Commander de Foulquerre was stationed
+at the portal, with several of the young French chevaliers about him.
+Before Don Luis could offer her the holy water, he was anticipated by
+the commander, who thrust himself between them, and, while he performed
+the gallant office to the lady, rudely turned his back upon her admirer,
+and trod upon his feet. The insult was enjoyed by the young Frenchmen
+who were present: it was too deep and grave to be forgiven by Spanish
+pride; and at once put an end to all Don Luis' plans of caution and
+forbearance. He repressed his passion for the moment, however, and
+waited until all the parties left the church; then, accosting the
+commander with an air of coolness and unconcern, he inquired after his
+health, and asked to what church he proposed making his second visit.
+"To the Magisterial Church of Saint John." Don Luis offered to conduct
+him thither, by the shortest route. His offer was accepted, apparently
+without suspicion, and they proceeded together. After walking some
+distance, they entered a long, narrow lane, without door or window
+opening upon it, called the "Strada Stretta," or narrow street. It was a
+street in which duels were tacitly permitted, or connived at, in Malta,
+and were suffered to pass as accidental encounters. Every where else
+they were prohibited. This restriction had been instituted to diminish
+the number of duels, formerly so frequent in Malta. As a farther
+precaution to render these encounters less fatal, it was an offence,
+punishable with death, for any one to enter this street armed with
+either poniard or pistol. It was a lonely, dismal street, just wide
+enough for two men to stand upon their guard, and cross their swords;
+few persons ever traversed it, unless with some sinister design; and on
+any preconcerted duello, the seconds posted themselves at each end, to
+stop all passengers, and prevent interruption.
+
+In the present instance, the parties had scarce entered the street,
+when Don Luis drew his sword, and called upon the commander to defend
+himself.
+
+De Foulquerre was evidently taken by surprise: he drew back, and
+attempted to expostulate; but Don Luis persisted in defying him to the
+combat.
+
+After a second or two, he likewise drew his sword, but immediately
+lowered the point.
+
+"Good Friday!" ejaculated he, shaking his head: "one word with you; it
+is full six years since I have been in a confessional: I am shocked at
+the state of my conscience; but within three days--that is to say, on
+Monday next--"
+
+Don Luis would listen to nothing. Though naturally of a peaceable
+disposition, he had been stung to fury, and people of that character,
+when once incensed, are deaf to reason. He compelled the commander to
+put himself on his guard. The latter, though a man accustomed to brawl
+in battle, was singularly dismayed. Terror was visible in all his
+features. He placed himself with his back to the wall, and the weapons
+were crossed. The contest was brief and fatal. At the very first thrust,
+the sword of Don Luis passed through the body of his antagonist. The
+commander staggered to the wall, and leaned against it.
+
+"On Good Friday!" ejaculated he again, with a failing voice, and
+despairing accents. "Heaven pardon you!" added he; "take my sword to
+Têtefoulques, and have a hundred masses performed in the chapel of the
+castle, for the repose of my soul!" With these words he expired.
+
+The fury of Don Luis was at an end. He stood aghast, gazing at the
+bleeding body of the commander. He called to mind the prayer of the
+deceased for three days' respite, to make his peace with heaven; he had
+refused it; had sent him to the grave, with all his sins upon his head!
+His conscience smote him to the core; he gathered up the sword of the
+commander, which he had been enjoined to take to Têtefoulques, and
+hurried from the fatal Strada Stretta.
+
+The duel of course made a great noise in Malta, but had no injurious
+effect upon the worldly fortunes of Don Luis. He made a full declaration
+of the whole matter, before the proper authorities; the Chapter of
+the Order considered it one of those casual encounters of the Strada
+Stretta, which were mourned over, but tolerated; the public, by whom
+the late commander had been generally detested, declared that he had
+deserved his fate. It was but three days after the event, that Don
+Luis was advanced to one of the highest dignities of the Order, being
+invested by the Grand Master with the priorship of the kingdom of
+Minorca.
+
+From that time forward, however, the whole character and conduct of Don
+Luis underwent a change. He became a prey to a dark melancholy, which
+nothing could assuage. The most austere piety, the severest penances,
+had no effect in allaying the horror which preyed upon his mind. He was
+absent for a long time from Malta; having gone, it was said, on remote
+pilgrimages: when he returned, he was more haggard than ever. There
+seemed something mysterious and inexplicable in this disorder of his
+mind. The following is the revelation made by himself, of the horrible
+visions, or chimeras, by which he was haunted:
+
+"When I had made my declaration before the Chapter," said he, "and my
+provocations were publicly known, I had made my peace with man; but it
+was not so with God, nor with my confessor, nor with my own conscience.
+My act was doubly criminal, from the day on which it was committed,
+and from my refusal to a delay of three days, for the victim of my
+resentment to receive the sacraments. His despairing ejaculation, 'Good
+Friday! Good Friday!' continually rang in my ears. 'Why did I not grant
+the respite!' cried I to myself; 'was it not enough to kill the body,
+but must I seek to kill the soul!'
+
+"On the night of the following Friday, I started suddenly from my sleep.
+An unaccountable horror was upon me. I looked wildly around. It seemed
+as if I were not in my apartment, nor in my bed, but in the fatal Strada
+Stretta, lying on the pavement. I again saw the commander leaning
+against the wall; I again heard his dying words: 'Take my sword to
+Têtefoulques, and have a hundred masses performed in the chapel of the
+castle, for the repose of my soul!'
+
+"On the following night, I caused one of my servants to sleep in the
+same room with me. I saw and heard nothing, either on that night, or any
+of the nights following, until the next Friday; when I had again the
+same vision, with this difference, that my valet seemed to be lying at
+some distance from me on the pavement of the Strada Stretta. The vision
+continued to be repeated on every Friday night, the commander always
+appearing in the same manner, and uttering the same words: 'Take my
+sword to Têtefoulques, and have a hundred masses performed in the chapel
+of the castle for the repose of my soul!' On questioning my servant on
+the subject, he stated, that on these occasions he dreamed that he was
+lying in a very narrow street, but he neither saw nor heard any thing of
+the commander.
+
+"I knew nothing of this Têtefoulques, whither the defunct was so urgent
+I should carry his sword. I made inquiries, therefore, concerning it
+among the French chevaliers. They informed me that it was an old castle,
+situated about four leagues from Poitiers, in the midst of a forest.
+It had been built in old times, several centuries since, by Foulques
+Taillefer, (or Fulke Hackiron,) a redoubtable, hard-fighting Count of
+Angouleme, who gave it to an illegitimate son, afterward created Grand
+Seneschal of Poitou, which son became the pro genitor of the Foulquerres
+of Têtefoulques, hereditary Seneschals of Poitou. They farther
+informed me, that strange stories were told of this old castle, in the
+surrounding country, and that it contained many curious reliques. Among
+these, were the arms of Foulques Taillefer, together with all those of
+the warriors he had slain; and that it was an immemorial usage with the
+Foulquerres to have the weapons deposited there which they had wielded
+either in war or in single combat. This, then, was the reason of the
+dying injunction of the commander respecting his sword. I carried this
+weapon with me, wherever I went, but still I neglected to comply with
+his request.
+
+"The visions still continued to harass me with undiminished horror.
+I repaired to Rome, where I confessed myself to the Grand Cardinal
+penitentiary, and informed him of the terrors with which I was haunted.
+He promised me absolution, after I should have performed certain acts of
+penance, the principal of which was, to execute the dying request of the
+commander, by carrying the sword to Têtefoulques, and having the hundred
+masses performed in the chapel of the castle for the repose of his soul.
+
+"I set out for France as speedily as possible, and made no delay in my
+journey. On arriving at Poitiers, I found that the tidings of the death
+of the commander had reached there, but had caused no more affliction
+than among the people of Malta. Leaving my equipage in the town, I
+put on the garb of a pilgrim, and taking a guide, set out on foot
+for Têtefoulques, Indeed the roads in this part of the country were
+impracticable for carriages.
+
+"I found the castle of Têtefoulques a grand but gloomy and dilapidated
+pile. All the gates were closed, and there reigned over the whole place
+an air of almost savage loneliness and desertion. I had understood that
+its only inhabitant were the concierge, or warder, and a kind of hermit
+who had charge of the chapel. After ringing for some time at the gate,
+I at length succeeded in bringing forth the warder, who bowed with
+reverence to my pilgrim's garb. I begged him to conduct me to the
+chapel, that being the end of my pilgrimage. We found the hermit there,
+chanting the funeral service; a dismal sound to one who came to perform
+a penance for the death of a member of the family. When he had ceased
+to chant, I informed him that I came to accomplish an obligation of
+conscience, and that I wished him to perform a hundred masses for the
+repose of the soul of the commander. He replied that, not being in
+orders, he was not authorized to perform mass, but that he would
+willingly undertake to see that my debt of conscience was discharged. I
+laid my offering on the altar, and would have placed the sword of the
+commander there, likewise. 'Hold!' said the hermit, with a melancholy
+shake of the head,'this is no place for so deadly a weapon, that has so
+often been bathed in Christian blood. Take it to the armory; you will
+find there trophies enough of like character. It is a place into which I
+never enter.'
+
+"The warder here took up the theme abandoned by the peaceful man of
+God. He assured me that I would see in the armory the swords of all the
+warrior race of Foulquerres, together with those of the enemies over
+whom they had triumphed. This, he observed, had been a usage kept
+up since the time of Mellusine, and of her husband, Geoffrey a la
+Grand-dent, or Geoffrey with the Great-tooth.
+
+"I followed the gossiping warder to the armory. It was a great dusty
+hall, hung round with Gothic-looking portraits, of a stark line of
+warriors, each with his weapon, and the weapons of those he had slain in
+battle, hung beside his picture. The most conspicuous portrait was that
+of Foulques Taillefer, (Fulke Hackiron,) Count of Angouleme, and founder
+of the castle. He was represented at full-length, armed cap-a-pie, and
+grasping a huge buckler, on which were emblazoned three lions passant.
+The figure was so striking, that it seemed ready to start from the
+canvas: and I observed beneath this picture, a trophy composed of many
+weapons, proofs of the numerous triumphs of this hard-fighting old
+cavalier. Beside the weapons connected with the portraits, there were
+swords of all shapes, sizes, and centuries, hung round the hall; with
+piles of armor, placed as it were in effigy.
+
+"On each side of an immense chimney, were suspended the portraits of the
+first seneschal of Poitou (the illegitimate son of Foulques Taillefer)
+and his wife Isabella de Lusignan; the progenitors of the grim race of
+Foulquerres that frowned around. They had the look of being perfect
+likenesses; and as I gazed on them, I fancied I could trace in their
+antiquated features some family resemblance to their unfortunate
+descendant, whom I had slain! This was a dismal neighborhood, yet the
+armory was the only part of the castle that had a habitable air; so I
+asked the warder whether he could not make a fire, and give me something
+for supper there, and prepare me a bed in one corner.
+
+"'A fire and a supper you shall have, and that cheerfully, most worthy
+pilgrim,' said he; 'but as to a bed, I advise you to come and sleep in
+my chamber.'
+
+"'Why so?' inquired I; 'why shall I not sleep in this hall?'
+
+"'I have my reasons; I will make a bed for you close to mine.'
+
+"I made no objections, for I recollected that it was Friday, and I
+dreaded the return of my vision. He brought in billets of wood, kindled
+a fire in the great overhanging chimney, and then went forth to prepare
+my supper. I drew a heavy chair before the fire, and seating myself in
+it, gazed muzingly round upon the portraits of the Foulquerres, and the
+antiquated armor and weapons, the mementos of many a bloody deed. As
+the day declined, the smoky draperies of the hall gradually became
+confounded with the dark ground of the paintings, and the lurid gleams
+from the chimney only enabled me to see visages staring at me from the
+gathering darkness. All this was dismal in the extreme, and somewhat
+appalling; perhaps it was the state of my conscience that rendered me
+peculiarly sensitive, and prone to fearful imaginings.
+
+"At length the warder brought in my supper. It consisted of a dish of
+trout, and some crawfish taken in the fosse of the castle. He procured
+also a bottle of wine, which he informed me was wine of Poitou. I
+requested him to invite the hermit to join me in my repast; but the holy
+man sent back word that he allowed himself nothing but roots and herbs,
+cooked with water. I took my meal, therefore, alone, but prolonged it as
+much as possible, and sought to cheer my drooping spirits by the wine of
+Poitou, which I found very tolerable.
+
+"When supper was over, I prepared for my evening devotions. I have
+always been very punctual in reciting my breviary; it is the prescribed
+and bounden duty of all chevaliers of the religious orders; and I can
+answer for it, is faithfully performed by those of Spain. I accordingly
+drew forth from my pocket a small missal and a rosary, and told the
+warder he need only designate to me the way to his chamber, where I
+could come and rejoin him, when I had finished my prayers.
+
+"He accordingly pointed out a winding stair-case, opening from the hall.
+'You will descend this stair-case,' said he, 'until you come to the
+fourth landing-place, where you enter a vaulted passage, terminated by
+an arcade, with a statue of the blessed Jeanne of France; you cannot
+help finding my room, the door of which I will leave open; it is the
+sixth door from the landing-place. I advise you not to remain in this
+hall after midnight. Before that hour, you will hear the hermit ring the
+bell, in going the rounds of the corridors. Do not linger here after
+that signal.'
+
+"The warder retired, and I commenced my devotions. I continued at them
+earnestly; pausing from time to time to put wood upon the fire. I did
+not dare to look much around me, for I felt myself becoming a prey to
+fearful fancies. The pictures appeared to become animated. If I regarded
+one attentively, for any length of time, it seemed to move the eyes and
+lips. Above all, the portraits of the Grand Seneschal and his lady,
+which hung on each side of the great chimney, the progenitors of the
+Foulquerres of Têtefoulque, regarded me, I thought, with angry and
+baleful eyes: I even fancied they exchanged significant glances with
+each other. Just then a terrible blast of wind shook all the casements,
+and, rushing through the hall, made a fearful rattling and clashing
+among the armor. To my startled fancy, it seemed something supernatural.
+
+"At length I heard the bell of the hermit, and hastened to quit the
+hall. Taking a solitary light, which stood on the supper-table, I
+descended the winding stair-case; but before I had reached the vaulted
+passage leading to the statue of the blessed Jeanne of France, a blast
+of wind extinguished my taper. I hastily remounted the stairs, to light
+it again at the chimney; but judge of my feelings, when, on arriving at
+the entrance to the armory, I beheld the Seneschal and his lady, who had
+descended from their frames, and seated themselves on each side of the
+fire-place! "'Madam, my love,' said the Seneschal, with great formality,
+and in antiquated phrase, 'what think you of the presumption of this
+Castilian, who comes to harbor himself and make wassail in this our
+castle, after having slain our descendant, the commander, and that
+without granting him time for confession?'
+
+"'Truly, my lord,' answered the female spectre, with no less stateliness
+of manner, and with great asperity of tone; 'truly, my lord, I opine
+that this Castilian did a grievous wrong in this encounter; and he
+should never be suffered to depart hence, without your throwing him the
+gauntlet.' I paused to hear no more, but rushed again down-stairs, to
+seek the chamber of the warder. It was impossible to find it in the
+darkness, and in the perturbation of my mind. After an hour and a half
+of fruitless search, and mortal horror and anxieties, I endeavored
+to persuade myself that the day was about to break, and listened
+impatiently for the crowing of the cock; for I thought if I could hear
+his cheerful note, I should be reassured; catching, in the disordered
+state of my nerves, at the popular notion that ghosts never appear after
+the first crowing of the cock.
+
+"At length I rallied myself, and endeavored to shake off the vague
+terrors which haunted me. I tried to persuade myself that the two
+figures which I had seemed to see and hear, had existed only in my
+troubled imagination. I still had the end of the candle in my hand, and
+determined to make another effort to re-light it, and find my way to
+bed; for I was ready to sink with fatigue. I accordingly sprang up the
+stair-case, three steps at a time, stopped at the door of the armory,
+and peeped cautiously in. The two Gothic figures were no longer in the
+chimney corners, but I neglected to notice whether they had reascended
+to their frames. I entered, and made desperately for the fire-place, but
+scarce had I advanced three strides, when Messire Foolques Taillefer
+stood before me, in the centre of the hall, armed cap-à-pie, and
+standing in guard, with the point of his sword silently presented to
+me. I would have retreated to the stair-case, but the door of it was
+occupied by the phantom figure of an esquire, who rudely flung a
+gauntlet in my face. Driven to fury, I snatched down a sword from the
+wall: by chance, it was that of the commander which I had placed there.
+I rushed upon my fantastic adversary, and seemed to pierce him through
+and through; but at the same time I felt as if something pierced my
+heart, burning like a red-hot iron. My blood inundated the hall, and I
+fell senseless.
+
+"When I recovered consciousness, it was broad day, and I found myself in
+a small chamber, attended by the warder and the hermit. The former told
+me that on the previous night, he had awakened long after the midnight
+hour, and perceiving that I had not come to his chamber, he had
+furnished himself with a vase of holy water, and set out to seek me. He
+found me stretched senseless on the pavement of the armory, and bore me
+to this room. I spoke of my wound, and of the quantity of blood that I
+had lost. He shook his head, and knew nothing about it; and to my
+surprise, on examination, I found myself perfectly sound and unharmed.
+The wound and blood, therefore, had been all delusion. Neither the
+warder nor the hermit put any questions to me, but advised me to leave
+the castle as soon as possible. I lost no time in complying with their
+counsel, and felt my heart relieved from an oppressive weight, as I left
+the gloomy and fate-bound battlements of Têtefoulques behind me.
+
+"I arrived at Bayonne, on my way to Spain, on the following Friday. At
+midnight I was startled from my sleep, as I had formerly been; but it
+was no longer by the vision of the dying commander. It was old Foulques
+Taillefer who stood before me, armed cap-à-pie, and presenting the point
+of his sword. I made the sign of the cross, and the spectre vanished,
+but I received the same red-hot thrust in the heart which I had felt in
+the armory, and I seemed to be bathed in blood. I would have called out,
+or have arisen from my bed and gone in quest of succor, but I could
+neither speak nor stir. This agony endured until the crowing of the
+cock, when I fell asleep again; but the next day I was ill, and in a
+most pitiable state. I have continued to be harassed by the same vision
+every Friday night; no acts of penitence and devotion have been able to
+relieve me from it; and it is only a lingering hope in divine mercy,
+that sustains me, and enables me to support so lamentable a visitation."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Grand Prior of Minorca wasted gradually away under this constant
+remorse of conscience, and this horrible incubus. He died some time
+after having revealed the preceding particulars of his case, evidently
+the victim of a diseased imagination.
+
+The above relation has been rendered, in many parts literally, from the
+French memoir, in which it is given as a true story: if so, it is one of
+those instances in which truth is more romantic than fiction.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LEGEND OF
+THE ENGULPHED CONVENT.
+
+BY GEOFFREY CRAYON, GENT.
+
+At the dark and melancholy period when Don Roderick the Goth and his
+chivalry were overthrown on the banks of the Guadalete, and all Spain
+was overrun by the Moors, great was the devastation of churches and
+convents throughout that pious kingdom. The miraculous fate of one of
+those holy piles is thus recorded in one of the authentic legends of
+those days.
+
+On the summit of a hill, not very distant from the capital city of
+Toledo, stood an ancient convent and chapel, dedicated to the invocation
+of Saint Benedict, and inhabited by a sisterhood of Benedictine nuns.
+This holy asylum was confined to females of noble lineage. The younger
+sisters of the highest families were here given in religious marriage to
+their Saviour, in order that the portions of their elder sisters might
+be increased, and they enabled to make suitable matches on earth, or
+that the family wealth might go undivided to elder brothers, and the
+dignity of their ancient houses be protected from decay. The convent was
+renowned, therefore, for enshrining within its walls a sisterhood of the
+purest blood, the most immaculate virtue, and most resplendent beauty,
+of all Gothic Spain.
+
+When the Moors overran the kingdom, there was nothing that more
+excited their hostility than these virgin asylums. The very sight of a
+convent-spire was sufficient to set their Moslem blood in a foment, and
+they sacked it with as fierce a zeal as though the sacking of a nunnery
+were a sure passport to Elysium.
+
+Tidings of such outrages committed in various parts of the kingdom
+reached this noble sanctuary and filled it with dismay. The danger
+came nearer and nearer; the infidel hosts were spreading all over the
+country; Toledo itself was captured; there was no flying from the
+convent, and no security within its walls.
+
+In the midst of this agitation, the alarm was given one day that a great
+band of Saracens were spurring across the plain. In an instant the whole
+convent was a scene of confusion. Some of the nuns wrung their fair
+hands at the windows; others waved their veils and uttered shrieks from
+the tops of the towers, vainly hoping to draw relief from a country
+over-run by the foe. The sight of these innocent doves thus fluttering
+about their dove-cote, but increased the zealot fury of the whiskered
+Moors. They thundered at the portal, and at every blow the ponderous
+gates trembled on their hinges.
+
+The nuns now crowded round the abbess. They had been accustomed to look
+up to her as all-powerful, and they now implored her protection. The
+mother abbess looked with a rueful eye upon the treasures of beauty
+and vestal virtue exposed to such imminent peril. Alas! how was she to
+protect them from the spoiler! She had, it is true, experienced many
+signal inter-positions of providence in her individual favor. Her early
+days had been passed amid the temptations of a court, where her virtue
+had been purified by repeated trials, from none of which had she escaped
+but by a miracle. But were miracles never to cease? Could she hope that
+the marvelous protection shown to herself would be extended to a
+whole sisterhood? There was no other resource. The Moors were at the
+threshold; a few moments more and the convent would be at their mercy.
+Summoning her nuns to follow her, she hurried into the chapel; and
+throwing herself on her knees before the image of the blessed Mary, "Oh,
+holy Lady!" exclaimed she, "oh, most pure and immaculate of virgins!
+thou seest our extremity. The ravager is at the gate, and there is none
+on earth to help us! Look down with pity, and grant that the earth may
+gape and swallow us rather than that our cloister vows should suffer
+violation!"
+
+The Moors redoubled their assault upon the portal; the gates gave way,
+with a tremendous crash; a savage yell of exultation arose; when of a
+sudden the earth yawned; down sank the convent, with its cloisters, its
+dormitories, and all its nuns. The chapel tower was the last that sank,
+the bell ringing forth a peal of triumph in the very teeth of the
+infidels.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Forty years had passed and gone, since the period of this miracle. The
+subjugation of Spain was complete. The Moors lorded it over city and
+country; and such of the Christian population as remained, and were
+permitted to exercise their religion, did it in humble resignation to
+the Moslem sway.
+
+At this time, a Christian cavalier, of Cordova, hearing that a patriotic
+band of his countrymen had raised the standard of the cross in the
+mountains of the Asturias, resolved to join them, and unite in breaking
+the yoke of bondage. Secretly arming himself, and caparisoning his
+steed, he set forth from Cordova, and pursued his course by unfrequented
+mule-paths, and along the dry channels made by winter torrents. His
+spirit burned with indignation, whenever, on commanding a view over a
+long sweeping plain, he beheld the mosque swelling in the distance, and
+the Arab horsemen careering about, as if the rightful lords of the soil.
+Many a deep-drawn sigh, and heavy groan, also, did the good cavalier
+utter, on passing the ruins of churches and convents desolated by the
+conquerors.
+
+It was on a sultry midsummer evening, that this wandering cavalier, in
+skirting a hill thickly covered with forest, heard the faint tones of a
+vesper bell sounding melodiously in the air, and seeming to come from
+the summit of the hill. The cavalier crossed himself with wonder, at
+this unwonted and Christian sound. He supposed it to proceed from one
+of those humble chapels and hermitages permitted to exist through the
+indulgence of the Moslem conquerors. Turning his steed up a narrow
+path of the forest, he sought this sanctuary, in hopes of finding a
+hospitable shelter for the night. As he advanced, the trees threw a deep
+gloom around him, and the bat flitted across his path. The bell ceased
+to toll, and all was silence.
+
+Presently a choir of female voices came stealing sweetly through the
+forest, chanting the evening service, to the solemn accompaniment of
+an organ. The heart of the good cavalier melted at the sound, for it
+recalled the happier days of his country. Urging forward his weary
+steed, he at length arrived at a broad grassy area, on the summit of the
+hill, surrounded by the forest. Here the melodious voices rose in full
+chorus, like the swelling of the breeze; but whence they came, he could
+not tell. Sometimes they were before, sometimes behind him; sometimes in
+the air, sometimes as if from within the bosom of the earth. At length
+they died away, and a holy stillness settled on the place.
+
+The cavalier gazed around with bewildered eye. There was neither chapel
+nor convent, nor humble hermitage, to be seen; nothing but a moss-grown
+stone pinnacle, rising out of the centre of the area, surmounted by a
+cross. The greensward around appeared to have been sacred from the tread
+of man or beast, and the surrounding trees bent toward the cross, as if
+in adoration.
+
+The cavalier felt a sensation of holy awe. He alighted and tethered
+his steed on the skirts of the forest, where he might crop the tender
+herbage; then approaching the cross, he knelt and poured forth his
+evening prayers before this relique of the Christian days of Spain.
+His orisons being concluded, he laid himself down at the foot of the
+pinnacle, and reclining his head against one of its stones, fell into a
+deep sleep.
+
+About midnight, he was awakened by the tolling of a bell, and found
+himself lying before the gate of an ancient convent. A train of nuns
+passed by, each bearing a taper. The cavalier rose and followed them
+into the chapel; in the centre of which was a bier, on which lay the
+corpse of an aged nun. The organ performed a solemn requiem: the nuns
+joining in chorus. When the funeral service was finished, a melodious
+voice chanted, "_Requiescat in pace!_"--"May she rest in peace!" The
+lights immediately vanished; the whole passed away as a dream; and the
+cavalier found himself at the foot of the cross, and beheld, by the
+faint rays of the rising moon, his steed quietly grazing near him.
+
+When the day dawned, the cavalier descended the hill, and following the
+course of a small brook, came to a cave, at the entrance of which was
+seated an ancient man, clad in hermit's garb, with rosary and cross,
+and a beard that descended to his girdle. He was one of those holy
+anchorites permitted by the Moors to live unmolested in dens and caves,
+and humble hermitages, and even to practise the rites of their religion.
+The cavalier checked his horse, and dismounting, knelt and craved a
+benediction. He then related all that had befallen him in the night, and
+besought the hermit to explain the mystery.
+
+"What thou hast heard and seen, my son," replied the other, "is but type
+and shadow of the woes of Spain."
+
+He then related the foregoing story of the miraculous deliverance of the
+convent.
+
+"Forty years," added the holy man, "have elapsed since this event, yet
+the bells of that sacred edifice are still heard, from time to time,
+sounding from under ground, together with the pealing of the organ, and
+the chanting of the choir. The Moors avoid this neighborhood, as haunted
+ground, and the whole place, as thou mayest perceive, has become covered
+with a thick and lonely forest."
+
+The cavalier listened with wonder to the story of this engulphed
+convent, as related by the holy man. For three days and nights did they
+keep vigils beside the cross; but nothing more was to be seen of nun or
+convent. It is supposed that, forty years having elapsed, the natural
+lives of all the nuns were finished, and that the cavalier had beheld
+the obsequies of the last of the sisterhood. Certain it is, that from
+that time, bell, and organ, and choral chant have never more been heard.
+
+The mouldering pinnacle, surmounted by the cross, still remains an
+object of pious pilgrimage. Some say that it anciently stood in front
+of the convent, but others assert that it was the spire of the sacred
+edifice, and that, when the main body of the building sank, this
+remained above ground, like the top-mast of some tall ship that
+has foundered. These pious believers maintain, that the convent is
+miraculously preserved entire in the centre of the mountain, where, if
+proper excavations were made, it would be found, with all its treasures,
+and monuments, and shrines, and reliques, and the tombs of its virgin
+nuns.
+
+Should any one doubt the truth of this marvelous interposition of the
+Virgin, to protect the vestal purity of her votaries, let him read the
+excellent work entitled "España Triumphante," written by Padre Fray
+Antonio de Sancta Maria, a bare-foot friar of the Carmelite order, and
+he will doubt no longer.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE COUNT VAN HORN.
+
+
+During the minority of Louis XV., while the Duke of Orleans was Regent
+of France, a young Flemish nobleman, the Count Antoine Joseph Van Horn,
+made his sudden appearance in Paris, and by his character, conduct, and
+the subsequent disasters in which he became involved, created a great
+sensation in the high circles of the proud aristocracy. He was about
+twenty-two years of age, tall, finely formed, with a pale, romantic
+countenance, and eyes of remarkable brilliancy and wildness.
+
+He was of one of the most ancient and highly-esteemed families of
+European nobility, being of the line of the Princes of Horn and
+Overique, sovereign Counts of Hautekerke, and hereditary Grand Veneurs
+of the empire.
+
+The family took its name from the little town and seigneurie of Horn, in
+Brabant; and was known as early as the eleventh century among the little
+dynasties of the Netherlands, and since that time by a long line of
+illustrious generations. At the peace of Utrecht, when the Netherlands
+passed under subjection to Austria, the house of Van Horn came under the
+domination of the emperor. At the time we treat of, two of the branches
+of this ancient house were extinct; the third and only surviving branch
+was represented by the reigning prince, Maximilian Emanuel Van Horn,
+twenty-four years of age, who resided in honorable and courtly style
+on his hereditary domains at Baussigny, in the Netherlands, and his
+brother, the Count Antoine Joseph, who is the subject of this memoir.
+
+The ancient house of Van Horn, by the intermarriage of its various
+branches with the noble families of the continent, had become widely
+connected and interwoven with the high aristocracy of Europe. The Count
+Antoine, therefore, could claim relationship to many of the proudest
+names in Paris. In fact, he was grandson, by the mother's side, of the
+Prince de Ligne, and even might boast of affinity to the Regent (the
+Duke of Orleans) himself. There were circumstances, however, connected
+with his sudden appearance in Paris, and his previous story, that placed
+him in what is termed "a false position;" a word of baleful significance
+in the fashionable vocabulary of France.
+
+The young count had been a captain in the service of Austria, but had
+been cashiered for irregular conduct, and for disrespect to Prince Louis
+of Baden, commander-in-chief. To check him in his wild career, and
+bring him to sober reflection, his brother the prince caused him to be
+arrested and sent to the old castle of Van Wert, in the domains of Horn.
+This was the same castle in which, in former times, John Van Horn,
+Stadtholder of Gueldres, had imprisoned his father; a circumstance which
+has furnished Rembrandt with the subject of an admirable painting. The
+governor of the castle was one Van Wert, grandson of the famous John Van
+Wert, the hero of many a popular song and legend. It was the intention
+of the prince that his brother should be held in honorable durance, for
+his object was to sober and improve, not to punish and afflict him. Van
+Wert, however, was a stern, harsh man of violent passions. He treated
+the youth in a manner that prisoners and offenders were treated in the
+strong-holds of the robber counts of Germany in old times; confined him
+in a dungeon and inflicted on him such hardships and indignities that
+the irritable temperament of the young count was roused to continual
+fury, which ended in insanity. For six months was the unfortunate youth
+kept in this horrible state, without his brother the prince being
+informed of his melancholy condition or of the cruel treatment to which
+he was subjected. At length, one day, in a paroxysm of frenzy, the count
+knocked down two of his gaolers with a beetle, escaped from the castle
+of Van Wert, and eluded all pursuit; and after roving about in a state
+of distraction, made his way to Baussigny and appeared like a sceptre
+before his brother.
+
+The prince was shocked at his wretched, emaciated appearance and his
+lamentable state of mental alienation. He received him with the most
+compassionate tenderness; lodged him in his own room, appointed three
+servants to attend and watch over him day and night, and endeavored by
+the most soothing and affectionate assiduity to atone for the past act
+of rigor with which he reproached himself. When he learned, however, the
+manner in which his unfortunate brother had been treated in confinement,
+and the course of brutalities that had led to his mental malady, he was
+roused to indignation. His first step was to cashier Van Wert from his
+command. That violent man set the prince at defiance, and attempted to
+maintain himself in his government and his castle by instigating the
+peasants, for several leagues round, to revolt. His insurrection might
+have been formidable against the power of a petty prince; but he was put
+under the ban of the empire and seized as a state prisoner. The memory
+of his grandfather, the oft-sung John Van Wert, alone saved him from a
+gibbet; but he was imprisoned in the strong tower of Horn-op-Zee. There
+he remained until he was eighty-two years of age, savage, violent, and
+unconquered to the last; for we are told that he never ceased fighting
+and thumping as long as he could close a fist or wield a cudgel.
+
+In the mean time a course of kind and gentle treatment and wholesome
+regimen, and, above all, the tender and affectionate assiduity of his
+brother, the prince, produced the most salutary effects upon Count
+Antoine. He gradually recovered his reason; but a degree of violence
+seemed always lurking at the bottom of his character, and he required
+to be treated with the greatest caution and mildness, for the least
+contradiction exasperated him.
+
+In this state of mental convalescence, he began to find the supervision
+and restraints of brotherly affection insupportable; so he left the
+Netherlands furtively, and repaired to Paris, whither, in fact, it
+is said he was called by motives of interest, to make arrangements
+concerning a valuable estate which he inherited from his relative, the
+Princess d'Epinay.
+
+On his arrival in Paris, he called upon the Marquis of Créqui, and other
+of the high nobility with whom he was connected. He was received with
+great courtesy; but, as he brought no letters from his elder brother,
+the prince, and as various circumstances of his previous history had
+transpired, they did not receive him into their families, nor introduce
+him to their ladies. Still they fêted him in bachelor style, gave him
+gay and elegant suppers at their separate apartments, and took him to
+their boxes at the theatres. He was often noticed, too, at the doors of
+the most fashionable churches, taking his stand among the young men
+of fashion; and at such times, his tall, elegant figure, his pale but
+handsome countenance, and his flashing eyes, distinguished him from
+among the crowd; and the ladies declared that it was almost impossible
+to support his ardent gaze.
+
+The Count did not afflict himself much at his limited circulation in the
+fastidious circles of the high aristocracy. He relished society of a
+wilder and less ceremonious cast; and meeting with loose companions to
+his taste, soon ran into all the excesses of the capital, in that most
+licentious period. It is said that, in the course of his wild career, he
+had an intrigue with a lady of quality, a favorite of the Regent; that
+he was surprised by that prince in one of his interviews; that sharp
+words passed between them; and that the jealousy and vengeance thus
+awakened, ended only with his life.
+
+About this time, the famous Mississippi scheme of Law was at its height,
+or rather it began to threaten that disastrous catastrophe which
+convulsed the whole financial world. Every effort was making to keep the
+bubble inflated. The vagrant population of France was swept off from the
+streets at night, and conveyed to Havre de Grace, to be shipped to the
+projected colonies; even laboring people and mechanics were thus crimped
+and spirited away. As Count Antoine was in the habit of sallying forth
+at night, in disguise, in pursuit of his pleasures, he came near being
+carried off by a gang of crimps; it seemed, in fact, as if they had been
+lying in wait for him, as he had experienced very rough treatment at
+their hands. Complaint was made of his case by his relation, the Marquis
+de Créqui, who took much interest in the youth; but the Marquis received
+mysterious intimations not to interfere in the matter, but to advise the
+Count to quit Paris immediately; "If he lingers, he is lost!" This has
+been cited as a proof that vengeance was dogging at the heels of the
+unfortunate youth, and only watching for an opportunity to destroy him.
+
+Such opportunity occurred but too soon. Among the loose companions with
+whom the Count had become intimate, were two who lodged in the same
+hotel with him. One was a youth only twenty years of age, who passed
+himself off as the Chevalier d'Etampes, but whose real name was Lestang,
+the prodigal son of a Flemish banker. The other, named Laurent de Mille,
+a Piedmontese, was a cashiered captain, and at the time an esquire
+in the service of the dissolute Princess de Carignan, who kept
+gambling-tables in her palace. It is probable that gambling propensities
+had driven these young men together, and that their losses had brought
+them to desperate measures: certain it is, that all Paris was suddenly
+astounded by a murder which they were said to have committed. What made
+the crime more startling, was, that it seemed connected with the great
+Mississippi scheme, at that time the fruitful source of all kinds of
+panics and agitations. A Jew, a stock-broker, who dealt largely in
+shares of the bank of Law, founded on the Mississippi scheme, was the
+victim. The story of his death is variously related. The darkest account
+states, that the Jew was decoyed by these young men into an obscure
+tavern, under pretext of negotiating with him for bank shares to the
+amount of one hundred thousand crowns, which he had with him in his
+pocket-book. Lestang kept watch upon the stairs. The Count and De Mille
+entered with the Jew into a chamber. In a little while there were heard
+cries and struggles from within. A waiter passing by the room, looked
+in, and seeing the Jew weltering in his blood, shut the door again,
+double-locked it, and alarmed the house. Lestang rushed downstairs, made
+his way to the hotel, secured his most portable effects, and fled the
+country. The Count and De Mille endeavored to escape by the window, but
+were both taken, and conducted to prison.
+
+A circumstance which occurs in this part of the Count's story, seems to
+point him out as a fated man. His mother, and his brother, the Prince
+Van Horn, had received intelligence some time before at Baussigny, of
+the dissolute life the Count was leading at Paris, and of his losses at
+play. They despatched a gentleman of the prince's household to Paris, to
+pay the debts of the Count, and persuade him to return to Flanders; or,
+if he should refuse, to obtain an order from the Regent for him to quit
+the capital. Unfortunately the gentleman did not arrive at Paris until
+the day after the murder.
+
+The news of the Count's arrest and imprisonment on a charge of murder,
+caused a violent sensation among the high aristocracy. All those
+connected with him, who had treated him hitherto with indifference,
+found their dignity deeply involved in the question of his guilt or
+innocence. A general convocation was held at the hotel of the Marquis de
+Créqui, of all the relatives and allies of the house of Horn. It was
+an assemblage of the most proud and aristocratic personages of Paris.
+Inquiries were made into the circumstances of the affair. It was
+ascertained, beyond a doubt, that the Jew was dead, and that he had been
+killed by several stabs of a poniard. In escaping by the window, it was
+said that the Count had fallen, and been immediately taken; but that De
+Mille had fled through the streets, pursued by the populace, and had
+been arrested at some distance from the scene of the murder; that the
+Count had declared himself innocent of the death of the Jew, and that
+he had risked his own life in endeavoring to protect him; but that De
+Mille, on being brought back to the tavern, confessed to a plot to
+murder the broker, and rob him of his pocket-book, and inculpated the
+Count in the crime.
+
+Another version of the story was, that the Count Van Horn had deposited
+with the broker, bank shares to the amount of eighty-eight thousand
+livres; that he had sought him in this tavern, which was one of his
+resorts, and had demanded the shares; that the Jew had denied the
+deposit; that a quarrel had ensued, in the course of which the Jew
+struck the Count in the face; that the latter, transported with rage,
+had snatched up a knife from a table, and wounded the Jew in the
+shoulder; and that thereupon De Mille, who was present, and who had
+likewise been defrauded by the broker, fell on him, and despatched him
+with blows of a poniard, and seized upon his pocket-book; that he had
+offered to divide the contents of the latter with the Count, _pro rata_,
+of what the usurer had defrauded them; that the latter had refused the
+proposition with disdain, and that, at a noise of persons approaching,
+both had attempted to escape from the premises, but had been taken.
+
+Regard the story in any way they might, appearances were terribly
+against the Count, and the noble assemblage was in great consternation.
+What was to be done to ward off so foul a disgrace and to save their
+illustrious escutcheons from this murderous stain of blood? Their
+first attempt was to prevent the affair from going to trial, and their
+relative from being dragged before a criminal tribunal, on so horrible
+and degrading a charge. They applied, therefore, to the Regent, to
+intervene his power; to treat the Count as having acted under an access
+of his mental malady; and to shut him up in a madhouse. The Regent was
+deaf to their solicitations. He replied, coldly, that if the Count was a
+madman, one could not get rid too quickly of madmen who were furious in
+their insanity. The crime was too public and atrocious to be hushed up
+or slurred over; justice must take its course.
+
+Seeing there was no avoiding the humiliating scene of a public trial,
+the noble relatives of the Count endeavored to predispose the minds of
+the magistrates before whom he was to be arraigned. They accordingly
+made urgent and eloquent representations of the high descent, and noble
+and powerful connexions of the Count; set forth the circumstances of his
+early history; his mental malady; the nervous irritability to which he
+was subject, and his extreme sensitiveness to insult or contradiction.
+By these means they sought to prepare the judges to interpret every
+thing in favor of the Count, and, even if it should prove that he had
+inflicted the mortal blow on the usurer, to attribute it to access of
+insanity, provoked by insult.
+
+To give full effect to these representations, the noble conclave
+determined to bring upon the judges the dazzling rays of the whole
+assembled aristocracy. Accordingly, on the day that the trial took
+place, the relations of the Count, to the number of fifty-seven persons,
+of both sexes, and of the highest rank, repaired in a body to the Palace
+of Justice, and took their stations in a long corridor which led to the
+court-room. Here, as the judges entered, they had to pass in review this
+array of lofty and noble personages, who saluted them mournfully and
+significantly, as they passed. Any one conversant with the stately pride
+and jealous dignity of the French noblesse of that day, may imagine the
+extreme state of sensitiveness that produced this self-abasement. It was
+confidently presumed, however, by the noble suppliants, that having once
+brought themselves to this measure, their influence over the tribunal
+would be irresistible. There was one lady present, however, Madame de
+Beauffremont, who was affected with the Scottish gift of second sight,
+and related such dismal and sinister apparitions as passing before
+her eyes, that many of her female companions were filled with doleful
+presentiments.
+
+Unfortunately for the Count, there was another interest at work, more
+powerful even than the high aristocracy. The all-potent Abbé Dubois, the
+grand favorite and bosom counsellor of the Regent, was deeply interested
+in the scheme of Law, and the prosperity of his bank, and of course in
+the security of the stock-brokers. Indeed, the Regent himself is said to
+have dipped deep in the Mississippi scheme. Dubois and Law, therefore,
+exerted their influence to the utmost to have the tragic affair pushed
+to the extremity of the law, and the murder of the broker punished in
+the most signal and appalling manner. Certain it is, the trial was
+neither long nor intricate. The Count and his fellow prisoner were
+equally inculpated in the crime; and both were condemned to a death the
+most horrible and ignominious--to be broken alive on the wheel!
+
+As soon as the sentence of the court was made public, all the nobility,
+in any degree related to the house of Van Horn, went into mourning.
+Another grand aristocratical assemblage was held, and a petition to the
+Regent, on behalf of the Count, was drawn out and left with the Marquis
+de Créqui for signature. This petition set forth the previous insanity
+of the Count, and showed that it was a hereditary malady of his family.
+It stated various circumstances in mitigation of his offence, and
+implored that his sentence might be commuted to perpetual imprisonment.
+
+Upward of fifty names of the highest nobility, beginning with the Prince
+de Ligne, and including cardinals, archbishops, dukes, marquises, etc.,
+together with ladies of equal rank, were signed to this petition. By
+one of the caprices of human pride and vanity, it became an object of
+ambition to get enrolled among the illustrious suppliants; a kind of
+testimonial of noble blood, to prove relationship to a murderer! The
+Marquis de Créqui was absolutely besieged by applicants to sign, and had
+to refer their claims to this singular honor, to the Prince de Ligne,
+the grandfather of the Count. Many who were excluded, were highly
+incensed, and numerous feuds took place. Nay, the affronts thus given to
+the morbid pride of some aristocratical families, passed from generation
+to generation; for, fifty years afterward, the Duchess of Mazarin
+complained of a slight which her father had received from the Marquis
+de Créqui; which proved to be something connected with the signature of
+this petition. This important document being completed, the illustrious
+body of petitioners, male and female, on Saturday evening, the eve of
+Palm Sunday, repaired to the Palais Royal, the residence of the Regent,
+and were ushered, with great ceremony but profound silence, into his
+hall of council. They had appointed four of their number as deputies, to
+present the petition, viz.: the Cardinal de Rohan, the Duke de Havré,
+the Prince de Ligne, and the Marquis de Créqui. After a little while,
+the deputies were summoned to the cabinet of the Regent. They entered,
+leaving the assembled petitioners in a state of the greatest anxiety.
+As time slowly wore away, and the evening advanced, the gloom of the
+company increased. Several of the ladies prayed devoutly; the good
+Princess of Armagnac told her beads.
+
+The petition was received by the Regent with a most unpropitious aspect.
+"In asking the pardon of the criminal," said he, "you display more zeal
+for the house of Van Horn, than for the service of the king." The noble
+deputies enforced the petition by every argument in their power. They
+supplicated the Regent to consider that the infamous punishment in
+question would reach not merely the person of the condemned, not
+merely the house of Van Horn, but also the genealogies of princely
+and illustrious families, in whose armorial bearings might be found
+quarterings of this dishonored name.
+
+"Gentlemen," replied the Regent, "it appears to me the disgrace consists
+in the crime, rather than in the punishment."
+
+The Prince de Ligne spoke with warmth: "I have in my genealogical
+standard," said he, "four escutcheons of Van Horn, and of course have
+four ancestors of that house. I must have them erased and effaced, and
+there would be so many blank spaces, like holes, in my heraldic ensigns.
+There is not a sovereign family which would not suffer, through the
+rigor of your Royal Highness; nay, all the world knows, that in the
+thirty-two quarterings of Madame, your mother, there is an escutcheon of
+Van Horn."
+
+"Very well," replied the Regent, "I will share the disgrace with you,
+gentlemen."
+
+Seeing that a pardon could not be obtained, the Cardinal de Rohan and
+the Marquis de Créqui left the cabinet; but the Prince de Ligne and the
+Duke de Havré remained behind. The honor of their houses, more than the
+life of the unhappy Count, was the great object of their solicitude.
+They now endeavored to obtain a minor grace. They represented that in
+the Netherlands, and in Germany, there was an important difference in
+the public mind as to the mode of inflicting the punishment of death
+upon persons of quality. That decapitation had no influence on the
+fortunes of the family of the executed, but that the punishment of the
+wheel was such an infamy, that the uncles, aunts, brothers, and sisters
+of the criminal, and his whole family, for three succeeding generations,
+were excluded from all noble chapters, princely abbeys, sovereign
+bishoprics, and even Teutonic commanderies of the Order of Malta. They
+showed how this would operate immediately upon the fortunes of a sister
+of the Count, who was on the point of being received as a canoness into
+one of the noble chapters.
+
+While this scene was going on in the cabinet of the Regent, the
+illustrious assemblage of petitioners remained in the hall of council,
+in the most gloomy state of suspense. The re-entrance from the cabinet
+of the Cardinal de Rohan and the Marquis de Créqui, with pale, downcast
+countenances, had struck a chill into every heart. Still they lingered
+until near midnight, to learn the result of the after application. At
+length the cabinet conference was at an end. The Regent came forth, and
+saluted the high personages of the assemblage in a courtly manner. One
+old lady of quality, Madame de Guyon, whom he had known in his infancy,
+he kissed on the cheek, calling her his "good aunt." He made a most
+ceremonious salutation to the stately Marchioness de Créqui, telling
+her he was charmed to see her at the Palais Royal; "a compliment very
+ill-timed," said the Marchioness, "considering the circumstance which
+brought me there." He then conducted the ladies to the door of the
+second saloon, and there dismissed them, with the most ceremonious
+politeness.
+
+The application of the Prince de Ligne and the Duke de Havré, for a
+change of the mode of punishment, had, after much difficulty, been
+successful. The Regent had promised solemnly to send a letter of
+commutation to the attorney-general on Holy Monday, the 25th of March,
+at five o'clock in the morning. According to the same promise, a
+scaffold would be arranged in the cloister of the Conciergerie,
+or prison, where the Count would be beheaded on the same morning,
+immediately after having received absolution. This mitigation of the
+form of punishment gave but little consolation to the great body of
+petitioners, who had been anxious for the pardon of the youth: it was
+looked upon as all-important, however, by the Prince de Ligne, who, as
+has been before observed,--was exquisitely alive to the dignity of his
+family.
+
+The Bishop of Bayeux and the Marquis de Créqui visited the unfortunate
+youth in prison. He had just received the communion in the chapel of the
+Conciergerie, and was kneeling before the altar, listening to a mass for
+the dead, which was performed at his request. He protested his innocence
+of any intention to murder the Jew, but did not deign to allude to the
+accusation of robbery. He made the bishop and the Marquis promise to see
+his brother the prince, and inform him of this his dying asseveration.
+
+Two other of his relations, the Prince Rebecq-Montmorency and the
+Marshal Van Isenghien, visited him secretly, and offered him poison, as
+a means of evading the disgrace of a public execution. On his refusing
+to take it, they left him with high indignation. "Miserable man!" said
+they, "you are fit only to perish by the hand of the executioner!"
+
+The Marquis de Créqui sought the executioner of Paris, to bespeak an
+easy and decent death--for the unfortunate youth. "Do not make him
+suffer," said he; "uncover no part of him but the neck; and have his
+body placed in a coffin, before you deliver it to his family." The
+executioner promised all that was requested, but declined a rouleau of a
+hundred louis-d'ors which the Marquis would have put into his hand. "I
+am paid by the king for fulfilling my office," said he; and added that
+he had already refused a like sum, offered by another relation of the
+Marquis.
+
+The Marquis de Créqui returned home in a state of deep affliction. There
+he found a letter from the Duke de St. Simon, the familiar friend of the
+Regent, repeating the promise of that prince, that the punishment of the
+wheel should be commuted to decapitation.
+
+"Imagine," says the Marchioness de Créqui, who in her memoirs gives a
+detailed account of this affair, "imagine what we experienced, and what
+was our astonishment, our grief, and indignation, when, on Tuesday, the
+26th of March, an hour after midday, word was brought us that the Count
+Van Horn had been exposed on the wheel, in the Place de Gréve, since
+half-past six in the morning, on the same scaffold with the Piedmontese
+de Mille, and that he had been tortured previous to execution!"
+
+One more scene of aristocratic pride closed this tragic story. The
+Marquis de Créqui, on receiving this astounding news, immediately
+arrayed himself in the uniform of a general officer, with his cordon
+of nobility on the coat. He ordered six valets to attend him in grand
+livery, and two of his carriages, each with six horses, to be brought
+forth. In this sumptuous state, he set off for the Place de Gréve, where
+he had been preceded by the Princes de Ligne, de Rohan, de Croüy, and
+the Duke de Havré.
+
+The Count Van Horn was already dead, and it was believed that the
+executioner had had the charity to give him the coup de grace, or
+"death-blow," at eight o'clock in the morning. At five o'clock in the
+evening, when the Judge Commissary left his post at the Hotel de Ville,
+these noblemen, with their own hands, aided to detach the mutilated
+remains of their relation; the Marquis de Crequi placed them in one of
+his carriages, and bore them off to his hotel, to receive the last sad
+obsequies.
+
+The conduct of the Regent in this affair excited general indignation.
+His needless severity was attributed by some to vindictive jealousy; by
+others to the persevering machinations of Law. The house of Van Horn,
+and the high nobility of Flanders and Germany, considered themselves
+flagrantly outraged: many schemes of vengeance were talked of, and a
+hatred engendered against the Regent, that followed him through life,
+and was wreaked with bitterness upon his memory after his death.
+
+The following letter is said to have been written to the Regent by the
+Prince Van Horn, to whom the former had adjudged the confiscated effects
+of the Count:
+
+"I do not complain, Sir, of the death of my brother, but I complain
+that your Royal Highness has violated in his person the rights of the
+kingdom, the nobility, and the nation. I thank you for the confiscation
+of his effects; but I should think myself as much disgraced as he,
+should I accept any favor at your hands. _I hope that God and the
+King may render to you as strict justice as you have rendered to my
+unfortunate brother._"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies, by 
+Washington Irving
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+
+Project Gutenberg&rsquo;s Wolfert&rsquo;s Roost and Miscellanies, by Washington Irving
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Wolfert&rsquo;s Roost and Miscellanies
+
+Author: Washington Irving
+
+Posting Date: October 8, 2012 [EBook #8571]
+Release Date: July, 2005
+First Posted: July 24, 2003
+Last Updated: June 1, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOLFERT&rsquo;S ROOST AND MISCELLANIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Etext produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, David Widger
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+HTML file produced by David Widger
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+</pre>
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      WOLFERT&rsquo;S ROOST AND MISCELLANIES
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Washington Irving
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <b>CONTENTS</b>
+    </p>
+
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> A CHRONICLE OF WOLFERT&rsquo;S ROOST. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> A CHRONICLE OF WOLFERT&rsquo;S ROOST. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> SLEEPY HOLLOW. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> THE BIRDS OF SPRING. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> RECOLLECTIONS OF THE ALHAMBRA. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> THE ABENCERRAGE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> THE ENCHANTED ISLAND. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> <i>THE ADELANTADO OF THE SEVEN CITIES</i>. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> NATIONAL NOMENCLATURE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> DESULTORY THOUGHTS ON CRITICISM. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> SPANISH ROMANCE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> LEGEND OF DON MUNIO SANCHO DE HINOJOSA. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> COMMUNIPAW. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> CONSPIRACY OF THE COCKED HATS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> A LEGEND OF COMMUNIPAW. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> <i>GUESTS FROM GIBBET-ISLAND</i>. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> THE BERMUDAS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0019"> <i>THE THREE KINGS OF BERMUDA</i>. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0020"> PELAYO AND THE MERCHANT&rsquo;S DAUGHTER. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0021"> THE KNIGHT OF MALTA. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0022"> <i>THE GRAND PRIOR OF MINORCA,</i> </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0023"> LEGEND OF THE ENGULPHED CONVENT. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0024"> THE COUNT VAN HORN. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A CHRONICLE OF WOLFERT&rsquo;S ROOST.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Sir: I have observed that as a man advances in life, he is subject to a
+      kind of plethora of the mind, doubtless occasioned by the vast
+      accumulation of wisdom and experience upon the brain. Hence he is apt to
+      become narrative and admonitory, that is to say, fond of telling long
+      stories, and of doling out advice, to the small profit and great annoyance
+      of his friends. As I have a great horror of becoming the oracle, or, more
+      technically speaking, the &ldquo;bore,&rdquo; of the domestic circle, and
+      would much rather bestow my wisdom and tediousness upon the world at
+      large, I have always sought to ease off this surcharge of the intellect by
+      means of my pen, and hence have inflicted divers gossiping volumes upon
+      the patience of the public. I am tired, however, of writing volumes; they
+      do not afford exactly the relief I require; there is too much preparation,
+      arrangement, and parade, in this set form of coming before the public. I
+      am growing too indolent and unambitious for any thing that requires labor
+      or display. I have thought, therefore, of securing to myself a snug corner
+      in some periodical work where I might, as it were, loll at my ease in my
+      elbow-chair, and chat sociably with the public, as with an old friend, on
+      any chance subject that might pop into my brain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In looking around, for this purpose, upon the various excellent
+      periodicals with which our country abounds, my eye was struck by the title
+      of your work&mdash;&ldquo;THE KNICKERBOCKER.&rdquo; My heart leaped at the
+      sight. DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER, Sir, was one of my earliest and most valued
+      friends, and the recollection of him is associated with some of the
+      pleasantest scenes of my youthful days. To explain this, and to show how I
+      came into possession of sundry of his posthumous works, which I have from
+      time to time given to the world, permit me to relate a few particulars of
+      our early intercourse. I give them with the more confidence, as I know the
+      interest you take in that departed worthy, whose name and effigy are
+      stamped upon your title-page, and as they will be found important to the
+      better understanding and relishing divers communications I may have to
+      make to you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My first acquaintance with that great and good man, for such I may venture
+      to call him, now that the lapse of some thirty years has shrouded his name
+      with venerable antiquity, and the popular voice has elevated him to the
+      rank of the classic historians of yore, my first acquaintance with him was
+      formed on the banks of the Hudson, not far from the wizard region of
+      Sleepy Hollow. He had come there in the course of his researches among the
+      Dutch neighborhoods for materials for his immortal history. For this
+      purpose, he was ransacking the archives of one of the most ancient and
+      historical mansions in the country. It was a lowly edifice, built in the
+      time of the Dutch dynasty, and stood on a green bank, overshadowed by
+      trees, from which it peeped forth upon the Great Tappan Zee, so famous
+      among early Dutch navigators. A bright pure spring welled up at the foot
+      of the green bank; a wild brook came babbling down a neighboring ravine,
+      and threw itself into a little woody cove, in front of the mansion. It was
+      indeed as quiet and sheltered a nook as the heart of man could require, in
+      which to take refuge from the cares and troubles of the world; and as
+      such, it had been chosen in old times, by Wolfert Acker, one of the privy
+      councillors of the renowned Peter Stuyvesant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This worthy but ill-starred man had led a weary and worried life,
+      throughout the stormy reign of the chivalric Peter, being one of those
+      unlucky wights with whom the world is ever at variance, and who are kept
+      in a continual fume and fret, by the wickedness of mankind. At the time of
+      the subjugation of the province by the English, he retired hither in high
+      dudgeon; with the bitter determination to bury himself from the world, and
+      live here in peace and quietness for the remainder of his days. In token
+      of this fixed resolution, he inscribed over his door the favorite Dutch
+      motto, &ldquo;Lust in Rust,&rdquo; (pleasure in repose.) The mansion was
+      thence called &ldquo;Wolfert&rsquo;s Rust&rdquo;&mdash;Wolfert&rsquo;s
+      Rest; but in process of time, the name was vitiated into Wolfert&rsquo;s
+      Roost, probably from its quaint cock-loft look, or from its having a
+      weather-cock perched on every gable. This name it continued to bear, long
+      after the unlucky Wolfert was driven forth once more upon a wrangling
+      world, by the tongue of a termagant wife; for it passed into a proverb
+      through the neighborhood, and has been handed down by tradition, that the
+      cock of the Roost was the most hen-pecked bird in the country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This primitive and historical mansion has since passed through many
+      changes and trials, which it may be my lot hereafter to notice. At the
+      time of the sojourn of Diedrich Knickerbocker it was in possession of the
+      gallant family of the Van Tassels, who have figured so conspicuously in
+      his writings. What appears to have given it peculiar value, in his eyes,
+      was the rich treasury of historical facts here secretly hoarded up, like
+      buried gold; for it is said that Wolfert Acker, when he retreated from New
+      Amsterdam, carried off with him many of the records and journals of the
+      province, pertaining to the Dutch dynasty; swearing that they should never
+      fall into the hands of the English. These, like the lost books of Livy,
+      had baffled the research of former historians; but these did I find the
+      indefatigable Diedrich diligently deciphering. He was already a sage in
+      year&rsquo;s and experience, I but an idle stripling; yet he did not
+      despise my youth and ignorance, but took me kindly by the hand, and led me
+      gently into those paths of local and traditional lore which he was so fond
+      of exploring. I sat with him in his little chamber at the Roost, and
+      watched the antiquarian patience and perseverance with which he deciphered
+      those venerable Dutch documents, worse than Herculanean manuscripts. I sat
+      with him by the spring, at the foot of the green bank, and listened to his
+      heroic tales about the worthies of the olden time, the paladins of New
+      Amsterdam. I accompanied him in his legendary researches about Tarrytown
+      and Sing-Sing, and explored with him the spell-bound recesses of Sleepy
+      Hollow. I was present at many of his conferences with the good old Dutch
+      burghers and their wives, from whom he derived many of those marvelous
+      facts not laid down in books or records, and which give such superior
+      value and authenticity to his history, over all others that have been
+      written concerning the New Netherlands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But let me check my proneness to dilate upon this favorite theme; I may
+      recur to it hereafter. Suffice it to say, the intimacy thus formed,
+      continued for a considerable time; and in company with the worthy
+      Diedrich, I visited many of the places celebrated by his pen. The currents
+      of our lives at length diverged. He remained at home to complete his
+      mighty work, while a vagrant fancy led me to wander about the world. Many,
+      many years elapsed, before I returned to the parent soil. In the interim,
+      the venerable historian of the New Netherlands had been gathered to his
+      fathers, but his name had risen to renown. His native city, that city in
+      which he so much delighted, had decreed all manner of costly honors to his
+      memory. I found his effigy imprinted upon new-year cakes, and devoured
+      with eager relish by holiday urchins; a great oyster-house bore the name
+      of &ldquo;Knickerbocker Hall;&rdquo; and I narrowly escaped the pleasure
+      of being run over by a Knickerbocker omnibus!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Proud of having associated with a man who had achieved such greatness, I
+      now recalled our early intimacy with tenfold pleasure, and sought to
+      revisit the scenes we had trodden together. The most important of these
+      was the mansion of the Van Tassels, the Roost of the unfortunate Wolfert.
+      Time, which changes all things, is but slow in its operations upon a
+      Dutchman&rsquo;s dwelling. I found the venerable and quaint little edifice
+      much as I had seen it during the sojourn of Diedrich. There stood his
+      elbow-chair in the corner of the room he had occupied; the old-fashioned
+      Dutch writing-desk at which he had pored over the chronicles of the
+      Manhattoes; there was the old wooden chest, with the archives left by
+      Wolfert Acker, many of which, however, had been fired off as wadding from
+      the long duck gun of the Van Tassels. The scene around the mansion was
+      still the same; the green bank; the spring beside which I had listened to
+      the legendary narratives of the historian; the wild brook babbling down to
+      the woody cove, and the overshadowing locust trees, half shutting out the
+      prospect of the great Tappan Zee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I looked round upon the scene, my heart yearned at the recollection of
+      my departed friend, and I wistfully eyed the mansion which he had
+      inhabited, and which was fast mouldering to decay. The thought struck me
+      to arrest the desolating hand of Time; to rescue the historic pile from
+      utter ruin, and to make it the closing scene of my wanderings; a quiet
+      home, where I might enjoy &ldquo;lust in rust&rdquo; for the remainder of
+      my days. It is true, the fate of the unlucky Wolfert passed across my
+      mind; but I consoled myself with the reflection that I was a bachelor, and
+      that I had no termagant wife to dispute the sovereignty of the Roost with
+      me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have become possessor of the Roost! I have repaired and renovated it
+      with religious care, in the genuine Dutch style, and have adorned and
+      illustrated it with sundry reliques of the glorious days of the New
+      Netherlands. A venerable weathercock, of portly Dutch dimensions, which
+      once battled with the wind on the top of the Stadt-House of New Amsterdam,
+      in the time of Peter Stuyvesant, now erects its crest on the gable end of
+      my edifice; a gilded horse in full gallop, once the weathercock of the
+      great Vander Heyden Palace of Albany, now glitters in the sunshine, and
+      veers with every breeze, on the peaked turret over my portal; my sanctum
+      sanctorum is the chamber once honored by the illustrious Diedrich, and it
+      is from his elbow-chair, and his identical old Dutch writing-desk, that I
+      pen this rambling epistle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here, then, have I set up my rest, surrounded by the recollections of
+      early days, and the mementoes of the historian of the Manhattoes, with
+      that glorious river before me, which flows with such majesty through his
+      works, and which has ever been to me a river of delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I thank God I was born on the banks of the Hudson! I think it an
+      invaluable advantage to be born and brought up in the neighborhood of some
+      grand and noble object in nature; a river, a lake, or a mountain. We make
+      a friendship with it, we in a manner ally ourselves to it for life. It
+      remains an object of our pride and affections, a rallying point, to call
+      us home again after all our wanderings. &ldquo;The things which we have
+      learned in our childhood,&rdquo; says an old writer, &ldquo;grow up with
+      our souls, and unite themselves to it.&rdquo; So it is with the scenes
+      among which we have passed our early days; they influence the whole course
+      of our thoughts and feelings; and I fancy I can trace much of what is good
+      and pleasant in my own heterogeneous compound to my early companionship
+      with this glorious river. In the warmth of my youthful enthusiasm, I used
+      to clothe it with moral attributes, and almost to give it a soul. I
+      admired its frank, bold, honest character; its noble sincerity and perfect
+      truth. Here was no specious, smiling surface, covering the dangerous
+      sand-bar or perfidious rock; but a stream deep as it was broad, and
+      bearing with honorable faith the bark that trusted to its waves. I gloried
+      in its simple, quiet, majestic, epic flow; ever straight forward. Once,
+      indeed, it turns aside for a moment, forced from its course by opposing
+      mountains, but it struggles bravely through them, and immediately resumes
+      its straightforward march. Behold, thought I, an emblem of a good man&rsquo;s
+      course through life; ever simple, open, and direct; or if, overpowered by
+      adverse circumstances, he deviate into error, it is but momentary; he soon
+      recovers his onward and honorable career, and continues it to the end of
+      his pilgrimage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Excuse this rhapsody, into which I have been betrayed by a revival of
+      early feelings. The Hudson is, in a manner, my first and last love; and
+      after all my wanderings and seeming infidelities, I return to it with a
+      heart-felt preference over all the other rivers in the world. I seem to
+      catch new life as I bathe in its ample billows and inhale the pure breezes
+      of its hills. It is true, the romance of youth is past, that once spread
+      illusions over every scene. I can no longer picture an Arcadia in every
+      green valley; nor a fairy land among the distant mountains; nor a peerless
+      beauty in every villa gleaming among the trees; but though the illusions
+      of youth have faded from the landscape, the recollections of departed
+      years and departed pleasures shed over it the mellow charm of evening
+      sunshine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Permit me, then, Mr. Editor, through the medium of your work, to hold
+      occasional discourse from my retreat with the busy world I have abandoned.
+      I have much to say about what I have seen, heard, felt, and thought
+      through the course of a varied and rambling life, and some lucubrations
+      that have long been encumbering my portfolio; together with divers
+      reminiscences of the venerable historian of the New Netherlands, that may
+      not be unacceptable to those who have taken an interest in his writings,
+      and are desirous of any thing that may cast a light back upon our early
+      history. Let your readers rest assured of one thing, that, though retired
+      from the world, I am not disgusted with it; and that if in my communings
+      with it I do not prove very wise, I trust I shall at least prove very
+      good-natured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Which is all at present, from
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yours, etc.,
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      GEOFFREY CRAYON.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Worthy Sir: In a preceding communication, I have given you some brief
+      notice of Wolfert&rsquo;s Roost, the mansion where I first had the good
+      fortune to become acquainted with the venerable historian of the New
+      Netherlands. As this ancient edifice is likely to be the place whence I
+      shall date many of my lucubrations, and as it is really a very remarkable
+      little pile, intimately connected with all the great epochs of our local
+      and national history, I have thought it but right to give some farther
+      particulars concerning it. Fortunately, in rummaging a ponderous Dutch
+      chest of drawers, which serves as the archives of the Roost, and in which
+      are preserved many inedited manuscripts of Mr. KNICKERBOCKER, together
+      with the precious records of New-Amsterdam, brought hither by Wolfert
+      Acker at the downfall of the Dutch dynasty, as has been already mentioned,
+      I found in one corner, among dried pumpkin-seeds, bunches of thyme, and
+      pennyroyal, and crumbs of new-year cakes, a manuscript, carefully wrapped
+      up in the fragment of an old parchment deed, but much blotted, and the ink
+      grown foxy by time, which, on inspection, I discovered to be a faithful
+      chronicle of the Roost. The hand-writing, and certain internal evidences,
+      leave no doubt in my mind, that it is a genuine production of the
+      venerable historian of the New-Netherlands, written, very probably, during
+      his residence at the Roost, in gratitude for the hospitality of its
+      proprietor. As such, I submit it for publication. As the entire chronicle
+      is too long for the pages of your Magazine, and as it contains many minute
+      particulars, which might prove tedious to the general reader, I have
+      abbreviated and occasionally omitted some of its details; but may
+      hereafter furnish them separately, should they seem to be required by the
+      curiosity of an enlightened and document-hunting public.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Respectfully yours, GEOFFREY CRAYON.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A CHRONICLE OF WOLFERT&rsquo;S ROOST.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      FOUND AMONG THE PAPERS OF THE LATE DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      About five-and-twenty miles from the ancient and renowned city of
+      Manhattan, formerly called New-Amsterdam, and vulgarly called New-York, on
+      the eastern bank of that expansion of the Hudson, known among Dutch
+      mariners of yore, as the Tappan Zee, being in fact the great Mediterranean
+      Sea of the New-Netherlands, stands a little old-fashioned stone mansion,
+      all made up of gable-ends, and as full of angles and corners as an old
+      cocked hat. Though but of small dimensions, yet, like many small people,
+      it is of mighty spirit, and values itself greatly on its antiquity, being
+      one of the oldest edifices, for its size, in the whole country. It claims
+      to be an ancient seat of empire, I may rather say an empire in itself, and
+      like all empires, great and small, has had its grand historical epochs. In
+      speaking of this doughty and valorous little pile, I shall call it by its
+      usual appellation of &ldquo;The Roost;&rdquo; though that is a name given
+      to it in modern days, since it became the abode of the white man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Its origin, in truth, dates far back in that remote region commonly called
+      the fabulous age, in which vulgar fact becomes mystified, and tinted up
+      with delectable fiction. The eastern shore of the Tappan Sea was inhabited
+      in those days by an unsophisticated race, existing in all the simplicity
+      of nature; that is to say, they lived by hunting and fishing, and
+      recreated themselves occasionally with a little tomahawking and scalping.
+      Each stream that flows down from the hills into the Hudson, had its petty
+      sachem, who ruled over a hand&rsquo;s-breadth of forest on either side,
+      and had his seat of government at its mouth. The chieftain who ruled at
+      the Roost, was not merely a great warrior, but a medicine-man, or prophet,
+      or conjurer, for they all mean the same thing, in Indian parlance. Of his
+      fighting propensities, evidences still remain, in various arrowheads of
+      flint, and stone battle-axes, occasionally digged up about the Roost: of
+      his wizard powers, we have a token in a spring which wells up at the foot
+      of the bank, on the very margin of the river, which, it is said, was
+      gifted by him with rejuvenating powers, something like the renowned
+      Fountain of Youth in the Floridas, so anxiously but vainly sought after by
+      the veteran Ponce de Leon. This story, however, is stoutly contradicted by
+      an old Dutch matter-of-fact tradition, which declares that the spring in
+      question was smuggled over from Holland in a churn, by Femmetie Van
+      Slocum, wife of Goosen Garret Van Slocum, one of the first settlers, and
+      that she took it up by night, unknown to her husband, from beside their
+      farm-house near Rotterdam; being sure she should find no water equal to it
+      in the new country&mdash;and she was right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wizard sachem had a great passion for discussing territorial
+      questions, and settling boundary lines; this kept him in continual feud
+      with the neighboring sachems, each of whom stood up stoutly for his
+      hand-breadth of territory; so that there is not a petty stream nor ragged
+      hill in the neighborhood, that has not been the subject of long talks and
+      hard battles. The sachem, however, as has been observed, was a
+      medicine-man, as well as warrior, and vindicated his claims by arts as
+      well as arms; so that, by dint of a little hard fighting here, and
+      hocus-pocus there, he managed to extend his boundary-line from field to
+      field and stream to stream, until he found himself in legitimate
+      possession of that region of hills and valleys, bright fountains and
+      limpid brooks, locked in by the mazy windings of the Neperan and the
+      Pocantico. [Footnote: As every one may not recognize these boundaries by
+      their original Indian names, it may be well to observe, that the Neperan
+      is that beautiful stream, vulgarly called the Saw-Mill River, which, after
+      winding gracefully for many miles through a lovely valley, shrouded by
+      groves, and dotted by Dutch farm-houses, empties itself into the Hudson,
+      at the ancient drop of Yonkers. The Pocantico is that hitherto nameless
+      brook, that, rising among woody hills, winds in many a wizard maze through
+      the sequestered banks of Sleepy Hollow. We owe it to the indefatigable
+      researches of Mr. KNICKERBOCKER, that those beautiful streams are rescued
+      from modern common-place, and reinvested with their ancient Indian names.
+      The correctness of the venerable historian may be ascertained, by
+      reference to the records of the original Indian grants to the Herr
+      Frederick Philipsen, preserved in the county clerk&rsquo;s office, at
+      White Plains.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This last-mentioned stream, or rather the valley through which it flows,
+      was the most difficult of all his acquisitions. It lay half way to the
+      strong-hold of the redoubtable sachem of Sing-Sing, and was claimed by him
+      as an integral part of his domains. Many were the sharp conflicts between
+      the rival chieftains for the sovereignty of this valley, and many the
+      ambuscades, surprisals, and deadly onslaughts that took place among its
+      fastnesses, of which it grieves me much that I cannot furnish the details
+      for the gratification of those gentle but bloody-minded readers of both
+      sexes, who delight in the romance of the tomahawk and scalping-knife.
+      Suffice it to say that the wizard chieftain was at length victorious,
+      though his victory is attributed in Indian tradition to a great medicine
+      or charm by which he laid the sachem of Sing-Sing and his warriors asleep
+      among the rocks and recesses of the valley, where they remain asleep to
+      the present day with their bows and war-clubs beside them. This was the
+      origin of that potent and drowsy spell which still prevails over the
+      valley of the Pocantico, and which has gained it the well-merited
+      appellation of Sleepy Hollow. Often, in secluded and quiet parts of that
+      valley, where the stream is overhung by dark woods and rocks, the
+      ploughman, on some calm and sunny day as he shouts to his oxen, is
+      surprised at hearing faint shouts from the hill-sides in reply; being, it
+      is said, the spell-bound warriors, who half start from their rocky couches
+      and grasp their weapons, but sink to sleep again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The conquest of the Pocantico was the last triumph of the wizard sachem.
+      Notwithstanding all his medicine and charms, he fell in battle in
+      attempting to extend his boundary line to the east so as to take in the
+      little wild valley of the Sprain, and his grave is still shown near the
+      banks of that pastoral stream. He left, however, a great empire to his
+      successors, extending along the Tappan Zee, from Yonkers quite to Sleepy
+      Hollow; all which delectable region, if every one had his right, would
+      still acknowledge allegiance to the lord of the Roost&mdash;whoever he
+      might be. [Footnote: In recording the contest for the sovereignty of
+      Sleepy Hollow, I have called one sachem by the modern name of his castle
+      or strong-hold, viz.: Sing-Sing. This, I would observe for the sake of
+      historical exactness, is a corruption of the old Indian name, O-sin-sing,
+      or rather O-sin-song; that is to say, a place where any thing may be had
+      for a song&mdash;a great recommendation for a market town. The modern and
+      melodious alteration of the name to Sing-Sing is said to have been made in
+      compliment to an eminent Methodist singing-master, who first introduced
+      into the neighborhood the art of singing through the nose. D. K.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wizard sachem was succeeded by a line of chiefs, of whom nothing
+      remarkable remains on record. The last who makes any figure in history is
+      the one who ruled here at the time of the discovery of the country by the
+      white man. This sachem is said to have been a renowned trencherman, who
+      maintained almost as potent a sway by dint of good feeding as his warlike
+      predecessor had done by hard fighting. He diligently cultivated the growth
+      of oysters along the aquatic borders of his territories, and founded those
+      great oyster-beds which yet exist along the shores of the Tappan Zee. Did
+      any dispute occur between him and a neighboring sachem, he invited him and
+      all his principal sages and fighting-men to a solemn banquet, and seldom
+      failed of feeding them into terms. Enormous heaps of oyster-shells, which
+      encumber the lofty banks of the river, remain as monuments of his
+      gastronomical victories, and have been occasionally adduced through
+      mistake by amateur geologists from town, as additional proofs of the
+      deluge. Modern investigators, who are making such indefatigable researches
+      into our early history, have even affirmed that this sachem was the very
+      individual on whom Master Hendrick Hudson and his mate, Robert Juet, made
+      that sage and astounding experiment so gravely recorded by the latter in
+      his narrative of the voyage: &ldquo;Our master and his mate determined to
+      try some of the cheefe men of the country whether they had any treacherie
+      in them. So they took them down into the cabin and gave them so much wine
+      and aqua vitae that they were all very merrie; one of them had his wife
+      with him, which sate so modestly as any of our countrywomen would do in a
+      strange place. In the end one of them was drunke; and that was strange to
+      them, for they could not tell how to take it.&rdquo; [Footnote: See Juet&rsquo;s
+      Journal, Purchas Pilgrim.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How far Master Hendrick Hudson and his worthy mate carried their
+      experiment with the sachem&rsquo;s wife is not recorded, neither does the
+      curious Robert Juet make any mention of the after-consequences of this
+      grand moral test; tradition, however, affirms that the sachem on landing
+      gave his modest spouse a hearty rib-roasting, according to the connubial
+      discipline of the aboriginals; it farther affirms that he remained a hard
+      drinker to the day of his death, trading away all his lands, acre by acre,
+      for aqua vitae; by which means the Roost and all its domains, from Yonkers
+      to Sleepy Hollow, came, in the regular course of trade and by right of
+      purchase, into the possession of the Dutchmen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Never has a territorial right in these new countries been more
+      legitimately and tradefully established; yet, I grieve to say, the worthy
+      government of the New Netherlands was not suffered to enjoy this grand
+      acquisition unmolested; for, in the year 1654, the local Yankees of
+      Connecticut&mdash;those swapping, bargaining, squatting enemies of the
+      Manhattoes&mdash;made a daring inroad into this neighborhood and founded a
+      colony called Westchester, or, as the ancient Dutch records term it, Vest
+      Dorp, in the right of one Thomas Pell, who pretended to have purchased the
+      whole surrounding country of the Indians, and stood ready to argue their
+      claims before any tribunal of Christendom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This happened during the chivalrous reign of Peter Stuyvesant, and it
+      roused the ire of that gunpowder old hero; who, without waiting to discuss
+      claims and titles, pounced at once upon the nest of nefarious squatters,
+      carried off twenty-five of them in chains to the Manhattoes, nor did he
+      stay his hand, nor give rest to his wooden leg, until he had driven every
+      Yankee back into the bounds of Connecticut, or obliged him to acknowledge
+      allegiance to their High Mightinesses. He then established certain
+      out-posts, far in the Indian country, to keep an eye over these debateable
+      lands; one of these border-holds was the Roost, being accessible from New
+      Amsterdam by water, and easily kept supplied. The Yankees, however, had
+      too great a hankering after this delectable region to give it up entirely.
+      Some remained and swore allegiance to the Manhattoes; but, while they kept
+      this open semblance of fealty, they went to work secretly and vigorously
+      to intermarry and multiply, and by these nefarious means, artfully
+      propagated themselves into possession of a wide tract of those open,
+      arable parts of Westchester county, lying along the Sound, where their
+      descendants may be found at the present day; while the mountainous regions
+      along the Hudson, with the valleys of the Neperan and the Pocantico, are
+      tenaciously held by the lineal descendants of the Copperheads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chronicle of the venerable Diedrich here goes on to relate how that,
+      shortly after the above-mentioned events, the whole province of the New
+      Netherlands &lsquo;was subjugated by the British; how that Wolfert Acker,
+      one of the wrangling councillors of Peter Stuyvesant, retired in dudgeon
+      to this fastness in the wilderness, determining to enjoy &ldquo;lust in
+      rust&rdquo; for the remainder of his days, whence the place first received
+      its name of Wolfert&rsquo;s Roost. As these and sundry other matters have
+      been laid before the public in a preceding article, I shall pass them
+      over, and resume the chronicle where it treats of matters not hitherto
+      recorded:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Like many men who retire from a worrying world, says DIEDRICH
+      KNICKERBOCKER, to enjoy quiet in the country, Wolfert Acker soon found
+      himself up to the ears in trouble. He had a termagant wife at home, and
+      there was what is profanely called &ldquo;the deuce to pay,&rdquo; abroad.
+      The recent irruption of the Yankees into the bounds of the New
+      Netherlands, had left behind it a doleful pestilence, such as is apt to
+      follow the steps of invading armies. This was the deadly plague of
+      witchcraft, which had long been prevalent to the eastward. The malady
+      broke out at Vest Dorp, and threatened to spread throughout the country.
+      The Dutch burghers along the Hudson, from Yonkers to Sleepy Hollow,
+      hastened to nail horseshoes to their doors, which have ever been found of
+      sovereign virtue to repel this awful visitation. This is the origin of the
+      horse-shoes which may still be seen nailed to the doors of barns and
+      farmhouses, in various parts of this sage and sober-thoughted region.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The evil, however, bore hard upon the Roost; partly, perhaps, from its
+      having in old times been subject to supernatural influences, during the
+      sway of the Wizard Sachem; but it has always, in fact, been considered a
+      fated mansion. The unlucky Wolfert had no rest day nor night. When the
+      weather was quiet all over the country, the wind would howl and whistle
+      round his roof; witches would ride and whirl upon his weathercocks, and
+      scream down his chimneys. His cows gave bloody milk, and his horses broke
+      bounds, and scampered into the woods. There were not wanting evil tongues
+      to whisper that Wolfert&rsquo;s termagant wife had some tampering with the
+      enemy; and that she even attended a witches&rsquo; Sabbath in Sleepy
+      Hollow; nay, a neighbor, who lived hard by, declared that he saw her
+      harnessing a rampant broom-stick, and about to ride to the meeting; though
+      others presume it was merely flourished in the course of one of her
+      curtain lectures, to give energy and emphasis to a period. Certain it is,
+      that Wolfert Acker nailed a horse-shoe to the front door, during one of
+      her nocturnal excursions, to prevent her return; but as she re-entered the
+      house without any difficulty, it is probable she was not so much of a
+      witch as she was represented. [Footnote: HISTORICAL NOTE.&mdash;The
+      annexed extracts from the early colonial records, relate to the irruption
+      of witchcraft into Westchester county, as mentioned in the chronicle:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;JULY 7, 1670.&mdash;Katharine Harryson, accused of witchcraft on
+      complaint of Thomas Hunt and Edward Waters, in behalf of the town, who
+      pray that she may be driven from the town of Westchester. The woman
+      appears before the council.... She was a native of England, and had lived
+      a year in Weathersfield, Connecticut, where she had been tried for
+      witchcraft, found guilty by the jury, acquitted by the bench, and released
+      out of prison, upon condition she would remove. Affair adjourned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;AUGUST 24.&mdash;Affair taken up again, when, being heard at large,
+      it was referred to the general court of assize. Woman ordered to give
+      security for good behavior,&rdquo; etc.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In another place is the following entry:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Order given for Katharine Harryson, charged with witchcraft, to
+      leave Westchester, as the inhabitants are uneasy at her residing there,
+      and she is ordered to go off.&rdquo;]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the time of Wolfert Acker, a long interval elapses, about which but
+      little is known. It is hoped, however, that the antiquarian researches so
+      diligently making in every part of this new country, may yet throw some
+      light upon what may be termed the Dark Ages of the Roost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next period at which we find this venerable and eventful pile rising
+      to importance, and resuming its old belligerent character, is during the
+      revolutionary war. It was at that time owned by Jacob Van Tassel, or Van
+      Texel, as the name was originally spelled, after the place in Holland
+      which gave birth to this heroic line. He was strong-built, long-limbed,
+      and as stout in soul as in body; a fit successor to the warrior sachem of
+      yore, and, like him, delighting in extravagant enterprises and hardy deeds
+      of arms. But, before I enter upon the exploits of this worthy cock of the
+      Boost, it is fitting I should throw some light upon the state of the
+      mansion, and of the surrounding country, at the time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The situation of the Roost is in the very heart of what was the debateable
+      ground between the American and British lines, during the war. The British
+      held possession of the city of New York, and the island of Manhattan on
+      which it stands. The Americans drew up toward the Highlands, holding their
+      headquarters at Peekskill. The intervening country, from Croton River to
+      Spiting Devil Creek, was the debateable land, subject to be harried by
+      friend and foe, like the Scottish borders of yore. It is a rugged country,
+      with a line of rocky hills extending through it, like a back bone, sending
+      ribs on either side; but among these rude hills are beautiful winding
+      valleys, like those watered by the Pocantico and the Neperan. In the
+      fastnesses of these hills, and along these valleys, exist a race of
+      hard-headed, hard-handed, stout-hearted Dutchmen, descendants of the
+      primitive Nederlanders. Most of these were strong whigs throughout the
+      war, and have ever remained obstinately attached to the soil, and neither
+      to be fought nor bought out of their paternal acres. Others were tories,
+      and adherents to the old kingly rule; some of whom took refuge within the
+      British lines, joined the royal bands of refugees, a name odious to the
+      American ear, and occasionally returned to harass their ancient neighbors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a little while, this debateable land was overrun by predatory bands
+      from either side; sacking hen-roosts, plundering farm-houses, and driving
+      off cattle. Hence arose those two great orders of border chivalry, the
+      Skinners and the Cowboys, famous in the heroic annals of Westchester
+      county. The former fought, or rather marauded, under the American, the
+      latter under the British banner; but both, in the hurry of their military
+      ardor, were apt to err on the safe side, and rob friend as well as foe.
+      Neither of them stopped to ask the politics of horse or cow, which they
+      drove into captivity; nor, when they wrung the neck of a rooster, did they
+      trouble their heads to ascertain whether he were crowing for Congress or
+      King George.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While this marauding system prevailed on shore, the Great Tappan Sea,
+      which washes this belligerent region, was domineered over by British
+      frigates and other vessels of war, anchored here and there, to keep an eye
+      upon the river, and maintain a communication between the various military
+      posts. Stout galleys, also, armed with eighteen-pounders, and navigated
+      with sails and oars, cruised about like hawks, ready to pounce upon their
+      prey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All these were eyed with bitter hostility by the Dutch yeomanry along
+      shore, who were indignant at seeing their great Mediterranean ploughed by
+      hostile prows; and would occasionally throw up a mud breast-work on a
+      point or promontory, mount an old iron field-piece, and fire away at the
+      enemy, though the greatest harm was apt to happen to themselves from the
+      bursting of their ordnance; nay, there was scarce a Dutchman along the
+      river that would hesitate to fire with his long duck gun at any British
+      cruiser that came within reach, as he had been accustomed to fire at
+      water-fowl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have been thus particular in my account of the times and neighborhood,
+      that the reader might the more readily comprehend the surrounding dangers
+      in this the Heroic Age of the Roost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was commanded at the time, as I have already observed, by the stout
+      Jacob Van Tassel. As I wish to be extremely accurate in this part of my
+      chronicle, I beg that this Jacob Van Tassel of the Roost may not be
+      confounded with another Jacob Van Tassel, commonly known in border story
+      by the name of &ldquo;Clump-footed Jake,&rdquo; a noted tory, and one of
+      the refugee band of Spiting Devil. On the contrary, he of the Roost was a
+      patriot of the first water, and, if we may take his own word for granted,
+      a thorn in the side of the enemy. As the Roost, from its lonely situation
+      on the water&rsquo;s edge, might be liable to attack, he took measures for
+      defence. On a row of hooks above his fire-place, reposed his great piece
+      of ordnance, ready charged and primed for action. This was a duck, or
+      rather goose-gun, of unparalleled longitude, with which it was said he
+      could kill a wild goose, though half-way across the Tappan Sea. Indeed,
+      there are as many wonders told of this renowned gun, as of the enchanted
+      weapons of the heroes of classic story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In different parts of the stone walls of his mansion, he had made
+      loop-holes, through which he might fire upon an assailant. His wife was
+      stout-hearted as himself, and could load as fast as he could fire; and
+      then he had an ancient and redoubtable sister, Nochie Van Wurmer, a match,
+      as he said, for the stoutest man in the country. Thus garrisoned, the
+      little Roost was fit to stand a siege, and Jacob Van Tassel was the man to
+      defend it to the last charge of powder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was, as I have already hinted, of pugnacious propensities; and, not
+      content with being a patriot at home, and fighting for the security of his
+      own fireside, he extended his thoughts abroad, and entered into a
+      confederacy with certain of the bold, hard-riding lads of Tarrytown,
+      Petticoat Lane, and Sleepy Hollow, who formed a kind of Holy Brotherhood,
+      scouring the country to clear it of Skinner and Cow-boy, and all other
+      border vermin. The Roost was one of their rallying points. Did a band of
+      marauders from Manhattan island come sweeping through the neighborhood,
+      and driving off cattle, the stout Jacob and his compeers were soon
+      clattering at their heels, and fortunate did the rogues esteem themselves
+      if they could but get a part of their booty across the lines, or escape
+      themselves without a rough handling. Should the mosstroopers succeed in
+      passing with their cavalcade, with thundering tramp and dusty whirlwind,
+      across Kingsbridge, the Holy Brotherhood of the Roost would rein up at
+      that perilous pass, and, wheeling about, would indemnify themselves by
+      foraging the refugee region of Morrisania.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When at home at the Roost, the stout Jacob was not idle; but was prone to
+      carry on a petty warfare of his own, for his private recreation and
+      refreshment. Did he ever chance to espy, from his look-out place, a
+      hostile ship or galley anchored or becalmed near shore, he would take down
+      his long goose-gun from the hooks over the fire-place, sally out alone,
+      and lurk along shore, dodging behind rocks and trees, and watching for
+      hours together, like a veteran mouser intent on a rat-hole. So sure as a
+      boat put off for shore, and came within shot, bang! went the great
+      goose-gun; a shower of slugs and buck-shot whistled about the ears of the
+      enemy, and before the boat could reach the shore, Jacob had scuttled up
+      some woody ravine, and left no trace behind. About this time, the Roost
+      experienced a vast accession of warlike importance, in being made one of
+      the stations of the water-guard. This was a kind of aquatic corps of
+      observation, composed of long, sharp, canoe-shaped boats, technically
+      called whale-boats, that lay lightly on the water, and could be rowed with
+      great rapidity. They were manned by resolute fellows, skilled at pulling
+      an oar, or handling a musket. These lurked about in nooks and bays, and
+      behind those long promontories which run out into the Tappan Sea, keeping
+      a look-out, to give notice of the approach or movements of hostile ships.
+      They roved about in pairs; sometimes at night, with muffled oars, gliding
+      like spectres about frigates and guard-ships riding at anchor, cutting off
+      any boats that made for shore, and keeping the enemy in constant
+      uneasiness. These mosquito-cruisers generally kept aloof by day, so that
+      their harboring places might not be discovered, but would pull quietly
+      along, under shadow of the shore, at night, to take up their quarters at
+      the Roost. Hither, at such time, would also repair the hard-riding lads of
+      the hills, to hold secret councils of war with the &ldquo;ocean chivalry;&rdquo;
+      and in these nocturnal meetings were concerted many of those daring
+      forays, by land and water, that resounded throughout the border.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chronicle here goes on to recount divers wonderful stories of the wars
+      of the Roost, from which it would seem, that this little warrior nest
+      carried the terror of its arms into every sea, from Spiting Devil Creek to
+      Antony&rsquo;s Nose; that it even bearded the stout island of Manhattan,
+      invading it at night, penetrating to its centre, and burning down the
+      famous Delancey house, the conflagration of which makes such a blaze in
+      revolutionary history. Nay more, in their extravagant daring, these cocks
+      of the Roost meditated a nocturnal descent upon New York itself, to swoop
+      upon the British commanders, Howe and Clinton, by surprise, bear them off
+      captive, and perhaps put a triumphant close to the war!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All these and many similar exploits are recorded by the worthy Diedrich,
+      with his usual minuteness and enthusiasm, whenever the deeds in arms of
+      his kindred Dutchmen are in question; but though most of these warlike
+      stories rest upon the best of all authority, that of the warriors
+      themselves, and though many of them are still current among the
+      revolutionary patriarchs of this heroic neighborhood, yet I dare not
+      expose them to the incredulity of a tamer and less chivalric age, Suffice
+      it to say, the frequent gatherings at the Roost, and the hardy projects
+      set on foot there, at length drew on it the fiery indignation of the
+      enemy; and this was quickened by the conduct of the stout Jacob Van
+      Tassel; with whose valorous achievements we resume the course of the
+      chronicle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THIS doughty Dutchman, continues the sage DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER, was not
+      content with taking a share in all the magnanimous enterprises concocted
+      at the Roost, but still continued his petty warfare along shore. A series
+      of exploits at length raised his confidence in his prowess to such a
+      height, that he began to think himself and his goose-gun a match for any
+      thing. Unluckily, in the course of one of his prowlings, he descried a
+      British transport aground, not far from shore, with her stern swung toward
+      the land, within point-blank shot. The temptation was too great to be
+      resisted; bang! as usual, went the great goose-gun, shivering the cabin
+      windows, and driving all hands forward. Bang! bang! the shots were
+      repeated. The reports brought several sharp-shooters of the neighborhood
+      to the spot; before the transport could bring a gun to bear, or land a
+      boat, to take revenge, she was soundly peppered, and the coast evacuated.
+      This was the last of Jacob&rsquo;s triumphs. He fared like some heroic
+      spider, that has unwittingly ensnared a hornet, to his immortal glory,
+      perhaps, but to the utter ruin of his web.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not long after this, during the absence of Jacob Van Tassel on one
+      of his forays, and when no one was in garrison but his stout-hearted
+      spouse, his redoubtable sister, Nochie Van Wurmer, and a strapping negro
+      wench, called Dinah, that an armed vessel came to anchor off the Roost,
+      and a boat full of men pulled to shore. The garrison flew to arms, that is
+      to say, to mops, broom-sticks, shovels, tongs, and all kinds of domestic
+      weapons; for, unluckily, the great piece of ordnance, the goose-gun, was
+      absent with its owner. Above all, a vigorous defence was made with that
+      most potent of female weapons, the tongue. Never did invaded hen-roost
+      make a more vociferous outcry. It was all in vain. The house was sacked
+      and plundered, fire was set to each corner, and in a few moments its blaze
+      shed a baleful light far over the Tappan Sea. The invaders then pounced
+      upon the blooming Laney Van Tassel, the beauty of the Roost, and
+      endeavored to bear her off to the boat. But here was the real tug of war.
+      The mother, the aunt, and the strapping negro wench, all flew to the
+      rescue. The struggle continued down to the very water&rsquo;s edge; when a
+      voice from the armed vessel at anchor, ordered the spoilers to let go
+      their hold; they relinquished their prize, jumped into their boats, and
+      pulled off, and the heroine of the Roost escaped with a mere rumpling of
+      the feathers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fear of tiring my readers, who may not take such an interest as myself
+      in these heroic themes, induces me to close here my extracts from this
+      precious chronicle of the venerable Diedrich. Suffice it briefly to say,
+      that shortly after the catastrophe of the Roost, Jacob Van Tassel, in the
+      course of one of his forays, fell into the hands of the British; was sent
+      prisoner to New York, and was detained in captivity for the greater part
+      of the war. In the mean time, the Roost remained a melancholy ruin; its
+      stone walls and brick chimneys alone standing, blackened by fire, and the
+      resort of bats and owlets. It was not until the return of peace, when this
+      belligerent neighborhood once more resumed its quiet agricultural
+      pursuits, that the stout Jacob sought the scene of his triumphs and
+      disasters; rebuilt the Roost, and reared again on high its glittering
+      weather-cocks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Does any one want further particulars of the fortunes of this eventful
+      little pile? Let him go to the fountain-head, and drink deep of historic
+      truth. Reader! the stout Jacob Van Tassel still lives, a venerable,
+      gray-headed patriarch of the revolution, now in his ninety-fifth year! He
+      sits by his fireside, in the ancient city of the Manhattoes, and passes
+      the long winter evenings, surrounded by his children, and grand-children,
+      and great-grand-children, all listening to his tales of the border wars,
+      and the heroic days of the Roost. His great goose-gun, too, is still in
+      existence, having been preserved for many years in a hollow tree, and
+      passed from hand to hand among the Dutch burghers, as a precious relique
+      of the revolution. It is now actually in possession of a contemporary of
+      the stout Jacob, one almost his equal in years, who treasures it up at his
+      house in the Bowerie of New-Amsterdam, hard by the ancient rural retreat
+      of the chivalric Peter Stuyvesant. I am not without hopes of one day
+      seeing this formidable piece of ordinance restored to its proper station
+      in the arsenal of the Roost. Before closing this historic document, I
+      cannot but advert to certain notions and traditions concerning the
+      venerable pile in question. Old-time edifices are apt to gather odd
+      fancies and superstitions about them, as they do moss and weather-stains;
+      and this is in a neighborhood a little given to old-fashioned notions, and
+      who look upon the Roost as somewhat of a fated mansion. A lonely,
+      rambling, down-hill lane leads to it, overhung with trees, with a wild
+      brook dashing along, and crossing and re-crossing it. This lane I found
+      some of the good people of the neighborhood shy of treading at night; why,
+      I could not for a long time ascertain; until I learned that one or two of
+      the rovers of the Tappan Sea, shot by the stout Jacob during the war, had
+      been buried hereabout, in unconsecrated ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another local superstition is of a less gloomy kind, and one which I
+      confess I am somewhat disposed to cherish. The Tappan Sea, in front of the
+      Roost, is about three miles wide, bordered by a lofty line of waving and
+      rocky hills. Often, in the still twilight of a summer evening, when the
+      sea is like glass, with the opposite hills throwing their purple shadows
+      half across it, a low sound is heard, as of the steady, vigorous pull of
+      oars, far out in the middle of the stream, though not a boat is to be
+      descried. This I should have been apt to ascribe to some boat rowed along
+      under the shadows of the western shore, for sounds are conveyed to a great
+      distance by water, at such quiet hours, and I can distinctly hear the
+      baying of the watch-dogs at night, from the farms on the sides of the
+      opposite mountains. The ancient traditionists of the neighborhood,
+      however, religiously ascribed these sounds to a judgment upon one Rumbout
+      Van Dam, of Spiting Devil, who danced and drank late one Saturday night,
+      at a Dutch quilting frolic, at Kakiat, and set off alone for home in his
+      boat, on the verge of Sunday morning; swearing he would not land till he
+      reached Spiting Devil, if it took him a month of Sundays. He was never
+      seen afterward, but is often heard plying his oars across the Tappan Sea,
+      a Flying Dutchman on a small scale, suited to the size of his
+      cruising-ground; being doomed to ply between Kakiat and Spiting Devil till
+      the day of judgment, but never to reach the land.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is one room in the mansion which almost overhangs the river, and is
+      reputed to be haunted by the ghost of a young lady who died of love and
+      green apples. I have been awakened at night by the sound of oars and the
+      tinkling of guitars beneath the window; and seeing a boat loitering in the
+      moonlight, have been tempted to believe it the Flying Dutchman of Spiting
+      Devil, and to try whether a silver bullet might not put an end to his
+      unhappy cruisings; but, happening to recollect that there was a living
+      young lady in the haunted room, who might be terrified by the report of
+      fire-arms, I have refrained from pulling trigger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As to the enchanted fountain, said to have been gifted by the wizard
+      sachem with supernatural powers, it still wells up at the foot of the
+      bank, on the margin of the river, and goes by the name of the Indian
+      spring; but I have my doubts as to its rejuvenating powers, for though I
+      have drank oft and copiously of it, I cannot boast that I find myself
+      growing younger.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      GEOFFREY CRAYON.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      SLEEPY HOLLOW.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      HAVING pitched my tent, probably for the remainder of my days, in the
+      neighborhood of Sleepy Hollow, I am tempted to give some few particulars
+      concerning that spell-bound region; especially as it has risen to historic
+      importance under the pen of my revered friend and master, the sage
+      historian of the New Netherlands. Beside, I find the very existence of the
+      place has been held in question by many; who, judging from its odd name
+      and from the odd stories current among the vulgar concerning it, have
+      rashly deemed the whole to be a fanciful creation, like the Lubber Land of
+      mariners. I must confess there is some apparent cause for doubt, in
+      consequence of the coloring given by the worthy Diedrich to his
+      descriptions of the Hollow; who, in this instance, has departed a little
+      from his usually sober if not severe style; beguiled, very probably, by
+      his predilection for the haunts of his youth, and by a certain lurking
+      taint of romance whenever any thing connected with the Dutch was to be
+      described. I shall endeavor to make up for this amiable error on the part
+      of my venerable and venerated friend by presenting the reader with a more
+      precise and statistical account of the Hollow; though I am not sure that I
+      shall not be prone to lapse in the end into the very error I am speaking
+      of, so potent is the witchery of the theme.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I believe it was the very peculiarity of its name and the idea of
+      something mystic and dreamy connected with it that first led me in my
+      boyish ramblings into Sleepy Hollow. The character of the valley seemed to
+      answer to the name; the slumber of past ages apparently reigned over it;
+      it had not awakened to the stir of improvement which had put all the rest
+      of the world in a bustle. Here reigned good, old long-forgotten fashions;
+      the men were in home-spun garbs, evidently the product of their own farms
+      and the manufacture of their own wives; the women were in primitive short
+      gowns and petticoats, with the venerable sun-bonnets of Holland origin.
+      The lower part of the valley was cut up into small farms, each consisting
+      of a little meadow and corn-field; an orchard of sprawling, gnarled
+      apple-trees, and a garden, where the rose, the marigold, and the hollyhock
+      were permitted to skirt the domains of the capacious cabbage, the aspiring
+      pea, and the portly pumpkin. Each had its prolific little mansion teeming
+      with children; with an old hat nailed against the wall for the
+      housekeeping wren; a motherly hen, under a coop on the grass-plot,
+      clucking to keep around her a brood of vagrant chickens; a cool, stone
+      well, with the moss-covered bucket suspended to the long balancing-pole,
+      according to the antediluvian idea of hydraulics; and its spinning-wheel
+      humming within doors, the patriarchal music of home manufacture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Hollow at that time was inhabited by families which had existed there
+      from the earliest times, and which, by frequent intermarriage, had become
+      so interwoven, as to make a kind of natural commonwealth. As the families
+      had grown larger the farms had grown smaller; every new generation
+      requiring a new subdivision, and few thinking of swarming from the native
+      hive. In this way that happy golden mean had been produced, so much
+      extolled by the poets, in which there was no gold and very little silver.
+      One thing which doubtless contributed to keep up this amiable mean was a
+      general repugnance to sordid labor. The sage inhabitants of Sleepy Hollow
+      had read in their Bible, which was the only book they studied, that labor
+      was originally inflicted upon man as a punishment of sin; they regarded
+      it, therefore, with pious abhorrence, and never humiliated themselves to
+      it but in cases of extremity. There seemed, in fact, to be a league and
+      covenant against it throughout the Hollow as against a common enemy. Was
+      any one compelled by dire necessity to repair his house, mend his fences,
+      build a barn, or get in a harvest, he considered it a great evil that
+      entitled him to call in the assistance or his friend? He accordingly
+      proclaimed a &lsquo;bee&rsquo; or rustic gathering, whereupon all his
+      neighbors hurried to his aid like faithful allies; attacked the task with
+      the desperate energy of lazy men eager to overcome a job; and, when it was
+      accomplished, fell to eating and drinking, fiddling and dancing for very
+      joy that so great an amount of labor had been vanquished with so little
+      sweating of the brow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet, let it not be supposed that this worthy community was without its
+      periods of arduous activity. Let but a flock of wild pigeons fly across
+      the valley and all Sleepy Hollow was wide awake in an instant. The pigeon
+      season had arrived. Every gun and net was forthwith in requisition. The
+      flail was thrown down on the barn floor; the spade rusted in the garden;
+      the plough stood idle in the furrow; every one was to the hillside and
+      stubble-field at daybreak to shoot or entrap the pigeons in their
+      periodical migrations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So, likewise, let but the word be given that the shad were ascending the
+      Hudson, and the worthies of the Hollow were to be seen launched in boats
+      upon the river setting great stakes, and stretching their nets like
+      gigantic spider-webs half across the stream to the great annoyance of
+      navigators. Such are the wise provisions of Nature, by which she equalizes
+      rural affairs. A laggard at the plough is often extremely industrious with
+      the fowling-piece and fishing-net; and, whenever a man is an indifferent
+      farmer, he is apt to be a first-rate sportsman. For catching shad and wild
+      pigeons there were none throughout the country to compare with the lads of
+      Sleepy Hollow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I have observed, it was the dreamy nature of the name that first
+      beguiled me in the holiday rovings of boyhood into this sequestered
+      region. I shunned, however, the populous parts of the Hollow, and sought
+      its retired haunts far in the foldings of the hills, where the Pocantico
+      &ldquo;winds its wizard stream&rdquo; sometimes silently and darkly
+      through solemn woodlands; sometimes sparkling between grassy borders in
+      fresh, green meadows; sometimes stealing along the feet of rugged heights
+      under the balancing sprays of beech and chestnut trees. A thousand crystal
+      springs, with which this neighborhood abounds, sent down from the
+      hill-sides their whimpering rills, as if to pay tribute to the Pocantico.
+      In this stream I first essayed my unskilful hand at angling. I loved to
+      loiter along it with rod in hand, watching my float as it whirled amid the
+      eddies or drifted into dark holes under twisted roots and sunken logs,
+      where the largest fish are apt to lurk. I delighted to follow it into the
+      brown accesses of the woods; to throw by my fishing-gear and sit upon
+      rocks beneath towering oaks and clambering grape-vines; bathe my feet in
+      the cool current, and listen to the summer breeze playing among the
+      tree-tops. My boyish fancy clothed all nature around me with ideal charms,
+      and peopled it with the fairy beings I had read of in poetry and fable.
+      Here it was I gave full scope to my incipient habit of day dreaming, and
+      to a certain propensity, to weave up and tint sober realities with my own
+      whims and imaginings, which has sometimes made life a little too much like
+      an Arabian tale to me, and this &ldquo;working-day world&rdquo; rather
+      like a region of romance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great gathering-place of Sleepy Hollow in those days was the church.
+      It stood outside of the Hollow, near the great highway, on a green bank
+      shaded by trees, with the Pocantico sweeping round it and emptying itself
+      into a spacious mill-pond. At that time the Sleepy Hollow church was the
+      only place of worship for a wide neighborhood. It was a venerable edifice,
+      partly of stone and partly of brick, the latter having been brought from
+      Holland in the early days of the province, before the arts in the New
+      Netherlands could aspire to such a fabrication. On a stone above the porch
+      were inscribed the names of the founders, Frederick Filipsen, a mighty
+      patroon of the olden time, who reigned over a wide extent of this
+      neighborhood and held his seat of power at Yonkers; and his wife, Katrina
+      Van Courtlandt, of the no less potent line of the Van Courtlandts of
+      Croton, who lorded it over a great part of the Highlands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The capacious pulpit, with its wide-spreading sounding-board, were
+      likewise early importations from Holland; as also the communion-table, of
+      massive form and curious fabric. The same might be said of a weather-cock
+      perched on top of the belfry, and which was considered orthodox in all
+      windy matters, until a small pragmatical rival was set up on the other end
+      of the church above the chancel. This latter bore, and still bears, the
+      initials of Frederick Filipsen, and assumed great airs in consequence. The
+      usual contradiction ensued that always exists among church weather-cocks,
+      which can never be brought to agree as to the point from which the wind
+      blows, having doubtless acquired, from their position, the Christian
+      propensity to schism and controversy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Behind the church, and sloping up a gentle acclivity, was its capacious
+      burying-ground, in which slept the earliest fathers of this rural
+      neighborhood. Here were tombstones of the rudest sculpture; on which were
+      inscribed, in Dutch, the names and virtues of many of the first settlers,
+      with their portraitures curiously carved in similitude of cherubs. Long
+      rows of grave-stones, side by side, of similar names, but various dates,
+      showed that generation after generation of the same families had followed
+      each other and been garnered together in this last gathering-place of
+      kindred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let me speak of this quiet grave-yard with all due reverence, for I owe it
+      amends for the heedlessness of my boyish days. I blush to acknowledge the
+      thoughtless frolic with which, in company with other whipsters, I have
+      sported within its sacred bounds during the intervals of worship; chasing
+      butterflies, plucking wild flowers, or vying with each other who could
+      leap over the tallest tomb-stones, until checked by the stern voice of the
+      sexton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The congregation was, in those days, of a really rural character. City
+      fashions were as yet unknown, or unregarded, by the country people of the
+      neighborhood. Steam-boats had not as yet confounded town with country. A
+      weekly market-boat from Tarry town, the &ldquo;Farmers&rsquo; Daughter,&rdquo;
+      navigated by the worthy Gabriel Requa, was the only communication between
+      all these parts and the metropolis. A rustic belle in those days
+      considered a visit to the city in much the same light as one of our modern
+      fashionable ladies regards a visit to Europe; an event that may possibly
+      take place once in the course of a lifetime, but to be hoped for, rather
+      than expected. Hence the array of the congregation was chiefly after the
+      primitive fashions existing in Sleepy Hollow; or if, by chance, there was
+      a departure from the Dutch sun-bonnet, or the apparition of a bright gown
+      of flowered calico, it caused quite a sensation throughout the church. As
+      the dominie generally preached by the hour, a bucket of water was
+      providently placed on a bench near the door, in summer, with a tin cup
+      beside it, for the solace of those who might be athirst, either from the
+      heat of the weather, or the drouth of the sermon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Around the pulpit, and behind the communion-table, sat the elders of the
+      church, reverend, gray-headed, leathern-visaged men, whom I regarded with
+      awe, as so many apostles. They were stern in their sanctity, kept a
+      vigilant eye upon my giggling companions and myself, and shook a rebuking
+      finger at any boyish device to relieve the tediousness of compulsory
+      devotion. Vain, however, were all their efforts at vigilance. Scarcely had
+      the preacher held forth for half an hour, on one of his interminable
+      sermons, than it seemed as if the drowsy influence of Sleepy Hollow
+      breathed into the place; one by one the congregation sank into slumber;
+      the sanctified elders leaned back in their pews, spreading their
+      handkerchiefs over their faces, as if to keep off the flies; while the
+      locusts in the neighboring trees would spin out their sultry summer notes,
+      as if in imitation of the sleep-provoking tones of the dominie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have thus endeavored to give an idea of Sleepy Hollow and its church, as
+      I recollect them to have been in the days of my boyhood. It was in my
+      stripling days, when a few years had passed over my head, that I revisited
+      them, in company with the venerable Diedrich. I shall never forget the
+      antiquarian reverence with which that sage and excellent man contemplated
+      the church. It seemed as if all his pious enthusiasm for the ancient Dutch
+      dynasty swelled within his bosom at the sight. The tears stood in his
+      eyes, as he regarded the pulpit and the communion-table; even the very
+      bricks that had come from the mother country, seemed to touch a filial
+      chord within his bosom. He almost bowed in deference to the stone above
+      the porch, containing the names of Frederick Filipsen and Katrina Van
+      Courtlandt, regarding it as the linking together of those patronymic
+      names, once so famous along the banks of the Hudson; or rather as a
+      key-stone, binding that mighty Dutch family connexion of yore, one foot of
+      which rested on Yonkers, and the other on the Groton. Nor did he forbear
+      to notice with admiration, the windy contest which had been carried on,
+      since time immemorial, and with real Dutch perseverance, between the two
+      weather-cocks; though I could easily perceive he coincided with the one
+      which had come from Holland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Together we paced the ample church-yard. With deep veneration would he
+      turn down the weeds and brambles that obscured the modest brown
+      grave-stones, half sunk in earth, on which were recorded, in Dutch, the
+      names of the patriarchs of ancient days, the Ackers, the Van Tassels, and
+      the Van Warts. As we sat on one of the tomb-stones, he recounted to me the
+      exploits of many of these worthies; and my heart smote me, when I heard of
+      their great doings in days of yore, to think how heedlessly I had once
+      sported over their graves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the church, the venerable Diedrich proceeded in his researches up the
+      Hollow. The genius of the place seemed to hail its future historian. All
+      nature was alive with gratulation. The quail whistled a greeting from the
+      corn-field; the robin carolled a song of praise from the orchard; the
+      loquacious catbird flew from bush to bush, with restless wing, proclaiming
+      his approach in every variety of note, and anon would whisk about, and
+      perk inquisitively into his face, as if to get a knowledge of his
+      physiognomy; the wood-pecker, also, tapped a tattoo on the hollow
+      apple-tree, and then peered knowingly round the trunk, to see how the
+      great Diedrich relished his salutation; while the ground-squirrel
+      scampered along the fence, and occasionally whisked his tail over his
+      head, by way of a huzza!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The worthy Diedrich pursued his researches in the valley with
+      characteristic devotion; entering familiarly into the various cottages,
+      and gossiping with the simple folk, in the style of their own simplicity.
+      I confess my heart yearned with admiration, to see so great a man, in his
+      eager quest after knowledge, humbly demeaning himself to curry favor with
+      the humblest; sitting patiently on a three-legged stool, patting the
+      children, and taking a purring grimalkin on his lap, while he conciliated
+      the good-will of the old Dutch housewife, and drew from her long ghost
+      stories, spun out to the humming accompaniment of her wheel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His greatest treasure of historic lore, however, was discovered in an old
+      goblin-looking mill, situated among rocks and waterfalls, with clanking
+      wheels, and rushing streams, and all kinds of uncouth noises. A
+      horse-shoe, nailed to the door to keep off witches and evil spirits,
+      showed that this mill was subject to awful visitations. As we approached
+      it, an old negro thrust his head, all dabbled with flour, out of a hole
+      above the water-wheel, and grinned, and rolled his eyes, and looked like
+      the very hobgoblin of the place. The illustrious Diedrich fixed upon him,
+      at once, as the very one to give him that invaluable kind of information
+      never to be acquired from books. He beckoned him from his nest, sat with
+      him by the hour on a broken mill-stone, by the side of the waterfall,
+      heedless of the noise of the water, and the clatter of the mill; and I
+      verily believe it was to his conference with this African sage, and the
+      precious revelations of the good dame of the spinning-wheel, that we are
+      indebted for the surprising though true history of Ichabod Crane and the
+      headless horseman, which has since astounded and edified the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I have said enough of the good old times of my youthful days; let me
+      speak of the Hollow as I found it, after an absence of many years, when it
+      was kindly given me once more to revisit the haunts of my boyhood. It was
+      a genial day, as I approached that fated region. The warm sunshine was
+      tempered by a slight haze, so as to give a dreamy effect to the landscape.
+      Not a breath of air shook the foliage. The broad Tappan Sea was without a
+      ripple, and the sloops, with drooping sails, slept on its grassy bosom.
+      Columns of smoke, from burning brush-wood, rose lazily from the folds of
+      the hills, on the opposite side of the river, and slowly expanded in
+      mid-air. The distant lowing of a cow, or the noontide crowing of a cock,
+      coming faintly to the ear, seemed to illustrate, rather than disturb, the
+      drowsy quiet of the scene.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I entered the hollow with a beating heart. Contrary to my apprehensions, I
+      found it but little changed. The march of intellect, which had made such
+      rapid strides along every river and highway, had not yet, apparently,
+      turned down into this favored valley. Perhaps the wizard spell of ancient
+      days still reigned over the place, binding up the faculties of the
+      inhabitants in happy contentment with things as they had been handed down
+      to them from yore. There were the same little farms and farmhouses, with
+      their old hats for the housekeeping wren; their stone wells, moss-covered
+      buckets, and long balancing poles. There were the same little rills,
+      whimpering down to pay their tributes to the Pocantico; while that wizard
+      stream still kept on its course, as of old, through solemn woodlands and
+      fresh green meadows: nor were there wanting joyous holiday boys to loiter
+      along its banks, as I have done; throw their pin-hooks in the stream, or
+      launch their mimic barks. I watched them with a kind of melancholy
+      pleasure, wondering whether they were under the same spell of the fancy
+      that once rendered this valley a fairy land to me. Alas! alas! to me every
+      thing now stood revealed in its simple reality. The echoes no longer
+      answered with wizard tongues; the dream of youth was at an end; the spell
+      of Sleepy Hollow was broken!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I sought the ancient church on the following Sunday. There it stood, on
+      its green bank, among the trees; the Pocantico swept by it in a deep dark
+      stream, where I had so often angled; there expanded the mill-pond, as of
+      old, with the cows under the willows on its margin, knee-deep in water,
+      chewing the cud, and lashing the flies from their sides with their tails.
+      The hand of improvement, however, had been busy with the venerable pile.
+      The pulpit, fabricated in Holland, had been superseded by one of modern
+      construction, and the front of the semi-Gothic edifice was decorated by a
+      semi-Grecian portico. Fortunately, the two weather-cocks remained
+      undisturbed on their perches at each end of the church, and still kept up
+      a diametrical opposition to each other on all points of windy doctrine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On entering the church the changes of time continued to be apparent. The
+      elders round the pulpit were men whom I had left in the gamesome frolic of
+      their youth, but who had succeeded to the sanctity of station of which
+      they once had stood so much in awe. What most struck my eye was the change
+      in the female part of the congregation. Instead of the primitive garbs of
+      homespun manufacture and antique Dutch fashion, I beheld French sleeves,
+      French capes, and French collars, and a fearful-fluttering of French
+      ribbands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the service was ended I sought the church-yard, in which I had
+      sported in my unthinking days of boyhood. Several of the modest brown
+      stones, on which were recorded in Dutch the names and virtues of the
+      patriarchs, had disappeared, and had been succeeded by others of white
+      marble, with urns and wreaths, and scraps of English tomb-stone poetry,
+      marking the intrusion of taste and literature and the English language in
+      this once unsophisticated Dutch neighborhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I was stumbling about among these silent yet eloquent memorials of the
+      dead, I came upon names familiar to me; of those who had paid the debt of
+      nature during the long interval of my absence. Some, I remembered, my
+      companions in boyhood, who had sported with me on the very sod under which
+      they were now mouldering; others who in those days had been the flower of
+      the yeomanry, figuring in Sunday finery on the church green; others, the
+      white-haired elders of the sanctuary, once arrayed in awful sanctity
+      around the pulpit, and ever ready to rebuke the ill-timed mirth of the
+      wanton stripling who, now a man, sobered by years and schooled by
+      vicissitudes, looked down pensively upon their graves. &ldquo;Our fathers,&rdquo;
+      thought I, &ldquo;where are they!&mdash;and the prophets, can they live
+      for ever!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was disturbed in my meditations by the noise of a troop of idle urchins,
+      who came gambolling about the place where I had so often gambolled. They
+      were checked, as I and my playmates had often been, by the voice of the
+      sexton, a man staid in years and demeanor. I looked wistfully in his face;
+      had I met him any where else, I should probably have passed him by without
+      remark; but here I was alive to the traces of former times, and detected
+      in the demure features of this guardian of the sanctuary the lurking
+      lineaments of one of the very playmates I have alluded to. We renewed our
+      acquaintance. He sat down beside me, on one of the tomb-stones over which
+      we had leaped in our juvenile sports, and we talked together about our
+      boyish days, and held edifying discourse on the instability of all
+      sublunary things, as instanced in the scene around us. He was rich in
+      historic lore, as to the events of the last thirty years and the
+      circumference of thirty miles, and from him I learned the appalling
+      revolution that was taking place throughout the neighborhood. All this I
+      clearly perceived he attributed to the boasted march of intellect, or
+      rather to the all-pervading influence of steam. He bewailed the times when
+      the only communication with town was by the weekly market-boat, the
+      &ldquo;Farmers&rsquo; Daughter,&rdquo; which, under the pilotage of the
+      worthy Gabriel Requa, braved the perils of the Tappan Sea. Alas! Gabriel
+      and the &ldquo;Farmer&rsquo;s Daughter&rdquo; slept in peace. Two
+      steamboats now splashed and paddled up daily to the little rural port of
+      Tarrytown. The spirit of speculation and improvement had seized even upon
+      that once quiet and unambitious little dorp. The whole neighborhood was
+      laid out into town lots. Instead of the little tavern below the hill,
+      where the farmers used to loiter on market days and indulge in cider and
+      gingerbread, an ambitious hotel, with cupola and verandas, now crested the
+      summit, among churches built in the Grecian and Gothic styles, showing the
+      great increase of piety and polite taste in the neighborhood. As to Dutch
+      dresses and sun-bonnets, they were no longer tolerated, or even thought
+      of; not a farmer&rsquo;s daughter but now went to town for the fashions;
+      nay, a city milliner had recently set up in the village, who threatened to
+      reform the heads of the whole neighborhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had heard enough! I thanked my old playmate for his intelligence, and
+      departed from the Sleepy Hollow church with the sad conviction that I had
+      beheld the last lingerings of the good old Dutch times in this once
+      favored region. If any thing were wanting to confirm this impression, it
+      would be the intelligence which has just reached me, that a bank is about
+      to be established in the aspiring little port just mentioned. The fate of
+      the neighborhood is therefore sealed. I see no hope of averting it. The
+      golden mean is at an end, The country is suddenly to be deluged with
+      wealth. The late simple farmers are to become bank directors and drink
+      claret and champagne; and their wives and daughters to figure in French
+      hats and feathers; for French wines and French fashions commonly keep pace
+      with paper money. How can I hope that even Sleepy Hollow can escape the
+      general inundation? In a little while, I fear the slumber of ages will be
+      at end&mdash;the strum of the piano will succeed to the hum of the
+      spinning-wheel; the trill of the Italian opera to the nasal quaver of
+      Ichabod Crane; and the antiquarian visitor to the Hollow, in the petulance
+      of his disappointment, may pronounce all that I have recorded of that once
+      favored region a fable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE BIRDS OF SPRING.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      My quiet residence in the country, aloof from fashion, politics, and the
+      money market, leaves me rather at a loss for important occupation, and
+      drives me to the study of nature, and other low pursuits. Having few
+      neighbors, also, on whom to keep a watch, and exercise my habits of
+      observation, I am fain to amuse myself with prying into the domestic
+      concerns and peculiarities of the animals around me; and, during the
+      present season, have derived considerable entertainment from certain
+      sociable little birds, almost the only visitors we have, during this early
+      part of the year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those who have passed the winter in the country, are sensible of the
+      delightful influences that accompany the earliest indications of spring;
+      and of these, none are more delightful than the first notes of the birds.
+      There is one modest little sad-colored bird, much resembling a wren, which
+      came about the house just on the skirts of winter, when not a blade of
+      grass was to be seen, and when a few prematurely warm days had given a
+      flattering foretaste of soft weather. He sang early in the dawning, long
+      before sun-rise, and late in the evening, just before the closing in of
+      night, his matin and his vesper hymns. It is true, he sang occasionally
+      throughout the day; but at these still hours, his song was more remarked.
+      He sat on a leafless tree, just before the window, and warbled forth his
+      notes, free and simple, but singularly sweet, with something of a
+      plaintive tone, that heightened their effect. The first morning that he
+      was heard, was a joyous one among the young folks of my household. The
+      long, deathlike sleep of winter was at an end; nature was once more
+      awakening; they now promised themselves the immediate appearance of buds
+      and blossoms. I was reminded of the tempest-tossed crew of Columbus, when,
+      after their long dubious voyage, the field birds came singing round the
+      ship, though still far at sea, rejoicing them with the belief of the
+      immediate proximity of land. A sharp return of winter almost silenced my
+      little songster, and dashed the hilarity of the household; yet still he
+      poured forth, now and then, a few plaintive notes, between the frosty
+      pipings of the breeze, like gleams of sunshine between wintry clouds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have consulted my book of ornithology in vain, to find out the name of
+      this kindly little bird, who certainly deserves honor and favor far beyond
+      his modest pretensions. He comes like the lowly violet, the most
+      unpretending, but welcomest of flowers, breathing the sweet promise of the
+      early year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another of our feathered visitors, who follows close upon the steps of
+      winter, is the Pe-wit, or Pe-wee, or Phoebe-bird; for he is called by each
+      of these names, from a fancied resemblance to the sound of his monotonous
+      note. He is a sociable little being, and seeks the habitation of man. A
+      pair of them have built beneath my porch, and have reared several broods
+      there for two years past, their nest being never disturbed. They arrive
+      early in the spring, just when the crocus and the snow-drop begin to peep
+      forth. Their first chirp spreads gladness through the house. &ldquo;The
+      Phoebe-birds have come!&rdquo; is heard on all sides; they are welcomed
+      back like members of the family, and speculations are made upon where they
+      have been, and what countries they have seen during their long absence.
+      Their arrival is the more cheering, as it is pronounced, by the old
+      weather-wise people of the country, the sure sign that the severe frosts
+      are at an end, and that the gardener may resume his labors with
+      confidence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About this time, too, arrives the blue-bird, so poetically yet truly
+      described by Wilson. His appearance gladdens the whole landscape. You hear
+      his soft warble in every field. He sociably approaches your habitation,
+      and takes up his residence in your vicinity. But why should I attempt to
+      describe him, when I have Wilson&rsquo;s own graphic verses to place him
+      before the reader?
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  When winter&rsquo;s cold tempests and snows are no more,
+  Green meadows and brown furrowed fields re-appearing:
+  The fishermen hauling their shad to the shore,
+  And cloud-cleaving geese to the lakes are a-steering;
+  When first the lone butterfly flits on the wing,
+  When red glow the maples, so fresh and so pleasing,
+  O then comes the blue-bird, the herald of spring,
+  And hails with his warblings the charms of the season.
+
+  The loud-piping frogs make the marshes to ring;
+  Then warm glows the sunshine, and warm glows the weather;
+  The blue woodland flowers just beginning to spring,
+  And spice-wood and sassafras budding together;
+  O then to your gardens, ye housewives, repair,
+  Your walks border up, sow and plant at your leisure;
+  The blue-bird will chant from his box such an air,
+  That all your hard toils will seem truly a pleasure.
+
+  He flits through the orchard, he visits each tree,
+  The red flowering peach, and the apple&rsquo;s sweet blossoms;
+  He snaps up destroyers, wherever they be,
+  And seizes the caitiffs that lurk in their bosoms;
+  He drags the vile grub from the corn it devours,
+  The worms from the webs where they riot and welter;
+  His song and his services freely are ours,
+  And all that he asks is, in summer a shelter.
+
+  The ploughman is pleased when he gleams in his train,
+  Now searching the furrows, now mounting to cheer him;
+  The gard&rsquo;ner delights in his sweet simple strain,
+  And leans on his spade to survey and to hear him.
+  The slow lingering school-boys forget they&rsquo;ll be chid,
+  While gazing intent, as he warbles before them,
+  In mantle of sky-blue, and bosom so red,
+  That each little loiterer seems to adore him.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The happiest bird of our spring, however, and one that rivals the European
+      lark, in my estimation, is the Boblincon, or Boblink, as he is commonly
+      called. He arrives at that choice portion of our year, which, in this
+      latitude, answers to the description of the month of May, so often given
+      by the poets. With us, it begins about the middle of May, and lasts until
+      nearly the middle of June. Earlier than this, winter is apt to return on
+      its traces, and to blight the opening beauties of the year; and later than
+      this, begin the parching, and panting, and dissolving heats of summer. But
+      in this genial interval, nature is in all her freshness and fragrance:
+      &ldquo;the rains are over and gone, the flowers appear upon the earth, the
+      time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard
+      in the land.&rdquo; The trees are now in their fullest foliage and
+      brightest verdure; the woods are gay with the clustered flowers of the
+      laurel; the air is perfumed by the sweet-briar and the wild rose; the
+      meadows are enamelled with clover-blossoms; while the young apple, the
+      peach, and the plum, begin to swell, and the cherry to glow, among the
+      green leaves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is the chosen season of revelry of the Boblink. He comes amidst the
+      pomp and fragrance of the season; his life seems all sensibility and
+      enjoyment, all song and sunshine. He is to be found in the soft bosoms of
+      the freshest and sweetest meadows; and is most in song when the clover is
+      in blossom. He perches on the topmost twig of a tree, or on some long
+      flaunting weed; and as he rises and sinks with the breeze, pours forth a
+      succession of rich tinkling notes; crowding one upon another, like the
+      outpouring melody of the skylark, and possessing the same rapturous
+      character. Sometimes he pitches from the summit of a tree, begins his song
+      as soon as he gets upon the wing, and flutters tremulously down to the
+      earth, as if overcome with ecstasy at his own music. Sometimes he is in
+      pursuit of his paramour; always in full song, as if he would win her by
+      his melody; and always with the same appearance of intoxication and
+      delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of all the birds of our groves and meadows, the Boblink was the envy of my
+      boyhood. He crossed my path in the sweetest weather, and the sweetest
+      season of the year, when all nature called to the fields, and the rural
+      feeling throbbed in every bosom; but when I, luckless urchin! was doomed
+      to be mewed up, during the livelong day, in that purgatory of boyhood, a
+      school-room. It seemed as if the little varlet mocked at me, as he flew by
+      in full song, and sought to taunt me with his happier lot. Oh, how I
+      envied him! No lessons, no tasks, no hateful school; nothing but holiday,
+      frolic, green fields, and fine weather. Had I been then more versed in
+      poetry, I might have addressed him in the words of Logan to the cuckoo:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green,
+  Thy sky is ever clear;
+  Thou hast no sorrow in thy note,
+  No winter in thy year.
+
+  Oh! could I fly, I&rsquo;d fly with thee;
+  We&rsquo;d make, on joyful wing,
+  Our annual visit round the globe,
+  Companions of the spring!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Farther observation and experience have given me a different idea of this
+      little feathered voluptuary, which I will venture to impart, for the
+      benefit of my school-boy readers, who may regard him with the same
+      unqualified envy and admiration which I once indulged. I have shown him
+      only as I saw him at first, in what I may call the poetical part of his
+      career, when he in a manner devoted himself to elegant pursuits and
+      enjoyments, and was a bird of music, and song, and taste, and sensibility,
+      and refinement. While this lasted, he was sacred from injury; the very
+      school-boy would not fling a stone at him, and the merest rustic would
+      pause to listen to his strain. But mark the difference. As the year
+      advances, as the clover-blossoms disappear, and the spring fades into
+      summer, his notes cease to vibrate on the ear. He gradually gives up his
+      elegant tastes and habits, doffs his poetical and professional suit of
+      black, assumes a russet or rather dusty garb, and enters into the gross
+      enjoyments of common, vulgar birds. He becomes a bon-vivant, a mere
+      gourmand; thinking of nothing but good cheer, and gormandizing on the
+      seeds of the long grasses on which he lately swung, and chaunted so
+      musically. He begins to think there is nothing like &ldquo;the joys of the
+      table,&rdquo; if I may be allowed to apply that convivial phrase to his
+      indulgences. He now grows discontented with plain, every-day fare, and
+      sets out on a gastronomical tour, in search of foreign luxuries. He is to
+      be found in myriads among the reeds of the Delaware, banqueting on their
+      seeds; grows corpulent with good feeding, and soon acquires the unlucky
+      renown of the ortolan. Whereever he goes, pop! pop! pop! the rusty
+      firelocks of the country are cracking on every side; he sees his
+      companions falling by the thousands around him; he is the <i>reed-bird</i>,
+      the much-sought-for tit-bit of the Pennsylvanian epicure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Does he take warning and reform? Not he! He wings his flight still farther
+      south, in search of other luxuries. We hear of him gorging himself in the
+      rice swamps; filling himself with rice almost to bursting; he can hardly
+      fly for corpulency. Last stage of his career, we hear of him spitted by
+      dozens, and served up on the table of the gourmand, the most vaunted of
+      southern dainties, the <i>rice-bird</i> of the Carolinas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such is the story of the once musical and admired, but finally sensual and
+      persecuted Boblink. It contains a moral, worthy the attention of all
+      little birds and little boys; warning them to keep to those refined and
+      intellectual pursuits, which raised him to so high a pitch of popularity,
+      during the early part of his career; but to eschew all tendency to that
+      gross and dissipated indulgence, which brought this mistaken little bird
+      to an untimely end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Which is all at present, from the well-wisher of little boys and little
+      birds,
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      GEOFFREY CRAYON.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      RECOLLECTIONS OF THE ALHAMBRA.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      By The Author Of The Sketch-Book.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      During a summer&rsquo;s residence in the old Moorish palace of the
+      Alhambra, of which I have already given numerous anecdotes to the public,
+      I used to pass much of my time in the beautiful hall of the Abencerrages,
+      beside the fountain celebrated in the tragic story of that devoted race.
+      Here it was, that thirty-six cavaliers of that heroic line were
+      treacherously sacrificed, to appease the jealousy or allay the fears of a
+      tyrant. The fountain which now throws up its sparkling jet, and sheds a
+      dewy freshness around, ran red with the noblest blood of Granada, and a
+      deep stain on the marble pavement is still pointed out, by the cicerones
+      of the pile, as a sanguinary record of the massacre. I have regarded it
+      with the same determined faith with which I have regarded the traditional
+      stains of Rizzio&rsquo;s blood on the floor of the chamber of the
+      unfortunate Mary, at Holyrood. I thank no one for endeavoring to enlighten
+      my credulity, on such points of popular belief. It is like breaking up the
+      shrine of the pilgrim; it is robbing a poor traveller of half the reward
+      of his toils; for, strip travelling of its historical illusions, and what
+      a mere fag you make of it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For my part, I gave myself up, during my sojourn in the Alhambra, to all
+      the romantic and fabulous traditions connected with the pile. I lived in
+      the midst of an Arabian tale, and shut my eyes, as much as possible, to
+      every thing that called me back to every-day life; and if there is any
+      country in Europe where one can do so, it is in poor, wild, legendary,
+      proud-spirited, romantic Spain; where the old magnificent barbaric spirit
+      still contends against the utilitarianism of modern civilization.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the silent and deserted halls of the Alhambra; surrounded with the
+      insignia of regal sway, and the still vivid, though dilapidated traces of
+      oriental voluptuousness, I was in the strong-hold of Moorish story, and
+      every thing spoke and breathed of the glorious days of Granada, when under
+      the dominion of the crescent. When I sat in the hall of the Abencerrages,
+      I suffered my mind to conjure up all that I had read of that illustrious
+      line. In the proudest days of Moslem domination, the Abencerrages were the
+      soul of every thing noble and chivalrous. The veterans of the family, who
+      sat in the royal council, were the foremost to devise those heroic
+      enterprises, which carried dismay into the territories of the Christians;
+      and what the sages of the family devised, the young men of the name were
+      the foremost to execute. In all services of hazard; in all adventurous
+      forays, and hair-breadth hazards; the Abencerrages were sure to win the
+      brightest laurels. In those noble recreations, too, which bear so close an
+      affinity to war; in the tilt and tourney, the riding at the ring, and the
+      daring bull-fight; still the Abencerrages carried off the palm. None could
+      equal them for the splendor of their array, the gallantry of their
+      devices; for their noble bearing, and glorious horsemanship. Their
+      open-handed munificence made them the idols of the populace, while their
+      lofty magnanimity, and perfect faith, gained them golden opinions from the
+      generous and high-minded. Never were they known to decry the merits of a
+      rival, or to betray the confidings of a friend; and the &ldquo;word of an
+      Abencerrage&rdquo; was a guarantee that never admitted of a doubt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then their devotion to the fair! Never did Moorish beauty consider the
+      fame of her charms established, until she had an Abencerrage for a lover;
+      and never did an Abencerrage prove recreant to his vows. Lovely Granada!
+      City of delights! Who ever bore the favors of thy dames more proudly on
+      their casques, or championed them more gallantly in the chivalrous tilts
+      of the Vivarambla? Or who ever made thy moon-lit balconies, thy gardens of
+      myrtles and roses, of oranges, citrons, and pomegranates, respond to more
+      tender serenades?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I speak with enthusiasm on this theme; for it is connected with the
+      recollection of one of the sweetest evenings and sweetest scenes that ever
+      I enjoyed in Spain. One of the greatest pleasures of the Spaniards is, to
+      sit in the beautiful summer evenings, and listen to traditional ballads,
+      and tales about the wars of the Moors and Christians, and the &ldquo;buenas
+      andanzas&rdquo; and &ldquo;grandes hechos,&rdquo; the &ldquo;good fortunes&rdquo;
+      and &ldquo;great exploits&rdquo; of the hardy warriors of yore. It is
+      worthy of remark, also, that many of these songs, or romances, as they are
+      called, celebrate the prowess and magnanimity in war, and the tenderness
+      and, fidelity in love, of the Moorish cavaliers, once their most
+      formidable and hated foes. But centuries have elapsed, to extinguish the
+      bigotry of the zealot; and the once detested warriors of Granada are now
+      held up by Spanish poets, as the mirrors of chivalric virtue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the amusement of the evening in question. A number of us were
+      seated in the Hall of the Abencerrages, listening to one of the most
+      gifted and fascinating beings that I had ever met with in my wanderings.
+      She was young and beautiful; and light and ethereal; full of fire, and
+      spirit, and pure enthusiasm. She wore the fanciful Andalusian dress;
+      touched the guitar with speaking eloquence; improvised with wonderful
+      facility; and, as she became excited by her theme, or by the rapt
+      attention of her auditors, would pour forth, in the richest and most
+      melodious strains, a succession of couplets, full of striking description,
+      or stirring narration, and composed, as I was assured, at the moment. Most
+      of these were suggested by the place, and related to the ancient glories
+      of Granada, and the prowess of her chivalry. The Abencerrages were her
+      favorite heroes; she felt a woman&rsquo;s admiration of their gallant
+      courtesy, and high-souled honor; and it was touching and inspiring to hear
+      the praises of that generous but devoted race, chanted in this fated hall
+      of their calamity, by the lips of Spanish beauty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among the subjects of which she treated, was a tale of Moslem honor, and
+      old-fashioned Spanish courtesy, which made a strong impression on me. She
+      disclaimed all merit of invention, however, and said she had merely
+      dilated into verse a popular tradition; and, indeed, I have since found
+      the main facts inserted at the end of Conde&rsquo;s History of the
+      Domination of the Arabs, and the story itself embodied in the form of an
+      episode in the Diana of Montemayor. From these sources I have drawn it
+      forth, and endeavored to shape it according to my recollection of the
+      version of the beautiful minstrel; but, alas! what can supply the want of
+      that voice, that look, that form, that action, which gave magical effect
+      to her chant, and held every one rapt in breathless admiration! Should
+      this mere travestie of her inspired numbers ever meet her eye, in her
+      stately abode at Granada, may it meet with that indulgence which belongs
+      to her benignant nature. Happy should I be, if it could awaken in her
+      bosom one kind recollection of the lonely stranger and sojourner, for
+      whose gratification she did not think it beneath her to exert those
+      fascinating powers which were the delight of brilliant circles; and who
+      will ever recall with enthusiasm the happy evening passed in listening to
+      her strains, in the moon-lit halls of the Alhambra.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE ABENCERRAGE.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A SPANISH TALE.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      On the summit of a craggy hill, a spur of the mountains of Ronda, stands
+      the castle of Allora, now a mere ruin, infested by bats and owlets, but in
+      old times one of the strong border holds of the Christians, to keep watch
+      upon the frontiers of the warlike kingdom of Granada, and to hold the
+      Moors in check. It was a post always confided to some well-tried
+      commander; and, at the time of which we treat, was held by Rodrigo de
+      Narvaez, a veteran, famed, both among Moors and Christians, not only for
+      his hardy feats of arms, but also for that magnanimous courtesy which
+      should ever be entwined with the sterner virtues of the soldier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The castle of Allora was a mere part of his command; he was Alcayde, or
+      military governor of Antiquera, but he passed most of his time at this
+      frontier post, because its situation on the borders gave more frequent
+      opportunity for those adventurous exploits which were the delight of the
+      Spanish chivalry. His garrison consisted of fifty chosen cavaliers, all
+      well mounted and well appointed: with these he kept vigilant watch upon
+      the Moslems; patrolling the roads, and paths, and defiles of the
+      mountains, so that nothing could escape his eye; and now and then
+      signalizing himself by some dashing foray into the very Vega of Granada.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On a fair and beautiful night in summer, when the freshness of the evening
+      breeze had tempered the heat of day, the worthy Alcayde sallied forth,
+      with nine of his cavaliers, to patrol the neighborhood, and seek
+      adventures. They rode quietly and cautiously, lest they should be
+      overheard by Moorish scout or traveller; and kept along ravines and hollow
+      ways, lest they should be betrayed by the glittering of the full moon upon
+      their armor. Coming to where the road divided, the Alcayde directed five
+      of his cavaliers to take one of the branches, while he, with the remaining
+      four, would take the other. Should either party be in danger, the blast of
+      a horn was to be the signal to bring their comrades to their aid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The party of five had not proceeded far, when, in passing through a
+      defile, overhung with trees, they heard the voice of a man, singing. They
+      immediately concealed themselves in a grove, on the brow of a declivity,
+      up which the stranger would have to ascend. The moonlight, which left the
+      grove in deep shadow, lit up the whole person of the wayfarer, as he
+      advanced, and enabled them to distinguish his dress and appearance with
+      perfect accuracy. He was a Moorish cavalier, and his noble demeanor,
+      graceful carriage, and splendid attire showed him to be of lofty rank. He
+      was superbly mounted, on a dapple-gray steed, of powerful frame, and
+      generous spirit, and magnificently caparisoned. His dress was a marlota,
+      or tunic, and an Albernoz of crimson damask, fringed with gold. His
+      Tunisian turban, of many folds, was of silk and cotton, striped, and
+      bordered with golden fringe. At his girdle hung a scimitar of Damascus
+      steel, with loops and tassels of silk and gold. On his left arm he bore an
+      ample target, and his right hand grasped a long double-pointed lance. Thus
+      equipped, he sat negligently on his steed, as one who dreamed of no
+      danger, gazing on the moon, and singing, with a sweet and manly voice, a
+      Moorish love ditty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just opposite the place where the Spanish cavaliers were concealed, was a
+      small fountain in the rock, beside the road, to which the horse turned to
+      drink; the rider threw the reins on his neck, and continued his song.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Spanish cavaliers conferred together; they were all so pleased with
+      the gallant and gentle appearance of the Moor, that they resolved not to
+      harm, but to capture him, which, in his negligent mood, promised to be an
+      easy task; rushing, therefore, from their concealment, they thought to
+      surround and seize him. Never were men more mistaken. To gather up his
+      reins, wheel round his steed, brace his buckler, and couch his lance, was
+      the work of an instant; and there he sat, fixed like a castle in his
+      saddle, beside the fountain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Christian cavaliers checked their steeds and reconnoitered him warily,
+      loth to come to an encounter, which must end in his destruction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Moor now held a parley: &ldquo;If you be true knights,&rdquo; said he,
+      &ldquo;and seek for honorable fame, come on, singly, and I am ready to
+      meet each in succession; but if you be mere lurkers of the road, intent on
+      spoil, come all at once, and do your worst!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cavaliers communed for a moment apart, when one, advancing singly,
+      exclaimed: &ldquo;Although no law of chivalry obliges us to risk the loss
+      of a prize, when clearly in our power, yet we willingly grant, as a
+      courtesy, what we might refuse as a right. Valiant Moor! defend thyself!&rdquo;
+      So saying, he wheeled, took proper distance, couched his lance, and
+      putting spurs to his horse, made at the stranger. The latter met him in
+      mid career, transpierced him with his lance, and threw him headlong from
+      his saddle. A second and a third succeeded, but were unhorsed with equal
+      facility, and thrown to the earth, severely wounded. The remaining two,
+      seeing their comrades thus roughly treated, forgot all compact of
+      courtesy, and charged both at once upon the Moor. He parried the thrust of
+      one, but was wounded by the other in the thigh, and, in the shock and
+      confusion, dropped his lance. Thus disarmed, and closely pressed, he
+      pretended to fly, and was hotly pursued. Having drawn the two cavaliers
+      some distance from the spot, he suddenly wheeled short about, with one of
+      those dexterous movements for which the Moorish horsemen are renowned;
+      passed swiftly between them, swung himself down from his saddle, so as to
+      catch up his lance, then, lightly replacing himself, turned to renew the
+      combat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seeing him thus fresh for the encounter, as if just issued from his tent,
+      one of the cavaliers put his lips to his horn, and blew a blast, that soon
+      brought the Alcayde and his four companions to the spot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The valiant Narvaez, seeing three of his cavaliers extended on the earth,
+      and two others hotly engaged with the Moor, was struck with admiration,
+      and coveted a contest with so accomplished a warrior. Interfering in the
+      fight, he called upon his followers to desist, and addressing the Moor,
+      with courteous words, invited him to a more equal combat. The latter
+      readily accepted the challenge. For some time, their contest was fierce
+      and doubtful; and the Alcayde had need of all his skill and strength to
+      ward off the blows of his antagonist. The Moor, however, was exhausted by
+      previous fighting, and by loss of blood. He no longer sat his horse
+      firmly, nor managed him with his wonted skill. Collecting all his strength
+      for a last assault, he rose in his stirrups, and made a violent thrust
+      with his lance; the Alcayde received it upon his shield, and at the same
+      time wounded the Moor in the right arm; then closing, in the shock, he
+      grasped him in his arms, dragged him from his saddle, and fell with him to
+      the earth: when putting his knee upon his breast, and his dagger to his
+      throat, &ldquo;Cavalier,&rdquo; exclaimed he, &ldquo;render thyself my
+      prisoner, for thy life is in my hands!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kill me, rather,&rdquo; replied the Moor, &ldquo;for death would be
+      less grievous than loss of liberty.&rdquo; The Alcayde, however, with the
+      clemency of the truly brave, assisted the Moor to rise, ministered to his
+      wounds with his own hands, and had him conveyed with great care to the
+      castle of Allora. His wounds were slight, and in a few days were nearly
+      cured; but the deepest wound had been inflicted on his spirit. He was
+      constantly buried in a profound melancholy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Alcayde, who had conceived a great regard for him, treated him more as
+      a friend than a captive, and tried in every way to cheer him, but in vain;
+      he was always sad and moody, and, when on the battlements of the castle,
+      would keep his eyes turned to the south, with a fixed and wistful gaze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is this?&rdquo; exclaimed the Alcayde, reproachfully, &ldquo;that
+      you, who were so hardy and fearless in the field, should lose all spirit
+      in prison? If any secret grief preys on your heart, confide it to me, as
+      to a friend, and I promise you, on the faith of a cavalier, that you shall
+      have no cause to repent the disclosure.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Moorish knight kissed the hand of the Alcayde. &ldquo;Noble cavalier,&rdquo;
+      said he &ldquo;that I am cast down in spirit, is not from my wounds, which
+      are slight, nor from my captivity, for your kindness has robbed it of all
+      gloom; nor from my defeat, for to be conquered by so accomplished and
+      renowned a cavalier, is no disgrace. But to explain to you the cause of my
+      grief, it is necessary to give you some particulars of my story; and this
+      I am moved to do, by the great sympathy you have manifested toward me, and
+      the magnanimity that shines through all your actions.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Know, then, that my name is Abendaraez, and that I am of the noble
+      but unfortunate line of the Abencerrages of Granada. You have doubtless
+      heard of the destruction that fell upon our race. Charged with treasonable
+      designs, of which they were entirely innocent, many of them were beheaded,
+      the rest banished; so that not an Abencerrages was permitted to remain in
+      Granada, excepting my father and my uncle, whose innocence was proved,
+      even to the satisfaction of their persecutors. It was decreed, however,
+      that, should they have children, the sons should be educated at a distance
+      from Granada, and the daughters should be married out of the kingdom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Conformably to this decree, I was sent, while yet an infant, to be
+      reared in the fortress of Cartama, the worthy Alcayde of which was an
+      ancient friend of my father. He had no children, and received me into his
+      family as his own child, treating me with the kindness and affection of a
+      father; and I grew up in the belief that he really was such. A few years
+      afterward, his wife gave birth to a daughter, but his tenderness toward me
+      continued undiminished. I thus grew up with Xarisa, for so the infant
+      daughter of the Alcayde was called, as her own brother, and thought the
+      growing passion which I felt for her, was mere fraternal affection. I
+      beheld her charms unfolding, as it were, leaf by leaf, like the morning
+      rose, each moment disclosing fresh beauty and sweetness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At this period, I overheard a conversation between the Alcayde and
+      his confidential domestic, and found myself to be the subject. &lsquo;It
+      is time,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;to apprise him of his parentage, that he
+      may adopt a career in life. I have deferred the communication as long as
+      possible, through reluctance to inform him that he is of a proscribed and
+      an unlucky race.&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This intelligence would have overwhelmed me at an earlier period,
+      but the intimation that Xarisa was not my sister, operated like magic, and
+      in an instant transformed my brotherly affection into ardent love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I sought Xarisa, to impart to her the secret I had learned. I found
+      her in the garden, in a bower of jessamines, arranging her beautiful hair
+      by the mirror of a crystal fountain. The radiance of her beauty dazzled
+      me. I ran to her with open arms, and she received me with a sister&rsquo;s
+      embraces. When we had seated ourselves beside the fountain, she began to
+      upbraid me for leaving her so long alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In reply, I informed her of the conversation I had overheard. The
+      recital shocked and distressed her. &lsquo;Alas!&rsquo; cried she, &lsquo;then
+      is our happiness at an end!&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;How!&rsquo; exclaimed I; &lsquo;wilt thou cease to love me,
+      because I am not thy brother?&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Not so,&rsquo; replied she; &lsquo;but do you not know that
+      when it is once known we are not brother and sister, we can no longer be
+      permitted to be thus always together?&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In fact, from that moment our intercourse took a new character. We
+      met often at the fountain among the jessamines, but Xarisa no longer
+      advanced with open arms to meet me. She became reserved and silent, and
+      would blush, and cast down her eyes, when I seated myself beside her. My
+      heart became a prey to the thousand doubts and fears that ever attend upon
+      true love. I was restless and uneasy, and looked back with regret to the
+      unreserved intercourse that had existed between us, when we supposed
+      ourselves brother and sister; yet I would not have had the relationship
+      true, for the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;While matters were in this state between us, an order came from the
+      King of Granada for the Alcayde to take command of the fortress of Coyn,
+      which lies directly on the Christian frontier. He prepared to remove, with
+      all his family, but signified that I should remain at Cartama. I exclaimed
+      against the separation, and declared that I could not be parted from
+      Xarisa. &lsquo;That is the very cause,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;why I leave
+      thee behind. It is time, Abendaraez, that thou shouldst know the secret of
+      thy birth; that thou art no son of mine, neither is Xarisa thy sister.&rsquo;
+      ‘I know it all,&rsquo; exclaimed I, &lsquo;and I love her with tenfold the
+      affection of a brother. You have brought us up together; you have made us
+      necessary to each other&rsquo;s happiness; our hearts have entwined
+      themselves with our growth; do not now tear them asunder. Fill up the
+      measure of your kindness; be indeed a father to me, by giving me Xarisa
+      for my wife.&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The brow of the Alcayde darkened as I spoke. &lsquo;Have I then
+      been deceived?&rsquo; said he. &lsquo;Have those nurtured in my very
+      bosom, been conspiring against me? Is this your return for my paternal
+      tenderness?&mdash;to beguile the affections of my child, and teach her to
+      deceive her father? It was cause enough to refuse thee the hand of my
+      daughter, that thou wert of a proscribed race, who can never approach the
+      walls of Granada; this, however, I might have passed over; but never will
+      I give my daughter to a man who has endeavored to win her from me by
+      deception.&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All my attempts to vindicate myself and Xarisa were unavailing. I
+      retired in anguish from his presence, and seeking Xarisa, told her of this
+      blow, which was worse than death to me. &lsquo;Xarisa,&rsquo; said I,
+      &lsquo;we part for ever! I shall never see thee more! Thy father will
+      guard thee rigidly. Thy beauty and his wealth will soon attract some
+      happier rival, and I shall be forgotten!&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Xarisa reproached me with my want of faith, and promised me eternal
+      constancy. I still doubted and desponded, until, moved by my anguish and
+      despair, she agreed to a secret union. Our espousals made, we parted, with
+      a promise on her part to send me word from Coyn, should her father absent
+      himself from the fortress. The very day after our secret nuptials, I
+      beheld the whole train of the Alcayde depart from Cartama, nor would he
+      admit me to his presence, or permit me to bid farewell to Xarisa. I
+      remained at Cartama, somewhat pacified in spirit by this secret bond of
+      union; but every thing around me fed my passion, and reminded me of
+      Xarisa. I saw the windows at which I had so often beheld her. I wandered
+      through the apartment she had inhabited; the chamber in which she had
+      slept. I visited the bower of jessamines, and lingered beside the fountain
+      in which she had delighted. Every thing recalled her to my imagination,
+      and filled my heart with tender melancholy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At length, a confidential servant brought me word, that her father
+      was to depart that day for Granada, on a short absence, inviting me to
+      hasten to Coyn, describing a secret portal at which I should apply, and
+      the signal by which I would obtain admittance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If ever you have loved, most valiant Alcayde, you may judge of the
+      transport of my bosom. That very night I arrayed myself in my most gallant
+      attire, to pay due honor to my bride; and arming myself against any casual
+      attack, issued forth privately from Cartama. You know the rest, and by
+      what sad fortune of war I found myself, instead of a happy bridegroom, in
+      the nuptial bower of Coyn, vanquished, wounded, and a prisoner, withing
+      the walls of Allora. The term of absence of the father of Xarisa is nearly
+      expired. Within three days he will return to Coyn, and our meeting will no
+      longer be possible. Judge, then, whether I grieve without cause, and
+      whether I may not well be excused for showing impatience under
+      confinement.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Rodrigo de Narvaez was greatly moved by this recital; for, though more
+      used to rugged war, than scenes of amorous softness, he was of a kind and
+      generous nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Abendaraez,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I did not seek thy confidence to
+      gratify an idle curiosity. It grieves me much that the good fortune which
+      delivered thee into my hands, should have marred so fair an enterprise.
+      Give me thy faith, as a true knight, to return prisoner to my castle,
+      within three days, and I will grant thee permission to accomplish thy
+      nuptials.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Abencerrage would have thrown himself at his feet, to pour out
+      protestations of eternal gratitude, but the Alcayde prevented him. Calling
+      in his cavaliers, he took the Abencerrage by the right hand, in their
+      presence, exclaiming solemnly, &ldquo;You promise, on the faith of a
+      cavalier, to return to my castle of Allora within three days, and render
+      yourself my prisoner?&rdquo; And the Abencerrage said, &ldquo;I promise.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then said the Alcayde, &ldquo;Go! and may good fortune attend you. If you
+      require any safeguard, I and my cavaliers are ready to be your companions.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Abencerrage kissed the hand of the Alcayde, in grateful
+      acknowledgment. &ldquo;Give me,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;my own armor, and
+      my steed, and I require no guard. It is not likely that I shall again meet
+      with so valorous a foe.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The shades of night had fallen, when the tramp of the dapple-gray steed
+      sounded over the drawbridge, and immediately afterward the light clatter
+      of hoofs along the road, bespoke the fleetness with which the youthful
+      lover hastened to his bride. It was deep night when the Moor arrived at
+      the castle of Coyn. He silently and cautiously walked his panting steed
+      under its dark walls, and having nearly passed round them, came to the
+      portal denoted by Xarisa. He paused and looked around to see that he was
+      not observed, and then knocked three times with the butt of his lance. In
+      a little while the portal was timidly unclosed by the duenna of Xarisa.
+      &ldquo;Alas! senor,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;what has detained you thus
+      long? Every night have I watched for you; and my lady is sick at heart
+      with doubt and anxiety.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Abencerrage hung his lance, and shield, and scimitar against the wall,
+      and then followed the duenna, with silent steps, up a winding stair-case,
+      to the apartment of Xarisa. Vain would be the attempt to describe the
+      raptures of that meeting. Time flew too swiftly, and the Abencerrage had
+      nearly forgotten, until too late, his promise to return a prisoner to the
+      Alcayde of Allora. The recollection of it came to him with a pang, and
+      suddenly awoke him from his dream of bliss. Xarisa saw his altered looks,
+      and heard with alarm his stifled sighs; but her countenance brightened,
+      when she heard the cause. &ldquo;Let not thy spirit be cast down,&rdquo;
+      said she, throwing her white arms around him. &ldquo;I have the keys of my
+      father&rsquo;s treasures; send ransom more than enough to satisfy the
+      Christian, and remain with me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Abendaraez, &ldquo;I have given my word to return
+      in person, and like a true knight, must fulfil my promise. After that,
+      fortune must do with me as it pleases.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; said Xarisa, &ldquo;I will accompany thee. Never shall
+      you return a prisoner, and I remain at liberty.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Abencerrage was transported with joy at this new proof of devotion in
+      his beautiful bride. All preparations were speedily made for their
+      departure. Xarisa mounted behind the Moor, on his powerful steed; they
+      left the castle walls before daybreak, nor did they pause, until they
+      arrived at the gate of the castle of Allora, which was flung wide to
+      receive them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alighting in the court, the Abencerrage supported the steps of his
+      trembling bride, who remained closely veiled, into the presence of Rodrigo
+      de Narvaez. &ldquo;Behold, valiant Alcayde!&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;the way
+      in which an Abencerrage keeps his word. I promised to return to thee a
+      prisoner, but I deliver two captives into your power. Behold Xarisa, and
+      judge whether I grieved without reason, over the loss of such a treasure.
+      Receive us as your own, for I confide my life and her honor to your hands.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Alcayde was lost in admiration of the beauty of the lady, and the
+      noble spirit of the Moor. &ldquo;I know not,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;which
+      of you surpasses the other; but I know that my castle is graced and
+      honored by your presence. Enter into it, and consider it your own, while
+      you deign to reside with me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For several days the lovers remained at Allora, happy in each other&rsquo;s
+      love, and in the friendship of the brave Alcayde. The latter wrote a
+      letter, full of courtesy, to the Moorish king of Granada, relating the
+      whole event, extolling the valor and good faith of the Abencerrage, and
+      craving for him the royal countenance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The king was moved by the story, and was pleased with an opportunity of
+      showing attention to the wishes of a gallant and chivalrous enemy; for
+      though he had often suffered from the prowess of Don Rodigro de Narvaez,
+      he admired the heroic character he had gained throughout the land. Calling
+      the Alcayde of Coyn into his presence, he gave him the letter to read. The
+      Alcayde turned pale, and trembled with rage, on the perusal. &ldquo;Restrain
+      thine anger,&rdquo; said the king; &ldquo;there is nothing that the
+      Alcayde of Allora could ask, that I would not grant, if in my power. Go
+      thou to Allora; pardon thy children; take them to thy home. I receive this
+      Abencerrage into my favor, and it will be my delight to heap benefits upon
+      you all.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The kindling ire of the Alcayde was suddenly appeased. He hastened to
+      Allora; and folded his children to his bosom, who would have fallen at his
+      feet. The gallant Rodrigo de Narvaez gave liberty to his prisoner without
+      ransom, demanding merely a promise of his friendship. He accompanied the
+      youthful couple and their father to Coyn, where their nuptials were
+      celebrated with great rejoicings. When the festivities were over, Don
+      Rodrigo de Narvaez returned to his fortress of Allora.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After his departure, the Alcayde of Coyn addressed his children: &ldquo;To
+      your hands,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I confide the disposition of my wealth.
+      One of the first things I charge you, is not to forget the ransom you owe
+      to the Alcayde of Allora. His magnanimity you can never repay, but you can
+      prevent it from wronging him of his just dues. Give him, moreover, your
+      entire friendship, for he merits it fully, though of a different faith.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Abencerrage thanked him for his generous proposition, which so truly
+      accorded with his own wishes. He took a large sum of gold, and enclosed it
+      in a rich coffer; and, on his own part, sent six beautiful horses,
+      superbly caparisoned; with six shields and lances, mounted and embossed
+      with gold. The beautiful Xarisa, at the same time, wrote a letter to the
+      Alcayde, filled with expressions of gratitude and friendship, and sent him
+      a box of fragrant cypress-wood, containing linen, of the finest quality,
+      for his person. The valiant Alcayde disposed of the present in a
+      characteristic manner. The horses and armor he shared among the cavaliers
+      who had accompanied him on the night of the skirmish. The box of
+      cypress-wood and its contents he retained, for the sake of the beautiful
+      Xarisa; and sent her, by the hands of a messenger, the sum of gold paid as
+      a ransom, entreating her to receive it as a wedding present. This courtesy
+      and magnanimity raised the character of the Alcayde Rodrigo de Narvaez
+      still higher in the estimation of the Moors, who extolled him as a perfect
+      mirror of chivalric virtue; and from that time forward, there was a
+      continual exchange of good offices between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE ENCHANTED ISLAND.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      By The Author Of The Sketch-Book.
+    </h3>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Break, Phantsie, from thy cave of cloud,
+  And wave thy purple wings,
+  Now all thy figures are allowed,
+  And various shapes of things.
+  Create of airy forms a stream;
+  It must have blood and nought of phlegm;
+  And though it be a walking dream,
+  Yet let it like an odor rise
+  To all the senses here,
+  And fall like sleep upon their eyes,
+  Or music on their ear.&mdash;BEN JONSON.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in
+      our philosophy,&rdquo; and among these may be placed that marvel and
+      mystery of the seas, the island of St. Brandan. Every school-boy can
+      enumerate and call by name the Canaries, the Fortunate Islands of the
+      ancients; which, according to some ingenious speculative minds, are mere
+      wrecks and remnants of the vast island of Atalantis, mentioned by Plato,
+      as having been swallowed up by the ocean. Whoever has read the history of
+      those isles, will remember the wonders told of another island, still more
+      beautiful, seen occasionally from their shores, stretching away in the
+      clear bright west, with long shadowy promontories, and high, sun-gilt
+      peaks. Numerous expeditions, both in ancient and modern days, have
+      launched forth from the Canaries in quest of that island; but, on their
+      approach, mountain and promontory have gradually faded away, until nothing
+      has remained but the blue sky above, and the deep blue water below. Hence
+      it was termed by the geographers of old, Aprositus, or the Inaccessible;
+      while modern navigators have called its very existence in question,
+      pronouncing it a mere optical illusion, like the Fata Morgana of the
+      Straits of Messina; or classing it with those unsubstantial regions known
+      to mariners as Cape Flyaway, and the Coast of Cloud Land.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let not, however, the doubts of the worldly-wise sceptics of modern days
+      rob us of all the glorious realms owned by happy credulity in days of
+      yore. Be assured, O reader of easy faith!&mdash;thou for whom I delight to
+      labor&mdash;be assured, that such an island does actually exist, and has,
+      from time to time, been revealed to the gaze, and trodden by the feet, of
+      favored mortals. Nay, though doubted by historians and philosophers, its
+      existence is fully attested by the poets, who, being an inspired race, and
+      gifted with a kind of second sight, can see into the mysteries of nature,
+      hidden from the eyes of ordinary mortals. To this gifted race it has ever
+      been a region of fancy and romance, teeming with all kinds of wonders.
+      Here once bloomed, and perhaps still blooms, the famous garden of the
+      Hesperides, with its golden fruit. Here, too, was the enchanted garden of
+      Armida, in which that sorceress held the Christian paladin, Rinaldo, in
+      delicious but inglorious thraldom; as is set forth in the immortal lay of
+      Tasso. It was on this island, also, that Sycorax, the witch, held sway,
+      when the good Prospero, and his infant daughter Miranda, were wafted to
+      its shores. The isle was then
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &mdash;-&ldquo;full of noises,
+  Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Who does not know the tale, as told in the magic page of Shakspeare?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In fact, the island appears to have been, at different times, under the
+      sway of different powers, genii of earth, and air, and ocean; who made it
+      their shadowy abode; or rather, it is the retiring place of old worn-out
+      deities and dynasties, that once ruled the poetic world, but are now
+      nearly shorn of all their attributes. Here Neptune and Amphitrite hold a
+      diminished court, like sovereigns in exile. Their ocean-chariot lies
+      bottom upward, in a cave of the island, almost a perfect wreck, while
+      their pursy Tritons and haggard Nereids bask listlessly, like seals about
+      the rocks. Sometimes they assume a shadow of their ancient pomp, and glide
+      in state about the glassy sea; while the crew of some tall Indiaman, that
+      lies becalmed with flapping sails, hear with astonishment the mellow note
+      of the Triton&rsquo;s shell swelling upon the ear, as the invisible
+      pageant sweeps by. Sometimes the quondam monarch of the ocean is permitted
+      to make himself visible to mortal eyes, visiting the ships that cross the
+      line, to exact a tribute from new-comers; the only remnant of his ancient
+      rule, and that, alas! performed with tattered state, and tarnished
+      splendor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the shores of this wondrous island, the mighty kraken heaves his bulk,
+      and wallows many a rood; here, too, the sea-serpent lies coiled up, during
+      the intervals of his much-contested revelations to the eyes of true
+      believers; and here it is said, even the Flying Dutchman finds a port and
+      casts his anchor, and furls his shadowy sail, and takes a short repose
+      from his eternal wanderings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here all the treasures lost in the deep are safely garnered. The caverns
+      of the shores are piled with golden ingots, hexes of pearls, rich bales of
+      oriental silks; and their deep recesses sparkle with diamonds, or flame
+      with carbuncles. Here, in deep bays and harbors, lies many a spell-bound
+      ship, long given up as lost by the ruined merchant. Here, too, its crew,
+      long bewailed as swallowed up in ocean, lie sleeping in mossy grottoes,
+      from age to age, or wander about enchanted shores and groves, in pleasing
+      oblivion of all things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such are some of the marvels related of this island, and which may serve
+      to throw some light on the following legend, of unquestionable truth,
+      which I recommend to the entire belief of the reader.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      <i>THE ADELANTADO OF THE SEVEN CITIES</i>.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A LEGEND OF ST. BRANDAN.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      In the early part of the fifteenth century, when Prince Henry of Portugal,
+      of worthy memory, was pushing the career of discovery along the western
+      coast of Africa, and the world was resounding with reports of golden
+      regions on the main land, and new-found islands in the ocean, there
+      arrived at Lisbon an old bewildered pilot of the seas, who had been driven
+      by tempests, he knew not whither, and who raved about an island far in the
+      deep, on which he had landed, and which he had found peopled with
+      Christians, and adorned with noble cities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The inhabitants, he said, gathered round, and regarded him with surprise,
+      having never before been visited by a ship. They told him they were
+      descendants of a band of Christians, who fled from Spain when that country
+      was conquered by the Moslems. They were curious about the state of their
+      fatherland, and grieved to hear that the Moslems still held possession of
+      the kingdom of Granada. They would have taken the old navigator to church,
+      to convince him of their orthodoxy; but, either through lack of devotion,
+      or lack of faith in their words, he declined their invitation, and
+      preferred to return on board of his ship. He was properly punished. A
+      furious storm arose, drove him from his anchorage, hurried him out to sea,
+      and he saw no more of the unknown island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This strange story caused great marvel in Lisbon and elsewhere. Those
+      versed in history, remembered to have read, in an ancient chronicle, that,
+      at the time of the conquest of Spain, in the eighth century, when the
+      blessed cross was cast down, and the crescent erected in its place, and
+      when Christian churches were turned into Moslem mosques, seven bishops, at
+      the head of seven bands of pious exiles, had fled from the peninsula, and
+      embarked in quest of some ocean island, or distant land, where they might
+      found seven Christian cities, and enjoy their faith unmolested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fate of these pious saints errant had hitherto remained a mystery, and
+      their story had faded from memory; the report of the old tempest-tossed
+      pilot, however, revived this long-forgotten theme; and it was determined
+      by the pious and enthusiastic, that the island thus accidentally
+      discovered, was the identical place of refuge, whither the wandering
+      bishops had been guided by a protecting Providence, and where they had
+      folded their flocks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This most excitable of worlds has always some darling object of chimerical
+      enterprise: the &ldquo;Island of the Seven Cities&rdquo; now awakened as
+      much interest and longing among zealous Christians, as has the renowned
+      city of Timbuctoo among adventurous travellers, or the North-east Passage
+      among hardy navigators; and it was a frequent prayer of the devout, that
+      these scattered and lost portions of the Christian family might be
+      discovered, and reunited to the great body of Christendom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one, however, entered into the matter with half the zeal of Don
+      Fernando de Ulmo, a young cavalier of high standing in the Portuguese
+      court, and of most sanguine and romantic temperament. He had recently come
+      to his estate, and had run the round of all kinds of pleasures and
+      excitements, when this new theme of popular talk and wonder presented
+      itself. The Island of the Seven Cities became now the constant subject of
+      his thoughts by day and his dreams by night; it even rivalled his passion
+      for a beautiful girl, one of the greatest belles of Lisbon, to whom he was
+      betrothed. At length his imagination became so inflamed on the subject,
+      that he determined to fit out an expedition, at his own expense, and set
+      sail in quest of this sainted island. It could not be a cruise of any
+      great extent; for according to the calculations of the tempest-tossed
+      pilot, it must be somewhere in the latitude of the Canaries; which at that
+      time, when the new world was as yet undiscovered, formed the frontier of
+      ocean enterprise. Don Fernando applied to the crown for countenance and
+      protection. As he was a favorite at court, the usual patronage was readily
+      extended to him; that is to say, he received a commission from the king,
+      Don Ioam II., constituting him Adelantado, or military governor, of any
+      country he might discover, with the single proviso, that he should bear
+      all the expenses of the discovery and pay a tenth of the profits to the
+      crown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Fernando now set to work in the true spirit of a projector. He sold
+      acre after acre of solid land, and invested the proceeds in ships, guns,
+      ammunition, and sea-stores. Even his old family mansion in Lisbon was
+      mortgaged without scruple, for &ldquo;he looked forward to a palace in one
+      of the Seven Cities of which he was to be Adelantado.&rdquo; This was the
+      age of nautical romance, when the thoughts of all speculative dreamers
+      were turned to the ocean. The scheme of Don Fernando, therefore, drew
+      adventurers of every kind. The merchant promised himself new marts of
+      opulent traffic; the soldier hoped to sack and plunder some one or other
+      of those Seven Cities; even the fat monk shook off the sleep and sloth of
+      the cloister, to join in a crusade which promised such increase to the
+      possessions of the church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One person alone regarded the whole project with sovereign contempt and
+      growling hostility. This was Don Ramiro Alvarez, the father of the
+      beautiful Serafina, to whom Don Fernando was betrothed. He was one of
+      those perverse, matter-of-fact old men who are prone to oppose every thing
+      speculative and romantic. He had no faith in the Island of the Seven
+      Cities; regarded the projected cruise as a crack-brained freak; looked
+      with angry eye and internal heart-burning on the conduct of his intended
+      son-in-law, chaffering away solid lands for lands in the moon, and
+      scoffingly dubbed him Adelantado of Lubberland. In fact, he had never
+      really relished the intended match, to which his consent had been slowly
+      extorted by the tears and entreaties of his daughter. It is true he could
+      have no reasonable objections to the youth, for Don Fernando was the very
+      flower of Portuguese chivalry. No one could excel him at the tilting
+      match, or the riding at the ring; none was more bold and dexterous in the
+      bull-fight; none composed more gallant madrigals in praise of his lady&rsquo;s
+      charms, or sang them with sweeter tones to the accompaniment of her
+      guitar; nor could any one handle the castanets and dance the bolero with
+      more captivating grace. All these admirable qualities and endowments,
+      however, though they had been sufficient to win the heart of Serafina,
+      were nothing in the eyes of her unreasonable father. O Cupid, god of Love!
+      why will fathers always be so unreasonable!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The engagement to Serafina had threatened at first to throw an obstacle in
+      the way of the expedition of Don Fernando, and for a time perplexed him in
+      the extreme. He was passionately attached to the young lady; but he was
+      also passionately bent on this romantic enterprise. How should he
+      reconcile the two passionate inclinations? A simple and obvious
+      arrangement at length presented itself: marry Serafina, enjoy a portion of
+      the honeymoon at once, and defer the rest until his return from the
+      discovery of the Seven Cities!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He hastened to make known this most excellent arrangement to Don Ramiro,
+      when the long-smothered wrath of the old cavalier burst forth in a storm
+      about his ears. He reproached him with being the dupe of wandering
+      vagabonds and wild schemers, and of squandering all his real possessions
+      in pursuit of empty bubbles. Don Fernando was too sanguine a projector,
+      and too young a man, to listen tamely to such language. He acted with what
+      is technically called &ldquo;becoming spirit.&rdquo; A high quarrel
+      ensued; Don Ramiro pronounced him a mad man, and forbade all farther
+      intercourse with his daughter, until he should give proof of returning
+      sanity by abandoning this mad-cap enterprise; while Don Fernando flung out
+      of the house, more bent than ever on the expedition, from the idea of
+      triumphing over the incredulity of the gray-beard when he should return
+      successful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Ramiro repaired to his daughter&rsquo;s chamber the moment the youth
+      had departed. He represented to her the sanguine, unsteady character of
+      her lover and the chimerical nature of his schemes; showed her the
+      propriety of suspending all intercourse with him until he should recover
+      from his present hallucination; folded her to his bosom with parental
+      fondness, kissed the tear that stole down her cheek, and, as he left the
+      chamber, gently locked the door; for although he was a fond father, and
+      had a high opinion of the submissive temper of his child, he had a still
+      higher opinion of the conservative virtues of lock and key. Whether the
+      damsel had been in any wise shaken in her faith as to the schemes of her
+      lover, and the existence of the Island of the Seven Cities, by the sage
+      representations of her father, tradition does not say; but it is certain
+      that she became a firm believer the moment she heard him turn the key in
+      the lock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Notwithstanding the interdict of Don Ramiro, therefore, and his shrewd
+      precautions, the intercourse of the lovers continued, although
+      clandestinely. Don Fernando toiled all day, hurrying forward his nautical
+      enterprise, while at night he would repair, beneath the grated balcony of
+      his mistress, to carry on at equal pace the no less interesting enterprise
+      of the heart. At length the preparations for the expedition were
+      completed. Two gallant caravels lay anchored in the Tagus, ready to sail
+      with the morning dawn; while late at night, by the pale light of a waning
+      moon, Don Fernando sought the stately mansion of Alvarez to take a last
+      farewell of Serafina. The customary signal of a few low touches of a
+      guitar brought her to the balcony. She was sad at heart and full of gloomy
+      forebodings; but her lover strove to impart to her his own buoyant hope
+      and youthful confidence. &ldquo;A few short months,&rdquo; said he,
+      &ldquo;and I shall return in triumph. Thy father will then blush at his
+      incredulity, and will once more welcome me to his house, when I cross its
+      threshold a wealthy suitor and Adelantado of the Seven Cities.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The beautiful Serafina shook her head mournfully. It was not on those
+      points that she felt doubt or dismay. She believed most implicitly in the
+      Island of the Seven Cities, and trusted devoutly in the success of the
+      enterprise; but she had heard of the inconstancy of the seas, and the
+      inconstancy of those who roam them. Now, let the truth be spoken, Don
+      Fernando, if he had any fault in the world, it was that he was a little
+      too inflammable; that is to say, a little too subject to take fire from
+      the sparkle of every bright eye: he had been somewhat of a rover among the
+      sex on shore, what might he not be on sea? Might he not meet with other
+      loves in foreign ports? Might he not behold some peerless beauty in one or
+      other of those seven cities, who might efface the image of Serafina from
+      his thoughts?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length she ventured to hint her doubts; but Don Fernando spurned at the
+      very idea. Never could his heart be false to Serafina! Never could another
+      be captivating in his eyes!&mdash;never&mdash;never! Repeatedly did he
+      bend his knee, and smite his breast, and call upon the silver moon to
+      witness the sincerity of his vows. But might not Serafina, herself, be
+      forgetful of her plighted faith? Might not some wealthier rival present,
+      while he was tossing on the sea, and, backed by the authority of her
+      father, win the treasure of her hand? Alas, how little did he know
+      Serafina&rsquo;s heart! The more her father should oppose, the more would
+      she be fixed in her faith. Though years should pass before his return, he
+      would find her true to her vows. Even should the salt seas swallow him up,
+      (and her eyes streamed with salt tears at the very thought,) never would
+      she be the wife of another&mdash;never&mdash;never! She raised her
+      beautiful white arms between the iron bars of the balcony, and invoked the
+      moon as a testimonial of her faith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, according to immemorial usage, the lovers parted, with many a vow of
+      eternal constancy. But will they keep those vows? Perish the doubt! Have
+      they not called the constant moon to witness?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the morning dawn the caravels dropped down the Tagus and put to sea.
+      They steered for the Canaries, in those days the regions of nautical
+      romance. Scarcely had they reached those latitudes, when a violent tempest
+      arose. Don Fernando soon lost sight of the accompanying caravel, and was
+      driven out of all reckoning by the fury of the storm. For several weary
+      days and nights he was tossed to and fro, at the mercy of the elements,
+      expecting each moment to be swallowed up. At length, one day toward
+      evening, the storm subsided; the clouds cleared up, as though a veil had
+      suddenly been withdrawn from the face of heaven, and the setting sun shone
+      gloriously upon a fair and mountainous island, that seemed close at hand.
+      The tempest-tossed mariners rubbed their eyes, and gazed almost
+      incredulously upon this land, that had emerged so suddenly from the murky
+      gloom; yet there it lay, spread out in lovely landscapes; enlivened by
+      villages, and towers, and spires, while the late stormy sea rolled in
+      peaceful billows to its shores. About a league from the sea, on the banks
+      of a river, stood a noble city, with lofty walls and towers, and a
+      protecting castle. Don Fernando anchored off the mouth of the river, which
+      appeared to form a spacious harbor. In a little while a barge was seen
+      issuing from the river. It was evidently a barge of ceremony, for it was
+      richly though quaintly carved and gilt, and decorated with a silken awning
+      and fluttering streamers, while a banner, bearing the sacred emblem of the
+      cross, floated to the breeze. The barge advanced slowly, impelled by
+      sixteen oars, painted of a bright crimson. The oarsmen were uncouth, or
+      rather antique, in their garb, and kept stroke to the regular cadence of
+      an old Spanish ditty. Beneath the awning sat a cavalier, in a rich though
+      old-fashioned doublet, with an enormous sombrero and feather. When the
+      barge reached the caravel, the cavalier stepped on board. He was tall and
+      gaunt, with a long, Spanish visage, and lack-lustre eyes, and an air of
+      lofty and somewhat pompous gravity. His mustaches were curled up to his
+      ears, his beard was forked and precise; he wore gauntlets that reached to
+      his elbows, and a Toledo blade that strutted out behind, while, in front,
+      its huge basket-hilt might have served for a porringer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thrusting out a long spindle leg, and taking off his sombrero with a grave
+      and stately sweep, he saluted Don Fernando by name, and welcomed him, in
+      old Castilian language, and in the style of old Castilian courtesy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Fernando was startled at hearing himself accosted by name, by an utter
+      stranger, in a strange land. As soon as he could recover from his
+      surprise, he inquired what land it was at which he had arrived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Island of the Seven Cities!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Could this be true? Had he indeed been thus tempest-driven upon the very
+      land of which he was in quest? It was even so. The other caravel, from
+      which he had been separated in the storm, had made a neighboring port of
+      the island, and announced the tidings of this expedition, which came to
+      restore the country to the great community of Christendom. The whole
+      island, he was told, was given up to rejoicings on the happy event; and
+      they only awaited his arrival to acknowledge allegiance to the crown of
+      Portugal, and hail him as Adelantado of the Seven Cities. A grand fête was
+      to be solemnized that very night in the palace of the Alcayde or governor
+      of the city; who, on beholding the most opportune arrival of the caravel,
+      had despatched his grand chamberlain, in his barge of state, to conduct
+      the future Adelantado to the ceremony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Fernando could scarcely believe but that this was all a dream. He
+      fixed a scrutinizing gaze upon the grand chamberlain, who, having
+      delivered his message, stood in buckram dignity, drawn up to his full
+      stature, curling his whiskers, stroking his beard, and looking down upon
+      him with inexpressible loftiness through his lack-lustre eyes. There was
+      no doubting the word of so grave and ceremonious a hidalgo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Fernando now arrayed himself in gala attire. He would have launched
+      his boat, and gone on shore with his own men, but he was informed the
+      barge of state was expressly provided for his accommodation, and, after
+      the fête, would bring him back to his ship; in which, on the following
+      day, he might enter the harbor in befitting style. He accordingly stepped
+      into the barge, and took his seat beneath the awning. The grand
+      chamberlain seated himself on the cushion opposite. The rowers bent to
+      their oars, and renewed their mournful old ditty, and the gorgeous, but
+      unwieldy barge moved slowly and solemnly through the water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The night closed in, before they entered the river. They swept along, past
+      rock and promontory, each guarded by its tower. The sentinels at every
+      post challenged them as they passed by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who goes there?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Adelantado of the Seven Cities.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is welcome. Pass on.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On entering the harbor, they rowed close along an armed galley, of the
+      most ancient form. Soldiers with cross-bows were stationed on the deck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who goes there?&rdquo; was again demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Adelantado of the Seven Cities.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is welcome. Pass on.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They landed at a broad flight of stone steps, leading up, between two
+      massive towers, to the water-gate of the city, at which they knocked for
+      admission. A sentinel, in an ancient steel casque, looked over the wall.
+      &ldquo;Who is there?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Adelantado of the Seven Cities.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gate swung slowly open, grating upon its rusty hinges. They entered
+      between two rows of iron-clad warriors, in battered armor, with
+      cross-bows, battle-axes, and ancient maces, and with faces as
+      old-fashioned and rusty as their armor. They saluted Don Fernando in
+      military style, but with perfect silence, as he passed between their
+      ranks. The city was illuminated, but in such manner as to give a more
+      shadowy and solemn effect to its old-time architecture. There were
+      bonfires in the principal streets, with groups about them in such
+      old-fashioned garbs, that they looked like the fantastic figures that roam
+      the streets in carnival time. Even the stately dames who gazed from the
+      balconies, which they had hung with antique tapestry, looked more like
+      effigies dressed up for a quaint mummery, than like ladies in their
+      fashionable attire. Every thing, in short, bore the stamp of former ages,
+      as if the world had suddenly rolled back a few centuries. Nor was this to
+      be wondered at. Had not the Island of the Seven Cities been for several
+      hundred years cut off from all communication with the rest of the world,
+      and was it not natural that the inhabitants should retain many of the
+      modes and customs brought here by their ancestors?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One thing certainly they had conserved; the old-fashioned Spanish gravity
+      and stateliness. Though this was a time of public rejoicing, and though
+      Don Fernando was the object of their gratulations, every thing was
+      conducted with the most solemn ceremony, and wherever he appeared, instead
+      of acclamations, he was received with profound silence, and the most
+      formal reverences and swayings of their sombreros.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arrived at the palace of the Alcayde, the usual ceremonial was repeated.
+      The chamberlain knocked for admission.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is there?&rdquo; demanded the porter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Adelantado of the Seven Cities.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is welcome. Pass on.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The grand portal was thrown open. The chamberlain led the way up a vast
+      but heavily moulded marble stair-case, and so through one of those
+      interminable suites of apartments, that are the pride of Spanish palaces.
+      All were furnished in a style of obsolete magnificence. As they passed
+      through the chambers, the title of Don Fernando was forwarded on by
+      servants stationed at every door; and every where produced the most
+      profound reverences and courtesies. At length they reached a magnificent
+      saloon, blazing with tapers, in which the Alcayde, and the principal
+      dignitaries of the city, were waiting to receive their illustrious guest.
+      The grand chamberlain presented Don Fernando in due form, and falling back
+      among the other officers of the household, stood as usual curling his
+      whiskers and stroking his forked beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Fernando was received by the Alcayde and the other dignitaries with
+      the same stately and formal courtesy that he had every where remarked. In
+      fact, there was so much form and ceremonial, that it seemed difficult to
+      get at any thing social or substantial. Nothing but bows, and compliments,
+      and old-fashioned courtesies. The Alcayde and his courtiers resembled, in
+      face and form, those quaint worthies to be seen in the pictures of old
+      illuminated manuscripts; while the cavaliers and dames who thronged the
+      saloon, might have beep taken for the antique figures of gobelin tapestry
+      suddenly vivified and put in motion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The banquet, which had been kept back until the arrival of Don Fernando,
+      was now announced; and such a feast! such unknown dishes and obsolete
+      dainties; with the peacock, that bird of state and ceremony, served up in
+      full plumage, in a golden dish, at the head of the table. And then, as Don
+      Fernando cast his eyes over the glittering board, what a vista of odd
+      heads and head-dresses, of formal bearded dignitaries, and stately dames,
+      with castellated locks and towering plumes!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As fate would have it, on the other side of Don Fernando, was seated the
+      daughter of the Alcayde. She was arrayed, it is true, in a dress that
+      might have been worn before the flood; but then, she had a melting black
+      Andalusian eye, that was perfectly irresistible. Her voice, too, her
+      manner, her movements, all smacked of Andalusia, and showed how female
+      fascination may be transmitted from age to age, and clime to clime,
+      without ever losing its power, or going out of fashion. Those who know the
+      witchery of the sex, in that most amorous region of old Spain, may judge
+      what must have been the fascination to which Don Fernando was exposed,
+      when seated beside one of the most captivating of its descendants. He was,
+      as has already been hinted, of an inflammable temperament; with a heart
+      ready to get in a light blaze at every instant. And then he had been so
+      wearied by pompous, tedious old cavaliers, with their formal bows and
+      speeches; is it to be wondered at that he turned with delight to the
+      Alcayde&rsquo;s daughter, all smiles, and dimples, and melting looks, and
+      melting accents? Beside, for I wish to give him every excuse in my power,
+      he was in a particularly excitable mood, from the novelty of the scene
+      before him, and his head was almost turned with this sudden and complete
+      realization of all his hopes and fancies; and then, in the flurry of the
+      moment, he had taken frequent draughts at the wine-cup, presented him at
+      every instant by officious pages, and all the world knows the effect of
+      such draughts in giving potency to female charms. In a word, there is no
+      concealing the matter, the banquet was not half over, before Don Fernando
+      was making love, outright, to the Alcayde&rsquo;s daughter. It was his
+      cold habitude, contracted long before his matrimonial engagement. The
+      young lady hung her head coyly; her eye rested upon a ruby heart,
+      sparkling in a ring on the hand of Don Fernando, a parting gage of love
+      from Serafina. A blush crimsoned her very temples. She darted a glance of
+      doubt at the ring, and then at Don Fernando. He read her doubt, and in the
+      giddy intoxication of the moment, drew off the pledge of his affianced
+      bride, and slipped it on the finger of the Alcayde&rsquo;s daughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment the banquet broke up. The chamberlain with his lofty
+      demeanor, and his lack-lustre eyes, stood before him, and announced that
+      the barge was waiting to conduct him back to the caravel. Don Fernando
+      took a formal leave of the Alcayde and his dignitaries, and a tender
+      farewell of the Alcayde&rsquo;s daughter, with a promise to throw himself
+      at her feet on the following day. He was rowed back to his vessel in the
+      same slow and stately manner, to the cadence of the same mournful old
+      ditty. He retired to his cabin, his brain whirling with all that he had
+      seen, and his heart now and then giving him a twinge as he recollected his
+      temporary infidelity to the beautiful Serafina. He flung himself on his
+      bed, and soon fell into a feverish sleep. His dreams were wild and
+      incoherent. How long he slept he knew not, but when he awoke he found
+      himself in a strange cabin, with persons around him of whom he had no
+      knowledge. He rubbed his eyes to ascertain whether he were really awake.
+      In reply to his inquiries, he was informed that he was on board of a
+      Portuguese ship, bound to Lisbon; having been taken senseless from a wreck
+      drifting about the ocean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Fernando was confounded and perplexed. He retraced every thing
+      distinctly that had happened to him in the Island of the Seven Cities, and
+      until he had retired to rest on board of the caravel. Had his vessel been
+      driven from her anchors, and wrecked during his sleep? The people about
+      him could give him no information on the subject. He talked to them of the
+      Island of the Seven Cities, and of all that had befallen him there. They
+      regarded his words as the ravings of delirium, and in their honest
+      solicitude, administered such rough remedies, that he was fain to drop the
+      subject, and observe a cautious taciturnity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length they arrived in the Tagus, and anchored before the famous city
+      of Lisbon. Don Fernando sprang joyfully on shore, and hastened to his
+      ancestral mansion. To his surprise, it was inhabited by strangers; and
+      when he asked about his family, no one could give him any information
+      concerning them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He now sought the mansion of Don Ramiro, for the temporary flame kindled
+      by the bright eyes of the Alcayde&rsquo;s daughter had long since burnt
+      itself out, and his genuine passion for Serafina had revived with all its
+      fervor. He approached the balcony, beneath which he had so often serenaded
+      her. Did his eyes deceive him? No! There was Serafina herself at the
+      balcony. An exclamation of rapture burst from him, as he raised his arms
+      toward her. She cast upon him a look of indignation, and hastily retiring,
+      closed the casement. Could she have heard of his flirtation with the
+      Alcayde&rsquo;s daughter? He would soon dispel every doubt of his
+      constancy. The door was open. He rushed up-stairs, and entering the room,
+      threw himself at her feet. She shrank back with affright, and took refuge
+      in the arms of a youthful cavalier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What mean you, Sir,&rdquo; cried the latter, &ldquo;by this
+      intrusion?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What right have you,&rdquo; replied Don Fernando, &ldquo;to ask the
+      question?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The right of an affianced suitor!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Fernando started, and turned pale. &ldquo;Oh, Serafina! Serafina!&rdquo;
+      cried he in a tone of agony, &ldquo;is this thy plighted constancy?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Serafina?&mdash;what mean you by Serafina? If it be this young lady
+      you intend, her name is Maria.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is not this Serafina Alvarez, and is not that her portrait?&rdquo;
+      cried Don Fernando, pointing to a picture of his mistress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Holy Virgin!&rdquo; cried the young lady; &ldquo;he is talking of
+      my great-grandmother!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An explanation ensued, if that could be called an explanation, which
+      plunged the unfortunate Fernando into tenfold perplexity. If he might
+      believe his eyes, he saw before him his beloved Serafina; if he might
+      believe his ears, it was merely her hereditary form and features,
+      perpetuated in the person of her great-granddaughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His brain began to spin. He sought tho office of the Minister of Marine,
+      and made a report of his expedition, and of the Island of the Seven
+      Cities, which he had so fortunately discovered. No body knew any thing of
+      such an expedition, or such an island. He declared that he had undertaken
+      the enterprise under a formal contract with the crown, and had received a
+      regular commission, constituting him Adelantado. This must be matter of
+      record, and he insisted loudly, that the books of the department should be
+      consulted. The wordy strife at length attracted the attention of an old,
+      gray-headed clerk, who sat perched on a high stool, at a high desk, with
+      iron-rimmed spectacles on the top of a thin, pinched nose, copying records
+      into an enormous folio. He had wintered and summered in the department for
+      a great part of a century, until he had almost grown to be a piece of the
+      desk at which he sat; his memory was a mere index of official facts and
+      documents, and his brain was little better than red tape and parchment.
+      After peering down for a time from his lofty perch, and ascertaining the
+      matter in controversy, he put his pen behind his ear, and descended. He
+      remembered to have heard something from his predecessor about an
+      expedition of the kind in question, but then it had sailed during the
+      reign of Don Ioam II., and he had been dead at least a hundred years. To
+      put the matter beyond dispute, however, the archives of the Torve do
+      Tombo, that sepulchre of old Portuguese documents, were diligently
+      searched, and a record was found of a contract between the crown and one
+      Fernando de Ulmo, for the discovery of the Island of the Seven Cities, and
+      of a commission secured to him as Adelantado of the country he might
+      discover.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There!&rdquo; cried Don Fernando, triumphantly, &ldquo;there you
+      have proof, before your own eyes, of what I have said. I am the Fernando
+      de Ulmo specified in that record. I have discovered the Island of the
+      Seven Cities, and am entitled to be Adelantado, according to contract.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The story of Don Fernando had certainly, what is pronounced the best of
+      historical foundation, documentary evidence; but when a man, in the bloom
+      of youth, talked of events that had taken place above a century
+      previously, as having happened to himself, it is no wonder that he was set
+      down for a mad man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old clerk looked at him from above and below his spectacles, shrugged
+      his shoulders, stroked his chin, reascended his lofty stool, took the pen
+      from behind his ears, and resumed his daily and eternal task, copying
+      records into the fiftieth volume of a series of gigantic folios. The other
+      clerks winked at each other shrewdly, and dispersed to their several
+      places, and poor Don Fernando, thus left to himself, flung out of the
+      office, almost driven wild by these repeated perplexities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the confusion of his mind, he instinctively repaired to the mansion of
+      Alvarez, but it was barred against him. To break the delusion under which
+      the youth apparently labored, and to convince him that the Serafina about
+      whom he raved was really dead, he was conducted to her tomb. There she
+      lay, a stately matron, cut out in alabaster; and there lay her husband
+      beside her; a portly cavalier, in armor; and there knelt, on each side,
+      the effigies of a numerous progeny, proving that she had been a fruitful
+      vine. Even the very monument gave proof of the lapse of time, for the
+      hands of her husband, which were folded as if in prayer, had lost their
+      fingers, and the face of the once lovely Serafina was noseless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Fernando felt a transient glow of indignation at beholding this
+      monumental proof of the inconstancy of his mistress; but who could expect
+      a mistress to remain constant during a whole century of absence? And what
+      right had he to rail about constancy, after what had passed between him
+      and the Alcayde&rsquo;s daughter? The unfortunate cavalier performed one
+      pious act of tender devotion; he had the alabaster nose of Serafina
+      restored by a skilful statuary, and then tore himself from the tomb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He could now no longer doubt the fact that, somehow or other, he had
+      skipped over a whole century, during the night he had spent at the Island
+      of the Seven Cities; and he was now as complete a stranger in his native
+      city, as if he had never been there. A thousand times did he wish himself
+      back to that wonderful island, with its antiquated banquet halls, where he
+      had been so courteously received; and now that the once young and
+      beautiful Serafina was nothing but a great-grandmother in marble, with
+      generations of descendants, a thousand times would he recall the melting
+      black eyes of the Alcayde&rsquo;s daughter, who doubtless, like himself,
+      was still flourishing in fresh juvenility, and breathe a secret wish that
+      he were seated by her side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He would at once have set on foot another expedition, at his own expense,
+      to cruise in search of the sainted island, but his means were exhausted.
+      He endeavored to rouse others to the enterprise, setting forth the
+      certainty of profitable results, of which his own experience furnished
+      such unquestionable proof. Alas! no one would give faith to his tale; but
+      looked upon it as the feverish dream of a shipwrecked man. He persisted in
+      his efforts; holding forth in all places and all companies, until he
+      became an object of jest and jeer to the light-minded, who mistook his
+      earnest enthusiasm for a proof of insanity; and the very children in the
+      streets bantered him with the title of &ldquo;The Adelantado of the Seven
+      Cities.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finding all his efforts in vain, in his native city of Lisbon, he took
+      shipping for the Canaries, as being nearer the latitude of his former
+      cruise, and inhabited by people given to nautical adventure. Here he found
+      ready listeners to his story; for the old pilots and mariners of those
+      parts were notorious island-hunters and devout believers in all the
+      wonders of the seas. Indeed, one and all treated his adventure as a common
+      occurrence, and turning to each other, with a sagacious nod of the head,
+      observed, &ldquo;He has been at the Island of St. Brandan.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They then went on to inform him of that great marvel and enigma of the
+      ocean; of its repeated appearance to the inhabitants of their islands; and
+      of the many but ineffectual expeditions that had been made in search of
+      it. They took him to a promontory of the island of Palma, from whence the
+      shadowy St. Brandan had oftenest been descried, and they pointed out the
+      very tract in the west where its mountains had been seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Fernando listened with rapt attention. He had no longer a doubt that
+      this mysterious and fugacious island must be the same with that of the
+      Seven Cities; and that there must be some supernatural influence connected
+      with it, that had operated upon himself, and made the events of a night
+      occupy the space of a century.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He endeavored, but in vain, to rouse the islanders to another attempt at
+      discovery; they had given up the phantom island as indeed inaccessible.
+      Fernando, however, was not to be discouraged. The idea wore itself deeper
+      and deeper in his mind, until it became the engrossing subject of his
+      thoughts and object of his being. Every morning he would repair to the
+      promontory of Palma, and sit there throughout the live-long day, in hopes
+      of seeing the fairy mountains of St. Brandan peering above the horizon;
+      every evening he returned to his home, a disappointed man, but ready to
+      resume his post on the following morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His assiduity was all in vain. He grew gray in his ineffectual attempt;
+      and was at length found dead at his post. His grave is still shown in the
+      island of Palma, and a cross is erected on the spot where he used to sit
+      and look out upon the sea, in hopes of the reappearance of the enchanted
+      island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      NATIONAL NOMENCLATURE.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Sir: I am somewhat of the same way of thinking, in regard to names, with
+      that profound philosopher, Mr. Shandy, the elder, who maintained that some
+      inspired high thoughts and heroic aims, while others entailed
+      irretrievable meanness and vulgarity; insomuch that a man might sink under
+      the insignificance of his name, and be absolutely &ldquo;Nicodemused into
+      nothing.&rdquo; I have ever, therefore, thought it a great hardship for a
+      man to be obliged to struggle through life with some ridiculous or ignoble
+      <i>Christian</i> name, as it is too often falsely called, inflicted on him
+      in infancy, when he could not choose for himself; and would give him free
+      liberty to change it for one more to his taste, when he had arrived at
+      years of discretion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have the same notion with respect to local names. Some at once
+      prepossess us in favor of a place; others repel us, by unlucky
+      associations of the mind; and I have known scenes worthy of being the very
+      haunt of poetry and romance, yet doomed to irretrievable vulgarity, by
+      some ill-chosen name, which not even the magic numbers of a Halleck or a
+      Bryant could elevate into poetical acceptation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is an evil unfortunately too prevalent throughout our country. Nature
+      has stamped the land with features of sublimity and beauty; but some of
+      our noblest mountains and loveliest streams are in danger of remaining for
+      ever unhonored and unsung, from bearing appellations totally abhorrent to
+      the Muse. In the first place, our country is deluged with names taken from
+      places in the old world, and applied to places having no possible affinity
+      or resemblance to their namesakes. This betokens a forlorn poverty of
+      invention, and a second-hand spirit, content to cover its nakedness with
+      borrowed or cast-off clothes of Europe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then we have a shallow affectation of scholarship: the whole catalogue of
+      ancient worthies is shaken out from the back of Lempriere&rsquo;s
+      Classical Dictionary, and a wide region of wild country sprinkled over
+      with the names of the heroes, poets, and sages of antiquity, jumbled into
+      the most whimsical juxtaposition. Then we have our political god-fathers;
+      topographical engineers, perhaps, or persons employed by government to
+      survey and lay out townships. These, forsooth, glorify the patrons that
+      give them bread; so we have the names of the great official men of the day
+      scattered over the land, as if they were the real &ldquo;salt of the
+      earth,&rdquo; with which it was to be seasoned. Well for us is it, when
+      these official great men happen to have names of fair acceptation; but wo
+      unto us, should a Tubbs or a Potts be in power: we are sure, in a little
+      while, to find Tubbsvilles and Pottsylvanias springing up in every
+      direction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Under these melancholy dispensations of taste and loyalty, therefore, Mr.
+      Editor, it is with a feeling of dawning hope, that I have lately perceived
+      the attention of persons of intelligence beginning to be awakened on this
+      subject. I trust if the matter should once be taken up, it will not be
+      readily abandoned. We are yet young enough, as a country, to remedy and
+      reform much of what has been done, and to release many of our rising towns
+      and cities, and our noble streams, from names calculated to vulgarize the
+      land.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have, on a former occasion, suggested the expediency of searching out
+      the original Indian names of places, and wherever they are striking and
+      euphonious, and those by which they have been superseded are glaringly
+      objectionable, to restore them. They would have the merit of originality,
+      and of belonging to the country; and they would remain as reliques of the
+      native lords of the soil, when every other vestige had disappeared. Many
+      of these names may easily be regained, by reference to old title deeds,
+      and to the archives of states and counties. In my own case, by examining
+      the records of the county clerk&rsquo;s office, I have discovered the
+      Indian names of various places and objects in the neighborhood, and have
+      found them infinitely superior to the trite, poverty-stricken names which
+      had been given by the settlers. A beautiful pastoral stream, for instance,
+      which winds for many a mile through one of the loveliest little valleys in
+      the state, has long been known by the common-place name of the &ldquo;Saw-mill
+      River.&rdquo; In the old Indian grants, it is designated as the Neperan.
+      Another, a perfectly wizard stream, which winds through the wildest
+      recesses of Sleepy Hollow, bears the hum-drum name of Mill Creek: in the
+      Indian grants, it sustains the euphonious title of the Pocantico.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Similar researches have released Long-Island from many of those paltry and
+      vulgar names which fringed its beautiful shores; their Cow Bays, and Cow
+      Necks, and Oyster Ponds, and Mosquito Coves, which spread a spell of
+      vulgarity over the whole island, and kept persons of taste and fancy at a
+      distance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It would be an object worthy the attention of the historical societies,
+      which are springing up in various parts of the Union, to have maps
+      executed of their respective states or neighborhoods, in which all the
+      Indian local names should, as far as possible, be restored. In fact, it
+      appears to me that the nomenclature of the country is almost of sufficient
+      importance for the foundation of a distinct society; or rather, a
+      corresponding association of persons of taste and judgment, of all parts
+      of the Union. Such an association, if properly constituted and composed,
+      comprising especially all the literary talent of the country, though it
+      might not have legislative power in its enactments, yet would have the
+      all-pervading power of the press; and the changes in nomenclature which it
+      might dictate, being at once adopted by elegant writers in prose and
+      poetry, and interwoven with the literature of the country, would
+      ultimately pass into popular currency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Should such a reforming association arise, I beg to recommend to its
+      attention all those mongrel names that have the adjective <i>New</i>
+      prefixed to them, and pray they may be one and all kicked out of the
+      country. I am for none of these second-hand appellations, that stamp us a
+      second-hand people, and that are to perpetuate us a new country to the end
+      of time. Odds my life! Mr. Editor, I hope and trust we are to live to be
+      an old nation, as well as our neighbors, and have no idea that our cities,
+      when they shall have attained to venerable antiquity, shall still be
+      dubbed <i>New</i>-York, and <i>New</i>-London, and <i>new</i> this and <i>new</i>
+      that, like the Pont-Neuf, (the New Bridge,) at Paris, which is the oldest
+      bridge in that capital, or like the Vicar of Wakefield&rsquo;s horse,
+      which continued to be called &ldquo;the colt,&rdquo; until he died of old
+      age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Speaking of New-York, reminds me of some observations which I met with
+      some time since, in one of the public papers, about the name of our state
+      and city. The writer proposes to substitute for the present names, those
+      of the State of Ontario, and the CITY OF MANHATTAN. I concur in his
+      suggestion most heartily. Though born and brought up in the city of
+      New-York, and though I love every stick and stone about it, yet I do not,
+      nor ever did, relish its name. I like neither its sound nor its
+      significance. As to its <i>significance</i>, the very adjective <i>new</i>
+      gives to our great commercial metropolis a second-hand character, as if
+      referring to some older, more dignified, and important place, of which it
+      was a mere copy; though in fact, if I am rightly informed, the whole name
+      commemorates a grant by Charles II. to his brother, the duke of York, made
+      in the spirit of royal munificence, of a tract of country which did not
+      belong to him. As to the <i>sound</i>, what can you make of it, either in
+      poetry or prose? New-York! Why, Sir, if it were to share the fate of Troy
+      itself; to suffer a ten years&rsquo; siege, and be sacked and plundered;
+      no modern Homer would ever be able to elevate the name to epic dignity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, Sir, ONTARIO would be a name worthy of the empire state. It bears
+      with it the majesty of that internal sea which washes our northwestern
+      shore. Or, if any objection should be made, from its not being completely
+      embraced within our boundaries, there is the MOHEGAN, one of the Indian
+      names for that glorious river, the Hudson, which would furnish an
+      excellent state appellation. So also New-York might be called Manhatta, as
+      it is named in some of the early records, and Manhattan used as the
+      adjective. Manhattan, however, stands well as a substantive, and &ldquo;Manhattanese,&rdquo;
+      which I observe Mr. COOPER has adopted in some of his writings, would be a
+      very good appellation for a citizen of the commercial metropolis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A word or two more, Mr. Editor, and I have done. We want a NATIONAL NAME.
+      We want it poetically, and we want it politically. With the poetical
+      necessity of the case I shall not trouble myself. I leave it to our poets
+      to tell how they manage to steer that collocation of words, &ldquo;The
+      United States of North America,&rdquo; down the swelling tide of song, and
+      to float the whole raft out upon the sea of heroic poesy. I am now
+      speaking of the mere purposes of common life. How is a citizen of this
+      republic to designate himself? As an American? There are two Americas,
+      each subdivided into various empires, rapidly rising in importance. As a
+      citizen of the United States? It is a clumsy, lumbering title, yet still
+      it is not distinctive; for we have now the United States of Central
+      America; and heaven knows how many &ldquo;United States&rdquo; may spring
+      up under the Proteus changes of Spanish America.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This may appear matter of small concernment; but any one that has
+      travelled in foreign countries must be conscious of the embarrassment and
+      circumlocution sometimes occasioned by the want of a perfectly distinct
+      and explicit national appellation. In France, when I have announced myself
+      as an American, I have been supposed to belong to one of the French
+      colonies; in Spain, to be from Mexico, or Peru, or some other
+      Spanish-American country. Repeatedly have I found myself involved in a
+      long geographical and political definition of my national identity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, Sir, meaning no disrespect to any of our co-heirs of this great
+      quarter of the world, I am for none of this coparceny in a name that is to
+      mingle us up with the riff-raff colonies and off-sets of every nation of
+      Europe. The title of American may serve to tell the quarter of the world
+      to which I belong, the same as a Frenchman or an Englishman may call
+      himself a European; but I want my own peculiar national name to rally
+      under. I want an appellation that shall tell at once, and in a way not to
+      be mistaken, that I belong to this very portion of America, geographical
+      and political, to which it is my pride and happiness to belong; that I am
+      of the Anglo-Saxon race which founded this Anglo-Saxon empire in the
+      wilderness; and that I have no part or parcel with any other race or
+      empire, Spanish, French, or Portuguese, in either of the Americas. Such an
+      appellation, Sir, would have magic in it. It would bind every part of the
+      confederacy together as with a keystone; it would be a passport to the
+      citizen of our republic throughout the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have it in our power to furnish ourselves with such a national
+      appellation, from one of the grand and eternal features of our country;
+      from that noble chain of mountains which formed its back-bone, and ran
+      through the &ldquo;old confederacy,&rdquo; when it first declared our
+      national independence. I allude to the Appalachian or Alleghany mountains.
+      We might do this without any very inconvenient change in our present
+      titles. We might still use the phrase, &ldquo;The United States,&rdquo;
+      substituting Appalachia, or Alleghania, (I should prefer the latter,) in
+      place of America. The title of Appalachian, or Alleghanian, would still
+      announce us as Americans, but would specify us as citizens of the Great
+      Republic. Even our old national cypher of U. S. A. might remain unaltered,
+      designating the United States of Alleghania.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These are crude ideas, Mr. Editor, hastily thrown out to elicit the ideas
+      of others, and to call attention to a subject of more national importance
+      than may at first be supposed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very respectfully yours,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Geoffrey Crayon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      DESULTORY THOUGHTS ON CRITICISM.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let a man write never so well, there are now-a-days a sort of
+      persons they call critics, that, egad, have no more wit in them than so
+      many hobby-horses: but they&rsquo;ll laugh at you, Sir, and find fault,
+      and censure things, that, egad, I&rsquo;m sure they are not able to do
+      themselves; a sort of envious persons, that emulate the glories of persons
+      of parts, and think to build their fame by calumniation of persons that,
+      egad, to my knowledge, of all persons in the world, are in nature the
+      persons that do as much despise all that, as&mdash;a&mdash;In fine, I&rsquo;ll
+      say no more of &lsquo;em!&rdquo; -REHEARSAL.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the world knows the story of the tempest-tossed voyager, who, coming
+      upon a strange coast, and seeing a man hanging in chains, hailed it with
+      joy, as the sign of a civilized country. In like manner we may hail, as a
+      proof of the rapid advancement of civilization and refinement in this
+      country, the increasing number of delinquent authors daily gibbeted for
+      the edification of the public.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this respect, as in every other, we are &ldquo;going ahead&rdquo; with
+      accelerated velocity, and promising to outstrip the superannuated
+      countries of Europe. It is really astonishing to see the number of
+      tribunals incessantly springing up for the trial of literary offences.
+      Independent of the high courts of Oyer and Terminer, the great quarterly
+      reviews, we have innumerable minor tribunals, monthly and weekly, down to
+      the Pie-poudre courts in the daily papers; insomuch that no culprit stands
+      so little chance of escaping castigation, as an unlucky author, guilty of
+      an unsuccessful attempt to please the public.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seriously speaking, however, it is questionable whether our national
+      literature is sufficiently advanced, to bear this excess of criticism; and
+      whether it would not thrive better, if allowed to spring up, for some time
+      longer, in the freshness and vigor of native vegetation. When the worthy
+      Judge Coulter, of Virginia, opened court for the first time in one of the
+      upper counties, he was for enforcing all the rules and regulations that
+      had grown into use in the old, long-settled counties. &ldquo;This is all
+      very well,&rdquo; said a shrewd old farmer; &ldquo;but let me tell you,
+      Judge Coulter, you set your coulter too deep for a new soil.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For my part, I doubt whether either writer or reader is benefited by what
+      is commonly called criticism. The former is rendered cautious and
+      distrustful; he fears to give way to those kindling emotions, and brave
+      sallies of thought, which bear him up to excellence; the latter is made
+      fastidious and cynical; or rather, he surrenders his own independent taste
+      and judgment, and learns to like and dislike at second hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us, for a moment, consider the nature of this thing called criticism,
+      which exerts such a sway over the literary world. The pronoun we, used by
+      critics, has a most imposing and delusive sound. The reader pictures to
+      himself a conclave of learned men, deliberating gravely and scrupulously
+      on the merits of the book in question; examining it page by page,
+      comparing and balancing their opinions, and when they have united in a
+      conscientious verdict, publishing it for the benefit of the world: whereas
+      the criticism is generally the crude and hasty production of an
+      individual, scribbling to while away an idle hour, to oblige a
+      book-seller, or to defray current expenses. How often is it the passing
+      notion of the hour, affected by accidental circumstances; by
+      indisposition, by peevishness, by vapors or indigestion; by personal
+      prejudice, or party feeling. Sometimes a work is sacrificed, because the
+      reviewer wishes a satirical article; sometimes because he wants a humorous
+      one; and sometimes because the author reviewed has become offensively
+      celebrated, and offers high game to the literary marksman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How often would the critic himself, if a conscientious man, reverse his
+      opinion, had he time to revise it in a more sunny moment; but the press is
+      waiting, the printer&rsquo;s devil is at his elbow; the article is wanted
+      to make the requisite variety for the number of the review, or the author
+      has pressing occasion for the sum he is to receive for the article, so it
+      is sent off, all blotted and blurred; with a shrug of the shoulders, and
+      the consolatory ejaculation: &ldquo;Pshaw! curse it! it&rsquo;s nothing
+      but a review!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The critic, too, who dictates thus oracularly to the world, is perhaps
+      some dingy, ill-favored, ill-mannered varlet, who, were he to speak by
+      word of mouth, would be disregarded, if not scoffed at; but such is the
+      magic of types; such the mystic operation of anonymous writing; such the
+      potential effect of the pronoun we, that his crude decisions, fulminated
+      through the press, become circulated far and wide, control the opinions of
+      the world, and give or destroy reputation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Many readers have grown timorous in their judgments since the
+      all-pervading currency of criticism. They fear to express a revised, frank
+      opinion about any new work, and to relish it honestly and heartily, lest
+      it should be condemned in the next review, and they stand convicted of bad
+      taste. Hence they hedge their opinions, like a gambler his bets, and leave
+      an opening to retract, and retreat, and qualify, and neutralise every
+      unguarded expression of delight, until their very praise declines into a
+      faintness that is damning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Were every one, on the contrary, to judge for himself, and speak his mind
+      frankly and fearlessly, we should have more true criticism in the world
+      than at present. Whenever a person is pleased with a work, he may be
+      assured that it has good qualities. An author who pleases a variety of
+      readers, must possess substantial powers of pleasing; or, in other words,
+      intrinsic merits; for otherwise we acknowledge an effect, and deny the
+      cause. The reader, therefore, should not suffer himself to be readily
+      shaken from the conviction of his own feelings, by the sweeping censures
+      of pseudo critics. The author he has admired, may be chargeable with a
+      thousand faults; but it is nevertheless beauties and excellencies that
+      have excited his admiration; and he should recollect that taste and
+      judgment are as much evinced in the perception of beauties among defects,
+      as in a detection of defects among beauties. For my part, I honor the
+      blessed and blessing spirit that is quick to discover and extol all that
+      is pleasing and meritorious. Give me the honest bee, that extracts honey
+      from the humblest weed, but save me from the ingenuity of the spider,
+      which traces its venom, even in the midst of a flower-garden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the mere fact of being chargeable with faults and imperfections is to
+      condemn an author, who is to escape? The greatest writers of antiquity
+      have, in this way, been obnoxious to criticism. Aristotle himself has been
+      accused of ignorance; Aristophanes of impiety and buffoonery; Virgil of
+      plagiarism, and a want of invention; Horace of obscurity; Cicero has been,
+      said to want vigor and connexion, and Demosthenes to be deficient in
+      nature, and in purity of language. Yet these have all survived the
+      censures of the critic, and flourished on to a glorious immortality. Every
+      now and then the world is startled by some new doctrines in matters of
+      taste, some levelling attacks on established creeds; some sweeping
+      denunciations of whole generations, or schools of writers, as they are
+      called, who had seemed to be embalmed and canonized in public opinion.
+      Such has been the case, for instance, with Pope, and Dryden, and Addison,
+      who for a time have almost been shaken from their pedestals, and treated
+      as false idols.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is singular, also, to see the fickleness of the world with respect to
+      its favorites. Enthusiasm exhausts itself, and prepares the way for
+      dislike. The public is always for positive sentiments, and new sensations.
+      When wearied of admiring, it delights to censure; thus coining a double
+      set of enjoyments out of the same subject. Scott and Byron are scarce cold
+      in their graves, and already we find criticism beginning to call in
+      question those powers which held the world in magic thraldom. Even in our
+      own country, one of its greatest geniuses has had some rough passages with
+      the censors of the press; and instantly criticism begins to unsay all that
+      it has repeatedly said in his praise; and the public are almost led to
+      believe that the pen which has so often delighted them, is absolutely
+      destitute of the power to delight!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If, then, such reverses in opinion as to matters of taste can be so
+      readily brought about, when may an author feel himself secure? Where is
+      the anchoring-ground of popularity, when he may thus be driven from his
+      moorings, and foundered even in harbor? The reader, too, when he is to
+      consider himself safe in admiring, when he sees long-established altars
+      overthrown, and his household deities dashed to the ground!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is one consolatory reflection. Every abuse carries with it its own
+      remedy or palliation. Thus the excess of crude and hasty criticism, which
+      has of late prevailed throughout the literary world, and threatened to
+      overrun our country, begins to produce its own antidote. Where there is a
+      multiplicity of contradictory paths, a man must make his choice; in so
+      doing, he has to exercise his judgment, and that is one great step to
+      mental independence. He begins to doubt all, where all differ, and but one
+      can be in the right. He is driven to trust to his own discernment, and his
+      natural feelings; and here he is most likely to be safe. The author, too,
+      finding that what is condemned at one tribunal, is applauded at another,
+      though perplexed for a time, gives way at length to the spontaneous
+      impulse of his genius, and the dictates of his taste, and writes in the
+      way most natural to himself. It is thus that criticism, which by its
+      severity may have held the little world of writers in check, may, by its
+      very excess, disarm itself of its terrors, and the hardihood of talent
+      become restored.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      G.C.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      SPANISH ROMANCE.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Sir: I have already given you a legend or two drawn from ancient Spanish
+      sources, and may occasionally give you a few more. I love these old
+      Spanish themes, especially when they have a dash of the Morisco in them,
+      and treat of the times when the Moslems maintained a foot-hold in the
+      peninsula. They have a high, spicy, oriental flavor, not to be found in
+      any other themes that are merely European. In fact, Spain is a country
+      that stands alone in the midst of Europe; severed in habits, manners, and
+      modes of thinking, from all its continental neighbors. It is a romantic
+      country; but its romance has none of the sentimentality of modern European
+      romance: it is chiefly derived from the brilliant regions of the East, and
+      from the high-minded school of Saracenic chivalry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Arab invasion and conquest brought a higher civilization and a nobler
+      style of thinking into Gothic Spain. The Arabs were a quick-witted,
+      sagacious, proud-spirited, and poetical people, and were imbued with
+      oriental science and literature. Wherever they established a seat of
+      power, it became a rallying place for the learned and ingenious; and they
+      softened and refined the people whom they conquered. By degrees, occupancy
+      seemed to give them a hereditary right to their foothold in the land; they
+      ceased to be looked upon as invaders, and were regarded as rival
+      neighbors. The peninsula, broken up into a variety of states, both
+      Christian and Moslem, became for centuries a great campaigning ground,
+      where the art of war seemed to be the principal business of man, and was
+      carried to the highest pitch of romantic chivalry. The original ground of
+      hostility, a difference of faith, gradually lost its rancor. Neighboring
+      states, of opposite creeds, were occasionally linked together in
+      alliances, offensive and defensive; so that the cross and crescent were to
+      be seen side by side fighting against some common enemy. In times of
+      peace, too, the noble youth of either faith resorted to the same cities,
+      Christian or Moslem, to school themselves in military science. Even in the
+      temporary truces of sanguinary wars, the warriors who had recently striven
+      together in the deadly conflicts of the field, laid aside their animosity,
+      met at tournaments, jousts, and other military festivities, and exchanged
+      the courtesies of gentle and generous spirits. Thus the opposite races
+      became frequently mingled together in peaceful intercourse, or if any
+      rivalry took place, it was in those high courtesies and nobler acts which
+      bespeak the accomplished cavalier. Warriors of opposite creeds became
+      ambitious of transcending each other in magnanimity as well as valor.
+      Indeed, the chivalric virtues were refined upon to a degree sometimes
+      fastidious and constrained; but at other times, inexpressibly noble and
+      affecting. The annals of the times teem with illustrious instances of
+      high-wrought courtesy, romantic generosity, lofty disinterestedness, and
+      punctilious honor, that warm the very soul to read them. These have
+      furnished themes for national plays and poems, or have been celebrated in
+      those all-pervading ballads which are as the life-breath of the people,
+      and thus have continued to exercise an influence on the national character
+      which centuries of vicissitude and decline have not been able to destroy;
+      so that, with all their faults, and they are many, the Spaniards, even at
+      the present day, are on many points the most high-minded and
+      proud-spirited people of Europe. It is true, the romance of feeling
+      derived from the sources I have mentioned, has, like all other romance,
+      its affectations and extremes. It renders the Spaniard at times pompous
+      and grandiloquent; prone to carry the &ldquo;pundonor,&rdquo; or point of
+      honor, beyond the bounds of sober sense and sound morality; disposed, in
+      the midst of poverty, to affect the &ldquo;grande caballero,&rdquo; and to
+      look down with sovereign disdain upon &ldquo;arts mechanical,&rdquo; and
+      all the gainful pursuits of plebeian life; but this very inflation of
+      spirit, while it fills his brain with vapors, lifts him above a thousand
+      meannesses; and though it often keeps him in indigence, ever protects him
+      from vulgarity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the present day, when popular literature is running into the low levels
+      of life and luxuriating on the vices and follies of mankind, and when the
+      universal pursuit of gain is trampling down the early growth of poetic
+      feeling and wearing out the verdure of the soul, I question whether it
+      would not be of service for the reader occasionally to turn to these
+      records of prouder times and loftier modes of thinking, and to steep
+      himself to the very lips in old Spanish romance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For my own part, I have a shelf or two of venerable, parchment-bound
+      tomes, picked up here and there about the peninsula, and filled with
+      chronicles, plays, and ballads, about Moors and Christians, which I keep
+      by me as mental tonics, in the same way that a provident housewife has her
+      cupboard of cordials. Whenever I find my mind brought below par by the
+      commonplace of every-day life, or jarred by the sordid collisions of the
+      world, or put out of tune by the shrewd selfishness of modern
+      utilitarianism, I resort to these venerable tomes, as did the worthy hero
+      of La Mancha to his books of chivalry, and refresh and tone up my spirit
+      by a deep draught of their contents. They have some such effect upon me as
+      Falstaff ascribes to a good Sherris sack, &ldquo;warming the blood and
+      filling the brain with fiery and delectable shapes.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I here subjoin, Mr. Editor, a small specimen of the cordials I have
+      mentioned, just drawn from my Spanish cupboard, which I recommend to your
+      palate. If you find it to your taste, you may pass it on to your readers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Your correspondent and well-wisher,
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      GEOFFREY CRAYON.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      LEGEND OF DON MUNIO SANCHO DE HINOJOSA.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      By The Author Of The Sketch-Book.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      In the cloisters of the ancient Benedictine convent of San Domingo, at
+      Silos, in Castile, are the mouldering yet magnificent monuments of the
+      once powerful and chivalrous family of Hinojosa. Among these, reclines the
+      marble figure of a knight, in complete armor, with the hands pressed
+      together, as if in prayer. On one side of his tomb is sculptured in relief
+      a band of Christian cavaliers, capturing a cavalcade of male and female
+      Moors; on the other side, the same cavaliers are represented kneeling
+      before an altar. The tomb, like most of the neighboring monuments, is
+      almost in ruins, and the sculpture is nearly unintelligible, excepting to
+      the keen eye of the antiquary. The story connected with the sepulchre,
+      however, is still preserved in the old Spanish chronicles, and is to the
+      following purport.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In old times, several hundred years ago, there was a noble Castilian
+      cavalier, named Don Munio Sancho de Hinojosa, lord of a border castle,
+      which had stood the brunt of many a Moorish foray. He had seventy horsemen
+      as his household troops, all of the ancient Castilian proof; stark
+      warriors, hard riders, and men of iron; with these he scoured the Moorish
+      lands, and made his name terrible throughout the borders. His castle hall
+      was covered with banners, and scimitars, and Moslem helms, the trophies of
+      his prowess. Don Munio was, moreover, a keen huntsman; and rejoiced in
+      hounds of all kinds, steeds for the chase, and hawks for the towering
+      sport of falconry. When not engaged in warfare, his delight was to beat up
+      the neighboring forests; and scarcely ever did he ride forth, without
+      hound and horn, a boar-spear in his hand, or a hawk upon his fist, and an
+      attendant train of huntsmen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His wife, Donna Maria Palacin, was of a gentle and timid nature, little
+      fitted to be the spouse of so hardy and adventurous a knight; and many a
+      tear did the poor lady shed, when he sallied forth upon his daring
+      enterprises, and many a prayer did she offer up for his safety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As this doughty cavalier was one day hunting, he stationed himself in a
+      thicket, on the borders of a green glade of the forest, and dispersed his
+      followers to rouse the game, and drive it toward his stand. He had not
+      been here long, when a cavalcade of Moors, of both sexes, came prankling
+      over the forest lawn. They were unarmed, and magnificently dressed in
+      robes of tissue and embroidery, rich shawls of India, bracelets and
+      anklets of gold, and jewels that sparkled in the sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the head of this gay cavalcade, rode a youthful cavalier, superior to
+      the rest in dignity and loftiness of demeanor, and in splendor of attire;
+      beside him was a damsel, whose veil, blown aside by the breeze, displayed
+      a face of surpassing beauty, and eyes cast down in maiden modesty, yet
+      beaming with tenderness and joy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Munio thanked his stars for sending him such a prize, and exulted at
+      the thought of bearing home to his wife the glittering spoils of these
+      infidels. Putting his hunting-horn to his lips, he gave a blast that rung
+      through the forest. His huntsmen came running from all quarters, and the
+      astonished Moors were surrounded and made captives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The beautiful Moor wrung her hands in despair, and her female attendants
+      uttered the most piercing cries. The young Moorish cavalier alone retained
+      self-possession. He inquired the name of the Christian knight, who
+      commanded this troop of horsemen. When told that it was Don Munio Sancho
+      de Hinojosa, his countenance lighted up. Approaching that cavalier, and
+      kissing his hand, &ldquo;Don Munio Sancho,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I have
+      heard of your fame as a true and valiant knight, terrible in arms, but
+      schooled in the noble virtues of chivalry. Such do I trust to find you. In
+      me you behold Abadil, son of a Moorish Alcayde. I am on the way to
+      celebrate my nuptials with this lady; chance has thrown us in your power,
+      but I confide in your magnanimity. Take all our treasure and jewels;
+      demand what ransom you think proper for our person, but suffer us not to
+      be insulted or dishonored.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the good knight heard this appeal, and beheld the beauty of the
+      youthful pair, his heart was touched with tenderness and courtesy. &ldquo;God
+      forbid,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;that I should disturb such happy nuptials.
+      My prisoners in troth shall ye be, for fifteen days, and immured within my
+      castle, where I claim, as conqueror, the right of celebrating your
+      espousals.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So saying, he despatched one of his fleetest horsemen in advance, to
+      notify Donna Maria Palacin of the coming of this bridal party; while he
+      and his huntsmen escorted the cavalcade, not as captors, but as a guard of
+      honor. As they drew near to the castle, the banners were hung out, and the
+      trumpets sounded from the battlements; and on their nearer approach, the
+      draw-bridge was lowered, and Donna Maria came forth to meet them, attended
+      by her ladies and knights, her pages and her minstrels. She took the young
+      bride, Allifra, in her arms, kissed her with the tenderness of a sister,
+      and conducted her into the castle. In the mean time, Don Munio sent forth
+      missives in every direction, and had viands and dainties of all kinds
+      collected from the country round; and the wedding of the Moorish lovers
+      was celebrated with all possible state and festivity. For fifteen days,
+      the castle was given up to joy and revelry. There were tiltings and jousts
+      at the ring, and bullfights, and banquets, and dances to the sound of
+      minstrelsy. When the fifteen days were at an end, he made the bride and
+      bridegroom magnificent presents, and conducted them and their attendants
+      safely beyond the borders. Such, in old times, were the courtesy and
+      generosity of a Spanish cavalier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Several years after this event, the King of Castile summoned his nobles to
+      assist him in a campaign against the Moors. Don Munio Sancho was among the
+      first to answer to the call, with seventy horsemen, all staunch and
+      well-tried warriors. His wife, Donna Maria, hung about his neck. &ldquo;Alas,
+      my lord!&rdquo; exclaimed she, &ldquo;how often wilt thou tempt thy fate,
+      and when will thy thirst for glory be appeased?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One battle more,&rdquo; replied Don Munio, &ldquo;one battle more,
+      for the honor of Castile, and I here make a vow, that when this is over, I
+      will lay by my sword, and repair with my cavaliers in pilgrimage to the
+      sepulchre of our Lord at Jerusalem.&rdquo; The cavaliers all joined with
+      him in the vow, and Donna Maria felt in some degree soothed in spirit:
+      still, she saw with a heavy heart the departure of her husband, and
+      watched his banner with wistful eyes, until it disappeared among the trees
+      of the forest,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Castile led his army to the plains of Almanara, where they
+      encountered the Moorish host, near to Ucles. The battle was long and
+      bloody; the Christians repeatedly wavered, and were as often rallied by
+      the energy of their commanders. Don Munio was covered with wounds, but
+      refused to leave the field. The Christians at length gave way, and the
+      king was hardly pressed, and in danger of being captured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Munio called upon his cavaliers to follow him to the rescue. &ldquo;Now
+      is the time,&rdquo; cried he, &ldquo;to prove your loyalty. Fall to, like
+      brave men! We fight for the true faith, and if we lose our lives here, we
+      gain a better life hereafter.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rushing with his men between the king and his pursuers, they checked the
+      latter in their career, and gave time for their monarch to escape; but
+      they fell victims to their loyalty. They all fought to the last gasp. Don
+      Munio was singled out by a powerful Moorish knight, but having been
+      wounded in the right arm, he fought to disadvantage, and was slain. The
+      battle being over, the Moor paused to possess himself of the spoils of
+      this redoubtable Christian warrior. When he unlaced the helmet, however,
+      and beheld the countenance of Don Munio, he gave a great cry, and smote
+      his breast. &ldquo;Woe is me!&rdquo; cried he: &ldquo;I have slain my
+      benefactor! The flower of knightly virtue! the most magnanimous of
+      cavaliers!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While the battle had been raging on the plain of Salmanara, Donna Maria
+      Palacin remained in her castle, a prey to the keenest anxiety. Her eyes
+      were ever fixed on the road that led from the country of the Moors, and
+      often she asked the watchman of the tower, &ldquo;What seest thou?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening, at the shadowy hour of twilight, the warden sounded his horn.
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; cried he, &ldquo;a numerous train winding up the
+      valley. There are mingled Moors and Christians. The banner of my lord is
+      in the advance. Joyful tidings!&rdquo; exclaimed the old seneschal:
+      &ldquo;my lord returns in triumph, and brings captives!&rdquo; Then the
+      castle courts rang with shouts of joy; and the standard was displayed, and
+      the trumpets were sounded, and the draw-bridge was lowered, and Donna
+      Maria went forth with her ladies, and her knights, and her pages, and her
+      minstrels, to welcome her lord from the wars. But as the train drew nigh,
+      she beheld a sumptuous bier, covered with black velvet, and on it lay a
+      warrior, as if taking his repose: he lay in his armor, with his helmet on
+      his head, and his sword in his hand, as one who had never been conquered,
+      and around the bier were the escutcheons of the house of Hinojosa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A number of Moorish cavaliers attended the bier, with emblems of mourning,
+      and with dejected countenances: and their leader cast himself at the feet
+      of Donna Maria, and hid his face in his hands. She beheld in him the
+      gallant Abadil, whom she had once welcomed with his bride to her castle,
+      but who now came with the body of her lord, whom he had unknowingly slain
+      in battle!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sepulchre erected in the cloisters of the Convent of San Domingo was
+      achieved at the expense of the Moor Abadil, as a feeble testimony of his
+      grief for the death of the good knight Don Munio, and his reverence for
+      his memory. The tender and faithful Donna Maria soon followed her lord to
+      the tomb. On one of the stones of a small arch, beside his sepulchre, is
+      the following simple inscription: &ldquo;<i>Hic jacet Maria Palacin, uxor
+      Munonis Sancij de Finojosa</i>:&rdquo; Here lies Maria Palacin, wife of
+      Munio Sancho de Hinojosa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The legend of Don Munio Sancho does not conclude with his death. On the
+      same day on which the battle took place on the plain of Salmanara, a
+      chaplain of the Holy Temple at Jerusalem, while standing at the outer
+      gate, beheld a train of Christian cavaliers advancing, as if in
+      pilgrimage. The chaplain was a native of Spain, and as the pilgrims
+      approached, he knew the foremost to be Don Munio Sancho de Hinojosa, with
+      whom he had been well acquainted in former times. Hastening to the
+      patriarch, he told him of the honorable rank of the pilgrims at the gate.
+      The patriarch, therefore, went forth with a grand procession of priests
+      and monks, and received the pilgrims with all due honor. There were
+      seventy cavaliers, beside their leader, all stark and lofty warriors. They
+      carried their helmets in their hands, and their faces were deadly pale.
+      They greeted no one, nor looked either to the right or to the left, but
+      entered the chapel, and kneeling before the Sepulchre of our Saviour,
+      performed their orisons in silence. When they had concluded, they rose as
+      if to depart, and the patriarch and his attendants advanced to speak to
+      them, but they were no more to be seen. Every one marvelled what could be
+      the meaning of this prodigy. The patriarch carefully noted down the day,
+      and sent to Castile to learn tidings of Don Munio Sancho de Hinojosa. He
+      received for reply, that on the very day specified, that worthy knight,
+      with seventy of his followers, had been slain in battle. These, therefore,
+      must have been the blessed spirits of those Christian warriors, come to
+      fulfil their vow of a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. Such
+      was Castilian faith, in the olden time, which kept its word, even beyond
+      the grave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If any one should doubt of the miraculous apparition of these phantom
+      knights, let him consult the History of the Kings of Castile and Leon, by
+      the learned and pious Fray Prudencio de Sandoval, Bishop of Pamplona,
+      where he will find it recorded in the History of the King Don Alonzo VI.,
+      on the hundred and second page. It is too precious a legend to be lightly
+      abandoned to the doubter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      COMMUNIPAW.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Sir: I observe, with pleasure, that you are performing from time to time a
+      pious duty, imposed upon you, I may say, by the name you have adopted as
+      your titular standard, in following in the footsteps of the venerable
+      KNICKERBOCKER, and gleaning every fact concerning the early times of the
+      Manhattoes which may have escaped his hand. I trust, therefore, a few
+      particulars, legendary and statistical, concerning a place which figures
+      conspicuously in the early pages of his history, will not be unacceptable.
+      I allude, Sir, to the ancient and renowned village of Communipaw, which,
+      according to the veracious Diedrich, and to equally veracious tradition,
+      was the first spot where our ever-to-be-lamented Dutch progenitors planted
+      their standard and cast the seeds of empire, and from whence subsequently
+      sailed the memorable expedition under Oloffe the Dreamer, which landed on
+      the opposite island of Manhatta, and founded the present city of New-York,
+      the city of dreams and speculations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Communipaw, therefore, may truly be called the parent of New-York; yet it
+      is an astonishing fact, that though immediately opposite to the great city
+      it has produced, from whence its red roofs and tin weather-cocks can
+      actually be descried peering above the surrounding apple orchards, it
+      should be almost as rarely visited, and as little known by the inhabitants
+      of the metropolis, as if it had been locked up among the Rocky Mountains.
+      Sir, I think there is something unnatural in this, especially in these
+      times of ramble and research, when our citizens are antiquity-hunting in
+      every part of the world. Curiosity, like charity, should begin at home;
+      and I would enjoin it on our worthy burghers, especially those of the real
+      Knickerbocker breed, before they send their sons abroad to wonder and grow
+      wise among the remains of Greece and Rome, to let them make a tour of
+      ancient Pavonia, from Weehawk even to the Kills, and meditate, with filial
+      reverence, on the moss-grown mansions of Communipaw. Sir, I regard this
+      much neglected village as one of the most remarkable places in the
+      country. The intelligent traveller, as he looks down upon it from the
+      Bergen Heights, modestly nestled among its cabbage-gardens, while the
+      great flaunting city it has begotten is stretching far and wide on the
+      opposite side of the bay, the intelligent traveller, I say, will be filled
+      with astonishment; not, Sir, at the village of Communipaw, which in truth
+      is a very small village, but at the almost incredible fact that so small a
+      village should have produced so great a city. It looks to him, indeed,
+      like some squat little dame, with a tall grenadier of a son strutting by
+      her side; or some simple-hearted hen that has unwittingly hatched out a
+      long-legged turkey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this is not all for which Communipaw is remarkable. Sir, it is
+      interesting on another account. It is to the ancient province of the
+      New-Netherlands and the classic era of the Dutch dynasty, what Herculaneum
+      and Pompeii are to ancient Rome and the glorious days of the empire. Here
+      every thing remains in statu quo, as it was in the days of Oloffe the
+      Dreamer, Walter the Doubter, and the other worthies of the golden age; the
+      same broad-brimmed hats and broad-bottomed breeches; the same knee-buckles
+      and shoe-buckles; the same close-quilled caps and linsey-woolsey
+      short-gowns and petticoats; the same implements and utensils and forms and
+      fashions; in a word, Communipaw at the present day is a picture of what
+      New-Amsterdam was before the conquest. The &ldquo;intelligent traveller&rdquo;
+      aforesaid, as he treads its streets, is struck with the primitive
+      character of every thing around him. Instead of Grecian temples for
+      dwelling-houses, with a great column of pine boards in the way of every
+      window, he beholds high peaked roofs, gable ends to the street, with
+      weather-cocks at top, and windows of all sorts and sizes; large ones for
+      the grown-up members of the family, and little ones for the little folk.
+      Instead of cold marble porches, with close-locked doors and brass
+      knockers, he sees the doors hospitably open; the worthy burgher smoking
+      his pipe on the old-fashioned stoop in front, with his &ldquo;vrouw&rdquo;
+      knitting beside him; and the cat and her kittens at their feet sleeping in
+      the sunshine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Astonished at the obsolete and &ldquo;old world&rdquo; air of every thing
+      around him, the intelligent traveller demands how all this has come to
+      pass. Herculaneum and Pompeii remain, it is true, unaffected by the
+      varying fashions of centuries; but they were buried by a volcano and
+      preserved in ashes. What charmed spell has kept this wonderful little
+      place unchanged, though in sight of the most changeful city in the
+      universe? Has it, too, been buried under its cabbage-gardens, and only dug
+      out in modern days for the wonder and edification of the world? The reply
+      involves a point of history, worthy of notice and record, and reflecting
+      immortal honor on Communipaw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the time when New-Amsterdam was invaded and conquered by British foes,
+      as has been related in the history of the venerable Diedrich, a great
+      dispersion took place among the Dutch inhabitants. Many, like the
+      illustrious Peter Stuyvesant, buried themselves in rural retreats in the
+      Bowerie; others, like Wolfert Acker, took refuge in various remote parts
+      of the Hudson; but there was one staunch, unconquerable band that
+      determined to keep together, and preserve themselves, like seed corn, for
+      the future fructification and perpetuity of the Knickerbocker race. These
+      were headed by one Garret Van Horne, a gigantic Dutchman, the Pelayo of
+      the New-Netherlands. Under his guidance, they retreated across the bay and
+      buried themselves among the marshes of ancient Pavonia, as did the
+      followers of Pelayo among the mountains of Asturias, when Spain was
+      overrun by its Arabian invaders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gallant Van Horne set up his standard at Communipaw, and invited all
+      those to rally under it, who were true Nederlanders at heart, and
+      determined to resist all foreign intermixture or encroachment. A strict
+      non-intercourse was observed with the captured city; not a boat ever
+      crossed to it from Communipaw, and the English language was rigorously
+      tabooed throughout the village and its dependencies. Every man was sworn
+      to wear his hat, cut his coat, build his house, and harness his horses,
+      exactly as his father had done before him; and to permit nothing but the
+      Dutch language to be spoken in his household.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a citadel of the place, and a strong-hold for the preservation and
+      defence of every thing Dutch, the gallant Van Horne erected a lordly
+      mansion, with a chimney perched at every corner, which thence derived the
+      aristocratical name of &ldquo;The House of the Four Chimneys.&rdquo;
+      Hither he transferred many of the precious reliques of New-Amsterdam; the
+      great round-crowned hat that once covered the capacious head of Walter the
+      Doubter, and the identical shoe with which Peter the Headstrong kicked his
+      pusillanimous councillors down-stairs. St. Nicholas, it is said, took this
+      loyal house under his especial protection; and a Dutch soothsayer
+      predicted, that as long as it should stand, Communipaw would be safe from
+      the intrusion either of Briton or Yankee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this house would the gallant Van Home and his compeers hold frequent
+      councils of war, as to the possibility of re-conquering the province from
+      the British; and here would they sit for hours, nay, days, together
+      smoking their pipes and keeping watch upon the growing city of New-York;
+      groaning in spirit whenever they saw a new house erected or ship launched,
+      and persuading themselves that Admiral Van Tromp would one day or other
+      arrive to sweep out the invaders with the broom which he carried at his
+      mast-head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Years rolled by, but Van Tromp never arrived. The British strengthened
+      themselves in the land, and the captured city flourished under their
+      domination. Still, the worthies of Communipaw would not despair; something
+      or other, they were sure, would turn up to restore the power of the Hogen
+      Mogens, the Lord States-General; so they kept smoking and smoking, and
+      watching and watching, and turning the same few thoughts over and over in
+      a perpetual circle, which is commonly called deliberating. In the mean
+      time, being hemmed up within a narrow compass, between the broad bay and
+      the Bergen hills, they grew poorer and poorer, until they had scarce the
+      wherewithal to maintain their pipes in fuel during their endless
+      deliberations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now must I relate a circumstance which will call for a little exertion
+      of faith on the part of the reader; but I can only say that if he doubts
+      it, he had better not utter his doubts in Communipaw, as it is among the
+      religious beliefs of the place. It is, in fact, nothing more nor less than
+      a miracle, worked by the blessed St. Nicholas, for the relief and
+      sustenance of this loyal community.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It so happened, in this time of extremity, that in the course of cleaning
+      the House of the Four Chimneys, by an ignorant housewife who knew nothing
+      of the historic value of the reliques it contained, the old hat of Walter
+      the Doubter and the executive shoe of Peter the Headstrong were thrown out
+      of doors as rubbish. But mark the consequence. The good St. Nicholas kept
+      watch over these precious reliques, and wrought out of them a wonderful
+      providence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hat of Walter the Doubter falling on a stercoraceous heap of compost,
+      in the rear of the house, began forthwith to vegetate. Its broad brim,
+      spread forth grandly and exfoliated, and its round crown swelled and
+      crimped and consolidated until the whole became a prodigious cabbage,
+      rivalling in magnitude the capacious head of the Doubter. In a word, it
+      was the origin of that renowned species of cabbage known, by all Dutch
+      epicures, by the name of the Governor&rsquo;s Head, and which is to this
+      day the glory of Communipaw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the other hand, the shoe of Peter Stuyvesant being thrown into the
+      river, in front of the house, gradually hardened and concreted, and became
+      covered with barnacles, and at length turned into a gigantic oyster; being
+      the progenitor of that illustrious species known throughout the
+      gastronomical world by the name of the Governor&rsquo;s Foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These miracles were the salvation of Communipaw. The sages of the place
+      immediately saw in them the hand of St. Nicholas, and understood their
+      mystic signification. They set to work with all diligence to cultivate and
+      multiply these great blessings; and so abundantly did the gubernatorial
+      hat and shoe fructify and increase, that in a little time great patches of
+      cabbages were to be seen extending from the village of Communipaw quite to
+      the Bergen Hills; while the whole bottom of the bay in front became a vast
+      bed of oysters. Ever since that time this excellent community has been
+      divided into two great classes: those who cultivate the land and those who
+      cultivate the water. The former have devoted themselves to the nurture and
+      edification of cabbages, rearing them in all their varieties; while the
+      latter have formed parks and plantations, under water, to which juvenile
+      oysters are transplanted from foreign parts, to finish their education.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As these great sources of profit multiplied upon their hands, the worthy
+      inhabitants of Communipaw began to long for a market at which to dispose
+      of their superabundance. This gradually produced once more an intercourse
+      with New-York; but it was always carried on by the old people and the
+      negroes; never would they permit the young folks, of either sex, to visit
+      the city, lest they should get tainted with foreign manners and bring home
+      foreign fashions. Even to this day, if you see an old burgher in the
+      market, with hat and garb of antique Dutch fashion, you may be sure he is
+      one of the old unconquered race of the &ldquo;bitter blood,&rdquo; who
+      maintain their strong-hold at Communipaw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In modern days, the hereditary bitterness against the English has lost
+      much of its asperity, or rather has become merged in a new source of
+      jealousy and apprehension: I allude to the incessant and wide-spreading
+      irruptions from New-England. Word has been continually brought back to
+      Communipaw, by those of the community who return from their trading
+      voyages in cabbages and oysters, of the alarming power which the Yankees
+      are gaining in the ancient city of New-Amsterdam; elbowing the genuine
+      Knickerbockers out of all civic posts of honor and profit; bargaining them
+      out of their hereditary homesteads; pulling down the venerable houses,
+      with crow-step gables, which have stood since the time of the Dutch rule,
+      and erecting, instead, granite stores, and marble banks; in a word,
+      evincing a deadly determination to obliterate every vestige of the good
+      old Dutch times.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In consequence of the jealousy thus awakened, the worthy traders from
+      Communipaw confine their dealings, as much as possible, to the genuine
+      Dutch families. If they furnish the Yankees at all, it is with inferior
+      articles. Never can the latter procure a real &ldquo;Governor&rsquo;s
+      Head,&rdquo; or &ldquo;Governor&rsquo;s Foot,&rdquo; though they have
+      offered extravagant prices for the same, to grace their table on the
+      annual festival of the New-England Society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But what has carried this hostility to the Yankees to the highest pitch,
+      was an attempt made by that all-pervading race to get possession of
+      Communipaw itself. Yes, Sir; during the late mania for land speculation, a
+      daring company of Yankee projectors landed before the village; stopped the
+      honest burghers on the public highway, and endeavored to bargain them out
+      of their hereditary acres; displayed lithographic maps, in which their
+      cabbage-gardens were laid out into town lots: their oyster-parks into
+      docks and quays; and even the House of the Four Chimneys metamorphosed
+      into a bank, which was to enrich the whole neighborhood with paper money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fortunately, the gallant Van Hornes came to the rescue, just as some of
+      the worthy burghers were on the point of capitulating. The Yankees were
+      put to the rout, with signal confusion, and have never since dared to show
+      their faces in the place. The good people continue to cultivate their
+      cabbages, and rear their oysters; they know nothing of banks, nor joint
+      stock companies, but treasure up their money in stocking-feet, at the
+      bottom of the family chest, or bury it in iron pots, as did their fathers
+      and grandfathers before them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As to the House of the Four Chimneys, it still remains in the great and
+      tall family of the Van Hornes. Here are to be seen ancient Dutch corner
+      cupboards, chests of drawers, and massive clothes-presses, quaintly
+      carved, and carefully waxed and polished; together with divers thick,
+      black-letter volumes, with brass clasps, printed of yore in Leydon and
+      Amsterdam, and handed down from generation to generation, in the family,
+      but never read. They are preserved in the archives, among sundry old
+      parchment deeds, in Dutch and English, bearing the seals of the early
+      governors of the province.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this house, the primitive Dutch holidays of Paas and Pinxter are
+      faithfully kept up; and New-Year celebrated with cookies and
+      cherry-bounce; nor is the festival of the blessed St. Nicholas forgotten,
+      when all the children are sure to hang up their stockings, and to have
+      them filled according to their deserts; though, it is said, the good saint
+      is occasionally perplexed in his nocturnal visits, which chimney to
+      descend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of late, this portentous mansion has begun to give signs of dilapidation
+      and decay. Some have attributed this to the visits made by the young
+      people to the city, and their bringing thence various modern fashions; and
+      to their neglect of the Dutch language, which is gradually becoming
+      confined to the older persons in the community. The house, too, was
+      greatly shaken by high winds, during the prevalence of the speculation
+      mania, especially at the time of the landing of the Yankees. Seeing how
+      mysteriously the fate of Communipaw is identified with this venerable
+      mansion, we cannot wonder that the older and wiser heads of the community
+      should be filled with dismay, whenever a brick is toppled down from one of
+      the chimneys, or a weather-cock is blown off from a gable-end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The present lord of this historic pile, I am happy to say, is calculated
+      to maintain it in all its integrity. He is of patriarchal age, and is
+      worthy of the days of the patriarchs. He has done his utmost to increase
+      and multiply the true race in the land. His wife has not been inferior to
+      him in zeal, and they are surrounded by a goodly progeny of children, and
+      grand-children, and great-grand-children, who promise to perpetuate the
+      name of Van Horne, until time shall be no more. So be it! Long may the
+      horn of the Van Hornes continue to be exalted in the land! Tall as they
+      are, may their shadows never be less! May the House of the Four Chimneys
+      remain for ages, the citadel of Communipaw, and the smoke of its chimneys
+      continue to ascend, a sweet-smelling incense in the hose of St. Nicholas!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With great respect, Mr. Editor,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Your ob&rsquo;t servant,
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      HERMANUS VANDERDONK.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CONSPIRACY OF THE COCKED HATS.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Sir: I have read with great satisfaction the valuable paper of your
+      correspondent, Mr. HERMANUS VANDERDONK, (who, I take it, is a descendant
+      of the learned Adrian Vanderdonk, one of the early historians of the
+      Nieuw-Nederlands,) giving sundry particulars, legendary and statistical,
+      touching the venerable village of Communipaw and its fate-bound citadel,
+      the House of the Four Chimneys. It goes to prove what I have repeatedly
+      maintained, that we live in the midst of history and mystery and romance;
+      and that there is no spot in the world more rich in themes for the writer
+      of historic novels, heroic melodramas, and rough-shod epics, than this
+      same business-looking city of the Manhattoes and its environs. He who
+      would find these elements, however, must not seek them among the modern
+      improvements and modern people of this moneyed metropolis, but must dig
+      for them, as for Kidd the pirate&rsquo;s treasures, in out-of-the-way
+      places, and among the ruins of the past.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Poetry and romance received a fatal blow at the overthrow of the ancient
+      Dutch dynasty, and have ever since been gradually withering under the
+      growing domination of the Yankees. They abandoned our hearths when the old
+      Dutch tiles were superseded by marble chimney-pieces; when brass andirons
+      made way for polished grates, and the crackling and blazing fire of
+      nut-wood gave place to the smoke and stench of Liverpool coal; and on the
+      downfall of the last gable-end house, their requiem was tolled from the
+      tower of the Dutch church in Nassau-street by the old bell that came from
+      Holland. But poetry and romance still live unseen among us, or seen only
+      by the enlightened few, who are able to contemplate this city and its
+      environs through the medium of tradition, and clothed with the
+      associations of foregone ages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Would you seek these elements in the country, Mr. Editor, avoid all
+      turnpikes, rail-roads, and steamboats, those abominable inventions by
+      which the usurping Yankees are strengthening themselves in the land, and
+      subduing every thing to utility and common-place. Avoid all towns and
+      cities of white clapboard palaces and Grecian temples, studded with
+      &ldquo;Academics,&rdquo; &ldquo;Seminaries,&rdquo; and &ldquo;Institutes,&rdquo;
+      which glisten along our bays and rivers; these are the strong-holds of
+      Yankee usurpation; but if haply you light upon some rough, rambling road,
+      winding between stone fences, gray with moss, and overgrown with elder,
+      poke-berry, mullein, and sweet-briar, with here and there a low,
+      red-roofed, whitewashed farm-house, cowering among apple and cherry trees;
+      an old stone church, with elms, willows, and button-woods, as old-looking
+      as itself, and tombstones almost buried in their own graves; and,
+      peradventure, a small log school-house at a cross-road, where the English
+      is still taught with a thickness of the tongue, instead of a twang of the
+      nose; should you, I say, light upon such a neighborhood, Mr. Editor, you
+      may thank your stars that you have found one of the lingering haunts of
+      poetry and romance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Your correspondent, Sir, has touched upon that sublime and affecting
+      feature in the history of Communipaw, the retreat of the patriotic band of
+      Nederlanders, led by Van Horne, whom he justly terms the Pelayo of the
+      New-Netherlands. He has given you a picture of the manner in which they
+      ensconced themselves in the House of the Four Chimneys, and awaited with
+      heroic patience and perseverance the day that should see the flag of the
+      Hogen Mogens once more floating on the fort of New-Amsterdam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Your correspondent, Sir, has but given you a glimpse over the threshold; I
+      will now let you into the heart of the mystery of this most mysterious and
+      eventful village.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Yes, sir, I will now&mdash;&ldquo;unclasp a secret book;
+  And to your quick conceiving discontents,
+  I&rsquo;ll read you matter deep and dangerous,
+  As full of peril and adventurous spirit,
+  As to o&rsquo;er walk a current, roaring loud,
+  On the unsteadfast footing of a spear.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Sir, it is one of the most beautiful and interesting facts connected with
+      the history of Communipaw, that the early feeling of resistance to foreign
+      rule, alluded to by your correspondent, is still kept up. Yes, sir, a
+      settled, secret, and determined conspiracy has been going on for
+      generations among this indomitable people, the descendants of the refugees
+      from New-Amsterdam; the object of which is to redeem their ancient seat of
+      empire, and to drive the losel Yankees out of the land.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Communipaw, it is true, has the glory of originating this conspiracy; and
+      it was hatched and reared in the House of the Four Chimneys; but it has
+      spread far and wide over ancient Pavonia, surmounted the heights of
+      Bergen, Hoboken, and Weehawk, crept up along the banks of the Passaic and
+      the Hackensack, until it pervades the whole chivalry of the country from
+      Tappan Slote in the north to Piscataway in the south, including the
+      pugnacious village of Rahway, more heroically denominated Spank-town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Throughout all these regions a great &ldquo;in-and-in confederacy&rdquo;
+      prevails, that is to say, a confederacy among the Dutch families, by dint
+      of diligent and exclusive intermarriage, to keep the race pure and to
+      multiply. If ever, Mr. Editor, in the course of your travels between
+      Spank-town and Tappan Slote, you should see a cosey, low-eaved farm-house,
+      teeming with sturdy, broad-built little urchins, you may set it down as
+      one of the breeding places of this grand secret confederacy, stocked with
+      the embryo deliverers of New-Amsterdam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another step in the progress of this patriotic conspiracy, is the
+      establishment, in various places within the ancient boundaries of the
+      Nieuw-Nederlands, of secret, or rather mysterious associations, composed
+      of the genuine sons of the Nederlanders, with the ostensible object of
+      keeping up the memory of old times and customs, but with the real object
+      of promoting the views of this dark and mighty plot, and extending its
+      ramifications throughout the land.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sir, I am descended from a long line of genuine Nederlanders, who, though
+      they remained in the city of New-Amsterdam after the conquest, and
+      throughout the usurpation, have never in their hearts been able to
+      tolerate the yoke imposed upon them. My worthy father, who was one of the
+      last of the cocked hats, had a little knot of cronies, of his own stamp,
+      who used to meet in our wainscoted parlor, round a nut-wood fire, talk
+      over old times, when the city was ruled by its native burgomasters, and
+      groan over the monopoly of all places of power and profit by the Yankees.
+      I well recollect the effect upon this worthy little conclave, when the
+      Yankees first instituted then New-England Society, held their &ldquo;national
+      festival,&rdquo; toasted their &ldquo;father land,&rdquo; and sang their
+      foreign songs of triumph within the very precincts of our ancient
+      metropolis. Sir, from that day, my father held the smell of codfish and
+      potatoes, and the sight of pumpkin pie, in utter abomination; and whenever
+      the annual dinner of the New-England Society came round, it was a sore
+      anniversary for his children. He got up in an ill humor, grumbled and
+      growled throughout the day, and not one of us went to bed that night,
+      without having had his jacket well trounced, to the tune of &ldquo;The
+      Pilgrim Fathers.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You may judge, then, Mr. Editor, of the exaltation of all true patriots of
+      this stamp, when the Society of Saint Nicholas was set up among us, and
+      intrepidly established, cheek by jole, alongside of the society of the
+      invaders. Never shall I forget the effect upon my father and his little
+      knot of brother groaners, when tidings were brought them that the ancient
+      banner of the Manhattoes was actually floating from the window of the City
+      Hotel. Sir, they nearly jumped out of their silver-buckled shoes for joy.
+      They took down their cocked hats from the pegs on which they had hanged
+      them, as the Israelites of yore hung their harps upon the willows, in
+      token of bondage, clapped them resolutely once more upon their heads, and
+      cocked them in the face of every Yankee they met on the way to the
+      banqueting-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The institution of this society was hailed with transport throughout the
+      whole extent of the New-Netherlands; being considered a secret foothold
+      gained in New-Amsterdam, and a flattering presage of future triumph.
+      Whenever that society holds its annual feast, a sympathetic hilarity
+      prevails throughout the land; ancient Pavonia sends over its contributions
+      of cabbages and oysters; the House of the Four Chimneys is splendidly
+      illuminated, and the traditional song of St. Nicholas, the mystic bond of
+      union and conspiracy, is chaunted with closed doors, in every genuine
+      Dutch family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have thus, I trust, Mr. Editor, opened your eyes to some of the grand
+      moral, poetical, and political phenomena with which you are surrounded.
+      You will now be able to read the &ldquo;signs of the times.&rdquo; You
+      will now understand what is meant by those &ldquo;Knickerbocker Halls,&rdquo;
+      and &ldquo;Knickerbocker Hotels,&rdquo; and &ldquo;Knickerbocker Lunches,&rdquo;
+      that are daily springing up in our city and what all these &ldquo;Knickerbocker
+      Omnibuses&rdquo; are driving at. You will see in them so many clouds
+      before a storm; so many mysterious but sublime intimations of the
+      gathering vengeance of a great though oppressed people. Above all, you
+      will now contemplate our bay and its portentous borders, with proper
+      feelings of awe and admiration. Talk of the Bay of Naples, and its
+      volcanic mountains! Why, Sir, little Communipaw, sleeping among its
+      cabbage gardens, &ldquo;quiet as gunpowder,&rdquo; yet with this
+      tremendous conspiracy brewing in its bosom is an object ten times as
+      sublime (in a moral point of view, mark me) as Vesuvius in repose, though
+      charged with lava and brimstone, and ready for an eruption.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let me advert to a circumstance connected with this theme, which cannot
+      but be appreciated by every heart of sensibility. You must have remarked,
+      Mr. Editor, on summer evenings, and on Sunday afternoons, certain grave,
+      primitive-looking personages, walking the Battery, in close confabulation,
+      with their canes behind their backs, and ever and anon turning a wistful
+      gaze toward the Jersey shore. These, Sir, are the sons of Saint Nicholas,
+      the genuine Nederlanders; who regard Communipaw with pious reverence, not
+      merely as the progenitor, but the destined regenerator, of this great
+      metropolis. Yes, Sir; they are looking with longing eyes to the green
+      marshes of ancient Pavonia, as did the poor conquered Spaniards of yore
+      toward the stern mountains of Asturias, wondering whether the day of
+      deliverance is at hand. Many is the time, when, in my boyhood, I have
+      walked with my father and his confidential compeers on the Battery, and
+      listened to their calculations and conjectures, and observed the points of
+      their sharp cocked hats evermore turned toward Pavonia. Nay, Sir, I am
+      convinced that at this moment, if I were to take down the cocked hat of my
+      lamented father from the peg on which it has hung for years, and were to
+      carry it to the Battery, its centre point, true as the needle to the pole,
+      would turn to Communipaw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Editor, the great historic drama of New-Amsterdam, is but half acted.
+      The reigns of Walter the Doubter, William the Testy, and Peter the
+      Headstrong, with the rise, progress, and decline of the Dutch dynasty, are
+      but so many parts of the main action, the triumphant catastrophe of which
+      is yet to come. Yes, Sir! the deliverance of the New-Nederlands from
+      Yankee domination will eclipse the far-famed redemption of Spain from the
+      Moors, and the oft-sung conquest of Granada will fade before the
+      chivalrous triumph of New-Amsterdam. Would that Peter Stuyvesant could
+      rise from his grave to witness that day!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Your humble servant,
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      ROLOFF VAN RIPPER.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      P. S. Just as I had concluded the foregoing epistle, I received a piece of
+      intelligence, which makes me tremble for the fate of Communipaw. I fear,
+      Mr. Editor, the grand conspiracy is in danger of being countermined and
+      counteracted, by those all-pervading and indefatigable Yankees. Would you
+      think it, Sir! one of them has actually effected an entry in the place by
+      covered way; or in other words, under cover of the petticoats. Finding
+      every other mode ineffectual, he secretly laid siege to a Dutch heiress,
+      who owns a great cabbage-garden in her own right. Being a smooth-tongued
+      varlet, he easily prevailed on her to elope with him, and they were
+      privately married at Spank-town! The first notice the good people of
+      Communipaw had of this awful event, was a lithographed map of the cabbage
+      garden laid out in town lots, and advertised for sale! On the night of the
+      wedding, the main weather-cock of the House of the Four Chimneys was
+      carried away in a whirlwind! The greatest consternation reigns throughout
+      the village!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A LEGEND OF COMMUNIPAW.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER MAGAZINE.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Sir: I observed in your last month&rsquo;s periodical, a communication
+      from a Mr. VANDERDONK, giving some information concerning Communipaw. I
+      herewith send you, Mr. Editor, a legend connected with that place; and am
+      much surprised it should have escaped the researches of your very
+      authentic correspondent, as it relates to an edifice scarcely less fated
+      than the House of the Four Chimneys. I give you the legend in its crude
+      and simple state, as I heard it related; it is capable, however, of being
+      dilated, inflated, and dressed up into very imposing shape and dimensions.
+      Should any of your ingenious contributors in this line feel inclined to
+      take it in hand, they will find ample materials, collateral and
+      illustrative, among the papers of the late Reinier Skaats, many years
+      since crier of the court, and keeper of the City Hall, in the city of the
+      Manhattoes; or in the library of that important and utterly renowned
+      functionary, Mr. Jacob Hays, long time high constable, who, in the course
+      of his extensive researches, has amassed an amount of valuable facts, to
+      be rivalled only by that great historical collection, &ldquo;The Newgate
+      Calendar.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Your humble servant,
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      BARENT VAN SCHAICK.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      <i>GUESTS FROM GIBBET-ISLAND</i>.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A LEGEND OF COMMUNIPAW.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Whoever has visited the ancient and renowned village of Communipaw, may
+      have noticed an old stone building, of most ruinous and sinister
+      appearance. The doors and window-shutters are ready to drop from their
+      hinges; old clothes are stuffed in the broken panes of glass, while
+      legions of half-starved dogs prowl about the premises, and rush out and
+      bark at every passer-by; for your beggarly house in a village is most apt
+      to swarm with profligate and ill-conditioned dogs. What adds to the
+      sinister appearance of this mansion, is a tall frame in front, not a
+      little resembling a gallows, and which looks as if waiting to accommodate
+      some of the inhabitants with a well-merited airing. It is not a gallows,
+      however, but an ancient sign-post; for this dwelling, in the golden days
+      of Communipaw, was one of the most orderly and peaceful of village
+      taverns, where all the public affairs of Communipaw were talked and smoked
+      over. In fact, it was in this very building that Oloffe the Dreamer, and
+      his companions, concerted that great voyage of discovery and colonization,
+      in which they explored Buttermilk Channel, were nearly shipwrecked in the
+      strait of Hell-gate, and finally landed on the Island of Manhattan, and
+      founded the great city of New-Amsterdam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even after the province had been cruelly wrested from the sway of their
+      High Mightinesses, by the combined forces of the British and Yankees, this
+      tavern continued its ancient loyalty. It is true, the head of the Prince
+      of Orange disappeared from the sign; a strange bird being painted over it,
+      with the explanatory legend of &ldquo;DIE WILDE GANS,&rdquo; or The Wild
+      Goose; but this all the world knew to be a sly riddle of the landlord, the
+      worthy Teunis Van Gieson, a knowing man in a small way, who laid his
+      finger beside his nose and winked, when any one studied the signification
+      of his sign, and observed that his goose was hatching, but would join the
+      flock whenever they flew over the water; an enigma which was the perpetual
+      recreation and delight of the loyal but fat-headed burghers of Communipaw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Under the sway of this patriotic, though discreet and quiet publican, the
+      tavern continued to flourish in primeval tranquillity, and was the resort
+      of all true-hearted Nederlanders, from all parts of Pavonia; who met here
+      quietly and secretly, to smoke and drink the downfall of Briton and
+      Yankee, and success to Admiral Van Tromp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only drawback on the comfort of the establishment, was a nephew of
+      mine host, a sister&rsquo;s son, Yan Yost Vanderscamp by name, and a real
+      scamp by nature. This unlucky whipster showed an early propensity to
+      mischief, which he gratified in a small way, by playing tricks upon the
+      frequenters of the Wild Goose; putting gunpowder in their pipes, or squibs
+      in their pockets, and astonishing them with an explosion, while they sat
+      nodding round the fire-place in the bar-room; and if perchance a worthy
+      burgher from some distant part of Pavonia had lingered until dark over his
+      potation, it was odds but that young Vanderscamp would slip a briar under
+      his horse&rsquo;s tail, as he mounted, and send him clattering along the
+      road, in neck-or-nothing style, to his infinite astonishment and
+      discomfiture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may be wondered at, that mine host of the Wild Goose did not turn such
+      a graceless varlet out of doors; but Teunis Van Gieson was an
+      easy-tempered man, and, having no child of his own, looked upon his nephew
+      with almost parental indulgence. His patience and good-nature were doomed
+      to be tried by another inmate of his mansion. This was a cross-grained
+      curmudgeon of a negro, named Pluto, who was a kind of enigma in
+      Communipaw. Where he came from, nobody knew. He was found one morning,
+      after a storm, cast like a sea-monster on the strand, in front of the Wild
+      Goose, and lay there, more dead than alive. The neighbors gathered round,
+      and speculated on this production of the deep; whether it were fish or
+      flesh, or a compound of both, commonly yclept a merman. The kind-hearted
+      Teunis Van Gieson, seeing that he wore the human form, took him into his
+      house, and warmed him into life. By degrees, he showed signs of
+      intelligence, and even uttered sounds very much like language, but which
+      no one in Communipaw could understand. Some thought him a negro just from
+      Guinea, who had either fallen overboard, or escaped from a slave-ship.
+      Nothing, however, could ever draw from him any account of his origin. When
+      questioned on the subject, he merely pointed to Gibbet-Island, a small
+      rocky islet, which lies in the open bay, just opposite to Communipaw, as
+      if that were his native place, though every body knew it had never been
+      inhabited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the process of time, he acquired something of the Dutch language, that
+      is to say, he learnt all its vocabulary of oaths and maledictions, with
+      just words sufficient to string them together. &ldquo;Donder en blicksen!&rdquo;
+      (thunder and lightning,) was the gentlest of his ejaculations. For years
+      he kept about the Wild Goose, more like one of those familiar spirits, or
+      household goblins, that we read of, than like a human being. He
+      acknowledged allegiance to no one, but performed various domestic offices,
+      when it suited his humor; waiting occasionally on the guests; grooming the
+      horses, cutting wood, drawing water; and all this without being ordered.
+      Lay any command on him, and the stubborn sea-urchin was sure to rebel. He
+      was never so much at home, however, as when on the water, plying about in
+      skiff or canoe, entirely alone, fishing, crabbing, or grabbing for
+      oysters, and would bring home quantities for the larder of the Wild Goose,
+      which he would throw down at the kitchen door, with a growl. No wind nor
+      weather deterred him from launching forth on his favorite element: indeed,
+      the wilder the weather, the more he seemed to enjoy it. If a storm was
+      brewing, he was sure to put off from shore; and would be seen far out in
+      the bay, his light skiff dancing like a feather on the waves, when sea and
+      sky were all in a turmoil, and the stoutest ships were fain to lower their
+      sails. Sometimes, on such occasions, he would be absent for days together.
+      How he weathered the tempest, and how and where he subsisted, no one could
+      divine, nor did any one venture to ask, for all had an almost
+      superstitious awe of him. Some of the Communipaw oystermen declared that
+      they had more than once seen him suddenly disappear, canoe and all, as if
+      they plunged beneath the waves, and after a while come up again, in quite
+      a different part of the bay; whence they concluded that he could live
+      under water like that notable species of wild duck, commonly called the
+      Hell-diver. All began to consider him in the light of a foul-weather bird,
+      like the Mother Carey&rsquo;s Chicken, or Stormy Petrel; and whenever they
+      saw him putting far out in his skiff, in cloudy weather, made up their
+      minds for a storm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only being for whom he seemed to have any liking, was Yan Yost
+      Vanderscamp, and him he liked for his very wickedness. He in a manner took
+      the boy under his tutelage, prompted him to all kinds of mischief, aided
+      him in every wild, harum-scarum freak, until the lad became the complete
+      scapegrace of the village; a pest to his uncle, and to every one else. Nor
+      were his pranks confined to the land; he soon learned to accompany old
+      Pluto on the water. Together these worthies would cruise about the broad
+      bay, and all the neighboring straits and rivers; poking around in skiffs
+      and canoes; robbing the set-nets of the fishermen; landing on remote
+      coasts, and laying waste orchards and water-melon patches; in short,
+      carrying on a complete system of piracy, on a small scale, Piloted by
+      Pluto, the youthful Vanderscamp soon became acquainted with all the bays,
+      rivers, creeks, and inlets of the watery world around him; could navigate
+      from the Hook to Spiting-devil on the darkest night, and learned to set
+      even the terrors of Hell-gate at defiance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length, negro and boy suddenly disappeared, and days and weeks elapsed,
+      but without tidings of them. Some said they must have run away and gone to
+      sea; others jocosely hinted, that old Pluto, being no other than his
+      namesake in disguise, had spirited away the boy to the nether regions.
+      All, however, agreed in one thing, that the village was well rid of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the process of time, the good Teunis Van Gieson slept with his fathers,
+      and the tavern remained shut up, waiting for a claimant, for the next heir
+      was Yan Yost Vanderscamp, and he had not been heard of for years. At
+      length, one day, a boat was seen pulling for the shore, from a long,
+      black, rakish-looking schooner, that lay at anchor in the bay. The boat&rsquo;s
+      crew seemed worthy of the craft from which they debarked. Never had such a
+      set of noisy, roistering, swaggering varlets landed in peaceful
+      Communipaw. They were outlandish in garb and demeanor, and were headed by
+      a rough, burly, bully ruffian, with fiery whiskers, a copper nose, a scar
+      across his face, and a great Flaunderish beaver slouched on one side of
+      his head, in whom, to their dismay, the quiet inhabitants were made to
+      recognize their early pest, Yan Yost Vanderscamp. The rear of this hopeful
+      gang was brought up by old Pluto, who had lost an eye, grown
+      grizzly-headed, and looked more like a devil than ever. Vanderscamp
+      renewed his acquaintance with the old burghers, much against their will,
+      and in a manner not at all to their taste. He slapped them familiarly on
+      the back, gave them an iron grip of the hand, and was hail fellow well
+      met. According to his own account, he had been all the world over; had
+      made money by bags full; had ships in every sea, and now meant to turn the
+      Wild Goose into a country seat, where he and his comrades, all rich
+      merchants from foreign parts, might enjoy themselves in the interval of
+      their voyages. Sure enough, in a little while there was a complete
+      metamorphose of the Wild Goose. From being a quiet, peaceful Dutch public
+      house, it became a most riotous, uproarious private dwelling; a complete
+      rendezvous for boisterous men of the seas, who came here to have what they
+      called a &ldquo;blow out&rdquo; on dry land, and might be seen at all
+      hours, lounging about the door, or lolling out of the windows; swearing
+      among themselves, and cracking rough jokes on every passer-by. The house
+      was fitted up, too, in so strange a manner: hammocks slung to the walls,
+      instead of bedsteads; odd kinds of furniture, of foreign fashion; bamboo
+      couches, Spanish chairs; pistols, cutlasses, and blunderbusses, suspended
+      on every peg; silver crucifixes on the mantel-pieces, silver candle-sticks
+      and porringers on the tables, contrasting oddly with the pewter and Delf
+      ware of the original establishment. And then the strange amusements of
+      these sea-monsters! Pitching Spanish dollars, instead of quoits; firing
+      blunderbusses out of the window; shooting at a mark, or at any unhappy
+      dog, or cat, or pig, or barn-door fowl, that might happen to come within
+      reach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only being who seemed to relish their rough waggery, was old Pluto;
+      and yet he led but a dog&rsquo;s life of it; for they practised all kinds
+      of manual jokes upon him; kicked him about like a foot-ball; shook him by
+      his grizzly mop of wool, and never spoke to him without coupling a curse
+      by way of adjective to his name, and consigning him to the infernal
+      regions. The old fellow, however, seemed to like them the better, the more
+      they cursed him, though his utmost expression of pleasure never amounted
+      to more than the growl of a petted bear, when his ears are rubbed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Pluto was the ministering spirit at the orgies of the Wild Goose; and
+      such orgies as took place there! Such drinking, singing, whooping,
+      swearing; with an occasional interlude of quarrelling and fighting. The
+      noisier grew the revel, the more old Pluto plied the potations, until the
+      guests would become frantic in their merriment, smashing every thing to
+      pieces, and throwing the house out of the windows. Sometimes, after a
+      drinking bout, they sallied forth and scoured the village, to the dismay
+      of the worthy burghers, who gathered their women within doors, and would
+      have shut up the house. Vanderscamp, however, was not to be rebuffed. He
+      insisted on renewing acquaintance with his old neighbors, and on
+      introducing his friends, the merchants, to their families; swore he was on
+      the look-out for a wife, and meant, before he stopped, to find husbands
+      for all their daughters. So, will-ye, nil-ye, sociable he was; swaggered
+      about their best parlors, with his hat on one side of his head; sat on the
+      good wife&rsquo;s nicely-waxed mahogany table, kicking his heels against
+      the carved and polished legs; kissed and tousled the young vrouws; and, if
+      they frowned and pouted, gave them a gold rosary, or a sparkling cross, to
+      put them in good humor again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes nothing would satisfy him, but he must have some of his old
+      neighbors to dinner at the Wild Goose. There was no refusing him, for he
+      had got the complete upper-hand of the community, and the peaceful
+      burghers all stood in awe of him. But what a time would the quiet, worthy
+      men have, among these rake-hells, who would delight to astound them with
+      the most extravagant gunpowder tales, embroidered with all kinds of
+      foreign oaths; clink the can with them; pledge them in deep potations;
+      bawl drinking songs in their ears; and occasionally fire pistols over
+      their heads, or under the table, and then laugh in their faces, and ask
+      them how they liked the smell of gunpowder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus was the little village of Communipaw for a time like the unfortunate
+      wight possessed with devils; until Vanderscamp and his brother merchants
+      would sail on another trading voyage, when the Wild Goose would be shut
+      up, and every thing relapse into quiet, only to be disturbed by his next
+      visitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mystery of all these proceedings gradually dawned upon the tardy
+      intellects of Communipaw. These were the times of the notorious Captain
+      Kidd, when the American harbors were the resorts of piratical adventurers
+      of all kinds, who, under pretext of mercantile voyages, scoured the West
+      Indies, made plundering descents upon the Spanish Main, visited even the
+      remote Indian Seas, and then came to dispose of their booty, have their
+      revels, and fit out new expeditions, in the English colonies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vanderscamp had served in this hopeful school, and having risen to
+      importance among the bucaniers, had pitched upon his native village and
+      early home, as a quiet, out-of-the-way, unsuspected place, where he and
+      his comrades, while anchored at New York, might have their feasts, and
+      concert their plans, without molestation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length the attention of the British government was called to these
+      piratical enterprises, that were becoming so frequent and outrageous.
+      Vigorous measures were taken to check and punish them. Several of the most
+      noted freebooters were caught and executed, and three of Vanderscamp&rsquo;s
+      chosen comrades, the most riotous swash-bucklers of the Wild Goose, were
+      hanged in chains on Gibbet-Island, in full sight of their favorite resort.
+      As to Vanderscamp himself, he and his man Pluto again disappeared, and it
+      was hoped by the people of Communipaw that he had fallen in some foreign
+      brawl, or been swung on some foreign gallows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a time, therefore, the tranquillity of the village was restored; the
+      worthy Dutchmen once more smoked their pipes in peace, eying, with
+      peculiar complacency, their old pests and terrors, the pirates, dangling
+      and drying in the sun, on Gibbet-Island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This perfect calm was doomed at length to be ruffled. The fiery
+      persecution of the pirates gradually subsided. Justice was satisfied with
+      the examples that had been made, and there was no more talk of Kidd, and
+      the other heroes of like kidney. On a calm summer evening, a boat,
+      somewhat heavily laden, was seen pulling into Communipaw. What was the
+      surprise and disquiet of the inhabitants, to see Yan Yost Vanderscamp
+      seated at the helm, and his man Pluto tugging at the oars! Vanderscamp,
+      however, was apparently an altered man. He brought home with him a wife,
+      who seemed to be a shrew, and to have the upper-hand of him. He no longer
+      was the swaggering, bully ruffian, but affected the regular merchant, and
+      talked of retiring from business, and settling down quietly, to pass the
+      rest of his days in his native place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Wild Goose mansion was again opened, but with diminished splendor, and
+      no riot. It is true, Vanderscamp had frequent nautical visitors, and the
+      sound of revelry was occasionally overheard in his house; but every thing
+      seemed to be done under the rose; and old Pluto was the only servant that
+      officiated at these orgies. The visitors, indeed, were by no means of the
+      turbulent stamp of their predecessors; but quiet, mysterious traders, full
+      of nods, and winks, and hieroglyphic signs, with whom, to use their cant
+      phrase, &ldquo;every thing was smug.&rdquo; Their ships came to anchor at
+      night in the lower bay; and, on a private signal, Vanderscamp would launch
+      his boat, and accompanied solely by his man Pluto, would make them
+      mysterious visits. Sometimes boats pulled in at night, in front of the
+      Wild Goose, and various articles of merchandise were landed in the dark,
+      and spirited away, nobody knew whither. One of the more curious of the
+      inhabitants kept watch, and caught a glimpse of the features of some of
+      these night visitors, by the casual glance of a lantern, and declared that
+      he recognized more than one of the freebooting frequenters of the Wild
+      Goose, in former times; from whence he concluded that Vanderscamp was at
+      his old game, and that this mysterious merchandise was nothing more nor
+      less than piratical plunder. The more charitable opinion, however, was,
+      that Vanderscamp and his comrades, having been driven from their old line
+      of business, by the &ldquo;oppressions of government,&rdquo; had resorted
+      to smuggling to make both ends meet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Be that as it may: I come now to the extraordinary fact, which is the
+      butt-end of this story. It happened late one night, that Yan Yost
+      Vanderscamp was returning across the broad bay, in his light skiff, rowed
+      by his man Pluto. He had been carousing on board of a vessel, newly
+      arrived, and was somewhat obfuscated in intellect, by the liquor he had
+      imbibed. It was a still, sultry night; a heavy mass of lurid clouds was
+      rising in the west, with the low muttering of distant thunder. Vanderscamp
+      called on Pluto to pull lustily, that they might get home before the
+      gathering storm. The old negro made no reply, but shaped his course so as
+      to skirt the rocky shores of Gibbet-Island. A faint creaking overhead
+      caused Vanderscamp to cast up his eyes, when, to his horror, he beheld the
+      bodies of his three pot companions and brothers in iniquity dangling in
+      the moonlight, their rags fluttering, and their chains creaking, as they
+      were slowly swung backward and forward by the rising breeze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean, you blockhead!&rdquo; cried Vanderscamp, &ldquo;by
+      pulling so close to the island?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you&rsquo;d be glad to see your old friends once more,&rdquo;
+      growled the negro; &ldquo;you were never afraid of a living man, what do
+      you fear from the dead?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who&rsquo;s afraid?&rdquo; hiccupped Vanderscamp, partly heated by
+      liquor, partly nettled by the jeer of the negro; &ldquo;who&rsquo;s
+      afraid! Hang me, but I would be glad to see them once more, alive or dead,
+      at the Wild Goose. Come, my lads in the wind!&rdquo; continued he, taking
+      a draught, and flourishing the bottle above his head, &ldquo;here&rsquo;s
+      fair weather to you in the other world; and if you should be walking the
+      rounds to-night, odds fish! but I&rsquo;ll be happy if you will drop in to
+      supper.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A dismal creaking was the only reply. The wind blew loud and shrill, and
+      as it whistled round the gallows, and among the bones, sounded as if there
+      were laughing and gibbering in the air. Old Pluto chuckled to himself, and
+      now pulled for home. The storm burst over the voyagers, while they were
+      yet far from shore. The rain fell in torrents, the thunder crashed and
+      pealed, and the lightning kept up an incessant blaze. It was stark
+      midnight, before they landed at Communipaw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dripping and shivering, Vanderscamp crawled homeward. He was completely
+      sobered by the storm; the water soaked from without, having diluted and
+      cooled the liquor within. Arrived at the Wild Goose, he knocked timidly
+      and dubiously at the door, for he dreaded the reception he was to
+      experience from his wife. He had reason to do so. She met him at the
+      threshold, in a precious ill humor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is this a time,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;to keep people out of their
+      beds, and to bring home company, to turn the house upside down?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Company?&rdquo; said Vanderscamp, meekly; &ldquo;I have brought no
+      company with me, wife.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, indeed! they have got here before you, but by your invitation;
+      and blessed-looking company they are, truly!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vanderscamp&rsquo;s knees smote together. &ldquo;For the love of heaven,
+      where are they, wife?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where?&mdash;why, in the blue-room, up-stairs, making themselves as
+      much at home as if the house were their own.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vanderscamp made a desperate effort, scrambled up to the room, and threw
+      open the door. Sure enough, there at a table, on which burned a light as
+      blue as brimstone, sat the three guests from Gibbet-Island, with halters
+      round their necks, and bobbing their cups together, as if they were
+      hob-or-nobbing, and trolling the old Dutch freebooter&rsquo;s glee, since
+      translated into English:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+ &ldquo;For three merry lads be we,
+  And three merry lads be we;
+  I on the land, and thou on the sand,
+  And Jack on the gallows-tree.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Vanderscamp saw and heard no more. Starting back with horror, he missed
+      his footing on the landing-place, and fell from the top of the stairs to
+      the bottom. He was taken up speechless, and, either from the fall or the
+      fright, was buried in the yard of the little Dutch church at Bergen, on
+      the following Sunday.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From that day forward, the fate of the Wild Goose was sealed. It was
+      pronounced a <i>haunted house</i>, and avoided accordingly. No one
+      inhabited it but Vanderscamp&rsquo;s shrew of a widow, and old Pluto, and
+      they were considered but little better than its hobgoblin visitors. Pluto
+      grew more and more haggard and morose, and looked more like an imp of
+      darkness than a human being. He spoke to no one, but went about muttering
+      to himself; or, as some hinted, talking with the devil, who, though
+      unseen, was ever at his elbow. Now and then he was seen pulling about the
+      bay alone, in his skiff, in dark weather, or at the approach of
+      night-fall; nobody could tell why, unless on an errand to invite more
+      guests from the gallows. Indeed it was affirmed that the Wild Goose still
+      continued to be a house of entertainment for such guests, and that on
+      stormy nights, the blue chamber was occasionally illuminated, and sounds
+      of diabolical merriment were overheard, mingling with the howling of the
+      tempest. Some treated these as idle stories, until on one such night, it
+      was about the time of the equinox, there was a horrible uproar in the Wild
+      Goose, that could not be mistaken. It was not so much the sound of
+      revelry, however, as strife, with two or three piercing shrieks, that
+      pervaded every part of the village. Nevertheless, no one thought of
+      hastening to the spot. On the contrary, the honest burghers of Communipaw
+      drew their night-caps over their ears, and buried their heads under the
+      bed-clothes, at the thoughts of Vanderscamp and his gallows companions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning, some of the bolder and more curious undertook to
+      reconnoitre. All was quiet and lifeless at the Wild Goose. The door yawned
+      wide open, and had evidently been open all night, for the storm had beaten
+      into the house. Gathering more courage from the silence and apparent
+      desertion, they gradually ventured over the threshold. The house had
+      indeed the air of having been possessed by devils. Every thing was
+      topsy-turvy; trunks had been broken open, and chests of drawers and corner
+      cupboards turned inside out, as in a time of general sack and pillage; but
+      the most woful sight was the widow of Yan Yost Vanderscamp, extended a
+      corpse on the floor of the blue-chamber, with the marks of a deadly gripe
+      on the wind-pipe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All now was conjecture and dismay at Communipaw; and the disappearance of
+      old Pluto, who was no where to be found, gave rise to all kinds of wild
+      surmises. Some suggested that the negro had betrayed the house to some of
+      Vanderscamp&rsquo;s bucaniering associates, and that they had decamped
+      together with the booty; others surmised that the negro was nothing more
+      nor less than a devil incarnate, who had now accomplished his ends, and
+      made off with his dues. Events, however, vindicated the negro from this
+      last imputation. His skiff was picked up, drifting about the bay, bottom
+      upward, as if wrecked in a tempest; and his body was found, shortly
+      afterward, by some Communipaw fishermen, stranded among the rocks of
+      Gibbet-Island, near the foot of the pirates&rsquo; gallows. The fishermen
+      shook their heads, and observed that old Pluto had ventured once too often
+      to invite Guests from Gibbet-Island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE BERMUDAS.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A SHAKSPERIAN RESEARCH: BY THE AUTHOR OF THE SKETCHBOOK.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who did not think, till within these foure yeares, but that these
+      islands had been rather a habitation for Divells, than fit for men to
+      dwell in? Who did not hate the name, when hee was on land, and shun the
+      place when he was on the seas? But behold the misprision and conceits of
+      the world! For true and large experience hath now told us, it is one of
+      the sweetest paradises that be upon earth.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;A PLAINE
+      DESCRIPT. OF THE BARMUDAS:&rdquo; 1613.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the course of a voyage home from England, our ship had been struggling,
+      for two or three weeks, with perverse headwinds, and a stormy sea. It was
+      in the month of May, yet the weather had at times a wintry sharpness, and
+      it was apprehended that we were in the neighborhood of floating islands of
+      ice, which at that season of the year drift out of the Gulf of Saint
+      Lawrence, and sometimes occasion the wreck of noble ships.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wearied out by the continued opposition of the elements, our captain at
+      length bore away to the south, in hopes of catching the expiring breath of
+      the trade-winds, and making what is called the southern passage. A few
+      days wrought, as it were, a magical &ldquo;sea change&rdquo; in every
+      thing around us. We seemed to emerge into a different world. The late dark
+      and angry sea, lashed up into roaring and swashing surges, became calm and
+      sunny; the rude winds died away; and gradually a light breeze sprang up
+      directly aft, filling out every sail, and wafting us smoothly along on an
+      even keel. The air softened into a bland and delightful temperature.
+      Dolphins began to play about us; the nautilus came floating by, like a
+      fairy ship, with its mimic sail and rainbow tints; and flying-fish, from
+      time to time, made their short excursive flights, and occasionally fell
+      upon the deck. The cloaks and overcoats in which we had hitherto wrapped
+      ourselves, and moped about the vessel, were thrown aside; for a summer
+      warmth had succeeded to the late wintry chills. Sails were stretched as
+      awnings over the quarter-deck, to protect us from the mid-day sun. Under
+      these we lounged away the day, in luxurious indolence, musing, with
+      half-shut eyes, upon the quiet ocean. The night was scarcely less
+      beautiful than the day. The rising moon sent a quivering column of silver
+      along the undulating surface of the deep, and, gradually climbing the
+      heaven, lit up our towering top-sails and swelling main-sails, and spread
+      a pale, mysterious light around. As our ship made her whispering way
+      through this dreamy world of waters, every boisterous sound on board was
+      charmed to silence; and the low whistle, or drowsy song of a sailor from
+      the forecastle, or the tinkling of a guitar, and the soft warbling of a
+      female voice from the quarter-deck, seemed to derive a witching melody
+      from the scene and hour. I was reminded of Oberon&rsquo;s exquisite
+      description of music and moonlight on the ocean:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+ &mdash;&ldquo;Thou rememberest
+  Since once I sat upon a promontory,
+  And heard a mermaid on a dolphin&rsquo;s back,
+  Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
+  That the rude sea grew civil at her song?
+  And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
+  To hear the sea-maid&rsquo;s music.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Indeed, I was in the very mood to conjure up all the imaginary beings with
+      which poetry has peopled old ocean, and almost ready to fancy I heard the
+      distant song of the mermaid, or the mellow shell of the triton, and to
+      picture to myself Neptune and Amphitrite with all their pageant sweeping
+      along the dim horizon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A day or two of such fanciful voyaging brought us in sight of the
+      Bermudas, which first looked like mere summer clouds, peering above the
+      quiet ocean. All day we glided along in sight of them, with just wind
+      enough to fill our sails; and never did land appear more lovely. They were
+      clad in emerald verdure, beneath the serenest of skies: not an angry wave
+      broke upon their quiet shores, and small fishing craft, riding on the
+      crystal waves, seemed as if hung in air. It was such a scene that Fletcher
+      pictured to himself, when he extolled the halcyon lot of the fisherman:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Ah! would thou knewest how much it better were
+  To bide among the simple fisher-swains:
+  No shrieking owl, no night-crow lodgeth here,
+  Nor is our simple pleasure mixed with pains.
+  Our sports begin with the beginning year;
+  In calms, to pull the leaping fish to land,
+  In roughs, to sing and dance along the yellow sand.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      In contemplating these beautiful islands, and the peaceful sea around
+      them, I could hardly realize that these were the &ldquo;still vexed
+      Bermoothes&rdquo; of Shakspeare, once the dread of mariners, and infamous
+      in the narratives of the early discoverers, for the dangers and disasters
+      which beset them. Such, however, was the case; and the islands derived
+      additional interest in my eyes, from fancying that I could trace in their
+      early history, and in the superstitious notions connected with them, some
+      of the elements of Shakspeare&rsquo;s wild and beautiful drama of the
+      Tempest. I shall take the liberty of citing a few historical facts, in
+      support of this idea, which may claim some additional attention from the
+      American reader, as being connected with the first settlement of Virginia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the time when Shakspeare was in the fulness of his talent, and seizing
+      upon everything that could furnish aliment to his imagination, the
+      colonization of Virginia was a favorite object of enterprise among people
+      of condition in England, and several of the courtiers of the court of
+      Queen Elizabeth were personally engaged in it. In the year 1609 a noble
+      armament of nine ships and five hundred men sailed for the relief of the
+      colony. It was commanded by Sir George Somers, as admiral, a gallant and
+      generous gentleman, above sixty years of age, and possessed of an ample
+      fortune, yet still bent upon hardy enterprise, and ambitious of
+      signalizing himself in the service of his country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On board of his flag-ship, the Sea-Vulture, sailed also Sir Thomas Gates,
+      lieutenant-general of the colony. The voyage was long and boisterous. On
+      the twenty-fifth of July, the admiral&rsquo;s ship was separated from the
+      rest, in a hurricane. For several days she was driven about at the mercy
+      of the elements, and so strained and racked, that her seams yawned open,
+      and her hold was half filled with water. The storm subsided, but left her
+      a mere foundering wreck. The crew stood in the hold to their waists in
+      water, vainly endeavoring to bail her with kettles, buckets, and other
+      vessels. The leaks rapidly gained on them, while their strength was as
+      rapidly declining. They lost all hope of keeping the ship afloat, until
+      they should reach the American coast; and wearied with fruitless toil,
+      determined, in their despair, to give up all farther attempt, shut down
+      the hatches, and abandon themselves to Providence. Some, who had
+      spirituous liquors, or &ldquo;comfortable waters,&rdquo; as the old record
+      quaintly terms them, brought them forth, and shared them with their
+      comrades, and they all drank a sad farewell to one another, as men who
+      were soon to part company in this world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this moment of extremity, the worthy admiral, who kept sleepless watch
+      from the high stern of the vessel, gave the thrilling cry of &ldquo;land!&rdquo;
+      All rushed on deck, in a frenzy of joy, and nothing now was to be seen or
+      heard on board, but the transports of men who felt as if rescued from the
+      grave. It is true the land in sight would not, in ordinary circumstances,
+      have inspired much self-gratulation. It could be nothing else but the
+      group of islands called after their discoverer, one Juan Bermudas, a
+      Spaniard, but stigmatized among the mariners of those days as &ldquo;the
+      islands of devils!&rdquo; &ldquo;For the islands of the Bermudas,&rdquo;
+      says the old narrative of this voyage, &ldquo;as every man knoweth that
+      hath heard or read of them, were never inhabited by any Christian or
+      heathen people, but were ever esteemed and reputed a most prodigious and
+      inchanted place, affording nothing but gusts, stormes, and foul weather,
+      which made every navigator and mariner to avoide them, as Scylla and
+      Charybdis, or as they would shun the Divell himself.&rdquo; [Footnote:
+      &ldquo;A Plaine Description of the Barmudas.&rdquo;]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sir George Somers and his tempest-tossed comrades, however, hailed them
+      with rapture, as if they had been a terrestrial paradise. Every sail was
+      spread, and every exertion made to urge the foundering ship to land.
+      Before long, she struck upon a rock. Fortunately, the late stormy winds
+      had subsided, and there was no surf. A swelling wave lifted her from off
+      the rock, and bore her to another; and thus she was borne on from rock to
+      rock, until she remained wedged between two, as firmly as if set upon the
+      stocks. The boats were immediately lowered, and, though the shore was
+      above a mile distant, the whole crew were landed in safety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every one had now his task assigned him. Some made all haste to unload the
+      ship, before she should go to pieces; some constructed wigwams of palmetto
+      leaves, and others ranged the island in quest of wood and water. To their
+      surprise and joy, they found it far different from the desolate and
+      frightful place they had been taught, by seamen&rsquo;s stories, to
+      expect. It was well-wooded and fertile; there were birds of various kinds,
+      and herds of swine roaming about, the progeny of a number that had swam
+      ashore, in former years, from a Spanish wreck. The island abounded with
+      turtle, and great quantities of their eggs were to be found among the
+      rocks. The bays and inlets were full of fish; so tame, that if any one
+      stepped into the water, they would throng around him. Sir George Somers,
+      in a little while, caught enough with hook and line to furnish a meal to
+      his whole ship&rsquo;s company. Some of them were so large, that two were
+      as much as a man could carry. Crawfish, also, were taken in abundance. The
+      air was soft and salubrious, and the sky beautifully serene. Waller, in
+      his &ldquo;Summer Islands,&rdquo; has given us a faithful picture of the
+      climate:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;For the kind spring, (which but salutes us here,)
+  Inhabits these, and courts them all the year:
+  Ripe fruits and blossoms on the same trees live;
+  At once they promise, and at once they give:
+  So sweet the air, so moderate the clime,
+  None sickly lives, or dies before his time.
+  Heaven sure has kept this spot of earth uncursed
+  To shew how all things were created first.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      We may imagine the feelings of the shipwrecked marines on finding
+      themselves cast by stormy seas upon so happy a coast; where abundance was
+      to be had without labor; where what in other climes constituted the costly
+      luxuries of the rich, were within every man&rsquo;s reach; and where life
+      promised to be a mere holiday. Many of the common sailors, especially,
+      declared they desired no better lot than to pass the rest of their lives
+      on this favored island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The commanders, however, were not so ready to console themselves with mere
+      physical comforts, for the severance from the enjoyment of cultivated
+      life, and all the objects of honorable ambition. Despairing of the arrival
+      of any chance ship on these shunned and dreaded islands, they fitted out
+      the long-boat, making a deck of the ship&rsquo;s hatches, and having
+      manned her with eight picked men, despatched her, under the command of an
+      able and hardy mariner, named Raven, to proceed to Virginia, and procure
+      shipping to be sent to their relief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While waiting in anxious idleness for the arrival of the looked-for aid,
+      dissensions arose between Sir George Somers and Sir Thomas Gates,
+      originating, very probably, in jealousy of the lead which the nautical
+      experience and professional station of the admiral gave him in the present
+      emergency. Each commander, of course, had his adherents: these dissensions
+      ripened into a complete schism; and this handful of shipwrecked men, thus
+      thrown together, on an uninhabited island, separated into two parties, and
+      lived asunder in bitter feud, as men rendered fickle by prosperity instead
+      of being brought into brotherhood by a common calamity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Weeks and months elapsed, without bringing the looked-for aid from
+      Virginia, though that colony was within but a few days&rsquo; sail. Fears
+      were now entertained that the long-boat had been either swallowed up in
+      the sea, or wrecked on some savage coast; one or other of which most
+      probably was the case, as nothing was ever heard of Raven and his
+      comrades.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Each party now set to work to build a vessel for itself out of the cedar
+      with which the island abounded. The wreck of the Sea-Vulture furnished
+      rigging, and various other articles; but they had no iron for bolts, and
+      other fastenings; and for want of pitch and tar, they payed the seams of
+      their vessels with lime and turtle&rsquo;s oil, which soon dried, and
+      became as hard as stone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the tenth of May, 1610, they set sail, having been about nine months on
+      the island. They reached Virginia without farther accident, but found the
+      colony in great distress for provisions. The account they gave of the
+      abundance that reigned in the Bermudas, and especially of the herds of
+      swine that roamed the island, determined Lord Delaware, the governor of
+      Virginia, to send thither for supplies. Sir George Somers, with his wonted
+      promptness and generosity, offered to undertake what was still considered
+      a dangerous voyage. Accordingly, on the nineteenth of June, he set sail,
+      in his own cedar vessel of thirty tons, accompanied by another small
+      vessel, commanded by Captain Argall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gallant Somers was doomed again to be tempest-tossed. His companion
+      vessel was soon driven back to port, but he kept the sea; and, as usual,
+      remained at his post on deck, in all weathers. His voyage was long and
+      boisterous, and the fatigues and exposures which he underwent, were too
+      much for a frame impaired by age, and by previous hardships. He arrived at
+      Bermudas completely exhausted and broken down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His nephew, Captain Mathew Somers, attended him in his illness with
+      affectionate assiduity. Finding his end approaching, the veteran called
+      his men together, and exhorted them to be true to the interests of
+      Virginia; to procure provisions with all possible despatch, and hasten
+      back to the relief of the colony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With this dying charge, he gave up the ghost, leaving us nephew and crew
+      overwhelmed with grief and consternation. Their first thought was to pay
+      honor to his remains. Opening the body, they took out the heart and
+      entrails, and buried them, erecting a cross over the grave. They then
+      embalmed the body, and set sail with it for England; thus, while paying
+      empty honors to their deceased commander, neglecting his earnest wish and
+      dying injunction, that they should return with relief to Virginia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little bark arrived safely at Whitechurch, in Dorsetshire, with its
+      melancholy freight. The body of the worthy Somers was interred with the
+      military honors due to a brave soldier, and many volleys were fired over
+      his grave. The Bermudas have since received the name of the Somer Islands,
+      as a tribute to his memory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The accounts given by Captain Mathew Somers and his crew of the delightful
+      climate, and the great beauty, fertility, and abundance of these islands,
+      excited the zeal of enthusiasts, and the cupidity of speculators, and a
+      plan was set on foot to colonize them. The Virginia company sold their
+      right to the islands to one hundred and twenty of their own members, who
+      erected themselves into a distinct corporation, under the name of the
+      &ldquo;Somer Island Society;&rdquo; and Mr. Richard More was sent out, in
+      1612, as governor, with sixty men, to found a colony: and this leads me to
+      the second branch of this research.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0019" id="link2H_4_0019"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      <i>THE THREE KINGS OF BERMUDA</i>.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      AND THEIR TREASURE OF AMBERGRIS.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      At the time that Sir George Somers was preparing to launch his cedar-built
+      bark, and sail for Virginia, there were three culprits among his men, who
+      had been guilty of capital offences. One of them was shot; the others,
+      named Christopher Carter and Edward Waters, escaped. Waters, indeed, made
+      a very narrow escape, for he had actually been tied to a tree to be
+      executed, but cut the rope with a knife, which he had concealed about his
+      person, and fled to the woods, where he was joined by Carter. These two
+      worthies kept themselves concealed in the secret parts of the island,
+      until the departure of the two vessels. When Sir George Somers revisited
+      the island, in quest of supplies for the Virginia colony, these culprits
+      hovered about the landing-place, and succeeded in persuading another
+      seaman, named Edward Chard, to join them, giving him the most seductive
+      pictures of the ease and abundance in which they revelled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the bark that bore Sir George&rsquo;s body to England had faded from
+      the watery horizon, these three vagabonds walked forth in their majesty
+      and might, the lords and sole inhabitants of these islands. For a time
+      their little commonwealth went on prosperously and happily. They built a
+      house, sowed corn, and the seeds of various fruits; and having plenty of
+      hogs, wild fowl, and fish of all kinds, with turtle in abundance, carried
+      on their tripartite sovereignty with great harmony and much feasting. All
+      kingdoms, however, are doomed to revolution, convulsion, or decay; and so
+      it fared with the empire of the three kings of Bermuda, albeit they were
+      monarchs without subjects. In an evil hour, in their search after turtle,
+      among the fissures of the rocks, they came upon a great treasure of
+      ambergris, which had been cast on shore by the ocean. Beside a number of
+      pieces of smaller dimensions, there was one great mass, the largest that
+      had ever been known, weighing eighty pounds, and which of itself,
+      according to the market value of ambergris in those days, was worth about
+      nine or ten thousand pounds!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From that moment, the happiness and harmony of the three kings of Bermuda
+      were gone for ever. While poor devils, with nothing to share but the
+      common blessings of the island, which administered to present enjoyment,
+      but had nothing of convertible value, they were loving and united: but
+      here was actual wealth, which would make them rich men, whenever they
+      could transport it to a market.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Adieu the delights of the island! They now became flat and insipid. Each
+      pictured to himself the consequence he might now aspire to, in civilized
+      life, could he once get there with this mass of ambergris. No longer a
+      poor Jack Tar, frolicking in the low taveriis of Wapping, he might roll
+      through London in his coach, and perchance arrive, like Whittington, at
+      the dignity of Lord Mayor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With riches came envy and covetousness. Each was now for assuming the
+      supreme power, and getting the monopoly of the ambergris. A civil war at
+      length broke out: Chard and Waters defied each other to mortal combat, and
+      the kingdom of the Bermudas was on the point of being deluged with royal
+      blood. Fortunately, Carter took no part in the bloody feud. Ambition might
+      have made him view it with secret exultation; for if either or both of his
+      brother potentates were slain in the conflict, he would be a gainer in
+      purse and ambergris. But he dreaded to be left alone in this uninhabited
+      island, and to find himself the monarch of a solitude: so he secretly
+      purloined and hid the weapons of the belligerent rivals, who, having no
+      means of carrying on the war, gradually cooled down into a sullen
+      armistice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The arrival of Governor More, with an overpowering force of sixty men, put
+      an end to the empire. He took possession of the kingdom, in the name of
+      the Somer Island Company, and forthwith proceeded to make a settlement.
+      The three kings tacitly relinquished their sway, but stood up stoutly for
+      their treasure. It was determined, however, that they had been fitted out
+      at the expense, and employed in the service, of the Virginia Company; that
+      they had found the ambergis while in the service of that company, and on
+      that company&rsquo;s land; that the ambergis, therefore, belonged to that
+      company, or rather to the Somer Island Company, in consequence of their
+      recent purchase of the island, and all their appurtenances. Having thus
+      legally established their right, and being moreover able to back it by
+      might, the company laid the lion&rsquo;s paw upon the spoil; and nothing
+      more remains on historic record of the Three Kings of Bermuda, and their
+      treasure of ambergris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reader will now determine whether I am more extravagant than most of
+      the commentators on Shakspeare, in my surmise that the story of Sir George
+      Somers&rsquo; shipwreck, and the subsequent occurrences that took place on
+      the uninhabited island, may have furnished the bard with some of the
+      elements of his drama of the Tempest. The tidings of the shipwreck, and of
+      the incidents connected with it, reached England not long before the
+      production of this drama, and made a great sensation there. A narrative of
+      the whole matter, from which most of the foregoing particulars are
+      extracted, was published at the time in London, in a pamphlet form, and
+      could not fail to be eagerly perused by Shakspeare, and to make a vivid
+      impression on his fancy. His expression, in the Tempest, of &ldquo;the
+      still vext Bermoothes,&rdquo; accords exactly with the storm-beaten
+      character of those islands. The enchantments, too, with which he has
+      clothed the island of Prospero, may they not be traced to the wild and
+      superstitious notions entertained about the Bermudas? I have already cited
+      two passages from a pamphlet published at the time, showing that they were
+      esteemed &ldquo;a most <i>prodigious</i> and <i>inchanted</i> place,&rdquo;
+      and the &ldquo;habitation of divells;&rdquo; and another pamphlet,
+      published shortly afterward, observes: &ldquo;And whereas it is reported
+      that this land of the Barmudas, with the islands about, (which are many,
+      at least a hundred,) are inchanted and kept with evil and wicked spirits,
+      it is a most idle and false report.&rdquo; [Footnote: &ldquo;Newes from
+      the Barmudas;&rdquo; 1612.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The description, too, given in the same pamphlets, of the real beauty and
+      fertility of the Bermudas, and of their serene and happy climate, so
+      opposite to the dangerous and inhospitable character with which they had
+      been stigmatized, accords with the eulogium of Sebastian on the island of
+      Prospero:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Though this island seem to be desert, uninhabitable, and almost
+      inaccessible, it must needs be of subtle, tender, and delicate temperance.
+      The air breathes upon us here most sweetly. Here is every thing
+      advantageous to life. How lush and lusty the grass looks! how green!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I think too, in the exulting consciousness of ease, security, and
+      abundance felt by the late tempest-tossed mariners, while revelling in the
+      plenteousness of the island, and their inclination to remain there,
+      released from the labors, the cares, and the artificial restraints of
+      civilized life, I can see something of the golden commonwealth of honest
+      Gonzalo:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;Had I plantation of this isle, my lord,
+  And were the king of it, what would I do?
+  I&rsquo; the commonwealth I would by contraries
+  Execute all things: for no kind of traffic
+  Would I admit; no name of magistrate;
+  Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,
+  And use of service, none; contract, succession,
+  Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none:
+  No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil:
+  No occupation; all men idle, all.
+
+  All things in common, nature should produce,
+  Without sweat or endeavor: Treason, felony,
+  Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine,
+  Would I not have; but nature should bring forth,
+  Of its own kind, all foizon, all abundance,
+  To feed my innocent people.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+But above all, in the three fugitive vagabonds who remained in
+possession of the island of Bermuda, on the departure of their comrades,
+and in their squabbles about supremacy, on the finding of their
+treasure, I see typified Sebastian, Trinculo, and their worthy companion
+Caliban:
+
+  &ldquo;Trinculo, the king and all our company being drowned,
+we will inherit here.&rdquo;
+
+  &ldquo;Monster, I will kill this man; his daughter and I will be king and
+queen, (save our graces!) and Trinculo and thyself shall be viceroys.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      I do not mean to hold up the incidents and characters in the narrative and
+      in the play as parallel, or as being strikingly similar: neither would I
+      insinuate that the narrative suggested the play; I would only suppose that
+      Shakspeare, being occupied about that time on the drama of the Tempest,
+      the main story of which, I believe, is of Italian origin, had many of the
+      fanciful ideas of it suggested to his mind by the shipwreck of Sir George
+      Somers on the &ldquo;still vext Bermothes,&rdquo; and by the popular
+      superstitions connected with these islands, and suddenly put in
+      circulation by that event.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0020" id="link2H_4_0020"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PELAYO AND THE MERCHANT&rsquo;S DAUGHTER.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      By The Author Of The Sketch-Book.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It is the common lamentation of Spanish historiographers, that, for an
+      obscure and melancholy space of time immediately succeeding the conquest
+      of their country by the Moslems, its history is a mere wilderness of
+      dubious facts, groundless fables, and rash exaggerations. Learned men, in
+      cells and cloisters, have worn out their lives in vainly endeavoring to
+      connect incongruous events, and to account for startling improbabilities,
+      recorded of this period. The worthy Jesuit, Padre Abarca, declares that,
+      for more than forty years during which he had been employed in theological
+      controversies, he had never found any so obscure and inexplicable as those
+      which rise out of this portion of Spanish history, and that the only fruit
+      of an indefatigable, prolix, and even prodigious study of the subject, was
+      a melancholy and mortifying state of indecision. [Footnote: PADRE PEDRO
+      ABARCA. Anales de Aragon, Anti Regno, F2.] During this apocryphal period,
+      flourished PELAYO, the deliverer of Spain, whose name, like that of
+      William Wallace, will ever be linked with the glory of his country, but
+      linked, in like manner, by a bond in which fact and fiction are
+      inextricably interwoven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The quaint old chronicle of the Moor Rasis, which, though wild and
+      fanciful in the extreme, is frequently drawn upon for early facts by
+      Spanish historians, professes to give the birth, parentage, and whole
+      course of fortune of Pelayo, without the least doubt or hesitation. It
+      makes him a son of the Duke of Cantabria, and descended, both by father
+      and mother&rsquo;s side, from the Gothic kings of Spain. I shall pass over
+      the romantic story of his childhood, and shall content myself with a scene
+      of his youth, which was spent in a castle among the Pyrenees, under the
+      eye of his widowed and noble-minded mother, who caused him to be
+      instructed in everything befitting a cavalier of gentle birth. While the
+      sons of the nobility were revelling amid the pleasures of a licentious
+      court, and sunk in that vicious and effeminate indulgence which led to the
+      perdition of unhappy Spain, the youthful Pelayo, in his rugged mountain
+      school, was steeled to all kinds of hardy exercise. A great part of his
+      time was spent in hunting the bears, the wild boars, and the wolves, with
+      which the Pyrenees abounded; and so purely and chastely was he brought up,
+      by his good lady mother, that, if the ancient chronicle from which I draw
+      my facts may be relied on, he had attained his one-and-twentieth year,
+      without having once sighed for woman!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor were his hardy contests confined to the wild beasts of the forest.
+      Occasionally he had to contend with adversaries of a more formidable
+      character. The skirts and defiles of these border mountains were often
+      infested by marauders from the Gallic plains of Gascony. The Gascons, says
+      an old chronicler, were a people who used smooth words when expedient, but
+      force when they had power, and were ready to lay their hands on every
+      thing they met. Though poor, they were proud; for there was not one who
+      did not pride himself on being a hijo-dalgo, or the son of somebody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the head of a band of these needy hijodalgos of Gascony, was one
+      Arnaud, a broken-down cavalier. He and four of his followers were well
+      armed and mounted; the rest were a set of scamper-grounds on foot,
+      furnished with darts and javelins. They were the terror of the border;
+      here to-day and gone to-morrow; sometimes in one pass, sometimes in
+      another. They would make sudden inroads into Spain, scour the roads,
+      plunder the country, and were over the mountains and far away before a
+      force could be collected to pursue them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now it happened one day, that a wealthy burgher of Bordeaux, who was a
+      merchant, trading with Biscay, set out on a journey for that province. As
+      he intended to sojourn there for a season, he took with him his wife, who
+      was a goodly dame, and his daughter, a gentle damsel, of marriageable age,
+      and exceeding fair to look upon. He was attended by a trusty clerk from
+      his comptoir, and a man servant; while another servant led a hackney,
+      laden with bags of money, with which he intended to purchase merchandise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the Gascons heard of this wealthy merchant and his convoy passing
+      through the mountains, they thanked their stars, for they considered all
+      peaceful men of traffic as lawful spoil, sent by providence for the
+      benefit of hidalgos like themselves, of valor and gentle blood, who lived
+      by the sword. Placing themselves in ambush, in a lonely defile, by which
+      the travellers had to pass, they silently awaited their coming. In a
+      little while they beheld them approaching. The merchant was a fair, portly
+      man, in a buff surcoat and velvet cap. His looks bespoke the good cheer of
+      his native city, and he was mounted on a stately, well-fed steed, while
+      his wife and daughter paced gently on palfreys by his side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The travellers had advanced some distance in the defile, when the
+      Bandoleros rushed forth and assailed them. The merchant, though but little
+      used to the exercise of arms, and unwieldy in his form, yet made valiant
+      defence, having his wife and daughter and money-bags at hazard. He was
+      wounded in two places, and overpowered; one of his servants was slain, the
+      other took to flight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The freebooters then began to ransack for spoil, but were disappointed at
+      not finding the wealth they had expected. Putting their swords to the
+      breast of the trembling merchant, they demanded where he had concealed his
+      treasure, and learned from him of the hackney that was following, laden
+      with, money. Overjoyed at this intelligence, they bound their captives to
+      trees, and awaited the arrival of the golden spoil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On this same day, Pelayo was out with his huntsmen among the mountains,
+      and had taken his stand on a rock, at a narrow pass, to await the sallying
+      forth of a wild boar. Close by him was a page, conducting a horse, and at
+      the saddle-bow hung his armor, for he was always prepared for fight among
+      these border mountains. While thus posted, the servant of the merchant
+      came flying from the robbers. On beholding Pelayo, he fell on his knees,
+      and implored his life, for he supposed him to be one of the band. It was
+      some time before he could be relieved from his terror, and made to tell
+      his story. When Pelayo heard of the robbers, he concluded they were the
+      crew of Gascon hidalgos, upon the scamper. Taking his armor from the page,
+      he put on his helmet, slung his buckler round his neck, took lance in
+      hand, and mounting his steed, compelled the trembling servant to guide him
+      to the scene of action. At the same time he ordered the page to seek his
+      huntsmen, and summon them to his assistance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the robbers saw Pelayo advancing through the forest, with a single
+      attendant on foot, and beheld his rich armor sparkling in the sun, they
+      thought a new prize had fallen into their hands, and Arnaud and two of his
+      companions, mounting their horses, advanced to meet him. As they
+      approached, Pelayo stationed himself in a narrow pass between two rocks,
+      where he could only be assailed in front, and bracing his buckler, and
+      lowering his lance, awaited their coming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who and what are ye,&rdquo; cried he, &ldquo;and what seek ye in
+      this land?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are huntsmen,&rdquo; replied Arnaud, &ldquo;and lo! our game
+      runs into our toils!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By my faith,&rdquo; replied Pelayo, &ldquo;thou wilt find the game
+      more readily roused than taken: have at thee for a villain!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So saying, he put spurs to his horse, and ran full speed upon him. The
+      Gascon, not expecting so sudden an attack from a single horseman, was
+      taken by surprise. He hastily couched his lance, but it merely glanced on
+      the shield of Pelayo, who sent his own through the middle of his breast,
+      and threw him out of his saddle to the earth. One of the other robbers
+      made at Pelayo, and wounded him slightly in the side, but received a blow
+      from the sword of the latter, which cleft his skull-cap, and sank into his
+      brain. His companion, seeing him fall, put spurs to his steed, and
+      galloped off through the forest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Beholding several other robbers on foot coming up, Pelayo returned to his
+      station between the rocks, where he was assailed by them all at once. He
+      received two of their darts on his buckler, a javelin razed his cuirass,
+      and glancing down, wounded his horse. Pelayo then rushed forth, and struck
+      one of the robbers dead: the others, beholding several huntsmen advancing,
+      took to flight, but were pursued, and several of them taken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The good merchant of Bordeaux and his family beheld this scene with
+      trembling and amazement, for never had they looked upon such feats of
+      arms. They considered Don Pelayo as a leader of some rival band of
+      robbers; and when the bonds were loosed by which they were tied to the
+      trees, they fell at his feet and implored mercy. The females were soonest
+      undeceived, especially the daughter; for the damsel was struck with the
+      noble countenance and gentle demeanor of Pelayo, and said to herself:
+      &ldquo;Surely nothing evil can dwell in so goodly and gracious a form.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pelayo now sounded his horn, which echoed from rock to rock, and was
+      answered by shouts and horns from various parts of the mountains. The
+      merchant&rsquo;s heart misgave him at these signals, and especially when
+      he beheld more than forty men gathering from glen and thicket. They were
+      clad in hunters&rsquo; dresses, and armed with boar-spears, darts, and
+      hunting-swords, and many of them led hounds in long leashes. All this was
+      a new and wild scene to the astonished merchant; nor were his fears
+      abated, when he saw his servant approaching with the hackney, laden with
+      money-bags; &ldquo;for of a certainty,&rdquo; said he to himself, &ldquo;this
+      will be too tempting a spoil for these wild hunters of the mountains.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pelayo, however, took no more notice of the gold than if it had been so
+      much dross; at which the honest burgher marvelled exceedingly. He ordered
+      that the wounds of the merchant should be dressed, and his own examined.
+      On taking off his cuirass, his wound was found to be but slight; but his
+      men were so exasperated at seeing his blood, that they would have put the
+      captive robbers to instant death, had he not forbidden them to do them any
+      harm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The huntsmen now made a great fire at the foot of a tree, and bringing a
+      boar which they had killed, cut off portions and roasted them, or broiled
+      them on the coals. Then drawing forth loaves of bread from their wallets,
+      they devoured their food half raw, with the hungry relish of huntsmen and
+      mountaineers. The merchant, his wife, and daughter, looked at all this,
+      and wondered, for they had never beheld so savage a repast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pelayo then inquired of them if they did not desire to eat; they were too
+      much in awe of him to decline, though they felt a loathing at the thought
+      of partaking of this hunter&rsquo;s fare; but he ordered a linen cloth to
+      be spread under the shade of a great oak, on the grassy margin of a clear
+      running stream; and to their astonishment, they were served, not with the
+      flesh of the boar, but with dainty cheer, such as the merchant had
+      scarcely hoped to find out of the walls of his native city of Bordeaux.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The good burgher was of a community renowned for gastronomic prowess: his
+      fears having subsided, his appetite was now awakened, and he addressed
+      himself manfully to the viands that were set before him. His daughter,
+      however, could not eat: her eyes were ever and anon stealing to gaze on
+      Pelayo, whom she regarded with gratitude for his protection, and
+      admiration for his valor; and now that he had laid aside his helmet, and
+      she beheld his lofty countenance, glowing with manly beauty, she thought
+      him something more than mortal. The heart of the gentle donzella, says the
+      ancient chronicler, was kind and yielding; and had Pelayo thought fit to
+      ask the greatest boon that love and beauty could bestow&mdash;doubtless
+      meaning her fair hand&mdash;she could not have had the cruelty to say him
+      nay. Pelayo, however, had no such thoughts: the love of woman had never
+      yet entered his heart; and though he regarded the damsel as the fairest
+      maiden he had ever beheld, her beauty caused no perturbation in his
+      breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the repast was over, Pelayo offered to conduct the merchant and his
+      family through the defiles of the mountains, lest they should be molested
+      by any of the scattered band of robbers. The bodies of the slain marauders
+      were buried, and the corpse of the servant was laid upon one of the horses
+      captured in the battle. Having formed their cavalcade, they pursued their
+      way slowly up one of the steep and winding passes of the Pyrenees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Toward sunset, they arrived at the dwelling of a holy hermit. It was hewn
+      out of the living rock; there was a cross over the door, and before it was
+      a great spreading oak, with a sweet spring of water at its foot. The body
+      of the faithful servant who had fallen in the defence of his lord, was
+      buried close by the wall of this sacred retreat, and the hermit promised
+      to perform masses for the repose of his soul. Then Pelayo obtained from
+      the holy father consent that the merchant&rsquo;s wife and daughter should
+      pass the night within his cell; and the hermit made beds of moss for them,
+      and gave them his benediction; but the damsel found little rest, so much
+      were her thoughts occupied by the youthful champion who had rescued her
+      from death or dishonor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pelayo, however, was visited by no such wandering of the mind; but,
+      wrapping himself in his mantle, slept soundly by the fountain under the
+      tree. At midnight, when every thing was buried in deep repose, he was
+      awakened from his sleep and beheld the hermit before him, with the beams
+      of the moon shining upon his silver hair and beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is no time,&rdquo; said the latter, &ldquo;to be sleeping;
+      arise and listen to my words, and hear of the great work for which thou
+      art chosen!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Pelayo arose and seated himself on a rock, and the hermit continued
+      his discourse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Behold,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;the ruin of Spain is at hand! It
+      will be delivered into the hands of strangers, and will become a prey to
+      the spoiler. Its children will be slain or carried into captivity; or such
+      as may escape these evils, will harbor with the beasts of the forest or
+      the eagles of the mountain. The thorn and bramble will spring up where now
+      are seen the cornfield, the vine, and the olive; and hungry wolves will
+      roam in place of peaceful flocks and herds. But thou, my son! tarry not
+      thou to see these things, for thou canst not prevent them. Depart on a
+      pilgrimage to the sepulchre of our blessed Lord in Palestine; purify
+      thyself by prayer; enroll thyself in the order of chivalry, and prepare
+      for the great work of the redemption of thy country; for to thee it will
+      be given to raise it from the depth of its affliction.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pelayo would have inquired farther into the evils thus foretold, but the
+      hermit rebuked his curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seek not to know more,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;than heaven is
+      pleased to reveal. Clouds and darkness cover its designs, and prophecy is
+      never permitted to lift up but in part the veil that rests upon the
+      future.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hermit ceased to speak, and Pelayo laid himself down again to take
+      repose, but sleep was a stranger to his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the first rays of the rising sun shone upon the tops of the
+      mountains, the travellers assembled round the fountain beneath the tree
+      and made their morning&rsquo;s repast. Then, having received the
+      benediction of the hermit, they departed in the freshness of the day, and
+      descended along the hollow defiles leading into the interior of Spain. The
+      good merchant was refreshed by sleep and by his morning&rsquo;s meal; and
+      when he beheld his wife and daughter thus secure by his side, and the
+      hackney laden with his treasure close behind him, his heart was light in
+      his bosom, and he carolled a chanson as he went, and the woodlands echoed
+      to his song. But Pelayo rode in silence, for he revolved in his mind the
+      portentous words of the hermit; and the daughter of the merchant ever and
+      anon stole looks at him full of tenderness and admiration, and deep sighs
+      betrayed the agitation of her bosom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length they came to the foot of the mountains, where the forests and
+      the rocks terminated, and an open and secure country lay before the
+      travellers. Here they halted, for their roads were widely different. When
+      they came to part, the merchant and his wife were loud in thanks and
+      benedictions, and the good burgher would fain have given Pelayo the
+      largest of his sacks of gold; but the young man put it aside with a smile.
+      &ldquo;Silver and gold,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;need I not, but if I have
+      deserved aught at thy hands, give me thy prayers, for the prayers of a
+      good man are above all price.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the mean time the daughter had spoken never a word. At length she
+      raised her eyes, which were filled with tears, and looked timidly at
+      Pelayo, and her bosom throbbed; and after a violent struggle between
+      strong affection and virgin modesty, her heart relieved itself by words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Senor,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;I know that I am unworthy of the
+      notice of so noble a cavalier; but suffer me to place this ring upon a
+      finger of that hand which has so bravely rescued us from death; and when
+      you regard it, you may consider it as a memorial of your own valor, and
+      not of one who is too humble to be remembered by you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With these words, she drew a ring from her finger and put it upon the
+      finger of Pelayo; and having done this, she blushed and trembled at her
+      own boldness, and stood as one abashed, with her eyes cast down upon the
+      earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pelayo was moved at the words of the simple maiden, and at the touch of
+      her fair hand, and at her beauty, as she stood thus trembling and in tears
+      before him; but as yet he knew nothing of woman, and his heart was free
+      from the snares of love. &ldquo;Amiga,&rdquo; (friend,) said he, &ldquo;I
+      accept thy present, and will wear it in remembrance of thy goodness;&rdquo;
+      so saying, he kissed her on the cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The damsel was cheered by these words, and hoped that she had awakened
+      some tenderness in his bosom; but it was no such thing, says the grave old
+      chronicler, for his heart was devoted to higher and more sacred matters;
+      yet certain it is, that he always guarded well that ring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they parted, Pelayo remained with his huntsmen on a cliff, watching
+      that no evil befell them, until they were far beyond the skirts of the
+      mountain; and the damsel often turned to look at him, until she could no
+      longer discern him, for the distance and the tears that dimmed her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And for that he had accepted her ring, says the ancient chronicler, she
+      considered herself wedded to him in her heart, and would never marry; nor
+      could she be brought to look with eyes of affection upon any other man;
+      but for the true love which she bore Pelayo, she lived and died a virgin.
+      And she composed a book which treated of love and chivalry, and the
+      temptations of this mortal life; and one part discoursed of celestial
+      matters, and it was called &ldquo;The Contemplations of Love;&rdquo;
+      because at the time she wrote it, she thought of Pelayo, and of his having
+      accepted her jewel and called her by the gentle appellation of &ldquo;Amiga.&rdquo;
+      And often thinking of him in tender sadness, and of her never having
+      beheld him more, she would take the book and would read it as if in his
+      stead; and while she repeated the words of love which it contained, she
+      would endeavor to fancy them uttered by Pelayo, and that he stood before
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0021" id="link2H_4_0021"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE KNIGHT OF MALTA.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      SIR: In the course of a tour which I made in Sicily, in the days of my
+      juvenility, I passed some little time at the ancient city of Catania, at
+      the foot of Mount Ætna. Here I became acquainted with the Chevalier L&mdash;&mdash;,
+      an old Knight of Malta. It was not many years after the time that Napoleon
+      had dislodged the knights from their island, and he still wore the
+      insignia of his order. He was not, however, one of those reliques of that
+      once chivalrous body, who had been described was &ldquo;a few worn-out old
+      men, creeping about certain parts of Europe, with the Maltese cross on
+      their breasts;&rdquo; on the contrary, though advanced in life, his form
+      was still light and vigorous; he had a pale, thin, intellectual visage,
+      with a high forehead, and a bright, visionary eye. He seemed to take a
+      fancy to me, as I certainly did to him, and we soon became intimate, I
+      visited him occasionally, at his apartments, in the wing of an old palace,
+      looking toward Mount Ætna. He was an antiquary, a virtuoso, and a
+      connoisseur. His rooms were decorated with mutilated statues, dug up from
+      Grecian and Roman ruins; old vases, lachrymals, and sepulchral lamps. He
+      had astronomical and chemical instruments, and black-letter books, in
+      various languages. I found that he had dipped a little in chimerical
+      studies and had a hankering after astrology and alchymy. He affected to
+      believe in dreams and visions, and delighted in the fanciful Rosicrucian
+      doctrines. I cannot persuade myself, however, that he really believed in
+      all these: I rather think he loved to let his imagination carry him away
+      into the boundless fairy land which they unfolded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In company with the chevalier, I took several excursions on horseback
+      about the environs of Catania, and the picturesque skirts of Mount Etna.
+      One of these led through a village, which had sprung up on the very tract
+      of an ancient eruption, the houses being built of lava. At one time we
+      passed, for some distance, along a narrow lane, between two high dead
+      convent walls. It was a cut-throat-looking place, in a country where
+      assassinations are frequent; and just about midway through it, we observed
+      blood upon the pavement and the walls, as if a murder had actually been
+      committed there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chevalier spurred on his horse, until he had extricated himself
+      completely from this suspicious neighborhood. He then observed, that it
+      reminded him of a similar blind alley in Malta, infamous on account of the
+      many assassinations that had taken place there; concerning one of which,
+      he related a long and tragical story, that lasted until we reached
+      Catania. It involved various circumstances of a wild and supernatural
+      character, but which he assured me were handed down in tradition, and
+      generally credited by the old inhabitants of Malta.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I like to pick up strange stories, and as I was particularly struck
+      with several parts of this, I made a minute of it, on my return to my
+      lodgings. The memorandum was lost, with several others of my travelling
+      papers, and the story had faded from my mind, when recently, in perusing a
+      French memoir, I came suddenly upon it, dressed up, it is true, in a very
+      different manner, but agreeing in the leading facts, and given upon the
+      word of that famous adventurer, the Count Cagliostro.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have amused myself, during a snowy day in the country, by rendering it
+      roughly into English, for the entertainment of a youthful circle round the
+      Christmas fire. It was well received by my auditors, who, however, are
+      rather easily pleased. One proof of its merits is that it sent some of the
+      youngest of them quaking to their beds, and gave them very fearful dreams.
+      Hoping that it may have the same effect upon your ghost-hunting readers, I
+      offer it, Mr. Editor, for insertion in your Magazine. I would observe,
+      that wherever I have modified the French version of the Story, it has been
+      in conformity to some recollection of the narrative of my friend, the
+      Knight of Malta.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Your obt. servt.,
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      GEOFFREY CRAYON.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0022" id="link2H_4_0022"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      <i>THE GRAND PRIOR OF MINORCA,</i>
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A VERITABLE GHOST STORY.
+    </h3>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;Keep my wits, heaven! They say spirits appear
+  To melancholy minds, and the graves open!&rdquo;&mdash;FLETCHER.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      About the middle of the last century, while the Knights of Saint John of
+      Jerusalem still maintained something of their ancient state and sway in
+      the Island of Malta, a tragical event took place there, which is the
+      groundwork of the following narrative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may be as well to premise, that at the time we are treating of, the
+      order of Saint John of Jerusalem, grown excessively wealthy, had
+      degenerated from its originally devout and warlike character. Instead of
+      being a hardy body of &ldquo;monk-knights,&rdquo; sworn soldiers of the
+      cross, fighting the Paynim in the Holy Land, or scouring the
+      Mediterranean, and scourging the Barbary coasts with their galleys, or
+      feeding the poor, and attending upon the sick at their hospitals, they led
+      a life of luxury and libertinism, and were to be found in the most
+      voluptuous courts of Europe. The order, in fact, had become a mode of
+      providing for the needy branches of the Catholic aristocracy of Europe.
+      &ldquo;A commandery,&rdquo; we are told, was a splendid provision for a
+      younger brother; and men of rank, however dissolute, provided they
+      belonged to the highest aristocracy, became Knights of Malta, just as they
+      did bishops, or colonels of regiments, or court chamberlains. After a
+      brief Residence at Malta, the knights passed the rest of their time in
+      their own countries, or only made a visit now and then to the island.
+      While there, having but little military duty to perform, they beguiled
+      their idleness by paying attentions to the fair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was one circle of society, however, into which they could not obtain
+      currency. This was composed of a few families of the old Maltese nobility,
+      natives of the island. These families, not being permitted to enroll any
+      of their members in the order, affected to hold no intercourse with its
+      chevaliers; admitting none into their exclusive coteries but the Grand
+      Master, whom they acknowledged as their sovereign, and the members of the
+      chapter which composed his council.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To indemnify themselves for this exclusion, the chevaliers carried their
+      gallantries into the next class of society, composed of those who held
+      civil, administrative, and judicial situations. The ladies of this class
+      were called <i>honorate</i>, or honorables, to distinguish them from the
+      inferior orders; and among them were many of superior grace, beauty, and
+      fascination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even in this more hospitable class, the chevaliers were not all equally
+      favored. Those of Germany had the decided preference, owing to their fair
+      and fresh complexions, and the kindliness of their manners: next to these
+      came the Spanish cavaliers, on account of their profound and courteous
+      devotion, and most discreet secrecy. Singular as it may seem, the
+      chevaliers of France fared the worst. The Maltese ladies dreaded their
+      volatility, and their proneness to boast of their amours, and shunned all
+      entanglement with them. They were forced, therefore, to content themselves
+      with conquests among females of the lower orders. They revenged
+      themselves, after the gay French manner, by making the &ldquo;honorate&rdquo;
+      the objects of all kinds of jests and mystifications; by prying into their
+      tender affairs with the more favored chevaliers, and making them the theme
+      of song and epigram.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About this time, a French vessel arrived at Malta, bringing out a
+      distinguished personage of the order of Saint John of Jerusalem, the
+      Commander de Foulquerre, who came to solicit the post of
+      commander-in-chief of the galleys. He was descended from an old and
+      warrior line of French nobility, his ancestors having long been seneschals
+      of Poitou, and claiming descent from the first counts of Angouleme.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The arrival of the commander caused a little uneasiness among the
+      peaceably inclined, for he bore the character, in the island, of being
+      fiery, arrogant, and quarrelsome. He had already been three times at
+      Malta, and on each visit had signalized himself by some rash and deadly
+      affray.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he was now thirty-five years of age, however, it was hoped that time
+      might have taken off the fiery edge of his spirit, and that he might prove
+      more quiet and sedate than formerly. The commander set up an establishment
+      befitting his rank and pretensions; for he arrogated to himself an
+      importance greater even than that of the Grand Master. His house
+      immediately became the rallying place of all the young French chevaliers.
+      They informed him of all the slights they had experienced or imagined, and
+      indulged their petulant and satirical vein at the expense of the honorate
+      and their admirers. The chevaliers of other nations soon found the topics
+      and tone of conversation at the commander&rsquo;s irksome and offensive,
+      and gradually ceased to visit there. The commander remained the head of a
+      national <i>clique</i>, who looked up to him as their model. If he was not
+      as boisterous and quarrelsome as formerly, he had become haughty and
+      overbearing. He was fond of talking over his past affairs of punctilio and
+      bloody duel. When walking the streets, he was generally attended by a
+      ruffling train of young French cavaliers, who caught his own air of
+      assumption and bravado. These he would conduct to the scenes of his deadly
+      encounters, point out the very spot where each fatal lunge had been given,
+      and dwell vaingloriously on every particular.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Under his tuition, the young French chevaliers began to add bluster and
+      arrogance to their former petulance and levity; they fired up on the most
+      trivial occasions, particularly with those who had been most successful
+      with the fair; and would put on the most intolerable drawcansir airs. The
+      other chevaliers conducted themselves with all possible forbearance and
+      reserve; but they saw it would be impossible to keep on long, in this
+      manner, without coming to an open rupture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among the Spanish cavaliers was one named Don Luis de Lima Vasconcellos.
+      He was distantly related to the Grand Master; and had been enrolled at an
+      early age among his pages, but had been rapidly promoted by him, until, at
+      the age of twenty-six, he had been given the richest Spanish commandery in
+      the order. He had, moreover, been fortunate with the fair, with one of
+      whom, the most beautiful honorata of Malta, he had long maintained the
+      most tender correspondence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The character, rank, and connexions of Don Luis put him on a par with the
+      imperious Commander de Foulquerre, and pointed him out as a leader and
+      champion to his countrymen. The Spanish chevaliers repaired to him,
+      therefore, in a body; represented all the grievances they had sustained,
+      and the evils they apprehended, and urged him to use his influence with
+      the commander and his adherents to put a stop to the growing abuses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Luis was gratified by this mark of confidence and esteem on the part
+      of his countrymen, and promised to have an interview with the Commander de
+      Foulquerre on the subject. He resolved to conduct himself with the utmost
+      caution and delicacy on the occasion; to represent to the commander the
+      evil consequences which might result from the inconsiderate conduct of the
+      young French chevaliers, and to entreat him to exert the great influence
+      he so deservedly possessed over them, to restrain their excesses. Don Luis
+      was aware, however, of the peril that attended any interview of the kind
+      with this imperious and fractious man, and apprehended, however it might
+      commence, that it would terminate in a duel. Still, it was an affair of
+      honor, in which Castilian dignity was concerned; beside, he had a lurking
+      disgust at the overbearing manners of De Foulquerre, and perhaps had been
+      somewhat offended by certain intrusive attentions which he had presumed to
+      pay to the beautiful honorata.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was now Holy Week; a time too sacred for worldly feuds and passions,
+      especially in a community under the dominion of a religious order; it was
+      agreed, therefore, that the dangerous interview in question should not
+      take place until after the Easter holidays. It is probable, from
+      subsequent circumstances, that the Commander de Foulquerre had some
+      information of this arrangement among the Spanish chevaliers, and was
+      determined to be beforehand, and to mortify the pride of their champion,
+      who was thus preparing to read him a lecture. He chose Good Friday for his
+      purpose. On this sacred day, it is customary in Catholic countries to make
+      a tour of all the churches, offering up prayers in each. In every Catholic
+      church, as is well known, there is a vessel of holy water near the door.
+      In this, every one, on entering, dips his fingers, and makes therewith the
+      sign of the cross on his forehead and breast. An office of gallantry,
+      among the young Spaniards, is to stand near the door, dip their hands in
+      the holy vessel, and extend them courteously and respectfully to any lady
+      of their acquaintance who may enter; who thus receives the sacred water at
+      second hand, on the tips of her fingers, and proceeds to cross herself,
+      with all due decorum. The Spaniards, who are the most jealous of lovers,
+      are impatient when this piece of devotional gallantry is proffered to the
+      object of their affections by any other hand: on Good Friday, therefore,
+      when a lady makes a tour of the churches, it is the usage among them for
+      the inamorato to follow her from church to church, so as to present her
+      the holy water at the door of each; thus testifying his own devotion, and
+      at the same time preventing the officious services of a rival.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the day in question, Don Luis followed the beautiful honorata, to whom,
+      as has already been observed, he had long been devoted. At the very first
+      church she visited, the Commander de Foulquerre was stationed at the
+      portal, with several of the young French chevaliers about him. Before Don
+      Luis could offer her the holy water, he was anticipated by the commander,
+      who thrust himself between them, and, while he performed the gallant
+      office to the lady, rudely turned his back upon her admirer, and trod upon
+      his feet. The insult was enjoyed by the young Frenchmen who were present:
+      it was too deep and grave to be forgiven by Spanish pride; and at once put
+      an end to all Don Luis&rsquo; plans of caution and forbearance. He
+      repressed his passion for the moment, however, and waited until all the
+      parties left the church; then, accosting the commander with an air of
+      coolness and unconcern, he inquired after his health, and asked to what
+      church he proposed making his second visit. &ldquo;To the Magisterial
+      Church of Saint John.&rdquo; Don Luis offered to conduct him thither, by
+      the shortest route. His offer was accepted, apparently without suspicion,
+      and they proceeded together. After walking some distance, they entered a
+      long, narrow lane, without door or window opening upon it, called the
+      &ldquo;Strada Stretta,&rdquo; or narrow street. It was a street in which
+      duels were tacitly permitted, or connived at, in Malta, and were suffered
+      to pass as accidental encounters. Every where else they were prohibited.
+      This restriction had been instituted to diminish the number of duels,
+      formerly so frequent in Malta. As a farther precaution to render these
+      encounters less fatal, it was an offence, punishable with death, for any
+      one to enter this street armed with either poniard or pistol. It was a
+      lonely, dismal street, just wide enough for two men to stand upon their
+      guard, and cross their swords; few persons ever traversed it, unless with
+      some sinister design; and on any preconcerted duello, the seconds posted
+      themselves at each end, to stop all passengers, and prevent interruption.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the present instance, the parties had scarce entered the street, when
+      Don Luis drew his sword, and called upon the commander to defend himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      De Foulquerre was evidently taken by surprise: he drew back, and attempted
+      to expostulate; but Don Luis persisted in defying him to the combat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a second or two, he likewise drew his sword, but immediately lowered
+      the point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good Friday!&rdquo; ejaculated he, shaking his head: &ldquo;one
+      word with you; it is full six years since I have been in a confessional: I
+      am shocked at the state of my conscience; but within three days&mdash;that
+      is to say, on Monday next&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Luis would listen to nothing. Though naturally of a peaceable
+      disposition, he had been stung to fury, and people of that character, when
+      once incensed, are deaf to reason. He compelled the commander to put
+      himself on his guard. The latter, though a man accustomed to brawl in
+      battle, was singularly dismayed. Terror was visible in all his features.
+      He placed himself with his back to the wall, and the weapons were crossed.
+      The contest was brief and fatal. At the very first thrust, the sword of
+      Don Luis passed through the body of his antagonist. The commander
+      staggered to the wall, and leaned against it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On Good Friday!&rdquo; ejaculated he again, with a failing voice,
+      and despairing accents. &ldquo;Heaven pardon you!&rdquo; added he; &ldquo;take
+      my sword to Têtefoulques, and have a hundred masses performed in the
+      chapel of the castle, for the repose of my soul!&rdquo; With these words
+      he expired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fury of Don Luis was at an end. He stood aghast, gazing at the
+      bleeding body of the commander. He called to mind the prayer of the
+      deceased for three days&rsquo; respite, to make his peace with heaven; he
+      had refused it; had sent him to the grave, with all his sins upon his
+      head! His conscience smote him to the core; he gathered up the sword of
+      the commander, which he had been enjoined to take to Têtefoulques, and
+      hurried from the fatal Strada Stretta.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The duel of course made a great noise in Malta, but had no injurious
+      effect upon the worldly fortunes of Don Luis. He made a full declaration
+      of the whole matter, before the proper authorities; the Chapter of the
+      Order considered it one of those casual encounters of the Strada Stretta,
+      which were mourned over, but tolerated; the public, by whom the late
+      commander had been generally detested, declared that he had deserved his
+      fate. It was but three days after the event, that Don Luis was advanced to
+      one of the highest dignities of the Order, being invested by the Grand
+      Master with the priorship of the kingdom of Minorca.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From that time forward, however, the whole character and conduct of Don
+      Luis underwent a change. He became a prey to a dark melancholy, which
+      nothing could assuage. The most austere piety, the severest penances, had
+      no effect in allaying the horror which preyed upon his mind. He was absent
+      for a long time from Malta; having gone, it was said, on remote
+      pilgrimages: when he returned, he was more haggard than ever. There seemed
+      something mysterious and inexplicable in this disorder of his mind. The
+      following is the revelation made by himself, of the horrible visions, or
+      chimeras, by which he was haunted:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I had made my declaration before the Chapter,&rdquo; said he,
+      &ldquo;and my provocations were publicly known, I had made my peace with
+      man; but it was not so with God, nor with my confessor, nor with my own
+      conscience. My act was doubly criminal, from the day on which it was
+      committed, and from my refusal to a delay of three days, for the victim of
+      my resentment to receive the sacraments. His despairing ejaculation,
+      &lsquo;Good Friday! Good Friday!&rsquo; continually rang in my ears.
+      &lsquo;Why did I not grant the respite!&rsquo; cried I to myself; &lsquo;was
+      it not enough to kill the body, but must I seek to kill the soul!&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the night of the following Friday, I started suddenly from my
+      sleep. An unaccountable horror was upon me. I looked wildly around. It
+      seemed as if I were not in my apartment, nor in my bed, but in the fatal
+      Strada Stretta, lying on the pavement. I again saw the commander leaning
+      against the wall; I again heard his dying words: &lsquo;Take my sword to
+      Têtefoulques, and have a hundred masses performed in the chapel of the
+      castle, for the repose of my soul!&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the following night, I caused one of my servants to sleep in the
+      same room with me. I saw and heard nothing, either on that night, or any
+      of the nights following, until the next Friday; when I had again the same
+      vision, with this difference, that my valet seemed to be lying at some
+      distance from me on the pavement of the Strada Stretta. The vision
+      continued to be repeated on every Friday night, the commander always
+      appearing in the same manner, and uttering the same words: &lsquo;Take my
+      sword to Têtefoulques, and have a hundred masses performed in the chapel
+      of the castle for the repose of my soul!&rsquo; On questioning my servant
+      on the subject, he stated, that on these occasions he dreamed that he was
+      lying in a very narrow street, but he neither saw nor heard any thing of
+      the commander.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew nothing of this Têtefoulques, whither the defunct was so
+      urgent I should carry his sword. I made inquiries, therefore, concerning
+      it among the French chevaliers. They informed me that it was an old
+      castle, situated about four leagues from Poitiers, in the midst of a
+      forest. It had been built in old times, several centuries since, by
+      Foulques Taillefer, (or Fulke Hackiron,) a redoubtable, hard-fighting
+      Count of Angouleme, who gave it to an illegitimate son, afterward created
+      Grand Seneschal of Poitou, which son became the pro genitor of the
+      Foulquerres of Têtefoulques, hereditary Seneschals of Poitou. They farther
+      informed me, that strange stories were told of this old castle, in the
+      surrounding country, and that it contained many curious reliques. Among
+      these, were the arms of Foulques Taillefer, together with all those of the
+      warriors he had slain; and that it was an immemorial usage with the
+      Foulquerres to have the weapons deposited there which they had wielded
+      either in war or in single combat. This, then, was the reason of the dying
+      injunction of the commander respecting his sword. I carried this weapon
+      with me, wherever I went, but still I neglected to comply with his
+      request.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The visions still continued to harass me with undiminished horror.
+      I repaired to Rome, where I confessed myself to the Grand Cardinal
+      penitentiary, and informed him of the terrors with which I was haunted. He
+      promised me absolution, after I should have performed certain acts of
+      penance, the principal of which was, to execute the dying request of the
+      commander, by carrying the sword to Têtefoulques, and having the hundred
+      masses performed in the chapel of the castle for the repose of his soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I set out for France as speedily as possible, and made no delay in
+      my journey. On arriving at Poitiers, I found that the tidings of the death
+      of the commander had reached there, but had caused no more affliction than
+      among the people of Malta. Leaving my equipage in the town, I put on the
+      garb of a pilgrim, and taking a guide, set out on foot for Têtefoulques,
+      Indeed the roads in this part of the country were impracticable for
+      carriages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I found the castle of Têtefoulques a grand but gloomy and
+      dilapidated pile. All the gates were closed, and there reigned over the
+      whole place an air of almost savage loneliness and desertion. I had
+      understood that its only inhabitant were the concierge, or warder, and a
+      kind of hermit who had charge of the chapel. After ringing for some time
+      at the gate, I at length succeeded in bringing forth the warder, who bowed
+      with reverence to my pilgrim&rsquo;s garb. I begged him to conduct me to
+      the chapel, that being the end of my pilgrimage. We found the hermit
+      there, chanting the funeral service; a dismal sound to one who came to
+      perform a penance for the death of a member of the family. When he had
+      ceased to chant, I informed him that I came to accomplish an obligation of
+      conscience, and that I wished him to perform a hundred masses for the
+      repose of the soul of the commander. He replied that, not being in orders,
+      he was not authorized to perform mass, but that he would willingly
+      undertake to see that my debt of conscience was discharged. I laid my
+      offering on the altar, and would have placed the sword of the commander
+      there, likewise. &lsquo;Hold!&rsquo; said the hermit, with a melancholy
+      shake of the head,'this is no place for so deadly a weapon, that has so
+      often been bathed in Christian blood. Take it to the armory; you will find
+      there trophies enough of like character. It is a place into which I never
+      enter.&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The warder here took up the theme abandoned by the peaceful man of
+      God. He assured me that I would see in the armory the swords of all the
+      warrior race of Foulquerres, together with those of the enemies over whom
+      they had triumphed. This, he observed, had been a usage kept up since the
+      time of Mellusine, and of her husband, Geoffrey a la Grand-dent, or
+      Geoffrey with the Great-tooth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I followed the gossiping warder to the armory. It was a great dusty
+      hall, hung round with Gothic-looking portraits, of a stark line of
+      warriors, each with his weapon, and the weapons of those he had slain in
+      battle, hung beside his picture. The most conspicuous portrait was that of
+      Foulques Taillefer, (Fulke Hackiron,) Count of Angouleme, and founder of
+      the castle. He was represented at full-length, armed cap-a-pie, and
+      grasping a huge buckler, on which were emblazoned three lions passant. The
+      figure was so striking, that it seemed ready to start from the canvas: and
+      I observed beneath this picture, a trophy composed of many weapons, proofs
+      of the numerous triumphs of this hard-fighting old cavalier. Beside the
+      weapons connected with the portraits, there were swords of all shapes,
+      sizes, and centuries, hung round the hall; with piles of armor, placed as
+      it were in effigy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On each side of an immense chimney, were suspended the portraits of
+      the first seneschal of Poitou (the illegitimate son of Foulques Taillefer)
+      and his wife Isabella de Lusignan; the progenitors of the grim race of
+      Foulquerres that frowned around. They had the look of being perfect
+      likenesses; and as I gazed on them, I fancied I could trace in their
+      antiquated features some family resemblance to their unfortunate
+      descendant, whom I had slain! This was a dismal neighborhood, yet the
+      armory was the only part of the castle that had a habitable air; so I
+      asked the warder whether he could not make a fire, and give me something
+      for supper there, and prepare me a bed in one corner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;A fire and a supper you shall have, and that cheerfully,
+      most worthy pilgrim,&rsquo; said he; &lsquo;but as to a bed, I advise you
+      to come and sleep in my chamber.&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Why so?&rsquo; inquired I; &lsquo;why shall I not sleep in
+      this hall?&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;I have my reasons; I will make a bed for you close to mine.&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I made no objections, for I recollected that it was Friday, and I
+      dreaded the return of my vision. He brought in billets of wood, kindled a
+      fire in the great overhanging chimney, and then went forth to prepare my
+      supper. I drew a heavy chair before the fire, and seating myself in it,
+      gazed muzingly round upon the portraits of the Foulquerres, and the
+      antiquated armor and weapons, the mementos of many a bloody deed. As the
+      day declined, the smoky draperies of the hall gradually became confounded
+      with the dark ground of the paintings, and the lurid gleams from the
+      chimney only enabled me to see visages staring at me from the gathering
+      darkness. All this was dismal in the extreme, and somewhat appalling;
+      perhaps it was the state of my conscience that rendered me peculiarly
+      sensitive, and prone to fearful imaginings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At length the warder brought in my supper. It consisted of a dish
+      of trout, and some crawfish taken in the fosse of the castle. He procured
+      also a bottle of wine, which he informed me was wine of Poitou. I
+      requested him to invite the hermit to join me in my repast; but the holy
+      man sent back word that he allowed himself nothing but roots and herbs,
+      cooked with water. I took my meal, therefore, alone, but prolonged it as
+      much as possible, and sought to cheer my drooping spirits by the wine of
+      Poitou, which I found very tolerable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When supper was over, I prepared for my evening devotions. I have
+      always been very punctual in reciting my breviary; it is the prescribed
+      and bounden duty of all chevaliers of the religious orders; and I can
+      answer for it, is faithfully performed by those of Spain. I accordingly
+      drew forth from my pocket a small missal and a rosary, and told the warder
+      he need only designate to me the way to his chamber, where I could come
+      and rejoin him, when I had finished my prayers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He accordingly pointed out a winding stair-case, opening from the
+      hall. ‘You will descend this stair-case,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;until you
+      come to the fourth landing-place, where you enter a vaulted passage,
+      terminated by an arcade, with a statue of the blessed Jeanne of France;
+      you cannot help finding my room, the door of which I will leave open; it
+      is the sixth door from the landing-place. I advise you not to remain in
+      this hall after midnight. Before that hour, you will hear the hermit ring
+      the bell, in going the rounds of the corridors. Do not linger here after
+      that signal.&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The warder retired, and I commenced my devotions. I continued at
+      them earnestly; pausing from time to time to put wood upon the fire. I did
+      not dare to look much around me, for I felt myself becoming a prey to
+      fearful fancies. The pictures appeared to become animated. If I regarded
+      one attentively, for any length of time, it seemed to move the eyes and
+      lips. Above all, the portraits of the Grand Seneschal and his lady, which
+      hung on each side of the great chimney, the progenitors of the Foulquerres
+      of Têtefoulque, regarded me, I thought, with angry and baleful eyes: I
+      even fancied they exchanged significant glances with each other. Just then
+      a terrible blast of wind shook all the casements, and, rushing through the
+      hall, made a fearful rattling and clashing among the armor. To my startled
+      fancy, it seemed something supernatural.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At length I heard the bell of the hermit, and hastened to quit the
+      hall. Taking a solitary light, which stood on the supper-table, I
+      descended the winding stair-case; but before I had reached the vaulted
+      passage leading to the statue of the blessed Jeanne of France, a blast of
+      wind extinguished my taper. I hastily remounted the stairs, to light it
+      again at the chimney; but judge of my feelings, when, on arriving at the
+      entrance to the armory, I beheld the Seneschal and his lady, who had
+      descended from their frames, and seated themselves on each side of the
+      fire-place! &ldquo;&lsquo;Madam, my love,&rsquo; said the Seneschal, with
+      great formality, and in antiquated phrase, &lsquo;what think you of the
+      presumption of this Castilian, who comes to harbor himself and make
+      wassail in this our castle, after having slain our descendant, the
+      commander, and that without granting him time for confession?&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Truly, my lord,&rsquo; answered the female spectre, with no
+      less stateliness of manner, and with great asperity of tone; &lsquo;truly,
+      my lord, I opine that this Castilian did a grievous wrong in this
+      encounter; and he should never be suffered to depart hence, without your
+      throwing him the gauntlet.&rsquo; I paused to hear no more, but rushed
+      again down-stairs, to seek the chamber of the warder. It was impossible to
+      find it in the darkness, and in the perturbation of my mind. After an hour
+      and a half of fruitless search, and mortal horror and anxieties, I
+      endeavored to persuade myself that the day was about to break, and
+      listened impatiently for the crowing of the cock; for I thought if I could
+      hear his cheerful note, I should be reassured; catching, in the disordered
+      state of my nerves, at the popular notion that ghosts never appear after
+      the first crowing of the cock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At length I rallied myself, and endeavored to shake off the vague
+      terrors which haunted me. I tried to persuade myself that the two figures
+      which I had seemed to see and hear, had existed only in my troubled
+      imagination. I still had the end of the candle in my hand, and determined
+      to make another effort to re-light it, and find my way to bed; for I was
+      ready to sink with fatigue. I accordingly sprang up the stair-case, three
+      steps at a time, stopped at the door of the armory, and peeped cautiously
+      in. The two Gothic figures were no longer in the chimney corners, but I
+      neglected to notice whether they had reascended to their frames. I
+      entered, and made desperately for the fire-place, but scarce had I
+      advanced three strides, when Messire Foolques Taillefer stood before me,
+      in the centre of the hall, armed cap-à-pie, and standing in guard, with
+      the point of his sword silently presented to me. I would have retreated to
+      the stair-case, but the door of it was occupied by the phantom figure of
+      an esquire, who rudely flung a gauntlet in my face. Driven to fury, I
+      snatched down a sword from the wall: by chance, it was that of the
+      commander which I had placed there. I rushed upon my fantastic adversary,
+      and seemed to pierce him through and through; but at the same time I felt
+      as if something pierced my heart, burning like a red-hot iron. My blood
+      inundated the hall, and I fell senseless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I recovered consciousness, it was broad day, and I found
+      myself in a small chamber, attended by the warder and the hermit. The
+      former told me that on the previous night, he had awakened long after the
+      midnight hour, and perceiving that I had not come to his chamber, he had
+      furnished himself with a vase of holy water, and set out to seek me. He
+      found me stretched senseless on the pavement of the armory, and bore me to
+      this room. I spoke of my wound, and of the quantity of blood that I had
+      lost. He shook his head, and knew nothing about it; and to my surprise, on
+      examination, I found myself perfectly sound and unharmed. The wound and
+      blood, therefore, had been all delusion. Neither the warder nor the hermit
+      put any questions to me, but advised me to leave the castle as soon as
+      possible. I lost no time in complying with their counsel, and felt my
+      heart relieved from an oppressive weight, as I left the gloomy and
+      fate-bound battlements of Têtefoulques behind me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I arrived at Bayonne, on my way to Spain, on the following Friday.
+      At midnight I was startled from my sleep, as I had formerly been; but it
+      was no longer by the vision of the dying commander. It was old Foulques
+      Taillefer who stood before me, armed cap-à-pie, and presenting the point
+      of his sword. I made the sign of the cross, and the spectre vanished, but
+      I received the same red-hot thrust in the heart which I had felt in the
+      armory, and I seemed to be bathed in blood. I would have called out, or
+      have arisen from my bed and gone in quest of succor, but I could neither
+      speak nor stir. This agony endured until the crowing of the cock, when I
+      fell asleep again; but the next day I was ill, and in a most pitiable
+      state. I have continued to be harassed by the same vision every Friday
+      night; no acts of penitence and devotion have been able to relieve me from
+      it; and it is only a lingering hope in divine mercy, that sustains me, and
+      enables me to support so lamentable a visitation.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Grand Prior of Minorca wasted gradually away under this constant
+      remorse of conscience, and this horrible incubus. He died some time after
+      having revealed the preceding particulars of his case, evidently the
+      victim of a diseased imagination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The above relation has been rendered, in many parts literally, from the
+      French memoir, in which it is given as a true story: if so, it is one of
+      those instances in which truth is more romantic than fiction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0023" id="link2H_4_0023"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      LEGEND OF THE ENGULPHED CONVENT.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      At the dark and melancholy period when Don Roderick the Goth and his
+      chivalry were overthrown on the banks of the Guadalete, and all Spain was
+      overrun by the Moors, great was the devastation of churches and convents
+      throughout that pious kingdom. The miraculous fate of one of those holy
+      piles is thus recorded in one of the authentic legends of those days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the summit of a hill, not very distant from the capital city of Toledo,
+      stood an ancient convent and chapel, dedicated to the invocation of Saint
+      Benedict, and inhabited by a sisterhood of Benedictine nuns. This holy
+      asylum was confined to females of noble lineage. The younger sisters of
+      the highest families were here given in religious marriage to their
+      Saviour, in order that the portions of their elder sisters might be
+      increased, and they enabled to make suitable matches on earth, or that the
+      family wealth might go undivided to elder brothers, and the dignity of
+      their ancient houses be protected from decay. The convent was renowned,
+      therefore, for enshrining within its walls a sisterhood of the purest
+      blood, the most immaculate virtue, and most resplendent beauty, of all
+      Gothic Spain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the Moors overran the kingdom, there was nothing that more excited
+      their hostility than these virgin asylums. The very sight of a
+      convent-spire was sufficient to set their Moslem blood in a foment, and
+      they sacked it with as fierce a zeal as though the sacking of a nunnery
+      were a sure passport to Elysium.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tidings of such outrages committed in various parts of the kingdom reached
+      this noble sanctuary and filled it with dismay. The danger came nearer and
+      nearer; the infidel hosts were spreading all over the country; Toledo
+      itself was captured; there was no flying from the convent, and no security
+      within its walls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the midst of this agitation, the alarm was given one day that a great
+      band of Saracens were spurring across the plain. In an instant the whole
+      convent was a scene of confusion. Some of the nuns wrung their fair hands
+      at the windows; others waved their veils and uttered shrieks from the tops
+      of the towers, vainly hoping to draw relief from a country over-run by the
+      foe. The sight of these innocent doves thus fluttering about their
+      dove-cote, but increased the zealot fury of the whiskered Moors. They
+      thundered at the portal, and at every blow the ponderous gates trembled on
+      their hinges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The nuns now crowded round the abbess. They had been accustomed to look up
+      to her as all-powerful, and they now implored her protection. The mother
+      abbess looked with a rueful eye upon the treasures of beauty and vestal
+      virtue exposed to such imminent peril. Alas! how was she to protect them
+      from the spoiler! She had, it is true, experienced many signal
+      inter-positions of providence in her individual favor. Her early days had
+      been passed amid the temptations of a court, where her virtue had been
+      purified by repeated trials, from none of which had she escaped but by a
+      miracle. But were miracles never to cease? Could she hope that the
+      marvelous protection shown to herself would be extended to a whole
+      sisterhood? There was no other resource. The Moors were at the threshold;
+      a few moments more and the convent would be at their mercy. Summoning her
+      nuns to follow her, she hurried into the chapel; and throwing herself on
+      her knees before the image of the blessed Mary, &ldquo;Oh, holy Lady!&rdquo;
+      exclaimed she, &ldquo;oh, most pure and immaculate of virgins! thou seest
+      our extremity. The ravager is at the gate, and there is none on earth to
+      help us! Look down with pity, and grant that the earth may gape and
+      swallow us rather than that our cloister vows should suffer violation!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Moors redoubled their assault upon the portal; the gates gave way,
+      with a tremendous crash; a savage yell of exultation arose; when of a
+      sudden the earth yawned; down sank the convent, with its cloisters, its
+      dormitories, and all its nuns. The chapel tower was the last that sank,
+      the bell ringing forth a peal of triumph in the very teeth of the
+      infidels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Forty years had passed and gone, since the period of this miracle. The
+      subjugation of Spain was complete. The Moors lorded it over city and
+      country; and such of the Christian population as remained, and were
+      permitted to exercise their religion, did it in humble resignation to the
+      Moslem sway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this time, a Christian cavalier, of Cordova, hearing that a patriotic
+      band of his countrymen had raised the standard of the cross in the
+      mountains of the Asturias, resolved to join them, and unite in breaking
+      the yoke of bondage. Secretly arming himself, and caparisoning his steed,
+      he set forth from Cordova, and pursued his course by unfrequented
+      mule-paths, and along the dry channels made by winter torrents. His spirit
+      burned with indignation, whenever, on commanding a view over a long
+      sweeping plain, he beheld the mosque swelling in the distance, and the
+      Arab horsemen careering about, as if the rightful lords of the soil. Many
+      a deep-drawn sigh, and heavy groan, also, did the good cavalier utter, on
+      passing the ruins of churches and convents desolated by the conquerors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was on a sultry midsummer evening, that this wandering cavalier, in
+      skirting a hill thickly covered with forest, heard the faint tones of a
+      vesper bell sounding melodiously in the air, and seeming to come from the
+      summit of the hill. The cavalier crossed himself with wonder, at this
+      unwonted and Christian sound. He supposed it to proceed from one of those
+      humble chapels and hermitages permitted to exist through the indulgence of
+      the Moslem conquerors. Turning his steed up a narrow path of the forest,
+      he sought this sanctuary, in hopes of finding a hospitable shelter for the
+      night. As he advanced, the trees threw a deep gloom around him, and the
+      bat flitted across his path. The bell ceased to toll, and all was silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently a choir of female voices came stealing sweetly through the
+      forest, chanting the evening service, to the solemn accompaniment of an
+      organ. The heart of the good cavalier melted at the sound, for it recalled
+      the happier days of his country. Urging forward his weary steed, he at
+      length arrived at a broad grassy area, on the summit of the hill,
+      surrounded by the forest. Here the melodious voices rose in full chorus,
+      like the swelling of the breeze; but whence they came, he could not tell.
+      Sometimes they were before, sometimes behind him; sometimes in the air,
+      sometimes as if from within the bosom of the earth. At length they died
+      away, and a holy stillness settled on the place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cavalier gazed around with bewildered eye. There was neither chapel
+      nor convent, nor humble hermitage, to be seen; nothing but a moss-grown
+      stone pinnacle, rising out of the centre of the area, surmounted by a
+      cross. The greensward around appeared to have been sacred from the tread
+      of man or beast, and the surrounding trees bent toward the cross, as if in
+      adoration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cavalier felt a sensation of holy awe. He alighted and tethered his
+      steed on the skirts of the forest, where he might crop the tender herbage;
+      then approaching the cross, he knelt and poured forth his evening prayers
+      before this relique of the Christian days of Spain. His orisons being
+      concluded, he laid himself down at the foot of the pinnacle, and reclining
+      his head against one of its stones, fell into a deep sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About midnight, he was awakened by the tolling of a bell, and found
+      himself lying before the gate of an ancient convent. A train of nuns
+      passed by, each bearing a taper. The cavalier rose and followed them into
+      the chapel; in the centre of which was a bier, on which lay the corpse of
+      an aged nun. The organ performed a solemn requiem: the nuns joining in
+      chorus. When the funeral service was finished, a melodious voice chanted,
+      &ldquo;<i>Requiescat in pace!</i>&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;May she rest in
+      peace!&rdquo; The lights immediately vanished; the whole passed away as a
+      dream; and the cavalier found himself at the foot of the cross, and
+      beheld, by the faint rays of the rising moon, his steed quietly grazing
+      near him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the day dawned, the cavalier descended the hill, and following the
+      course of a small brook, came to a cave, at the entrance of which was
+      seated an ancient man, clad in hermit&rsquo;s garb, with rosary and cross,
+      and a beard that descended to his girdle. He was one of those holy
+      anchorites permitted by the Moors to live unmolested in dens and caves,
+      and humble hermitages, and even to practise the rites of their religion.
+      The cavalier checked his horse, and dismounting, knelt and craved a
+      benediction. He then related all that had befallen him in the night, and
+      besought the hermit to explain the mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What thou hast heard and seen, my son,&rdquo; replied the other,
+      &ldquo;is but type and shadow of the woes of Spain.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He then related the foregoing story of the miraculous deliverance of the
+      convent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forty years,&rdquo; added the holy man, &ldquo;have elapsed since
+      this event, yet the bells of that sacred edifice are still heard, from
+      time to time, sounding from under ground, together with the pealing of the
+      organ, and the chanting of the choir. The Moors avoid this neighborhood,
+      as haunted ground, and the whole place, as thou mayest perceive, has
+      become covered with a thick and lonely forest.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cavalier listened with wonder to the story of this engulphed convent,
+      as related by the holy man. For three days and nights did they keep vigils
+      beside the cross; but nothing more was to be seen of nun or convent. It is
+      supposed that, forty years having elapsed, the natural lives of all the
+      nuns were finished, and that the cavalier had beheld the obsequies of the
+      last of the sisterhood. Certain it is, that from that time, bell, and
+      organ, and choral chant have never more been heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mouldering pinnacle, surmounted by the cross, still remains an object
+      of pious pilgrimage. Some say that it anciently stood in front of the
+      convent, but others assert that it was the spire of the sacred edifice,
+      and that, when the main body of the building sank, this remained above
+      ground, like the top-mast of some tall ship that has foundered. These
+      pious believers maintain, that the convent is miraculously preserved
+      entire in the centre of the mountain, where, if proper excavations were
+      made, it would be found, with all its treasures, and monuments, and
+      shrines, and reliques, and the tombs of its virgin nuns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Should any one doubt the truth of this marvelous interposition of the
+      Virgin, to protect the vestal purity of her votaries, let him read the
+      excellent work entitled &ldquo;España Triumphante,&rdquo; written by Padre
+      Fray Antonio de Sancta Maria, a bare-foot friar of the Carmelite order,
+      and he will doubt no longer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0024" id="link2H_4_0024"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE COUNT VAN HORN.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      During the minority of Louis XV., while the Duke of Orleans was Regent of
+      France, a young Flemish nobleman, the Count Antoine Joseph Van Horn, made
+      his sudden appearance in Paris, and by his character, conduct, and the
+      subsequent disasters in which he became involved, created a great
+      sensation in the high circles of the proud aristocracy. He was about
+      twenty-two years of age, tall, finely formed, with a pale, romantic
+      countenance, and eyes of remarkable brilliancy and wildness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was of one of the most ancient and highly-esteemed families of European
+      nobility, being of the line of the Princes of Horn and Overique, sovereign
+      Counts of Hautekerke, and hereditary Grand Veneurs of the empire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The family took its name from the little town and seigneurie of Horn, in
+      Brabant; and was known as early as the eleventh century among the little
+      dynasties of the Netherlands, and since that time by a long line of
+      illustrious generations. At the peace of Utrecht, when the Netherlands
+      passed under subjection to Austria, the house of Van Horn came under the
+      domination of the emperor. At the time we treat of, two of the branches of
+      this ancient house were extinct; the third and only surviving branch was
+      represented by the reigning prince, Maximilian Emanuel Van Horn,
+      twenty-four years of age, who resided in honorable and courtly style on
+      his hereditary domains at Baussigny, in the Netherlands, and his brother,
+      the Count Antoine Joseph, who is the subject of this memoir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ancient house of Van Horn, by the intermarriage of its various
+      branches with the noble families of the continent, had become widely
+      connected and interwoven with the high aristocracy of Europe. The Count
+      Antoine, therefore, could claim relationship to many of the proudest names
+      in Paris. In fact, he was grandson, by the mother&rsquo;s side, of the
+      Prince de Ligne, and even might boast of affinity to the Regent (the Duke
+      of Orleans) himself. There were circumstances, however, connected with his
+      sudden appearance in Paris, and his previous story, that placed him in
+      what is termed &ldquo;a false position;&rdquo; a word of baleful
+      significance in the fashionable vocabulary of France.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young count had been a captain in the service of Austria, but had been
+      cashiered for irregular conduct, and for disrespect to Prince Louis of
+      Baden, commander-in-chief. To check him in his wild career, and bring him
+      to sober reflection, his brother the prince caused him to be arrested and
+      sent to the old castle of Van Wert, in the domains of Horn. This was the
+      same castle in which, in former times, John Van Horn, Stadtholder of
+      Gueldres, had imprisoned his father; a circumstance which has furnished
+      Rembrandt with the subject of an admirable painting. The governor of the
+      castle was one Van Wert, grandson of the famous John Van Wert, the hero of
+      many a popular song and legend. It was the intention of the prince that
+      his brother should be held in honorable durance, for his object was to
+      sober and improve, not to punish and afflict him. Van Wert, however, was a
+      stern, harsh man of violent passions. He treated the youth in a manner
+      that prisoners and offenders were treated in the strong-holds of the
+      robber counts of Germany in old times; confined him in a dungeon and
+      inflicted on him such hardships and indignities that the irritable
+      temperament of the young count was roused to continual fury, which ended
+      in insanity. For six months was the unfortunate youth kept in this
+      horrible state, without his brother the prince being informed of his
+      melancholy condition or of the cruel treatment to which he was subjected.
+      At length, one day, in a paroxysm of frenzy, the count knocked down two of
+      his gaolers with a beetle, escaped from the castle of Van Wert, and eluded
+      all pursuit; and after roving about in a state of distraction, made his
+      way to Baussigny and appeared like a sceptre before his brother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince was shocked at his wretched, emaciated appearance and his
+      lamentable state of mental alienation. He received him with the most
+      compassionate tenderness; lodged him in his own room, appointed three
+      servants to attend and watch over him day and night, and endeavored by the
+      most soothing and affectionate assiduity to atone for the past act of
+      rigor with which he reproached himself. When he learned, however, the
+      manner in which his unfortunate brother had been treated in confinement,
+      and the course of brutalities that had led to his mental malady, he was
+      roused to indignation. His first step was to cashier Van Wert from his
+      command. That violent man set the prince at defiance, and attempted to
+      maintain himself in his government and his castle by instigating the
+      peasants, for several leagues round, to revolt. His insurrection might
+      have been formidable against the power of a petty prince; but he was put
+      under the ban of the empire and seized as a state prisoner. The memory of
+      his grandfather, the oft-sung John Van Wert, alone saved him from a
+      gibbet; but he was imprisoned in the strong tower of Horn-op-Zee. There he
+      remained until he was eighty-two years of age, savage, violent, and
+      unconquered to the last; for we are told that he never ceased fighting and
+      thumping as long as he could close a fist or wield a cudgel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the mean time a course of kind and gentle treatment and wholesome
+      regimen, and, above all, the tender and affectionate assiduity of his
+      brother, the prince, produced the most salutary effects upon Count
+      Antoine. He gradually recovered his reason; but a degree of violence
+      seemed always lurking at the bottom of his character, and he required to
+      be treated with the greatest caution and mildness, for the least
+      contradiction exasperated him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this state of mental convalescence, he began to find the supervision
+      and restraints of brotherly affection insupportable; so he left the
+      Netherlands furtively, and repaired to Paris, whither, in fact, it is said
+      he was called by motives of interest, to make arrangements concerning a
+      valuable estate which he inherited from his relative, the Princess d&rsquo;Epinay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On his arrival in Paris, he called upon the Marquis of Créqui, and other
+      of the high nobility with whom he was connected. He was received with
+      great courtesy; but, as he brought no letters from his elder brother, the
+      prince, and as various circumstances of his previous history had
+      transpired, they did not receive him into their families, nor introduce
+      him to their ladies. Still they fêted him in bachelor style, gave him gay
+      and elegant suppers at their separate apartments, and took him to their
+      boxes at the theatres. He was often noticed, too, at the doors of the most
+      fashionable churches, taking his stand among the young men of fashion; and
+      at such times, his tall, elegant figure, his pale but handsome
+      countenance, and his flashing eyes, distinguished him from among the
+      crowd; and the ladies declared that it was almost impossible to support
+      his ardent gaze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Count did not afflict himself much at his limited circulation in the
+      fastidious circles of the high aristocracy. He relished society of a
+      wilder and less ceremonious cast; and meeting with loose companions to his
+      taste, soon ran into all the excesses of the capital, in that most
+      licentious period. It is said that, in the course of his wild career, he
+      had an intrigue with a lady of quality, a favorite of the Regent; that he
+      was surprised by that prince in one of his interviews; that sharp words
+      passed between them; and that the jealousy and vengeance thus awakened,
+      ended only with his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About this time, the famous Mississippi scheme of Law was at its height,
+      or rather it began to threaten that disastrous catastrophe which convulsed
+      the whole financial world. Every effort was making to keep the bubble
+      inflated. The vagrant population of France was swept off from the streets
+      at night, and conveyed to Havre de Grace, to be shipped to the projected
+      colonies; even laboring people and mechanics were thus crimped and
+      spirited away. As Count Antoine was in the habit of sallying forth at
+      night, in disguise, in pursuit of his pleasures, he came near being
+      carried off by a gang of crimps; it seemed, in fact, as if they had been
+      lying in wait for him, as he had experienced very rough treatment at their
+      hands. Complaint was made of his case by his relation, the Marquis de
+      Créqui, who took much interest in the youth; but the Marquis received
+      mysterious intimations not to interfere in the matter, but to advise the
+      Count to quit Paris immediately; &ldquo;If he lingers, he is lost!&rdquo;
+      This has been cited as a proof that vengeance was dogging at the heels of
+      the unfortunate youth, and only watching for an opportunity to destroy
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such opportunity occurred but too soon. Among the loose companions with
+      whom the Count had become intimate, were two who lodged in the same hotel
+      with him. One was a youth only twenty years of age, who passed himself off
+      as the Chevalier d&rsquo;Etampes, but whose real name was Lestang, the
+      prodigal son of a Flemish banker. The other, named Laurent de Mille, a
+      Piedmontese, was a cashiered captain, and at the time an esquire in the
+      service of the dissolute Princess de Carignan, who kept gambling-tables in
+      her palace. It is probable that gambling propensities had driven these
+      young men together, and that their losses had brought them to desperate
+      measures: certain it is, that all Paris was suddenly astounded by a murder
+      which they were said to have committed. What made the crime more
+      startling, was, that it seemed connected with the great Mississippi
+      scheme, at that time the fruitful source of all kinds of panics and
+      agitations. A Jew, a stock-broker, who dealt largely in shares of the bank
+      of Law, founded on the Mississippi scheme, was the victim. The story of
+      his death is variously related. The darkest account states, that the Jew
+      was decoyed by these young men into an obscure tavern, under pretext of
+      negotiating with him for bank shares to the amount of one hundred thousand
+      crowns, which he had with him in his pocket-book. Lestang kept watch upon
+      the stairs. The Count and De Mille entered with the Jew into a chamber. In
+      a little while there were heard cries and struggles from within. A waiter
+      passing by the room, looked in, and seeing the Jew weltering in his blood,
+      shut the door again, double-locked it, and alarmed the house. Lestang
+      rushed downstairs, made his way to the hotel, secured his most portable
+      effects, and fled the country. The Count and De Mille endeavored to escape
+      by the window, but were both taken, and conducted to prison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A circumstance which occurs in this part of the Count&rsquo;s story, seems
+      to point him out as a fated man. His mother, and his brother, the Prince
+      Van Horn, had received intelligence some time before at Baussigny, of the
+      dissolute life the Count was leading at Paris, and of his losses at play.
+      They despatched a gentleman of the prince&rsquo;s household to Paris, to
+      pay the debts of the Count, and persuade him to return to Flanders; or, if
+      he should refuse, to obtain an order from the Regent for him to quit the
+      capital. Unfortunately the gentleman did not arrive at Paris until the day
+      after the murder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The news of the Count&rsquo;s arrest and imprisonment on a charge of
+      murder, caused a violent sensation among the high aristocracy. All those
+      connected with him, who had treated him hitherto with indifference, found
+      their dignity deeply involved in the question of his guilt or innocence. A
+      general convocation was held at the hotel of the Marquis de Créqui, of all
+      the relatives and allies of the house of Horn. It was an assemblage of the
+      most proud and aristocratic personages of Paris. Inquiries were made into
+      the circumstances of the affair. It was ascertained, beyond a doubt, that
+      the Jew was dead, and that he had been killed by several stabs of a
+      poniard. In escaping by the window, it was said that the Count had fallen,
+      and been immediately taken; but that De Mille had fled through the
+      streets, pursued by the populace, and had been arrested at some distance
+      from the scene of the murder; that the Count had declared himself innocent
+      of the death of the Jew, and that he had risked his own life in
+      endeavoring to protect him; but that De Mille, on being brought back to
+      the tavern, confessed to a plot to murder the broker, and rob him of his
+      pocket-book, and inculpated the Count in the crime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another version of the story was, that the Count Van Horn had deposited
+      with the broker, bank shares to the amount of eighty-eight thousand
+      livres; that he had sought him in this tavern, which was one of his
+      resorts, and had demanded the shares; that the Jew had denied the deposit;
+      that a quarrel had ensued, in the course of which the Jew struck the Count
+      in the face; that the latter, transported with rage, had snatched up a
+      knife from a table, and wounded the Jew in the shoulder; and that
+      thereupon De Mille, who was present, and who had likewise been defrauded
+      by the broker, fell on him, and despatched him with blows of a poniard,
+      and seized upon his pocket-book; that he had offered to divide the
+      contents of the latter with the Count, <i>pro rata</i>, of what the usurer
+      had defrauded them; that the latter had refused the proposition with
+      disdain, and that, at a noise of persons approaching, both had attempted
+      to escape from the premises, but had been taken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Regard the story in any way they might, appearances were terribly against
+      the Count, and the noble assemblage was in great consternation. What was
+      to be done to ward off so foul a disgrace and to save their illustrious
+      escutcheons from this murderous stain of blood? Their first attempt was to
+      prevent the affair from going to trial, and their relative from being
+      dragged before a criminal tribunal, on so horrible and degrading a charge.
+      They applied, therefore, to the Regent, to intervene his power; to treat
+      the Count as having acted under an access of his mental malady; and to
+      shut him up in a madhouse. The Regent was deaf to their solicitations. He
+      replied, coldly, that if the Count was a madman, one could not get rid too
+      quickly of madmen who were furious in their insanity. The crime was too
+      public and atrocious to be hushed up or slurred over; justice must take
+      its course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seeing there was no avoiding the humiliating scene of a public trial, the
+      noble relatives of the Count endeavored to predispose the minds of the
+      magistrates before whom he was to be arraigned. They accordingly made
+      urgent and eloquent representations of the high descent, and noble and
+      powerful connexions of the Count; set forth the circumstances of his early
+      history; his mental malady; the nervous irritability to which he was
+      subject, and his extreme sensitiveness to insult or contradiction. By
+      these means they sought to prepare the judges to interpret every thing in
+      favor of the Count, and, even if it should prove that he had inflicted the
+      mortal blow on the usurer, to attribute it to access of insanity, provoked
+      by insult.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To give full effect to these representations, the noble conclave
+      determined to bring upon the judges the dazzling rays of the whole
+      assembled aristocracy. Accordingly, on the day that the trial took place,
+      the relations of the Count, to the number of fifty-seven persons, of both
+      sexes, and of the highest rank, repaired in a body to the Palace of
+      Justice, and took their stations in a long corridor which led to the
+      court-room. Here, as the judges entered, they had to pass in review this
+      array of lofty and noble personages, who saluted them mournfully and
+      significantly, as they passed. Any one conversant with the stately pride
+      and jealous dignity of the French noblesse of that day, may imagine the
+      extreme state of sensitiveness that produced this self-abasement. It was
+      confidently presumed, however, by the noble suppliants, that having once
+      brought themselves to this measure, their influence over the tribunal
+      would be irresistible. There was one lady present, however, Madame de
+      Beauffremont, who was affected with the Scottish gift of second sight, and
+      related such dismal and sinister apparitions as passing before her eyes,
+      that many of her female companions were filled with doleful presentiments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unfortunately for the Count, there was another interest at work, more
+      powerful even than the high aristocracy. The all-potent Abbé Dubois, the
+      grand favorite and bosom counsellor of the Regent, was deeply interested
+      in the scheme of Law, and the prosperity of his bank, and of course in the
+      security of the stock-brokers. Indeed, the Regent himself is said to have
+      dipped deep in the Mississippi scheme. Dubois and Law, therefore, exerted
+      their influence to the utmost to have the tragic affair pushed to the
+      extremity of the law, and the murder of the broker punished in the most
+      signal and appalling manner. Certain it is, the trial was neither long nor
+      intricate. The Count and his fellow prisoner were equally inculpated in
+      the crime; and both were condemned to a death the most horrible and
+      ignominious&mdash;to be broken alive on the wheel!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as the sentence of the court was made public, all the nobility, in
+      any degree related to the house of Van Horn, went into mourning. Another
+      grand aristocratical assemblage was held, and a petition to the Regent, on
+      behalf of the Count, was drawn out and left with the Marquis de Créqui for
+      signature. This petition set forth the previous insanity of the Count, and
+      showed that it was a hereditary malady of his family. It stated various
+      circumstances in mitigation of his offence, and implored that his sentence
+      might be commuted to perpetual imprisonment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upward of fifty names of the highest nobility, beginning with the Prince
+      de Ligne, and including cardinals, archbishops, dukes, marquises, etc.,
+      together with ladies of equal rank, were signed to this petition. By one
+      of the caprices of human pride and vanity, it became an object of ambition
+      to get enrolled among the illustrious suppliants; a kind of testimonial of
+      noble blood, to prove relationship to a murderer! The Marquis de Créqui
+      was absolutely besieged by applicants to sign, and had to refer their
+      claims to this singular honor, to the Prince de Ligne, the grandfather of
+      the Count. Many who were excluded, were highly incensed, and numerous
+      feuds took place. Nay, the affronts thus given to the morbid pride of some
+      aristocratical families, passed from generation to generation; for, fifty
+      years afterward, the Duchess of Mazarin complained of a slight which her
+      father had received from the Marquis de Créqui; which proved to be
+      something connected with the signature of this petition. This important
+      document being completed, the illustrious body of petitioners, male and
+      female, on Saturday evening, the eve of Palm Sunday, repaired to the
+      Palais Royal, the residence of the Regent, and were ushered, with great
+      ceremony but profound silence, into his hall of council. They had
+      appointed four of their number as deputies, to present the petition, viz.:
+      the Cardinal de Rohan, the Duke de Havré, the Prince de Ligne, and the
+      Marquis de Créqui. After a little while, the deputies were summoned to the
+      cabinet of the Regent. They entered, leaving the assembled petitioners in
+      a state of the greatest anxiety. As time slowly wore away, and the evening
+      advanced, the gloom of the company increased. Several of the ladies prayed
+      devoutly; the good Princess of Armagnac told her beads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The petition was received by the Regent with a most unpropitious aspect.
+      &ldquo;In asking the pardon of the criminal,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;you
+      display more zeal for the house of Van Horn, than for the service of the
+      king.&rdquo; The noble deputies enforced the petition by every argument in
+      their power. They supplicated the Regent to consider that the infamous
+      punishment in question would reach not merely the person of the condemned,
+      not merely the house of Van Horn, but also the genealogies of princely and
+      illustrious families, in whose armorial bearings might be found
+      quarterings of this dishonored name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gentlemen,&rdquo; replied the Regent, &ldquo;it appears to me the
+      disgrace consists in the crime, rather than in the punishment.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Prince de Ligne spoke with warmth: &ldquo;I have in my genealogical
+      standard,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;four escutcheons of Van Horn, and of
+      course have four ancestors of that house. I must have them erased and
+      effaced, and there would be so many blank spaces, like holes, in my
+      heraldic ensigns. There is not a sovereign family which would not suffer,
+      through the rigor of your Royal Highness; nay, all the world knows, that
+      in the thirty-two quarterings of Madame, your mother, there is an
+      escutcheon of Van Horn.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; replied the Regent, &ldquo;I will share the
+      disgrace with you, gentlemen.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seeing that a pardon could not be obtained, the Cardinal de Rohan and the
+      Marquis de Créqui left the cabinet; but the Prince de Ligne and the Duke
+      de Havré remained behind. The honor of their houses, more than the life of
+      the unhappy Count, was the great object of their solicitude. They now
+      endeavored to obtain a minor grace. They represented that in the
+      Netherlands, and in Germany, there was an important difference in the
+      public mind as to the mode of inflicting the punishment of death upon
+      persons of quality. That decapitation had no influence on the fortunes of
+      the family of the executed, but that the punishment of the wheel was such
+      an infamy, that the uncles, aunts, brothers, and sisters of the criminal,
+      and his whole family, for three succeeding generations, were excluded from
+      all noble chapters, princely abbeys, sovereign bishoprics, and even
+      Teutonic commanderies of the Order of Malta. They showed how this would
+      operate immediately upon the fortunes of a sister of the Count, who was on
+      the point of being received as a canoness into one of the noble chapters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While this scene was going on in the cabinet of the Regent, the
+      illustrious assemblage of petitioners remained in the hall of council, in
+      the most gloomy state of suspense. The re-entrance from the cabinet of the
+      Cardinal de Rohan and the Marquis de Créqui, with pale, downcast
+      countenances, had struck a chill into every heart. Still they lingered
+      until near midnight, to learn the result of the after application. At
+      length the cabinet conference was at an end. The Regent came forth, and
+      saluted the high personages of the assemblage in a courtly manner. One old
+      lady of quality, Madame de Guyon, whom he had known in his infancy, he
+      kissed on the cheek, calling her his &ldquo;good aunt.&rdquo; He made a
+      most ceremonious salutation to the stately Marchioness de Créqui, telling
+      her he was charmed to see her at the Palais Royal; &ldquo;a compliment
+      very ill-timed,&rdquo; said the Marchioness, &ldquo;considering the
+      circumstance which brought me there.&rdquo; He then conducted the ladies
+      to the door of the second saloon, and there dismissed them, with the most
+      ceremonious politeness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The application of the Prince de Ligne and the Duke de Havré, for a change
+      of the mode of punishment, had, after much difficulty, been successful.
+      The Regent had promised solemnly to send a letter of commutation to the
+      attorney-general on Holy Monday, the 25th of March, at five o&rsquo;clock
+      in the morning. According to the same promise, a scaffold would be
+      arranged in the cloister of the Conciergerie, or prison, where the Count
+      would be beheaded on the same morning, immediately after having received
+      absolution. This mitigation of the form of punishment gave but little
+      consolation to the great body of petitioners, who had been anxious for the
+      pardon of the youth: it was looked upon as all-important, however, by the
+      Prince de Ligne, who, as has been before observed,&mdash;was exquisitely
+      alive to the dignity of his family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Bishop of Bayeux and the Marquis de Créqui visited the unfortunate
+      youth in prison. He had just received the communion in the chapel of the
+      Conciergerie, and was kneeling before the altar, listening to a mass for
+      the dead, which was performed at his request. He protested his innocence
+      of any intention to murder the Jew, but did not deign to allude to the
+      accusation of robbery. He made the bishop and the Marquis promise to see
+      his brother the prince, and inform him of this his dying asseveration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two other of his relations, the Prince Rebecq-Montmorency and the Marshal
+      Van Isenghien, visited him secretly, and offered him poison, as a means of
+      evading the disgrace of a public execution. On his refusing to take it,
+      they left him with high indignation. &ldquo;Miserable man!&rdquo; said
+      they, &ldquo;you are fit only to perish by the hand of the executioner!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquis de Créqui sought the executioner of Paris, to bespeak an easy
+      and decent death&mdash;for the unfortunate youth. &ldquo;Do not make him
+      suffer,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;uncover no part of him but the neck; and
+      have his body placed in a coffin, before you deliver it to his family.&rdquo;
+      The executioner promised all that was requested, but declined a rouleau of
+      a hundred louis-d&rsquo;ors which the Marquis would have put into his
+      hand. &ldquo;I am paid by the king for fulfilling my office,&rdquo; said
+      he; and added that he had already refused a like sum, offered by another
+      relation of the Marquis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquis de Créqui returned home in a state of deep affliction. There
+      he found a letter from the Duke de St. Simon, the familiar friend of the
+      Regent, repeating the promise of that prince, that the punishment of the
+      wheel should be commuted to decapitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Imagine,&rdquo; says the Marchioness de Créqui, who in her memoirs
+      gives a detailed account of this affair, &ldquo;imagine what we
+      experienced, and what was our astonishment, our grief, and indignation,
+      when, on Tuesday, the 26th of March, an hour after midday, word was
+      brought us that the Count Van Horn had been exposed on the wheel, in the
+      Place de Gréve, since half-past six in the morning, on the same scaffold
+      with the Piedmontese de Mille, and that he had been tortured previous to
+      execution!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One more scene of aristocratic pride closed this tragic story. The Marquis
+      de Créqui, on receiving this astounding news, immediately arrayed himself
+      in the uniform of a general officer, with his cordon of nobility on the
+      coat. He ordered six valets to attend him in grand livery, and two of his
+      carriages, each with six horses, to be brought forth. In this sumptuous
+      state, he set off for the Place de Gréve, where he had been preceded by
+      the Princes de Ligne, de Rohan, de Croüy, and the Duke de Havré.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Count Van Horn was already dead, and it was believed that the
+      executioner had had the charity to give him the coup de grace, or &ldquo;death-blow,&rdquo;
+      at eight o&rsquo;clock in the morning. At five o&rsquo;clock in the
+      evening, when the Judge Commissary left his post at the Hotel de Ville,
+      these noblemen, with their own hands, aided to detach the mutilated
+      remains of their relation; the Marquis de Crequi placed them in one of his
+      carriages, and bore them off to his hotel, to receive the last sad
+      obsequies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The conduct of the Regent in this affair excited general indignation. His
+      needless severity was attributed by some to vindictive jealousy; by others
+      to the persevering machinations of Law. The house of Van Horn, and the
+      high nobility of Flanders and Germany, considered themselves flagrantly
+      outraged: many schemes of vengeance were talked of, and a hatred
+      engendered against the Regent, that followed him through life, and was
+      wreaked with bitterness upon his memory after his death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The following letter is said to have been written to the Regent by the
+      Prince Van Horn, to whom the former had adjudged the confiscated effects
+      of the Count:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not complain, Sir, of the death of my brother, but I complain
+      that your Royal Highness has violated in his person the rights of the
+      kingdom, the nobility, and the nation. I thank you for the confiscation of
+      his effects; but I should think myself as much disgraced as he, should I
+      accept any favor at your hands. <i>I hope that God and the King may render
+      to you as strict justice as you have rendered to my unfortunate brother.</i>&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
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+</html>
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+Project Gutenberg's Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies, by Washington Irving
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies
+
+Author: Washington Irving
+
+Posting Date: October 8, 2012 [EBook #8571]
+Release Date: July, 2005
+First Posted: July 24, 2003
+Last Updated: December 7, 2005
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOLFERT'S ROOST AND MISCELLANIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, David Widger
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+WOLFERT'S ROOST
+
+AND
+
+MISCELLANIES
+
+BY
+
+WASHINGTON IRVING
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+CHRONICLE OF WOLFERT'S ROOST
+
+SLEEPY HOLLOW
+
+BIRDS OF SPRING
+
+RECOLLECTIONS OF THE ALHAMBRA
+
+ABENCERRAGE
+
+ENCHANTED ISLAND
+
+ADELANTADO OF THE SEVEN CITIES
+
+NATIONAL NOMENCLATURE
+
+DESULTORY THOUGHTS ON CRITICISM
+
+SPANISH ROMANCE
+
+LEGEND OF DON MUIO SANCHO DE HINOJOSA
+
+COMMUNIPAW
+
+CONSPIRACY OF THE COCKED HATS
+
+LEGEND OF COMMUNIPAW
+
+BERMUDAS, THE
+
+PELAYO AND THE MERCHANT'S DAUGHTER
+
+KNIGHT OF MALTA
+
+LEGEND OF THE ENGULPHED CONVENT
+
+
+
+
+COUNT VAN HORN WOLFERT'S ROOST
+
+AND
+
+MISCELLANIES.
+
+
+A CHRONICLE OF WOLFERT'S ROOST.
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
+
+Sir: I have observed that as a man advances in life, he is subject to
+a kind of plethora of the mind, doubtless occasioned by the vast
+accumulation of wisdom and experience upon the brain. Hence he is apt to
+become narrative and admonitory, that is to say, fond of telling long
+stories, and of doling out advice, to the small profit and great
+annoyance of his friends. As I have a great horror of becoming the
+oracle, or, more technically speaking, the "bore," of the domestic
+circle, and would much rather bestow my wisdom and tediousness upon the
+world at large, I have always sought to ease off this surcharge of the
+intellect by means of my pen, and hence have inflicted divers gossiping
+volumes upon the patience of the public. I am tired, however, of writing
+volumes; they do not afford exactly the relief I require; there is too
+much preparation, arrangement, and parade, in this set form of coming
+before the public. I am growing too indolent and unambitious for any
+thing that requires labor or display. I have thought, therefore, of
+securing to myself a snug corner in some periodical work where I might,
+as it were, loll at my ease in my elbow-chair, and chat sociably with
+the public, as with an old friend, on any chance subject that might pop
+into my brain.
+
+In looking around, for this purpose, upon the various excellent
+periodicals with which our country abounds, my eye was struck by the
+title of your work--"THE KNICKERBOCKER." My heart leaped at the sight.
+DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER, Sir, was one of my earliest and most valued
+friends, and the recollection of him is associated with some of the
+pleasantest scenes of my youthful days. To explain this, and to show how
+I came into possession of sundry of his posthumous works, which I
+have from time to time given to the world, permit me to relate a
+few particulars of our early intercourse. I give them with the more
+confidence, as I know the interest you take in that departed worthy,
+whose name and effigy are stamped upon your title-page, and as they will
+be found important to the better understanding and relishing divers
+communications I may have to make to you.
+
+My first acquaintance with that great and good man, for such I may
+venture to call him, now that the lapse of some thirty years has
+shrouded his name with venerable antiquity, and the popular voice has
+elevated him to the rank of the classic historians of yore, my first
+acquaintance with him was formed on the banks of the Hudson, not far
+from the wizard region of Sleepy Hollow. He had come there in the course
+of his researches among the Dutch neighborhoods for materials for his
+immortal history. For this purpose, he was ransacking the archives of
+one of the most ancient and historical mansions in the country. It was
+a lowly edifice, built in the time of the Dutch dynasty, and stood on a
+green bank, overshadowed by trees, from which it peeped forth upon the
+Great Tappan Zee, so famous among early Dutch navigators. A bright
+pure spring welled up at the foot of the green bank; a wild brook came
+babbling down a neighboring ravine, and threw itself into a little woody
+cove, in front of the mansion. It was indeed as quiet and sheltered a
+nook as the heart of man could require, in which to take refuge from the
+cares and troubles of the world; and as such, it had been chosen in old
+times, by Wolfert Acker, one of the privy councillors of the renowned
+Peter Stuyvesant.
+
+This worthy but ill-starred man had led a weary and worried life,
+throughout the stormy reign of the chivalric Peter, being one of those
+unlucky wights with whom the world is ever at variance, and who are kept
+in a continual fume and fret, by the wickedness of mankind. At the time
+of the subjugation of the province by the English, he retired hither in
+high dudgeon; with the bitter determination to bury himself from the
+world, and live here in peace and quietness for the remainder of his
+days. In token of this fixed resolution, he inscribed over his door the
+favorite Dutch motto, "Lust in Rust," (pleasure in repose.) The mansion
+was thence called "Wolfert's Rust"--Wolfert's Rest; but in process of
+time, the name was vitiated into Wolfert's Roost, probably from its
+quaint cock-loft look, or from its having a weather-cock perched on
+every gable. This name it continued to bear, long after the unlucky
+Wolfert was driven forth once more upon a wrangling world, by the
+tongue of a termagant wife; for it passed into a proverb through the
+neighborhood, and has been handed down by tradition, that the cock of
+the Roost was the most hen-pecked bird in the country.
+
+This primitive and historical mansion has since passed through many
+changes and trials, which it may be my lot hereafter to notice. At the
+time of the sojourn of Diedrich Knickerbocker it was in possession of
+the gallant family of the Van Tassels, who have figured so conspicuously
+in his writings. What appears to have given it peculiar value, in his
+eyes, was the rich treasury of historical facts here secretly hoarded
+up, like buried gold; for it is said that Wolfert Acker, when he
+retreated from New Amsterdam, carried off with him many of the records
+and journals of the province, pertaining to the Dutch dynasty; swearing
+that they should never fall into the hands of the English. These, like
+the lost books of Livy, had baffled the research of former historians;
+but these did I find the indefatigable Diedrich diligently deciphering.
+He was already a sage in year's and experience, I but an idle stripling;
+yet he did not despise my youth and ignorance, but took me kindly by the
+hand, and led me gently into those paths of local and traditional lore
+which he was so fond of exploring. I sat with him in his little chamber
+at the Roost, and watched the antiquarian patience and perseverance
+with which he deciphered those venerable Dutch documents, worse than
+Herculanean manuscripts. I sat with him by the spring, at the foot of
+the green bank, and listened to his heroic tales about the worthies of
+the olden time, the paladins of New Amsterdam. I accompanied him in his
+legendary researches about Tarrytown and Sing-Sing, and explored with
+him the spell-bound recesses of Sleepy Hollow. I was present at many of
+his conferences with the good old Dutch burghers and their wives, from
+whom he derived many of those marvelous facts not laid down in books
+or records, and which give such superior value and authenticity to his
+history, over all others that have been written concerning the New
+Netherlands.
+
+But let me check my proneness to dilate upon this favorite theme; I may
+recur to it hereafter. Suffice it to say, the intimacy thus formed,
+continued for a considerable time; and in company with the worthy
+Diedrich, I visited many of the places celebrated by his pen. The
+currents of our lives at length diverged. He remained at home to
+complete his mighty work, while a vagrant fancy led me to wander about
+the world. Many, many years elapsed, before I returned to the parent
+soil. In the interim, the venerable historian of the New Netherlands
+had been gathered to his fathers, but his name had risen to renown. His
+native city, that city in which he so much delighted, had decreed all
+manner of costly honors to his memory. I found his effigy imprinted upon
+new-year cakes, and devoured with eager relish by holiday urchins; a
+great oyster-house bore the name of "Knickerbocker Hall;" and I narrowly
+escaped the pleasure of being run over by a Knickerbocker omnibus!
+
+Proud of having associated with a man who had achieved such greatness,
+I now recalled our early intimacy with tenfold pleasure, and sought to
+revisit the scenes we had trodden together. The most important of
+these was the mansion of the Van Tassels, the Roost of the unfortunate
+Wolfert. Time, which changes all things, is but slow in its operations
+upon a Dutchman's dwelling. I found the venerable and quaint little
+edifice much as I had seen it during the sojourn of Diedrich. There
+stood his elbow-chair in the corner of the room he had occupied;
+the old-fashioned Dutch writing-desk at which he had pored over the
+chronicles of the Manhattoes; there was the old wooden chest, with the
+archives left by Wolfert Acker, many of which, however, had been fired
+off as wadding from the long duck gun of the Van Tassels. The scene
+around the mansion was still the same; the green bank; the spring beside
+which I had listened to the legendary narratives of the historian; the
+wild brook babbling down to the woody cove, and the overshadowing locust
+trees, half shutting out the prospect of the great Tappan Zee.
+
+As I looked round upon the scene, my heart yearned at the recollection
+of my departed friend, and I wistfully eyed the mansion which he had
+inhabited, and which was fast mouldering to decay. The thought struck me
+to arrest the desolating hand of Time; to rescue the historic pile from
+utter ruin, and to make it the closing scene of my wanderings; a quiet
+home, where I might enjoy "lust in rust" for the remainder of my days.
+It is true, the fate of the unlucky Wolfert passed across my mind; but
+I consoled myself with the reflection that I was a bachelor, and that I
+had no termagant wife to dispute the sovereignty of the Roost with me.
+
+I have become possessor of the Roost! I have repaired and renovated it
+with religious care, in the genuine Dutch style, and have adorned and
+illustrated it with sundry reliques of the glorious days of the New
+Netherlands. A venerable weathercock, of portly Dutch dimensions,
+which once battled with the wind on the top of the Stadt-House of New
+Amsterdam, in the time of Peter Stuyvesant, now erects its crest on
+the gable end of my edifice; a gilded horse in full gallop, once the
+weathercock of the great Vander Heyden Palace of Albany, now glitters in
+the sunshine, and veers with every breeze, on the peaked turret over
+my portal; my sanctum sanctorum is the chamber once honored by the
+illustrious Diedrich, and it is from his elbow-chair, and his identical
+old Dutch writing-desk, that I pen this rambling epistle.
+
+Here, then, have I set up my rest, surrounded by the recollections of
+early days, and the mementoes of the historian of the Manhattoes, with
+that glorious river before me, which flows with such majesty through his
+works, and which has ever been to me a river of delight.
+
+I thank God I was born on the banks of the Hudson! I think it an
+invaluable advantage to be born and brought up in the neighborhood of
+some grand and noble object in nature; a river, a lake, or a mountain.
+We make a friendship with it, we in a manner ally ourselves to it for
+life. It remains an object of our pride and affections, a rallying
+point, to call us home again after all our wanderings. "The things which
+we have learned in our childhood," says an old writer, "grow up with our
+souls, and unite themselves to it." So it is with the scenes among which
+we have passed our early days; they influence the whole course of our
+thoughts and feelings; and I fancy I can trace much of what is good and
+pleasant in my own heterogeneous compound to my early companionship with
+this glorious river. In the warmth of my youthful enthusiasm, I used to
+clothe it with moral attributes, and almost to give it a soul. I admired
+its frank, bold, honest character; its noble sincerity and perfect
+truth. Here was no specious, smiling surface, covering the dangerous
+sand-bar or perfidious rock; but a stream deep as it was broad, and
+bearing with honorable faith the bark that trusted to its waves. I
+gloried in its simple, quiet, majestic, epic flow; ever straight
+forward. Once, indeed, it turns aside for a moment, forced from its
+course by opposing mountains, but it struggles bravely through them, and
+immediately resumes its straightforward march. Behold, thought I, an
+emblem of a good man's course through life; ever simple, open, and
+direct; or if, overpowered by adverse circumstances, he deviate into
+error, it is but momentary; he soon recovers his onward and honorable
+career, and continues it to the end of his pilgrimage.
+
+Excuse this rhapsody, into which I have been betrayed by a revival of
+early feelings. The Hudson is, in a manner, my first and last love; and
+after all my wanderings and seeming infidelities, I return to it with a
+heart-felt preference over all the other rivers in the world. I seem
+to catch new life as I bathe in its ample billows and inhale the pure
+breezes of its hills. It is true, the romance of youth is past, that
+once spread illusions over every scene. I can no longer picture an
+Arcadia in every green valley; nor a fairy land among the distant
+mountains; nor a peerless beauty in every villa gleaming among the
+trees; but though the illusions of youth have faded from the landscape,
+the recollections of departed years and departed pleasures shed over it
+the mellow charm of evening sunshine.
+
+Permit me, then, Mr. Editor, through the medium of your work, to
+hold occasional discourse from my retreat with the busy world I have
+abandoned. I have much to say about what I have seen, heard, felt, and
+thought through the course of a varied and rambling life, and some
+lucubrations that have long been encumbering my portfolio; together with
+divers reminiscences of the venerable historian of the New Netherlands,
+that may not be unacceptable to those who have taken an interest in his
+writings, and are desirous of any thing that may cast a light back upon
+our early history. Let your readers rest assured of one thing, that,
+though retired from the world, I am not disgusted with it; and that if
+in my communings with it I do not prove very wise, I trust I shall at
+least prove very good-natured.
+
+Which is all at present, from
+
+Yours, etc.,
+
+GEOFFREY CRAYON.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
+
+Worthy Sir: In a preceding communication, I have given you some brief
+notice of Wolfert's Roost, the mansion where I first had the good
+fortune to become acquainted with the venerable historian of the New
+Netherlands. As this ancient edifice is likely to be the place whence
+I shall date many of my lucubrations, and as it is really a very
+remarkable little pile, intimately connected with all the great epochs
+of our local and national history, I have thought it but right to give
+some farther particulars concerning it. Fortunately, in rummaging a
+ponderous Dutch chest of drawers, which serves as the archives of the
+Roost, and in which are preserved many inedited manuscripts of Mr.
+KNICKERBOCKER, together with the precious records of New-Amsterdam,
+brought hither by Wolfert Acker at the downfall of the Dutch dynasty,
+as has been already mentioned, I found in one corner, among dried
+pumpkin-seeds, bunches of thyme, and pennyroyal, and crumbs of new-year
+cakes, a manuscript, carefully wrapped up in the fragment of an old
+parchment deed, but much blotted, and the ink grown foxy by time, which,
+on inspection, I discovered to be a faithful chronicle of the Roost. The
+hand-writing, and certain internal evidences, leave no doubt in my
+mind, that it is a genuine production of the venerable historian of the
+New-Netherlands, written, very probably, during his residence at the
+Roost, in gratitude for the hospitality of its proprietor. As such, I
+submit it for publication. As the entire chronicle is too long for the
+pages of your Magazine, and as it contains many minute particulars,
+which might prove tedious to the general reader, I have abbreviated and
+occasionally omitted some of its details; but may hereafter furnish
+them separately, should they seem to be required by the curiosity of an
+enlightened and document-hunting public. Respectfully yours, GEOFFREY
+CRAYON.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A CHRONICLE OF WOLFERT'S ROOST.
+
+FOUND AMONG THE PAPERS OF THE LATE DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER.
+
+About five-and-twenty miles from the ancient and renowned city of
+Manhattan, formerly called New-Amsterdam, and vulgarly called New-York,
+on the eastern bank of that expansion of the Hudson, known among
+Dutch mariners of yore, as the Tappan Zee, being in fact the great
+Mediterranean Sea of the New-Netherlands, stands a little old-fashioned
+stone mansion, all made up of gable-ends, and as full of angles and
+corners as an old cocked hat. Though but of small dimensions, yet, like
+many small people, it is of mighty spirit, and values itself greatly on
+its antiquity, being one of the oldest edifices, for its size, in the
+whole country. It claims to be an ancient seat of empire, I may rather
+say an empire in itself, and like all empires, great and small, has had
+its grand historical epochs. In speaking of this doughty and valorous
+little pile, I shall call it by its usual appellation of "The Roost;"
+though that is a name given to it in modern days, since it became the
+abode of the white man.
+
+Its origin, in truth, dates far back in that remote region commonly
+called the fabulous age, in which vulgar fact becomes mystified, and
+tinted up with delectable fiction. The eastern shore of the Tappan Sea
+was inhabited in those days by an unsophisticated race, existing in all
+the simplicity of nature; that is to say, they lived by hunting and
+fishing, and recreated themselves occasionally with a little tomahawking
+and scalping. Each stream that flows down from the hills into the
+Hudson, had its petty sachem, who ruled over a hand's-breadth of forest
+on either side, and had his seat of government at its mouth. The
+chieftain who ruled at the Roost, was not merely a great warrior, but a
+medicine-man, or prophet, or conjurer, for they all mean the same thing,
+in Indian parlance. Of his fighting propensities, evidences still
+remain, in various arrowheads of flint, and stone battle-axes,
+occasionally digged up about the Roost: of his wizard powers, we have a
+token in a spring which wells up at the foot of the bank, on the
+very margin of the river, which, it is said, was gifted by him with
+rejuvenating powers, something like the renowned Fountain of Youth in
+the Floridas, so anxiously but vainly sought after by the veteran Ponce
+de Leon. This story, however, is stoutly contradicted by an old Dutch
+matter-of-fact tradition, which declares that the spring in question was
+smuggled over from Holland in a churn, by Femmetie Van Slocum, wife of
+Goosen Garret Van Slocum, one of the first settlers, and that she took
+it up by night, unknown to her husband, from beside their farm-house
+near Rotterdam; being sure she should find no water equal to it in the
+new country--and she was right.
+
+The wizard sachem had a great passion for discussing territorial
+questions, and settling boundary lines; this kept him in continual feud
+with the neighboring sachems, each of whom stood up stoutly for his
+hand-breadth of territory; so that there is not a petty stream nor
+ragged hill in the neighborhood, that has not been the subject of long
+talks and hard battles. The sachem, however, as has been observed, was a
+medicine-man, as well as warrior, and vindicated his claims by arts
+as well as arms; so that, by dint of a little hard fighting here, and
+hocus-pocus there, he managed to extend his boundary-line from field
+to field and stream to stream, until he found himself in legitimate
+possession of that region of hills and valleys, bright fountains and
+limpid brooks, locked in by the mazy windings of the Neperan and the
+Pocantico. [Footnote: As every one may not recognize these boundaries
+by their original Indian names, it may be well to observe, that the
+Neperan is that beautiful stream, vulgarly called the Saw-Mill River,
+which, after winding gracefully for many miles through a lovely valley,
+shrouded by groves, and dotted by Dutch farm-houses, empties itself
+into the Hudson, at the ancient drop of Yonkers. The Pocantico is that
+hitherto nameless brook, that, rising among woody hills, winds in many a
+wizard maze through the sequestered banks of Sleepy Hollow. We owe it to
+the indefatigable researches of Mr. KNICKERBOCKER, that those beautiful
+streams are rescued from modern common-place, and reinvested with their
+ancient Indian names. The correctness of the venerable historian may be
+ascertained, by reference to the records of the original Indian grants
+to the Herr Frederick Philipsen, preserved in the county clerk's office,
+at White Plains.]
+
+This last-mentioned stream, or rather the valley through which it flows,
+was the most difficult of all his acquisitions. It lay half way to the
+strong-hold of the redoubtable sachem of Sing-Sing, and was claimed by
+him as an integral part of his domains. Many were the sharp conflicts
+between the rival chieftains for the sovereignty of this valley, and
+many the ambuscades, surprisals, and deadly onslaughts that took place
+among its fastnesses, of which it grieves me much that I cannot furnish
+the details for the gratification of those gentle but bloody-minded
+readers of both sexes, who delight in the romance of the tomahawk and
+scalping-knife. Suffice it to say that the wizard chieftain was at
+length victorious, though his victory is attributed in Indian tradition
+to a great medicine or charm by which he laid the sachem of Sing-Sing
+and his warriors asleep among the rocks and recesses of the valley,
+where they remain asleep to the present day with their bows and
+war-clubs beside them. This was the origin of that potent and drowsy
+spell which still prevails over the valley of the Pocantico, and which
+has gained it the well-merited appellation of Sleepy Hollow. Often, in
+secluded and quiet parts of that valley, where the stream is overhung by
+dark woods and rocks, the ploughman, on some calm and sunny day as
+he shouts to his oxen, is surprised at hearing faint shouts from the
+hill-sides in reply; being, it is said, the spell-bound warriors, who
+half start from their rocky couches and grasp their weapons, but sink to
+sleep again.
+
+The conquest of the Pocantico was the last triumph of the wizard sachem.
+Notwithstanding all his medicine and charms, he fell in battle in
+attempting to extend his boundary line to the east so as to take in the
+little wild valley of the Sprain, and his grave is still shown near the
+banks of that pastoral stream. He left, however, a great empire to his
+successors, extending along the Tappan Zee, from Yonkers quite to Sleepy
+Hollow; all which delectable region, if every one had his right, would
+still acknowledge allegiance to the lord of the Roost--whoever he might
+be. [Footnote: In recording the contest for the sovereignty of Sleepy
+Hollow, I have called one sachem by the modern name of his castle or
+strong-hold, viz.: Sing-Sing. This, I would observe for the sake
+of historical exactness, is a corruption of the old Indian name,
+O-sin-sing, or rather O-sin-song; that is to say, a place where any
+thing may be had for a song--a great recommendation for a market town.
+The modern and melodious alteration of the name to Sing-Sing is said to
+have been made in compliment to an eminent Methodist singing-master, who
+first introduced into the neighborhood the art of singing through the
+nose. D. K.]
+
+The wizard sachem was succeeded by a line of chiefs, of whom nothing
+remarkable remains on record. The last who makes any figure in history
+is the one who ruled here at the time of the discovery of the country by
+the white man. This sachem is said to have been a renowned trencherman,
+who maintained almost as potent a sway by dint of good feeding as his
+warlike predecessor had done by hard fighting. He diligently cultivated
+the growth of oysters along the aquatic borders of his territories, and
+founded those great oyster-beds which yet exist along the shores of the
+Tappan Zee. Did any dispute occur between him and a neighboring sachem,
+he invited him and all his principal sages and fighting-men to a solemn
+banquet, and seldom failed of feeding them into terms. Enormous heaps of
+oyster-shells, which encumber the lofty banks of the river, remain as
+monuments of his gastronomical victories, and have been occasionally
+adduced through mistake by amateur geologists from town, as additional
+proofs of the deluge. Modern investigators, who are making such
+indefatigable researches into our early history, have even affirmed that
+this sachem was the very individual on whom Master Hendrick Hudson and
+his mate, Robert Juet, made that sage and astounding experiment so
+gravely recorded by the latter in his narrative of the voyage: "Our
+master and his mate determined to try some of the cheefe men of the
+country whether they had any treacherie in them. So they took them down
+into the cabin and gave them so much wine and aqua vitae that they
+were all very merrie; one of them had his wife with him, which sate so
+modestly as any of our countrywomen would do in a strange place. In the
+end one of them was drunke; and that was strange to them, for they
+could not tell how to take it." [Footnote: See Juet's Journal, Purchas
+Pilgrim.]
+
+How far Master Hendrick Hudson and his worthy mate carried their
+experiment with the sachem's wife is not recorded, neither does the
+curious Robert Juet make any mention of the after-consequences of this
+grand moral test; tradition, however, affirms that the sachem on landing
+gave his modest spouse a hearty rib-roasting, according to the connubial
+discipline of the aboriginals; it farther affirms that he remained a
+hard drinker to the day of his death, trading away all his lands, acre
+by acre, for aqua vitae; by which means the Roost and all its domains,
+from Yonkers to Sleepy Hollow, came, in the regular course of trade and
+by right of purchase, into the possession of the Dutchmen.
+
+Never has a territorial right in these new countries been more
+legitimately and tradefully established; yet, I grieve to say, the
+worthy government of the New Netherlands was not suffered to enjoy this
+grand acquisition unmolested; for, in the year 1654, the local Yankees
+of Connecticut--those swapping, bargaining, squatting enemies of the
+Manhattoes--made a daring inroad into this neighborhood and founded a
+colony called Westchester, or, as the ancient Dutch records term it,
+Vest Dorp, in the right of one Thomas Pell, who pretended to have
+purchased the whole surrounding country of the Indians, and stood ready
+to argue their claims before any tribunal of Christendom.
+
+This happened during the chivalrous reign of Peter Stuyvesant, and it
+roused the ire of that gunpowder old hero; who, without waiting to
+discuss claims and titles, pounced at once upon the nest of nefarious
+squatters, carried off twenty-five of them in chains to the Manhattoes,
+nor did he stay his hand, nor give rest to his wooden leg, until he had
+driven every Yankee back into the bounds of Connecticut, or obliged
+him to acknowledge allegiance to their High Mightinesses. He then
+established certain out-posts, far in the Indian country, to keep an eye
+over these debateable lands; one of these border-holds was the Roost,
+being accessible from New Amsterdam by water, and easily kept supplied.
+The Yankees, however, had too great a hankering after this delectable
+region to give it up entirely. Some remained and swore allegiance to the
+Manhattoes; but, while they kept this open semblance of fealty, they
+went to work secretly and vigorously to intermarry and multiply, and by
+these nefarious means, artfully propagated themselves into possession of
+a wide tract of those open, arable parts of Westchester county, lying
+along the Sound, where their descendants may be found at the present
+day; while the mountainous regions along the Hudson, with the valleys
+of the Neperan and the Pocantico, are tenaciously held by the lineal
+descendants of the Copperheads.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The chronicle of the venerable Diedrich here goes on to relate how that,
+shortly after the above-mentioned events, the whole province of the New
+Netherlands 'was subjugated by the British; how that Wolfert Acker, one
+of the wrangling councillors of Peter Stuyvesant, retired in dudgeon to
+this fastness in the wilderness, determining to enjoy "lust in rust" for
+the remainder of his days, whence the place first received its name of
+Wolfert's Roost. As these and sundry other matters have been laid before
+the public in a preceding article, I shall pass them over, and resume
+the chronicle where it treats of matters not hitherto recorded:
+
+Like many men who retire from a worrying world, says DIEDRICH
+KNICKERBOCKER, to enjoy quiet in the country, Wolfert Acker soon found
+himself up to the ears in trouble. He had a termagant wife at home,
+and there was what is profanely called "the deuce to pay," abroad. The
+recent irruption of the Yankees into the bounds of the New Netherlands,
+had left behind it a doleful pestilence, such as is apt to follow the
+steps of invading armies. This was the deadly plague of witchcraft,
+which had long been prevalent to the eastward. The malady broke out at
+Vest Dorp, and threatened to spread throughout the country. The Dutch
+burghers along the Hudson, from Yonkers to Sleepy Hollow, hastened to
+nail horseshoes to their doors, which have ever been found of sovereign
+virtue to repel this awful visitation. This is the origin of the
+horse-shoes which may still be seen nailed to the doors of barns and
+farmhouses, in various parts of this sage and sober-thoughted region.
+
+The evil, however, bore hard upon the Roost; partly, perhaps, from its
+having in old times been subject to supernatural influences, during the
+sway of the Wizard Sachem; but it has always, in fact, been considered a
+fated mansion. The unlucky Wolfert had no rest day nor night. When the
+weather was quiet all over the country, the wind would howl and whistle
+round his roof; witches would ride and whirl upon his weathercocks, and
+scream down his chimneys. His cows gave bloody milk, and his horses
+broke bounds, and scampered into the woods. There were not wanting evil
+tongues to whisper that Wolfert's termagant wife had some tampering
+with the enemy; and that she even attended a witches' Sabbath in Sleepy
+Hollow; nay, a neighbor, who lived hard by, declared that he saw her
+harnessing a rampant broom-stick, and about to ride to the meeting;
+though others presume it was merely flourished in the course of one of
+her curtain lectures, to give energy and emphasis to a period. Certain
+it is, that Wolfert Acker nailed a horse-shoe to the front door, during
+one of her nocturnal excursions, to prevent her return; but as she
+re-entered the house without any difficulty, it is probable she was
+not so much of a witch as she was represented. [Footnote: HISTORICAL
+NOTE.--The annexed extracts from the early colonial records, relate to
+the irruption of witchcraft into Westchester county, as mentioned in the
+chronicle:
+
+"JULY 7, 1670.--Katharine Harryson, accused of witchcraft on complaint of
+Thomas Hunt and Edward Waters, in behalf of the town, who pray that she
+may be driven from the town of Westchester. The woman appears before
+the council.... She was a native of England, and had lived a year in
+Weathersfield, Connecticut, where she had been tried for witchcraft,
+found guilty by the jury, acquitted by the bench, and released out of
+prison, upon condition she would remove. Affair adjourned.
+
+"AUGUST 24.--Affair taken up again, when, being heard at large, it was
+referred to the general court of assize. Woman ordered to give security
+for good behavior," etc.
+
+In another place is the following entry:
+
+"Order given for Katharine Harryson, charged with witchcraft, to leave
+Westchester, as the inhabitants are uneasy at her residing there, and
+she is ordered to go off."]
+
+After the time of Wolfert Acker, a long interval elapses, about which
+but little is known. It is hoped, however, that the antiquarian
+researches so diligently making in every part of this new country, may
+yet throw some light upon what may be termed the Dark Ages of the Roost.
+
+The next period at which we find this venerable and eventful pile rising
+to importance, and resuming its old belligerent character, is during the
+revolutionary war. It was at that time owned by Jacob Van Tassel, or Van
+Texel, as the name was originally spelled, after the place in Holland
+which gave birth to this heroic line. He was strong-built, long-limbed,
+and as stout in soul as in body; a fit successor to the warrior sachem
+of yore, and, like him, delighting in extravagant enterprises and hardy
+deeds of arms. But, before I enter upon the exploits of this worthy cock
+of the Boost, it is fitting I should throw some light upon the state of
+the mansion, and of the surrounding country, at the time.
+
+The situation of the Roost is in the very heart of what was the
+debateable ground between the American and British lines, during the
+war. The British held possession of the city of New York, and the island
+of Manhattan on which it stands. The Americans drew up toward the
+Highlands, holding their headquarters at Peekskill. The intervening
+country, from Croton River to Spiting Devil Creek, was the debateable
+land, subject to be harried by friend and foe, like the Scottish borders
+of yore. It is a rugged country, with a line of rocky hills extending
+through it, like a back bone, sending ribs on either side; but among
+these rude hills are beautiful winding valleys, like those watered by
+the Pocantico and the Neperan. In the fastnesses of these hills,
+and along these valleys, exist a race of hard-headed, hard-handed,
+stout-hearted Dutchmen, descendants of the primitive Nederlanders. Most
+of these were strong whigs throughout the war, and have ever remained
+obstinately attached to the soil, and neither to be fought nor bought
+out of their paternal acres. Others were tories, and adherents to the
+old kingly rule; some of whom took refuge within the British lines,
+joined the royal bands of refugees, a name odious to the American ear,
+and occasionally returned to harass their ancient neighbors.
+
+In a little while, this debateable land was overrun by predatory bands
+from either side; sacking hen-roosts, plundering farm-houses, and
+driving off cattle. Hence arose those two great orders of border
+chivalry, the Skinners and the Cowboys, famous in the heroic annals of
+Westchester county. The former fought, or rather marauded, under the
+American, the latter under the British banner; but both, in the hurry of
+their military ardor, were apt to err on the safe side, and rob friend
+as well as foe. Neither of them stopped to ask the politics of horse or
+cow, which they drove into captivity; nor, when they wrung the neck of
+a rooster, did they trouble their heads to ascertain whether he were
+crowing for Congress or King George.
+
+While this marauding system prevailed on shore, the Great Tappan Sea,
+which washes this belligerent region, was domineered over by British
+frigates and other vessels of war, anchored here and there, to keep an
+eye upon the river, and maintain a communication between the various
+military posts. Stout galleys, also, armed with eighteen-pounders, and
+navigated with sails and oars, cruised about like hawks, ready to pounce
+upon their prey.
+
+All these were eyed with bitter hostility by the Dutch yeomanry along
+shore, who were indignant at seeing their great Mediterranean ploughed
+by hostile prows; and would occasionally throw up a mud breast-work on a
+point or promontory, mount an old iron field-piece, and fire away at the
+enemy, though the greatest harm was apt to happen to themselves from the
+bursting of their ordnance; nay, there was scarce a Dutchman along the
+river that would hesitate to fire with his long duck gun at any British
+cruiser that came within reach, as he had been accustomed to fire at
+water-fowl.
+
+I have been thus particular in my account of the times and neighborhood,
+that the reader might the more readily comprehend the surrounding
+dangers in this the Heroic Age of the Roost.
+
+It was commanded at the time, as I have already observed, by the stout
+Jacob Van Tassel. As I wish to be extremely accurate in this part of
+my chronicle, I beg that this Jacob Van Tassel of the Roost may not be
+confounded with another Jacob Van Tassel, commonly known in border story
+by the name of "Clump-footed Jake," a noted tory, and one of the refugee
+band of Spiting Devil. On the contrary, he of the Roost was a patriot of
+the first water, and, if we may take his own word for granted, a thorn
+in the side of the enemy. As the Roost, from its lonely situation on the
+water's edge, might be liable to attack, he took measures for defence.
+On a row of hooks above his fire-place, reposed his great piece of
+ordnance, ready charged and primed for action. This was a duck, or
+rather goose-gun, of unparalleled longitude, with which it was said he
+could kill a wild goose, though half-way across the Tappan Sea. Indeed,
+there are as many wonders told of this renowned gun, as of the enchanted
+weapons of the heroes of classic story.
+
+In different parts of the stone walls of his mansion, he had made
+loop-holes, through which he might fire upon an assailant. His wife was
+stout-hearted as himself, and could load as fast as he could fire; and
+then he had an ancient and redoubtable sister, Nochie Van Wurmer, a
+match, as he said, for the stoutest man in the country. Thus garrisoned,
+the little Roost was fit to stand a siege, and Jacob Van Tassel was the
+man to defend it to the last charge of powder.
+
+He was, as I have already hinted, of pugnacious propensities; and, not
+content with being a patriot at home, and fighting for the security of
+his own fireside, he extended his thoughts abroad, and entered into a
+confederacy with certain of the bold, hard-riding lads of Tarrytown,
+Petticoat Lane, and Sleepy Hollow, who formed a kind of Holy
+Brotherhood, scouring the country to clear it of Skinner and Cow-boy,
+and all other border vermin. The Roost was one of their rallying points.
+Did a band of marauders from Manhattan island come sweeping through the
+neighborhood, and driving off cattle, the stout Jacob and his compeers
+were soon clattering at their heels, and fortunate did the rogues esteem
+themselves if they could but get a part of their booty across the lines,
+or escape themselves without a rough handling. Should the mosstroopers
+succeed in passing with their cavalcade, with thundering tramp and dusty
+whirlwind, across Kingsbridge, the Holy Brotherhood of the Roost would
+rein up at that perilous pass, and, wheeling about, would indemnify
+themselves by foraging the refugee region of Morrisania.
+
+When at home at the Roost, the stout Jacob was not idle; but was prone
+to carry on a petty warfare of his own, for his private recreation and
+refreshment. Did he ever chance to espy, from his look-out place, a
+hostile ship or galley anchored or becalmed near shore, he would take
+down his long goose-gun from the hooks over the fire-place, sally
+out alone, and lurk along shore, dodging behind rocks and trees, and
+watching for hours together, like a veteran mouser intent on a rat-hole.
+So sure as a boat put off for shore, and came within shot, bang! went
+the great goose-gun; a shower of slugs and buck-shot whistled about the
+ears of the enemy, and before the boat could reach the shore, Jacob had
+scuttled up some woody ravine, and left no trace behind. About this
+time, the Roost experienced a vast accession of warlike importance, in
+being made one of the stations of the water-guard. This was a kind of
+aquatic corps of observation, composed of long, sharp, canoe-shaped
+boats, technically called whale-boats, that lay lightly on the water,
+and could be rowed with great rapidity. They were manned by resolute
+fellows, skilled at pulling an oar, or handling a musket. These lurked
+about in nooks and bays, and behind those long promontories which run
+out into the Tappan Sea, keeping a look-out, to give notice of the
+approach or movements of hostile ships. They roved about in pairs;
+sometimes at night, with muffled oars, gliding like spectres about
+frigates and guard-ships riding at anchor, cutting off any boats that
+made for shore, and keeping the enemy in constant uneasiness. These
+mosquito-cruisers generally kept aloof by day, so that their harboring
+places might not be discovered, but would pull quietly along, under
+shadow of the shore, at night, to take up their quarters at the Roost.
+Hither, at such time, would also repair the hard-riding lads of the
+hills, to hold secret councils of war with the "ocean chivalry;" and in
+these nocturnal meetings were concerted many of those daring forays, by
+land and water, that resounded throughout the border.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The chronicle here goes on to recount divers wonderful stories of the
+wars of the Roost, from which it would seem, that this little warrior
+nest carried the terror of its arms into every sea, from Spiting Devil
+Creek to Antony's Nose; that it even bearded the stout island of
+Manhattan, invading it at night, penetrating to its centre, and burning
+down the famous Delancey house, the conflagration of which makes such a
+blaze in revolutionary history. Nay more, in their extravagant daring,
+these cocks of the Roost meditated a nocturnal descent upon New York
+itself, to swoop upon the British commanders, Howe and Clinton, by
+surprise, bear them off captive, and perhaps put a triumphant close to
+the war!
+
+All these and many similar exploits are recorded by the worthy Diedrich,
+with his usual minuteness and enthusiasm, whenever the deeds in arms of
+his kindred Dutchmen are in question; but though most of these warlike
+stories rest upon the best of all authority, that of the warriors
+themselves, and though many of them are still current among the
+revolutionary patriarchs of this heroic neighborhood, yet I dare not
+expose them to the incredulity of a tamer and less chivalric age,
+Suffice it to say, the frequent gatherings at the Roost, and the hardy
+projects set on foot there, at length drew on it the fiery indignation
+of the enemy; and this was quickened by the conduct of the stout Jacob
+Van Tassel; with whose valorous achievements we resume the course of the
+chronicle.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THIS doughty Dutchman, continues the sage DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER, was
+not content with taking a share in all the magnanimous enterprises
+concocted at the Roost, but still continued his petty warfare along
+shore. A series of exploits at length raised his confidence in his
+prowess to such a height, that he began to think himself and his
+goose-gun a match for any thing. Unluckily, in the course of one of his
+prowlings, he descried a British transport aground, not far from shore,
+with her stern swung toward the land, within point-blank shot. The
+temptation was too great to be resisted; bang! as usual, went the great
+goose-gun, shivering the cabin windows, and driving all hands forward.
+Bang! bang! the shots were repeated. The reports brought several
+sharp-shooters of the neighborhood to the spot; before the transport
+could bring a gun to bear, or land a boat, to take revenge, she was
+soundly peppered, and the coast evacuated. This was the last of Jacob's
+triumphs. He fared like some heroic spider, that has unwittingly
+ensnared a hornet, to his immortal glory, perhaps, but to the utter ruin
+of his web.
+
+It was not long after this, during the absence of Jacob Van Tassel on
+one of his forays, and when no one was in garrison but his stout-hearted
+spouse, his redoubtable sister, Nochie Van Wurmer, and a strapping negro
+wench, called Dinah, that an armed vessel came to anchor off the Roost,
+and a boat full of men pulled to shore. The garrison flew to arms, that
+is to say, to mops, broom-sticks, shovels, tongs, and all kinds of
+domestic weapons; for, unluckily, the great piece of ordnance, the
+goose-gun, was absent with its owner. Above all, a vigorous defence was
+made with that most potent of female weapons, the tongue. Never did
+invaded hen-roost make a more vociferous outcry. It was all in vain. The
+house was sacked and plundered, fire was set to each corner, and in a
+few moments its blaze shed a baleful light far over the Tappan Sea. The
+invaders then pounced upon the blooming Laney Van Tassel, the beauty of
+the Roost, and endeavored to bear her off to the boat. But here was the
+real tug of war. The mother, the aunt, and the strapping negro wench,
+all flew to the rescue. The struggle continued down to the very water's
+edge; when a voice from the armed vessel at anchor, ordered the spoilers
+to let go their hold; they relinquished their prize, jumped into their
+boats, and pulled off, and the heroine of the Roost escaped with a mere
+rumpling of the feathers.
+
+The fear of tiring my readers, who may not take such an interest as
+myself in these heroic themes, induces me to close here my extracts from
+this precious chronicle of the venerable Diedrich. Suffice it briefly to
+say, that shortly after the catastrophe of the Roost, Jacob Van Tassel,
+in the course of one of his forays, fell into the hands of the British;
+was sent prisoner to New York, and was detained in captivity for
+the greater part of the war. In the mean time, the Roost remained a
+melancholy ruin; its stone walls and brick chimneys alone standing,
+blackened by fire, and the resort of bats and owlets. It was not until
+the return of peace, when this belligerent neighborhood once more
+resumed its quiet agricultural pursuits, that the stout Jacob sought the
+scene of his triumphs and disasters; rebuilt the Roost, and reared again
+on high its glittering weather-cocks.
+
+Does any one want further particulars of the fortunes of this eventful
+little pile? Let him go to the fountain-head, and drink deep of historic
+truth. Reader! the stout Jacob Van Tassel still lives, a venerable,
+gray-headed patriarch of the revolution, now in his ninety-fifth year!
+He sits by his fireside, in the ancient city of the Manhattoes, and
+passes the long winter evenings, surrounded by his children, and
+grand-children, and great-grand-children, all listening to his tales of
+the border wars, and the heroic days of the Roost. His great goose-gun,
+too, is still in existence, having been preserved for many years in a
+hollow tree, and passed from hand to hand among the Dutch burghers, as a
+precious relique of the revolution. It is now actually in possession of
+a contemporary of the stout Jacob, one almost his equal in years, who
+treasures it up at his house in the Bowerie of New-Amsterdam, hard by
+the ancient rural retreat of the chivalric Peter Stuyvesant. I am not
+without hopes of one day seeing this formidable piece of ordinance
+restored to its proper station in the arsenal of the Roost. Before
+closing this historic document, I cannot but advert to certain notions
+and traditions concerning the venerable pile in question. Old-time
+edifices are apt to gather odd fancies and superstitions about them, as
+they do moss and weather-stains; and this is in a neighborhood a little
+given to old-fashioned notions, and who look upon the Roost as somewhat
+of a fated mansion. A lonely, rambling, down-hill lane leads to it,
+overhung with trees, with a wild brook dashing along, and crossing
+and re-crossing it. This lane I found some of the good people of the
+neighborhood shy of treading at night; why, I could not for a long time
+ascertain; until I learned that one or two of the rovers of the Tappan
+Sea, shot by the stout Jacob during the war, had been buried hereabout,
+in unconsecrated ground.
+
+Another local superstition is of a less gloomy kind, and one which I
+confess I am somewhat disposed to cherish. The Tappan Sea, in front of
+the Roost, is about three miles wide, bordered by a lofty line of waving
+and rocky hills. Often, in the still twilight of a summer evening, when
+the sea is like glass, with the opposite hills throwing their purple
+shadows half across it, a low sound is heard, as of the steady, vigorous
+pull of oars, far out in the middle of the stream, though not a boat
+is to be descried. This I should have been apt to ascribe to some boat
+rowed along under the shadows of the western shore, for sounds are
+conveyed to a great distance by water, at such quiet hours, and I can
+distinctly hear the baying of the watch-dogs at night, from the farms on
+the sides of the opposite mountains. The ancient traditionists of the
+neighborhood, however, religiously ascribed these sounds to a judgment
+upon one Rumbout Van Dam, of Spiting Devil, who danced and drank late
+one Saturday night, at a Dutch quilting frolic, at Kakiat, and set off
+alone for home in his boat, on the verge of Sunday morning; swearing he
+would not land till he reached Spiting Devil, if it took him a month of
+Sundays. He was never seen afterward, but is often heard plying his oars
+across the Tappan Sea, a Flying Dutchman on a small scale, suited to
+the size of his cruising-ground; being doomed to ply between Kakiat and
+Spiting Devil till the day of judgment, but never to reach the land.
+
+There is one room in the mansion which almost overhangs the river, and
+is reputed to be haunted by the ghost of a young lady who died of love
+and green apples. I have been awakened at night by the sound of oars and
+the tinkling of guitars beneath the window; and seeing a boat loitering
+in the moonlight, have been tempted to believe it the Flying Dutchman of
+Spiting Devil, and to try whether a silver bullet might not put an end
+to his unhappy cruisings; but, happening to recollect that there was a
+living young lady in the haunted room, who might be terrified by the
+report of fire-arms, I have refrained from pulling trigger.
+
+As to the enchanted fountain, said to have been gifted by the wizard
+sachem with supernatural powers, it still wells up at the foot of the
+bank, on the margin of the river, and goes by the name of the Indian
+spring; but I have my doubts as to its rejuvenating powers, for though
+I have drank oft and copiously of it, I cannot boast that I find myself
+growing younger.
+
+GEOFFREY CRAYON.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+SLEEPY HOLLOW.
+
+BY GEOFFREY CRAYON, GENT.
+
+HAVING pitched my tent, probably for the remainder of my days, in the
+neighborhood of Sleepy Hollow, I am tempted to give some few particulars
+concerning that spell-bound region; especially as it has risen to
+historic importance under the pen of my revered friend and master, the
+sage historian of the New Netherlands. Beside, I find the very existence
+of the place has been held in question by many; who, judging from its
+odd name and from the odd stories current among the vulgar concerning
+it, have rashly deemed the whole to be a fanciful creation, like the
+Lubber Land of mariners. I must confess there is some apparent cause for
+doubt, in consequence of the coloring given by the worthy Diedrich to
+his descriptions of the Hollow; who, in this instance, has departed
+a little from his usually sober if not severe style; beguiled, very
+probably, by his predilection for the haunts of his youth, and by a
+certain lurking taint of romance whenever any thing connected with the
+Dutch was to be described. I shall endeavor to make up for this amiable
+error on the part of my venerable and venerated friend by presenting the
+reader with a more precise and statistical account of the Hollow; though
+I am not sure that I shall not be prone to lapse in the end into the
+very error I am speaking of, so potent is the witchery of the theme.
+
+I believe it was the very peculiarity of its name and the idea of
+something mystic and dreamy connected with it that first led me in my
+boyish ramblings into Sleepy Hollow. The character of the valley seemed
+to answer to the name; the slumber of past ages apparently reigned over
+it; it had not awakened to the stir of improvement which had put all the
+rest of the world in a bustle. Here reigned good, old long-forgotten
+fashions; the men were in home-spun garbs, evidently the product of
+their own farms and the manufacture of their own wives; the women were
+in primitive short gowns and petticoats, with the venerable sun-bonnets
+of Holland origin. The lower part of the valley was cut up into small
+farms, each consisting of a little meadow and corn-field; an orchard
+of sprawling, gnarled apple-trees, and a garden, where the rose, the
+marigold, and the hollyhock were permitted to skirt the domains of the
+capacious cabbage, the aspiring pea, and the portly pumpkin. Each had
+its prolific little mansion teeming with children; with an old hat
+nailed against the wall for the housekeeping wren; a motherly hen, under
+a coop on the grass-plot, clucking to keep around her a brood of vagrant
+chickens; a cool, stone well, with the moss-covered bucket suspended
+to the long balancing-pole, according to the antediluvian idea of
+hydraulics; and its spinning-wheel humming within doors, the patriarchal
+music of home manufacture.
+
+The Hollow at that time was inhabited by families which had existed
+there from the earliest times, and which, by frequent intermarriage, had
+become so interwoven, as to make a kind of natural commonwealth. As
+the families had grown larger the farms had grown smaller; every new
+generation requiring a new subdivision, and few thinking of swarming
+from the native hive. In this way that happy golden mean had been
+produced, so much extolled by the poets, in which there was no gold and
+very little silver. One thing which doubtless contributed to keep up
+this amiable mean was a general repugnance to sordid labor. The sage
+inhabitants of Sleepy Hollow had read in their Bible, which was the only
+book they studied, that labor was originally inflicted upon man as a
+punishment of sin; they regarded it, therefore, with pious abhorrence,
+and never humiliated themselves to it but in cases of extremity. There
+seemed, in fact, to be a league and covenant against it throughout
+the Hollow as against a common enemy. Was any one compelled by dire
+necessity to repair his house, mend his fences, build a barn, or get in
+a harvest, he considered it a great evil that entitled him to call in
+the assistance or his friend? He accordingly proclaimed a 'bee' or
+rustic gathering, whereupon all his neighbors hurried to his aid like
+faithful allies; attacked the task with the desperate energy of lazy men
+eager to overcome a job; and, when it was accomplished, fell to eating
+and drinking, fiddling and dancing for very joy that so great an amount
+of labor had been vanquished with so little sweating of the brow.
+
+Yet, let it not be supposed that this worthy community was without its
+periods of arduous activity. Let but a flock of wild pigeons fly across
+the valley and all Sleepy Hollow was wide awake in an instant.
+The pigeon season had arrived. Every gun and net was forthwith in
+requisition. The flail was thrown down on the barn floor; the spade
+rusted in the garden; the plough stood idle in the furrow; every one was
+to the hillside and stubble-field at daybreak to shoot or entrap the
+pigeons in their periodical migrations.
+
+So, likewise, let but the word be given that the shad were ascending the
+Hudson, and the worthies of the Hollow were to be seen launched in boats
+upon the river setting great stakes, and stretching their nets like
+gigantic spider-webs half across the stream to the great annoyance
+of navigators. Such are the wise provisions of Nature, by which she
+equalizes rural affairs. A laggard at the plough is often extremely
+industrious with the fowling-piece and fishing-net; and, whenever a man
+is an indifferent farmer, he is apt to be a first-rate sportsman. For
+catching shad and wild pigeons there were none throughout the country to
+compare with the lads of Sleepy Hollow.
+
+As I have observed, it was the dreamy nature of the name that first
+beguiled me in the holiday rovings of boyhood into this sequestered
+region. I shunned, however, the populous parts of the Hollow, and sought
+its retired haunts far in the foldings of the hills, where the Pocantico
+"winds its wizard stream" sometimes silently and darkly through solemn
+woodlands; sometimes sparkling between grassy borders in fresh, green
+meadows; sometimes stealing along the feet of rugged heights under
+the balancing sprays of beech and chestnut trees. A thousand crystal
+springs, with which this neighborhood abounds, sent down from the
+hill-sides their whimpering rills, as if to pay tribute to the
+Pocantico. In this stream I first essayed my unskilful hand at angling.
+I loved to loiter along it with rod in hand, watching my float as it
+whirled amid the eddies or drifted into dark holes under twisted roots
+and sunken logs, where the largest fish are apt to lurk. I delighted
+to follow it into the brown accesses of the woods; to throw by my
+fishing-gear and sit upon rocks beneath towering oaks and clambering
+grape-vines; bathe my feet in the cool current, and listen to the summer
+breeze playing among the tree-tops. My boyish fancy clothed all nature
+around me with ideal charms, and peopled it with the fairy beings I
+had read of in poetry and fable. Here it was I gave full scope to my
+incipient habit of day dreaming, and to a certain propensity, to weave
+up and tint sober realities with my own whims and imaginings, which has
+sometimes made life a little too much like an Arabian tale to me, and
+this "working-day world" rather like a region of romance.
+
+The great gathering-place of Sleepy Hollow in those days was the church.
+It stood outside of the Hollow, near the great highway, on a green bank
+shaded by trees, with the Pocantico sweeping round it and emptying
+itself into a spacious mill-pond. At that time the Sleepy Hollow
+church was the only place of worship for a wide neighborhood. It was
+a venerable edifice, partly of stone and partly of brick, the latter
+having been brought from Holland in the early days of the province,
+before the arts in the New Netherlands could aspire to such a
+fabrication. On a stone above the porch were inscribed the names of the
+founders, Frederick Filipsen, a mighty patroon of the olden time, who
+reigned over a wide extent of this neighborhood and held his seat of
+power at Yonkers; and his wife, Katrina Van Courtlandt, of the no less
+potent line of the Van Courtlandts of Croton, who lorded it over a great
+part of the Highlands.
+
+The capacious pulpit, with its wide-spreading sounding-board, were
+likewise early importations from Holland; as also the communion-table,
+of massive form and curious fabric. The same might be said of a
+weather-cock perched on top of the belfry, and which was considered
+orthodox in all windy matters, until a small pragmatical rival was set
+up on the other end of the church above the chancel. This latter bore,
+and still bears, the initials of Frederick Filipsen, and assumed great
+airs in consequence. The usual contradiction ensued that always exists
+among church weather-cocks, which can never be brought to agree as to
+the point from which the wind blows, having doubtless acquired, from
+their position, the Christian propensity to schism and controversy.
+
+Behind the church, and sloping up a gentle acclivity, was its capacious
+burying-ground, in which slept the earliest fathers of this rural
+neighborhood. Here were tombstones of the rudest sculpture; on which
+were inscribed, in Dutch, the names and virtues of many of the first
+settlers, with their portraitures curiously carved in similitude of
+cherubs. Long rows of grave-stones, side by side, of similar names,
+but various dates, showed that generation after generation of the same
+families had followed each other and been garnered together in this last
+gathering-place of kindred.
+
+Let me speak of this quiet grave-yard with all due reverence, for I owe
+it amends for the heedlessness of my boyish days. I blush to acknowledge
+the thoughtless frolic with which, in company with other whipsters, I
+have sported within its sacred bounds during the intervals of worship;
+chasing butterflies, plucking wild flowers, or vying with each other
+who could leap over the tallest tomb-stones, until checked by the stern
+voice of the sexton.
+
+The congregation was, in those days, of a really rural character. City
+fashions were as yet unknown, or unregarded, by the country people
+of the neighborhood. Steam-boats had not as yet confounded town with
+country. A weekly market-boat from Tarry town, the "Farmers' Daughter,"
+navigated by the worthy Gabriel Requa, was the only communication
+between all these parts and the metropolis. A rustic belle in those days
+considered a visit to the city in much the same light as one of our
+modern fashionable ladies regards a visit to Europe; an event that may
+possibly take place once in the course of a lifetime, but to be hoped
+for, rather than expected. Hence the array of the congregation was
+chiefly after the primitive fashions existing in Sleepy Hollow; or if,
+by chance, there was a departure from the Dutch sun-bonnet, or the
+apparition of a bright gown of flowered calico, it caused quite a
+sensation throughout the church. As the dominie generally preached by
+the hour, a bucket of water was providently placed on a bench near the
+door, in summer, with a tin cup beside it, for the solace of those who
+might be athirst, either from the heat of the weather, or the drouth of
+the sermon.
+
+Around the pulpit, and behind the communion-table, sat the elders of the
+church, reverend, gray-headed, leathern-visaged men, whom I regarded
+with awe, as so many apostles. They were stern in their sanctity, kept
+a vigilant eye upon my giggling companions and myself, and shook a
+rebuking finger at any boyish device to relieve the tediousness of
+compulsory devotion. Vain, however, were all their efforts at vigilance.
+Scarcely had the preacher held forth for half an hour, on one of his
+interminable sermons, than it seemed as if the drowsy influence of
+Sleepy Hollow breathed into the place; one by one the congregation sank
+into slumber; the sanctified elders leaned back in their pews, spreading
+their handkerchiefs over their faces, as if to keep off the flies; while
+the locusts in the neighboring trees would spin out their sultry summer
+notes, as if in imitation of the sleep-provoking tones of the dominie.
+
+I have thus endeavored to give an idea of Sleepy Hollow and its church,
+as I recollect them to have been in the days of my boyhood. It was in
+my stripling days, when a few years had passed over my head, that I
+revisited them, in company with the venerable Diedrich. I shall never
+forget the antiquarian reverence with which that sage and excellent man
+contemplated the church. It seemed as if all his pious enthusiasm for
+the ancient Dutch dynasty swelled within his bosom at the sight.
+The tears stood in his eyes, as he regarded the pulpit and the
+communion-table; even the very bricks that had come from the mother
+country, seemed to touch a filial chord within his bosom. He almost
+bowed in deference to the stone above the porch, containing the names
+of Frederick Filipsen and Katrina Van Courtlandt, regarding it as the
+linking together of those patronymic names, once so famous along the
+banks of the Hudson; or rather as a key-stone, binding that mighty Dutch
+family connexion of yore, one foot of which rested on Yonkers, and the
+other on the Groton. Nor did he forbear to notice with admiration, the
+windy contest which had been carried on, since time immemorial, and with
+real Dutch perseverance, between the two weather-cocks; though I could
+easily perceive he coincided with the one which had come from Holland.
+
+Together we paced the ample church-yard. With deep veneration would
+he turn down the weeds and brambles that obscured the modest brown
+grave-stones, half sunk in earth, on which were recorded, in Dutch, the
+names of the patriarchs of ancient days, the Ackers, the Van Tassels,
+and the Van Warts. As we sat on one of the tomb-stones, he recounted to
+me the exploits of many of these worthies; and my heart smote me, when I
+heard of their great doings in days of yore, to think how heedlessly I
+had once sported over their graves.
+
+From the church, the venerable Diedrich proceeded in his researches up
+the Hollow. The genius of the place seemed to hail its future historian.
+All nature was alive with gratulation. The quail whistled a greeting
+from the corn-field; the robin carolled a song of praise from the
+orchard; the loquacious catbird flew from bush to bush, with restless
+wing, proclaiming his approach in every variety of note, and anon would
+whisk about, and perk inquisitively into his face, as if to get a
+knowledge of his physiognomy; the wood-pecker, also, tapped a tattoo on
+the hollow apple-tree, and then peered knowingly round the trunk, to
+see how the great Diedrich relished his salutation; while the
+ground-squirrel scampered along the fence, and occasionally whisked his
+tail over his head, by way of a huzza!
+
+The worthy Diedrich pursued his researches in the valley with
+characteristic devotion; entering familiarly into the various cottages,
+and gossiping with the simple folk, in the style of their own
+simplicity. I confess my heart yearned with admiration, to see so great
+a man, in his eager quest after knowledge, humbly demeaning himself
+to curry favor with the humblest; sitting patiently on a three-legged
+stool, patting the children, and taking a purring grimalkin on his lap,
+while he conciliated the good-will of the old Dutch housewife, and drew
+from her long ghost stories, spun out to the humming accompaniment of
+her wheel.
+
+His greatest treasure of historic lore, however, was discovered in an
+old goblin-looking mill, situated among rocks and waterfalls, with
+clanking wheels, and rushing streams, and all kinds of uncouth noises.
+A horse-shoe, nailed to the door to keep off witches and evil spirits,
+showed that this mill was subject to awful visitations. As we approached
+it, an old negro thrust his head, all dabbled with flour, out of a hole
+above the water-wheel, and grinned, and rolled his eyes, and looked like
+the very hobgoblin of the place. The illustrious Diedrich fixed upon
+him, at once, as the very one to give him that invaluable kind of
+information never to be acquired from books. He beckoned him from his
+nest, sat with him by the hour on a broken mill-stone, by the side of
+the waterfall, heedless of the noise of the water, and the clatter
+of the mill; and I verily believe it was to his conference with this
+African sage, and the precious revelations of the good dame of the
+spinning-wheel, that we are indebted for the surprising though true
+history of Ichabod Crane and the headless horseman, which has since
+astounded and edified the world.
+
+But I have said enough of the good old times of my youthful days; let me
+speak of the Hollow as I found it, after an absence of many years,
+when it was kindly given me once more to revisit the haunts of my
+boyhood. It was a genial day, as I approached that fated region. The
+warm sunshine was tempered by a slight haze, so as to give a dreamy
+effect to the landscape. Not a breath of air shook the foliage. The
+broad Tappan Sea was without a ripple, and the sloops, with drooping
+sails, slept on its grassy bosom. Columns of smoke, from burning
+brush-wood, rose lazily from the folds of the hills, on the opposite
+side of the river, and slowly expanded in mid-air. The distant lowing
+of a cow, or the noontide crowing of a cock, coming faintly to the ear,
+seemed to illustrate, rather than disturb, the drowsy quiet of the
+scene.
+
+I entered the hollow with a beating heart. Contrary to my apprehensions,
+I found it but little changed. The march of intellect, which had
+made such rapid strides along every river and highway, had not yet,
+apparently, turned down into this favored valley. Perhaps the wizard
+spell of ancient days still reigned over the place, binding up the
+faculties of the inhabitants in happy contentment with things as they
+had been handed down to them from yore. There were the same little farms
+and farmhouses, with their old hats for the housekeeping wren; their
+stone wells, moss-covered buckets, and long balancing poles. There were
+the same little rills, whimpering down to pay their tributes to the
+Pocantico; while that wizard stream still kept on its course, as of old,
+through solemn woodlands and fresh green meadows: nor were there wanting
+joyous holiday boys to loiter along its banks, as I have done; throw
+their pin-hooks in the stream, or launch their mimic barks. I watched
+them with a kind of melancholy pleasure, wondering whether they were
+under the same spell of the fancy that once rendered this valley a fairy
+land to me. Alas! alas! to me every thing now stood revealed in its
+simple reality. The echoes no longer answered with wizard tongues; the
+dream of youth was at an end; the spell of Sleepy Hollow was broken!
+
+I sought the ancient church on the following Sunday. There it stood, on
+its green bank, among the trees; the Pocantico swept by it in a deep
+dark stream, where I had so often angled; there expanded the mill-pond,
+as of old, with the cows under the willows on its margin, knee-deep in
+water, chewing the cud, and lashing the flies from their sides with
+their tails. The hand of improvement, however, had been busy with the
+venerable pile. The pulpit, fabricated in Holland, had been superseded
+by one of modern construction, and the front of the semi-Gothic
+edifice was decorated by a semi-Grecian portico. Fortunately, the two
+weather-cocks remained undisturbed on their perches at each end of the
+church, and still kept up a diametrical opposition to each other on all
+points of windy doctrine.
+
+On entering the church the changes of time continued to be apparent. The
+elders round the pulpit were men whom I had left in the gamesome frolic
+of their youth, but who had succeeded to the sanctity of station of
+which they once had stood so much in awe. What most struck my eye was
+the change in the female part of the congregation. Instead of the
+primitive garbs of homespun manufacture and antique Dutch fashion,
+I beheld French sleeves, French capes, and French collars, and a
+fearful-fluttering of French ribbands.
+
+When the service was ended I sought the church-yard, in which I had
+sported in my unthinking days of boyhood. Several of the modest brown
+stones, on which were recorded in Dutch the names and virtues of the
+patriarchs, had disappeared, and had been succeeded by others of white
+marble, with urns and wreaths, and scraps of English tomb-stone poetry,
+marking the intrusion of taste and literature and the English language
+in this once unsophisticated Dutch neighborhood.
+
+As I was stumbling about among these silent yet eloquent memorials of
+the dead, I came upon names familiar to me; of those who had paid
+the debt of nature during the long interval of my absence. Some, I
+remembered, my companions in boyhood, who had sported with me on the
+very sod under which they were now mouldering; others who in those days
+had been the flower of the yeomanry, figuring in Sunday finery on the
+church green; others, the white-haired elders of the sanctuary, once
+arrayed in awful sanctity around the pulpit, and ever ready to rebuke
+the ill-timed mirth of the wanton stripling who, now a man, sobered by
+years and schooled by vicissitudes, looked down pensively upon their
+graves. "Our fathers," thought I, "where are they!--and the prophets,
+can they live for ever!"
+
+I was disturbed in my meditations by the noise of a troop of idle
+urchins, who came gambolling about the place where I had so often
+gambolled. They were checked, as I and my playmates had often been, by
+the voice of the sexton, a man staid in years and demeanor. I looked
+wistfully in his face; had I met him any where else, I should probably
+have passed him by without remark; but here I was alive to the traces of
+former times, and detected in the demure features of this guardian of
+the sanctuary the lurking lineaments of one of the very playmates I have
+alluded to. We renewed our acquaintance. He sat down beside me, on one
+of the tomb-stones over which we had leaped in our juvenile sports, and
+we talked together about our boyish days, and held edifying discourse
+on the instability of all sublunary things, as instanced in the scene
+around us. He was rich in historic lore, as to the events of the last
+thirty years and the circumference of thirty miles, and from him I
+learned the appalling revolution that was taking place throughout the
+neighborhood. All this I clearly perceived he attributed to the boasted
+march of intellect, or rather to the all-pervading influence of steam.
+He bewailed the times when the only communication with town was by the
+weekly market-boat, the "Farmers' Daughter," which, under the pilotage
+of the worthy Gabriel Requa, braved the perils of the Tappan Sea. Alas!
+Gabriel and the "Farmer's Daughter" slept in peace. Two steamboats now
+splashed and paddled up daily to the little rural port of Tarrytown. The
+spirit of speculation and improvement had seized even upon that once
+quiet and unambitious little dorp. The whole neighborhood was laid out
+into town lots. Instead of the little tavern below the hill, where
+the farmers used to loiter on market days and indulge in cider and
+gingerbread, an ambitious hotel, with cupola and verandas, now crested
+the summit, among churches built in the Grecian and Gothic styles,
+showing the great increase of piety and polite taste in the
+neighborhood. As to Dutch dresses and sun-bonnets, they were no longer
+tolerated, or even thought of; not a farmer's daughter but now went to
+town for the fashions; nay, a city milliner had recently set up in the
+village, who threatened to reform the heads of the whole neighborhood.
+
+I had heard enough! I thanked my old playmate for his intelligence, and
+departed from the Sleepy Hollow church with the sad conviction that I
+had beheld the last lingerings of the good old Dutch times in this once
+favored region. If any thing were wanting to confirm this impression,
+it would be the intelligence which has just reached me, that a bank is
+about to be established in the aspiring little port just mentioned. The
+fate of the neighborhood is therefore sealed. I see no hope of averting
+it. The golden mean is at an end, The country is suddenly to be deluged
+with wealth. The late simple farmers are to become bank directors and
+drink claret and champagne; and their wives and daughters to figure in
+French hats and feathers; for French wines and French fashions commonly
+keep pace with paper money. How can I hope that even Sleepy Hollow can
+escape the general inundation? In a little while, I fear the slumber of
+ages will be at end--the strum of the piano will succeed to the hum of
+the spinning-wheel; the trill of the Italian opera to the nasal quaver
+of Ichabod Crane; and the antiquarian visitor to the Hollow, in the
+petulance of his disappointment, may pronounce all that I have recorded
+of that once favored region a fable.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE BIRDS OF SPRING.
+
+BY GEOFFREY CRAYON, GENT.
+
+My quiet residence in the country, aloof from fashion, politics, and the
+money market, leaves me rather at a loss for important occupation, and
+drives me to the study of nature, and other low pursuits. Having few
+neighbors, also, on whom to keep a watch, and exercise my habits of
+observation, I am fain to amuse myself with prying into the domestic
+concerns and peculiarities of the animals around me; and, during the
+present season, have derived considerable entertainment from certain
+sociable little birds, almost the only visitors we have, during this
+early part of the year.
+
+Those who have passed the winter in the country, are sensible of the
+delightful influences that accompany the earliest indications of spring;
+and of these, none are more delightful than the first notes of the
+birds. There is one modest little sad-colored bird, much resembling a
+wren, which came about the house just on the skirts of winter, when not
+a blade of grass was to be seen, and when a few prematurely warm days
+had given a flattering foretaste of soft weather. He sang early in the
+dawning, long before sun-rise, and late in the evening, just before the
+closing in of night, his matin and his vesper hymns. It is true, he sang
+occasionally throughout the day; but at these still hours, his song was
+more remarked. He sat on a leafless tree, just before the window, and
+warbled forth his notes, free and simple, but singularly sweet, with
+something of a plaintive tone, that heightened their effect. The first
+morning that he was heard, was a joyous one among the young folks of my
+household. The long, deathlike sleep of winter was at an end; nature
+was once more awakening; they now promised themselves the immediate
+appearance of buds and blossoms. I was reminded of the tempest-tossed
+crew of Columbus, when, after their long dubious voyage, the field birds
+came singing round the ship, though still far at sea, rejoicing them
+with the belief of the immediate proximity of land. A sharp return of
+winter almost silenced my little songster, and dashed the hilarity of
+the household; yet still he poured forth, now and then, a few plaintive
+notes, between the frosty pipings of the breeze, like gleams of sunshine
+between wintry clouds.
+
+I have consulted my book of ornithology in vain, to find out the name
+of this kindly little bird, who certainly deserves honor and favor far
+beyond his modest pretensions. He comes like the lowly violet, the most
+unpretending, but welcomest of flowers, breathing the sweet promise of
+the early year.
+
+Another of our feathered visitors, who follows close upon the steps of
+winter, is the Pe-wit, or Pe-wee, or Phoebe-bird; for he is called by
+each of these names, from a fancied resemblance to the sound of his
+monotonous note. He is a sociable little being, and seeks the habitation
+of man. A pair of them have built beneath my porch, and have reared
+several broods there for two years past, their nest being never
+disturbed. They arrive early in the spring, just when the crocus and
+the snow-drop begin to peep forth. Their first chirp spreads gladness
+through the house. "The Phoebe-birds have come!" is heard on all sides;
+they are welcomed back like members of the family, and speculations are
+made upon where they have been, and what countries they have seen
+during their long absence. Their arrival is the more cheering, as it is
+pronounced, by the old weather-wise people of the country, the sure sign
+that the severe frosts are at an end, and that the gardener may resume
+his labors with confidence.
+
+About this time, too, arrives the blue-bird, so poetically yet truly
+described by Wilson. His appearance gladdens the whole landscape.
+You hear his soft warble in every field. He sociably approaches your
+habitation, and takes up his residence in your vicinity. But why should
+I attempt to describe him, when I have Wilson's own graphic verses to
+place him before the reader?
+
+  When winter's cold tempests and snows are no more,
+  Green meadows and brown furrowed fields re-appearing:
+  The fishermen hauling their shad to the shore,
+  And cloud-cleaving geese to the lakes are a-steering;
+  When first the lone butterfly flits on the wing,
+  When red glow the maples, so fresh and so pleasing,
+  O then comes the blue-bird, the herald of spring,
+  And hails with his warblings the charms of the season.
+
+  The loud-piping frogs make the marshes to ring;
+  Then warm glows the sunshine, and warm glows the weather;
+  The blue woodland flowers just beginning to spring,
+  And spice-wood and sassafras budding together;
+  O then to your gardens, ye housewives, repair,
+  Your walks border up, sow and plant at your leisure;
+  The blue-bird will chant from his box such an air,
+  That all your hard toils will seem truly a pleasure.
+
+  He flits through the orchard, he visits each tree,
+  The red flowering peach, and the apple's sweet blossoms;
+  He snaps up destroyers, wherever they be,
+  And seizes the caitiffs that lurk in their bosoms;
+  He drags the vile grub from the corn it devours,
+  The worms from the webs where they riot and welter;
+  His song and his services freely are ours,
+  And all that he asks is, in summer a shelter.
+
+  The ploughman is pleased when he gleams in his train,
+  Now searching the furrows, now mounting to cheer him;
+  The gard'ner delights in his sweet simple strain,
+  And leans on his spade to survey and to hear him.
+  The slow lingering school-boys forget they'll be chid,
+  While gazing intent, as he warbles before them,
+  In mantle of sky-blue, and bosom so red,
+  That each little loiterer seems to adore him.
+
+The happiest bird of our spring, however, and one that rivals the
+European lark, in my estimation, is the Boblincon, or Boblink, as he is
+commonly called. He arrives at that choice portion of our year, which,
+in this latitude, answers to the description of the month of May, so
+often given by the poets. With us, it begins about the middle of May,
+and lasts until nearly the middle of June. Earlier than this, winter is
+apt to return on its traces, and to blight the opening beauties of
+the year; and later than this, begin the parching, and panting, and
+dissolving heats of summer. But in this genial interval, nature is in
+all her freshness and fragrance: "the rains are over and gone, the
+flowers appear upon the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come,
+and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land." The trees are now in
+their fullest foliage and brightest verdure; the woods are gay with the
+clustered flowers of the laurel; the air is perfumed by the sweet-briar
+and the wild rose; the meadows are enamelled with clover-blossoms; while
+the young apple, the peach, and the plum, begin to swell, and the cherry
+to glow, among the green leaves.
+
+This is the chosen season of revelry of the Boblink. He comes amidst the
+pomp and fragrance of the season; his life seems all sensibility and
+enjoyment, all song and sunshine. He is to be found in the soft bosoms
+of the freshest and sweetest meadows; and is most in song when the
+clover is in blossom. He perches on the topmost twig of a tree, or on
+some long flaunting weed; and as he rises and sinks with the breeze,
+pours forth a succession of rich tinkling notes; crowding one upon
+another, like the outpouring melody of the skylark, and possessing the
+same rapturous character. Sometimes he pitches from the summit of a
+tree, begins his song as soon as he gets upon the wing, and flutters
+tremulously down to the earth, as if overcome with ecstasy at his own
+music. Sometimes he is in pursuit of his paramour; always in full
+song, as if he would win her by his melody; and always with the same
+appearance of intoxication and delight.
+
+Of all the birds of our groves and meadows, the Boblink was the envy of
+my boyhood. He crossed my path in the sweetest weather, and the sweetest
+season of the year, when all nature called to the fields, and the rural
+feeling throbbed in every bosom; but when I, luckless urchin! was doomed
+to be mewed up, during the livelong day, in that purgatory of boyhood, a
+school-room. It seemed as if the little varlet mocked at me, as he flew
+by in full song, and sought to taunt me with his happier lot. Oh, how
+I envied him! No lessons, no tasks, no hateful school; nothing but
+holiday, frolic, green fields, and fine weather. Had I been then more
+versed in poetry, I might have addressed him in the words of Logan to
+the cuckoo:
+
+  Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green,
+  Thy sky is ever clear;
+  Thou hast no sorrow in thy note,
+  No winter in thy year.
+
+  Oh! could I fly, I'd fly with thee;
+  We'd make, on joyful wing,
+  Our annual visit round the globe,
+  Companions of the spring!
+
+Farther observation and experience have given me a different idea of
+this little feathered voluptuary, which I will venture to impart, for
+the benefit of my school-boy readers, who may regard him with the same
+unqualified envy and admiration which I once indulged. I have shown him
+only as I saw him at first, in what I may call the poetical part of his
+career, when he in a manner devoted himself to elegant pursuits
+and enjoyments, and was a bird of music, and song, and taste, and
+sensibility, and refinement. While this lasted, he was sacred from
+injury; the very school-boy would not fling a stone at him, and the
+merest rustic would pause to listen to his strain. But mark the
+difference. As the year advances, as the clover-blossoms disappear, and
+the spring fades into summer, his notes cease to vibrate on the ear. He
+gradually gives up his elegant tastes and habits, doffs his poetical and
+professional suit of black, assumes a russet or rather dusty garb, and
+enters into the gross enjoyments of common, vulgar birds. He becomes a
+bon-vivant, a mere gourmand; thinking of nothing but good cheer, and
+gormandizing on the seeds of the long grasses on which he lately swung,
+and chaunted so musically. He begins to think there is nothing like "the
+joys of the table," if I may be allowed to apply that convivial phrase
+to his indulgences. He now grows discontented with plain, every-day
+fare, and sets out on a gastronomical tour, in search of foreign
+luxuries. He is to be found in myriads among the reeds of the Delaware,
+banqueting on their seeds; grows corpulent with good feeding, and soon
+acquires the unlucky renown of the ortolan. Whereever he goes, pop! pop!
+pop! the rusty firelocks of the country are cracking on every side;
+he sees his companions falling by the thousands around him; he is
+the _reed-bird_, the much-sought-for tit-bit of the Pennsylvanian
+epicure.
+
+Does he take warning and reform? Not he! He wings his flight still
+farther south, in search of other luxuries. We hear of him gorging
+himself in the rice swamps; filling himself with rice almost to
+bursting; he can hardly fly for corpulency. Last stage of his career,
+we hear of him spitted by dozens, and served up on the table of the
+gourmand, the most vaunted of southern dainties, the _rice-bird_ of the
+Carolinas.
+
+Such is the story of the once musical and admired, but finally sensual
+and persecuted Boblink. It contains a moral, worthy the attention of all
+little birds and little boys; warning them to keep to those refined
+and intellectual pursuits, which raised him to so high a pitch of
+popularity, during the early part of his career; but to eschew all
+tendency to that gross and dissipated indulgence, which brought this
+mistaken little bird to an untimely end.
+
+Which is all at present, from the well-wisher of little boys and little
+birds,
+
+GEOFFREY CRAYON.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+RECOLLECTIONS OF THE ALHAMBRA.
+
+BY THE AUTHOR OF THE SKETCH-BOOK.
+
+During a summer's residence in the old Moorish palace of the Alhambra,
+of which I have already given numerous anecdotes to the public, I used
+to pass much of my time in the beautiful hall of the Abencerrages,
+beside the fountain celebrated in the tragic story of that devoted
+race. Here it was, that thirty-six cavaliers of that heroic line were
+treacherously sacrificed, to appease the jealousy or allay the fears of
+a tyrant. The fountain which now throws up its sparkling jet, and sheds
+a dewy freshness around, ran red with the noblest blood of Granada,
+and a deep stain on the marble pavement is still pointed out, by the
+cicerones of the pile, as a sanguinary record of the massacre. I have
+regarded it with the same determined faith with which I have regarded
+the traditional stains of Rizzio's blood on the floor of the chamber of
+the unfortunate Mary, at Holyrood. I thank no one for endeavoring to
+enlighten my credulity, on such points of popular belief. It is like
+breaking up the shrine of the pilgrim; it is robbing a poor traveller of
+half the reward of his toils; for, strip travelling of its historical
+illusions, and what a mere fag you make of it!
+
+For my part, I gave myself up, during my sojourn in the Alhambra, to all
+the romantic and fabulous traditions connected with the pile. I lived in
+the midst of an Arabian tale, and shut my eyes, as much as possible, to
+every thing that called me back to every-day life; and if there is any
+country in Europe where one can do so, it is in poor, wild, legendary,
+proud-spirited, romantic Spain; where the old magnificent barbaric
+spirit still contends against the utilitarianism of modern civilization.
+
+In the silent and deserted halls of the Alhambra; surrounded with the
+insignia of regal sway, and the still vivid, though dilapidated traces
+of oriental voluptuousness, I was in the strong-hold of Moorish story,
+and every thing spoke and breathed of the glorious days of Granada,
+when under the dominion of the crescent. When I sat in the hall of the
+Abencerrages, I suffered my mind to conjure up all that I had read of
+that illustrious line. In the proudest days of Moslem domination, the
+Abencerrages were the soul of every thing noble and chivalrous. The
+veterans of the family, who sat in the royal council, were the foremost
+to devise those heroic enterprises, which carried dismay into the
+territories of the Christians; and what the sages of the family devised,
+the young men of the name were the foremost to execute. In all services
+of hazard; in all adventurous forays, and hair-breadth hazards; the
+Abencerrages were sure to win the brightest laurels. In those noble
+recreations, too, which bear so close an affinity to war; in the tilt
+and tourney, the riding at the ring, and the daring bull-fight; still
+the Abencerrages carried off the palm. None could equal them for the
+splendor of their array, the gallantry of their devices; for their noble
+bearing, and glorious horsemanship. Their open-handed munificence made
+them the idols of the populace, while their lofty magnanimity, and
+perfect faith, gained them golden opinions from the generous and
+high-minded. Never were they known to decry the merits of a rival, or to
+betray the confidings of a friend; and the "word of an Abencerrage" was
+a guarantee that never admitted of a doubt.
+
+And then their devotion to the fair! Never did Moorish beauty consider
+the fame of her charms established, until she had an Abencerrage for a
+lover; and never did an Abencerrage prove recreant to his vows. Lovely
+Granada! City of delights! Who ever bore the favors of thy dames more
+proudly on their casques, or championed them more gallantly in the
+chivalrous tilts of the Vivarambla? Or who ever made thy moon-lit
+balconies, thy gardens of myrtles and roses, of oranges, citrons, and
+pomegranates, respond to more tender serenades?
+
+I speak with enthusiasm on this theme; for it is connected with the
+recollection of one of the sweetest evenings and sweetest scenes that
+ever I enjoyed in Spain. One of the greatest pleasures of the Spaniards
+is, to sit in the beautiful summer evenings, and listen to traditional
+ballads, and tales about the wars of the Moors and Christians, and the
+"buenas andanzas" and "grandes hechos," the "good fortunes" and "great
+exploits" of the hardy warriors of yore. It is worthy of remark, also,
+that many of these songs, or romances, as they are called, celebrate
+the prowess and magnanimity in war, and the tenderness and, fidelity in
+love, of the Moorish cavaliers, once their most formidable and hated
+foes. But centuries have elapsed, to extinguish the bigotry of the
+zealot; and the once detested warriors of Granada are now held up by
+Spanish poets, as the mirrors of chivalric virtue.
+
+Such was the amusement of the evening in question. A number of us were
+seated in the Hall of the Abencerrages, listening to one of the most
+gifted and fascinating beings that I had ever met with in my wanderings.
+She was young and beautiful; and light and ethereal; full of fire, and
+spirit, and pure enthusiasm. She wore the fanciful Andalusian dress;
+touched the guitar with speaking eloquence; improvised with wonderful
+facility; and, as she became excited by her theme, or by the rapt
+attention of her auditors, would pour forth, in the richest and
+most melodious strains, a succession of couplets, full of striking
+description, or stirring narration, and composed, as I was assured, at
+the moment. Most of these were suggested by the place, and related to
+the ancient glories of Granada, and the prowess of her chivalry. The
+Abencerrages were her favorite heroes; she felt a woman's admiration of
+their gallant courtesy, and high-souled honor; and it was touching and
+inspiring to hear the praises of that generous but devoted race, chanted
+in this fated hall of their calamity, by the lips of Spanish beauty.
+
+Among the subjects of which she treated, was a tale of Moslem honor, and
+old-fashioned Spanish courtesy, which made a strong impression on me.
+She disclaimed all merit of invention, however, and said she had merely
+dilated into verse a popular tradition; and, indeed, I have since found
+the main facts inserted at the end of Conde's History of the Domination
+of the Arabs, and the story itself embodied in the form of an episode in
+the Diana of Montemayor. From these sources I have drawn it forth, and
+endeavored to shape it according to my recollection of the version of
+the beautiful minstrel; but, alas! what can supply the want of that
+voice, that look, that form, that action, which gave magical effect to
+her chant, and held every one rapt in breathless admiration! Should this
+mere travestie of her inspired numbers ever meet her eye, in her stately
+abode at Granada, may it meet with that indulgence which belongs to her
+benignant nature. Happy should I be, if it could awaken in her bosom
+one kind recollection of the lonely stranger and sojourner, for
+whose gratification she did not think it beneath her to exert those
+fascinating powers which were the delight of brilliant circles; and who
+will ever recall with enthusiasm the happy evening passed in listening
+to her strains, in the moon-lit halls of the Alhambra.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+GEOFFREY CRAYON.
+
+THE ABENCERRAGE.
+
+A SPANISH TALE.
+
+On the summit of a craggy hill, a spur of the mountains of Ronda, stands
+the castle of Allora, now a mere ruin, infested by bats and owlets, but
+in old times one of the strong border holds of the Christians, to keep
+watch upon the frontiers of the warlike kingdom of Granada, and to hold
+the Moors in check. It was a post always confided to some well-tried
+commander; and, at the time of which we treat, was held by Rodrigo de
+Narvaez, a veteran, famed, both among Moors and Christians, not only for
+his hardy feats of arms, but also for that magnanimous courtesy which
+should ever be entwined with the sterner virtues of the soldier.
+
+The castle of Allora was a mere part of his command; he was Alcayde, or
+military governor of Antiquera, but he passed most of his time at this
+frontier post, because its situation on the borders gave more frequent
+opportunity for those adventurous exploits which were the delight of the
+Spanish chivalry. His garrison consisted of fifty chosen cavaliers, all
+well mounted and well appointed: with these he kept vigilant watch
+upon the Moslems; patrolling the roads, and paths, and defiles of the
+mountains, so that nothing could escape his eye; and now and then
+signalizing himself by some dashing foray into the very Vega of Granada.
+
+On a fair and beautiful night in summer, when the freshness of the
+evening breeze had tempered the heat of day, the worthy Alcayde sallied
+forth, with nine of his cavaliers, to patrol the neighborhood, and
+seek adventures. They rode quietly and cautiously, lest they should be
+overheard by Moorish scout or traveller; and kept along ravines and
+hollow ways, lest they should be betrayed by the glittering of the full
+moon upon their armor. Coming to where the road divided, the Alcayde
+directed five of his cavaliers to take one of the branches, while he,
+with the remaining four, would take the other. Should either party be in
+danger, the blast of a horn was to be the signal to bring their comrades
+to their aid.
+
+The party of five had not proceeded far, when, in passing through a
+defile, overhung with trees, they heard the voice of a man, singing.
+They immediately concealed themselves in a grove, on the brow of a
+declivity, up which the stranger would have to ascend. The moonlight,
+which left the grove in deep shadow, lit up the whole person of the
+wayfarer, as he advanced, and enabled them to distinguish his dress and
+appearance with perfect accuracy. He was a Moorish cavalier, and his
+noble demeanor, graceful carriage, and splendid attire showed him to
+be of lofty rank. He was superbly mounted, on a dapple-gray steed, of
+powerful frame, and generous spirit, and magnificently caparisoned.
+His dress was a marlota, or tunic, and an Albernoz of crimson damask,
+fringed with gold. His Tunisian turban, of many folds, was of silk and
+cotton, striped, and bordered with golden fringe. At his girdle hung a
+scimitar of Damascus steel, with loops and tassels of silk and gold. On
+his left arm he bore an ample target, and his right hand grasped a long
+double-pointed lance. Thus equipped, he sat negligently on his steed, as
+one who dreamed of no danger, gazing on the moon, and singing, with a
+sweet and manly voice, a Moorish love ditty.
+
+Just opposite the place where the Spanish cavaliers were concealed, was
+a small fountain in the rock, beside the road, to which the horse turned
+to drink; the rider threw the reins on his neck, and continued his song.
+
+The Spanish cavaliers conferred together; they were all so pleased with
+the gallant and gentle appearance of the Moor, that they resolved not to
+harm, but to capture him, which, in his negligent mood, promised to be
+an easy task; rushing, therefore, from their concealment, they thought
+to surround and seize him. Never were men more mistaken. To gather up
+his reins, wheel round his steed, brace his buckler, and couch his
+lance, was the work of an instant; and there he sat, fixed like a castle
+in his saddle, beside the fountain.
+
+The Christian cavaliers checked their steeds and reconnoitered him
+warily, loth to come to an encounter, which must end in his destruction.
+
+The Moor now held a parley: "If you be true knights," said he, "and seek
+for honorable fame, come on, singly, and I am ready to meet each in
+succession; but if you be mere lurkers of the road, intent on spoil,
+come all at once, and do your worst!"
+
+The cavaliers communed for a moment apart, when one, advancing singly,
+exclaimed: "Although no law of chivalry obliges us to risk the loss of a
+prize, when clearly in our power, yet we willingly grant, as a courtesy,
+what we might refuse as a right. Valiant Moor! defend thyself!" So
+saying, he wheeled, took proper distance, couched his lance, and putting
+spurs to his horse, made at the stranger. The latter met him in mid
+career, transpierced him with his lance, and threw him headlong from his
+saddle. A second and a third succeeded, but were unhorsed with equal
+facility, and thrown to the earth, severely wounded. The remaining
+two, seeing their comrades thus roughly treated, forgot all compact of
+courtesy, and charged both at once upon the Moor. He parried the thrust
+of one, but was wounded by the other in the thigh, and, in the shock and
+confusion, dropped his lance. Thus disarmed, and closely pressed, he
+pretended to fly, and was hotly pursued. Having drawn the two cavaliers
+some distance from the spot, he suddenly wheeled short about, with
+one of those dexterous movements for which the Moorish horsemen are
+renowned; passed swiftly between them, swung himself down from his
+saddle, so as to catch up his lance, then, lightly replacing himself,
+turned to renew the combat.
+
+Seeing him thus fresh for the encounter, as if just issued from his
+tent, one of the cavaliers put his lips to his horn, and blew a blast,
+that soon brought the Alcayde and his four companions to the spot.
+
+The valiant Narvaez, seeing three of his cavaliers extended on the
+earth, and two others hotly engaged with the Moor, was struck with
+admiration, and coveted a contest with so accomplished a warrior.
+Interfering in the fight, he called upon his followers to desist, and
+addressing the Moor, with courteous words, invited him to a more equal
+combat. The latter readily accepted the challenge. For some time, their
+contest was fierce and doubtful; and the Alcayde had need of all his
+skill and strength to ward off the blows of his antagonist. The Moor,
+however, was exhausted by previous fighting, and by loss of blood. He
+no longer sat his horse firmly, nor managed him with his wonted skill.
+Collecting all his strength for a last assault, he rose in his stirrups,
+and made a violent thrust with his lance; the Alcayde received it upon
+his shield, and at the same time wounded the Moor in the right arm; then
+closing, in the shock, he grasped him in his arms, dragged him from his
+saddle, and fell with him to the earth: when putting his knee upon his
+breast, and his dagger to his throat, "Cavalier," exclaimed he, "render
+thyself my prisoner, for thy life is in my hands!"
+
+"Kill me, rather," replied the Moor, "for death would be less grievous
+than loss of liberty." The Alcayde, however, with the clemency of the
+truly brave, assisted the Moor to rise, ministered to his wounds with
+his own hands, and had him conveyed with great care to the castle of
+Allora. His wounds were slight, and in a few days were nearly cured; but
+the deepest wound had been inflicted on his spirit. He was constantly
+buried in a profound melancholy.
+
+The Alcayde, who had conceived a great regard for him, treated him more
+as a friend than a captive, and tried in every way to cheer him, but in
+vain; he was always sad and moody, and, when on the battlements of
+the castle, would keep his eyes turned to the south, with a fixed and
+wistful gaze.
+
+"How is this?" exclaimed the Alcayde, reproachfully, "that you, who were
+so hardy and fearless in the field, should lose all spirit in prison? If
+any secret grief preys on your heart, confide it to me, as to a friend,
+and I promise you, on the faith of a cavalier, that you shall have no
+cause to repent the disclosure."
+
+The Moorish knight kissed the hand of the Alcayde. "Noble cavalier,"
+said he "that I am cast down in spirit, is not from my wounds, which are
+slight, nor from my captivity, for your kindness has robbed it of all
+gloom; nor from my defeat, for to be conquered by so accomplished and
+renowned a cavalier, is no disgrace. But to explain to you the cause of
+my grief, it is necessary to give you some particulars of my story; and
+this I am moved to do, by the great sympathy you have manifested toward
+me, and the magnanimity that shines through all your actions."
+
+"Know, then, that my name is Abendaraez, and that I am of the noble but
+unfortunate line of the Abencerrages of Granada. You have doubtless
+heard of the destruction that fell upon our race. Charged with
+treasonable designs, of which they were entirely innocent, many of
+them were beheaded, the rest banished; so that not an Abencerrages was
+permitted to remain in Granada, excepting my father and my uncle, whose
+innocence was proved, even to the satisfaction of their persecutors. It
+was decreed, however, that, should they have children, the sons should
+be educated at a distance from Granada, and the daughters should be
+married out of the kingdom.
+
+"Conformably to this decree, I was sent, while yet an infant, to be
+reared in the fortress of Cartama, the worthy Alcayde of which was an
+ancient friend of my father. He had no children, and received me into
+his family as his own child, treating me with the kindness and affection
+of a father; and I grew up in the belief that he really was such. A few
+years afterward, his wife gave birth to a daughter, but his tenderness
+toward me continued undiminished. I thus grew up with Xarisa, for so
+the infant daughter of the Alcayde was called, as her own brother, and
+thought the growing passion which I felt for her, was mere fraternal
+affection. I beheld her charms unfolding, as it were, leaf by leaf, like
+the morning rose, each moment disclosing fresh beauty and sweetness.
+
+"At this period, I overheard a conversation between the Alcayde and his
+confidential domestic, and found myself to be the subject. 'It is time,'
+said he, 'to apprise him of his parentage, that he may adopt a career
+in life. I have deferred the communication as long as possible, through
+reluctance to inform him that he is of a proscribed and an unlucky
+race.'
+
+"This intelligence would have overwhelmed me at an earlier period, but
+the intimation that Xarisa was not my sister, operated like magic, and
+in an instant transformed my brotherly affection into ardent love.
+
+"I sought Xarisa, to impart to her the secret I had learned. I found her
+in the garden, in a bower of jessamines, arranging her beautiful hair by
+the mirror of a crystal fountain. The radiance of her beauty dazzled
+me. I ran to her with open arms, and she received me with a sister's
+embraces. When we had seated ourselves beside the fountain, she began to
+upbraid me for leaving her so long alone.
+
+"In reply, I informed her of the conversation I had overheard. The
+recital shocked and distressed her. 'Alas!' cried she, 'then is our
+happiness at an end!'
+
+"'How!' exclaimed I; 'wilt thou cease to love me, because I am not thy
+brother?'
+
+"'Not so,' replied she; 'but do you not know that when it is once known
+we are not brother and sister, we can no longer be permitted to be thus
+always together?'
+
+"In fact, from that moment our intercourse took a new character. We
+met often at the fountain among the jessamines, but Xarisa no longer
+advanced with open arms to meet me. She became reserved and silent, and
+would blush, and cast down her eyes, when I seated myself beside her. My
+heart became a prey to the thousand doubts and fears that ever attend
+upon true love. I was restless and uneasy, and looked back with regret
+to the unreserved intercourse that had existed between us, when we
+supposed ourselves brother and sister; yet I would not have had the
+relationship true, for the world.
+
+"While matters were in this state between us, an order came from the
+King of Granada for the Alcayde to take command of the fortress of Coyn,
+which lies directly on the Christian frontier. He prepared to remove,
+with all his family, but signified that I should remain at Cartama. I
+exclaimed against the separation, and declared that I could not be
+parted from Xarisa. 'That is the very cause,' said he, 'why I leave thee
+behind. It is time, Abendaraez, that thou shouldst know the secret of
+thy birth; that thou art no son of mine, neither is Xarisa thy sister.'
+'I know it all,' exclaimed I, 'and I love her with tenfold the
+affection of a brother. You have brought us up together; you have made
+us necessary to each other's happiness; our hearts have entwined
+themselves with our growth; do not now tear them asunder. Fill up the
+measure of your kindness; be indeed a father to me, by giving me Xarisa
+for my wife.'
+
+"The brow of the Alcayde darkened as I spoke. 'Have I then been
+deceived?' said he. 'Have those nurtured in my very bosom, been
+conspiring against me? Is this your return for my paternal
+tenderness?--to beguile the affections of my child, and teach her to
+deceive her father? It was cause enough to refuse thee the hand of my
+daughter, that thou wert of a proscribed race, who can never approach
+the walls of Granada; this, however, I might have passed over; but never
+will I give my daughter to a man who has endeavored to win her from me
+by deception.'
+
+"All my attempts to vindicate myself and Xarisa were unavailing. I
+retired in anguish from his presence, and seeking Xarisa, told her of
+this blow, which was worse than death to me. 'Xarisa,' said I, 'we
+part for ever! I shall never see thee more! Thy father will guard thee
+rigidly. Thy beauty and his wealth will soon attract some happier rival,
+and I shall be forgotten!'
+
+"Xarisa reproached me with my want of faith, and promised me eternal
+constancy. I still doubted and desponded, until, moved by my anguish and
+despair, she agreed to a secret union. Our espousals made, we parted,
+with a promise on her part to send me word from Coyn, should her
+father absent himself from the fortress. The very day after our secret
+nuptials, I beheld the whole train of the Alcayde depart from Cartama,
+nor would he admit me to his presence, or permit me to bid farewell
+to Xarisa. I remained at Cartama, somewhat pacified in spirit by this
+secret bond of union; but every thing around me fed my passion, and
+reminded me of Xarisa. I saw the windows at which I had so often beheld
+her. I wandered through the apartment she had inhabited; the chamber in
+which she had slept. I visited the bower of jessamines, and lingered
+beside the fountain in which she had delighted. Every thing recalled her
+to my imagination, and filled my heart with tender melancholy.
+
+"At length, a confidential servant brought me word, that her father
+was to depart that day for Granada, on a short absence, inviting me to
+hasten to Coyn, describing a secret portal at which I should apply, and
+the signal by which I would obtain admittance.
+
+"If ever you have loved, most valiant Alcayde, you may judge of the
+transport of my bosom. That very night I arrayed myself in my most
+gallant attire, to pay due honor to my bride; and arming myself against
+any casual attack, issued forth privately from Cartama. You know the
+rest, and by what sad fortune of war I found myself, instead of a happy
+bridegroom, in the nuptial bower of Coyn, vanquished, wounded, and a
+prisoner, withing the walls of Allora. The term of absence of the father
+of Xarisa is nearly expired. Within three days he will return to Coyn,
+and our meeting will no longer be possible. Judge, then, whether I
+grieve without cause, and whether I may not well be excused for showing
+impatience under confinement."
+
+Don Rodrigo de Narvaez was greatly moved by this recital; for, though
+more used to rugged war, than scenes of amorous softness, he was of a
+kind and generous nature.
+
+"Abendaraez," said he, "I did not seek thy confidence to gratify an idle
+curiosity. It grieves me much that the good fortune which delivered thee
+into my hands, should have marred so fair an enterprise. Give me thy
+faith, as a true knight, to return prisoner to my castle, within three
+days, and I will grant thee permission to accomplish thy nuptials."
+
+The Abencerrage would have thrown himself at his feet, to pour out
+protestations of eternal gratitude, but the Alcayde prevented him.
+Calling in his cavaliers, he took the Abencerrage by the right hand, in
+their presence, exclaiming solemnly, "You promise, on the faith of a
+cavalier, to return to my castle of Allora within three days, and render
+yourself my prisoner?" And the Abencerrage said, "I promise."
+
+Then said the Alcayde, "Go! and may good fortune attend you. If
+you require any safeguard, I and my cavaliers are ready to be your
+companions."
+
+The Abencerrage kissed the hand of the Alcayde, in grateful
+acknowledgment. "Give me," said he, "my own armor, and my steed, and
+I require no guard. It is not likely that I shall again meet with so
+valorous a foe."
+
+The shades of night had fallen, when the tramp of the dapple-gray steed
+sounded over the drawbridge, and immediately afterward the light clatter
+of hoofs along the road, bespoke the fleetness with which the youthful
+lover hastened to his bride. It was deep night when the Moor arrived at
+the castle of Coyn. He silently and cautiously walked his panting steed
+under its dark walls, and having nearly passed round them, came to the
+portal denoted by Xarisa. He paused and looked around to see that he was
+not observed, and then knocked three times with the butt of his lance.
+In a little while the portal was timidly unclosed by the duenna of
+Xarisa. "Alas! senor," said she, "what has detained you thus long? Every
+night have I watched for you; and my lady is sick at heart with doubt
+and anxiety."
+
+The Abencerrage hung his lance, and shield, and scimitar against the
+wall, and then followed the duenna, with silent steps, up a winding
+stair-case, to the apartment of Xarisa. Vain would be the attempt to
+describe the raptures of that meeting. Time flew too swiftly, and the
+Abencerrage had nearly forgotten, until too late, his promise to return
+a prisoner to the Alcayde of Allora. The recollection of it came to him
+with a pang, and suddenly awoke him from his dream of bliss. Xarisa
+saw his altered looks, and heard with alarm his stifled sighs; but her
+countenance brightened, when she heard the cause. "Let not thy spirit be
+cast down," said she, throwing her white arms around him. "I have the
+keys of my father's treasures; send ransom more than enough to satisfy
+the Christian, and remain with me."
+
+"No," said Abendaraez, "I have given my word to return in person, and
+like a true knight, must fulfil my promise. After that, fortune must do
+with me as it pleases."
+
+"Then," said Xarisa, "I will accompany thee. Never shall you return a
+prisoner, and I remain at liberty."
+
+The Abencerrage was transported with joy at this new proof of devotion
+in his beautiful bride. All preparations were speedily made for their
+departure. Xarisa mounted behind the Moor, on his powerful steed; they
+left the castle walls before daybreak, nor did they pause, until they
+arrived at the gate of the castle of Allora, which was flung wide to
+receive them.
+
+Alighting in the court, the Abencerrage supported the steps of his
+trembling bride, who remained closely veiled, into the presence of
+Rodrigo de Narvaez. "Behold, valiant Alcayde!" said he, "the way in
+which an Abencerrage keeps his word. I promised to return to thee a
+prisoner, but I deliver two captives into your power. Behold Xarisa,
+and judge whether I grieved without reason, over the loss of such a
+treasure. Receive us as your own, for I confide my life and her honor to
+your hands."
+
+The Alcayde was lost in admiration of the beauty of the lady, and the
+noble spirit of the Moor. "I know not," said he, "which of you surpasses
+the other; but I know that my castle is graced and honored by your
+presence. Enter into it, and consider it your own, while you deign to
+reside with me."
+
+For several days the lovers remained at Allora, happy in each other's
+love, and in the friendship of the brave Alcayde. The latter wrote a
+letter, full of courtesy, to the Moorish king of Granada, relating the
+whole event, extolling the valor and good faith of the Abencerrage, and
+craving for him the royal countenance.
+
+The king was moved by the story, and was pleased with an opportunity of
+showing attention to the wishes of a gallant and chivalrous enemy; for
+though he had often suffered from the prowess of Don Rodigro de Narvaez,
+he admired the heroic character he had gained throughout the land.
+Calling the Alcayde of Coyn into his presence, he gave him the letter to
+read. The Alcayde turned pale, and trembled with rage, on the perusal.
+"Restrain thine anger," said the king; "there is nothing that the
+Alcayde of Allora could ask, that I would not grant, if in my power. Go
+thou to Allora; pardon thy children; take them to thy home. I receive
+this Abencerrage into my favor, and it will be my delight to heap
+benefits upon you all."
+
+The kindling ire of the Alcayde was suddenly appeased. He hastened to
+Allora; and folded his children to his bosom, who would have fallen at
+his feet. The gallant Rodrigo de Narvaez gave liberty to his prisoner
+without ransom, demanding merely a promise of his friendship. He
+accompanied the youthful couple and their father to Coyn, where their
+nuptials were celebrated with great rejoicings. When the festivities
+were over, Don Rodrigo de Narvaez returned to his fortress of Allora.
+
+After his departure, the Alcayde of Coyn addressed his children: "To
+your hands," said he, "I confide the disposition of my wealth. One of
+the first things I charge you, is not to forget the ransom you owe to
+the Alcayde of Allora. His magnanimity you can never repay, but you can
+prevent it from wronging him of his just dues. Give him, moreover, your
+entire friendship, for he merits it fully, though of a different faith."
+
+The Abencerrage thanked him for his generous proposition, which so truly
+accorded with his own wishes. He took a large sum of gold, and enclosed
+it in a rich coffer; and, on his own part, sent six beautiful horses,
+superbly caparisoned; with six shields and lances, mounted and embossed
+with gold. The beautiful Xarisa, at the same time, wrote a letter to the
+Alcayde, filled with expressions of gratitude and friendship, and sent
+him a box of fragrant cypress-wood, containing linen, of the finest
+quality, for his person. The valiant Alcayde disposed of the present
+in a characteristic manner. The horses and armor he shared among the
+cavaliers who had accompanied him on the night of the skirmish. The
+box of cypress-wood and its contents he retained, for the sake of the
+beautiful Xarisa; and sent her, by the hands of a messenger, the sum
+of gold paid as a ransom, entreating her to receive it as a wedding
+present. This courtesy and magnanimity raised the character of the
+Alcayde Rodrigo de Narvaez still higher in the estimation of the Moors,
+who extolled him as a perfect mirror of chivalric virtue; and from that
+time forward, there was a continual exchange of good offices between
+them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE ENCHANTED ISLAND.
+
+BY THE AUTHOR OF THE SKETCH-BOOK.
+
+  Break, Phantsie, from thy cave of cloud,
+  And wave thy purple wings,
+  Now all thy figures are allowed,
+  And various shapes of things.
+  Create of airy forms a stream;
+  It must have blood and nought of phlegm;
+  And though it be a walking dream,
+  Yet let it like an odor rise
+  To all the senses here,
+  And fall like sleep upon their eyes,
+  Or music on their ear.--BEN JONSON.
+
+"There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our
+philosophy," and among these may be placed that marvel and mystery of
+the seas, the island of St. Brandan. Every school-boy can enumerate and
+call by name the Canaries, the Fortunate Islands of the ancients; which,
+according to some ingenious speculative minds, are mere wrecks and
+remnants of the vast island of Atalantis, mentioned by Plato, as having
+been swallowed up by the ocean. Whoever has read the history of those
+isles, will remember the wonders told of another island, still more
+beautiful, seen occasionally from their shores, stretching away in the
+clear bright west, with long shadowy promontories, and high, sun-gilt
+peaks. Numerous expeditions, both in ancient and modern days, have
+launched forth from the Canaries in quest of that island; but, on their
+approach, mountain and promontory have gradually faded away, until
+nothing has remained but the blue sky above, and the deep blue water
+below. Hence it was termed by the geographers of old, Aprositus, or the
+Inaccessible; while modern navigators have called its very existence in
+question, pronouncing it a mere optical illusion, like the Fata Morgana
+of the Straits of Messina; or classing it with those unsubstantial
+regions known to mariners as Cape Flyaway, and the Coast of Cloud Land.
+
+Let not, however, the doubts of the worldly-wise sceptics of modern days
+rob us of all the glorious realms owned by happy credulity in days of
+yore. Be assured, O reader of easy faith!--thou for whom I delight to
+labor--be assured, that such an island does actually exist, and has,
+from time to time, been revealed to the gaze, and trodden by the feet,
+of favored mortals. Nay, though doubted by historians and philosophers,
+its existence is fully attested by the poets, who, being an inspired
+race, and gifted with a kind of second sight, can see into the mysteries
+of nature, hidden from the eyes of ordinary mortals. To this gifted race
+it has ever been a region of fancy and romance, teeming with all kinds
+of wonders. Here once bloomed, and perhaps still blooms, the famous
+garden of the Hesperides, with its golden fruit. Here, too, was the
+enchanted garden of Armida, in which that sorceress held the Christian
+paladin, Rinaldo, in delicious but inglorious thraldom; as is set forth
+in the immortal lay of Tasso. It was on this island, also, that Sycorax,
+the witch, held sway, when the good Prospero, and his infant daughter
+Miranda, were wafted to its shores. The isle was then
+
+  ---"full of noises,
+  Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not."
+
+Who does not know the tale, as told in the magic page of Shakspeare?
+
+In fact, the island appears to have been, at different times, under the
+sway of different powers, genii of earth, and air, and ocean; who made
+it their shadowy abode; or rather, it is the retiring place of old
+worn-out deities and dynasties, that once ruled the poetic world,
+but are now nearly shorn of all their attributes. Here Neptune and
+Amphitrite hold a diminished court, like sovereigns in exile. Their
+ocean-chariot lies bottom upward, in a cave of the island, almost a
+perfect wreck, while their pursy Tritons and haggard Nereids bask
+listlessly, like seals about the rocks. Sometimes they assume a shadow
+of their ancient pomp, and glide in state about the glassy sea; while
+the crew of some tall Indiaman, that lies becalmed with flapping sails,
+hear with astonishment the mellow note of the Triton's shell swelling
+upon the ear, as the invisible pageant sweeps by. Sometimes the quondam
+monarch of the ocean is permitted to make himself visible to mortal
+eyes, visiting the ships that cross the line, to exact a tribute from
+new-comers; the only remnant of his ancient rule, and that, alas!
+performed with tattered state, and tarnished splendor.
+
+On the shores of this wondrous island, the mighty kraken heaves his
+bulk, and wallows many a rood; here, too, the sea-serpent lies coiled
+up, during the intervals of his much-contested revelations to the
+eyes of true believers; and here it is said, even the Flying Dutchman
+finds a port and casts his anchor, and furls his shadowy sail, and
+takes a short repose from his eternal wanderings.
+
+Here all the treasures lost in the deep are safely garnered. The caverns
+of the shores are piled with golden ingots, hexes of pearls, rich bales
+of oriental silks; and their deep recesses sparkle with diamonds, or
+flame with carbuncles. Here, in deep bays and harbors, lies many a
+spell-bound ship, long given up as lost by the ruined merchant. Here,
+too, its crew, long bewailed as swallowed up in ocean, lie sleeping in
+mossy grottoes, from age to age, or wander about enchanted shores and
+groves, in pleasing oblivion of all things.
+
+Such are some of the marvels related of this island, and which may serve
+to throw some light on the following legend, of unquestionable truth,
+which I recommend to the entire belief of the reader.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_THE ADELANTADO OF THE SEVEN CITIES_.
+
+A LEGEND OF ST. BRANDAN.
+
+In the early part of the fifteenth century, when Prince Henry of
+Portugal, of worthy memory, was pushing the career of discovery along
+the western coast of Africa, and the world was resounding with reports
+of golden regions on the main land, and new-found islands in the ocean,
+there arrived at Lisbon an old bewildered pilot of the seas, who had
+been driven by tempests, he knew not whither, and who raved about an
+island far in the deep, on which he had landed, and which he had found
+peopled with Christians, and adorned with noble cities.
+
+The inhabitants, he said, gathered round, and regarded him with
+surprise, having never before been visited by a ship. They told him they
+were descendants of a band of Christians, who fled from Spain when that
+country was conquered by the Moslems. They were curious about the state
+of their fatherland, and grieved to hear that the Moslems still held
+possession of the kingdom of Granada. They would have taken the old
+navigator to church, to convince him of their orthodoxy; but, either
+through lack of devotion, or lack of faith in their words, he declined
+their invitation, and preferred to return on board of his ship. He was
+properly punished. A furious storm arose, drove him from his anchorage,
+hurried him out to sea, and he saw no more of the unknown island.
+
+This strange story caused great marvel in Lisbon and elsewhere. Those
+versed in history, remembered to have read, in an ancient chronicle,
+that, at the time of the conquest of Spain, in the eighth century, when
+the blessed cross was cast down, and the crescent erected in its place,
+and when Christian churches were turned into Moslem mosques, seven
+bishops, at the head of seven bands of pious exiles, had fled from the
+peninsula, and embarked in quest of some ocean island, or distant land,
+where they might found seven Christian cities, and enjoy their faith
+unmolested.
+
+The fate of these pious saints errant had hitherto remained a
+mystery, and their story had faded from memory; the report of the old
+tempest-tossed pilot, however, revived this long-forgotten theme; and
+it was determined by the pious and enthusiastic, that the island thus
+accidentally discovered, was the identical place of refuge, whither the
+wandering bishops had been guided by a protecting Providence, and where
+they had folded their flocks.
+
+This most excitable of worlds has always some darling object of
+chimerical enterprise: the "Island of the Seven Cities" now awakened as
+much interest and longing among zealous Christians, as has the renowned
+city of Timbuctoo among adventurous travellers, or the North-east
+Passage among hardy navigators; and it was a frequent prayer of the
+devout, that these scattered and lost portions of the Christian family
+might be discovered, and reunited to the great body of Christendom.
+
+No one, however, entered into the matter with half the zeal of Don
+Fernando de Ulmo, a young cavalier of high standing in the Portuguese
+court, and of most sanguine and romantic temperament. He had recently
+come to his estate, and had run the round of all kinds of pleasures and
+excitements, when this new theme of popular talk and wonder presented
+itself. The Island of the Seven Cities became now the constant subject
+of his thoughts by day and his dreams by night; it even rivalled his
+passion for a beautiful girl, one of the greatest belles of Lisbon, to
+whom he was betrothed. At length his imagination became so inflamed on
+the subject, that he determined to fit out an expedition, at his own
+expense, and set sail in quest of this sainted island. It could not be
+a cruise of any great extent; for according to the calculations of the
+tempest-tossed pilot, it must be somewhere in the latitude of the
+Canaries; which at that time, when the new world was as yet undiscovered,
+formed the frontier of ocean enterprise. Don Fernando applied to the
+crown for countenance and protection. As he was a favorite at court, the
+usual patronage was readily extended to him; that is to say, he received
+a commission from the king, Don Ioam II., constituting him Adelantado,
+or military governor, of any country he might discover, with the single
+proviso, that he should bear all the expenses of the discovery and pay a
+tenth of the profits to the crown.
+
+Don Fernando now set to work in the true spirit of a projector. He sold
+acre after acre of solid land, and invested the proceeds in ships, guns,
+ammunition, and sea-stores. Even his old family mansion in Lisbon was
+mortgaged without scruple, for "he looked forward to a palace in one of
+the Seven Cities of which he was to be Adelantado." This was the age of
+nautical romance, when the thoughts of all speculative dreamers were
+turned to the ocean. The scheme of Don Fernando, therefore, drew
+adventurers of every kind. The merchant promised himself new marts of
+opulent traffic; the soldier hoped to sack and plunder some one or other
+of those Seven Cities; even the fat monk shook off the sleep and sloth
+of the cloister, to join in a crusade which promised such increase to
+the possessions of the church.
+
+One person alone regarded the whole project with sovereign contempt
+and growling hostility. This was Don Ramiro Alvarez, the father of the
+beautiful Serafina, to whom Don Fernando was betrothed. He was one of
+those perverse, matter-of-fact old men who are prone to oppose every
+thing speculative and romantic. He had no faith in the Island of the
+Seven Cities; regarded the projected cruise as a crack-brained freak;
+looked with angry eye and internal heart-burning on the conduct of his
+intended son-in-law, chaffering away solid lands for lands in the moon,
+and scoffingly dubbed him Adelantado of Lubberland. In fact, he had
+never really relished the intended match, to which his consent had been
+slowly extorted by the tears and entreaties of his daughter. It is true
+he could have no reasonable objections to the youth, for Don Fernando
+was the very flower of Portuguese chivalry. No one could excel him at
+the tilting match, or the riding at the ring; none was more bold and
+dexterous in the bull-fight; none composed more gallant madrigals in
+praise of his lady's charms, or sang them with sweeter tones to the
+accompaniment of her guitar; nor could any one handle the castanets
+and dance the bolero with more captivating grace. All these admirable
+qualities and endowments, however, though they had been sufficient to
+win the heart of Serafina, were nothing in the eyes of her unreasonable
+father. O Cupid, god of Love! why will fathers always be so
+unreasonable!
+
+The engagement to Serafina had threatened at first to throw an obstacle
+in the way of the expedition of Don Fernando, and for a time perplexed
+him in the extreme. He was passionately attached to the young lady; but
+he was also passionately bent on this romantic enterprise. How should
+he reconcile the two passionate inclinations? A simple and obvious
+arrangement at length presented itself: marry Serafina, enjoy a portion
+of the honeymoon at once, and defer the rest until his return from the
+discovery of the Seven Cities!
+
+He hastened to make known this most excellent arrangement to Don Ramiro,
+when the long-smothered wrath of the old cavalier burst forth in a storm
+about his ears. He reproached him with being the dupe of wandering
+vagabonds and wild schemers, and of squandering all his real possessions
+in pursuit of empty bubbles. Don Fernando was too sanguine a projector,
+and too young a man, to listen tamely to such language. He acted with
+what is technically called "becoming spirit." A high quarrel ensued; Don
+Ramiro pronounced him a mad man, and forbade all farther intercourse
+with his daughter, until he should give proof of returning sanity by
+abandoning this mad-cap enterprise; while Don Fernando flung out of
+the house, more bent than ever on the expedition, from the idea of
+triumphing over the incredulity of the gray-beard when he should return
+successful.
+
+Don Ramiro repaired to his daughter's chamber the moment the youth had
+departed. He represented to her the sanguine, unsteady character of her
+lover and the chimerical nature of his schemes; showed her the propriety
+of suspending all intercourse with him until he should recover from his
+present hallucination; folded her to his bosom with parental fondness,
+kissed the tear that stole down her cheek, and, as he left the chamber,
+gently locked the door; for although he was a fond father, and had a
+high opinion of the submissive temper of his child, he had a still
+higher opinion of the conservative virtues of lock and key. Whether the
+damsel had been in any wise shaken in her faith as to the schemes of her
+lover, and the existence of the Island of the Seven Cities, by the sage
+representations of her father, tradition does not say; but it is certain
+that she became a firm believer the moment she heard him turn the key in
+the lock.
+
+Notwithstanding the interdict of Don Ramiro, therefore, and his
+shrewd precautions, the intercourse of the lovers continued, although
+clandestinely. Don Fernando toiled all day, hurrying forward his
+nautical enterprise, while at night he would repair, beneath the
+grated balcony of his mistress, to carry on at equal pace the no less
+interesting enterprise of the heart. At length the preparations for the
+expedition were completed. Two gallant caravels lay anchored in the
+Tagus, ready to sail with the morning dawn; while late at night, by the
+pale light of a waning moon, Don Fernando sought the stately mansion of
+Alvarez to take a last farewell of Serafina. The customary signal of a
+few low touches of a guitar brought her to the balcony. She was sad at
+heart and full of gloomy forebodings; but her lover strove to impart to
+her his own buoyant hope and youthful confidence. "A few short months,"
+said he, "and I shall return in triumph. Thy father will then blush at
+his incredulity, and will once more welcome me to his house, when
+I cross its threshold a wealthy suitor and Adelantado of the Seven
+Cities."
+
+The beautiful Serafina shook her head mournfully. It was not on those
+points that she felt doubt or dismay. She believed most implicitly in
+the Island of the Seven Cities, and trusted devoutly in the success of
+the enterprise; but she had heard of the inconstancy of the seas, and
+the inconstancy of those who roam them. Now, let the truth be spoken,
+Don Fernando, if he had any fault in the world, it was that he was a
+little too inflammable; that is to say, a little too subject to take
+fire from the sparkle of every bright eye: he had been somewhat of a
+rover among the sex on shore, what might he not be on sea? Might he
+not meet with other loves in foreign ports? Might he not behold some
+peerless beauty in one or other of those seven cities, who might efface
+the image of Serafina from his thoughts?
+
+At length she ventured to hint her doubts; but Don Fernando spurned at
+the very idea. Never could his heart be false to Serafina! Never could
+another be captivating in his eyes!--never--never! Repeatedly did he
+bend his knee, and smite his breast, and call upon the silver moon to
+witness the sincerity of his vows. But might not Serafina, herself, be
+forgetful of her plighted faith? Might not some wealthier rival present,
+while he was tossing on the sea, and, backed by the authority of her
+father, win the treasure of her hand? Alas, how little did he know
+Serafina's heart! The more her father should oppose, the more would she
+be fixed in her faith. Though years should pass before his return, he
+would find her true to her vows. Even should the salt seas swallow him
+up, (and her eyes streamed with salt tears at the very thought,) never
+would she be the wife of another--never--never! She raised her beautiful
+white arms between the iron bars of the balcony, and invoked the moon as
+a testimonial of her faith.
+
+Thus, according to immemorial usage, the lovers parted, with many a vow
+of eternal constancy. But will they keep those vows? Perish the doubt!
+Have they not called the constant moon to witness?
+
+With the morning dawn the caravels dropped down the Tagus and put
+to sea. They steered for the Canaries, in those days the regions of
+nautical romance. Scarcely had they reached those latitudes, when a
+violent tempest arose. Don Fernando soon lost sight of the accompanying
+caravel, and was driven out of all reckoning by the fury of the storm.
+For several weary days and nights he was tossed to and fro, at the mercy
+of the elements, expecting each moment to be swallowed up. At length,
+one day toward evening, the storm subsided; the clouds cleared up, as
+though a veil had suddenly been withdrawn from the face of heaven, and
+the setting sun shone gloriously upon a fair and mountainous island,
+that seemed close at hand. The tempest-tossed mariners rubbed their
+eyes, and gazed almost incredulously upon this land, that had emerged so
+suddenly from the murky gloom; yet there it lay, spread out in lovely
+landscapes; enlivened by villages, and towers, and spires, while the
+late stormy sea rolled in peaceful billows to its shores. About a league
+from the sea, on the banks of a river, stood a noble city, with lofty
+walls and towers, and a protecting castle. Don Fernando anchored off
+the mouth of the river, which appeared to form a spacious harbor. In a
+little while a barge was seen issuing from the river. It was evidently
+a barge of ceremony, for it was richly though quaintly carved and gilt,
+and decorated with a silken awning and fluttering streamers, while a
+banner, bearing the sacred emblem of the cross, floated to the breeze.
+The barge advanced slowly, impelled by sixteen oars, painted of a bright
+crimson. The oarsmen were uncouth, or rather antique, in their garb, and
+kept stroke to the regular cadence of an old Spanish ditty. Beneath the
+awning sat a cavalier, in a rich though old-fashioned doublet, with an
+enormous sombrero and feather. When the barge reached the caravel, the
+cavalier stepped on board. He was tall and gaunt, with a long, Spanish
+visage, and lack-lustre eyes, and an air of lofty and somewhat pompous
+gravity. His mustaches were curled up to his ears, his beard was forked
+and precise; he wore gauntlets that reached to his elbows, and a Toledo
+blade that strutted out behind, while, in front, its huge basket-hilt
+might have served for a porringer.
+
+Thrusting out a long spindle leg, and taking off his sombrero with a
+grave and stately sweep, he saluted Don Fernando by name, and welcomed
+him, in old Castilian language, and in the style of old Castilian
+courtesy.
+
+Don Fernando was startled at hearing himself accosted by name, by an
+utter stranger, in a strange land. As soon as he could recover from his
+surprise, he inquired what land it was at which he had arrived.
+
+"The Island of the Seven Cities!"
+
+Could this be true? Had he indeed been thus tempest-driven upon the very
+land of which he was in quest? It was even so. The other caravel, from
+which he had been separated in the storm, had made a neighboring port of
+the island, and announced the tidings of this expedition, which came to
+restore the country to the great community of Christendom. The whole
+island, he was told, was given up to rejoicings on the happy event; and
+they only awaited his arrival to acknowledge allegiance to the crown of
+Portugal, and hail him as Adelantado of the Seven Cities. A grand fete
+was to be solemnized that very night in the palace of the Alcayde or
+governor of the city; who, on beholding the most opportune arrival of
+the caravel, had despatched his grand chamberlain, in his barge of
+state, to conduct the future Adelantado to the ceremony.
+
+Don Fernando could scarcely believe but that this was all a dream.
+He fixed a scrutinizing gaze upon the grand chamberlain, who, having
+delivered his message, stood in buckram dignity, drawn up to his full
+stature, curling his whiskers, stroking his beard, and looking down upon
+him with inexpressible loftiness through his lack-lustre eyes. There was
+no doubting the word of so grave and ceremonious a hidalgo.
+
+Don Fernando now arrayed himself in gala attire. He would have launched
+his boat, and gone on shore with his own men, but he was informed the
+barge of state was expressly provided for his accommodation, and, after
+the fete, would bring him back to his ship; in which, on the following
+day, he might enter the harbor in befitting style. He accordingly
+stepped into the barge, and took his seat beneath the awning. The grand
+chamberlain seated himself on the cushion opposite. The rowers bent to
+their oars, and renewed their mournful old ditty, and the gorgeous, but
+unwieldy barge moved slowly and solemnly through the water.
+
+The night closed in, before they entered the river. They swept along,
+past rock and promontory, each guarded by its tower. The sentinels at
+every post challenged them as they passed by.
+
+"Who goes there?"
+
+"The Adelantado of the Seven Cities."
+
+"He is welcome. Pass on."
+
+On entering the harbor, they rowed close along an armed galley, of the
+most ancient form. Soldiers with cross-bows were stationed on the deck.
+
+"Who goes there?" was again demanded.
+
+"The Adelantado of the Seven Cities."
+
+"He is welcome. Pass on."
+
+They landed at a broad flight of stone steps, leading up, between two
+massive towers, to the water-gate of the city, at which they knocked for
+admission. A sentinel, in an ancient steel casque, looked over the wall.
+"Who is there?"
+
+"The Adelantado of the Seven Cities."
+
+The gate swung slowly open, grating upon its rusty hinges. They entered
+between two rows of iron-clad warriors, in battered armor, with
+cross-bows, battle-axes, and ancient maces, and with faces as
+old-fashioned and rusty as their armor. They saluted Don Fernando in
+military style, but with perfect silence, as he passed between their
+ranks. The city was illuminated, but in such manner as to give a more
+shadowy and solemn effect to its old-time architecture. There were
+bonfires in the principal streets, with groups about them in such
+old-fashioned garbs, that they looked like the fantastic figures that
+roam the streets in carnival time. Even the stately dames who gazed from
+the balconies, which they had hung with antique tapestry, looked more
+like effigies dressed up for a quaint mummery, than like ladies in their
+fashionable attire. Every thing, in short, bore the stamp of former
+ages, as if the world had suddenly rolled back a few centuries. Nor was
+this to be wondered at. Had not the Island of the Seven Cities been for
+several hundred years cut off from all communication with the rest of
+the world, and was it not natural that the inhabitants should retain
+many of the modes and customs brought here by their ancestors?
+
+One thing certainly they had conserved; the old-fashioned Spanish
+gravity and stateliness. Though this was a time of public rejoicing, and
+though Don Fernando was the object of their gratulations, every thing
+was conducted with the most solemn ceremony, and wherever he appeared,
+instead of acclamations, he was received with profound silence, and the
+most formal reverences and swayings of their sombreros.
+
+Arrived at the palace of the Alcayde, the usual ceremonial was repeated.
+The chamberlain knocked for admission.
+
+"Who is there?" demanded the porter.
+
+"The Adelantado of the Seven Cities."
+
+"He is welcome. Pass on."
+
+The grand portal was thrown open. The chamberlain led the way up a vast
+but heavily moulded marble stair-case, and so through one of those
+interminable suites of apartments, that are the pride of Spanish
+palaces. All were furnished in a style of obsolete magnificence. As they
+passed through the chambers, the title of Don Fernando was forwarded on
+by servants stationed at every door; and every where produced the most
+profound reverences and courtesies. At length they reached a magnificent
+saloon, blazing with tapers, in which the Alcayde, and the principal
+dignitaries of the city, were waiting to receive their illustrious
+guest. The grand chamberlain presented Don Fernando in due form, and
+falling back among the other officers of the household, stood as usual
+curling his whiskers and stroking his forked beard.
+
+Don Fernando was received by the Alcayde and the other dignitaries with
+the same stately and formal courtesy that he had every where remarked.
+In fact, there was so much form and ceremonial, that it seemed difficult
+to get at any thing social or substantial. Nothing but bows, and
+compliments, and old-fashioned courtesies. The Alcayde and his courtiers
+resembled, in face and form, those quaint worthies to be seen in the
+pictures of old illuminated manuscripts; while the cavaliers and dames
+who thronged the saloon, might have beep taken for the antique figures
+of gobelin tapestry suddenly vivified and put in motion.
+
+The banquet, which had been kept back until the arrival of Don Fernando,
+was now announced; and such a feast! such unknown dishes and obsolete
+dainties; with the peacock, that bird of state and ceremony, served up
+in full plumage, in a golden dish, at the head of the table. And then,
+as Don Fernando cast his eyes over the glittering board, what a vista of
+odd heads and head-dresses, of formal bearded dignitaries, and stately
+dames, with castellated locks and towering plumes!
+
+As fate would have it, on the other side of Don Fernando, was seated the
+daughter of the Alcayde. She was arrayed, it is true, in a dress that
+might have been worn before the flood; but then, she had a melting black
+Andalusian eye, that was perfectly irresistible. Her voice, too, her
+manner, her movements, all smacked of Andalusia, and showed how female
+fascination may be transmitted from age to age, and clime to clime,
+without ever losing its power, or going out of fashion. Those who know
+the witchery of the sex, in that most amorous region of old Spain, may
+judge what must have been the fascination to which Don Fernando
+was exposed, when seated beside one of the most captivating of its
+descendants. He was, as has already been hinted, of an inflammable
+temperament; with a heart ready to get in a light blaze at every
+instant. And then he had been so wearied by pompous, tedious old
+cavaliers, with their formal bows and speeches; is it to be wondered at
+that he turned with delight to the Alcayde's daughter, all smiles, and
+dimples, and melting looks, and melting accents? Beside, for I wish to
+give him every excuse in my power, he was in a particularly excitable
+mood, from the novelty of the scene before him, and his head was almost
+turned with this sudden and complete realization of all his hopes and
+fancies; and then, in the flurry of the moment, he had taken frequent
+draughts at the wine-cup, presented him at every instant by officious
+pages, and all the world knows the effect of such draughts in giving
+potency to female charms. In a word, there is no concealing the matter,
+the banquet was not half over, before Don Fernando was making love,
+outright, to the Alcayde's daughter. It was his cold habitude,
+contracted long before his matrimonial engagement. The young lady hung
+her head coyly; her eye rested upon a ruby heart, sparkling in a ring on
+the hand of Don Fernando, a parting gage of love from Serafina. A blush
+crimsoned her very temples. She darted a glance of doubt at the
+ring, and then at Don Fernando. He read her doubt, and in the giddy
+intoxication of the moment, drew off the pledge of his affianced bride,
+and slipped it on the finger of the Alcayde's daughter.
+
+At this moment the banquet broke up. The chamberlain with his lofty
+demeanor, and his lack-lustre eyes, stood before him, and announced that
+the barge was waiting to conduct him back to the caravel. Don Fernando
+took a formal leave of the Alcayde and his dignitaries, and a tender
+farewell of the Alcayde's daughter, with a promise to throw himself at
+her feet on the following day. He was rowed back to his vessel in the
+same slow and stately manner, to the cadence of the same mournful old
+ditty. He retired to his cabin, his brain whirling with all that he had
+seen, and his heart now and then giving him a twinge as he recollected
+his temporary infidelity to the beautiful Serafina. He flung himself on
+his bed, and soon fell into a feverish sleep. His dreams were wild and
+incoherent. How long he slept he knew not, but when he awoke he found
+himself in a strange cabin, with persons around him of whom he had no
+knowledge. He rubbed his eyes to ascertain whether he were really awake.
+In reply to his inquiries, he was informed that he was on board of a
+Portuguese ship, bound to Lisbon; having been taken senseless from a
+wreck drifting about the ocean.
+
+Don Fernando was confounded and perplexed. He retraced every thing
+distinctly that had happened to him in the Island of the Seven Cities,
+and until he had retired to rest on board of the caravel. Had his vessel
+been driven from her anchors, and wrecked during his sleep? The people
+about him could give him no information on the subject. He talked to
+them of the Island of the Seven Cities, and of all that had befallen him
+there. They regarded his words as the ravings of delirium, and in their
+honest solicitude, administered such rough remedies, that he was fain to
+drop the subject, and observe a cautious taciturnity.
+
+At length they arrived in the Tagus, and anchored before the famous city
+of Lisbon. Don Fernando sprang joyfully on shore, and hastened to his
+ancestral mansion. To his surprise, it was inhabited by strangers; and
+when he asked about his family, no one could give him any information
+concerning them.
+
+He now sought the mansion of Don Ramiro, for the temporary flame kindled
+by the bright eyes of the Alcayde's daughter had long since burnt itself
+out, and his genuine passion for Serafina had revived with all its
+fervor. He approached the balcony, beneath which he had so often
+serenaded her. Did his eyes deceive him? No! There was Serafina herself
+at the balcony. An exclamation of rapture burst from him, as he raised
+his arms toward her. She cast upon him a look of indignation, and
+hastily retiring, closed the casement. Could she have heard of his
+flirtation with the Alcayde's daughter? He would soon dispel every doubt
+of his constancy. The door was open. He rushed up-stairs, and entering
+the room, threw himself at her feet. She shrank back with affright, and
+took refuge in the arms of a youthful cavalier.
+
+"What mean you, Sir," cried the latter, "by this intrusion?"
+
+"What right have you," replied Don Fernando, "to ask the question?"
+
+"The right of an affianced suitor!"
+
+Don Fernando started, and turned pale. "Oh, Serafina! Serafina!" cried
+he in a tone of agony, "is this thy plighted constancy?"
+
+"Serafina?--what mean you by Serafina? If it be this young lady you
+intend, her name is Maria."
+
+"Is not this Serafina Alvarez, and is not that her portrait?" cried Don
+Fernando, pointing to a picture of his mistress.
+
+"Holy Virgin!" cried the young lady; "he is talking of my
+great-grandmother!"
+
+An explanation ensued, if that could be called an explanation, which
+plunged the unfortunate Fernando into tenfold perplexity. If he might
+believe his eyes, he saw before him his beloved Serafina; if he might
+believe his ears, it was merely her hereditary form and features,
+perpetuated in the person of her great-granddaughter.
+
+His brain began to spin. He sought tho office of the Minister of Marine,
+and made a report of his expedition, and of the Island of the Seven
+Cities, which he had so fortunately discovered. No body knew any thing
+of such an expedition, or such an island. He declared that he had
+undertaken the enterprise under a formal contract with the crown, and
+had received a regular commission, constituting him Adelantado. This
+must be matter of record, and he insisted loudly, that the books of the
+department should be consulted. The wordy strife at length attracted the
+attention of an old, gray-headed clerk, who sat perched on a high stool,
+at a high desk, with iron-rimmed spectacles on the top of a thin,
+pinched nose, copying records into an enormous folio. He had wintered
+and summered in the department for a great part of a century, until he
+had almost grown to be a piece of the desk at which he sat; his memory
+was a mere index of official facts and documents, and his brain was
+little better than red tape and parchment. After peering down for a time
+from his lofty perch, and ascertaining the matter in controversy, he
+put his pen behind his ear, and descended. He remembered to have heard
+something from his predecessor about an expedition of the kind in
+question, but then it had sailed during the reign of Don Ioam II., and
+he had been dead at least a hundred years. To put the matter beyond
+dispute, however, the archives of the Torve do Tombo, that sepulchre of
+old Portuguese documents, were diligently searched, and a record was
+found of a contract between the crown and one Fernando de Ulmo, for the
+discovery of the Island of the Seven Cities, and of a commission secured
+to him as Adelantado of the country he might discover.
+
+"There!" cried Don Fernando, triumphantly, "there you have proof, before
+your own eyes, of what I have said. I am the Fernando de Ulmo specified
+in that record. I have discovered the Island of the Seven Cities, and am
+entitled to be Adelantado, according to contract."
+
+The story of Don Fernando had certainly, what is pronounced the best
+of historical foundation, documentary evidence; but when a man, in the
+bloom of youth, talked of events that had taken place above a century
+previously, as having happened to himself, it is no wonder that he was
+set down for a mad man.
+
+The old clerk looked at him from above and below his spectacles,
+shrugged his shoulders, stroked his chin, reascended his lofty stool,
+took the pen from behind his ears, and resumed his daily and eternal
+task, copying records into the fiftieth volume of a series of gigantic
+folios. The other clerks winked at each other shrewdly, and dispersed to
+their several places, and poor Don Fernando, thus left to himself, flung
+out of the office, almost driven wild by these repeated perplexities.
+
+In the confusion of his mind, he instinctively repaired to the mansion
+of Alvarez, but it was barred against him. To break the delusion under
+which the youth apparently labored, and to convince him that the
+Serafina about whom he raved was really dead, he was conducted to her
+tomb. There she lay, a stately matron, cut out in alabaster; and there
+lay her husband beside her; a portly cavalier, in armor; and there
+knelt, on each side, the effigies of a numerous progeny, proving that
+she had been a fruitful vine. Even the very monument gave proof of the
+lapse of time, for the hands of her husband, which were folded as if in
+prayer, had lost their fingers, and the face of the once lovely Serafina
+was noseless.
+
+Don Fernando felt a transient glow of indignation at beholding this
+monumental proof of the inconstancy of his mistress; but who could
+expect a mistress to remain constant during a whole century of absence?
+And what right had he to rail about constancy, after what had passed
+between him and the Alcayde's daughter? The unfortunate cavalier
+performed one pious act of tender devotion; he had the alabaster nose of
+Serafina restored by a skilful statuary, and then tore himself from the
+tomb.
+
+He could now no longer doubt the fact that, somehow or other, he had
+skipped over a whole century, during the night he had spent at the
+Island of the Seven Cities; and he was now as complete a stranger in his
+native city, as if he had never been there. A thousand times did he
+wish himself back to that wonderful island, with its antiquated banquet
+halls, where he had been so courteously received; and now that the once
+young and beautiful Serafina was nothing but a great-grandmother in
+marble, with generations of descendants, a thousand times would he
+recall the melting black eyes of the Alcayde's daughter, who doubtless,
+like himself, was still flourishing in fresh juvenility, and breathe a
+secret wish that he were seated by her side.
+
+He would at once have set on foot another expedition, at his own
+expense, to cruise in search of the sainted island, but his means were
+exhausted. He endeavored to rouse others to the enterprise, setting
+forth the certainty of profitable results, of which his own experience
+furnished such unquestionable proof. Alas! no one would give faith to
+his tale; but looked upon it as the feverish dream of a shipwrecked
+man. He persisted in his efforts; holding forth in all places and
+all companies, until he became an object of jest and jeer to the
+light-minded, who mistook his earnest enthusiasm for a proof of
+insanity; and the very children in the streets bantered him with the
+title of "The Adelantado of the Seven Cities."
+
+Finding all his efforts in vain, in his native city of Lisbon, he took
+shipping for the Canaries, as being nearer the latitude of his former
+cruise, and inhabited by people given to nautical adventure. Here he
+found ready listeners to his story; for the old pilots and mariners of
+those parts were notorious island-hunters and devout believers in all
+the wonders of the seas. Indeed, one and all treated his adventure as a
+common occurrence, and turning to each other, with a sagacious nod of
+the head, observed, "He has been at the Island of St. Brandan."
+
+They then went on to inform him of that great marvel and enigma of
+the ocean; of its repeated appearance to the inhabitants of their
+islands; and of the many but ineffectual expeditions that had been made
+in search of it. They took him to a promontory of the island of Palma,
+from whence the shadowy St. Brandan had oftenest been descried, and they
+pointed out the very tract in the west where its mountains had been
+seen.
+
+Don Fernando listened with rapt attention. He had no longer a doubt that
+this mysterious and fugacious island must be the same with that of
+the Seven Cities; and that there must be some supernatural influence
+connected with it, that had operated upon himself, and made the events
+of a night occupy the space of a century.
+
+He endeavored, but in vain, to rouse the islanders to another attempt at
+discovery; they had given up the phantom island as indeed inaccessible.
+Fernando, however, was not to be discouraged. The idea wore itself
+deeper and deeper in his mind, until it became the engrossing subject of
+his thoughts and object of his being. Every morning he would repair to
+the promontory of Palma, and sit there throughout the live-long day, in
+hopes of seeing the fairy mountains of St. Brandan peering above the
+horizon; every evening he returned to his home, a disappointed man, but
+ready to resume his post on the following morning.
+
+His assiduity was all in vain. He grew gray in his ineffectual attempt;
+and was at length found dead at his post. His grave is still shown in
+the island of Palma, and a cross is erected on the spot where he used
+to sit and look out upon the sea, in hopes of the reappearance of the
+enchanted island.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NATIONAL NOMENCLATURE.
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
+
+Sir: I am somewhat of the same way of thinking, in regard to names, with
+that profound philosopher, Mr. Shandy, the elder, who maintained that
+some inspired high thoughts and heroic aims, while others entailed
+irretrievable meanness and vulgarity; insomuch that a man might sink
+under the insignificance of his name, and be absolutely "Nicodemused
+into nothing." I have ever, therefore, thought it a great hardship for a
+man to be obliged to struggle through life with some ridiculous or
+ignoble _Christian_ name, as it is too often falsely called, inflicted
+on him in infancy, when he could not choose for himself; and would give
+him free liberty to change it for one more to his taste, when he had
+arrived at years of discretion.
+
+I have the same notion with respect to local names. Some at once
+prepossess us in favor of a place; others repel us, by unlucky
+associations of the mind; and I have known scenes worthy of being the
+very haunt of poetry and romance, yet doomed to irretrievable vulgarity,
+by some ill-chosen name, which not even the magic numbers of a Halleck
+or a Bryant could elevate into poetical acceptation.
+
+This is an evil unfortunately too prevalent throughout our country.
+Nature has stamped the land with features of sublimity and beauty; but
+some of our noblest mountains and loveliest streams are in danger of
+remaining for ever unhonored and unsung, from bearing appellations
+totally abhorrent to the Muse. In the first place, our country is
+deluged with names taken from places in the old world, and applied to
+places having no possible affinity or resemblance to their namesakes.
+This betokens a forlorn poverty of invention, and a second-hand spirit,
+content to cover its nakedness with borrowed or cast-off clothes of
+Europe.
+
+Then we have a shallow affectation of scholarship: the whole catalogue
+of ancient worthies is shaken out from the back of Lempriere's Classical
+Dictionary, and a wide region of wild country sprinkled over with the
+names of the heroes, poets, and sages of antiquity, jumbled into the
+most whimsical juxtaposition. Then we have our political god-fathers;
+topographical engineers, perhaps, or persons employed by government to
+survey and lay out townships. These, forsooth, glorify the patrons that
+give them bread; so we have the names of the great official men of the
+day scattered over the land, as if they were the real "salt of the
+earth," with which it was to be seasoned. Well for us is it, when these
+official great men happen to have names of fair acceptation; but wo unto
+us, should a Tubbs or a Potts be in power: we are sure, in a little
+while, to find Tubbsvilles and Pottsylvanias springing up in every
+direction.
+
+Under these melancholy dispensations of taste and loyalty, therefore,
+Mr. Editor, it is with a feeling of dawning hope, that I have lately
+perceived the attention of persons of intelligence beginning to be
+awakened on this subject. I trust if the matter should once be taken
+up, it will not be readily abandoned. We are yet young enough, as a
+country, to remedy and reform much of what has been done, and to release
+many of our rising towns and cities, and our noble streams, from names
+calculated to vulgarize the land.
+
+I have, on a former occasion, suggested the expediency of searching out
+the original Indian names of places, and wherever they are striking and
+euphonious, and those by which they have been superseded are glaringly
+objectionable, to restore them. They would have the merit of
+originality, and of belonging to the country; and they would remain as
+reliques of the native lords of the soil, when every other vestige had
+disappeared. Many of these names may easily be regained, by reference to
+old title deeds, and to the archives of states and counties. In my own
+case, by examining the records of the county clerk's office, I have
+discovered the Indian names of various places and objects in the
+neighborhood, and have found them infinitely superior to the trite,
+poverty-stricken names which had been given by the settlers. A beautiful
+pastoral stream, for instance, which winds for many a mile through one
+of the loveliest little valleys in the state, has long been known by the
+common-place name of the "Saw-mill River." In the old Indian grants, it
+is designated as the Neperan. Another, a perfectly wizard stream, which
+winds through the wildest recesses of Sleepy Hollow, bears the hum-drum
+name of Mill Creek: in the Indian grants, it sustains the euphonious
+title of the Pocantico.
+
+Similar researches have released Long-Island from many of those paltry
+and vulgar names which fringed its beautiful shores; their Cow Bays, and
+Cow Necks, and Oyster Ponds, and Mosquito Coves, which spread a spell of
+vulgarity over the whole island, and kept persons of taste and fancy at
+a distance.
+
+It would be an object worthy the attention of the historical societies,
+which are springing up in various parts of the Union, to have maps
+executed of their respective states or neighborhoods, in which all the
+Indian local names should, as far as possible, be restored. In fact,
+it appears to me that the nomenclature of the country is almost of
+sufficient importance for the foundation of a distinct society; or
+rather, a corresponding association of persons of taste and judgment, of
+all parts of the Union. Such an association, if properly constituted and
+composed, comprising especially all the literary talent of the country,
+though it might not have legislative power in its enactments, yet
+would have the all-pervading power of the press; and the changes in
+nomenclature which it might dictate, being at once adopted by elegant
+writers in prose and poetry, and interwoven with the literature of the
+country, would ultimately pass into popular currency.
+
+Should such a reforming association arise, I beg to recommend to its
+attention all those mongrel names that have the adjective _New_ prefixed
+to them, and pray they may be one and all kicked out of the country.
+I am for none of these second-hand appellations, that stamp us a
+second-hand people, and that are to perpetuate us a new country to the
+end of time. Odds my life! Mr. Editor, I hope and trust we are to live
+to be an old nation, as well as our neighbors, and have no idea that
+our cities, when they shall have attained to venerable antiquity, shall
+still be dubbed _New_-York, and _New_-London, and _new_ this and _new_
+that, like the Pont-Neuf, (the New Bridge,) at Paris, which is the
+oldest bridge in that capital, or like the Vicar of Wakefield's horse,
+which continued to be called "the colt," until he died of old age.
+
+Speaking of New-York, reminds me of some observations which I met with
+some time since, in one of the public papers, about the name of our
+state and city. The writer proposes to substitute for the present names,
+those of the State of Ontario, and the CITY OF MANHATTAN. I concur in
+his suggestion most heartily. Though born and brought up in the city of
+New-York, and though I love every stick and stone about it, yet I do
+not, nor ever did, relish its name. I like neither its sound nor its
+significance. As to its _significance_, the very adjective _new_ gives
+to our great commercial metropolis a second-hand character, as if
+referring to some older, more dignified, and important place, of which
+it was a mere copy; though in fact, if I am rightly informed, the whole
+name commemorates a grant by Charles II. to his brother, the duke of
+York, made in the spirit of royal munificence, of a tract of country
+which did not belong to him. As to the _sound_, what can you make of it,
+either in poetry or prose? New-York! Why, Sir, if it were to share the
+fate of Troy itself; to suffer a ten years' siege, and be sacked and
+plundered; no modern Homer would ever be able to elevate the name to
+epic dignity.
+
+Now, Sir, ONTARIO would be a name worthy of the empire state. It bears
+with it the majesty of that internal sea which washes our northwestern
+shore. Or, if any objection should be made, from its not being
+completely embraced within our boundaries, there is the MOHEGAN, one
+of the Indian names for that glorious river, the Hudson, which would
+furnish an excellent state appellation. So also New-York might be called
+Manhatta, as it is named in some of the early records, and Manhattan
+used as the adjective. Manhattan, however, stands well as a substantive,
+and "Manhattanese," which I observe Mr. COOPER has adopted in some of
+his writings, would be a very good appellation for a citizen of the
+commercial metropolis.
+
+A word or two more, Mr. Editor, and I have done. We want a NATIONAL
+NAME. We want it poetically, and we want it politically. With the
+poetical necessity of the case I shall not trouble myself. I leave it to
+our poets to tell how they manage to steer that collocation of words,
+"The United States of North America," down the swelling tide of song,
+and to float the whole raft out upon the sea of heroic poesy. I am now
+speaking of the mere purposes of common life. How is a citizen of this
+republic to designate himself? As an American? There are two Americas,
+each subdivided into various empires, rapidly rising in importance. As a
+citizen of the United States? It is a clumsy, lumbering title, yet still
+it is not distinctive; for we have now the United States of Central
+America; and heaven knows how many "United States" may spring up under
+the Proteus changes of Spanish America.
+
+This may appear matter of small concernment; but any one that has
+travelled in foreign countries must be conscious of the embarrassment
+and circumlocution sometimes occasioned by the want of a perfectly
+distinct and explicit national appellation. In France, when I have
+announced myself as an American, I have been supposed to belong to one
+of the French colonies; in Spain, to be from Mexico, or Peru, or some
+other Spanish-American country. Repeatedly have I found myself involved
+in a long geographical and political definition of my national identity.
+
+Now, Sir, meaning no disrespect to any of our co-heirs of this great
+quarter of the world, I am for none of this coparceny in a name that is
+to mingle us up with the riff-raff colonies and off-sets of every nation
+of Europe. The title of American may serve to tell the quarter of the
+world to which I belong, the same as a Frenchman or an Englishman may
+call himself a European; but I want my own peculiar national name to
+rally under. I want an appellation that shall tell at once, and in a
+way not to be mistaken, that I belong to this very portion of America,
+geographical and political, to which it is my pride and happiness to
+belong; that I am of the Anglo-Saxon race which founded this Anglo-Saxon
+empire in the wilderness; and that I have no part or parcel with any
+other race or empire, Spanish, French, or Portuguese, in either of the
+Americas. Such an appellation, Sir, would have magic in it. It would
+bind every part of the confederacy together as with a keystone; it would
+be a passport to the citizen of our republic throughout the world.
+
+We have it in our power to furnish ourselves with such a national
+appellation, from one of the grand and eternal features of our country;
+from that noble chain of mountains which formed its back-bone, and ran
+through the "old confederacy," when it first declared our national
+independence. I allude to the Appalachian or Alleghany mountains. We
+might do this without any very inconvenient change in our present
+titles. We might still use the phrase, "The United States," substituting
+Appalachia, or Alleghania, (I should prefer the latter,) in place of
+America. The title of Appalachian, or Alleghanian, would still announce
+us as Americans, but would specify us as citizens of the Great Republic.
+Even our old national cypher of U. S. A. might remain unaltered,
+designating the United States of Alleghania.
+
+These are crude ideas, Mr. Editor, hastily thrown out to elicit the
+ideas of others, and to call attention to a subject of more national
+importance than may at first be supposed.
+
+Very respectfully yours,
+
+Geoffrey Crayon.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+DESULTORY THOUGHTS ON CRITICISM.
+
+"Let a man write never so well, there are now-a-days a sort of persons
+they call critics, that, egad, have no more wit in them than so many
+hobby-horses: but they'll laugh at you, Sir, and find fault, and censure
+things, that, egad, I'm sure they are not able to do themselves; a sort
+of envious persons, that emulate the glories of persons of parts, and
+think to build their fame by calumniation of persons that, egad, to my
+knowledge, of all persons in the world, are in nature the persons that
+do as much despise all that, as--a--In fine, I'll say no more of 'em!"
+-REHEARSAL.
+
+All the world knows the story of the tempest-tossed voyager, who, coming
+upon a strange coast, and seeing a man hanging in chains, hailed it with
+joy, as the sign of a civilized country. In like manner we may hail, as
+a proof of the rapid advancement of civilization and refinement in
+this country, the increasing number of delinquent authors daily gibbeted
+for the edification of the public.
+
+In this respect, as in every other, we are "going ahead" with
+accelerated velocity, and promising to outstrip the superannuated
+countries of Europe. It is really astonishing to see the number of
+tribunals incessantly springing up for the trial of literary offences.
+Independent of the high courts of Oyer and Terminer, the great quarterly
+reviews, we have innumerable minor tribunals, monthly and weekly, down
+to the Pie-poudre courts in the daily papers; insomuch that no culprit
+stands so little chance of escaping castigation, as an unlucky author,
+guilty of an unsuccessful attempt to please the public.
+
+Seriously speaking, however, it is questionable whether our national
+literature is sufficiently advanced, to bear this excess of criticism;
+and whether it would not thrive better, if allowed to spring up, for
+some time longer, in the freshness and vigor of native vegetation. When
+the worthy Judge Coulter, of Virginia, opened court for the first time
+in one of the upper counties, he was for enforcing all the rules and
+regulations that had grown into use in the old, long-settled counties.
+"This is all very well," said a shrewd old farmer; "but let me tell you,
+Judge Coulter, you set your coulter too deep for a new soil."
+
+For my part, I doubt whether either writer or reader is benefited by
+what is commonly called criticism. The former is rendered cautious and
+distrustful; he fears to give way to those kindling emotions, and brave
+sallies of thought, which bear him up to excellence; the latter is made
+fastidious and cynical; or rather, he surrenders his own independent
+taste and judgment, and learns to like and dislike at second hand.
+
+Let us, for a moment, consider the nature of this thing called
+criticism, which exerts such a sway over the literary world. The pronoun
+we, used by critics, has a most imposing and delusive sound. The reader
+pictures to himself a conclave of learned men, deliberating gravely and
+scrupulously on the merits of the book in question; examining it page by
+page, comparing and balancing their opinions, and when they have united
+in a conscientious verdict, publishing it for the benefit of the world:
+whereas the criticism is generally the crude and hasty production of
+an individual, scribbling to while away an idle hour, to oblige a
+book-seller, or to defray current expenses. How often is it the
+passing notion of the hour, affected by accidental circumstances; by
+indisposition, by peevishness, by vapors or indigestion; by personal
+prejudice, or party feeling. Sometimes a work is sacrificed, because
+the reviewer wishes a satirical article; sometimes because he wants
+a humorous one; and sometimes because the author reviewed has become
+offensively celebrated, and offers high game to the literary marksman.
+
+How often would the critic himself, if a conscientious man, reverse his
+opinion, had he time to revise it in a more sunny moment; but the press
+is waiting, the printer's devil is at his elbow; the article is wanted
+to make the requisite variety for the number of the review, or the
+author has pressing occasion for the sum he is to receive for the
+article, so it is sent off, all blotted and blurred; with a shrug of
+the shoulders, and the consolatory ejaculation: "Pshaw! curse it! it's
+nothing but a review!"
+
+The critic, too, who dictates thus oracularly to the world, is perhaps
+some dingy, ill-favored, ill-mannered varlet, who, were he to speak by
+word of mouth, would be disregarded, if not scoffed at; but such is the
+magic of types; such the mystic operation of anonymous writing; such the
+potential effect of the pronoun we, that his crude decisions, fulminated
+through the press, become circulated far and wide, control the opinions
+of the world, and give or destroy reputation.
+
+Many readers have grown timorous in their judgments since the
+all-pervading currency of criticism. They fear to express a revised,
+frank opinion about any new work, and to relish it honestly and
+heartily, lest it should be condemned in the next review, and they stand
+convicted of bad taste. Hence they hedge their opinions, like a gambler
+his bets, and leave an opening to retract, and retreat, and qualify,
+and neutralise every unguarded expression of delight, until their very
+praise declines into a faintness that is damning.
+
+Were every one, on the contrary, to judge for himself, and speak his
+mind frankly and fearlessly, we should have more true criticism in the
+world than at present. Whenever a person is pleased with a work, he may
+be assured that it has good qualities. An author who pleases a variety
+of readers, must possess substantial powers of pleasing; or, in other
+words, intrinsic merits; for otherwise we acknowledge an effect, and
+deny the cause. The reader, therefore, should not suffer himself to be
+readily shaken from the conviction of his own feelings, by the sweeping
+censures of pseudo critics. The author he has admired, may be chargeable
+with a thousand faults; but it is nevertheless beauties and excellencies
+that have excited his admiration; and he should recollect that taste
+and judgment are as much evinced in the perception of beauties among
+defects, as in a detection of defects among beauties. For my part, I
+honor the blessed and blessing spirit that is quick to discover and
+extol all that is pleasing and meritorious. Give me the honest bee, that
+extracts honey from the humblest weed, but save me from the ingenuity
+of the spider, which traces its venom, even in the midst of a
+flower-garden.
+
+If the mere fact of being chargeable with faults and imperfections is to
+condemn an author, who is to escape? The greatest writers of antiquity
+have, in this way, been obnoxious to criticism. Aristotle himself has
+been accused of ignorance; Aristophanes of impiety and buffoonery;
+Virgil of plagiarism, and a want of invention; Horace of obscurity;
+Cicero has been, said to want vigor and connexion, and Demosthenes to
+be deficient in nature, and in purity of language. Yet these have all
+survived the censures of the critic, and flourished on to a glorious
+immortality. Every now and then the world is startled by some new
+doctrines in matters of taste, some levelling attacks on established
+creeds; some sweeping denunciations of whole generations, or schools of
+writers, as they are called, who had seemed to be embalmed and canonized
+in public opinion. Such has been the case, for instance, with Pope, and
+Dryden, and Addison, who for a time have almost been shaken from their
+pedestals, and treated as false idols.
+
+It is singular, also, to see the fickleness of the world with respect
+to its favorites. Enthusiasm exhausts itself, and prepares the way
+for dislike. The public is always for positive sentiments, and new
+sensations. When wearied of admiring, it delights to censure; thus
+coining a double set of enjoyments out of the same subject. Scott and
+Byron are scarce cold in their graves, and already we find criticism
+beginning to call in question those powers which held the world in magic
+thraldom. Even in our own country, one of its greatest geniuses has
+had some rough passages with the censors of the press; and instantly
+criticism begins to unsay all that it has repeatedly said in his praise;
+and the public are almost led to believe that the pen which has so often
+delighted them, is absolutely destitute of the power to delight!
+
+If, then, such reverses in opinion as to matters of taste can be so
+readily brought about, when may an author feel himself secure? Where is
+the anchoring-ground of popularity, when he may thus be driven from his
+moorings, and foundered even in harbor? The reader, too, when he is to
+consider himself safe in admiring, when he sees long-established altars
+overthrown, and his household deities dashed to the ground!
+
+There is one consolatory reflection. Every abuse carries with it its
+own remedy or palliation. Thus the excess of crude and hasty criticism,
+which has of late prevailed throughout the literary world, and
+threatened to overrun our country, begins to produce its own antidote.
+Where there is a multiplicity of contradictory paths, a man must make
+his choice; in so doing, he has to exercise his judgment, and that is
+one great step to mental independence. He begins to doubt all, where all
+differ, and but one can be in the right. He is driven to trust to his
+own discernment, and his natural feelings; and here he is most likely
+to be safe. The author, too, finding that what is condemned at one
+tribunal, is applauded at another, though perplexed for a time, gives
+way at length to the spontaneous impulse of his genius, and the dictates
+of his taste, and writes in the way most natural to himself. It is thus
+that criticism, which by its severity may have held the little world of
+writers in check, may, by its very excess, disarm itself of its terrors,
+and the hardihood of talent become restored.
+
+G.C.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+SPANISH ROMANCE.
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
+
+Sir: I have already given you a legend or two drawn from ancient Spanish
+sources, and may occasionally give you a few more. I love these old
+Spanish themes, especially when they have a dash of the Morisco in them,
+and treat of the times when the Moslems maintained a foot-hold in the
+peninsula. They have a high, spicy, oriental flavor, not to be found in
+any other themes that are merely European. In fact, Spain is a country
+that stands alone in the midst of Europe; severed in habits, manners,
+and modes of thinking, from all its continental neighbors. It is a
+romantic country; but its romance has none of the sentimentality of
+modern European romance: it is chiefly derived from the brilliant
+regions of the East, and from the high-minded school of Saracenic
+chivalry.
+
+The Arab invasion and conquest brought a higher civilization and
+a nobler style of thinking into Gothic Spain. The Arabs were a
+quick-witted, sagacious, proud-spirited, and poetical people, and were
+imbued with oriental science and literature. Wherever they established a
+seat of power, it became a rallying place for the learned and ingenious;
+and they softened and refined the people whom they conquered. By
+degrees, occupancy seemed to give them a hereditary right to their
+foothold in the land; they ceased to be looked upon as invaders, and
+were regarded as rival neighbors. The peninsula, broken up into a
+variety of states, both Christian and Moslem, became for centuries
+a great campaigning ground, where the art of war seemed to be the
+principal business of man, and was carried to the highest pitch of
+romantic chivalry. The original ground of hostility, a difference of
+faith, gradually lost its rancor. Neighboring states, of opposite
+creeds, were occasionally linked together in alliances, offensive and
+defensive; so that the cross and crescent were to be seen side by side
+fighting against some common enemy. In times of peace, too, the noble
+youth of either faith resorted to the same cities, Christian or Moslem,
+to school themselves in military science. Even in the temporary truces
+of sanguinary wars, the warriors who had recently striven together in
+the deadly conflicts of the field, laid aside their animosity, met at
+tournaments, jousts, and other military festivities, and exchanged the
+courtesies of gentle and generous spirits. Thus the opposite races
+became frequently mingled together in peaceful intercourse, or if any
+rivalry took place, it was in those high courtesies and nobler acts
+which bespeak the accomplished cavalier. Warriors of opposite creeds
+became ambitious of transcending each other in magnanimity as well as
+valor. Indeed, the chivalric virtues were refined upon to a degree
+sometimes fastidious and constrained; but at other times, inexpressibly
+noble and affecting. The annals of the times teem with illustrious
+instances of high-wrought courtesy, romantic generosity, lofty
+disinterestedness, and punctilious honor, that warm the very soul to
+read them. These have furnished themes for national plays and poems, or
+have been celebrated in those all-pervading ballads which are as the
+life-breath of the people, and thus have continued to exercise an
+influence on the national character which centuries of vicissitude and
+decline have not been able to destroy; so that, with all their faults,
+and they are many, the Spaniards, even at the present day, are on many
+points the most high-minded and proud-spirited people of Europe.
+It is true, the romance of feeling derived from the sources I have
+mentioned, has, like all other romance, its affectations and extremes.
+It renders the Spaniard at times pompous and grandiloquent; prone to
+carry the "pundonor," or point of honor, beyond the bounds of sober
+sense and sound morality; disposed, in the midst of poverty, to affect
+the "grande caballero," and to look down with sovereign disdain upon
+"arts mechanical," and all the gainful pursuits of plebeian life; but
+this very inflation of spirit, while it fills his brain with vapors,
+lifts him above a thousand meannesses; and though it often keeps him in
+indigence, ever protects him from vulgarity.
+
+In the present day, when popular literature is running into the low
+levels of life and luxuriating on the vices and follies of mankind, and
+when the universal pursuit of gain is trampling down the early growth
+of poetic feeling and wearing out the verdure of the soul, I question
+whether it would not be of service for the reader occasionally to turn
+to these records of prouder times and loftier modes of thinking, and to
+steep himself to the very lips in old Spanish romance.
+
+For my own part, I have a shelf or two of venerable, parchment-bound
+tomes, picked up here and there about the peninsula, and filled with
+chronicles, plays, and ballads, about Moors and Christians, which I keep
+by me as mental tonics, in the same way that a provident housewife has
+her cupboard of cordials. Whenever I find my mind brought below par by
+the commonplace of every-day life, or jarred by the sordid collisions
+of the world, or put out of tune by the shrewd selfishness of modern
+utilitarianism, I resort to these venerable tomes, as did the worthy
+hero of La Mancha to his books of chivalry, and refresh and tone up my
+spirit by a deep draught of their contents. They have some such effect
+upon me as Falstaff ascribes to a good Sherris sack, "warming the blood
+and filling the brain with fiery and delectable shapes."
+
+I here subjoin, Mr. Editor, a small specimen of the cordials I have
+mentioned, just drawn from my Spanish cupboard, which I recommend to
+your palate. If you find it to your taste, you may pass it on to your
+readers.
+
+  Your correspondent and well-wisher,
+  GEOFFREY CRAYON.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LEGEND OF DON MUNIO SANCHO DE HINOJOSA.
+
+BY THE AUTHOR OF THE SKETCH-BOOK.
+
+In the cloisters of the ancient Benedictine convent of San Domingo, at
+Silos, in Castile, are the mouldering yet magnificent monuments of the
+once powerful and chivalrous family of Hinojosa. Among these, reclines
+the marble figure of a knight, in complete armor, with the hands pressed
+together, as if in prayer. On one side of his tomb is sculptured in
+relief a band of Christian cavaliers, capturing a cavalcade of male and
+female Moors; on the other side, the same cavaliers are represented
+kneeling before an altar. The tomb, like most of the neighboring
+monuments, is almost in ruins, and the sculpture is nearly
+unintelligible, excepting to the keen eye of the antiquary. The story
+connected with the sepulchre, however, is still preserved in the old
+Spanish chronicles, and is to the following purport.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In old times, several hundred years ago, there was a noble Castilian
+cavalier, named Don Munio Sancho de Hinojosa, lord of a border castle,
+which had stood the brunt of many a Moorish foray. He had seventy
+horsemen as his household troops, all of the ancient Castilian proof;
+stark warriors, hard riders, and men of iron; with these he scoured the
+Moorish lands, and made his name terrible throughout the borders. His
+castle hall was covered with banners, and scimitars, and Moslem helms,
+the trophies of his prowess. Don Munio was, moreover, a keen huntsman;
+and rejoiced in hounds of all kinds, steeds for the chase, and hawks for
+the towering sport of falconry. When not engaged in warfare, his delight
+was to beat up the neighboring forests; and scarcely ever did he ride
+forth, without hound and horn, a boar-spear in his hand, or a hawk upon
+his fist, and an attendant train of huntsmen.
+
+His wife, Donna Maria Palacin, was of a gentle and timid nature, little
+fitted to be the spouse of so hardy and adventurous a knight; and many
+a tear did the poor lady shed, when he sallied forth upon his daring
+enterprises, and many a prayer did she offer up for his safety.
+
+As this doughty cavalier was one day hunting, he stationed himself in a
+thicket, on the borders of a green glade of the forest, and dispersed
+his followers to rouse the game, and drive it toward his stand. He had
+not been here long, when a cavalcade of Moors, of both sexes, came
+prankling over the forest lawn. They were unarmed, and magnificently
+dressed in robes of tissue and embroidery, rich shawls of India,
+bracelets and anklets of gold, and jewels that sparkled in the sun.
+
+At the head of this gay cavalcade, rode a youthful cavalier, superior
+to the rest in dignity and loftiness of demeanor, and in splendor of
+attire; beside him was a damsel, whose veil, blown aside by the breeze,
+displayed a face of surpassing beauty, and eyes cast down in maiden
+modesty, yet beaming with tenderness and joy.
+
+Don Munio thanked his stars for sending him such a prize, and exulted at
+the thought of bearing home to his wife the glittering spoils of these
+infidels. Putting his hunting-horn to his lips, he gave a blast that
+rung through the forest. His huntsmen came running from all quarters,
+and the astonished Moors were surrounded and made captives.
+
+The beautiful Moor wrung her hands in despair, and her female attendants
+uttered the most piercing cries. The young Moorish cavalier alone
+retained self-possession. He inquired the name of the Christian knight,
+who commanded this troop of horsemen. When told that it was Don Munio
+Sancho de Hinojosa, his countenance lighted up. Approaching that
+cavalier, and kissing his hand, "Don Munio Sancho," said he, "I have
+heard of your fame as a true and valiant knight, terrible in arms, but
+schooled in the noble virtues of chivalry. Such do I trust to find you.
+In me you behold Abadil, son of a Moorish Alcayde. I am on the way to
+celebrate my nuptials with this lady; chance has thrown us in your
+power, but I confide in your magnanimity. Take all our treasure and
+jewels; demand what ransom you think proper for our person, but suffer
+us not to be insulted or dishonored."
+
+When the good knight heard this appeal, and beheld the beauty of the
+youthful pair, his heart was touched with tenderness and courtesy.
+"God forbid," said he, "that I should disturb such happy nuptials. My
+prisoners in troth shall ye be, for fifteen days, and immured within
+my castle, where I claim, as conqueror, the right of celebrating your
+espousals."
+
+So saying, he despatched one of his fleetest horsemen in advance, to
+notify Donna Maria Palacin of the coming of this bridal party; while he
+and his huntsmen escorted the cavalcade, not as captors, but as a guard
+of honor. As they drew near to the castle, the banners were hung out,
+and the trumpets sounded from the battlements; and on their nearer
+approach, the draw-bridge was lowered, and Donna Maria came forth
+to meet them, attended by her ladies and knights, her pages and her
+minstrels. She took the young bride, Allifra, in her arms, kissed her
+with the tenderness of a sister, and conducted her into the castle. In
+the mean time, Don Munio sent forth missives in every direction, and had
+viands and dainties of all kinds collected from the country round; and
+the wedding of the Moorish lovers was celebrated with all possible state
+and festivity. For fifteen days, the castle was given up to joy and
+revelry. There were tiltings and jousts at the ring, and bullfights, and
+banquets, and dances to the sound of minstrelsy. When the fifteen days
+were at an end, he made the bride and bridegroom magnificent presents,
+and conducted them and their attendants safely beyond the borders. Such,
+in old times, were the courtesy and generosity of a Spanish cavalier.
+
+Several years after this event, the King of Castile summoned his nobles
+to assist him in a campaign against the Moors. Don Munio Sancho was
+among the first to answer to the call, with seventy horsemen, all
+staunch and well-tried warriors. His wife, Donna Maria, hung about his
+neck. "Alas, my lord!" exclaimed she, "how often wilt thou tempt thy
+fate, and when will thy thirst for glory be appeased?"
+
+"One battle more," replied Don Munio, "one battle more, for the honor of
+Castile, and I here make a vow, that when this is over, I will lay by my
+sword, and repair with my cavaliers in pilgrimage to the sepulchre of
+our Lord at Jerusalem." The cavaliers all joined with him in the vow,
+and Donna Maria felt in some degree soothed in spirit: still, she saw
+with a heavy heart the departure of her husband, and watched his banner
+with wistful eyes, until it disappeared among the trees of the forest,
+
+The King of Castile led his army to the plains of Almanara, where they
+encountered the Moorish host, near to Ucles. The battle was long and
+bloody; the Christians repeatedly wavered, and were as often rallied by
+the energy of their commanders. Don Munio was covered with wounds, but
+refused to leave the field. The Christians at length gave way, and the
+king was hardly pressed, and in danger of being captured.
+
+Don Munio called upon his cavaliers to follow him to the rescue. "Now is
+the time," cried he, "to prove your loyalty. Fall to, like brave men!
+We fight for the true faith, and if we lose our lives here, we gain a
+better life hereafter."
+
+Rushing with his men between the king and his pursuers, they checked the
+latter in their career, and gave time for their monarch to escape; but
+they fell victims to their loyalty. They all fought to the last gasp.
+Don Munio was singled out by a powerful Moorish knight, but having been
+wounded in the right arm, he fought to disadvantage, and was slain. The
+battle being over, the Moor paused to possess himself of the spoils of
+this redoubtable Christian warrior. When he unlaced the helmet, however,
+and beheld the countenance of Don Munio, he gave a great cry, and smote
+his breast. "Woe is me!" cried he: "I have slain my benefactor! The
+flower of knightly virtue! the most magnanimous of cavaliers!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While the battle had been raging on the plain of Salmanara, Donna Maria
+Palacin remained in her castle, a prey to the keenest anxiety. Her eyes
+were ever fixed on the road that led from the country of the Moors, and
+often she asked the watchman of the tower, "What seest thou?"
+
+One evening, at the shadowy hour of twilight, the warden sounded his
+horn. "I see," cried he, "a numerous train winding up the valley. There
+are mingled Moors and Christians. The banner of my lord is in the
+advance. Joyful tidings!" exclaimed the old seneschal: "my lord returns
+in triumph, and brings captives!" Then the castle courts rang with
+shouts of joy; and the standard was displayed, and the trumpets were
+sounded, and the draw-bridge was lowered, and Donna Maria went forth
+with her ladies, and her knights, and her pages, and her minstrels, to
+welcome her lord from the wars. But as the train drew nigh, she beheld a
+sumptuous bier, covered with black velvet, and on it lay a warrior, as
+if taking his repose: he lay in his armor, with his helmet on his head,
+and his sword in his hand, as one who had never been conquered, and
+around the bier were the escutcheons of the house of Hinojosa.
+
+A number of Moorish cavaliers attended the bier, with emblems of
+mourning, and with dejected countenances: and their leader cast himself
+at the feet of Donna Maria, and hid his face in his hands. She beheld in
+him the gallant Abadil, whom she had once welcomed with his bride to
+her castle, but who now came with the body of her lord, whom he had
+unknowingly slain in battle!
+
+The sepulchre erected in the cloisters of the Convent of San Domingo was
+achieved at the expense of the Moor Abadil, as a feeble testimony of his
+grief for the death of the good knight Don Munio, and his reverence for
+his memory. The tender and faithful Donna Maria soon followed her lord
+to the tomb. On one of the stones of a small arch, beside his sepulchre,
+is the following simple inscription: "_Hic jacet Maria Palacin, uxor
+Munonis Sancij de Finojosa_:" Here lies Maria Palacin, wife of Munio
+Sancho de Hinojosa.
+
+The legend of Don Munio Sancho does not conclude with his death. On the
+same day on which the battle took place on the plain of Salmanara, a
+chaplain of the Holy Temple at Jerusalem, while standing at the outer
+gate, beheld a train of Christian cavaliers advancing, as if in
+pilgrimage. The chaplain was a native of Spain, and as the pilgrims
+approached, he knew the foremost to be Don Munio Sancho de Hinojosa,
+with whom he had been well acquainted in former times. Hastening to the
+patriarch, he told him of the honorable rank of the pilgrims at the
+gate. The patriarch, therefore, went forth with a grand procession of
+priests and monks, and received the pilgrims with all due honor. There
+were seventy cavaliers, beside their leader, all stark and lofty
+warriors. They carried their helmets in their hands, and their faces
+were deadly pale. They greeted no one, nor looked either to the right or
+to the left, but entered the chapel, and kneeling before the Sepulchre
+of our Saviour, performed their orisons in silence. When they had
+concluded, they rose as if to depart, and the patriarch and his
+attendants advanced to speak to them, but they were no more to be seen.
+Every one marvelled what could be the meaning of this prodigy. The
+patriarch carefully noted down the day, and sent to Castile to learn
+tidings of Don Munio Sancho de Hinojosa. He received for reply, that
+on the very day specified, that worthy knight, with seventy of his
+followers, had been slain in battle. These, therefore, must have been
+the blessed spirits of those Christian warriors, come to fulfil their
+vow of a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. Such was
+Castilian faith, in the olden time, which kept its word, even beyond the
+grave.
+
+If any one should doubt of the miraculous apparition of these phantom
+knights, let him consult the History of the Kings of Castile and Leon,
+by the learned and pious Fray Prudencio de Sandoval, Bishop of Pamplona,
+where he will find it recorded in the History of the King Don Alonzo
+VI., on the hundred and second page. It is too precious a legend to be
+lightly abandoned to the doubter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+COMMUNIPAW.
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
+
+Sir: I observe, with pleasure, that you are performing from time to time
+a pious duty, imposed upon you, I may say, by the name you have adopted
+as your titular standard, in following in the footsteps of the venerable
+KNICKERBOCKER, and gleaning every fact concerning the early times of the
+Manhattoes which may have escaped his hand. I trust, therefore, a few
+particulars, legendary and statistical, concerning a place which
+figures conspicuously in the early pages of his history, will not be
+unacceptable. I allude, Sir, to the ancient and renowned village of
+Communipaw, which, according to the veracious Diedrich, and to equally
+veracious tradition, was the first spot where our ever-to-be-lamented
+Dutch progenitors planted their standard and cast the seeds of empire,
+and from whence subsequently sailed the memorable expedition under
+Oloffe the Dreamer, which landed on the opposite island of Manhatta,
+and founded the present city of New-York, the city of dreams and
+speculations.
+
+Communipaw, therefore, may truly be called the parent of New-York; yet
+it is an astonishing fact, that though immediately opposite to the great
+city it has produced, from whence its red roofs and tin weather-cocks
+can actually be descried peering above the surrounding apple orchards,
+it should be almost as rarely visited, and as little known by the
+inhabitants of the metropolis, as if it had been locked up among the
+Rocky Mountains. Sir, I think there is something unnatural in this,
+especially in these times of ramble and research, when our citizens are
+antiquity-hunting in every part of the world. Curiosity, like charity,
+should begin at home; and I would enjoin it on our worthy burghers,
+especially those of the real Knickerbocker breed, before they send their
+sons abroad to wonder and grow wise among the remains of Greece and
+Rome, to let them make a tour of ancient Pavonia, from Weehawk even
+to the Kills, and meditate, with filial reverence, on the moss-grown
+mansions of Communipaw. Sir, I regard this much neglected village as one
+of the most remarkable places in the country. The intelligent traveller,
+as he looks down upon it from the Bergen Heights, modestly nestled among
+its cabbage-gardens, while the great flaunting city it has begotten is
+stretching far and wide on the opposite side of the bay, the intelligent
+traveller, I say, will be filled with astonishment; not, Sir, at the
+village of Communipaw, which in truth is a very small village, but at
+the almost incredible fact that so small a village should have produced
+so great a city. It looks to him, indeed, like some squat little
+dame, with a tall grenadier of a son strutting by her side; or some
+simple-hearted hen that has unwittingly hatched out a long-legged
+turkey.
+
+But this is not all for which Communipaw is remarkable. Sir, it is
+interesting on another account. It is to the ancient province of
+the New-Netherlands and the classic era of the Dutch dynasty, what
+Herculaneum and Pompeii are to ancient Rome and the glorious days of the
+empire. Here every thing remains in statu quo, as it was in the days of
+Oloffe the Dreamer, Walter the Doubter, and the other worthies of the
+golden age; the same broad-brimmed hats and broad-bottomed breeches;
+the same knee-buckles and shoe-buckles; the same close-quilled caps
+and linsey-woolsey short-gowns and petticoats; the same implements and
+utensils and forms and fashions; in a word, Communipaw at the present
+day is a picture of what New-Amsterdam was before the conquest. The
+"intelligent traveller" aforesaid, as he treads its streets, is struck
+with the primitive character of every thing around him. Instead of
+Grecian temples for dwelling-houses, with a great column of pine boards
+in the way of every window, he beholds high peaked roofs, gable ends
+to the street, with weather-cocks at top, and windows of all sorts and
+sizes; large ones for the grown-up members of the family, and little
+ones for the little folk. Instead of cold marble porches, with
+close-locked doors and brass knockers, he sees the doors hospitably
+open; the worthy burgher smoking his pipe on the old-fashioned stoop in
+front, with his "vrouw" knitting beside him; and the cat and her kittens
+at their feet sleeping in the sunshine.
+
+Astonished at the obsolete and "old world" air of every thing around
+him, the intelligent traveller demands how all this has come to pass.
+Herculaneum and Pompeii remain, it is true, unaffected by the varying
+fashions of centuries; but they were buried by a volcano and preserved
+in ashes. What charmed spell has kept this wonderful little place
+unchanged, though in sight of the most changeful city in the universe?
+Has it, too, been buried under its cabbage-gardens, and only dug out
+in modern days for the wonder and edification of the world? The reply
+involves a point of history, worthy of notice and record, and reflecting
+immortal honor on Communipaw.
+
+At the time when New-Amsterdam was invaded and conquered by British
+foes, as has been related in the history of the venerable Diedrich, a
+great dispersion took place among the Dutch inhabitants. Many, like the
+illustrious Peter Stuyvesant, buried themselves in rural retreats in the
+Bowerie; others, like Wolfert Acker, took refuge in various remote
+parts of the Hudson; but there was one staunch, unconquerable band that
+determined to keep together, and preserve themselves, like seed corn,
+for the future fructification and perpetuity of the Knickerbocker race.
+These were headed by one Garret Van Horne, a gigantic Dutchman, the
+Pelayo of the New-Netherlands. Under his guidance, they retreated across
+the bay and buried themselves among the marshes of ancient Pavonia, as
+did the followers of Pelayo among the mountains of Asturias, when Spain
+was overrun by its Arabian invaders.
+
+The gallant Van Horne set up his standard at Communipaw, and invited
+all those to rally under it, who were true Nederlanders at heart, and
+determined to resist all foreign intermixture or encroachment. A strict
+non-intercourse was observed with the captured city; not a boat ever
+crossed to it from Communipaw, and the English language was rigorously
+tabooed throughout the village and its dependencies. Every man was sworn
+to wear his hat, cut his coat, build his house, and harness his horses,
+exactly as his father had done before him; and to permit nothing but the
+Dutch language to be spoken in his household.
+
+As a citadel of the place, and a strong-hold for the preservation and
+defence of every thing Dutch, the gallant Van Horne erected a lordly
+mansion, with a chimney perched at every corner, which thence derived
+the aristocratical name of "The House of the Four Chimneys." Hither he
+transferred many of the precious reliques of New-Amsterdam; the great
+round-crowned hat that once covered the capacious head of Walter the
+Doubter, and the identical shoe with which Peter the Headstrong kicked
+his pusillanimous councillors down-stairs. St. Nicholas, it is said,
+took this loyal house under his especial protection; and a Dutch
+soothsayer predicted, that as long as it should stand, Communipaw would
+be safe from the intrusion either of Briton or Yankee.
+
+In this house would the gallant Van Home and his compeers hold frequent
+councils of war, as to the possibility of re-conquering the province
+from the British; and here would they sit for hours, nay, days, together
+smoking their pipes and keeping watch upon the growing city of New-York;
+groaning in spirit whenever they saw a new house erected or ship
+launched, and persuading themselves that Admiral Van Tromp would one
+day or other arrive to sweep out the invaders with the broom which he
+carried at his mast-head.
+
+Years rolled by, but Van Tromp never arrived. The British strengthened
+themselves in the land, and the captured city flourished under their
+domination. Still, the worthies of Communipaw would not despair;
+something or other, they were sure, would turn up to restore the power
+of the Hogen Mogens, the Lord States-General; so they kept smoking and
+smoking, and watching and watching, and turning the same few thoughts
+over and over in a perpetual circle, which is commonly called
+deliberating. In the mean time, being hemmed up within a narrow compass,
+between the broad bay and the Bergen hills, they grew poorer and poorer,
+until they had scarce the wherewithal to maintain their pipes in fuel
+during their endless deliberations.
+
+And now must I relate a circumstance which will call for a little
+exertion of faith on the part of the reader; but I can only say that if
+he doubts it, he had better not utter his doubts in Communipaw, as it is
+among the religious beliefs of the place. It is, in fact, nothing more
+nor less than a miracle, worked by the blessed St. Nicholas, for the
+relief and sustenance of this loyal community.
+
+It so happened, in this time of extremity, that in the course of
+cleaning the House of the Four Chimneys, by an ignorant housewife who
+knew nothing of the historic value of the reliques it contained, the old
+hat of Walter the Doubter and the executive shoe of Peter the Headstrong
+were thrown out of doors as rubbish. But mark the consequence. The good
+St. Nicholas kept watch over these precious reliques, and wrought out of
+them a wonderful providence.
+
+The hat of Walter the Doubter falling on a stercoraceous heap of
+compost, in the rear of the house, began forthwith to vegetate. Its
+broad brim, spread forth grandly and exfoliated, and its round crown
+swelled and crimped and consolidated until the whole became a prodigious
+cabbage, rivalling in magnitude the capacious head of the Doubter. In a
+word, it was the origin of that renowned species of cabbage known, by
+all Dutch epicures, by the name of the Governor's Head, and which is to
+this day the glory of Communipaw.
+
+On the other hand, the shoe of Peter Stuyvesant being thrown into the
+river, in front of the house, gradually hardened and concreted, and
+became covered with barnacles, and at length turned into a gigantic
+oyster; being the progenitor of that illustrious species known
+throughout the gastronomical world by the name of the Governor's Foot.
+
+These miracles were the salvation of Communipaw. The sages of the place
+immediately saw in them the hand of St. Nicholas, and understood their
+mystic signification. They set to work with all diligence to cultivate
+and multiply these great blessings; and so abundantly did the
+gubernatorial hat and shoe fructify and increase, that in a little time
+great patches of cabbages were to be seen extending from the village of
+Communipaw quite to the Bergen Hills; while the whole bottom of the
+bay in front became a vast bed of oysters. Ever since that time this
+excellent community has been divided into two great classes: those who
+cultivate the land and those who cultivate the water. The former have
+devoted themselves to the nurture and edification of cabbages, rearing
+them in all their varieties; while the latter have formed parks and
+plantations, under water, to which juvenile oysters are transplanted
+from foreign parts, to finish their education.
+
+As these great sources of profit multiplied upon their hands, the worthy
+inhabitants of Communipaw began to long for a market at which to
+dispose of their superabundance. This gradually produced once more an
+intercourse with New-York; but it was always carried on by the old
+people and the negroes; never would they permit the young folks, of
+either sex, to visit the city, lest they should get tainted with foreign
+manners and bring home foreign fashions. Even to this day, if you see an
+old burgher in the market, with hat and garb of antique Dutch fashion,
+you may be sure he is one of the old unconquered race of the "bitter
+blood," who maintain their strong-hold at Communipaw.
+
+In modern days, the hereditary bitterness against the English has lost
+much of its asperity, or rather has become merged in a new source of
+jealousy and apprehension: I allude to the incessant and wide-spreading
+irruptions from New-England. Word has been continually brought back to
+Communipaw, by those of the community who return from their trading
+voyages in cabbages and oysters, of the alarming power which the Yankees
+are gaining in the ancient city of New-Amsterdam; elbowing the genuine
+Knickerbockers out of all civic posts of honor and profit; bargaining
+them out of their hereditary homesteads; pulling down the venerable
+houses, with crow-step gables, which have stood since the time of the
+Dutch rule, and erecting, instead, granite stores, and marble banks; in
+a word, evincing a deadly determination to obliterate every vestige of
+the good old Dutch times.
+
+In consequence of the jealousy thus awakened, the worthy traders from
+Communipaw confine their dealings, as much as possible, to the genuine
+Dutch families. If they furnish the Yankees at all, it is with inferior
+articles. Never can the latter procure a real "Governor's Head," or
+"Governor's Foot," though they have offered extravagant prices for the
+same, to grace their table on the annual festival of the New-England
+Society.
+
+But what has carried this hostility to the Yankees to the highest pitch,
+was an attempt made by that all-pervading race to get possession of
+Communipaw itself. Yes, Sir; during the late mania for land speculation,
+a daring company of Yankee projectors landed before the village; stopped
+the honest burghers on the public highway, and endeavored to bargain
+them out of their hereditary acres; displayed lithographic maps,
+in which their cabbage-gardens were laid out into town lots: their
+oyster-parks into docks and quays; and even the House of the Four
+Chimneys metamorphosed into a bank, which was to enrich the whole
+neighborhood with paper money.
+
+Fortunately, the gallant Van Hornes came to the rescue, just as some of
+the worthy burghers were on the point of capitulating. The Yankees were
+put to the rout, with signal confusion, and have never since dared to
+show their faces in the place. The good people continue to cultivate
+their cabbages, and rear their oysters; they know nothing of banks, nor
+joint stock companies, but treasure up their money in stocking-feet, at
+the bottom of the family chest, or bury it in iron pots, as did their
+fathers and grandfathers before them.
+
+As to the House of the Four Chimneys, it still remains in the great and
+tall family of the Van Hornes. Here are to be seen ancient Dutch corner
+cupboards, chests of drawers, and massive clothes-presses, quaintly
+carved, and carefully waxed and polished; together with divers thick,
+black-letter volumes, with brass clasps, printed of yore in Leydon and
+Amsterdam, and handed down from generation to generation, in the family,
+but never read. They are preserved in the archives, among sundry old
+parchment deeds, in Dutch and English, bearing the seals of the early
+governors of the province.
+
+In this house, the primitive Dutch holidays of Paas and Pinxter
+are faithfully kept up; and New-Year celebrated with cookies and
+cherry-bounce; nor is the festival of the blessed St. Nicholas
+forgotten, when all the children are sure to hang up their stockings,
+and to have them filled according to their deserts; though, it is said,
+the good saint is occasionally perplexed in his nocturnal visits, which
+chimney to descend.
+
+Of late, this portentous mansion has begun to give signs of dilapidation
+and decay. Some have attributed this to the visits made by the young
+people to the city, and their bringing thence various modern fashions;
+and to their neglect of the Dutch language, which is gradually becoming
+confined to the older persons in the community. The house, too, was
+greatly shaken by high winds, during the prevalence of the speculation
+mania, especially at the time of the landing of the Yankees. Seeing how
+mysteriously the fate of Communipaw is identified with this venerable
+mansion, we cannot wonder that the older and wiser heads of the
+community should be filled with dismay, whenever a brick is toppled
+down from one of the chimneys, or a weather-cock is blown off from a
+gable-end.
+
+The present lord of this historic pile, I am happy to say, is calculated
+to maintain it in all its integrity. He is of patriarchal age, and is
+worthy of the days of the patriarchs. He has done his utmost to increase
+and multiply the true race in the land. His wife has not been inferior
+to him in zeal, and they are surrounded by a goodly progeny of children,
+and grand-children, and great-grand-children, who promise to perpetuate
+the name of Van Horne, until time shall be no more. So be it! Long may
+the horn of the Van Hornes continue to be exalted in the land! Tall as
+they are, may their shadows never be less! May the House of the Four
+Chimneys remain for ages, the citadel of Communipaw, and the smoke of
+its chimneys continue to ascend, a sweet-smelling incense in the hose of
+St. Nicholas!
+
+With great respect, Mr. Editor,
+
+Your ob't servant,
+
+HERMANUS VANDERDONK.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+CONSPIRACY OF THE COCKED HATS.
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
+
+Sir: I have read with great satisfaction the valuable paper of your
+correspondent, Mr. HERMANUS VANDERDONK, (who, I take it, is a descendant
+of the learned Adrian Vanderdonk, one of the early historians of the
+Nieuw-Nederlands,) giving sundry particulars, legendary and statistical,
+touching the venerable village of Communipaw and its fate-bound citadel,
+the House of the Four Chimneys. It goes to prove what I have repeatedly
+maintained, that we live in the midst of history and mystery and
+romance; and that there is no spot in the world more rich in themes for
+the writer of historic novels, heroic melodramas, and rough-shod epics,
+than this same business-looking city of the Manhattoes and its environs.
+He who would find these elements, however, must not seek them among the
+modern improvements and modern people of this moneyed metropolis, but
+must dig for them, as for Kidd the pirate's treasures, in out-of-the-way
+places, and among the ruins of the past.
+
+Poetry and romance received a fatal blow at the overthrow of the ancient
+Dutch dynasty, and have ever since been gradually withering under the
+growing domination of the Yankees. They abandoned our hearths when the
+old Dutch tiles were superseded by marble chimney-pieces; when brass
+andirons made way for polished grates, and the crackling and blazing
+fire of nut-wood gave place to the smoke and stench of Liverpool coal;
+and on the downfall of the last gable-end house, their requiem was
+tolled from the tower of the Dutch church in Nassau-street by the old
+bell that came from Holland. But poetry and romance still live unseen
+among us, or seen only by the enlightened few, who are able to
+contemplate this city and its environs through the medium of tradition,
+and clothed with the associations of foregone ages.
+
+Would you seek these elements in the country, Mr. Editor, avoid all
+turnpikes, rail-roads, and steamboats, those abominable inventions by
+which the usurping Yankees are strengthening themselves in the land, and
+subduing every thing to utility and common-place. Avoid all towns and
+cities of white clapboard palaces and Grecian temples, studded with
+"Academics," "Seminaries," and "Institutes," which glisten along our
+bays and rivers; these are the strong-holds of Yankee usurpation; but if
+haply you light upon some rough, rambling road, winding between stone
+fences, gray with moss, and overgrown with elder, poke-berry, mullein,
+and sweet-briar, with here and there a low, red-roofed, whitewashed
+farm-house, cowering among apple and cherry trees; an old stone church,
+with elms, willows, and button-woods, as old-looking as itself, and
+tombstones almost buried in their own graves; and, peradventure, a small
+log school-house at a cross-road, where the English is still taught with
+a thickness of the tongue, instead of a twang of the nose; should you,
+I say, light upon such a neighborhood, Mr. Editor, you may thank your
+stars that you have found one of the lingering haunts of poetry and
+romance.
+
+Your correspondent, Sir, has touched upon that sublime and affecting
+feature in the history of Communipaw, the retreat of the patriotic band
+of Nederlanders, led by Van Horne, whom he justly terms the Pelayo of
+the New-Netherlands. He has given you a picture of the manner in which
+they ensconced themselves in the House of the Four Chimneys, and awaited
+with heroic patience and perseverance the day that should see the flag
+of the Hogen Mogens once more floating on the fort of New-Amsterdam.
+
+Your correspondent, Sir, has but given you a glimpse over the threshold;
+I will now let you into the heart of the mystery of this most mysterious
+and eventful village.
+
+  Yes, sir, I will now--"unclasp a secret book;
+  And to your quick conceiving discontents,
+  I'll read you matter deep and dangerous,
+  As full of peril and adventurous spirit,
+  As to o'er walk a current, roaring loud,
+  On the unsteadfast footing of a spear."
+
+Sir, it is one of the most beautiful and interesting facts connected
+with the history of Communipaw, that the early feeling of resistance to
+foreign rule, alluded to by your correspondent, is still kept up. Yes,
+sir, a settled, secret, and determined conspiracy has been going on
+for generations among this indomitable people, the descendants of the
+refugees from New-Amsterdam; the object of which is to redeem their
+ancient seat of empire, and to drive the losel Yankees out of the land.
+
+Communipaw, it is true, has the glory of originating this conspiracy;
+and it was hatched and reared in the House of the Four Chimneys; but it
+has spread far and wide over ancient Pavonia, surmounted the heights of
+Bergen, Hoboken, and Weehawk, crept up along the banks of the Passaic
+and the Hackensack, until it pervades the whole chivalry of the country
+from Tappan Slote in the north to Piscataway in the south, including the
+pugnacious village of Rahway, more heroically denominated Spank-town.
+
+Throughout all these regions a great "in-and-in confederacy" prevails,
+that is to say, a confederacy among the Dutch families, by dint of
+diligent and exclusive intermarriage, to keep the race pure and to
+multiply. If ever, Mr. Editor, in the course of your travels between
+Spank-town and Tappan Slote, you should see a cosey, low-eaved
+farm-house, teeming with sturdy, broad-built little urchins, you may set
+it down as one of the breeding places of this grand secret confederacy,
+stocked with the embryo deliverers of New-Amsterdam.
+
+Another step in the progress of this patriotic conspiracy, is the
+establishment, in various places within the ancient boundaries of the
+Nieuw-Nederlands, of secret, or rather mysterious associations, composed
+of the genuine sons of the Nederlanders, with the ostensible object of
+keeping up the memory of old times and customs, but with the real object
+of promoting the views of this dark and mighty plot, and extending its
+ramifications throughout the land.
+
+Sir, I am descended from a long line of genuine Nederlanders, who,
+though they remained in the city of New-Amsterdam after the conquest,
+and throughout the usurpation, have never in their hearts been able to
+tolerate the yoke imposed upon them. My worthy father, who was one of
+the last of the cocked hats, had a little knot of cronies, of his own
+stamp, who used to meet in our wainscoted parlor, round a nut-wood fire,
+talk over old times, when the city was ruled by its native burgomasters,
+and groan over the monopoly of all places of power and profit by the
+Yankees. I well recollect the effect upon this worthy little conclave,
+when the Yankees first instituted then New-England Society, held their
+"national festival," toasted their "father land," and sang their foreign
+songs of triumph within the very precincts of our ancient metropolis.
+Sir, from that day, my father held the smell of codfish and potatoes,
+and the sight of pumpkin pie, in utter abomination; and whenever the
+annual dinner of the New-England Society came round, it was a sore
+anniversary for his children. He got up in an ill humor, grumbled and
+growled throughout the day, and not one of us went to bed that night,
+without having had his jacket well trounced, to the tune of "The Pilgrim
+Fathers."
+
+You may judge, then, Mr. Editor, of the exaltation of all true patriots
+of this stamp, when the Society of Saint Nicholas was set up among us,
+and intrepidly established, cheek by jole, alongside of the society of
+the invaders. Never shall I forget the effect upon my father and his
+little knot of brother groaners, when tidings were brought them that the
+ancient banner of the Manhattoes was actually floating from the window
+of the City Hotel. Sir, they nearly jumped out of their silver-buckled
+shoes for joy. They took down their cocked hats from the pegs on which
+they had hanged them, as the Israelites of yore hung their harps upon
+the willows, in token of bondage, clapped them resolutely once more upon
+their heads, and cocked them in the face of every Yankee they met on the
+way to the banqueting-room.
+
+The institution of this society was hailed with transport throughout the
+whole extent of the New-Netherlands; being considered a secret foothold
+gained in New-Amsterdam, and a flattering presage of future triumph.
+Whenever that society holds its annual feast, a sympathetic hilarity
+prevails throughout the land; ancient Pavonia sends over its
+contributions of cabbages and oysters; the House of the Four Chimneys is
+splendidly illuminated, and the traditional song of St. Nicholas, the
+mystic bond of union and conspiracy, is chaunted with closed doors, in
+every genuine Dutch family.
+
+I have thus, I trust, Mr. Editor, opened your eyes to some of the grand
+moral, poetical, and political phenomena with which you are surrounded.
+You will now be able to read the "signs of the times." You will
+now understand what is meant by those "Knickerbocker Halls," and
+"Knickerbocker Hotels," and "Knickerbocker Lunches," that are daily
+springing up in our city and what all these "Knickerbocker Omnibuses"
+are driving at. You will see in them so many clouds before a storm; so
+many mysterious but sublime intimations of the gathering vengeance of a
+great though oppressed people. Above all, you will now contemplate
+our bay and its portentous borders, with proper feelings of awe and
+admiration. Talk of the Bay of Naples, and its volcanic mountains! Why,
+Sir, little Communipaw, sleeping among its cabbage gardens, "quiet as
+gunpowder," yet with this tremendous conspiracy brewing in its bosom is
+an object ten times as sublime (in a moral point of view, mark me) as
+Vesuvius in repose, though charged with lava and brimstone, and ready
+for an eruption.
+
+Let me advert to a circumstance connected with this theme, which
+cannot but be appreciated by every heart of sensibility. You must have
+remarked, Mr. Editor, on summer evenings, and on Sunday afternoons,
+certain grave, primitive-looking personages, walking the Battery, in
+close confabulation, with their canes behind their backs, and ever and
+anon turning a wistful gaze toward the Jersey shore. These, Sir, are the
+sons of Saint Nicholas, the genuine Nederlanders; who regard Communipaw
+with pious reverence, not merely as the progenitor, but the destined
+regenerator, of this great metropolis. Yes, Sir; they are looking with
+longing eyes to the green marshes of ancient Pavonia, as did the poor
+conquered Spaniards of yore toward the stern mountains of Asturias,
+wondering whether the day of deliverance is at hand. Many is the time,
+when, in my boyhood, I have walked with my father and his confidential
+compeers on the Battery, and listened to their calculations and
+conjectures, and observed the points of their sharp cocked hats evermore
+turned toward Pavonia. Nay, Sir, I am convinced that at this moment, if
+I were to take down the cocked hat of my lamented father from the peg on
+which it has hung for years, and were to carry it to the Battery, its
+centre point, true as the needle to the pole, would turn to Communipaw.
+
+Mr. Editor, the great historic drama of New-Amsterdam, is but half
+acted. The reigns of Walter the Doubter, William the Testy, and Peter
+the Headstrong, with the rise, progress, and decline of the Dutch
+dynasty, are but so many parts of the main action, the triumphant
+catastrophe of which is yet to come. Yes, Sir! the deliverance of
+the New-Nederlands from Yankee domination will eclipse the far-famed
+redemption of Spain from the Moors, and the oft-sung conquest of Granada
+will fade before the chivalrous triumph of New-Amsterdam. Would that
+Peter Stuyvesant could rise from his grave to witness that day!
+
+Your humble servant,
+
+ROLOFF VAN RIPPER.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+P. S. Just as I had concluded the foregoing epistle, I received a piece
+of intelligence, which makes me tremble for the fate of Communipaw.
+I fear, Mr. Editor, the grand conspiracy is in danger of being
+countermined and counteracted, by those all-pervading and
+indefatigable Yankees. Would you think it, Sir! one of them has actually
+effected an entry in the place by covered way; or in other words, under
+cover of the petticoats. Finding every other mode ineffectual, he
+secretly laid siege to a Dutch heiress, who owns a great cabbage-garden
+in her own right. Being a smooth-tongued varlet, he easily prevailed on
+her to elope with him, and they were privately married at Spank-town!
+The first notice the good people of Communipaw had of this awful event,
+was a lithographed map of the cabbage garden laid out in town lots, and
+advertised for sale! On the night of the wedding, the main weather-cock
+of the House of the Four Chimneys was carried away in a whirlwind! The
+greatest consternation reigns throughout the village!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A LEGEND OF COMMUNIPAW.
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER MAGAZINE.
+
+Sir: I observed in your last month's periodical, a communication from
+a Mr. VANDERDONK, giving some information concerning Communipaw. I
+herewith send you, Mr. Editor, a legend connected with that place; and
+am much surprised it should have escaped the researches of your very
+authentic correspondent, as it relates to an edifice scarcely less fated
+than the House of the Four Chimneys. I give you the legend in its crude
+and simple state, as I heard it related; it is capable, however, of
+being dilated, inflated, and dressed up into very imposing shape and
+dimensions. Should any of your ingenious contributors in this line feel
+inclined to take it in hand, they will find ample materials, collateral
+and illustrative, among the papers of the late Reinier Skaats, many
+years since crier of the court, and keeper of the City Hall, in the
+city of the Manhattoes; or in the library of that important and utterly
+renowned functionary, Mr. Jacob Hays, long time high constable, who,
+in the course of his extensive researches, has amassed an amount of
+valuable facts, to be rivalled only by that great historical collection,
+"The Newgate Calendar."
+
+Your humble servant,
+
+BARENT VAN SCHAICK.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_GUESTS FROM GIBBET-ISLAND_.
+
+A LEGEND OF COMMUNIPAW.
+
+Whoever has visited the ancient and renowned village of Communipaw,
+may have noticed an old stone building, of most ruinous and sinister
+appearance. The doors and window-shutters are ready to drop from their
+hinges; old clothes are stuffed in the broken panes of glass, while
+legions of half-starved dogs prowl about the premises, and rush out and
+bark at every passer-by; for your beggarly house in a village is most
+apt to swarm with profligate and ill-conditioned dogs. What adds to the
+sinister appearance of this mansion, is a tall frame in front, not
+a little resembling a gallows, and which looks as if waiting to
+accommodate some of the inhabitants with a well-merited airing. It is
+not a gallows, however, but an ancient sign-post; for this dwelling, in
+the golden days of Communipaw, was one of the most orderly and peaceful
+of village taverns, where all the public affairs of Communipaw were
+talked and smoked over. In fact, it was in this very building that
+Oloffe the Dreamer, and his companions, concerted that great voyage of
+discovery and colonization, in which they explored Buttermilk Channel,
+were nearly shipwrecked in the strait of Hell-gate, and finally landed
+on the Island of Manhattan, and founded the great city of New-Amsterdam.
+
+Even after the province had been cruelly wrested from the sway of their
+High Mightinesses, by the combined forces of the British and Yankees,
+this tavern continued its ancient loyalty. It is true, the head of the
+Prince of Orange disappeared from the sign; a strange bird being painted
+over it, with the explanatory legend of "DIE WILDE GANS," or The Wild
+Goose; but this all the world knew to be a sly riddle of the landlord,
+the worthy Teunis Van Gieson, a knowing man in a small way, who laid
+his finger beside his nose and winked, when any one studied the
+signification of his sign, and observed that his goose was hatching, but
+would join the flock whenever they flew over the water; an enigma which
+was the perpetual recreation and delight of the loyal but fat-headed
+burghers of Communipaw.
+
+Under the sway of this patriotic, though discreet and quiet publican,
+the tavern continued to flourish in primeval tranquillity, and was
+the resort of all true-hearted Nederlanders, from all parts of Pavonia;
+who met here quietly and secretly, to smoke and drink the downfall of
+Briton and Yankee, and success to Admiral Van Tromp.
+
+The only drawback on the comfort of the establishment, was a nephew of
+mine host, a sister's son, Yan Yost Vanderscamp by name, and a real
+scamp by nature. This unlucky whipster showed an early propensity to
+mischief, which he gratified in a small way, by playing tricks upon the
+frequenters of the Wild Goose; putting gunpowder in their pipes, or
+squibs in their pockets, and astonishing them with an explosion, while
+they sat nodding round the fire-place in the bar-room; and if perchance
+a worthy burgher from some distant part of Pavonia had lingered until
+dark over his potation, it was odds but that young Vanderscamp would
+slip a briar under his horse's tail, as he mounted, and send him
+clattering along the road, in neck-or-nothing style, to his infinite
+astonishment and discomfiture.
+
+It may be wondered at, that mine host of the Wild Goose did not turn
+such a graceless varlet out of doors; but Teunis Van Gieson was an
+easy-tempered man, and, having no child of his own, looked upon his
+nephew with almost parental indulgence. His patience and good-nature
+were doomed to be tried by another inmate of his mansion. This was a
+cross-grained curmudgeon of a negro, named Pluto, who was a kind of
+enigma in Communipaw. Where he came from, nobody knew. He was found one
+morning, after a storm, cast like a sea-monster on the strand, in front
+of the Wild Goose, and lay there, more dead than alive. The neighbors
+gathered round, and speculated on this production of the deep; whether
+it were fish or flesh, or a compound of both, commonly yclept a merman.
+The kind-hearted Teunis Van Gieson, seeing that he wore the human form,
+took him into his house, and warmed him into life. By degrees, he showed
+signs of intelligence, and even uttered sounds very much like language,
+but which no one in Communipaw could understand. Some thought him a
+negro just from Guinea, who had either fallen overboard, or escaped from
+a slave-ship. Nothing, however, could ever draw from him any account
+of his origin. When questioned on the subject, he merely pointed to
+Gibbet-Island, a small rocky islet, which lies in the open bay, just
+opposite to Communipaw, as if that were his native place, though every
+body knew it had never been inhabited.
+
+In the process of time, he acquired something of the Dutch language,
+that is to say, he learnt all its vocabulary of oaths and maledictions,
+with just words sufficient to string them together. "Donder en
+blicksen!" (thunder and lightning,) was the gentlest of his
+ejaculations. For years he kept about the Wild Goose, more like one of
+those familiar spirits, or household goblins, that we read of, than
+like a human being. He acknowledged allegiance to no one, but performed
+various domestic offices, when it suited his humor; waiting occasionally
+on the guests; grooming the horses, cutting wood, drawing water; and all
+this without being ordered. Lay any command on him, and the stubborn
+sea-urchin was sure to rebel. He was never so much at home, however,
+as when on the water, plying about in skiff or canoe, entirely alone,
+fishing, crabbing, or grabbing for oysters, and would bring home
+quantities for the larder of the Wild Goose, which he would throw down
+at the kitchen door, with a growl. No wind nor weather deterred him from
+launching forth on his favorite element: indeed, the wilder the weather,
+the more he seemed to enjoy it. If a storm was brewing, he was sure to
+put off from shore; and would be seen far out in the bay, his light
+skiff dancing like a feather on the waves, when sea and sky were all
+in a turmoil, and the stoutest ships were fain to lower their sails.
+Sometimes, on such occasions, he would be absent for days together. How
+he weathered the tempest, and how and where he subsisted, no one
+could divine, nor did any one venture to ask, for all had an almost
+superstitious awe of him. Some of the Communipaw oystermen declared that
+they had more than once seen him suddenly disappear, canoe and all, as
+if they plunged beneath the waves, and after a while come up again, in
+quite a different part of the bay; whence they concluded that he could
+live under water like that notable species of wild duck, commonly called
+the Hell-diver. All began to consider him in the light of a foul-weather
+bird, like the Mother Carey's Chicken, or Stormy Petrel; and whenever
+they saw him putting far out in his skiff, in cloudy weather, made up
+their minds for a storm.
+
+The only being for whom he seemed to have any liking, was Yan Yost
+Vanderscamp, and him he liked for his very wickedness. He in a manner
+took the boy under his tutelage, prompted him to all kinds of mischief,
+aided him in every wild, harum-scarum freak, until the lad became the
+complete scapegrace of the village; a pest to his uncle, and to every
+one else. Nor were his pranks confined to the land; he soon learned to
+accompany old Pluto on the water. Together these worthies would cruise
+about the broad bay, and all the neighboring straits and rivers; poking
+around in skiffs and canoes; robbing the set-nets of the fishermen;
+landing on remote coasts, and laying waste orchards and water-melon
+patches; in short, carrying on a complete system of piracy, on a small
+scale, Piloted by Pluto, the youthful Vanderscamp soon became acquainted
+with all the bays, rivers, creeks, and inlets of the watery world around
+him; could navigate from the Hook to Spiting-devil on the darkest night,
+and learned to set even the terrors of Hell-gate at defiance.
+
+At length, negro and boy suddenly disappeared, and days and weeks
+elapsed, but without tidings of them. Some said they must have run away
+and gone to sea; others jocosely hinted, that old Pluto, being no other
+than his namesake in disguise, had spirited away the boy to the nether
+regions. All, however, agreed in one thing, that the village was well
+rid of them.
+
+In the process of time, the good Teunis Van Gieson slept with his
+fathers, and the tavern remained shut up, waiting for a claimant, for
+the next heir was Yan Yost Vanderscamp, and he had not been heard of for
+years. At length, one day, a boat was seen pulling for the shore, from a
+long, black, rakish-looking schooner, that lay at anchor in the bay. The
+boat's crew seemed worthy of the craft from which they debarked. Never
+had such a set of noisy, roistering, swaggering varlets landed in
+peaceful Communipaw. They were outlandish in garb and demeanor, and were
+headed by a rough, burly, bully ruffian, with fiery whiskers, a copper
+nose, a scar across his face, and a great Flaunderish beaver slouched on
+one side of his head, in whom, to their dismay, the quiet inhabitants
+were made to recognize their early pest, Yan Yost Vanderscamp. The rear
+of this hopeful gang was brought up by old Pluto, who had lost an
+eye, grown grizzly-headed, and looked more like a devil than ever.
+Vanderscamp renewed his acquaintance with the old burghers, much against
+their will, and in a manner not at all to their taste. He slapped them
+familiarly on the back, gave them an iron grip of the hand, and was hail
+fellow well met. According to his own account, he had been all the world
+over; had made money by bags full; had ships in every sea, and now meant
+to turn the Wild Goose into a country seat, where he and his comrades,
+all rich merchants from foreign parts, might enjoy themselves in the
+interval of their voyages. Sure enough, in a little while there was a
+complete metamorphose of the Wild Goose. From being a quiet, peaceful
+Dutch public house, it became a most riotous, uproarious private
+dwelling; a complete rendezvous for boisterous men of the seas, who came
+here to have what they called a "blow out" on dry land, and might be
+seen at all hours, lounging about the door, or lolling out of the
+windows; swearing among themselves, and cracking rough jokes on every
+passer-by. The house was fitted up, too, in so strange a manner:
+hammocks slung to the walls, instead of bedsteads; odd kinds of
+furniture, of foreign fashion; bamboo couches, Spanish chairs; pistols,
+cutlasses, and blunderbusses, suspended on every peg; silver crucifixes
+on the mantel-pieces, silver candle-sticks and porringers on the
+tables, contrasting oddly with the pewter and Delf ware of the original
+establishment. And then the strange amusements of these sea-monsters!
+Pitching Spanish dollars, instead of quoits; firing blunderbusses out of
+the window; shooting at a mark, or at any unhappy dog, or cat, or pig,
+or barn-door fowl, that might happen to come within reach.
+
+The only being who seemed to relish their rough waggery, was old Pluto;
+and yet he led but a dog's life of it; for they practised all kinds of
+manual jokes upon him; kicked him about like a foot-ball; shook him by
+his grizzly mop of wool, and never spoke to him without coupling a curse
+by way of adjective to his name, and consigning him to the infernal
+regions. The old fellow, however, seemed to like them the better, the
+more they cursed him, though his utmost expression of pleasure never
+amounted to more than the growl of a petted bear, when his ears are
+rubbed.
+
+Old Pluto was the ministering spirit at the orgies of the Wild Goose;
+and such orgies as took place there! Such drinking, singing, whooping,
+swearing; with an occasional interlude of quarrelling and fighting. The
+noisier grew the revel, the more old Pluto plied the potations, until
+the guests would become frantic in their merriment, smashing every thing
+to pieces, and throwing the house out of the windows. Sometimes, after a
+drinking bout, they sallied forth and scoured the village, to the dismay
+of the worthy burghers, who gathered their women within doors, and would
+have shut up the house. Vanderscamp, however, was not to be rebuffed.
+He insisted on renewing acquaintance with his old neighbors, and on
+introducing his friends, the merchants, to their families; swore he was
+on the look-out for a wife, and meant, before he stopped, to find
+husbands for all their daughters. So, will-ye, nil-ye, sociable he was;
+swaggered about their best parlors, with his hat on one side of his
+head; sat on the good wife's nicely-waxed mahogany table, kicking his
+heels against the carved and polished legs; kissed and tousled the young
+vrouws; and, if they frowned and pouted, gave them a gold rosary, or a
+sparkling cross, to put them in good humor again.
+
+Sometimes nothing would satisfy him, but he must have some of his old
+neighbors to dinner at the Wild Goose. There was no refusing him, for
+he had got the complete upper-hand of the community, and the peaceful
+burghers all stood in awe of him. But what a time would the quiet,
+worthy men have, among these rake-hells, who would delight to astound
+them with the most extravagant gunpowder tales, embroidered with all
+kinds of foreign oaths; clink the can with them; pledge them in deep
+potations; bawl drinking songs in their ears; and occasionally fire
+pistols over their heads, or under the table, and then laugh in their
+faces, and ask them how they liked the smell of gunpowder.
+
+Thus was the little village of Communipaw for a time like the
+unfortunate wight possessed with devils; until Vanderscamp and his
+brother merchants would sail on another trading voyage, when the Wild
+Goose would be shut up, and every thing relapse into quiet, only to be
+disturbed by his next visitation.
+
+The mystery of all these proceedings gradually dawned upon the tardy
+intellects of Communipaw. These were the times of the notorious
+Captain Kidd, when the American harbors were the resorts of piratical
+adventurers of all kinds, who, under pretext of mercantile voyages,
+scoured the West Indies, made plundering descents upon the Spanish Main,
+visited even the remote Indian Seas, and then came to dispose of their
+booty, have their revels, and fit out new expeditions, in the English
+colonies.
+
+Vanderscamp had served in this hopeful school, and having risen to
+importance among the bucaniers, had pitched upon his native village and
+early home, as a quiet, out-of-the-way, unsuspected place, where he and
+his comrades, while anchored at New York, might have their feasts, and
+concert their plans, without molestation.
+
+At length the attention of the British government was called to these
+piratical enterprises, that were becoming so frequent and outrageous.
+Vigorous measures were taken to check and punish them. Several of
+the most noted freebooters were caught and executed, and three of
+Vanderscamp's chosen comrades, the most riotous swash-bucklers of the
+Wild Goose, were hanged in chains on Gibbet-Island, in full sight of
+their favorite resort. As to Vanderscamp himself, he and his man Pluto
+again disappeared, and it was hoped by the people of Communipaw that he
+had fallen in some foreign brawl, or been swung on some foreign gallows.
+
+For a time, therefore, the tranquillity of the village was restored;
+the worthy Dutchmen once more smoked their pipes in peace, eying, with
+peculiar complacency, their old pests and terrors, the pirates, dangling
+and drying in the sun, on Gibbet-Island.
+
+This perfect calm was doomed at length to be ruffled. The fiery
+persecution of the pirates gradually subsided. Justice was satisfied
+with the examples that had been made, and there was no more talk of
+Kidd, and the other heroes of like kidney. On a calm summer evening, a
+boat, somewhat heavily laden, was seen pulling into Communipaw. What
+was the surprise and disquiet of the inhabitants, to see Yan Yost
+Vanderscamp seated at the helm, and his man Pluto tugging at the oars!
+Vanderscamp, however, was apparently an altered man. He brought home
+with him a wife, who seemed to be a shrew, and to have the upper-hand of
+him. He no longer was the swaggering, bully ruffian, but affected the
+regular merchant, and talked of retiring from business, and settling
+down quietly, to pass the rest of his days in his native place.
+
+The Wild Goose mansion was again opened, but with diminished splendor,
+and no riot. It is true, Vanderscamp had frequent nautical visitors, and
+the sound of revelry was occasionally overheard in his house; but every
+thing seemed to be done under the rose; and old Pluto was the only
+servant that officiated at these orgies. The visitors, indeed, were
+by no means of the turbulent stamp of their predecessors; but quiet,
+mysterious traders, full of nods, and winks, and hieroglyphic signs,
+with whom, to use their cant phrase, "every thing was smug." Their ships
+came to anchor at night in the lower bay; and, on a private signal,
+Vanderscamp would launch his boat, and accompanied solely by his man
+Pluto, would make them mysterious visits. Sometimes boats pulled in at
+night, in front of the Wild Goose, and various articles of merchandise
+were landed in the dark, and spirited away, nobody knew whither. One of
+the more curious of the inhabitants kept watch, and caught a glimpse of
+the features of some of these night visitors, by the casual glance of
+a lantern, and declared that he recognized more than one of the
+freebooting frequenters of the Wild Goose, in former times; from whence
+he concluded that Vanderscamp was at his old game, and that this
+mysterious merchandise was nothing more nor less than piratical plunder.
+The more charitable opinion, however, was, that Vanderscamp and his
+comrades, having been driven from their old line of business, by the
+"oppressions of government," had resorted to smuggling to make both ends
+meet.
+
+Be that as it may: I come now to the extraordinary fact, which is the
+butt-end of this story. It happened late one night, that Yan Yost
+Vanderscamp was returning across the broad bay, in his light skiff,
+rowed by his man Pluto. He had been carousing on board of a vessel,
+newly arrived, and was somewhat obfuscated in intellect, by the liquor
+he had imbibed. It was a still, sultry night; a heavy mass of lurid
+clouds was rising in the west, with the low muttering of distant
+thunder. Vanderscamp called on Pluto to pull lustily, that they might
+get home before the gathering storm. The old negro made no reply, but
+shaped his course so as to skirt the rocky shores of Gibbet-Island. A
+faint creaking overhead caused Vanderscamp to cast up his eyes, when,
+to his horror, he beheld the bodies of his three pot companions and
+brothers in iniquity dangling in the moonlight, their rags fluttering,
+and their chains creaking, as they were slowly swung backward and
+forward by the rising breeze.
+
+"What do you mean, you blockhead!" cried Vanderscamp, "by pulling so
+close to the island?"
+
+"I thought you'd be glad to see your old friends once more," growled the
+negro; "you were never afraid of a living man, what do you fear from the
+dead?"
+
+"Who's afraid?" hiccupped Vanderscamp, partly heated by liquor, partly
+nettled by the jeer of the negro; "who's afraid! Hang me, but I would be
+glad to see them once more, alive or dead, at the Wild Goose. Come, my
+lads in the wind!" continued he, taking a draught, and flourishing the
+bottle above his head, "here's fair weather to you in the other world;
+and if you should be walking the rounds to-night, odds fish! but I'll be
+happy if you will drop in to supper."
+
+A dismal creaking was the only reply. The wind blew loud and shrill, and
+as it whistled round the gallows, and among the bones, sounded as if
+there were laughing and gibbering in the air. Old Pluto chuckled to
+himself, and now pulled for home. The storm burst over the voyagers,
+while they were yet far from shore. The rain fell in torrents, the
+thunder crashed and pealed, and the lightning kept up an incessant
+blaze. It was stark midnight, before they landed at Communipaw.
+
+Dripping and shivering, Vanderscamp crawled homeward. He was completely
+sobered by the storm; the water soaked from without, having diluted and
+cooled the liquor within. Arrived at the Wild Goose, he knocked timidly
+and dubiously at the door, for he dreaded the reception he was to
+experience from his wife. He had reason to do so. She met him at the
+threshold, in a precious ill humor.
+
+"Is this a time," said she, "to keep people out of their beds, and to
+bring home company, to turn the house upside down?"
+
+"Company?" said Vanderscamp, meekly; "I have brought no company with me,
+wife."
+
+"No, indeed! they have got here before you, but by your invitation; and
+blessed-looking company they are, truly!"
+
+Vanderscamp's knees smote together. "For the love of heaven, where are
+they, wife?"
+
+"Where?--why, in the blue-room, up-stairs, making themselves as much at
+home as if the house were their own."
+
+Vanderscamp made a desperate effort, scrambled up to the room, and threw
+open the door. Sure enough, there at a table, on which burned a light as
+blue as brimstone, sat the three guests from Gibbet-Island, with halters
+round their necks, and bobbing their cups together, as if they were
+hob-or-nobbing, and trolling the old Dutch freebooter's glee, since
+translated into English:
+
+ "For three merry lads be we,
+  And three merry lads be we;
+  I on the land, and thou on the sand,
+  And Jack on the gallows-tree."
+
+Vanderscamp saw and heard no more. Starting back with horror, he missed
+his footing on the landing-place, and fell from the top of the stairs to
+the bottom. He was taken up speechless, and, either from the fall or the
+fright, was buried in the yard of the little Dutch church at Bergen, on
+the following Sunday.
+
+From that day forward, the fate of the Wild Goose was sealed. It was
+pronounced a _haunted house_, and avoided accordingly. No one inhabited
+it but Vanderscamp's shrew of a widow, and old Pluto, and they were
+considered but little better than its hobgoblin visitors. Pluto grew
+more and more haggard and morose, and looked more like an imp of
+darkness than a human being. He spoke to no one, but went about
+muttering to himself; or, as some hinted, talking with the devil, who,
+though unseen, was ever at his elbow. Now and then he was seen pulling
+about the bay alone, in his skiff, in dark weather, or at the approach
+of night-fall; nobody could tell why, unless on an errand to invite more
+guests from the gallows. Indeed it was affirmed that the Wild Goose
+still continued to be a house of entertainment for such guests, and that
+on stormy nights, the blue chamber was occasionally illuminated, and
+sounds of diabolical merriment were overheard, mingling with the howling
+of the tempest. Some treated these as idle stories, until on one such
+night, it was about the time of the equinox, there was a horrible uproar
+in the Wild Goose, that could not be mistaken. It was not so much
+the sound of revelry, however, as strife, with two or three piercing
+shrieks, that pervaded every part of the village. Nevertheless, no one
+thought of hastening to the spot. On the contrary, the honest burghers
+of Communipaw drew their night-caps over their ears, and buried their
+heads under the bed-clothes, at the thoughts of Vanderscamp and his
+gallows companions.
+
+The next morning, some of the bolder and more curious undertook to
+reconnoitre. All was quiet and lifeless at the Wild Goose. The door
+yawned wide open, and had evidently been open all night, for the storm
+had beaten into the house. Gathering more courage from the silence and
+apparent desertion, they gradually ventured over the threshold. The
+house had indeed the air of having been possessed by devils. Every thing
+was topsy-turvy; trunks had been broken open, and chests of drawers and
+corner cupboards turned inside out, as in a time of general sack and
+pillage; but the most woful sight was the widow of Yan Yost Vanderscamp,
+extended a corpse on the floor of the blue-chamber, with the marks of a
+deadly gripe on the wind-pipe.
+
+All now was conjecture and dismay at Communipaw; and the disappearance
+of old Pluto, who was no where to be found, gave rise to all kinds of
+wild surmises. Some suggested that the negro had betrayed the house to
+some of Vanderscamp's bucaniering associates, and that they had decamped
+together with the booty; others surmised that the negro was nothing more
+nor less than a devil incarnate, who had now accomplished his ends, and
+made off with his dues. Events, however, vindicated the negro from this
+last imputation. His skiff was picked up, drifting about the bay, bottom
+upward, as if wrecked in a tempest; and his body was found, shortly
+afterward, by some Communipaw fishermen, stranded among the rocks of
+Gibbet-Island, near the foot of the pirates' gallows. The fishermen
+shook their heads, and observed that old Pluto had ventured once too
+often to invite Guests from Gibbet-Island.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE BERMUDAS.
+
+A SHAKSPERIAN RESEARCH: BY THE AUTHOR OF THE SKETCHBOOK.
+
+"Who did not think, till within these foure yeares, but that these
+islands had been rather a habitation for Divells, than fit for men to
+dwell in? Who did not hate the name, when hee was on land, and shun the
+place when he was on the seas? But behold the misprision and conceits of
+the world! For true and large experience hath now told us, it is one of
+the sweetest paradises that be upon earth."--"A PLAINE DESCRIPT. OF THE
+BARMUDAS:" 1613.
+
+In the course of a voyage home from England, our ship had been
+struggling, for two or three weeks, with perverse headwinds, and a
+stormy sea. It was in the month of May, yet the weather had at times
+a wintry sharpness, and it was apprehended that we were in the
+neighborhood of floating islands of ice, which at that season of the
+year drift out of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, and sometimes occasion the
+wreck of noble ships.
+
+Wearied out by the continued opposition of the elements, our captain at
+length bore away to the south, in hopes of catching the expiring breath
+of the trade-winds, and making what is called the southern passage. A
+few days wrought, as it were, a magical "sea change" in every thing
+around us. We seemed to emerge into a different world. The late dark and
+angry sea, lashed up into roaring and swashing surges, became calm and
+sunny; the rude winds died away; and gradually a light breeze sprang up
+directly aft, filling out every sail, and wafting us smoothly along on
+an even keel. The air softened into a bland and delightful temperature.
+Dolphins began to play about us; the nautilus came floating by, like a
+fairy ship, with its mimic sail and rainbow tints; and flying-fish, from
+time to time, made their short excursive flights, and occasionally fell
+upon the deck. The cloaks and overcoats in which we had hitherto wrapped
+ourselves, and moped about the vessel, were thrown aside; for a summer
+warmth had succeeded to the late wintry chills. Sails were stretched as
+awnings over the quarter-deck, to protect us from the mid-day sun. Under
+these we lounged away the day, in luxurious indolence, musing, with
+half-shut eyes, upon the quiet ocean. The night was scarcely less
+beautiful than the day. The rising moon sent a quivering column of
+silver along the undulating surface of the deep, and, gradually climbing
+the heaven, lit up our towering top-sails and swelling main-sails, and
+spread a pale, mysterious light around. As our ship made her whispering
+way through this dreamy world of waters, every boisterous sound on board
+was charmed to silence; and the low whistle, or drowsy song of a sailor
+from the forecastle, or the tinkling of a guitar, and the soft warbling
+of a female voice from the quarter-deck, seemed to derive a witching
+melody from the scene and hour. I was reminded of Oberon's exquisite
+description of music and moonlight on the ocean:
+
+ --"Thou rememberest
+  Since once I sat upon a promontory,
+  And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back,
+  Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
+  That the rude sea grew civil at her song?
+  And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
+  To hear the sea-maid's music."
+
+Indeed, I was in the very mood to conjure up all the imaginary beings
+with which poetry has peopled old ocean, and almost ready to fancy
+I heard the distant song of the mermaid, or the mellow shell of the
+triton, and to picture to myself Neptune and Amphitrite with all their
+pageant sweeping along the dim horizon.
+
+A day or two of such fanciful voyaging brought us in sight of the
+Bermudas, which first looked like mere summer clouds, peering above the
+quiet ocean. All day we glided along in sight of them, with just wind
+enough to fill our sails; and never did land appear more lovely. They
+were clad in emerald verdure, beneath the serenest of skies: not an
+angry wave broke upon their quiet shores, and small fishing craft,
+riding on the crystal waves, seemed as if hung in air. It was such a
+scene that Fletcher pictured to himself, when he extolled the halcyon
+lot of the fisherman:
+
+  Ah! would thou knewest how much it better were
+  To bide among the simple fisher-swains:
+  No shrieking owl, no night-crow lodgeth here,
+  Nor is our simple pleasure mixed with pains.
+  Our sports begin with the beginning year;
+  In calms, to pull the leaping fish to land,
+  In roughs, to sing and dance along the yellow sand.
+
+In contemplating these beautiful islands, and the peaceful sea
+around them, I could hardly realize that these were the "still vexed
+Bermoothes" of Shakspeare, once the dread of mariners, and infamous in
+the narratives of the early discoverers, for the dangers and disasters
+which beset them. Such, however, was the case; and the islands derived
+additional interest in my eyes, from fancying that I could trace in
+their early history, and in the superstitious notions connected with
+them, some of the elements of Shakspeare's wild and beautiful drama of
+the Tempest. I shall take the liberty of citing a few historical facts,
+in support of this idea, which may claim some additional attention from
+the American reader, as being connected with the first settlement of
+Virginia.
+
+At the time when Shakspeare was in the fulness of his talent, and
+seizing upon everything that could furnish aliment to his imagination,
+the colonization of Virginia was a favorite object of enterprise among
+people of condition in England, and several of the courtiers of the
+court of Queen Elizabeth were personally engaged in it. In the year
+1609 a noble armament of nine ships and five hundred men sailed for the
+relief of the colony. It was commanded by Sir George Somers, as admiral,
+a gallant and generous gentleman, above sixty years of age, and
+possessed of an ample fortune, yet still bent upon hardy enterprise, and
+ambitious of signalizing himself in the service of his country.
+
+On board of his flag-ship, the Sea-Vulture, sailed also Sir Thomas
+Gates, lieutenant-general of the colony. The voyage was long and
+boisterous. On the twenty-fifth of July, the admiral's ship was
+separated from the rest, in a hurricane. For several days she was driven
+about at the mercy of the elements, and so strained and racked, that her
+seams yawned open, and her hold was half filled with water. The storm
+subsided, but left her a mere foundering wreck. The crew stood in the
+hold to their waists in water, vainly endeavoring to bail her with
+kettles, buckets, and other vessels. The leaks rapidly gained on them,
+while their strength was as rapidly declining. They lost all hope of
+keeping the ship afloat, until they should reach the American coast; and
+wearied with fruitless toil, determined, in their despair, to give up
+all farther attempt, shut down the hatches, and abandon themselves to
+Providence. Some, who had spirituous liquors, or "comfortable waters,"
+as the old record quaintly terms them, brought them forth, and shared
+them with their comrades, and they all drank a sad farewell to one
+another, as men who were soon to part company in this world.
+
+In this moment of extremity, the worthy admiral, who kept sleepless
+watch from the high stern of the vessel, gave the thrilling cry of
+"land!" All rushed on deck, in a frenzy of joy, and nothing now was to
+be seen or heard on board, but the transports of men who felt as if
+rescued from the grave. It is true the land in sight would not, in
+ordinary circumstances, have inspired much self-gratulation. It could be
+nothing else but the group of islands called after their discoverer, one
+Juan Bermudas, a Spaniard, but stigmatized among the mariners of those
+days as "the islands of devils!" "For the islands of the Bermudas," says
+the old narrative of this voyage, "as every man knoweth that hath heard
+or read of them, were never inhabited by any Christian or heathen
+people, but were ever esteemed and reputed a most prodigious and
+inchanted place, affording nothing but gusts, stormes, and foul weather,
+which made every navigator and mariner to avoide them, as Scylla and
+Charybdis, or as they would shun the Divell himself." [Footnote: "A
+Plaine Description of the Barmudas."]
+
+Sir George Somers and his tempest-tossed comrades, however, hailed them
+with rapture, as if they had been a terrestrial paradise. Every sail was
+spread, and every exertion made to urge the foundering ship to land.
+Before long, she struck upon a rock. Fortunately, the late stormy winds
+had subsided, and there was no surf. A swelling wave lifted her from off
+the rock, and bore her to another; and thus she was borne on from rock
+to rock, until she remained wedged between two, as firmly as if set upon
+the stocks. The boats were immediately lowered, and, though the shore
+was above a mile distant, the whole crew were landed in safety.
+
+Every one had now his task assigned him. Some made all haste to unload
+the ship, before she should go to pieces; some constructed wigwams of
+palmetto leaves, and others ranged the island in quest of wood and
+water. To their surprise and joy, they found it far different from the
+desolate and frightful place they had been taught, by seamen's stories,
+to expect. It was well-wooded and fertile; there were birds of various
+kinds, and herds of swine roaming about, the progeny of a number that
+had swam ashore, in former years, from a Spanish wreck. The island
+abounded with turtle, and great quantities of their eggs were to be
+found among the rocks. The bays and inlets were full of fish; so tame,
+that if any one stepped into the water, they would throng around him.
+Sir George Somers, in a little while, caught enough with hook and line
+to furnish a meal to his whole ship's company. Some of them were so
+large, that two were as much as a man could carry. Crawfish, also,
+were taken in abundance. The air was soft and salubrious, and the sky
+beautifully serene. Waller, in his "Summer Islands," has given us a
+faithful picture of the climate:
+
+  "For the kind spring, (which but salutes us here,)
+  Inhabits these, and courts them all the year:
+  Ripe fruits and blossoms on the same trees live;
+  At once they promise, and at once they give:
+  So sweet the air, so moderate the clime,
+  None sickly lives, or dies before his time.
+  Heaven sure has kept this spot of earth uncursed
+  To shew how all things were created first."
+
+We may imagine the feelings of the shipwrecked marines on finding
+themselves cast by stormy seas upon so happy a coast; where abundance
+was to be had without labor; where what in other climes constituted the
+costly luxuries of the rich, were within every man's reach; and where
+life promised to be a mere holiday. Many of the common sailors,
+especially, declared they desired no better lot than to pass the rest of
+their lives on this favored island.
+
+The commanders, however, were not so ready to console themselves
+with mere physical comforts, for the severance from the enjoyment of
+cultivated life, and all the objects of honorable ambition. Despairing
+of the arrival of any chance ship on these shunned and dreaded islands,
+they fitted out the long-boat, making a deck of the ship's hatches,
+and having manned her with eight picked men, despatched her, under
+the command of an able and hardy mariner, named Raven, to proceed to
+Virginia, and procure shipping to be sent to their relief.
+
+While waiting in anxious idleness for the arrival of the looked-for
+aid, dissensions arose between Sir George Somers and Sir Thomas Gates,
+originating, very probably, in jealousy of the lead which the nautical
+experience and professional station of the admiral gave him in the
+present emergency. Each commander, of course, had his adherents:
+these dissensions ripened into a complete schism; and this handful
+of shipwrecked men, thus thrown together, on an uninhabited island,
+separated into two parties, and lived asunder in bitter feud, as men
+rendered fickle by prosperity instead of being brought into brotherhood
+by a common calamity.
+
+Weeks and months elapsed, without bringing the looked-for aid from
+Virginia, though that colony was within but a few days' sail. Fears were
+now entertained that the long-boat had been either swallowed up in
+the sea, or wrecked on some savage coast; one or other of which most
+probably was the case, as nothing was ever heard of Raven and his
+comrades.
+
+Each party now set to work to build a vessel for itself out of the cedar
+with which the island abounded. The wreck of the Sea-Vulture furnished
+rigging, and various other articles; but they had no iron for bolts, and
+other fastenings; and for want of pitch and tar, they payed the seams of
+their vessels with lime and turtle's oil, which soon dried, and became
+as hard as stone.
+
+On the tenth of May, 1610, they set sail, having been about nine months
+on the island. They reached Virginia without farther accident, but found
+the colony in great distress for provisions. The account they gave of
+the abundance that reigned in the Bermudas, and especially of the herds
+of swine that roamed the island, determined Lord Delaware, the governor
+of Virginia, to send thither for supplies. Sir George Somers, with his
+wonted promptness and generosity, offered to undertake what was still
+considered a dangerous voyage. Accordingly, on the nineteenth of June,
+he set sail, in his own cedar vessel of thirty tons, accompanied by
+another small vessel, commanded by Captain Argall.
+
+The gallant Somers was doomed again to be tempest-tossed. His companion
+vessel was soon driven back to port, but he kept the sea; and, as usual,
+remained at his post on deck, in all weathers. His voyage was long and
+boisterous, and the fatigues and exposures which he underwent, were too
+much for a frame impaired by age, and by previous hardships. He arrived
+at Bermudas completely exhausted and broken down.
+
+His nephew, Captain Mathew Somers, attended him in his illness with
+affectionate assiduity. Finding his end approaching, the veteran called
+his men together, and exhorted them to be true to the interests of
+Virginia; to procure provisions with all possible despatch, and hasten
+back to the relief of the colony.
+
+With this dying charge, he gave up the ghost, leaving us nephew and crew
+overwhelmed with grief and consternation. Their first thought was to
+pay honor to his remains. Opening the body, they took out the heart and
+entrails, and buried them, erecting a cross over the grave. They then
+embalmed the body, and set sail with it for England; thus, while paying
+empty honors to their deceased commander, neglecting his earnest wish
+and dying injunction, that they should return with relief to Virginia.
+
+The little bark arrived safely at Whitechurch, in Dorsetshire, with its
+melancholy freight. The body of the worthy Somers was interred with the
+military honors due to a brave soldier, and many volleys were fired
+over his grave. The Bermudas have since received the name of the Somer
+Islands, as a tribute to his memory.
+
+The accounts given by Captain Mathew Somers and his crew of the
+delightful climate, and the great beauty, fertility, and abundance of
+these islands, excited the zeal of enthusiasts, and the cupidity of
+speculators, and a plan was set on foot to colonize them. The Virginia
+company sold their right to the islands to one hundred and twenty of
+their own members, who erected themselves into a distinct corporation,
+under the name of the "Somer Island Society;" and Mr. Richard More was
+sent out, in 1612, as governor, with sixty men, to found a colony: and
+this leads me to the second branch of this research.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_THE THREE KINGS OF BERMUDA_.
+
+AND THEIR TREASURE OF AMBERGRIS.
+
+At the time that Sir George Somers was preparing to launch his
+cedar-built bark, and sail for Virginia, there were three culprits among
+his men, who had been guilty of capital offences. One of them was shot;
+the others, named Christopher Carter and Edward Waters, escaped. Waters,
+indeed, made a very narrow escape, for he had actually been tied to a
+tree to be executed, but cut the rope with a knife, which he had
+concealed about his person, and fled to the woods, where he was joined by
+Carter. These two worthies kept themselves concealed in the secret parts
+of the island, until the departure of the two vessels. When Sir George
+Somers revisited the island, in quest of supplies for the Virginia
+colony, these culprits hovered about the landing-place, and succeeded in
+persuading another seaman, named Edward Chard, to join them, giving him
+the most seductive pictures of the ease and abundance in which they
+revelled.
+
+When the bark that bore Sir George's body to England had faded from the
+watery horizon, these three vagabonds walked forth in their majesty and
+might, the lords and sole inhabitants of these islands. For a time their
+little commonwealth went on prosperously and happily. They built a
+house, sowed corn, and the seeds of various fruits; and having plenty
+of hogs, wild fowl, and fish of all kinds, with turtle in abundance,
+carried on their tripartite sovereignty with great harmony and much
+feasting. All kingdoms, however, are doomed to revolution, convulsion,
+or decay; and so it fared with the empire of the three kings of Bermuda,
+albeit they were monarchs without subjects. In an evil hour, in their
+search after turtle, among the fissures of the rocks, they came upon a
+great treasure of ambergris, which had been cast on shore by the ocean.
+Beside a number of pieces of smaller dimensions, there was one great
+mass, the largest that had ever been known, weighing eighty pounds, and
+which of itself, according to the market value of ambergris in those
+days, was worth about nine or ten thousand pounds!
+
+From that moment, the happiness and harmony of the three kings of
+Bermuda were gone for ever. While poor devils, with nothing to share
+but the common blessings of the island, which administered to present
+enjoyment, but had nothing of convertible value, they were loving and
+united: but here was actual wealth, which would make them rich men,
+whenever they could transport it to a market.
+
+Adieu the delights of the island! They now became flat and insipid. Each
+pictured to himself the consequence he might now aspire to, in civilized
+life, could he once get there with this mass of ambergris. No longer a
+poor Jack Tar, frolicking in the low taveriis of Wapping, he might roll
+through London in his coach, and perchance arrive, like Whittington, at
+the dignity of Lord Mayor.
+
+With riches came envy and covetousness. Each was now for assuming the
+supreme power, and getting the monopoly of the ambergris. A civil war at
+length broke out: Chard and Waters defied each other to mortal combat,
+and the kingdom of the Bermudas was on the point of being deluged with
+royal blood. Fortunately, Carter took no part in the bloody feud.
+Ambition might have made him view it with secret exultation; for if
+either or both of his brother potentates were slain in the conflict,
+he would be a gainer in purse and ambergris. But he dreaded to be left
+alone in this uninhabited island, and to find himself the monarch of
+a solitude: so he secretly purloined and hid the weapons of the
+belligerent rivals, who, having no means of carrying on the war,
+gradually cooled down into a sullen armistice.
+
+The arrival of Governor More, with an overpowering force of sixty men,
+put an end to the empire. He took possession of the kingdom, in the
+name of the Somer Island Company, and forthwith proceeded to make a
+settlement. The three kings tacitly relinquished their sway, but stood
+up stoutly for their treasure. It was determined, however, that they
+had been fitted out at the expense, and employed in the service, of the
+Virginia Company; that they had found the ambergis while in the service
+of that company, and on that company's land; that the ambergis,
+therefore, belonged to that company, or rather to the Somer Island
+Company, in consequence of their recent purchase of the island, and all
+their appurtenances. Having thus legally established their right, and
+being moreover able to back it by might, the company laid the lion's paw
+upon the spoil; and nothing more remains on historic record of the Three
+Kings of Bermuda, and their treasure of ambergris.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The reader will now determine whether I am more extravagant than most
+of the commentators on Shakspeare, in my surmise that the story of Sir
+George Somers' shipwreck, and the subsequent occurrences that took place
+on the uninhabited island, may have furnished the bard with some of the
+elements of his drama of the Tempest. The tidings of the shipwreck, and
+of the incidents connected with it, reached England not long before the
+production of this drama, and made a great sensation there. A narrative
+of the whole matter, from which most of the foregoing particulars are
+extracted, was published at the time in London, in a pamphlet form, and
+could not fail to be eagerly perused by Shakspeare, and to make a vivid
+impression on his fancy. His expression, in the Tempest, of "the still
+vext Bermoothes," accords exactly with the storm-beaten character of
+those islands. The enchantments, too, with which he has clothed the
+island of Prospero, may they not be traced to the wild and superstitious
+notions entertained about the Bermudas? I have already cited two
+passages from a pamphlet published at the time, showing that they
+were esteemed "a most _prodigious_ and _inchanted_ place," and the
+"habitation of divells;" and another pamphlet, published shortly
+afterward, observes: "And whereas it is reported that this land of the
+Barmudas, with the islands about, (which are many, at least a hundred,)
+are inchanted and kept with evil and wicked spirits, it is a most idle
+and false report." [Footnote: "Newes from the Barmudas;" 1612.]
+
+The description, too, given in the same pamphlets, of the real beauty
+and fertility of the Bermudas, and of their serene and happy climate, so
+opposite to the dangerous and inhospitable character with which they had
+been stigmatized, accords with the eulogium of Sebastian on the island
+of Prospero:
+
+"Though this island seem to be desert, uninhabitable, and almost
+inaccessible, it must needs be of subtle, tender, and delicate
+temperance. The air breathes upon us here most sweetly. Here is every
+thing advantageous to life. How lush and lusty the grass looks! how
+green!"
+
+I think too, in the exulting consciousness of ease, security, and
+abundance felt by the late tempest-tossed mariners, while revelling in
+the plenteousness of the island, and their inclination to remain there,
+released from the labors, the cares, and the artificial restraints of
+civilized life, I can see something of the golden commonwealth of honest
+Gonzalo:
+
+  "Had I plantation of this isle, my lord,
+  And were the king of it, what would I do?
+  I' the commonwealth I would by contraries
+  Execute all things: for no kind of traffic
+  Would I admit; no name of magistrate;
+  Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,
+  And use of service, none; contract, succession,
+  Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none:
+  No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil:
+  No occupation; all men idle, all.
+
+  All things in common, nature should produce,
+  Without sweat or endeavor: Treason, felony,
+  Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine,
+  Would I not have; but nature should bring forth,
+  Of its own kind, all foizon, all abundance,
+  To feed my innocent people."
+
+But above all, in the three fugitive vagabonds who remained in
+possession of the island of Bermuda, on the departure of their comrades,
+and in their squabbles about supremacy, on the finding of their
+treasure, I see typified Sebastian, Trinculo, and their worthy companion
+Caliban:
+
+  "Trinculo, the king and all our company being drowned,
+we will inherit here."
+
+  "Monster, I will kill this man; his daughter and I will be king and
+queen, (save our graces!) and Trinculo and thyself shall be viceroys."
+
+I do not mean to hold up the incidents and characters in the narrative
+and in the play as parallel, or as being strikingly similar: neither
+would I insinuate that the narrative suggested the play; I would only
+suppose that Shakspeare, being occupied about that time on the drama of
+the Tempest, the main story of which, I believe, is of Italian origin,
+had many of the fanciful ideas of it suggested to his mind by the
+shipwreck of Sir George Somers on the "still vext Bermothes," and by the
+popular superstitions connected with these islands, and suddenly put in
+circulation by that event.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PELAYO AND THE MERCHANT'S DAUGHTER.
+
+BY THE AUTHOR OF THE SKETCH-BOOK.
+
+It is the common lamentation of Spanish historiographers, that, for an
+obscure and melancholy space of time immediately succeeding the conquest
+of their country by the Moslems, its history is a mere wilderness of
+dubious facts, groundless fables, and rash exaggerations. Learned men,
+in cells and cloisters, have worn out their lives in vainly endeavoring
+to connect incongruous events, and to account for startling
+improbabilities, recorded of this period. The worthy Jesuit, Padre
+Abarca, declares that, for more than forty years during which he had
+been employed in theological controversies, he had never found any so
+obscure and inexplicable as those which rise out of this portion of
+Spanish history, and that the only fruit of an indefatigable, prolix,
+and even prodigious study of the subject, was a melancholy and
+mortifying state of indecision. [Footnote: PADRE PEDRO ABARCA. Anales
+de Aragon, Anti Regno, F2.] During this apocryphal period, flourished
+PELAYO, the deliverer of Spain, whose name, like that of William
+Wallace, will ever be linked with the glory of his country, but linked,
+in like manner, by a bond in which fact and fiction are inextricably
+interwoven.
+
+The quaint old chronicle of the Moor Rasis, which, though wild and
+fanciful in the extreme, is frequently drawn upon for early facts by
+Spanish historians, professes to give the birth, parentage, and whole
+course of fortune of Pelayo, without the least doubt or hesitation. It
+makes him a son of the Duke of Cantabria, and descended, both by father
+and mother's side, from the Gothic kings of Spain. I shall pass over the
+romantic story of his childhood, and shall content myself with a scene
+of his youth, which was spent in a castle among the Pyrenees, under
+the eye of his widowed and noble-minded mother, who caused him to be
+instructed in everything befitting a cavalier of gentle birth. While the
+sons of the nobility were revelling amid the pleasures of a licentious
+court, and sunk in that vicious and effeminate indulgence which led
+to the perdition of unhappy Spain, the youthful Pelayo, in his rugged
+mountain school, was steeled to all kinds of hardy exercise. A great
+part of his time was spent in hunting the bears, the wild boars, and the
+wolves, with which the Pyrenees abounded; and so purely and chastely was
+he brought up, by his good lady mother, that, if the ancient chronicle
+from which I draw my facts may be relied on, he had attained his
+one-and-twentieth year, without having once sighed for woman!
+
+Nor were his hardy contests confined to the wild beasts of the forest.
+Occasionally he had to contend with adversaries of a more formidable
+character. The skirts and defiles of these border mountains were often
+infested by marauders from the Gallic plains of Gascony. The Gascons,
+says an old chronicler, were a people who used smooth words when
+expedient, but force when they had power, and were ready to lay their
+hands on every thing they met. Though poor, they were proud; for there
+was not one who did not pride himself on being a hijo-dalgo, or the son
+of somebody.
+
+At the head of a band of these needy hijodalgos of Gascony, was one
+Arnaud, a broken-down cavalier. He and four of his followers were well
+armed and mounted; the rest were a set of scamper-grounds on foot,
+furnished with darts and javelins. They were the terror of the border;
+here to-day and gone to-morrow; sometimes in one pass, sometimes in
+another. They would make sudden inroads into Spain, scour the roads,
+plunder the country, and were over the mountains and far away before a
+force could be collected to pursue them.
+
+Now it happened one day, that a wealthy burgher of Bordeaux, who was a
+merchant, trading with Biscay, set out on a journey for that province.
+As he intended to sojourn there for a season, he took with him his
+wife, who was a goodly dame, and his daughter, a gentle damsel, of
+marriageable age, and exceeding fair to look upon. He was attended by a
+trusty clerk from his comptoir, and a man servant; while another servant
+led a hackney, laden with bags of money, with which he intended to
+purchase merchandise.
+
+When the Gascons heard of this wealthy merchant and his convoy passing
+through the mountains, they thanked their stars, for they considered
+all peaceful men of traffic as lawful spoil, sent by providence for the
+benefit of hidalgos like themselves, of valor and gentle blood, who
+lived by the sword. Placing themselves in ambush, in a lonely defile, by
+which the travellers had to pass, they silently awaited their coming. In
+a little while they beheld them approaching. The merchant was a fair,
+portly man, in a buff surcoat and velvet cap. His looks bespoke the good
+cheer of his native city, and he was mounted on a stately, well-fed
+steed, while his wife and daughter paced gently on palfreys by his side.
+
+The travellers had advanced some distance in the defile, when the
+Bandoleros rushed forth and assailed them. The merchant, though but
+little used to the exercise of arms, and unwieldy in his form, yet made
+valiant defence, having his wife and daughter and money-bags at hazard.
+He was wounded in two places, and overpowered; one of his servants was
+slain, the other took to flight.
+
+The freebooters then began to ransack for spoil, but were disappointed
+at not finding the wealth they had expected. Putting their swords to the
+breast of the trembling merchant, they demanded where he had concealed
+his treasure, and learned from him of the hackney that was following,
+laden with, money. Overjoyed at this intelligence, they bound their
+captives to trees, and awaited the arrival of the golden spoil.
+
+On this same day, Pelayo was out with his huntsmen among the mountains,
+and had taken his stand on a rock, at a narrow pass, to await the
+sallying forth of a wild boar. Close by him was a page, conducting a
+horse, and at the saddle-bow hung his armor, for he was always prepared
+for fight among these border mountains. While thus posted, the servant
+of the merchant came flying from the robbers. On beholding Pelayo, he
+fell on his knees, and implored his life, for he supposed him to be
+one of the band. It was some time before he could be relieved from his
+terror, and made to tell his story. When Pelayo heard of the robbers,
+he concluded they were the crew of Gascon hidalgos, upon the scamper.
+Taking his armor from the page, he put on his helmet, slung his buckler
+round his neck, took lance in hand, and mounting his steed, compelled
+the trembling servant to guide him to the scene of action. At the same
+time he ordered the page to seek his huntsmen, and summon them to his
+assistance.
+
+When the robbers saw Pelayo advancing through the forest, with a single
+attendant on foot, and beheld his rich armor sparkling in the sun, they
+thought a new prize had fallen into their hands, and Arnaud and two of
+his companions, mounting their horses, advanced to meet him. As they
+approached, Pelayo stationed himself in a narrow pass between two rocks,
+where he could only be assailed in front, and bracing his buckler, and
+lowering his lance, awaited their coming.
+
+"Who and what are ye," cried he, "and what seek ye in this land?"
+
+"We are huntsmen," replied Arnaud, "and lo! our game runs into our
+toils!"
+
+"By my faith," replied Pelayo, "thou wilt find the game more readily
+roused than taken: have at thee for a villain!"
+
+So saying, he put spurs to his horse, and ran full speed upon him. The
+Gascon, not expecting so sudden an attack from a single horseman, was
+taken by surprise. He hastily couched his lance, but it merely glanced
+on the shield of Pelayo, who sent his own through the middle of his
+breast, and threw him out of his saddle to the earth. One of the other
+robbers made at Pelayo, and wounded him slightly in the side, but
+received a blow from the sword of the latter, which cleft his skull-cap,
+and sank into his brain. His companion, seeing him fall, put spurs to
+his steed, and galloped off through the forest.
+
+Beholding several other robbers on foot coming up, Pelayo returned to
+his station between the rocks, where he was assailed by them all at
+once. He received two of their darts on his buckler, a javelin razed his
+cuirass, and glancing down, wounded his horse. Pelayo then rushed forth,
+and struck one of the robbers dead: the others, beholding several
+huntsmen advancing, took to flight, but were pursued, and several of
+them taken.
+
+The good merchant of Bordeaux and his family beheld this scene with
+trembling and amazement, for never had they looked upon such feats of
+arms. They considered Don Pelayo as a leader of some rival band of
+robbers; and when the bonds were loosed by which they were tied to
+the trees, they fell at his feet and implored mercy. The females were
+soonest undeceived, especially the daughter; for the damsel was struck
+with the noble countenance and gentle demeanor of Pelayo, and said to
+herself: "Surely nothing evil can dwell in so goodly and gracious a
+form."
+
+Pelayo now sounded his horn, which echoed from rock to rock, and was
+answered by shouts and horns from various parts of the mountains. The
+merchant's heart misgave him at these signals, and especially when he
+beheld more than forty men gathering from glen and thicket. They were
+clad in hunters' dresses, and armed with boar-spears, darts, and
+hunting-swords, and many of them led hounds in long leashes. All this
+was a new and wild scene to the astonished merchant; nor were his fears
+abated, when he saw his servant approaching with the hackney, laden with
+money-bags; "for of a certainty," said he to himself, "this will be too
+tempting a spoil for these wild hunters of the mountains."
+
+Pelayo, however, took no more notice of the gold than if it had been
+so much dross; at which the honest burgher marvelled exceedingly. He
+ordered that the wounds of the merchant should be dressed, and his own
+examined. On taking off his cuirass, his wound was found to be but
+slight; but his men were so exasperated at seeing his blood, that
+they would have put the captive robbers to instant death, had he not
+forbidden them to do them any harm.
+
+The huntsmen now made a great fire at the foot of a tree, and bringing
+a boar which they had killed, cut off portions and roasted them, or
+broiled them on the coals. Then drawing forth loaves of bread from their
+wallets, they devoured their food half raw, with the hungry relish of
+huntsmen and mountaineers. The merchant, his wife, and daughter, looked
+at all this, and wondered, for they had never beheld so savage a repast.
+
+Pelayo then inquired of them if they did not desire to eat; they were
+too much in awe of him to decline, though they felt a loathing at the
+thought of partaking of this hunter's fare; but he ordered a linen cloth
+to be spread under the shade of a great oak, on the grassy margin of a
+clear running stream; and to their astonishment, they were served, not
+with the flesh of the boar, but with dainty cheer, such as the merchant
+had scarcely hoped to find out of the walls of his native city of
+Bordeaux.
+
+The good burgher was of a community renowned for gastronomic prowess:
+his fears having subsided, his appetite was now awakened, and he
+addressed himself manfully to the viands that were set before him. His
+daughter, however, could not eat: her eyes were ever and anon stealing
+to gaze on Pelayo, whom she regarded with gratitude for his protection,
+and admiration for his valor; and now that he had laid aside his helmet,
+and she beheld his lofty countenance, glowing with manly beauty,
+she thought him something more than mortal. The heart of the gentle
+donzella, says the ancient chronicler, was kind and yielding; and had
+Pelayo thought fit to ask the greatest boon that love and beauty could
+bestow--doubtless meaning her fair hand--she could not have had the
+cruelty to say him nay. Pelayo, however, had no such thoughts: the love
+of woman had never yet entered his heart; and though he regarded the
+damsel as the fairest maiden he had ever beheld, her beauty caused no
+perturbation in his breast.
+
+When the repast was over, Pelayo offered to conduct the merchant and
+his family through the defiles of the mountains, lest they should be
+molested by any of the scattered band of robbers. The bodies of the
+slain marauders were buried, and the corpse of the servant was laid upon
+one of the horses captured in the battle. Having formed their cavalcade,
+they pursued their way slowly up one of the steep and winding passes of
+the Pyrenees.
+
+Toward sunset, they arrived at the dwelling of a holy hermit. It was
+hewn out of the living rock; there was a cross over the door, and before
+it was a great spreading oak, with a sweet spring of water at its foot.
+The body of the faithful servant who had fallen in the defence of his
+lord, was buried close by the wall of this sacred retreat, and the
+hermit promised to perform masses for the repose of his soul. Then
+Pelayo obtained from the holy father consent that the merchant's wife
+and daughter should pass the night within his cell; and the hermit made
+beds of moss for them, and gave them his benediction; but the damsel
+found little rest, so much were her thoughts occupied by the youthful
+champion who had rescued her from death or dishonor.
+
+Pelayo, however, was visited by no such wandering of the mind; but,
+wrapping himself in his mantle, slept soundly by the fountain under the
+tree. At midnight, when every thing was buried in deep repose, he was
+awakened from his sleep and beheld the hermit before him, with the beams
+of the moon shining upon his silver hair and beard.
+
+"This is no time," said the latter, "to be sleeping; arise and listen to
+my words, and hear of the great work for which thou art chosen!"
+
+Then Pelayo arose and seated himself on a rock, and the hermit continued
+his discourse.
+
+"Behold," said he, "the ruin of Spain is at hand! It will be delivered
+into the hands of strangers, and will become a prey to the spoiler. Its
+children will be slain or carried into captivity; or such as may escape
+these evils, will harbor with the beasts of the forest or the eagles of
+the mountain. The thorn and bramble will spring up where now are seen
+the cornfield, the vine, and the olive; and hungry wolves will roam in
+place of peaceful flocks and herds. But thou, my son! tarry not thou
+to see these things, for thou canst not prevent them. Depart on a
+pilgrimage to the sepulchre of our blessed Lord in Palestine; purify
+thyself by prayer; enroll thyself in the order of chivalry, and prepare
+for the great work of the redemption of thy country; for to thee it will
+be given to raise it from the depth of its affliction."
+
+Pelayo would have inquired farther into the evils thus foretold, but the
+hermit rebuked his curiosity.
+
+"Seek not to know more," said he, "than heaven is pleased to reveal.
+Clouds and darkness cover its designs, and prophecy is never permitted
+to lift up but in part the veil that rests upon the future."
+
+The hermit ceased to speak, and Pelayo laid himself down again to take
+repose, but sleep was a stranger to his eyes.
+
+When the first rays of the rising sun shone upon the tops of the
+mountains, the travellers assembled round the fountain beneath the tree
+and made their morning's repast. Then, having received the benediction
+of the hermit, they departed in the freshness of the day, and descended
+along the hollow defiles leading into the interior of Spain. The good
+merchant was refreshed by sleep and by his morning's meal; and when he
+beheld his wife and daughter thus secure by his side, and the hackney
+laden with his treasure close behind him, his heart was light in his
+bosom, and he carolled a chanson as he went, and the woodlands echoed to
+his song. But Pelayo rode in silence, for he revolved in his mind the
+portentous words of the hermit; and the daughter of the merchant ever
+and anon stole looks at him full of tenderness and admiration, and deep
+sighs betrayed the agitation of her bosom.
+
+At length they came to the foot of the mountains, where the forests and
+the rocks terminated, and an open and secure country lay before the
+travellers. Here they halted, for their roads were widely different.
+When they came to part, the merchant and his wife were loud in thanks
+and benedictions, and the good burgher would fain have given Pelayo the
+largest of his sacks of gold; but the young man put it aside with a
+smile. "Silver and gold," said he, "need I not, but if I have deserved
+aught at thy hands, give me thy prayers, for the prayers of a good man
+are above all price."
+
+In the mean time the daughter had spoken never a word. At length she
+raised her eyes, which were filled with tears, and looked timidly at
+Pelayo, and her bosom throbbed; and after a violent struggle between
+strong affection and virgin modesty, her heart relieved itself by words.
+
+"Senor," said she, "I know that I am unworthy of the notice of so noble
+a cavalier; but suffer me to place this ring upon a finger of that hand
+which has so bravely rescued us from death; and when you regard it, you
+may consider it as a memorial of your own valor, and not of one who is
+too humble to be remembered by you."
+
+With these words, she drew a ring from her finger and put it upon the
+finger of Pelayo; and having done this, she blushed and trembled at her
+own boldness, and stood as one abashed, with her eyes cast down upon the
+earth.
+
+Pelayo was moved at the words of the simple maiden, and at the touch of
+her fair hand, and at her beauty, as she stood thus trembling and in
+tears before him; but as yet he knew nothing of woman, and his heart was
+free from the snares of love. "Amiga," (friend,) said he, "I accept thy
+present, and will wear it in remembrance of thy goodness;" so saying, he
+kissed her on the cheek.
+
+The damsel was cheered by these words, and hoped that she had awakened
+some tenderness in his bosom; but it was no such thing, says the grave
+old chronicler, for his heart was devoted to higher and more sacred
+matters; yet certain it is, that he always guarded well that ring.
+
+When they parted, Pelayo remained with his huntsmen on a cliff, watching
+that no evil befell them, until they were far beyond the skirts of the
+mountain; and the damsel often turned to look at him, until she could no
+longer discern him, for the distance and the tears that dimmed her eyes.
+
+And for that he had accepted her ring, says the ancient chronicler, she
+considered herself wedded to him in her heart, and would never marry;
+nor could she be brought to look with eyes of affection upon any other
+man; but for the true love which she bore Pelayo, she lived and died a
+virgin. And she composed a book which treated of love and chivalry,
+and the temptations of this mortal life; and one part discoursed of
+celestial matters, and it was called "The Contemplations of Love;"
+because at the time she wrote it, she thought of Pelayo, and of his
+having accepted her jewel and called her by the gentle appellation of
+"Amiga." And often thinking of him in tender sadness, and of her never
+having beheld him more, she would take the book and would read it as
+if in his stead; and while she repeated the words of love which it
+contained, she would endeavor to fancy them uttered by Pelayo, and that
+he stood before her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE KNIGHT OF MALTA.
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER
+
+
+SIR: In the course of a tour which I made in Sicily, in the days of my
+juvenility, I passed some little time at the ancient city of Catania,
+at the foot of Mount AEtna. Here I became acquainted with the Chevalier
+L----, an old Knight of Malta. It was not many years after the time that
+Napoleon had dislodged the knights from their island, and he still wore
+the insignia of his order. He was not, however, one of those reliques of
+that once chivalrous body, who had been described was "a few worn-out
+old men, creeping about certain parts of Europe, with the Maltese cross
+on their breasts;" on the contrary, though advanced in life, his form
+was still light and vigorous; he had a pale, thin, intellectual visage,
+with a high forehead, and a bright, visionary eye. He seemed to take a
+fancy to me, as I certainly did to him, and we soon became intimate,
+I visited him occasionally, at his apartments, in the wing of an old
+palace, looking toward Mount AEtna. He was an antiquary, a virtuoso, and
+a connoisseur. His rooms were decorated with mutilated statues, dug up
+from Grecian and Roman ruins; old vases, lachrymals, and sepulchral
+lamps. He had astronomical and chemical instruments, and black-letter
+books, in various languages. I found that he had dipped a little in
+chimerical studies and had a hankering after astrology and alchymy. He
+affected to believe in dreams and visions, and delighted in the fanciful
+Rosicrucian doctrines. I cannot persuade myself, however, that he really
+believed in all these: I rather think he loved to let his imagination
+carry him away into the boundless fairy land which they unfolded.
+
+In company with the chevalier, I took several excursions on horseback
+about the environs of Catania, and the picturesque skirts of Mount Etna.
+One of these led through a village, which had sprung up on the very
+tract of an ancient eruption, the houses being built of lava. At one
+time we passed, for some distance, along a narrow lane, between two high
+dead convent walls. It was a cut-throat-looking place, in a country
+where assassinations are frequent; and just about midway through it,
+we observed blood upon the pavement and the walls, as if a murder had
+actually been committed there.
+
+The chevalier spurred on his horse, until he had extricated himself
+completely from this suspicious neighborhood. He then observed, that it
+reminded him of a similar blind alley in Malta, infamous on account of
+the many assassinations that had taken place there; concerning one
+of which, he related a long and tragical story, that lasted until
+we reached Catania. It involved various circumstances of a wild and
+supernatural character, but which he assured me were handed down in
+tradition, and generally credited by the old inhabitants of Malta.
+
+As I like to pick up strange stories, and as I was particularly struck
+with several parts of this, I made a minute of it, on my return to my
+lodgings. The memorandum was lost, with several others of my travelling
+papers, and the story had faded from my mind, when recently, in perusing
+a French memoir, I came suddenly upon it, dressed up, it is true, in a
+very different manner, but agreeing in the leading facts, and given upon
+the word of that famous adventurer, the Count Cagliostro.
+
+I have amused myself, during a snowy day in the country, by rendering it
+roughly into English, for the entertainment of a youthful circle round
+the Christmas fire. It was well received by my auditors, who, however,
+are rather easily pleased. One proof of its merits is that it sent
+some of the youngest of them quaking to their beds, and gave them very
+fearful dreams. Hoping that it may have the same effect upon your
+ghost-hunting readers, I offer it, Mr. Editor, for insertion in your
+Magazine. I would observe, that wherever I have modified the French
+version of the Story, it has been in conformity to some recollection of
+the narrative of my friend, the Knight of Malta.
+
+Your obt. servt.,
+
+GEOFFREY CRAYON.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_THE GRAND PRIOR OF MINORCA,_
+
+A VERITABLE GHOST STORY.
+
+  "Keep my wits, heaven! They say spirits appear
+  To melancholy minds, and the graves open!"--FLETCHER.
+
+About the middle of the last century, while the Knights of Saint John of
+Jerusalem still maintained something of their ancient state and sway in
+the Island of Malta, a tragical event took place there, which is the
+groundwork of the following narrative.
+
+It may be as well to premise, that at the time we are treating of,
+the order of Saint John of Jerusalem, grown excessively wealthy, had
+degenerated from its originally devout and warlike character. Instead
+of being a hardy body of "monk-knights," sworn soldiers of the cross,
+fighting the Paynim in the Holy Land, or scouring the Mediterranean, and
+scourging the Barbary coasts with their galleys, or feeding the poor,
+and attending upon the sick at their hospitals, they led a life of
+luxury and libertinism, and were to be found in the most voluptuous
+courts of Europe. The order, in fact, had become a mode of providing
+for the needy branches of the Catholic aristocracy of Europe. "A
+commandery," we are told, was a splendid provision for a younger
+brother; and men of rank, however dissolute, provided they belonged
+to the highest aristocracy, became Knights of Malta, just as they did
+bishops, or colonels of regiments, or court chamberlains. After a brief
+Residence at Malta, the knights passed the rest of their time in their
+own countries, or only made a visit now and then to the island. While
+there, having but little military duty to perform, they beguiled their
+idleness by paying attentions to the fair.
+
+There was one circle of society, however, into which they could not
+obtain currency. This was composed of a few families of the old Maltese
+nobility, natives of the island. These families, not being permitted
+to enroll any of their members in the order, affected to hold no
+intercourse with its chevaliers; admitting none into their exclusive
+coteries but the Grand Master, whom they acknowledged as their
+sovereign, and the members of the chapter which composed his council.
+
+To indemnify themselves for this exclusion, the chevaliers carried their
+gallantries into the next class of society, composed of those who held
+civil, administrative, and judicial situations. The ladies of this class
+were called _honorate_, or honorables, to distinguish them from the
+inferior orders; and among them were many of superior grace, beauty, and
+fascination.
+
+Even in this more hospitable class, the chevaliers were not all equally
+favored. Those of Germany had the decided preference, owing to their
+fair and fresh complexions, and the kindliness of their manners: next
+to these came the Spanish cavaliers, on account of their profound and
+courteous devotion, and most discreet secrecy. Singular as it may seem,
+the chevaliers of France fared the worst. The Maltese ladies dreaded
+their volatility, and their proneness to boast of their amours, and
+shunned all entanglement with them. They were forced, therefore, to
+content themselves with conquests among females of the lower orders.
+They revenged themselves, after the gay French manner, by making the
+"honorate" the objects of all kinds of jests and mystifications; by
+prying into their tender affairs with the more favored chevaliers, and
+making them the theme of song and epigram.
+
+About this time, a French vessel arrived at Malta, bringing out a
+distinguished personage of the order of Saint John of Jerusalem,
+the Commander de Foulquerre, who came to solicit the post of
+commander-in-chief of the galleys. He was descended from an old and
+warrior line of French nobility, his ancestors having long been
+seneschals of Poitou, and claiming descent from the first counts of
+Angouleme.
+
+The arrival of the commander caused a little uneasiness among the
+peaceably inclined, for he bore the character, in the island, of being
+fiery, arrogant, and quarrelsome. He had already been three times at
+Malta, and on each visit had signalized himself by some rash and deadly
+affray.
+
+As he was now thirty-five years of age, however, it was hoped that time
+might have taken off the fiery edge of his spirit, and that he might
+prove more quiet and sedate than formerly. The commander set up an
+establishment befitting his rank and pretensions; for he arrogated to
+himself an importance greater even than that of the Grand Master. His
+house immediately became the rallying place of all the young French
+chevaliers. They informed him of all the slights they had experienced or
+imagined, and indulged their petulant and satirical vein at the expense
+of the honorate and their admirers. The chevaliers of other nations soon
+found the topics and tone of conversation at the commander's irksome and
+offensive, and gradually ceased to visit there. The commander remained
+the head of a national _clique_, who looked up to him as their model.
+If he was not as boisterous and quarrelsome as formerly, he had become
+haughty and overbearing. He was fond of talking over his past affairs of
+punctilio and bloody duel. When walking the streets, he was generally
+attended by a ruffling train of young French cavaliers, who caught his
+own air of assumption and bravado. These he would conduct to the scenes
+of his deadly encounters, point out the very spot where each fatal lunge
+had been given, and dwell vaingloriously on every particular.
+
+Under his tuition, the young French chevaliers began to add bluster and
+arrogance to their former petulance and levity; they fired up on the
+most trivial occasions, particularly with those who had been most
+successful with the fair; and would put on the most intolerable
+drawcansir airs. The other chevaliers conducted themselves with all
+possible forbearance and reserve; but they saw it would be impossible to
+keep on long, in this manner, without coming to an open rupture.
+
+Among the Spanish cavaliers was one named Don Luis de Lima Vasconcellos.
+He was distantly related to the Grand Master; and had been enrolled at
+an early age among his pages, but had been rapidly promoted by him,
+until, at the age of twenty-six, he had been given the richest Spanish
+commandery in the order. He had, moreover, been fortunate with the fair,
+with one of whom, the most beautiful honorata of Malta, he had long
+maintained the most tender correspondence.
+
+The character, rank, and connexions of Don Luis put him on a par with
+the imperious Commander de Foulquerre, and pointed him out as a leader
+and champion to his countrymen. The Spanish chevaliers repaired to him,
+therefore, in a body; represented all the grievances they had sustained,
+and the evils they apprehended, and urged him to use his influence with
+the commander and his adherents to put a stop to the growing abuses.
+
+Don Luis was gratified by this mark of confidence and esteem on the part
+of his countrymen, and promised to have an interview with the Commander
+de Foulquerre on the subject. He resolved to conduct himself with
+the utmost caution and delicacy on the occasion; to represent to
+the commander the evil consequences which might result from the
+inconsiderate conduct of the young French chevaliers, and to entreat him
+to exert the great influence he so deservedly possessed over them, to
+restrain their excesses. Don Luis was aware, however, of the peril that
+attended any interview of the kind with this imperious and fractious
+man, and apprehended, however it might commence, that it would terminate
+in a duel. Still, it was an affair of honor, in which Castilian dignity
+was concerned; beside, he had a lurking disgust at the overbearing
+manners of De Foulquerre, and perhaps had been somewhat offended by
+certain intrusive attentions which he had presumed to pay to the
+beautiful honorata.
+
+It was now Holy Week; a time too sacred for worldly feuds and passions,
+especially in a community under the dominion of a religious order; it
+was agreed, therefore, that the dangerous interview in question should
+not take place until after the Easter holidays. It is probable, from
+subsequent circumstances, that the Commander de Foulquerre had some
+information of this arrangement among the Spanish chevaliers, and was
+determined to be beforehand, and to mortify the pride of their champion,
+who was thus preparing to read him a lecture. He chose Good Friday for
+his purpose. On this sacred day, it is customary in Catholic countries
+to make a tour of all the churches, offering up prayers in each. In
+every Catholic church, as is well known, there is a vessel of holy water
+near the door. In this, every one, on entering, dips his fingers, and
+makes therewith the sign of the cross on his forehead and breast. An
+office of gallantry, among the young Spaniards, is to stand near the
+door, dip their hands in the holy vessel, and extend them courteously
+and respectfully to any lady of their acquaintance who may enter; who
+thus receives the sacred water at second hand, on the tips of her
+fingers, and proceeds to cross herself, with all due decorum. The
+Spaniards, who are the most jealous of lovers, are impatient when this
+piece of devotional gallantry is proffered to the object of their
+affections by any other hand: on Good Friday, therefore, when a lady
+makes a tour of the churches, it is the usage among them for the
+inamorato to follow her from church to church, so as to present her the
+holy water at the door of each; thus testifying his own devotion, and at
+the same time preventing the officious services of a rival.
+
+On the day in question, Don Luis followed the beautiful honorata, to
+whom, as has already been observed, he had long been devoted. At the
+very first church she visited, the Commander de Foulquerre was stationed
+at the portal, with several of the young French chevaliers about him.
+Before Don Luis could offer her the holy water, he was anticipated by
+the commander, who thrust himself between them, and, while he performed
+the gallant office to the lady, rudely turned his back upon her admirer,
+and trod upon his feet. The insult was enjoyed by the young Frenchmen
+who were present: it was too deep and grave to be forgiven by Spanish
+pride; and at once put an end to all Don Luis' plans of caution and
+forbearance. He repressed his passion for the moment, however, and
+waited until all the parties left the church; then, accosting the
+commander with an air of coolness and unconcern, he inquired after his
+health, and asked to what church he proposed making his second visit.
+"To the Magisterial Church of Saint John." Don Luis offered to conduct
+him thither, by the shortest route. His offer was accepted, apparently
+without suspicion, and they proceeded together. After walking some
+distance, they entered a long, narrow lane, without door or window
+opening upon it, called the "Strada Stretta," or narrow street. It was a
+street in which duels were tacitly permitted, or connived at, in Malta,
+and were suffered to pass as accidental encounters. Every where else
+they were prohibited. This restriction had been instituted to diminish
+the number of duels, formerly so frequent in Malta. As a farther
+precaution to render these encounters less fatal, it was an offence,
+punishable with death, for any one to enter this street armed with
+either poniard or pistol. It was a lonely, dismal street, just wide
+enough for two men to stand upon their guard, and cross their swords;
+few persons ever traversed it, unless with some sinister design; and on
+any preconcerted duello, the seconds posted themselves at each end, to
+stop all passengers, and prevent interruption.
+
+In the present instance, the parties had scarce entered the street,
+when Don Luis drew his sword, and called upon the commander to defend
+himself.
+
+De Foulquerre was evidently taken by surprise: he drew back, and
+attempted to expostulate; but Don Luis persisted in defying him to the
+combat.
+
+After a second or two, he likewise drew his sword, but immediately
+lowered the point.
+
+"Good Friday!" ejaculated he, shaking his head: "one word with you; it
+is full six years since I have been in a confessional: I am shocked at
+the state of my conscience; but within three days--that is to say, on
+Monday next--"
+
+Don Luis would listen to nothing. Though naturally of a peaceable
+disposition, he had been stung to fury, and people of that character,
+when once incensed, are deaf to reason. He compelled the commander to
+put himself on his guard. The latter, though a man accustomed to brawl
+in battle, was singularly dismayed. Terror was visible in all his
+features. He placed himself with his back to the wall, and the weapons
+were crossed. The contest was brief and fatal. At the very first thrust,
+the sword of Don Luis passed through the body of his antagonist. The
+commander staggered to the wall, and leaned against it.
+
+"On Good Friday!" ejaculated he again, with a failing voice, and
+despairing accents. "Heaven pardon you!" added he; "take my sword to
+Tetefoulques, and have a hundred masses performed in the chapel of the
+castle, for the repose of my soul!" With these words he expired.
+
+The fury of Don Luis was at an end. He stood aghast, gazing at the
+bleeding body of the commander. He called to mind the prayer of the
+deceased for three days' respite, to make his peace with heaven; he had
+refused it; had sent him to the grave, with all his sins upon his head!
+His conscience smote him to the core; he gathered up the sword of the
+commander, which he had been enjoined to take to Tetefoulques, and
+hurried from the fatal Strada Stretta.
+
+The duel of course made a great noise in Malta, but had no injurious
+effect upon the worldly fortunes of Don Luis. He made a full declaration
+of the whole matter, before the proper authorities; the Chapter of
+the Order considered it one of those casual encounters of the Strada
+Stretta, which were mourned over, but tolerated; the public, by whom
+the late commander had been generally detested, declared that he had
+deserved his fate. It was but three days after the event, that Don
+Luis was advanced to one of the highest dignities of the Order, being
+invested by the Grand Master with the priorship of the kingdom of
+Minorca.
+
+From that time forward, however, the whole character and conduct of Don
+Luis underwent a change. He became a prey to a dark melancholy, which
+nothing could assuage. The most austere piety, the severest penances,
+had no effect in allaying the horror which preyed upon his mind. He was
+absent for a long time from Malta; having gone, it was said, on remote
+pilgrimages: when he returned, he was more haggard than ever. There
+seemed something mysterious and inexplicable in this disorder of his
+mind. The following is the revelation made by himself, of the horrible
+visions, or chimeras, by which he was haunted:
+
+"When I had made my declaration before the Chapter," said he, "and my
+provocations were publicly known, I had made my peace with man; but it
+was not so with God, nor with my confessor, nor with my own conscience.
+My act was doubly criminal, from the day on which it was committed,
+and from my refusal to a delay of three days, for the victim of my
+resentment to receive the sacraments. His despairing ejaculation, 'Good
+Friday! Good Friday!' continually rang in my ears. 'Why did I not grant
+the respite!' cried I to myself; 'was it not enough to kill the body,
+but must I seek to kill the soul!'
+
+"On the night of the following Friday, I started suddenly from my sleep.
+An unaccountable horror was upon me. I looked wildly around. It seemed
+as if I were not in my apartment, nor in my bed, but in the fatal Strada
+Stretta, lying on the pavement. I again saw the commander leaning
+against the wall; I again heard his dying words: 'Take my sword to
+Tetefoulques, and have a hundred masses performed in the chapel of the
+castle, for the repose of my soul!'
+
+"On the following night, I caused one of my servants to sleep in the
+same room with me. I saw and heard nothing, either on that night, or any
+of the nights following, until the next Friday; when I had again the
+same vision, with this difference, that my valet seemed to be lying at
+some distance from me on the pavement of the Strada Stretta. The vision
+continued to be repeated on every Friday night, the commander always
+appearing in the same manner, and uttering the same words: 'Take my
+sword to Tetefoulques, and have a hundred masses performed in the chapel
+of the castle for the repose of my soul!' On questioning my servant on
+the subject, he stated, that on these occasions he dreamed that he was
+lying in a very narrow street, but he neither saw nor heard any thing of
+the commander.
+
+"I knew nothing of this Tetefoulques, whither the defunct was so urgent
+I should carry his sword. I made inquiries, therefore, concerning it
+among the French chevaliers. They informed me that it was an old castle,
+situated about four leagues from Poitiers, in the midst of a forest.
+It had been built in old times, several centuries since, by Foulques
+Taillefer, (or Fulke Hackiron,) a redoubtable, hard-fighting Count of
+Angouleme, who gave it to an illegitimate son, afterward created Grand
+Seneschal of Poitou, which son became the pro genitor of the Foulquerres
+of Tetefoulques, hereditary Seneschals of Poitou. They farther
+informed me, that strange stories were told of this old castle, in the
+surrounding country, and that it contained many curious reliques. Among
+these, were the arms of Foulques Taillefer, together with all those of
+the warriors he had slain; and that it was an immemorial usage with the
+Foulquerres to have the weapons deposited there which they had wielded
+either in war or in single combat. This, then, was the reason of the
+dying injunction of the commander respecting his sword. I carried this
+weapon with me, wherever I went, but still I neglected to comply with
+his request.
+
+"The visions still continued to harass me with undiminished horror.
+I repaired to Rome, where I confessed myself to the Grand Cardinal
+penitentiary, and informed him of the terrors with which I was haunted.
+He promised me absolution, after I should have performed certain acts of
+penance, the principal of which was, to execute the dying request of the
+commander, by carrying the sword to Tetefoulques, and having the hundred
+masses performed in the chapel of the castle for the repose of his soul.
+
+"I set out for France as speedily as possible, and made no delay in my
+journey. On arriving at Poitiers, I found that the tidings of the death
+of the commander had reached there, but had caused no more affliction
+than among the people of Malta. Leaving my equipage in the town, I
+put on the garb of a pilgrim, and taking a guide, set out on foot
+for Tetefoulques, Indeed the roads in this part of the country were
+impracticable for carriages.
+
+"I found the castle of Tetefoulques a grand but gloomy and dilapidated
+pile. All the gates were closed, and there reigned over the whole place
+an air of almost savage loneliness and desertion. I had understood that
+its only inhabitant were the concierge, or warder, and a kind of hermit
+who had charge of the chapel. After ringing for some time at the gate,
+I at length succeeded in bringing forth the warder, who bowed with
+reverence to my pilgrim's garb. I begged him to conduct me to the
+chapel, that being the end of my pilgrimage. We found the hermit there,
+chanting the funeral service; a dismal sound to one who came to perform
+a penance for the death of a member of the family. When he had ceased
+to chant, I informed him that I came to accomplish an obligation of
+conscience, and that I wished him to perform a hundred masses for the
+repose of the soul of the commander. He replied that, not being in
+orders, he was not authorized to perform mass, but that he would
+willingly undertake to see that my debt of conscience was discharged. I
+laid my offering on the altar, and would have placed the sword of the
+commander there, likewise. 'Hold!' said the hermit, with a melancholy
+shake of the head,'this is no place for so deadly a weapon, that has so
+often been bathed in Christian blood. Take it to the armory; you will
+find there trophies enough of like character. It is a place into which I
+never enter.'
+
+"The warder here took up the theme abandoned by the peaceful man of
+God. He assured me that I would see in the armory the swords of all the
+warrior race of Foulquerres, together with those of the enemies over
+whom they had triumphed. This, he observed, had been a usage kept
+up since the time of Mellusine, and of her husband, Geoffrey a la
+Grand-dent, or Geoffrey with the Great-tooth.
+
+"I followed the gossiping warder to the armory. It was a great dusty
+hall, hung round with Gothic-looking portraits, of a stark line of
+warriors, each with his weapon, and the weapons of those he had slain in
+battle, hung beside his picture. The most conspicuous portrait was that
+of Foulques Taillefer, (Fulke Hackiron,) Count of Angouleme, and founder
+of the castle. He was represented at full-length, armed cap-a-pie, and
+grasping a huge buckler, on which were emblazoned three lions passant.
+The figure was so striking, that it seemed ready to start from the
+canvas: and I observed beneath this picture, a trophy composed of many
+weapons, proofs of the numerous triumphs of this hard-fighting old
+cavalier. Beside the weapons connected with the portraits, there were
+swords of all shapes, sizes, and centuries, hung round the hall; with
+piles of armor, placed as it were in effigy.
+
+"On each side of an immense chimney, were suspended the portraits of the
+first seneschal of Poitou (the illegitimate son of Foulques Taillefer)
+and his wife Isabella de Lusignan; the progenitors of the grim race of
+Foulquerres that frowned around. They had the look of being perfect
+likenesses; and as I gazed on them, I fancied I could trace in their
+antiquated features some family resemblance to their unfortunate
+descendant, whom I had slain! This was a dismal neighborhood, yet the
+armory was the only part of the castle that had a habitable air; so I
+asked the warder whether he could not make a fire, and give me something
+for supper there, and prepare me a bed in one corner.
+
+"'A fire and a supper you shall have, and that cheerfully, most worthy
+pilgrim,' said he; 'but as to a bed, I advise you to come and sleep in
+my chamber.'
+
+"'Why so?' inquired I; 'why shall I not sleep in this hall?'
+
+"'I have my reasons; I will make a bed for you close to mine.'
+
+"I made no objections, for I recollected that it was Friday, and I
+dreaded the return of my vision. He brought in billets of wood, kindled
+a fire in the great overhanging chimney, and then went forth to prepare
+my supper. I drew a heavy chair before the fire, and seating myself in
+it, gazed muzingly round upon the portraits of the Foulquerres, and the
+antiquated armor and weapons, the mementos of many a bloody deed. As
+the day declined, the smoky draperies of the hall gradually became
+confounded with the dark ground of the paintings, and the lurid gleams
+from the chimney only enabled me to see visages staring at me from the
+gathering darkness. All this was dismal in the extreme, and somewhat
+appalling; perhaps it was the state of my conscience that rendered me
+peculiarly sensitive, and prone to fearful imaginings.
+
+"At length the warder brought in my supper. It consisted of a dish of
+trout, and some crawfish taken in the fosse of the castle. He procured
+also a bottle of wine, which he informed me was wine of Poitou. I
+requested him to invite the hermit to join me in my repast; but the holy
+man sent back word that he allowed himself nothing but roots and herbs,
+cooked with water. I took my meal, therefore, alone, but prolonged it as
+much as possible, and sought to cheer my drooping spirits by the wine of
+Poitou, which I found very tolerable.
+
+"When supper was over, I prepared for my evening devotions. I have
+always been very punctual in reciting my breviary; it is the prescribed
+and bounden duty of all chevaliers of the religious orders; and I can
+answer for it, is faithfully performed by those of Spain. I accordingly
+drew forth from my pocket a small missal and a rosary, and told the
+warder he need only designate to me the way to his chamber, where I
+could come and rejoin him, when I had finished my prayers.
+
+"He accordingly pointed out a winding stair-case, opening from the hall.
+'You will descend this stair-case,' said he, 'until you come to the
+fourth landing-place, where you enter a vaulted passage, terminated by
+an arcade, with a statue of the blessed Jeanne of France; you cannot
+help finding my room, the door of which I will leave open; it is the
+sixth door from the landing-place. I advise you not to remain in this
+hall after midnight. Before that hour, you will hear the hermit ring the
+bell, in going the rounds of the corridors. Do not linger here after
+that signal.'
+
+"The warder retired, and I commenced my devotions. I continued at them
+earnestly; pausing from time to time to put wood upon the fire. I did
+not dare to look much around me, for I felt myself becoming a prey to
+fearful fancies. The pictures appeared to become animated. If I regarded
+one attentively, for any length of time, it seemed to move the eyes and
+lips. Above all, the portraits of the Grand Seneschal and his lady,
+which hung on each side of the great chimney, the progenitors of the
+Foulquerres of Tetefoulque, regarded me, I thought, with angry and
+baleful eyes: I even fancied they exchanged significant glances with
+each other. Just then a terrible blast of wind shook all the casements,
+and, rushing through the hall, made a fearful rattling and clashing
+among the armor. To my startled fancy, it seemed something supernatural.
+
+"At length I heard the bell of the hermit, and hastened to quit the
+hall. Taking a solitary light, which stood on the supper-table, I
+descended the winding stair-case; but before I had reached the vaulted
+passage leading to the statue of the blessed Jeanne of France, a blast
+of wind extinguished my taper. I hastily remounted the stairs, to light
+it again at the chimney; but judge of my feelings, when, on arriving at
+the entrance to the armory, I beheld the Seneschal and his lady, who had
+descended from their frames, and seated themselves on each side of the
+fire-place! "'Madam, my love,' said the Seneschal, with great formality,
+and in antiquated phrase, 'what think you of the presumption of this
+Castilian, who comes to harbor himself and make wassail in this our
+castle, after having slain our descendant, the commander, and that
+without granting him time for confession?'
+
+"'Truly, my lord,' answered the female spectre, with no less stateliness
+of manner, and with great asperity of tone; 'truly, my lord, I opine
+that this Castilian did a grievous wrong in this encounter; and he
+should never be suffered to depart hence, without your throwing him the
+gauntlet.' I paused to hear no more, but rushed again down-stairs, to
+seek the chamber of the warder. It was impossible to find it in the
+darkness, and in the perturbation of my mind. After an hour and a half
+of fruitless search, and mortal horror and anxieties, I endeavored
+to persuade myself that the day was about to break, and listened
+impatiently for the crowing of the cock; for I thought if I could hear
+his cheerful note, I should be reassured; catching, in the disordered
+state of my nerves, at the popular notion that ghosts never appear after
+the first crowing of the cock.
+
+"At length I rallied myself, and endeavored to shake off the vague
+terrors which haunted me. I tried to persuade myself that the two
+figures which I had seemed to see and hear, had existed only in my
+troubled imagination. I still had the end of the candle in my hand, and
+determined to make another effort to re-light it, and find my way to
+bed; for I was ready to sink with fatigue. I accordingly sprang up the
+stair-case, three steps at a time, stopped at the door of the armory,
+and peeped cautiously in. The two Gothic figures were no longer in the
+chimney corners, but I neglected to notice whether they had reascended
+to their frames. I entered, and made desperately for the fire-place, but
+scarce had I advanced three strides, when Messire Foolques Taillefer
+stood before me, in the centre of the hall, armed cap-a-pie, and
+standing in guard, with the point of his sword silently presented to
+me. I would have retreated to the stair-case, but the door of it was
+occupied by the phantom figure of an esquire, who rudely flung a
+gauntlet in my face. Driven to fury, I snatched down a sword from the
+wall: by chance, it was that of the commander which I had placed there.
+I rushed upon my fantastic adversary, and seemed to pierce him through
+and through; but at the same time I felt as if something pierced my
+heart, burning like a red-hot iron. My blood inundated the hall, and I
+fell senseless.
+
+"When I recovered consciousness, it was broad day, and I found myself in
+a small chamber, attended by the warder and the hermit. The former told
+me that on the previous night, he had awakened long after the midnight
+hour, and perceiving that I had not come to his chamber, he had
+furnished himself with a vase of holy water, and set out to seek me. He
+found me stretched senseless on the pavement of the armory, and bore me
+to this room. I spoke of my wound, and of the quantity of blood that I
+had lost. He shook his head, and knew nothing about it; and to my
+surprise, on examination, I found myself perfectly sound and unharmed.
+The wound and blood, therefore, had been all delusion. Neither the
+warder nor the hermit put any questions to me, but advised me to leave
+the castle as soon as possible. I lost no time in complying with their
+counsel, and felt my heart relieved from an oppressive weight, as I left
+the gloomy and fate-bound battlements of Tetefoulques behind me.
+
+"I arrived at Bayonne, on my way to Spain, on the following Friday. At
+midnight I was startled from my sleep, as I had formerly been; but it
+was no longer by the vision of the dying commander. It was old Foulques
+Taillefer who stood before me, armed cap-a-pie, and presenting the point
+of his sword. I made the sign of the cross, and the spectre vanished,
+but I received the same red-hot thrust in the heart which I had felt in
+the armory, and I seemed to be bathed in blood. I would have called out,
+or have arisen from my bed and gone in quest of succor, but I could
+neither speak nor stir. This agony endured until the crowing of the
+cock, when I fell asleep again; but the next day I was ill, and in a
+most pitiable state. I have continued to be harassed by the same vision
+every Friday night; no acts of penitence and devotion have been able to
+relieve me from it; and it is only a lingering hope in divine mercy,
+that sustains me, and enables me to support so lamentable a visitation."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Grand Prior of Minorca wasted gradually away under this constant
+remorse of conscience, and this horrible incubus. He died some time
+after having revealed the preceding particulars of his case, evidently
+the victim of a diseased imagination.
+
+The above relation has been rendered, in many parts literally, from the
+French memoir, in which it is given as a true story: if so, it is one of
+those instances in which truth is more romantic than fiction.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LEGEND OF
+THE ENGULPHED CONVENT.
+
+BY GEOFFREY CRAYON, GENT.
+
+At the dark and melancholy period when Don Roderick the Goth and his
+chivalry were overthrown on the banks of the Guadalete, and all Spain
+was overrun by the Moors, great was the devastation of churches and
+convents throughout that pious kingdom. The miraculous fate of one of
+those holy piles is thus recorded in one of the authentic legends of
+those days.
+
+On the summit of a hill, not very distant from the capital city of
+Toledo, stood an ancient convent and chapel, dedicated to the invocation
+of Saint Benedict, and inhabited by a sisterhood of Benedictine nuns.
+This holy asylum was confined to females of noble lineage. The younger
+sisters of the highest families were here given in religious marriage to
+their Saviour, in order that the portions of their elder sisters might
+be increased, and they enabled to make suitable matches on earth, or
+that the family wealth might go undivided to elder brothers, and the
+dignity of their ancient houses be protected from decay. The convent was
+renowned, therefore, for enshrining within its walls a sisterhood of the
+purest blood, the most immaculate virtue, and most resplendent beauty,
+of all Gothic Spain.
+
+When the Moors overran the kingdom, there was nothing that more
+excited their hostility than these virgin asylums. The very sight of a
+convent-spire was sufficient to set their Moslem blood in a foment, and
+they sacked it with as fierce a zeal as though the sacking of a nunnery
+were a sure passport to Elysium.
+
+Tidings of such outrages committed in various parts of the kingdom
+reached this noble sanctuary and filled it with dismay. The danger
+came nearer and nearer; the infidel hosts were spreading all over the
+country; Toledo itself was captured; there was no flying from the
+convent, and no security within its walls.
+
+In the midst of this agitation, the alarm was given one day that a great
+band of Saracens were spurring across the plain. In an instant the whole
+convent was a scene of confusion. Some of the nuns wrung their fair
+hands at the windows; others waved their veils and uttered shrieks from
+the tops of the towers, vainly hoping to draw relief from a country
+over-run by the foe. The sight of these innocent doves thus fluttering
+about their dove-cote, but increased the zealot fury of the whiskered
+Moors. They thundered at the portal, and at every blow the ponderous
+gates trembled on their hinges.
+
+The nuns now crowded round the abbess. They had been accustomed to look
+up to her as all-powerful, and they now implored her protection. The
+mother abbess looked with a rueful eye upon the treasures of beauty
+and vestal virtue exposed to such imminent peril. Alas! how was she to
+protect them from the spoiler! She had, it is true, experienced many
+signal inter-positions of providence in her individual favor. Her early
+days had been passed amid the temptations of a court, where her virtue
+had been purified by repeated trials, from none of which had she escaped
+but by a miracle. But were miracles never to cease? Could she hope that
+the marvelous protection shown to herself would be extended to a
+whole sisterhood? There was no other resource. The Moors were at the
+threshold; a few moments more and the convent would be at their mercy.
+Summoning her nuns to follow her, she hurried into the chapel; and
+throwing herself on her knees before the image of the blessed Mary, "Oh,
+holy Lady!" exclaimed she, "oh, most pure and immaculate of virgins!
+thou seest our extremity. The ravager is at the gate, and there is none
+on earth to help us! Look down with pity, and grant that the earth may
+gape and swallow us rather than that our cloister vows should suffer
+violation!"
+
+The Moors redoubled their assault upon the portal; the gates gave way,
+with a tremendous crash; a savage yell of exultation arose; when of a
+sudden the earth yawned; down sank the convent, with its cloisters, its
+dormitories, and all its nuns. The chapel tower was the last that sank,
+the bell ringing forth a peal of triumph in the very teeth of the
+infidels.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Forty years had passed and gone, since the period of this miracle. The
+subjugation of Spain was complete. The Moors lorded it over city and
+country; and such of the Christian population as remained, and were
+permitted to exercise their religion, did it in humble resignation to
+the Moslem sway.
+
+At this time, a Christian cavalier, of Cordova, hearing that a patriotic
+band of his countrymen had raised the standard of the cross in the
+mountains of the Asturias, resolved to join them, and unite in breaking
+the yoke of bondage. Secretly arming himself, and caparisoning his
+steed, he set forth from Cordova, and pursued his course by unfrequented
+mule-paths, and along the dry channels made by winter torrents. His
+spirit burned with indignation, whenever, on commanding a view over a
+long sweeping plain, he beheld the mosque swelling in the distance, and
+the Arab horsemen careering about, as if the rightful lords of the soil.
+Many a deep-drawn sigh, and heavy groan, also, did the good cavalier
+utter, on passing the ruins of churches and convents desolated by the
+conquerors.
+
+It was on a sultry midsummer evening, that this wandering cavalier, in
+skirting a hill thickly covered with forest, heard the faint tones of a
+vesper bell sounding melodiously in the air, and seeming to come from
+the summit of the hill. The cavalier crossed himself with wonder, at
+this unwonted and Christian sound. He supposed it to proceed from one
+of those humble chapels and hermitages permitted to exist through the
+indulgence of the Moslem conquerors. Turning his steed up a narrow
+path of the forest, he sought this sanctuary, in hopes of finding a
+hospitable shelter for the night. As he advanced, the trees threw a deep
+gloom around him, and the bat flitted across his path. The bell ceased
+to toll, and all was silence.
+
+Presently a choir of female voices came stealing sweetly through the
+forest, chanting the evening service, to the solemn accompaniment of
+an organ. The heart of the good cavalier melted at the sound, for it
+recalled the happier days of his country. Urging forward his weary
+steed, he at length arrived at a broad grassy area, on the summit of the
+hill, surrounded by the forest. Here the melodious voices rose in full
+chorus, like the swelling of the breeze; but whence they came, he could
+not tell. Sometimes they were before, sometimes behind him; sometimes in
+the air, sometimes as if from within the bosom of the earth. At length
+they died away, and a holy stillness settled on the place.
+
+The cavalier gazed around with bewildered eye. There was neither chapel
+nor convent, nor humble hermitage, to be seen; nothing but a moss-grown
+stone pinnacle, rising out of the centre of the area, surmounted by a
+cross. The greensward around appeared to have been sacred from the tread
+of man or beast, and the surrounding trees bent toward the cross, as if
+in adoration.
+
+The cavalier felt a sensation of holy awe. He alighted and tethered
+his steed on the skirts of the forest, where he might crop the tender
+herbage; then approaching the cross, he knelt and poured forth his
+evening prayers before this relique of the Christian days of Spain.
+His orisons being concluded, he laid himself down at the foot of the
+pinnacle, and reclining his head against one of its stones, fell into a
+deep sleep.
+
+About midnight, he was awakened by the tolling of a bell, and found
+himself lying before the gate of an ancient convent. A train of nuns
+passed by, each bearing a taper. The cavalier rose and followed them
+into the chapel; in the centre of which was a bier, on which lay the
+corpse of an aged nun. The organ performed a solemn requiem: the nuns
+joining in chorus. When the funeral service was finished, a melodious
+voice chanted, "_Requiescat in pace!_"--"May she rest in peace!" The
+lights immediately vanished; the whole passed away as a dream; and the
+cavalier found himself at the foot of the cross, and beheld, by the
+faint rays of the rising moon, his steed quietly grazing near him.
+
+When the day dawned, the cavalier descended the hill, and following the
+course of a small brook, came to a cave, at the entrance of which was
+seated an ancient man, clad in hermit's garb, with rosary and cross,
+and a beard that descended to his girdle. He was one of those holy
+anchorites permitted by the Moors to live unmolested in dens and caves,
+and humble hermitages, and even to practise the rites of their religion.
+The cavalier checked his horse, and dismounting, knelt and craved a
+benediction. He then related all that had befallen him in the night, and
+besought the hermit to explain the mystery.
+
+"What thou hast heard and seen, my son," replied the other, "is but type
+and shadow of the woes of Spain."
+
+He then related the foregoing story of the miraculous deliverance of the
+convent.
+
+"Forty years," added the holy man, "have elapsed since this event, yet
+the bells of that sacred edifice are still heard, from time to time,
+sounding from under ground, together with the pealing of the organ, and
+the chanting of the choir. The Moors avoid this neighborhood, as haunted
+ground, and the whole place, as thou mayest perceive, has become covered
+with a thick and lonely forest."
+
+The cavalier listened with wonder to the story of this engulphed
+convent, as related by the holy man. For three days and nights did they
+keep vigils beside the cross; but nothing more was to be seen of nun or
+convent. It is supposed that, forty years having elapsed, the natural
+lives of all the nuns were finished, and that the cavalier had beheld
+the obsequies of the last of the sisterhood. Certain it is, that from
+that time, bell, and organ, and choral chant have never more been heard.
+
+The mouldering pinnacle, surmounted by the cross, still remains an
+object of pious pilgrimage. Some say that it anciently stood in front
+of the convent, but others assert that it was the spire of the sacred
+edifice, and that, when the main body of the building sank, this
+remained above ground, like the top-mast of some tall ship that
+has foundered. These pious believers maintain, that the convent is
+miraculously preserved entire in the centre of the mountain, where, if
+proper excavations were made, it would be found, with all its treasures,
+and monuments, and shrines, and reliques, and the tombs of its virgin
+nuns.
+
+Should any one doubt the truth of this marvelous interposition of the
+Virgin, to protect the vestal purity of her votaries, let him read the
+excellent work entitled "Espana Triumphante," written by Padre Fray
+Antonio de Sancta Maria, a bare-foot friar of the Carmelite order, and
+he will doubt no longer.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE COUNT VAN HORN.
+
+
+During the minority of Louis XV., while the Duke of Orleans was Regent
+of France, a young Flemish nobleman, the Count Antoine Joseph Van Horn,
+made his sudden appearance in Paris, and by his character, conduct, and
+the subsequent disasters in which he became involved, created a great
+sensation in the high circles of the proud aristocracy. He was about
+twenty-two years of age, tall, finely formed, with a pale, romantic
+countenance, and eyes of remarkable brilliancy and wildness.
+
+He was of one of the most ancient and highly-esteemed families of
+European nobility, being of the line of the Princes of Horn and
+Overique, sovereign Counts of Hautekerke, and hereditary Grand Veneurs
+of the empire.
+
+The family took its name from the little town and seigneurie of Horn, in
+Brabant; and was known as early as the eleventh century among the little
+dynasties of the Netherlands, and since that time by a long line of
+illustrious generations. At the peace of Utrecht, when the Netherlands
+passed under subjection to Austria, the house of Van Horn came under the
+domination of the emperor. At the time we treat of, two of the branches
+of this ancient house were extinct; the third and only surviving branch
+was represented by the reigning prince, Maximilian Emanuel Van Horn,
+twenty-four years of age, who resided in honorable and courtly style
+on his hereditary domains at Baussigny, in the Netherlands, and his
+brother, the Count Antoine Joseph, who is the subject of this memoir.
+
+The ancient house of Van Horn, by the intermarriage of its various
+branches with the noble families of the continent, had become widely
+connected and interwoven with the high aristocracy of Europe. The Count
+Antoine, therefore, could claim relationship to many of the proudest
+names in Paris. In fact, he was grandson, by the mother's side, of the
+Prince de Ligne, and even might boast of affinity to the Regent (the
+Duke of Orleans) himself. There were circumstances, however, connected
+with his sudden appearance in Paris, and his previous story, that placed
+him in what is termed "a false position;" a word of baleful significance
+in the fashionable vocabulary of France.
+
+The young count had been a captain in the service of Austria, but had
+been cashiered for irregular conduct, and for disrespect to Prince Louis
+of Baden, commander-in-chief. To check him in his wild career, and
+bring him to sober reflection, his brother the prince caused him to be
+arrested and sent to the old castle of Van Wert, in the domains of Horn.
+This was the same castle in which, in former times, John Van Horn,
+Stadtholder of Gueldres, had imprisoned his father; a circumstance which
+has furnished Rembrandt with the subject of an admirable painting. The
+governor of the castle was one Van Wert, grandson of the famous John Van
+Wert, the hero of many a popular song and legend. It was the intention
+of the prince that his brother should be held in honorable durance, for
+his object was to sober and improve, not to punish and afflict him. Van
+Wert, however, was a stern, harsh man of violent passions. He treated
+the youth in a manner that prisoners and offenders were treated in the
+strong-holds of the robber counts of Germany in old times; confined him
+in a dungeon and inflicted on him such hardships and indignities that
+the irritable temperament of the young count was roused to continual
+fury, which ended in insanity. For six months was the unfortunate youth
+kept in this horrible state, without his brother the prince being
+informed of his melancholy condition or of the cruel treatment to which
+he was subjected. At length, one day, in a paroxysm of frenzy, the count
+knocked down two of his gaolers with a beetle, escaped from the castle
+of Van Wert, and eluded all pursuit; and after roving about in a state
+of distraction, made his way to Baussigny and appeared like a sceptre
+before his brother.
+
+The prince was shocked at his wretched, emaciated appearance and his
+lamentable state of mental alienation. He received him with the most
+compassionate tenderness; lodged him in his own room, appointed three
+servants to attend and watch over him day and night, and endeavored by
+the most soothing and affectionate assiduity to atone for the past act
+of rigor with which he reproached himself. When he learned, however, the
+manner in which his unfortunate brother had been treated in confinement,
+and the course of brutalities that had led to his mental malady, he was
+roused to indignation. His first step was to cashier Van Wert from his
+command. That violent man set the prince at defiance, and attempted to
+maintain himself in his government and his castle by instigating the
+peasants, for several leagues round, to revolt. His insurrection might
+have been formidable against the power of a petty prince; but he was put
+under the ban of the empire and seized as a state prisoner. The memory
+of his grandfather, the oft-sung John Van Wert, alone saved him from a
+gibbet; but he was imprisoned in the strong tower of Horn-op-Zee. There
+he remained until he was eighty-two years of age, savage, violent, and
+unconquered to the last; for we are told that he never ceased fighting
+and thumping as long as he could close a fist or wield a cudgel.
+
+In the mean time a course of kind and gentle treatment and wholesome
+regimen, and, above all, the tender and affectionate assiduity of his
+brother, the prince, produced the most salutary effects upon Count
+Antoine. He gradually recovered his reason; but a degree of violence
+seemed always lurking at the bottom of his character, and he required
+to be treated with the greatest caution and mildness, for the least
+contradiction exasperated him.
+
+In this state of mental convalescence, he began to find the supervision
+and restraints of brotherly affection insupportable; so he left the
+Netherlands furtively, and repaired to Paris, whither, in fact, it
+is said he was called by motives of interest, to make arrangements
+concerning a valuable estate which he inherited from his relative, the
+Princess d'Epinay.
+
+On his arrival in Paris, he called upon the Marquis of Crequi, and other
+of the high nobility with whom he was connected. He was received with
+great courtesy; but, as he brought no letters from his elder brother,
+the prince, and as various circumstances of his previous history had
+transpired, they did not receive him into their families, nor introduce
+him to their ladies. Still they feted him in bachelor style, gave him
+gay and elegant suppers at their separate apartments, and took him to
+their boxes at the theatres. He was often noticed, too, at the doors of
+the most fashionable churches, taking his stand among the young men
+of fashion; and at such times, his tall, elegant figure, his pale but
+handsome countenance, and his flashing eyes, distinguished him from
+among the crowd; and the ladies declared that it was almost impossible
+to support his ardent gaze.
+
+The Count did not afflict himself much at his limited circulation in the
+fastidious circles of the high aristocracy. He relished society of a
+wilder and less ceremonious cast; and meeting with loose companions to
+his taste, soon ran into all the excesses of the capital, in that most
+licentious period. It is said that, in the course of his wild career, he
+had an intrigue with a lady of quality, a favorite of the Regent; that
+he was surprised by that prince in one of his interviews; that sharp
+words passed between them; and that the jealousy and vengeance thus
+awakened, ended only with his life.
+
+About this time, the famous Mississippi scheme of Law was at its height,
+or rather it began to threaten that disastrous catastrophe which
+convulsed the whole financial world. Every effort was making to keep the
+bubble inflated. The vagrant population of France was swept off from the
+streets at night, and conveyed to Havre de Grace, to be shipped to the
+projected colonies; even laboring people and mechanics were thus crimped
+and spirited away. As Count Antoine was in the habit of sallying forth
+at night, in disguise, in pursuit of his pleasures, he came near being
+carried off by a gang of crimps; it seemed, in fact, as if they had been
+lying in wait for him, as he had experienced very rough treatment at
+their hands. Complaint was made of his case by his relation, the Marquis
+de Crequi, who took much interest in the youth; but the Marquis received
+mysterious intimations not to interfere in the matter, but to advise the
+Count to quit Paris immediately; "If he lingers, he is lost!" This has
+been cited as a proof that vengeance was dogging at the heels of the
+unfortunate youth, and only watching for an opportunity to destroy him.
+
+Such opportunity occurred but too soon. Among the loose companions with
+whom the Count had become intimate, were two who lodged in the same
+hotel with him. One was a youth only twenty years of age, who passed
+himself off as the Chevalier d'Etampes, but whose real name was Lestang,
+the prodigal son of a Flemish banker. The other, named Laurent de Mille,
+a Piedmontese, was a cashiered captain, and at the time an esquire
+in the service of the dissolute Princess de Carignan, who kept
+gambling-tables in her palace. It is probable that gambling propensities
+had driven these young men together, and that their losses had brought
+them to desperate measures: certain it is, that all Paris was suddenly
+astounded by a murder which they were said to have committed. What made
+the crime more startling, was, that it seemed connected with the great
+Mississippi scheme, at that time the fruitful source of all kinds of
+panics and agitations. A Jew, a stock-broker, who dealt largely in
+shares of the bank of Law, founded on the Mississippi scheme, was the
+victim. The story of his death is variously related. The darkest account
+states, that the Jew was decoyed by these young men into an obscure
+tavern, under pretext of negotiating with him for bank shares to the
+amount of one hundred thousand crowns, which he had with him in his
+pocket-book. Lestang kept watch upon the stairs. The Count and De Mille
+entered with the Jew into a chamber. In a little while there were heard
+cries and struggles from within. A waiter passing by the room, looked
+in, and seeing the Jew weltering in his blood, shut the door again,
+double-locked it, and alarmed the house. Lestang rushed downstairs, made
+his way to the hotel, secured his most portable effects, and fled the
+country. The Count and De Mille endeavored to escape by the window, but
+were both taken, and conducted to prison.
+
+A circumstance which occurs in this part of the Count's story, seems to
+point him out as a fated man. His mother, and his brother, the Prince
+Van Horn, had received intelligence some time before at Baussigny, of
+the dissolute life the Count was leading at Paris, and of his losses at
+play. They despatched a gentleman of the prince's household to Paris, to
+pay the debts of the Count, and persuade him to return to Flanders; or,
+if he should refuse, to obtain an order from the Regent for him to quit
+the capital. Unfortunately the gentleman did not arrive at Paris until
+the day after the murder.
+
+The news of the Count's arrest and imprisonment on a charge of murder,
+caused a violent sensation among the high aristocracy. All those
+connected with him, who had treated him hitherto with indifference,
+found their dignity deeply involved in the question of his guilt or
+innocence. A general convocation was held at the hotel of the Marquis de
+Crequi, of all the relatives and allies of the house of Horn. It was
+an assemblage of the most proud and aristocratic personages of Paris.
+Inquiries were made into the circumstances of the affair. It was
+ascertained, beyond a doubt, that the Jew was dead, and that he had been
+killed by several stabs of a poniard. In escaping by the window, it was
+said that the Count had fallen, and been immediately taken; but that De
+Mille had fled through the streets, pursued by the populace, and had
+been arrested at some distance from the scene of the murder; that the
+Count had declared himself innocent of the death of the Jew, and that
+he had risked his own life in endeavoring to protect him; but that De
+Mille, on being brought back to the tavern, confessed to a plot to
+murder the broker, and rob him of his pocket-book, and inculpated the
+Count in the crime.
+
+Another version of the story was, that the Count Van Horn had deposited
+with the broker, bank shares to the amount of eighty-eight thousand
+livres; that he had sought him in this tavern, which was one of his
+resorts, and had demanded the shares; that the Jew had denied the
+deposit; that a quarrel had ensued, in the course of which the Jew
+struck the Count in the face; that the latter, transported with rage,
+had snatched up a knife from a table, and wounded the Jew in the
+shoulder; and that thereupon De Mille, who was present, and who had
+likewise been defrauded by the broker, fell on him, and despatched him
+with blows of a poniard, and seized upon his pocket-book; that he had
+offered to divide the contents of the latter with the Count, _pro rata_,
+of what the usurer had defrauded them; that the latter had refused the
+proposition with disdain, and that, at a noise of persons approaching,
+both had attempted to escape from the premises, but had been taken.
+
+Regard the story in any way they might, appearances were terribly
+against the Count, and the noble assemblage was in great consternation.
+What was to be done to ward off so foul a disgrace and to save their
+illustrious escutcheons from this murderous stain of blood? Their
+first attempt was to prevent the affair from going to trial, and their
+relative from being dragged before a criminal tribunal, on so horrible
+and degrading a charge. They applied, therefore, to the Regent, to
+intervene his power; to treat the Count as having acted under an access
+of his mental malady; and to shut him up in a madhouse. The Regent was
+deaf to their solicitations. He replied, coldly, that if the Count was a
+madman, one could not get rid too quickly of madmen who were furious in
+their insanity. The crime was too public and atrocious to be hushed up
+or slurred over; justice must take its course.
+
+Seeing there was no avoiding the humiliating scene of a public trial,
+the noble relatives of the Count endeavored to predispose the minds of
+the magistrates before whom he was to be arraigned. They accordingly
+made urgent and eloquent representations of the high descent, and noble
+and powerful connexions of the Count; set forth the circumstances of his
+early history; his mental malady; the nervous irritability to which he
+was subject, and his extreme sensitiveness to insult or contradiction.
+By these means they sought to prepare the judges to interpret every
+thing in favor of the Count, and, even if it should prove that he had
+inflicted the mortal blow on the usurer, to attribute it to access of
+insanity, provoked by insult.
+
+To give full effect to these representations, the noble conclave
+determined to bring upon the judges the dazzling rays of the whole
+assembled aristocracy. Accordingly, on the day that the trial took
+place, the relations of the Count, to the number of fifty-seven persons,
+of both sexes, and of the highest rank, repaired in a body to the Palace
+of Justice, and took their stations in a long corridor which led to the
+court-room. Here, as the judges entered, they had to pass in review this
+array of lofty and noble personages, who saluted them mournfully and
+significantly, as they passed. Any one conversant with the stately pride
+and jealous dignity of the French noblesse of that day, may imagine the
+extreme state of sensitiveness that produced this self-abasement. It was
+confidently presumed, however, by the noble suppliants, that having once
+brought themselves to this measure, their influence over the tribunal
+would be irresistible. There was one lady present, however, Madame de
+Beauffremont, who was affected with the Scottish gift of second sight,
+and related such dismal and sinister apparitions as passing before
+her eyes, that many of her female companions were filled with doleful
+presentiments.
+
+Unfortunately for the Count, there was another interest at work, more
+powerful even than the high aristocracy. The all-potent Abbe Dubois, the
+grand favorite and bosom counsellor of the Regent, was deeply interested
+in the scheme of Law, and the prosperity of his bank, and of course in
+the security of the stock-brokers. Indeed, the Regent himself is said to
+have dipped deep in the Mississippi scheme. Dubois and Law, therefore,
+exerted their influence to the utmost to have the tragic affair pushed
+to the extremity of the law, and the murder of the broker punished in
+the most signal and appalling manner. Certain it is, the trial was
+neither long nor intricate. The Count and his fellow prisoner were
+equally inculpated in the crime; and both were condemned to a death the
+most horrible and ignominious--to be broken alive on the wheel!
+
+As soon as the sentence of the court was made public, all the nobility,
+in any degree related to the house of Van Horn, went into mourning.
+Another grand aristocratical assemblage was held, and a petition to the
+Regent, on behalf of the Count, was drawn out and left with the Marquis
+de Crequi for signature. This petition set forth the previous insanity
+of the Count, and showed that it was a hereditary malady of his family.
+It stated various circumstances in mitigation of his offence, and
+implored that his sentence might be commuted to perpetual imprisonment.
+
+Upward of fifty names of the highest nobility, beginning with the Prince
+de Ligne, and including cardinals, archbishops, dukes, marquises, etc.,
+together with ladies of equal rank, were signed to this petition. By
+one of the caprices of human pride and vanity, it became an object of
+ambition to get enrolled among the illustrious suppliants; a kind of
+testimonial of noble blood, to prove relationship to a murderer! The
+Marquis de Crequi was absolutely besieged by applicants to sign, and had
+to refer their claims to this singular honor, to the Prince de Ligne,
+the grandfather of the Count. Many who were excluded, were highly
+incensed, and numerous feuds took place. Nay, the affronts thus given to
+the morbid pride of some aristocratical families, passed from generation
+to generation; for, fifty years afterward, the Duchess of Mazarin
+complained of a slight which her father had received from the Marquis
+de Crequi; which proved to be something connected with the signature of
+this petition. This important document being completed, the illustrious
+body of petitioners, male and female, on Saturday evening, the eve of
+Palm Sunday, repaired to the Palais Royal, the residence of the Regent,
+and were ushered, with great ceremony but profound silence, into his
+hall of council. They had appointed four of their number as deputies, to
+present the petition, viz.: the Cardinal de Rohan, the Duke de Havre,
+the Prince de Ligne, and the Marquis de Crequi. After a little while,
+the deputies were summoned to the cabinet of the Regent. They entered,
+leaving the assembled petitioners in a state of the greatest anxiety.
+As time slowly wore away, and the evening advanced, the gloom of the
+company increased. Several of the ladies prayed devoutly; the good
+Princess of Armagnac told her beads.
+
+The petition was received by the Regent with a most unpropitious aspect.
+"In asking the pardon of the criminal," said he, "you display more zeal
+for the house of Van Horn, than for the service of the king." The noble
+deputies enforced the petition by every argument in their power. They
+supplicated the Regent to consider that the infamous punishment in
+question would reach not merely the person of the condemned, not
+merely the house of Van Horn, but also the genealogies of princely
+and illustrious families, in whose armorial bearings might be found
+quarterings of this dishonored name.
+
+"Gentlemen," replied the Regent, "it appears to me the disgrace consists
+in the crime, rather than in the punishment."
+
+The Prince de Ligne spoke with warmth: "I have in my genealogical
+standard," said he, "four escutcheons of Van Horn, and of course have
+four ancestors of that house. I must have them erased and effaced, and
+there would be so many blank spaces, like holes, in my heraldic ensigns.
+There is not a sovereign family which would not suffer, through the
+rigor of your Royal Highness; nay, all the world knows, that in the
+thirty-two quarterings of Madame, your mother, there is an escutcheon of
+Van Horn."
+
+"Very well," replied the Regent, "I will share the disgrace with you,
+gentlemen."
+
+Seeing that a pardon could not be obtained, the Cardinal de Rohan and
+the Marquis de Crequi left the cabinet; but the Prince de Ligne and the
+Duke de Havre remained behind. The honor of their houses, more than the
+life of the unhappy Count, was the great object of their solicitude.
+They now endeavored to obtain a minor grace. They represented that in
+the Netherlands, and in Germany, there was an important difference in
+the public mind as to the mode of inflicting the punishment of death
+upon persons of quality. That decapitation had no influence on the
+fortunes of the family of the executed, but that the punishment of the
+wheel was such an infamy, that the uncles, aunts, brothers, and sisters
+of the criminal, and his whole family, for three succeeding generations,
+were excluded from all noble chapters, princely abbeys, sovereign
+bishoprics, and even Teutonic commanderies of the Order of Malta. They
+showed how this would operate immediately upon the fortunes of a sister
+of the Count, who was on the point of being received as a canoness into
+one of the noble chapters.
+
+While this scene was going on in the cabinet of the Regent, the
+illustrious assemblage of petitioners remained in the hall of council,
+in the most gloomy state of suspense. The re-entrance from the cabinet
+of the Cardinal de Rohan and the Marquis de Crequi, with pale, downcast
+countenances, had struck a chill into every heart. Still they lingered
+until near midnight, to learn the result of the after application. At
+length the cabinet conference was at an end. The Regent came forth, and
+saluted the high personages of the assemblage in a courtly manner. One
+old lady of quality, Madame de Guyon, whom he had known in his infancy,
+he kissed on the cheek, calling her his "good aunt." He made a most
+ceremonious salutation to the stately Marchioness de Crequi, telling
+her he was charmed to see her at the Palais Royal; "a compliment very
+ill-timed," said the Marchioness, "considering the circumstance which
+brought me there." He then conducted the ladies to the door of the
+second saloon, and there dismissed them, with the most ceremonious
+politeness.
+
+The application of the Prince de Ligne and the Duke de Havre, for a
+change of the mode of punishment, had, after much difficulty, been
+successful. The Regent had promised solemnly to send a letter of
+commutation to the attorney-general on Holy Monday, the 25th of March,
+at five o'clock in the morning. According to the same promise, a
+scaffold would be arranged in the cloister of the Conciergerie,
+or prison, where the Count would be beheaded on the same morning,
+immediately after having received absolution. This mitigation of the
+form of punishment gave but little consolation to the great body of
+petitioners, who had been anxious for the pardon of the youth: it was
+looked upon as all-important, however, by the Prince de Ligne, who, as
+has been before observed,--was exquisitely alive to the dignity of his
+family.
+
+The Bishop of Bayeux and the Marquis de Crequi visited the unfortunate
+youth in prison. He had just received the communion in the chapel of the
+Conciergerie, and was kneeling before the altar, listening to a mass for
+the dead, which was performed at his request. He protested his innocence
+of any intention to murder the Jew, but did not deign to allude to the
+accusation of robbery. He made the bishop and the Marquis promise to see
+his brother the prince, and inform him of this his dying asseveration.
+
+Two other of his relations, the Prince Rebecq-Montmorency and the
+Marshal Van Isenghien, visited him secretly, and offered him poison, as
+a means of evading the disgrace of a public execution. On his refusing
+to take it, they left him with high indignation. "Miserable man!" said
+they, "you are fit only to perish by the hand of the executioner!"
+
+The Marquis de Crequi sought the executioner of Paris, to bespeak an
+easy and decent death--for the unfortunate youth. "Do not make him
+suffer," said he; "uncover no part of him but the neck; and have his
+body placed in a coffin, before you deliver it to his family." The
+executioner promised all that was requested, but declined a rouleau of a
+hundred louis-d'ors which the Marquis would have put into his hand. "I
+am paid by the king for fulfilling my office," said he; and added that
+he had already refused a like sum, offered by another relation of the
+Marquis.
+
+The Marquis de Crequi returned home in a state of deep affliction. There
+he found a letter from the Duke de St. Simon, the familiar friend of the
+Regent, repeating the promise of that prince, that the punishment of the
+wheel should be commuted to decapitation.
+
+"Imagine," says the Marchioness de Crequi, who in her memoirs gives a
+detailed account of this affair, "imagine what we experienced, and what
+was our astonishment, our grief, and indignation, when, on Tuesday, the
+26th of March, an hour after midday, word was brought us that the Count
+Van Horn had been exposed on the wheel, in the Place de Greve, since
+half-past six in the morning, on the same scaffold with the Piedmontese
+de Mille, and that he had been tortured previous to execution!"
+
+One more scene of aristocratic pride closed this tragic story. The
+Marquis de Crequi, on receiving this astounding news, immediately
+arrayed himself in the uniform of a general officer, with his cordon
+of nobility on the coat. He ordered six valets to attend him in grand
+livery, and two of his carriages, each with six horses, to be brought
+forth. In this sumptuous state, he set off for the Place de Greve, where
+he had been preceded by the Princes de Ligne, de Rohan, de Crouey, and
+the Duke de Havre.
+
+The Count Van Horn was already dead, and it was believed that the
+executioner had had the charity to give him the coup de grace, or
+"death-blow," at eight o'clock in the morning. At five o'clock in the
+evening, when the Judge Commissary left his post at the Hotel de Ville,
+these noblemen, with their own hands, aided to detach the mutilated
+remains of their relation; the Marquis de Crequi placed them in one of
+his carriages, and bore them off to his hotel, to receive the last sad
+obsequies.
+
+The conduct of the Regent in this affair excited general indignation.
+His needless severity was attributed by some to vindictive jealousy; by
+others to the persevering machinations of Law. The house of Van Horn,
+and the high nobility of Flanders and Germany, considered themselves
+flagrantly outraged: many schemes of vengeance were talked of, and a
+hatred engendered against the Regent, that followed him through life,
+and was wreaked with bitterness upon his memory after his death.
+
+The following letter is said to have been written to the Regent by the
+Prince Van Horn, to whom the former had adjudged the confiscated effects
+of the Count:
+
+"I do not complain, Sir, of the death of my brother, but I complain
+that your Royal Highness has violated in his person the rights of the
+kingdom, the nobility, and the nation. I thank you for the confiscation
+of his effects; but I should think myself as much disgraced as he,
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+Project Gutenberg's Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies, by Washington Irving
+#10 in our series by Washington Irving
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
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+Title: Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies
+
+Author: Washington Irving
+
+Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8571]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on July 24, 2003]
+[Date last updated: December 7, 2005]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOLFERT'S ROOST AND MISCELLANIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, David Widger
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+WOLFERT'S ROOST
+
+AND
+
+MISCELLANIES
+
+BY
+
+WASHINGTON IRVING
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+CHRONICLE OF WOLFERT'S ROOST
+
+SLEEPY HOLLOW
+
+BIRDS OF SPRING
+
+RECOLLECTIONS OF THE ALHAMBRA
+
+ABENCERRAGE
+
+ENCHANTED ISLAND
+
+ADELANTADO OF THE SEVEN CITIES
+
+NATIONAL NOMENCLATURE
+
+DESULTORY THOUGHTS ON CRITICISM
+
+SPANISH ROMANCE
+
+LEGEND OF DON MUIO SANCHO DE HINOJOSA
+
+COMMUNIPAW
+
+CONSPIRACY OF THE COCKED HATS
+
+LEGEND OF COMMUNIPAW
+
+BERMUDAS, THE
+
+PELAYO AND THE MERCHANT'S DAUGHTER
+
+KNIGHT OF MALTA
+
+LEGEND OF THE ENGULPHED CONVENT
+
+
+
+
+COUNT VAN HORN WOLFERT'S ROOST
+
+AND
+
+MISCELLANIES.
+
+
+A CHRONICLE OF WOLFERT'S ROOST.
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
+
+Sir: I have observed that as a man advances in life, he is subject to
+a kind of plethora of the mind, doubtless occasioned by the vast
+accumulation of wisdom and experience upon the brain. Hence he is apt to
+become narrative and admonitory, that is to say, fond of telling long
+stories, and of doling out advice, to the small profit and great
+annoyance of his friends. As I have a great horror of becoming the
+oracle, or, more technically speaking, the "bore," of the domestic
+circle, and would much rather bestow my wisdom and tediousness upon the
+world at large, I have always sought to ease off this surcharge of the
+intellect by means of my pen, and hence have inflicted divers gossiping
+volumes upon the patience of the public. I am tired, however, of writing
+volumes; they do not afford exactly the relief I require; there is too
+much preparation, arrangement, and parade, in this set form of coming
+before the public. I am growing too indolent and unambitious for any
+thing that requires labor or display. I have thought, therefore, of
+securing to myself a snug corner in some periodical work where I might,
+as it were, loll at my ease in my elbow-chair, and chat sociably with
+the public, as with an old friend, on any chance subject that might pop
+into my brain.
+
+In looking around, for this purpose, upon the various excellent
+periodicals with which our country abounds, my eye was struck by the
+title of your work--"THE KNICKERBOCKER." My heart leaped at the sight.
+DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER, Sir, was one of my earliest and most valued
+friends, and the recollection of him is associated with some of the
+pleasantest scenes of my youthful days. To explain this, and to show how
+I came into possession of sundry of his posthumous works, which I
+have from time to time given to the world, permit me to relate a
+few particulars of our early intercourse. I give them with the more
+confidence, as I know the interest you take in that departed worthy,
+whose name and effigy are stamped upon your title-page, and as they will
+be found important to the better understanding and relishing divers
+communications I may have to make to you.
+
+My first acquaintance with that great and good man, for such I may
+venture to call him, now that the lapse of some thirty years has
+shrouded his name with venerable antiquity, and the popular voice has
+elevated him to the rank of the classic historians of yore, my first
+acquaintance with him was formed on the banks of the Hudson, not far
+from the wizard region of Sleepy Hollow. He had come there in the course
+of his researches among the Dutch neighborhoods for materials for his
+immortal history. For this purpose, he was ransacking the archives of
+one of the most ancient and historical mansions in the country. It was
+a lowly edifice, built in the time of the Dutch dynasty, and stood on a
+green bank, overshadowed by trees, from which it peeped forth upon the
+Great Tappan Zee, so famous among early Dutch navigators. A bright
+pure spring welled up at the foot of the green bank; a wild brook came
+babbling down a neighboring ravine, and threw itself into a little woody
+cove, in front of the mansion. It was indeed as quiet and sheltered a
+nook as the heart of man could require, in which to take refuge from the
+cares and troubles of the world; and as such, it had been chosen in old
+times, by Wolfert Acker, one of the privy councillors of the renowned
+Peter Stuyvesant.
+
+This worthy but ill-starred man had led a weary and worried life,
+throughout the stormy reign of the chivalric Peter, being one of those
+unlucky wights with whom the world is ever at variance, and who are kept
+in a continual fume and fret, by the wickedness of mankind. At the time
+of the subjugation of the province by the English, he retired hither in
+high dudgeon; with the bitter determination to bury himself from the
+world, and live here in peace and quietness for the remainder of his
+days. In token of this fixed resolution, he inscribed over his door the
+favorite Dutch motto, "Lust in Rust," (pleasure in repose.) The mansion
+was thence called "Wolfert's Rust"--Wolfert's Rest; but in process of
+time, the name was vitiated into Wolfert's Roost, probably from its
+quaint cock-loft look, or from its having a weather-cock perched on
+every gable. This name it continued to bear, long after the unlucky
+Wolfert was driven forth once more upon a wrangling world, by the
+tongue of a termagant wife; for it passed into a proverb through the
+neighborhood, and has been handed down by tradition, that the cock of
+the Roost was the most hen-pecked bird in the country.
+
+This primitive and historical mansion has since passed through many
+changes and trials, which it may be my lot hereafter to notice. At the
+time of the sojourn of Diedrich Knickerbocker it was in possession of
+the gallant family of the Van Tassels, who have figured so conspicuously
+in his writings. What appears to have given it peculiar value, in his
+eyes, was the rich treasury of historical facts here secretly hoarded
+up, like buried gold; for it is said that Wolfert Acker, when he
+retreated from New Amsterdam, carried off with him many of the records
+and journals of the province, pertaining to the Dutch dynasty; swearing
+that they should never fall into the hands of the English. These, like
+the lost books of Livy, had baffled the research of former historians;
+but these did I find the indefatigable Diedrich diligently deciphering.
+He was already a sage in year's and experience, I but an idle stripling;
+yet he did not despise my youth and ignorance, but took me kindly by the
+hand, and led me gently into those paths of local and traditional lore
+which he was so fond of exploring. I sat with him in his little chamber
+at the Roost, and watched the antiquarian patience and perseverance
+with which he deciphered those venerable Dutch documents, worse than
+Herculanean manuscripts. I sat with him by the spring, at the foot of
+the green bank, and listened to his heroic tales about the worthies of
+the olden time, the paladins of New Amsterdam. I accompanied him in his
+legendary researches about Tarrytown and Sing-Sing, and explored with
+him the spell-bound recesses of Sleepy Hollow. I was present at many of
+his conferences with the good old Dutch burghers and their wives, from
+whom he derived many of those marvelous facts not laid down in books
+or records, and which give such superior value and authenticity to his
+history, over all others that have been written concerning the New
+Netherlands.
+
+But let me check my proneness to dilate upon this favorite theme; I may
+recur to it hereafter. Suffice it to say, the intimacy thus formed,
+continued for a considerable time; and in company with the worthy
+Diedrich, I visited many of the places celebrated by his pen. The
+currents of our lives at length diverged. He remained at home to
+complete his mighty work, while a vagrant fancy led me to wander about
+the world. Many, many years elapsed, before I returned to the parent
+soil. In the interim, the venerable historian of the New Netherlands
+had been gathered to his fathers, but his name had risen to renown. His
+native city, that city in which he so much delighted, had decreed all
+manner of costly honors to his memory. I found his effigy imprinted upon
+new-year cakes, and devoured with eager relish by holiday urchins; a
+great oyster-house bore the name of "Knickerbocker Hall;" and I narrowly
+escaped the pleasure of being run over by a Knickerbocker omnibus!
+
+Proud of having associated with a man who had achieved such greatness,
+I now recalled our early intimacy with tenfold pleasure, and sought to
+revisit the scenes we had trodden together. The most important of
+these was the mansion of the Van Tassels, the Roost of the unfortunate
+Wolfert. Time, which changes all things, is but slow in its operations
+upon a Dutchman's dwelling. I found the venerable and quaint little
+edifice much as I had seen it during the sojourn of Diedrich. There
+stood his elbow-chair in the corner of the room he had occupied;
+the old-fashioned Dutch writing-desk at which he had pored over the
+chronicles of the Manhattoes; there was the old wooden chest, with the
+archives left by Wolfert Acker, many of which, however, had been fired
+off as wadding from the long duck gun of the Van Tassels. The scene
+around the mansion was still the same; the green bank; the spring beside
+which I had listened to the legendary narratives of the historian; the
+wild brook babbling down to the woody cove, and the overshadowing locust
+trees, half shutting out the prospect of the great Tappan Zee.
+
+As I looked round upon the scene, my heart yearned at the recollection
+of my departed friend, and I wistfully eyed the mansion which he had
+inhabited, and which was fast mouldering to decay. The thought struck me
+to arrest the desolating hand of Time; to rescue the historic pile from
+utter ruin, and to make it the closing scene of my wanderings; a quiet
+home, where I might enjoy "lust in rust" for the remainder of my days.
+It is true, the fate of the unlucky Wolfert passed across my mind; but
+I consoled myself with the reflection that I was a bachelor, and that I
+had no termagant wife to dispute the sovereignty of the Roost with me.
+
+I have become possessor of the Roost! I have repaired and renovated it
+with religious care, in the genuine Dutch style, and have adorned and
+illustrated it with sundry reliques of the glorious days of the New
+Netherlands. A venerable weathercock, of portly Dutch dimensions,
+which once battled with the wind on the top of the Stadt-House of New
+Amsterdam, in the time of Peter Stuyvesant, now erects its crest on
+the gable end of my edifice; a gilded horse in full gallop, once the
+weathercock of the great Vander Heyden Palace of Albany, now glitters in
+the sunshine, and veers with every breeze, on the peaked turret over
+my portal; my sanctum sanctorum is the chamber once honored by the
+illustrious Diedrich, and it is from his elbow-chair, and his identical
+old Dutch writing-desk, that I pen this rambling epistle.
+
+Here, then, have I set up my rest, surrounded by the recollections of
+early days, and the mementoes of the historian of the Manhattoes, with
+that glorious river before me, which flows with such majesty through his
+works, and which has ever been to me a river of delight.
+
+I thank God I was born on the banks of the Hudson! I think it an
+invaluable advantage to be born and brought up in the neighborhood of
+some grand and noble object in nature; a river, a lake, or a mountain.
+We make a friendship with it, we in a manner ally ourselves to it for
+life. It remains an object of our pride and affections, a rallying
+point, to call us home again after all our wanderings. "The things which
+we have learned in our childhood," says an old writer, "grow up with our
+souls, and unite themselves to it." So it is with the scenes among which
+we have passed our early days; they influence the whole course of our
+thoughts and feelings; and I fancy I can trace much of what is good and
+pleasant in my own heterogeneous compound to my early companionship with
+this glorious river. In the warmth of my youthful enthusiasm, I used to
+clothe it with moral attributes, and almost to give it a soul. I admired
+its frank, bold, honest character; its noble sincerity and perfect
+truth. Here was no specious, smiling surface, covering the dangerous
+sand-bar or perfidious rock; but a stream deep as it was broad, and
+bearing with honorable faith the bark that trusted to its waves. I
+gloried in its simple, quiet, majestic, epic flow; ever straight
+forward. Once, indeed, it turns aside for a moment, forced from its
+course by opposing mountains, but it struggles bravely through them, and
+immediately resumes its straightforward march. Behold, thought I, an
+emblem of a good man's course through life; ever simple, open, and
+direct; or if, overpowered by adverse circumstances, he deviate into
+error, it is but momentary; he soon recovers his onward and honorable
+career, and continues it to the end of his pilgrimage.
+
+Excuse this rhapsody, into which I have been betrayed by a revival of
+early feelings. The Hudson is, in a manner, my first and last love; and
+after all my wanderings and seeming infidelities, I return to it with a
+heart-felt preference over all the other rivers in the world. I seem
+to catch new life as I bathe in its ample billows and inhale the pure
+breezes of its hills. It is true, the romance of youth is past, that
+once spread illusions over every scene. I can no longer picture an
+Arcadia in every green valley; nor a fairy land among the distant
+mountains; nor a peerless beauty in every villa gleaming among the
+trees; but though the illusions of youth have faded from the landscape,
+the recollections of departed years and departed pleasures shed over it
+the mellow charm of evening sunshine.
+
+Permit me, then, Mr. Editor, through the medium of your work, to
+hold occasional discourse from my retreat with the busy world I have
+abandoned. I have much to say about what I have seen, heard, felt, and
+thought through the course of a varied and rambling life, and some
+lucubrations that have long been encumbering my portfolio; together with
+divers reminiscences of the venerable historian of the New Netherlands,
+that may not be unacceptable to those who have taken an interest in his
+writings, and are desirous of any thing that may cast a light back upon
+our early history. Let your readers rest assured of one thing, that,
+though retired from the world, I am not disgusted with it; and that if
+in my communings with it I do not prove very wise, I trust I shall at
+least prove very good-natured.
+
+Which is all at present, from
+
+Yours, etc.,
+
+GEOFFREY CRAYON.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
+
+Worthy Sir: In a preceding communication, I have given you some brief
+notice of Wolfert's Roost, the mansion where I first had the good
+fortune to become acquainted with the venerable historian of the New
+Netherlands. As this ancient edifice is likely to be the place whence
+I shall date many of my lucubrations, and as it is really a very
+remarkable little pile, intimately connected with all the great epochs
+of our local and national history, I have thought it but right to give
+some farther particulars concerning it. Fortunately, in rummaging a
+ponderous Dutch chest of drawers, which serves as the archives of the
+Roost, and in which are preserved many inedited manuscripts of Mr.
+KNICKERBOCKER, together with the precious records of New-Amsterdam,
+brought hither by Wolfert Acker at the downfall of the Dutch dynasty,
+as has been already mentioned, I found in one corner, among dried
+pumpkin-seeds, bunches of thyme, and pennyroyal, and crumbs of new-year
+cakes, a manuscript, carefully wrapped up in the fragment of an old
+parchment deed, but much blotted, and the ink grown foxy by time, which,
+on inspection, I discovered to be a faithful chronicle of the Roost. The
+hand-writing, and certain internal evidences, leave no doubt in my
+mind, that it is a genuine production of the venerable historian of the
+New-Netherlands, written, very probably, during his residence at the
+Roost, in gratitude for the hospitality of its proprietor. As such, I
+submit it for publication. As the entire chronicle is too long for the
+pages of your Magazine, and as it contains many minute particulars,
+which might prove tedious to the general reader, I have abbreviated and
+occasionally omitted some of its details; but may hereafter furnish
+them separately, should they seem to be required by the curiosity of an
+enlightened and document-hunting public. Respectfully yours, GEOFFREY
+CRAYON.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A CHRONICLE OF WOLFERT'S ROOST.
+
+FOUND AMONG THE PAPERS OF THE LATE DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER.
+
+About five-and-twenty miles from the ancient and renowned city of
+Manhattan, formerly called New-Amsterdam, and vulgarly called New-York,
+on the eastern bank of that expansion of the Hudson, known among
+Dutch mariners of yore, as the Tappan Zee, being in fact the great
+Mediterranean Sea of the New-Netherlands, stands a little old-fashioned
+stone mansion, all made up of gable-ends, and as full of angles and
+corners as an old cocked hat. Though but of small dimensions, yet, like
+many small people, it is of mighty spirit, and values itself greatly on
+its antiquity, being one of the oldest edifices, for its size, in the
+whole country. It claims to be an ancient seat of empire, I may rather
+say an empire in itself, and like all empires, great and small, has had
+its grand historical epochs. In speaking of this doughty and valorous
+little pile, I shall call it by its usual appellation of "The Roost;"
+though that is a name given to it in modern days, since it became the
+abode of the white man.
+
+Its origin, in truth, dates far back in that remote region commonly
+called the fabulous age, in which vulgar fact becomes mystified, and
+tinted up with delectable fiction. The eastern shore of the Tappan Sea
+was inhabited in those days by an unsophisticated race, existing in all
+the simplicity of nature; that is to say, they lived by hunting and
+fishing, and recreated themselves occasionally with a little tomahawking
+and scalping. Each stream that flows down from the hills into the
+Hudson, had its petty sachem, who ruled over a hand's-breadth of forest
+on either side, and had his seat of government at its mouth. The
+chieftain who ruled at the Roost, was not merely a great warrior, but a
+medicine-man, or prophet, or conjurer, for they all mean the same thing,
+in Indian parlance. Of his fighting propensities, evidences still
+remain, in various arrowheads of flint, and stone battle-axes,
+occasionally digged up about the Roost: of his wizard powers, we have a
+token in a spring which wells up at the foot of the bank, on the
+very margin of the river, which, it is said, was gifted by him with
+rejuvenating powers, something like the renowned Fountain of Youth in
+the Floridas, so anxiously but vainly sought after by the veteran Ponce
+de Leon. This story, however, is stoutly contradicted by an old Dutch
+matter-of-fact tradition, which declares that the spring in question was
+smuggled over from Holland in a churn, by Femmetie Van Slocum, wife of
+Goosen Garret Van Slocum, one of the first settlers, and that she took
+it up by night, unknown to her husband, from beside their farm-house
+near Rotterdam; being sure she should find no water equal to it in the
+new country--and she was right.
+
+The wizard sachem had a great passion for discussing territorial
+questions, and settling boundary lines; this kept him in continual feud
+with the neighboring sachems, each of whom stood up stoutly for his
+hand-breadth of territory; so that there is not a petty stream nor
+ragged hill in the neighborhood, that has not been the subject of long
+talks and hard battles. The sachem, however, as has been observed, was a
+medicine-man, as well as warrior, and vindicated his claims by arts
+as well as arms; so that, by dint of a little hard fighting here, and
+hocus-pocus there, he managed to extend his boundary-line from field
+to field and stream to stream, until he found himself in legitimate
+possession of that region of hills and valleys, bright fountains and
+limpid brooks, locked in by the mazy windings of the Neperan and the
+Pocantico. [Footnote: As every one may not recognize these boundaries
+by their original Indian names, it may be well to observe, that the
+Neperan is that beautiful stream, vulgarly called the Saw-Mill River,
+which, after winding gracefully for many miles through a lovely valley,
+shrouded by groves, and dotted by Dutch farm-houses, empties itself
+into the Hudson, at the ancient drop of Yonkers. The Pocantico is that
+hitherto nameless brook, that, rising among woody hills, winds in many a
+wizard maze through the sequestered banks of Sleepy Hollow. We owe it to
+the indefatigable researches of Mr. KNICKERBOCKER, that those beautiful
+streams are rescued from modern common-place, and reinvested with their
+ancient Indian names. The correctness of the venerable historian may be
+ascertained, by reference to the records of the original Indian grants
+to the Herr Frederick Philipsen, preserved in the county clerk's office,
+at White Plains.]
+
+This last-mentioned stream, or rather the valley through which it flows,
+was the most difficult of all his acquisitions. It lay half way to the
+strong-hold of the redoubtable sachem of Sing-Sing, and was claimed by
+him as an integral part of his domains. Many were the sharp conflicts
+between the rival chieftains for the sovereignty of this valley, and
+many the ambuscades, surprisals, and deadly onslaughts that took place
+among its fastnesses, of which it grieves me much that I cannot furnish
+the details for the gratification of those gentle but bloody-minded
+readers of both sexes, who delight in the romance of the tomahawk and
+scalping-knife. Suffice it to say that the wizard chieftain was at
+length victorious, though his victory is attributed in Indian tradition
+to a great medicine or charm by which he laid the sachem of Sing-Sing
+and his warriors asleep among the rocks and recesses of the valley,
+where they remain asleep to the present day with their bows and
+war-clubs beside them. This was the origin of that potent and drowsy
+spell which still prevails over the valley of the Pocantico, and which
+has gained it the well-merited appellation of Sleepy Hollow. Often, in
+secluded and quiet parts of that valley, where the stream is overhung by
+dark woods and rocks, the ploughman, on some calm and sunny day as
+he shouts to his oxen, is surprised at hearing faint shouts from the
+hill-sides in reply; being, it is said, the spell-bound warriors, who
+half start from their rocky couches and grasp their weapons, but sink to
+sleep again.
+
+The conquest of the Pocantico was the last triumph of the wizard sachem.
+Notwithstanding all his medicine and charms, he fell in battle in
+attempting to extend his boundary line to the east so as to take in the
+little wild valley of the Sprain, and his grave is still shown near the
+banks of that pastoral stream. He left, however, a great empire to his
+successors, extending along the Tappan Zee, from Yonkers quite to Sleepy
+Hollow; all which delectable region, if every one had his right, would
+still acknowledge allegiance to the lord of the Roost--whoever he might
+be. [Footnote: In recording the contest for the sovereignty of Sleepy
+Hollow, I have called one sachem by the modern name of his castle or
+strong-hold, viz.: Sing-Sing. This, I would observe for the sake
+of historical exactness, is a corruption of the old Indian name,
+O-sin-sing, or rather O-sin-song; that is to say, a place where any
+thing may be had for a song--a great recommendation for a market town.
+The modern and melodious alteration of the name to Sing-Sing is said to
+have been made in compliment to an eminent Methodist singing-master, who
+first introduced into the neighborhood the art of singing through the
+nose. D. K.]
+
+The wizard sachem was succeeded by a line of chiefs, of whom nothing
+remarkable remains on record. The last who makes any figure in history
+is the one who ruled here at the time of the discovery of the country by
+the white man. This sachem is said to have been a renowned trencherman,
+who maintained almost as potent a sway by dint of good feeding as his
+warlike predecessor had done by hard fighting. He diligently cultivated
+the growth of oysters along the aquatic borders of his territories, and
+founded those great oyster-beds which yet exist along the shores of the
+Tappan Zee. Did any dispute occur between him and a neighboring sachem,
+he invited him and all his principal sages and fighting-men to a solemn
+banquet, and seldom failed of feeding them into terms. Enormous heaps of
+oyster-shells, which encumber the lofty banks of the river, remain as
+monuments of his gastronomical victories, and have been occasionally
+adduced through mistake by amateur geologists from town, as additional
+proofs of the deluge. Modern investigators, who are making such
+indefatigable researches into our early history, have even affirmed that
+this sachem was the very individual on whom Master Hendrick Hudson and
+his mate, Robert Juet, made that sage and astounding experiment so
+gravely recorded by the latter in his narrative of the voyage: "Our
+master and his mate determined to try some of the cheefe men of the
+country whether they had any treacherie in them. So they took them down
+into the cabin and gave them so much wine and aqua vitae that they
+were all very merrie; one of them had his wife with him, which sate so
+modestly as any of our countrywomen would do in a strange place. In the
+end one of them was drunke; and that was strange to them, for they
+could not tell how to take it." [Footnote: See Juet's Journal, Purchas
+Pilgrim.]
+
+How far Master Hendrick Hudson and his worthy mate carried their
+experiment with the sachem's wife is not recorded, neither does the
+curious Robert Juet make any mention of the after-consequences of this
+grand moral test; tradition, however, affirms that the sachem on landing
+gave his modest spouse a hearty rib-roasting, according to the connubial
+discipline of the aboriginals; it farther affirms that he remained a
+hard drinker to the day of his death, trading away all his lands, acre
+by acre, for aqua vitae; by which means the Roost and all its domains,
+from Yonkers to Sleepy Hollow, came, in the regular course of trade and
+by right of purchase, into the possession of the Dutchmen.
+
+Never has a territorial right in these new countries been more
+legitimately and tradefully established; yet, I grieve to say, the
+worthy government of the New Netherlands was not suffered to enjoy this
+grand acquisition unmolested; for, in the year 1654, the local Yankees
+of Connecticut--those swapping, bargaining, squatting enemies of the
+Manhattoes--made a daring inroad into this neighborhood and founded a
+colony called Westchester, or, as the ancient Dutch records term it,
+Vest Dorp, in the right of one Thomas Pell, who pretended to have
+purchased the whole surrounding country of the Indians, and stood ready
+to argue their claims before any tribunal of Christendom.
+
+This happened during the chivalrous reign of Peter Stuyvesant, and it
+roused the ire of that gunpowder old hero; who, without waiting to
+discuss claims and titles, pounced at once upon the nest of nefarious
+squatters, carried off twenty-five of them in chains to the Manhattoes,
+nor did he stay his hand, nor give rest to his wooden leg, until he had
+driven every Yankee back into the bounds of Connecticut, or obliged
+him to acknowledge allegiance to their High Mightinesses. He then
+established certain out-posts, far in the Indian country, to keep an eye
+over these debateable lands; one of these border-holds was the Roost,
+being accessible from New Amsterdam by water, and easily kept supplied.
+The Yankees, however, had too great a hankering after this delectable
+region to give it up entirely. Some remained and swore allegiance to the
+Manhattoes; but, while they kept this open semblance of fealty, they
+went to work secretly and vigorously to intermarry and multiply, and by
+these nefarious means, artfully propagated themselves into possession of
+a wide tract of those open, arable parts of Westchester county, lying
+along the Sound, where their descendants may be found at the present
+day; while the mountainous regions along the Hudson, with the valleys
+of the Neperan and the Pocantico, are tenaciously held by the lineal
+descendants of the Copperheads.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The chronicle of the venerable Diedrich here goes on to relate how that,
+shortly after the above-mentioned events, the whole province of the New
+Netherlands 'was subjugated by the British; how that Wolfert Acker, one
+of the wrangling councillors of Peter Stuyvesant, retired in dudgeon to
+this fastness in the wilderness, determining to enjoy "lust in rust" for
+the remainder of his days, whence the place first received its name of
+Wolfert's Roost. As these and sundry other matters have been laid before
+the public in a preceding article, I shall pass them over, and resume
+the chronicle where it treats of matters not hitherto recorded:
+
+Like many men who retire from a worrying world, says DIEDRICH
+KNICKERBOCKER, to enjoy quiet in the country, Wolfert Acker soon found
+himself up to the ears in trouble. He had a termagant wife at home,
+and there was what is profanely called "the deuce to pay," abroad. The
+recent irruption of the Yankees into the bounds of the New Netherlands,
+had left behind it a doleful pestilence, such as is apt to follow the
+steps of invading armies. This was the deadly plague of witchcraft,
+which had long been prevalent to the eastward. The malady broke out at
+Vest Dorp, and threatened to spread throughout the country. The Dutch
+burghers along the Hudson, from Yonkers to Sleepy Hollow, hastened to
+nail horseshoes to their doors, which have ever been found of sovereign
+virtue to repel this awful visitation. This is the origin of the
+horse-shoes which may still be seen nailed to the doors of barns and
+farmhouses, in various parts of this sage and sober-thoughted region.
+
+The evil, however, bore hard upon the Roost; partly, perhaps, from its
+having in old times been subject to supernatural influences, during the
+sway of the Wizard Sachem; but it has always, in fact, been considered a
+fated mansion. The unlucky Wolfert had no rest day nor night. When the
+weather was quiet all over the country, the wind would howl and whistle
+round his roof; witches would ride and whirl upon his weathercocks, and
+scream down his chimneys. His cows gave bloody milk, and his horses
+broke bounds, and scampered into the woods. There were not wanting evil
+tongues to whisper that Wolfert's termagant wife had some tampering
+with the enemy; and that she even attended a witches' Sabbath in Sleepy
+Hollow; nay, a neighbor, who lived hard by, declared that he saw her
+harnessing a rampant broom-stick, and about to ride to the meeting;
+though others presume it was merely flourished in the course of one of
+her curtain lectures, to give energy and emphasis to a period. Certain
+it is, that Wolfert Acker nailed a horse-shoe to the front door, during
+one of her nocturnal excursions, to prevent her return; but as she
+re-entered the house without any difficulty, it is probable she was
+not so much of a witch as she was represented. [Footnote: HISTORICAL
+NOTE.--The annexed extracts from the early colonial records, relate to
+the irruption of witchcraft into Westchester county, as mentioned in the
+chronicle:
+
+"JULY 7, 1670.--Katharine Harryson, accused of witchcraft on complaint of
+Thomas Hunt and Edward Waters, in behalf of the town, who pray that she
+may be driven from the town of Westchester. The woman appears before
+the council.... She was a native of England, and had lived a year in
+Weathersfield, Connecticut, where she had been tried for witchcraft,
+found guilty by the jury, acquitted by the bench, and released out of
+prison, upon condition she would remove. Affair adjourned.
+
+"AUGUST 24.--Affair taken up again, when, being heard at large, it was
+referred to the general court of assize. Woman ordered to give security
+for good behavior," etc.
+
+In another place is the following entry:
+
+"Order given for Katharine Harryson, charged with witchcraft, to leave
+Westchester, as the inhabitants are uneasy at her residing there, and
+she is ordered to go off."]
+
+After the time of Wolfert Acker, a long interval elapses, about which
+but little is known. It is hoped, however, that the antiquarian
+researches so diligently making in every part of this new country, may
+yet throw some light upon what may be termed the Dark Ages of the Roost.
+
+The next period at which we find this venerable and eventful pile rising
+to importance, and resuming its old belligerent character, is during the
+revolutionary war. It was at that time owned by Jacob Van Tassel, or Van
+Texel, as the name was originally spelled, after the place in Holland
+which gave birth to this heroic line. He was strong-built, long-limbed,
+and as stout in soul as in body; a fit successor to the warrior sachem
+of yore, and, like him, delighting in extravagant enterprises and hardy
+deeds of arms. But, before I enter upon the exploits of this worthy cock
+of the Boost, it is fitting I should throw some light upon the state of
+the mansion, and of the surrounding country, at the time.
+
+The situation of the Roost is in the very heart of what was the
+debateable ground between the American and British lines, during the
+war. The British held possession of the city of New York, and the island
+of Manhattan on which it stands. The Americans drew up toward the
+Highlands, holding their headquarters at Peekskill. The intervening
+country, from Croton River to Spiting Devil Creek, was the debateable
+land, subject to be harried by friend and foe, like the Scottish borders
+of yore. It is a rugged country, with a line of rocky hills extending
+through it, like a back bone, sending ribs on either side; but among
+these rude hills are beautiful winding valleys, like those watered by
+the Pocantico and the Neperan. In the fastnesses of these hills,
+and along these valleys, exist a race of hard-headed, hard-handed,
+stout-hearted Dutchmen, descendants of the primitive Nederlanders. Most
+of these were strong whigs throughout the war, and have ever remained
+obstinately attached to the soil, and neither to be fought nor bought
+out of their paternal acres. Others were tories, and adherents to the
+old kingly rule; some of whom took refuge within the British lines,
+joined the royal bands of refugees, a name odious to the American ear,
+and occasionally returned to harass their ancient neighbors.
+
+In a little while, this debateable land was overrun by predatory bands
+from either side; sacking hen-roosts, plundering farm-houses, and
+driving off cattle. Hence arose those two great orders of border
+chivalry, the Skinners and the Cowboys, famous in the heroic annals of
+Westchester county. The former fought, or rather marauded, under the
+American, the latter under the British banner; but both, in the hurry of
+their military ardor, were apt to err on the safe side, and rob friend
+as well as foe. Neither of them stopped to ask the politics of horse or
+cow, which they drove into captivity; nor, when they wrung the neck of
+a rooster, did they trouble their heads to ascertain whether he were
+crowing for Congress or King George.
+
+While this marauding system prevailed on shore, the Great Tappan Sea,
+which washes this belligerent region, was domineered over by British
+frigates and other vessels of war, anchored here and there, to keep an
+eye upon the river, and maintain a communication between the various
+military posts. Stout galleys, also, armed with eighteen-pounders, and
+navigated with sails and oars, cruised about like hawks, ready to pounce
+upon their prey.
+
+All these were eyed with bitter hostility by the Dutch yeomanry along
+shore, who were indignant at seeing their great Mediterranean ploughed
+by hostile prows; and would occasionally throw up a mud breast-work on a
+point or promontory, mount an old iron field-piece, and fire away at the
+enemy, though the greatest harm was apt to happen to themselves from the
+bursting of their ordnance; nay, there was scarce a Dutchman along the
+river that would hesitate to fire with his long duck gun at any British
+cruiser that came within reach, as he had been accustomed to fire at
+water-fowl.
+
+I have been thus particular in my account of the times and neighborhood,
+that the reader might the more readily comprehend the surrounding
+dangers in this the Heroic Age of the Roost.
+
+It was commanded at the time, as I have already observed, by the stout
+Jacob Van Tassel. As I wish to be extremely accurate in this part of
+my chronicle, I beg that this Jacob Van Tassel of the Roost may not be
+confounded with another Jacob Van Tassel, commonly known in border story
+by the name of "Clump-footed Jake," a noted tory, and one of the refugee
+band of Spiting Devil. On the contrary, he of the Roost was a patriot of
+the first water, and, if we may take his own word for granted, a thorn
+in the side of the enemy. As the Roost, from its lonely situation on the
+water's edge, might be liable to attack, he took measures for defence.
+On a row of hooks above his fire-place, reposed his great piece of
+ordnance, ready charged and primed for action. This was a duck, or
+rather goose-gun, of unparalleled longitude, with which it was said he
+could kill a wild goose, though half-way across the Tappan Sea. Indeed,
+there are as many wonders told of this renowned gun, as of the enchanted
+weapons of the heroes of classic story.
+
+In different parts of the stone walls of his mansion, he had made
+loop-holes, through which he might fire upon an assailant. His wife was
+stout-hearted as himself, and could load as fast as he could fire; and
+then he had an ancient and redoubtable sister, Nochie Van Wurmer, a
+match, as he said, for the stoutest man in the country. Thus garrisoned,
+the little Roost was fit to stand a siege, and Jacob Van Tassel was the
+man to defend it to the last charge of powder.
+
+He was, as I have already hinted, of pugnacious propensities; and, not
+content with being a patriot at home, and fighting for the security of
+his own fireside, he extended his thoughts abroad, and entered into a
+confederacy with certain of the bold, hard-riding lads of Tarrytown,
+Petticoat Lane, and Sleepy Hollow, who formed a kind of Holy
+Brotherhood, scouring the country to clear it of Skinner and Cow-boy,
+and all other border vermin. The Roost was one of their rallying points.
+Did a band of marauders from Manhattan island come sweeping through the
+neighborhood, and driving off cattle, the stout Jacob and his compeers
+were soon clattering at their heels, and fortunate did the rogues esteem
+themselves if they could but get a part of their booty across the lines,
+or escape themselves without a rough handling. Should the mosstroopers
+succeed in passing with their cavalcade, with thundering tramp and dusty
+whirlwind, across Kingsbridge, the Holy Brotherhood of the Roost would
+rein up at that perilous pass, and, wheeling about, would indemnify
+themselves by foraging the refugee region of Morrisania.
+
+When at home at the Roost, the stout Jacob was not idle; but was prone
+to carry on a petty warfare of his own, for his private recreation and
+refreshment. Did he ever chance to espy, from his look-out place, a
+hostile ship or galley anchored or becalmed near shore, he would take
+down his long goose-gun from the hooks over the fire-place, sally
+out alone, and lurk along shore, dodging behind rocks and trees, and
+watching for hours together, like a veteran mouser intent on a rat-hole.
+So sure as a boat put off for shore, and came within shot, bang! went
+the great goose-gun; a shower of slugs and buck-shot whistled about the
+ears of the enemy, and before the boat could reach the shore, Jacob had
+scuttled up some woody ravine, and left no trace behind. About this
+time, the Roost experienced a vast accession of warlike importance, in
+being made one of the stations of the water-guard. This was a kind of
+aquatic corps of observation, composed of long, sharp, canoe-shaped
+boats, technically called whale-boats, that lay lightly on the water,
+and could be rowed with great rapidity. They were manned by resolute
+fellows, skilled at pulling an oar, or handling a musket. These lurked
+about in nooks and bays, and behind those long promontories which run
+out into the Tappan Sea, keeping a look-out, to give notice of the
+approach or movements of hostile ships. They roved about in pairs;
+sometimes at night, with muffled oars, gliding like spectres about
+frigates and guard-ships riding at anchor, cutting off any boats that
+made for shore, and keeping the enemy in constant uneasiness. These
+mosquito-cruisers generally kept aloof by day, so that their harboring
+places might not be discovered, but would pull quietly along, under
+shadow of the shore, at night, to take up their quarters at the Roost.
+Hither, at such time, would also repair the hard-riding lads of the
+hills, to hold secret councils of war with the "ocean chivalry;" and in
+these nocturnal meetings were concerted many of those daring forays, by
+land and water, that resounded throughout the border.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The chronicle here goes on to recount divers wonderful stories of the
+wars of the Roost, from which it would seem, that this little warrior
+nest carried the terror of its arms into every sea, from Spiting Devil
+Creek to Antony's Nose; that it even bearded the stout island of
+Manhattan, invading it at night, penetrating to its centre, and burning
+down the famous Delancey house, the conflagration of which makes such a
+blaze in revolutionary history. Nay more, in their extravagant daring,
+these cocks of the Roost meditated a nocturnal descent upon New York
+itself, to swoop upon the British commanders, Howe and Clinton, by
+surprise, bear them off captive, and perhaps put a triumphant close to
+the war!
+
+All these and many similar exploits are recorded by the worthy Diedrich,
+with his usual minuteness and enthusiasm, whenever the deeds in arms of
+his kindred Dutchmen are in question; but though most of these warlike
+stories rest upon the best of all authority, that of the warriors
+themselves, and though many of them are still current among the
+revolutionary patriarchs of this heroic neighborhood, yet I dare not
+expose them to the incredulity of a tamer and less chivalric age,
+Suffice it to say, the frequent gatherings at the Roost, and the hardy
+projects set on foot there, at length drew on it the fiery indignation
+of the enemy; and this was quickened by the conduct of the stout Jacob
+Van Tassel; with whose valorous achievements we resume the course of the
+chronicle.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THIS doughty Dutchman, continues the sage DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER, was
+not content with taking a share in all the magnanimous enterprises
+concocted at the Roost, but still continued his petty warfare along
+shore. A series of exploits at length raised his confidence in his
+prowess to such a height, that he began to think himself and his
+goose-gun a match for any thing. Unluckily, in the course of one of his
+prowlings, he descried a British transport aground, not far from shore,
+with her stern swung toward the land, within point-blank shot. The
+temptation was too great to be resisted; bang! as usual, went the great
+goose-gun, shivering the cabin windows, and driving all hands forward.
+Bang! bang! the shots were repeated. The reports brought several
+sharp-shooters of the neighborhood to the spot; before the transport
+could bring a gun to bear, or land a boat, to take revenge, she was
+soundly peppered, and the coast evacuated. This was the last of Jacob's
+triumphs. He fared like some heroic spider, that has unwittingly
+ensnared a hornet, to his immortal glory, perhaps, but to the utter ruin
+of his web.
+
+It was not long after this, during the absence of Jacob Van Tassel on
+one of his forays, and when no one was in garrison but his stout-hearted
+spouse, his redoubtable sister, Nochie Van Wurmer, and a strapping negro
+wench, called Dinah, that an armed vessel came to anchor off the Roost,
+and a boat full of men pulled to shore. The garrison flew to arms, that
+is to say, to mops, broom-sticks, shovels, tongs, and all kinds of
+domestic weapons; for, unluckily, the great piece of ordnance, the
+goose-gun, was absent with its owner. Above all, a vigorous defence was
+made with that most potent of female weapons, the tongue. Never did
+invaded hen-roost make a more vociferous outcry. It was all in vain. The
+house was sacked and plundered, fire was set to each corner, and in a
+few moments its blaze shed a baleful light far over the Tappan Sea. The
+invaders then pounced upon the blooming Laney Van Tassel, the beauty of
+the Roost, and endeavored to bear her off to the boat. But here was the
+real tug of war. The mother, the aunt, and the strapping negro wench,
+all flew to the rescue. The struggle continued down to the very water's
+edge; when a voice from the armed vessel at anchor, ordered the spoilers
+to let go their hold; they relinquished their prize, jumped into their
+boats, and pulled off, and the heroine of the Roost escaped with a mere
+rumpling of the feathers.
+
+The fear of tiring my readers, who may not take such an interest as
+myself in these heroic themes, induces me to close here my extracts from
+this precious chronicle of the venerable Diedrich. Suffice it briefly to
+say, that shortly after the catastrophe of the Roost, Jacob Van Tassel,
+in the course of one of his forays, fell into the hands of the British;
+was sent prisoner to New York, and was detained in captivity for
+the greater part of the war. In the mean time, the Roost remained a
+melancholy ruin; its stone walls and brick chimneys alone standing,
+blackened by fire, and the resort of bats and owlets. It was not until
+the return of peace, when this belligerent neighborhood once more
+resumed its quiet agricultural pursuits, that the stout Jacob sought the
+scene of his triumphs and disasters; rebuilt the Roost, and reared again
+on high its glittering weather-cocks.
+
+Does any one want further particulars of the fortunes of this eventful
+little pile? Let him go to the fountain-head, and drink deep of historic
+truth. Reader! the stout Jacob Van Tassel still lives, a venerable,
+gray-headed patriarch of the revolution, now in his ninety-fifth year!
+He sits by his fireside, in the ancient city of the Manhattoes, and
+passes the long winter evenings, surrounded by his children, and
+grand-children, and great-grand-children, all listening to his tales of
+the border wars, and the heroic days of the Roost. His great goose-gun,
+too, is still in existence, having been preserved for many years in a
+hollow tree, and passed from hand to hand among the Dutch burghers, as a
+precious relique of the revolution. It is now actually in possession of
+a contemporary of the stout Jacob, one almost his equal in years, who
+treasures it up at his house in the Bowerie of New-Amsterdam, hard by
+the ancient rural retreat of the chivalric Peter Stuyvesant. I am not
+without hopes of one day seeing this formidable piece of ordinance
+restored to its proper station in the arsenal of the Roost. Before
+closing this historic document, I cannot but advert to certain notions
+and traditions concerning the venerable pile in question. Old-time
+edifices are apt to gather odd fancies and superstitions about them, as
+they do moss and weather-stains; and this is in a neighborhood a little
+given to old-fashioned notions, and who look upon the Roost as somewhat
+of a fated mansion. A lonely, rambling, down-hill lane leads to it,
+overhung with trees, with a wild brook dashing along, and crossing
+and re-crossing it. This lane I found some of the good people of the
+neighborhood shy of treading at night; why, I could not for a long time
+ascertain; until I learned that one or two of the rovers of the Tappan
+Sea, shot by the stout Jacob during the war, had been buried hereabout,
+in unconsecrated ground.
+
+Another local superstition is of a less gloomy kind, and one which I
+confess I am somewhat disposed to cherish. The Tappan Sea, in front of
+the Roost, is about three miles wide, bordered by a lofty line of waving
+and rocky hills. Often, in the still twilight of a summer evening, when
+the sea is like glass, with the opposite hills throwing their purple
+shadows half across it, a low sound is heard, as of the steady, vigorous
+pull of oars, far out in the middle of the stream, though not a boat
+is to be descried. This I should have been apt to ascribe to some boat
+rowed along under the shadows of the western shore, for sounds are
+conveyed to a great distance by water, at such quiet hours, and I can
+distinctly hear the baying of the watch-dogs at night, from the farms on
+the sides of the opposite mountains. The ancient traditionists of the
+neighborhood, however, religiously ascribed these sounds to a judgment
+upon one Rumbout Van Dam, of Spiting Devil, who danced and drank late
+one Saturday night, at a Dutch quilting frolic, at Kakiat, and set off
+alone for home in his boat, on the verge of Sunday morning; swearing he
+would not land till he reached Spiting Devil, if it took him a month of
+Sundays. He was never seen afterward, but is often heard plying his oars
+across the Tappan Sea, a Flying Dutchman on a small scale, suited to
+the size of his cruising-ground; being doomed to ply between Kakiat and
+Spiting Devil till the day of judgment, but never to reach the land.
+
+There is one room in the mansion which almost overhangs the river, and
+is reputed to be haunted by the ghost of a young lady who died of love
+and green apples. I have been awakened at night by the sound of oars and
+the tinkling of guitars beneath the window; and seeing a boat loitering
+in the moonlight, have been tempted to believe it the Flying Dutchman of
+Spiting Devil, and to try whether a silver bullet might not put an end
+to his unhappy cruisings; but, happening to recollect that there was a
+living young lady in the haunted room, who might be terrified by the
+report of fire-arms, I have refrained from pulling trigger.
+
+As to the enchanted fountain, said to have been gifted by the wizard
+sachem with supernatural powers, it still wells up at the foot of the
+bank, on the margin of the river, and goes by the name of the Indian
+spring; but I have my doubts as to its rejuvenating powers, for though
+I have drank oft and copiously of it, I cannot boast that I find myself
+growing younger.
+
+GEOFFREY CRAYON.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+SLEEPY HOLLOW.
+
+BY GEOFFREY CRAYON, GENT.
+
+HAVING pitched my tent, probably for the remainder of my days, in the
+neighborhood of Sleepy Hollow, I am tempted to give some few particulars
+concerning that spell-bound region; especially as it has risen to
+historic importance under the pen of my revered friend and master, the
+sage historian of the New Netherlands. Beside, I find the very existence
+of the place has been held in question by many; who, judging from its
+odd name and from the odd stories current among the vulgar concerning
+it, have rashly deemed the whole to be a fanciful creation, like the
+Lubber Land of mariners. I must confess there is some apparent cause for
+doubt, in consequence of the coloring given by the worthy Diedrich to
+his descriptions of the Hollow; who, in this instance, has departed
+a little from his usually sober if not severe style; beguiled, very
+probably, by his predilection for the haunts of his youth, and by a
+certain lurking taint of romance whenever any thing connected with the
+Dutch was to be described. I shall endeavor to make up for this amiable
+error on the part of my venerable and venerated friend by presenting the
+reader with a more precise and statistical account of the Hollow; though
+I am not sure that I shall not be prone to lapse in the end into the
+very error I am speaking of, so potent is the witchery of the theme.
+
+I believe it was the very peculiarity of its name and the idea of
+something mystic and dreamy connected with it that first led me in my
+boyish ramblings into Sleepy Hollow. The character of the valley seemed
+to answer to the name; the slumber of past ages apparently reigned over
+it; it had not awakened to the stir of improvement which had put all the
+rest of the world in a bustle. Here reigned good, old long-forgotten
+fashions; the men were in home-spun garbs, evidently the product of
+their own farms and the manufacture of their own wives; the women were
+in primitive short gowns and petticoats, with the venerable sun-bonnets
+of Holland origin. The lower part of the valley was cut up into small
+farms, each consisting of a little meadow and corn-field; an orchard
+of sprawling, gnarled apple-trees, and a garden, where the rose, the
+marigold, and the hollyhock were permitted to skirt the domains of the
+capacious cabbage, the aspiring pea, and the portly pumpkin. Each had
+its prolific little mansion teeming with children; with an old hat
+nailed against the wall for the housekeeping wren; a motherly hen, under
+a coop on the grass-plot, clucking to keep around her a brood of vagrant
+chickens; a cool, stone well, with the moss-covered bucket suspended
+to the long balancing-pole, according to the antediluvian idea of
+hydraulics; and its spinning-wheel humming within doors, the patriarchal
+music of home manufacture.
+
+The Hollow at that time was inhabited by families which had existed
+there from the earliest times, and which, by frequent intermarriage, had
+become so interwoven, as to make a kind of natural commonwealth. As
+the families had grown larger the farms had grown smaller; every new
+generation requiring a new subdivision, and few thinking of swarming
+from the native hive. In this way that happy golden mean had been
+produced, so much extolled by the poets, in which there was no gold and
+very little silver. One thing which doubtless contributed to keep up
+this amiable mean was a general repugnance to sordid labor. The sage
+inhabitants of Sleepy Hollow had read in their Bible, which was the only
+book they studied, that labor was originally inflicted upon man as a
+punishment of sin; they regarded it, therefore, with pious abhorrence,
+and never humiliated themselves to it but in cases of extremity. There
+seemed, in fact, to be a league and covenant against it throughout
+the Hollow as against a common enemy. Was any one compelled by dire
+necessity to repair his house, mend his fences, build a barn, or get in
+a harvest, he considered it a great evil that entitled him to call in
+the assistance or his friend? He accordingly proclaimed a 'bee' or
+rustic gathering, whereupon all his neighbors hurried to his aid like
+faithful allies; attacked the task with the desperate energy of lazy men
+eager to overcome a job; and, when it was accomplished, fell to eating
+and drinking, fiddling and dancing for very joy that so great an amount
+of labor had been vanquished with so little sweating of the brow.
+
+Yet, let it not be supposed that this worthy community was without its
+periods of arduous activity. Let but a flock of wild pigeons fly across
+the valley and all Sleepy Hollow was wide awake in an instant.
+The pigeon season had arrived. Every gun and net was forthwith in
+requisition. The flail was thrown down on the barn floor; the spade
+rusted in the garden; the plough stood idle in the furrow; every one was
+to the hillside and stubble-field at daybreak to shoot or entrap the
+pigeons in their periodical migrations.
+
+So, likewise, let but the word be given that the shad were ascending the
+Hudson, and the worthies of the Hollow were to be seen launched in boats
+upon the river setting great stakes, and stretching their nets like
+gigantic spider-webs half across the stream to the great annoyance
+of navigators. Such are the wise provisions of Nature, by which she
+equalizes rural affairs. A laggard at the plough is often extremely
+industrious with the fowling-piece and fishing-net; and, whenever a man
+is an indifferent farmer, he is apt to be a first-rate sportsman. For
+catching shad and wild pigeons there were none throughout the country to
+compare with the lads of Sleepy Hollow.
+
+As I have observed, it was the dreamy nature of the name that first
+beguiled me in the holiday rovings of boyhood into this sequestered
+region. I shunned, however, the populous parts of the Hollow, and sought
+its retired haunts far in the foldings of the hills, where the Pocantico
+"winds its wizard stream" sometimes silently and darkly through solemn
+woodlands; sometimes sparkling between grassy borders in fresh, green
+meadows; sometimes stealing along the feet of rugged heights under
+the balancing sprays of beech and chestnut trees. A thousand crystal
+springs, with which this neighborhood abounds, sent down from the
+hill-sides their whimpering rills, as if to pay tribute to the
+Pocantico. In this stream I first essayed my unskilful hand at angling.
+I loved to loiter along it with rod in hand, watching my float as it
+whirled amid the eddies or drifted into dark holes under twisted roots
+and sunken logs, where the largest fish are apt to lurk. I delighted
+to follow it into the brown accesses of the woods; to throw by my
+fishing-gear and sit upon rocks beneath towering oaks and clambering
+grape-vines; bathe my feet in the cool current, and listen to the summer
+breeze playing among the tree-tops. My boyish fancy clothed all nature
+around me with ideal charms, and peopled it with the fairy beings I
+had read of in poetry and fable. Here it was I gave full scope to my
+incipient habit of day dreaming, and to a certain propensity, to weave
+up and tint sober realities with my own whims and imaginings, which has
+sometimes made life a little too much like an Arabian tale to me, and
+this "working-day world" rather like a region of romance.
+
+The great gathering-place of Sleepy Hollow in those days was the church.
+It stood outside of the Hollow, near the great highway, on a green bank
+shaded by trees, with the Pocantico sweeping round it and emptying
+itself into a spacious mill-pond. At that time the Sleepy Hollow
+church was the only place of worship for a wide neighborhood. It was
+a venerable edifice, partly of stone and partly of brick, the latter
+having been brought from Holland in the early days of the province,
+before the arts in the New Netherlands could aspire to such a
+fabrication. On a stone above the porch were inscribed the names of the
+founders, Frederick Filipsen, a mighty patroon of the olden time, who
+reigned over a wide extent of this neighborhood and held his seat of
+power at Yonkers; and his wife, Katrina Van Courtlandt, of the no less
+potent line of the Van Courtlandts of Croton, who lorded it over a great
+part of the Highlands.
+
+The capacious pulpit, with its wide-spreading sounding-board, were
+likewise early importations from Holland; as also the communion-table,
+of massive form and curious fabric. The same might be said of a
+weather-cock perched on top of the belfry, and which was considered
+orthodox in all windy matters, until a small pragmatical rival was set
+up on the other end of the church above the chancel. This latter bore,
+and still bears, the initials of Frederick Filipsen, and assumed great
+airs in consequence. The usual contradiction ensued that always exists
+among church weather-cocks, which can never be brought to agree as to
+the point from which the wind blows, having doubtless acquired, from
+their position, the Christian propensity to schism and controversy.
+
+Behind the church, and sloping up a gentle acclivity, was its capacious
+burying-ground, in which slept the earliest fathers of this rural
+neighborhood. Here were tombstones of the rudest sculpture; on which
+were inscribed, in Dutch, the names and virtues of many of the first
+settlers, with their portraitures curiously carved in similitude of
+cherubs. Long rows of grave-stones, side by side, of similar names,
+but various dates, showed that generation after generation of the same
+families had followed each other and been garnered together in this last
+gathering-place of kindred.
+
+Let me speak of this quiet grave-yard with all due reverence, for I owe
+it amends for the heedlessness of my boyish days. I blush to acknowledge
+the thoughtless frolic with which, in company with other whipsters, I
+have sported within its sacred bounds during the intervals of worship;
+chasing butterflies, plucking wild flowers, or vying with each other
+who could leap over the tallest tomb-stones, until checked by the stern
+voice of the sexton.
+
+The congregation was, in those days, of a really rural character. City
+fashions were as yet unknown, or unregarded, by the country people
+of the neighborhood. Steam-boats had not as yet confounded town with
+country. A weekly market-boat from Tarry town, the "Farmers' Daughter,"
+navigated by the worthy Gabriel Requa, was the only communication
+between all these parts and the metropolis. A rustic belle in those days
+considered a visit to the city in much the same light as one of our
+modern fashionable ladies regards a visit to Europe; an event that may
+possibly take place once in the course of a lifetime, but to be hoped
+for, rather than expected. Hence the array of the congregation was
+chiefly after the primitive fashions existing in Sleepy Hollow; or if,
+by chance, there was a departure from the Dutch sun-bonnet, or the
+apparition of a bright gown of flowered calico, it caused quite a
+sensation throughout the church. As the dominie generally preached by
+the hour, a bucket of water was providently placed on a bench near the
+door, in summer, with a tin cup beside it, for the solace of those who
+might be athirst, either from the heat of the weather, or the drouth of
+the sermon.
+
+Around the pulpit, and behind the communion-table, sat the elders of the
+church, reverend, gray-headed, leathern-visaged men, whom I regarded
+with awe, as so many apostles. They were stern in their sanctity, kept
+a vigilant eye upon my giggling companions and myself, and shook a
+rebuking finger at any boyish device to relieve the tediousness of
+compulsory devotion. Vain, however, were all their efforts at vigilance.
+Scarcely had the preacher held forth for half an hour, on one of his
+interminable sermons, than it seemed as if the drowsy influence of
+Sleepy Hollow breathed into the place; one by one the congregation sank
+into slumber; the sanctified elders leaned back in their pews, spreading
+their handkerchiefs over their faces, as if to keep off the flies; while
+the locusts in the neighboring trees would spin out their sultry summer
+notes, as if in imitation of the sleep-provoking tones of the dominie.
+
+I have thus endeavored to give an idea of Sleepy Hollow and its church,
+as I recollect them to have been in the days of my boyhood. It was in
+my stripling days, when a few years had passed over my head, that I
+revisited them, in company with the venerable Diedrich. I shall never
+forget the antiquarian reverence with which that sage and excellent man
+contemplated the church. It seemed as if all his pious enthusiasm for
+the ancient Dutch dynasty swelled within his bosom at the sight.
+The tears stood in his eyes, as he regarded the pulpit and the
+communion-table; even the very bricks that had come from the mother
+country, seemed to touch a filial chord within his bosom. He almost
+bowed in deference to the stone above the porch, containing the names
+of Frederick Filipsen and Katrina Van Courtlandt, regarding it as the
+linking together of those patronymic names, once so famous along the
+banks of the Hudson; or rather as a key-stone, binding that mighty Dutch
+family connexion of yore, one foot of which rested on Yonkers, and the
+other on the Groton. Nor did he forbear to notice with admiration, the
+windy contest which had been carried on, since time immemorial, and with
+real Dutch perseverance, between the two weather-cocks; though I could
+easily perceive he coincided with the one which had come from Holland.
+
+Together we paced the ample church-yard. With deep veneration would
+he turn down the weeds and brambles that obscured the modest brown
+grave-stones, half sunk in earth, on which were recorded, in Dutch, the
+names of the patriarchs of ancient days, the Ackers, the Van Tassels,
+and the Van Warts. As we sat on one of the tomb-stones, he recounted to
+me the exploits of many of these worthies; and my heart smote me, when I
+heard of their great doings in days of yore, to think how heedlessly I
+had once sported over their graves.
+
+From the church, the venerable Diedrich proceeded in his researches up
+the Hollow. The genius of the place seemed to hail its future historian.
+All nature was alive with gratulation. The quail whistled a greeting
+from the corn-field; the robin carolled a song of praise from the
+orchard; the loquacious catbird flew from bush to bush, with restless
+wing, proclaiming his approach in every variety of note, and anon would
+whisk about, and perk inquisitively into his face, as if to get a
+knowledge of his physiognomy; the wood-pecker, also, tapped a tattoo on
+the hollow apple-tree, and then peered knowingly round the trunk, to
+see how the great Diedrich relished his salutation; while the
+ground-squirrel scampered along the fence, and occasionally whisked his
+tail over his head, by way of a huzza!
+
+The worthy Diedrich pursued his researches in the valley with
+characteristic devotion; entering familiarly into the various cottages,
+and gossiping with the simple folk, in the style of their own
+simplicity. I confess my heart yearned with admiration, to see so great
+a man, in his eager quest after knowledge, humbly demeaning himself
+to curry favor with the humblest; sitting patiently on a three-legged
+stool, patting the children, and taking a purring grimalkin on his lap,
+while he conciliated the good-will of the old Dutch housewife, and drew
+from her long ghost stories, spun out to the humming accompaniment of
+her wheel.
+
+His greatest treasure of historic lore, however, was discovered in an
+old goblin-looking mill, situated among rocks and waterfalls, with
+clanking wheels, and rushing streams, and all kinds of uncouth noises.
+A horse-shoe, nailed to the door to keep off witches and evil spirits,
+showed that this mill was subject to awful visitations. As we approached
+it, an old negro thrust his head, all dabbled with flour, out of a hole
+above the water-wheel, and grinned, and rolled his eyes, and looked like
+the very hobgoblin of the place. The illustrious Diedrich fixed upon
+him, at once, as the very one to give him that invaluable kind of
+information never to be acquired from books. He beckoned him from his
+nest, sat with him by the hour on a broken mill-stone, by the side of
+the waterfall, heedless of the noise of the water, and the clatter
+of the mill; and I verily believe it was to his conference with this
+African sage, and the precious revelations of the good dame of the
+spinning-wheel, that we are indebted for the surprising though true
+history of Ichabod Crane and the headless horseman, which has since
+astounded and edified the world.
+
+But I have said enough of the good old times of my youthful days; let me
+speak of the Hollow as I found it, after an absence of many years,
+when it was kindly given me once more to revisit the haunts of my
+boyhood. It was a genial day, as I approached that fated region. The
+warm sunshine was tempered by a slight haze, so as to give a dreamy
+effect to the landscape. Not a breath of air shook the foliage. The
+broad Tappan Sea was without a ripple, and the sloops, with drooping
+sails, slept on its grassy bosom. Columns of smoke, from burning
+brush-wood, rose lazily from the folds of the hills, on the opposite
+side of the river, and slowly expanded in mid-air. The distant lowing
+of a cow, or the noontide crowing of a cock, coming faintly to the ear,
+seemed to illustrate, rather than disturb, the drowsy quiet of the
+scene.
+
+I entered the hollow with a beating heart. Contrary to my apprehensions,
+I found it but little changed. The march of intellect, which had
+made such rapid strides along every river and highway, had not yet,
+apparently, turned down into this favored valley. Perhaps the wizard
+spell of ancient days still reigned over the place, binding up the
+faculties of the inhabitants in happy contentment with things as they
+had been handed down to them from yore. There were the same little farms
+and farmhouses, with their old hats for the housekeeping wren; their
+stone wells, moss-covered buckets, and long balancing poles. There were
+the same little rills, whimpering down to pay their tributes to the
+Pocantico; while that wizard stream still kept on its course, as of old,
+through solemn woodlands and fresh green meadows: nor were there wanting
+joyous holiday boys to loiter along its banks, as I have done; throw
+their pin-hooks in the stream, or launch their mimic barks. I watched
+them with a kind of melancholy pleasure, wondering whether they were
+under the same spell of the fancy that once rendered this valley a fairy
+land to me. Alas! alas! to me every thing now stood revealed in its
+simple reality. The echoes no longer answered with wizard tongues; the
+dream of youth was at an end; the spell of Sleepy Hollow was broken!
+
+I sought the ancient church on the following Sunday. There it stood, on
+its green bank, among the trees; the Pocantico swept by it in a deep
+dark stream, where I had so often angled; there expanded the mill-pond,
+as of old, with the cows under the willows on its margin, knee-deep in
+water, chewing the cud, and lashing the flies from their sides with
+their tails. The hand of improvement, however, had been busy with the
+venerable pile. The pulpit, fabricated in Holland, had been superseded
+by one of modern construction, and the front of the semi-Gothic
+edifice was decorated by a semi-Grecian portico. Fortunately, the two
+weather-cocks remained undisturbed on their perches at each end of the
+church, and still kept up a diametrical opposition to each other on all
+points of windy doctrine.
+
+On entering the church the changes of time continued to be apparent. The
+elders round the pulpit were men whom I had left in the gamesome frolic
+of their youth, but who had succeeded to the sanctity of station of
+which they once had stood so much in awe. What most struck my eye was
+the change in the female part of the congregation. Instead of the
+primitive garbs of homespun manufacture and antique Dutch fashion,
+I beheld French sleeves, French capes, and French collars, and a
+fearful-fluttering of French ribbands.
+
+When the service was ended I sought the church-yard, in which I had
+sported in my unthinking days of boyhood. Several of the modest brown
+stones, on which were recorded in Dutch the names and virtues of the
+patriarchs, had disappeared, and had been succeeded by others of white
+marble, with urns and wreaths, and scraps of English tomb-stone poetry,
+marking the intrusion of taste and literature and the English language
+in this once unsophisticated Dutch neighborhood.
+
+As I was stumbling about among these silent yet eloquent memorials of
+the dead, I came upon names familiar to me; of those who had paid
+the debt of nature during the long interval of my absence. Some, I
+remembered, my companions in boyhood, who had sported with me on the
+very sod under which they were now mouldering; others who in those days
+had been the flower of the yeomanry, figuring in Sunday finery on the
+church green; others, the white-haired elders of the sanctuary, once
+arrayed in awful sanctity around the pulpit, and ever ready to rebuke
+the ill-timed mirth of the wanton stripling who, now a man, sobered by
+years and schooled by vicissitudes, looked down pensively upon their
+graves. "Our fathers," thought I, "where are they!--and the prophets,
+can they live for ever!"
+
+I was disturbed in my meditations by the noise of a troop of idle
+urchins, who came gambolling about the place where I had so often
+gambolled. They were checked, as I and my playmates had often been, by
+the voice of the sexton, a man staid in years and demeanor. I looked
+wistfully in his face; had I met him any where else, I should probably
+have passed him by without remark; but here I was alive to the traces of
+former times, and detected in the demure features of this guardian of
+the sanctuary the lurking lineaments of one of the very playmates I have
+alluded to. We renewed our acquaintance. He sat down beside me, on one
+of the tomb-stones over which we had leaped in our juvenile sports, and
+we talked together about our boyish days, and held edifying discourse
+on the instability of all sublunary things, as instanced in the scene
+around us. He was rich in historic lore, as to the events of the last
+thirty years and the circumference of thirty miles, and from him I
+learned the appalling revolution that was taking place throughout the
+neighborhood. All this I clearly perceived he attributed to the boasted
+march of intellect, or rather to the all-pervading influence of steam.
+He bewailed the times when the only communication with town was by the
+weekly market-boat, the "Farmers' Daughter," which, under the pilotage
+of the worthy Gabriel Requa, braved the perils of the Tappan Sea. Alas!
+Gabriel and the "Farmer's Daughter" slept in peace. Two steamboats now
+splashed and paddled up daily to the little rural port of Tarrytown. The
+spirit of speculation and improvement had seized even upon that once
+quiet and unambitious little dorp. The whole neighborhood was laid out
+into town lots. Instead of the little tavern below the hill, where
+the farmers used to loiter on market days and indulge in cider and
+gingerbread, an ambitious hotel, with cupola and verandas, now crested
+the summit, among churches built in the Grecian and Gothic styles,
+showing the great increase of piety and polite taste in the
+neighborhood. As to Dutch dresses and sun-bonnets, they were no longer
+tolerated, or even thought of; not a farmer's daughter but now went to
+town for the fashions; nay, a city milliner had recently set up in the
+village, who threatened to reform the heads of the whole neighborhood.
+
+I had heard enough! I thanked my old playmate for his intelligence, and
+departed from the Sleepy Hollow church with the sad conviction that I
+had beheld the last lingerings of the good old Dutch times in this once
+favored region. If any thing were wanting to confirm this impression,
+it would be the intelligence which has just reached me, that a bank is
+about to be established in the aspiring little port just mentioned. The
+fate of the neighborhood is therefore sealed. I see no hope of averting
+it. The golden mean is at an end, The country is suddenly to be deluged
+with wealth. The late simple farmers are to become bank directors and
+drink claret and champagne; and their wives and daughters to figure in
+French hats and feathers; for French wines and French fashions commonly
+keep pace with paper money. How can I hope that even Sleepy Hollow can
+escape the general inundation? In a little while, I fear the slumber of
+ages will be at end--the strum of the piano will succeed to the hum of
+the spinning-wheel; the trill of the Italian opera to the nasal quaver
+of Ichabod Crane; and the antiquarian visitor to the Hollow, in the
+petulance of his disappointment, may pronounce all that I have recorded
+of that once favored region a fable.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE BIRDS OF SPRING.
+
+BY GEOFFREY CRAYON, GENT.
+
+My quiet residence in the country, aloof from fashion, politics, and the
+money market, leaves me rather at a loss for important occupation, and
+drives me to the study of nature, and other low pursuits. Having few
+neighbors, also, on whom to keep a watch, and exercise my habits of
+observation, I am fain to amuse myself with prying into the domestic
+concerns and peculiarities of the animals around me; and, during the
+present season, have derived considerable entertainment from certain
+sociable little birds, almost the only visitors we have, during this
+early part of the year.
+
+Those who have passed the winter in the country, are sensible of the
+delightful influences that accompany the earliest indications of spring;
+and of these, none are more delightful than the first notes of the
+birds. There is one modest little sad-colored bird, much resembling a
+wren, which came about the house just on the skirts of winter, when not
+a blade of grass was to be seen, and when a few prematurely warm days
+had given a flattering foretaste of soft weather. He sang early in the
+dawning, long before sun-rise, and late in the evening, just before the
+closing in of night, his matin and his vesper hymns. It is true, he sang
+occasionally throughout the day; but at these still hours, his song was
+more remarked. He sat on a leafless tree, just before the window, and
+warbled forth his notes, free and simple, but singularly sweet, with
+something of a plaintive tone, that heightened their effect. The first
+morning that he was heard, was a joyous one among the young folks of my
+household. The long, deathlike sleep of winter was at an end; nature
+was once more awakening; they now promised themselves the immediate
+appearance of buds and blossoms. I was reminded of the tempest-tossed
+crew of Columbus, when, after their long dubious voyage, the field birds
+came singing round the ship, though still far at sea, rejoicing them
+with the belief of the immediate proximity of land. A sharp return of
+winter almost silenced my little songster, and dashed the hilarity of
+the household; yet still he poured forth, now and then, a few plaintive
+notes, between the frosty pipings of the breeze, like gleams of sunshine
+between wintry clouds.
+
+I have consulted my book of ornithology in vain, to find out the name
+of this kindly little bird, who certainly deserves honor and favor far
+beyond his modest pretensions. He comes like the lowly violet, the most
+unpretending, but welcomest of flowers, breathing the sweet promise of
+the early year.
+
+Another of our feathered visitors, who follows close upon the steps of
+winter, is the Pe-wit, or Pe-wee, or Phoebe-bird; for he is called by
+each of these names, from a fancied resemblance to the sound of his
+monotonous note. He is a sociable little being, and seeks the habitation
+of man. A pair of them have built beneath my porch, and have reared
+several broods there for two years past, their nest being never
+disturbed. They arrive early in the spring, just when the crocus and
+the snow-drop begin to peep forth. Their first chirp spreads gladness
+through the house. "The Phoebe-birds have come!" is heard on all sides;
+they are welcomed back like members of the family, and speculations are
+made upon where they have been, and what countries they have seen
+during their long absence. Their arrival is the more cheering, as it is
+pronounced, by the old weather-wise people of the country, the sure sign
+that the severe frosts are at an end, and that the gardener may resume
+his labors with confidence.
+
+About this time, too, arrives the blue-bird, so poetically yet truly
+described by Wilson. His appearance gladdens the whole landscape.
+You hear his soft warble in every field. He sociably approaches your
+habitation, and takes up his residence in your vicinity. But why should
+I attempt to describe him, when I have Wilson's own graphic verses to
+place him before the reader?
+
+  When winter's cold tempests and snows are no more,
+  Green meadows and brown furrowed fields re-appearing:
+  The fishermen hauling their shad to the shore,
+  And cloud-cleaving geese to the lakes are a-steering;
+  When first the lone butterfly flits on the wing,
+  When red glow the maples, so fresh and so pleasing,
+  O then comes the blue-bird, the herald of spring,
+  And hails with his warblings the charms of the season.
+
+  The loud-piping frogs make the marshes to ring;
+  Then warm glows the sunshine, and warm glows the weather;
+  The blue woodland flowers just beginning to spring,
+  And spice-wood and sassafras budding together;
+  O then to your gardens, ye housewives, repair,
+  Your walks border up, sow and plant at your leisure;
+  The blue-bird will chant from his box such an air,
+  That all your hard toils will seem truly a pleasure.
+
+  He flits through the orchard, he visits each tree,
+  The red flowering peach, and the apple's sweet blossoms;
+  He snaps up destroyers, wherever they be,
+  And seizes the caitiffs that lurk in their bosoms;
+  He drags the vile grub from the corn it devours,
+  The worms from the webs where they riot and welter;
+  His song and his services freely are ours,
+  And all that he asks is, in summer a shelter.
+
+  The ploughman is pleased when he gleams in his train,
+  Now searching the furrows, now mounting to cheer him;
+  The gard'ner delights in his sweet simple strain,
+  And leans on his spade to survey and to hear him.
+  The slow lingering school-boys forget they'll be chid,
+  While gazing intent, as he warbles before them,
+  In mantle of sky-blue, and bosom so red,
+  That each little loiterer seems to adore him.
+
+The happiest bird of our spring, however, and one that rivals the
+European lark, in my estimation, is the Boblincon, or Boblink, as he is
+commonly called. He arrives at that choice portion of our year, which,
+in this latitude, answers to the description of the month of May, so
+often given by the poets. With us, it begins about the middle of May,
+and lasts until nearly the middle of June. Earlier than this, winter is
+apt to return on its traces, and to blight the opening beauties of
+the year; and later than this, begin the parching, and panting, and
+dissolving heats of summer. But in this genial interval, nature is in
+all her freshness and fragrance: "the rains are over and gone, the
+flowers appear upon the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come,
+and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land." The trees are now in
+their fullest foliage and brightest verdure; the woods are gay with the
+clustered flowers of the laurel; the air is perfumed by the sweet-briar
+and the wild rose; the meadows are enamelled with clover-blossoms; while
+the young apple, the peach, and the plum, begin to swell, and the cherry
+to glow, among the green leaves.
+
+This is the chosen season of revelry of the Boblink. He comes amidst the
+pomp and fragrance of the season; his life seems all sensibility and
+enjoyment, all song and sunshine. He is to be found in the soft bosoms
+of the freshest and sweetest meadows; and is most in song when the
+clover is in blossom. He perches on the topmost twig of a tree, or on
+some long flaunting weed; and as he rises and sinks with the breeze,
+pours forth a succession of rich tinkling notes; crowding one upon
+another, like the outpouring melody of the skylark, and possessing the
+same rapturous character. Sometimes he pitches from the summit of a
+tree, begins his song as soon as he gets upon the wing, and flutters
+tremulously down to the earth, as if overcome with ecstasy at his own
+music. Sometimes he is in pursuit of his paramour; always in full
+song, as if he would win her by his melody; and always with the same
+appearance of intoxication and delight.
+
+Of all the birds of our groves and meadows, the Boblink was the envy of
+my boyhood. He crossed my path in the sweetest weather, and the sweetest
+season of the year, when all nature called to the fields, and the rural
+feeling throbbed in every bosom; but when I, luckless urchin! was doomed
+to be mewed up, during the livelong day, in that purgatory of boyhood, a
+school-room. It seemed as if the little varlet mocked at me, as he flew
+by in full song, and sought to taunt me with his happier lot. Oh, how
+I envied him! No lessons, no tasks, no hateful school; nothing but
+holiday, frolic, green fields, and fine weather. Had I been then more
+versed in poetry, I might have addressed him in the words of Logan to
+the cuckoo:
+
+  Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green,
+  Thy sky is ever clear;
+  Thou hast no sorrow in thy note,
+  No winter in thy year.
+
+  Oh! could I fly, I'd fly with thee;
+  We'd make, on joyful wing,
+  Our annual visit round the globe,
+  Companions of the spring!
+
+Farther observation and experience have given me a different idea of
+this little feathered voluptuary, which I will venture to impart, for
+the benefit of my school-boy readers, who may regard him with the same
+unqualified envy and admiration which I once indulged. I have shown him
+only as I saw him at first, in what I may call the poetical part of his
+career, when he in a manner devoted himself to elegant pursuits
+and enjoyments, and was a bird of music, and song, and taste, and
+sensibility, and refinement. While this lasted, he was sacred from
+injury; the very school-boy would not fling a stone at him, and the
+merest rustic would pause to listen to his strain. But mark the
+difference. As the year advances, as the clover-blossoms disappear, and
+the spring fades into summer, his notes cease to vibrate on the ear. He
+gradually gives up his elegant tastes and habits, doffs his poetical and
+professional suit of black, assumes a russet or rather dusty garb, and
+enters into the gross enjoyments of common, vulgar birds. He becomes a
+bon-vivant, a mere gourmand; thinking of nothing but good cheer, and
+gormandizing on the seeds of the long grasses on which he lately swung,
+and chaunted so musically. He begins to think there is nothing like "the
+joys of the table," if I may be allowed to apply that convivial phrase
+to his indulgences. He now grows discontented with plain, every-day
+fare, and sets out on a gastronomical tour, in search of foreign
+luxuries. He is to be found in myriads among the reeds of the Delaware,
+banqueting on their seeds; grows corpulent with good feeding, and soon
+acquires the unlucky renown of the ortolan. Whereever he goes, pop! pop!
+pop! the rusty firelocks of the country are cracking on every side;
+he sees his companions falling by the thousands around him; he is
+the _reed-bird_, the much-sought-for tit-bit of the Pennsylvanian
+epicure.
+
+Does he take warning and reform? Not he! He wings his flight still
+farther south, in search of other luxuries. We hear of him gorging
+himself in the rice swamps; filling himself with rice almost to
+bursting; he can hardly fly for corpulency. Last stage of his career,
+we hear of him spitted by dozens, and served up on the table of the
+gourmand, the most vaunted of southern dainties, the _rice-bird_ of the
+Carolinas.
+
+Such is the story of the once musical and admired, but finally sensual
+and persecuted Boblink. It contains a moral, worthy the attention of all
+little birds and little boys; warning them to keep to those refined
+and intellectual pursuits, which raised him to so high a pitch of
+popularity, during the early part of his career; but to eschew all
+tendency to that gross and dissipated indulgence, which brought this
+mistaken little bird to an untimely end.
+
+Which is all at present, from the well-wisher of little boys and little
+birds,
+
+GEOFFREY CRAYON.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+RECOLLECTIONS OF THE ALHAMBRA.
+
+BY THE AUTHOR OF THE SKETCH-BOOK.
+
+During a summer's residence in the old Moorish palace of the Alhambra,
+of which I have already given numerous anecdotes to the public, I used
+to pass much of my time in the beautiful hall of the Abencerrages,
+beside the fountain celebrated in the tragic story of that devoted
+race. Here it was, that thirty-six cavaliers of that heroic line were
+treacherously sacrificed, to appease the jealousy or allay the fears of
+a tyrant. The fountain which now throws up its sparkling jet, and sheds
+a dewy freshness around, ran red with the noblest blood of Granada,
+and a deep stain on the marble pavement is still pointed out, by the
+cicerones of the pile, as a sanguinary record of the massacre. I have
+regarded it with the same determined faith with which I have regarded
+the traditional stains of Rizzio's blood on the floor of the chamber of
+the unfortunate Mary, at Holyrood. I thank no one for endeavoring to
+enlighten my credulity, on such points of popular belief. It is like
+breaking up the shrine of the pilgrim; it is robbing a poor traveller of
+half the reward of his toils; for, strip travelling of its historical
+illusions, and what a mere fag you make of it!
+
+For my part, I gave myself up, during my sojourn in the Alhambra, to all
+the romantic and fabulous traditions connected with the pile. I lived in
+the midst of an Arabian tale, and shut my eyes, as much as possible, to
+every thing that called me back to every-day life; and if there is any
+country in Europe where one can do so, it is in poor, wild, legendary,
+proud-spirited, romantic Spain; where the old magnificent barbaric
+spirit still contends against the utilitarianism of modern civilization.
+
+In the silent and deserted halls of the Alhambra; surrounded with the
+insignia of regal sway, and the still vivid, though dilapidated traces
+of oriental voluptuousness, I was in the strong-hold of Moorish story,
+and every thing spoke and breathed of the glorious days of Granada,
+when under the dominion of the crescent. When I sat in the hall of the
+Abencerrages, I suffered my mind to conjure up all that I had read of
+that illustrious line. In the proudest days of Moslem domination, the
+Abencerrages were the soul of every thing noble and chivalrous. The
+veterans of the family, who sat in the royal council, were the foremost
+to devise those heroic enterprises, which carried dismay into the
+territories of the Christians; and what the sages of the family devised,
+the young men of the name were the foremost to execute. In all services
+of hazard; in all adventurous forays, and hair-breadth hazards; the
+Abencerrages were sure to win the brightest laurels. In those noble
+recreations, too, which bear so close an affinity to war; in the tilt
+and tourney, the riding at the ring, and the daring bull-fight; still
+the Abencerrages carried off the palm. None could equal them for the
+splendor of their array, the gallantry of their devices; for their noble
+bearing, and glorious horsemanship. Their open-handed munificence made
+them the idols of the populace, while their lofty magnanimity, and
+perfect faith, gained them golden opinions from the generous and
+high-minded. Never were they known to decry the merits of a rival, or to
+betray the confidings of a friend; and the "word of an Abencerrage" was
+a guarantee that never admitted of a doubt.
+
+And then their devotion to the fair! Never did Moorish beauty consider
+the fame of her charms established, until she had an Abencerrage for a
+lover; and never did an Abencerrage prove recreant to his vows. Lovely
+Granada! City of delights! Who ever bore the favors of thy dames more
+proudly on their casques, or championed them more gallantly in the
+chivalrous tilts of the Vivarambla? Or who ever made thy moon-lit
+balconies, thy gardens of myrtles and roses, of oranges, citrons, and
+pomegranates, respond to more tender serenades?
+
+I speak with enthusiasm on this theme; for it is connected with the
+recollection of one of the sweetest evenings and sweetest scenes that
+ever I enjoyed in Spain. One of the greatest pleasures of the Spaniards
+is, to sit in the beautiful summer evenings, and listen to traditional
+ballads, and tales about the wars of the Moors and Christians, and the
+"buenas andanzas" and "grandes hechos," the "good fortunes" and "great
+exploits" of the hardy warriors of yore. It is worthy of remark, also,
+that many of these songs, or romances, as they are called, celebrate
+the prowess and magnanimity in war, and the tenderness and, fidelity in
+love, of the Moorish cavaliers, once their most formidable and hated
+foes. But centuries have elapsed, to extinguish the bigotry of the
+zealot; and the once detested warriors of Granada are now held up by
+Spanish poets, as the mirrors of chivalric virtue.
+
+Such was the amusement of the evening in question. A number of us were
+seated in the Hall of the Abencerrages, listening to one of the most
+gifted and fascinating beings that I had ever met with in my wanderings.
+She was young and beautiful; and light and ethereal; full of fire, and
+spirit, and pure enthusiasm. She wore the fanciful Andalusian dress;
+touched the guitar with speaking eloquence; improvised with wonderful
+facility; and, as she became excited by her theme, or by the rapt
+attention of her auditors, would pour forth, in the richest and
+most melodious strains, a succession of couplets, full of striking
+description, or stirring narration, and composed, as I was assured, at
+the moment. Most of these were suggested by the place, and related to
+the ancient glories of Granada, and the prowess of her chivalry. The
+Abencerrages were her favorite heroes; she felt a woman's admiration of
+their gallant courtesy, and high-souled honor; and it was touching and
+inspiring to hear the praises of that generous but devoted race, chanted
+in this fated hall of their calamity, by the lips of Spanish beauty.
+
+Among the subjects of which she treated, was a tale of Moslem honor, and
+old-fashioned Spanish courtesy, which made a strong impression on me.
+She disclaimed all merit of invention, however, and said she had merely
+dilated into verse a popular tradition; and, indeed, I have since found
+the main facts inserted at the end of Conde's History of the Domination
+of the Arabs, and the story itself embodied in the form of an episode in
+the Diana of Montemayor. From these sources I have drawn it forth, and
+endeavored to shape it according to my recollection of the version of
+the beautiful minstrel; but, alas! what can supply the want of that
+voice, that look, that form, that action, which gave magical effect to
+her chant, and held every one rapt in breathless admiration! Should this
+mere travestie of her inspired numbers ever meet her eye, in her stately
+abode at Granada, may it meet with that indulgence which belongs to her
+benignant nature. Happy should I be, if it could awaken in her bosom
+one kind recollection of the lonely stranger and sojourner, for
+whose gratification she did not think it beneath her to exert those
+fascinating powers which were the delight of brilliant circles; and who
+will ever recall with enthusiasm the happy evening passed in listening
+to her strains, in the moon-lit halls of the Alhambra.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+GEOFFREY CRAYON.
+
+THE ABENCERRAGE.
+
+A SPANISH TALE.
+
+On the summit of a craggy hill, a spur of the mountains of Ronda, stands
+the castle of Allora, now a mere ruin, infested by bats and owlets, but
+in old times one of the strong border holds of the Christians, to keep
+watch upon the frontiers of the warlike kingdom of Granada, and to hold
+the Moors in check. It was a post always confided to some well-tried
+commander; and, at the time of which we treat, was held by Rodrigo de
+Narvaez, a veteran, famed, both among Moors and Christians, not only for
+his hardy feats of arms, but also for that magnanimous courtesy which
+should ever be entwined with the sterner virtues of the soldier.
+
+The castle of Allora was a mere part of his command; he was Alcayde, or
+military governor of Antiquera, but he passed most of his time at this
+frontier post, because its situation on the borders gave more frequent
+opportunity for those adventurous exploits which were the delight of the
+Spanish chivalry. His garrison consisted of fifty chosen cavaliers, all
+well mounted and well appointed: with these he kept vigilant watch
+upon the Moslems; patrolling the roads, and paths, and defiles of the
+mountains, so that nothing could escape his eye; and now and then
+signalizing himself by some dashing foray into the very Vega of Granada.
+
+On a fair and beautiful night in summer, when the freshness of the
+evening breeze had tempered the heat of day, the worthy Alcayde sallied
+forth, with nine of his cavaliers, to patrol the neighborhood, and
+seek adventures. They rode quietly and cautiously, lest they should be
+overheard by Moorish scout or traveller; and kept along ravines and
+hollow ways, lest they should be betrayed by the glittering of the full
+moon upon their armor. Coming to where the road divided, the Alcayde
+directed five of his cavaliers to take one of the branches, while he,
+with the remaining four, would take the other. Should either party be in
+danger, the blast of a horn was to be the signal to bring their comrades
+to their aid.
+
+The party of five had not proceeded far, when, in passing through a
+defile, overhung with trees, they heard the voice of a man, singing.
+They immediately concealed themselves in a grove, on the brow of a
+declivity, up which the stranger would have to ascend. The moonlight,
+which left the grove in deep shadow, lit up the whole person of the
+wayfarer, as he advanced, and enabled them to distinguish his dress and
+appearance with perfect accuracy. He was a Moorish cavalier, and his
+noble demeanor, graceful carriage, and splendid attire showed him to
+be of lofty rank. He was superbly mounted, on a dapple-gray steed, of
+powerful frame, and generous spirit, and magnificently caparisoned.
+His dress was a marlota, or tunic, and an Albernoz of crimson damask,
+fringed with gold. His Tunisian turban, of many folds, was of silk and
+cotton, striped, and bordered with golden fringe. At his girdle hung a
+scimitar of Damascus steel, with loops and tassels of silk and gold. On
+his left arm he bore an ample target, and his right hand grasped a long
+double-pointed lance. Thus equipped, he sat negligently on his steed, as
+one who dreamed of no danger, gazing on the moon, and singing, with a
+sweet and manly voice, a Moorish love ditty.
+
+Just opposite the place where the Spanish cavaliers were concealed, was
+a small fountain in the rock, beside the road, to which the horse turned
+to drink; the rider threw the reins on his neck, and continued his song.
+
+The Spanish cavaliers conferred together; they were all so pleased with
+the gallant and gentle appearance of the Moor, that they resolved not to
+harm, but to capture him, which, in his negligent mood, promised to be
+an easy task; rushing, therefore, from their concealment, they thought
+to surround and seize him. Never were men more mistaken. To gather up
+his reins, wheel round his steed, brace his buckler, and couch his
+lance, was the work of an instant; and there he sat, fixed like a castle
+in his saddle, beside the fountain.
+
+The Christian cavaliers checked their steeds and reconnoitered him
+warily, loth to come to an encounter, which must end in his destruction.
+
+The Moor now held a parley: "If you be true knights," said he, "and seek
+for honorable fame, come on, singly, and I am ready to meet each in
+succession; but if you be mere lurkers of the road, intent on spoil,
+come all at once, and do your worst!"
+
+The cavaliers communed for a moment apart, when one, advancing singly,
+exclaimed: "Although no law of chivalry obliges us to risk the loss of a
+prize, when clearly in our power, yet we willingly grant, as a courtesy,
+what we might refuse as a right. Valiant Moor! defend thyself!" So
+saying, he wheeled, took proper distance, couched his lance, and putting
+spurs to his horse, made at the stranger. The latter met him in mid
+career, transpierced him with his lance, and threw him headlong from his
+saddle. A second and a third succeeded, but were unhorsed with equal
+facility, and thrown to the earth, severely wounded. The remaining
+two, seeing their comrades thus roughly treated, forgot all compact of
+courtesy, and charged both at once upon the Moor. He parried the thrust
+of one, but was wounded by the other in the thigh, and, in the shock and
+confusion, dropped his lance. Thus disarmed, and closely pressed, he
+pretended to fly, and was hotly pursued. Having drawn the two cavaliers
+some distance from the spot, he suddenly wheeled short about, with
+one of those dexterous movements for which the Moorish horsemen are
+renowned; passed swiftly between them, swung himself down from his
+saddle, so as to catch up his lance, then, lightly replacing himself,
+turned to renew the combat.
+
+Seeing him thus fresh for the encounter, as if just issued from his
+tent, one of the cavaliers put his lips to his horn, and blew a blast,
+that soon brought the Alcayde and his four companions to the spot.
+
+The valiant Narvaez, seeing three of his cavaliers extended on the
+earth, and two others hotly engaged with the Moor, was struck with
+admiration, and coveted a contest with so accomplished a warrior.
+Interfering in the fight, he called upon his followers to desist, and
+addressing the Moor, with courteous words, invited him to a more equal
+combat. The latter readily accepted the challenge. For some time, their
+contest was fierce and doubtful; and the Alcayde had need of all his
+skill and strength to ward off the blows of his antagonist. The Moor,
+however, was exhausted by previous fighting, and by loss of blood. He
+no longer sat his horse firmly, nor managed him with his wonted skill.
+Collecting all his strength for a last assault, he rose in his stirrups,
+and made a violent thrust with his lance; the Alcayde received it upon
+his shield, and at the same time wounded the Moor in the right arm; then
+closing, in the shock, he grasped him in his arms, dragged him from his
+saddle, and fell with him to the earth: when putting his knee upon his
+breast, and his dagger to his throat, "Cavalier," exclaimed he, "render
+thyself my prisoner, for thy life is in my hands!"
+
+"Kill me, rather," replied the Moor, "for death would be less grievous
+than loss of liberty." The Alcayde, however, with the clemency of the
+truly brave, assisted the Moor to rise, ministered to his wounds with
+his own hands, and had him conveyed with great care to the castle of
+Allora. His wounds were slight, and in a few days were nearly cured; but
+the deepest wound had been inflicted on his spirit. He was constantly
+buried in a profound melancholy.
+
+The Alcayde, who had conceived a great regard for him, treated him more
+as a friend than a captive, and tried in every way to cheer him, but in
+vain; he was always sad and moody, and, when on the battlements of
+the castle, would keep his eyes turned to the south, with a fixed and
+wistful gaze.
+
+"How is this?" exclaimed the Alcayde, reproachfully, "that you, who were
+so hardy and fearless in the field, should lose all spirit in prison? If
+any secret grief preys on your heart, confide it to me, as to a friend,
+and I promise you, on the faith of a cavalier, that you shall have no
+cause to repent the disclosure."
+
+The Moorish knight kissed the hand of the Alcayde. "Noble cavalier,"
+said he "that I am cast down in spirit, is not from my wounds, which are
+slight, nor from my captivity, for your kindness has robbed it of all
+gloom; nor from my defeat, for to be conquered by so accomplished and
+renowned a cavalier, is no disgrace. But to explain to you the cause of
+my grief, it is necessary to give you some particulars of my story; and
+this I am moved to do, by the great sympathy you have manifested toward
+me, and the magnanimity that shines through all your actions."
+
+"Know, then, that my name is Abendaraez, and that I am of the noble but
+unfortunate line of the Abencerrages of Granada. You have doubtless
+heard of the destruction that fell upon our race. Charged with
+treasonable designs, of which they were entirely innocent, many of
+them were beheaded, the rest banished; so that not an Abencerrages was
+permitted to remain in Granada, excepting my father and my uncle, whose
+innocence was proved, even to the satisfaction of their persecutors. It
+was decreed, however, that, should they have children, the sons should
+be educated at a distance from Granada, and the daughters should be
+married out of the kingdom.
+
+"Conformably to this decree, I was sent, while yet an infant, to be
+reared in the fortress of Cartama, the worthy Alcayde of which was an
+ancient friend of my father. He had no children, and received me into
+his family as his own child, treating me with the kindness and affection
+of a father; and I grew up in the belief that he really was such. A few
+years afterward, his wife gave birth to a daughter, but his tenderness
+toward me continued undiminished. I thus grew up with Xarisa, for so
+the infant daughter of the Alcayde was called, as her own brother, and
+thought the growing passion which I felt for her, was mere fraternal
+affection. I beheld her charms unfolding, as it were, leaf by leaf, like
+the morning rose, each moment disclosing fresh beauty and sweetness.
+
+"At this period, I overheard a conversation between the Alcayde and his
+confidential domestic, and found myself to be the subject. 'It is time,'
+said he, 'to apprise him of his parentage, that he may adopt a career
+in life. I have deferred the communication as long as possible, through
+reluctance to inform him that he is of a proscribed and an unlucky
+race.'
+
+"This intelligence would have overwhelmed me at an earlier period, but
+the intimation that Xarisa was not my sister, operated like magic, and
+in an instant transformed my brotherly affection into ardent love.
+
+"I sought Xarisa, to impart to her the secret I had learned. I found her
+in the garden, in a bower of jessamines, arranging her beautiful hair by
+the mirror of a crystal fountain. The radiance of her beauty dazzled
+me. I ran to her with open arms, and she received me with a sister's
+embraces. When we had seated ourselves beside the fountain, she began to
+upbraid me for leaving her so long alone.
+
+"In reply, I informed her of the conversation I had overheard. The
+recital shocked and distressed her. 'Alas!' cried she, 'then is our
+happiness at an end!'
+
+"'How!' exclaimed I; 'wilt thou cease to love me, because I am not thy
+brother?'
+
+"'Not so,' replied she; 'but do you not know that when it is once known
+we are not brother and sister, we can no longer be permitted to be thus
+always together?'
+
+"In fact, from that moment our intercourse took a new character. We
+met often at the fountain among the jessamines, but Xarisa no longer
+advanced with open arms to meet me. She became reserved and silent, and
+would blush, and cast down her eyes, when I seated myself beside her. My
+heart became a prey to the thousand doubts and fears that ever attend
+upon true love. I was restless and uneasy, and looked back with regret
+to the unreserved intercourse that had existed between us, when we
+supposed ourselves brother and sister; yet I would not have had the
+relationship true, for the world.
+
+"While matters were in this state between us, an order came from the
+King of Granada for the Alcayde to take command of the fortress of Coyn,
+which lies directly on the Christian frontier. He prepared to remove,
+with all his family, but signified that I should remain at Cartama. I
+exclaimed against the separation, and declared that I could not be
+parted from Xarisa. 'That is the very cause,' said he, 'why I leave thee
+behind. It is time, Abendaraez, that thou shouldst know the secret of
+thy birth; that thou art no son of mine, neither is Xarisa thy sister.'
+'I know it all,' exclaimed I, 'and I love her with tenfold the
+affection of a brother. You have brought us up together; you have made
+us necessary to each other's happiness; our hearts have entwined
+themselves with our growth; do not now tear them asunder. Fill up the
+measure of your kindness; be indeed a father to me, by giving me Xarisa
+for my wife.'
+
+"The brow of the Alcayde darkened as I spoke. 'Have I then been
+deceived?' said he. 'Have those nurtured in my very bosom, been
+conspiring against me? Is this your return for my paternal
+tenderness?--to beguile the affections of my child, and teach her to
+deceive her father? It was cause enough to refuse thee the hand of my
+daughter, that thou wert of a proscribed race, who can never approach
+the walls of Granada; this, however, I might have passed over; but never
+will I give my daughter to a man who has endeavored to win her from me
+by deception.'
+
+"All my attempts to vindicate myself and Xarisa were unavailing. I
+retired in anguish from his presence, and seeking Xarisa, told her of
+this blow, which was worse than death to me. 'Xarisa,' said I, 'we
+part for ever! I shall never see thee more! Thy father will guard thee
+rigidly. Thy beauty and his wealth will soon attract some happier rival,
+and I shall be forgotten!'
+
+"Xarisa reproached me with my want of faith, and promised me eternal
+constancy. I still doubted and desponded, until, moved by my anguish and
+despair, she agreed to a secret union. Our espousals made, we parted,
+with a promise on her part to send me word from Coyn, should her
+father absent himself from the fortress. The very day after our secret
+nuptials, I beheld the whole train of the Alcayde depart from Cartama,
+nor would he admit me to his presence, or permit me to bid farewell
+to Xarisa. I remained at Cartama, somewhat pacified in spirit by this
+secret bond of union; but every thing around me fed my passion, and
+reminded me of Xarisa. I saw the windows at which I had so often beheld
+her. I wandered through the apartment she had inhabited; the chamber in
+which she had slept. I visited the bower of jessamines, and lingered
+beside the fountain in which she had delighted. Every thing recalled her
+to my imagination, and filled my heart with tender melancholy.
+
+"At length, a confidential servant brought me word, that her father
+was to depart that day for Granada, on a short absence, inviting me to
+hasten to Coyn, describing a secret portal at which I should apply, and
+the signal by which I would obtain admittance.
+
+"If ever you have loved, most valiant Alcayde, you may judge of the
+transport of my bosom. That very night I arrayed myself in my most
+gallant attire, to pay due honor to my bride; and arming myself against
+any casual attack, issued forth privately from Cartama. You know the
+rest, and by what sad fortune of war I found myself, instead of a happy
+bridegroom, in the nuptial bower of Coyn, vanquished, wounded, and a
+prisoner, withing the walls of Allora. The term of absence of the father
+of Xarisa is nearly expired. Within three days he will return to Coyn,
+and our meeting will no longer be possible. Judge, then, whether I
+grieve without cause, and whether I may not well be excused for showing
+impatience under confinement."
+
+Don Rodrigo de Narvaez was greatly moved by this recital; for, though
+more used to rugged war, than scenes of amorous softness, he was of a
+kind and generous nature.
+
+"Abendaraez," said he, "I did not seek thy confidence to gratify an idle
+curiosity. It grieves me much that the good fortune which delivered thee
+into my hands, should have marred so fair an enterprise. Give me thy
+faith, as a true knight, to return prisoner to my castle, within three
+days, and I will grant thee permission to accomplish thy nuptials."
+
+The Abencerrage would have thrown himself at his feet, to pour out
+protestations of eternal gratitude, but the Alcayde prevented him.
+Calling in his cavaliers, he took the Abencerrage by the right hand, in
+their presence, exclaiming solemnly, "You promise, on the faith of a
+cavalier, to return to my castle of Allora within three days, and render
+yourself my prisoner?" And the Abencerrage said, "I promise."
+
+Then said the Alcayde, "Go! and may good fortune attend you. If
+you require any safeguard, I and my cavaliers are ready to be your
+companions."
+
+The Abencerrage kissed the hand of the Alcayde, in grateful
+acknowledgment. "Give me," said he, "my own armor, and my steed, and
+I require no guard. It is not likely that I shall again meet with so
+valorous a foe."
+
+The shades of night had fallen, when the tramp of the dapple-gray steed
+sounded over the drawbridge, and immediately afterward the light clatter
+of hoofs along the road, bespoke the fleetness with which the youthful
+lover hastened to his bride. It was deep night when the Moor arrived at
+the castle of Coyn. He silently and cautiously walked his panting steed
+under its dark walls, and having nearly passed round them, came to the
+portal denoted by Xarisa. He paused and looked around to see that he was
+not observed, and then knocked three times with the butt of his lance.
+In a little while the portal was timidly unclosed by the duenna of
+Xarisa. "Alas! senor," said she, "what has detained you thus long? Every
+night have I watched for you; and my lady is sick at heart with doubt
+and anxiety."
+
+The Abencerrage hung his lance, and shield, and scimitar against the
+wall, and then followed the duenna, with silent steps, up a winding
+stair-case, to the apartment of Xarisa. Vain would be the attempt to
+describe the raptures of that meeting. Time flew too swiftly, and the
+Abencerrage had nearly forgotten, until too late, his promise to return
+a prisoner to the Alcayde of Allora. The recollection of it came to him
+with a pang, and suddenly awoke him from his dream of bliss. Xarisa
+saw his altered looks, and heard with alarm his stifled sighs; but her
+countenance brightened, when she heard the cause. "Let not thy spirit be
+cast down," said she, throwing her white arms around him. "I have the
+keys of my father's treasures; send ransom more than enough to satisfy
+the Christian, and remain with me."
+
+"No," said Abendaraez, "I have given my word to return in person, and
+like a true knight, must fulfil my promise. After that, fortune must do
+with me as it pleases."
+
+"Then," said Xarisa, "I will accompany thee. Never shall you return a
+prisoner, and I remain at liberty."
+
+The Abencerrage was transported with joy at this new proof of devotion
+in his beautiful bride. All preparations were speedily made for their
+departure. Xarisa mounted behind the Moor, on his powerful steed; they
+left the castle walls before daybreak, nor did they pause, until they
+arrived at the gate of the castle of Allora, which was flung wide to
+receive them.
+
+Alighting in the court, the Abencerrage supported the steps of his
+trembling bride, who remained closely veiled, into the presence of
+Rodrigo de Narvaez. "Behold, valiant Alcayde!" said he, "the way in
+which an Abencerrage keeps his word. I promised to return to thee a
+prisoner, but I deliver two captives into your power. Behold Xarisa,
+and judge whether I grieved without reason, over the loss of such a
+treasure. Receive us as your own, for I confide my life and her honor to
+your hands."
+
+The Alcayde was lost in admiration of the beauty of the lady, and the
+noble spirit of the Moor. "I know not," said he, "which of you surpasses
+the other; but I know that my castle is graced and honored by your
+presence. Enter into it, and consider it your own, while you deign to
+reside with me."
+
+For several days the lovers remained at Allora, happy in each other's
+love, and in the friendship of the brave Alcayde. The latter wrote a
+letter, full of courtesy, to the Moorish king of Granada, relating the
+whole event, extolling the valor and good faith of the Abencerrage, and
+craving for him the royal countenance.
+
+The king was moved by the story, and was pleased with an opportunity of
+showing attention to the wishes of a gallant and chivalrous enemy; for
+though he had often suffered from the prowess of Don Rodigro de Narvaez,
+he admired the heroic character he had gained throughout the land.
+Calling the Alcayde of Coyn into his presence, he gave him the letter to
+read. The Alcayde turned pale, and trembled with rage, on the perusal.
+"Restrain thine anger," said the king; "there is nothing that the
+Alcayde of Allora could ask, that I would not grant, if in my power. Go
+thou to Allora; pardon thy children; take them to thy home. I receive
+this Abencerrage into my favor, and it will be my delight to heap
+benefits upon you all."
+
+The kindling ire of the Alcayde was suddenly appeased. He hastened to
+Allora; and folded his children to his bosom, who would have fallen at
+his feet. The gallant Rodrigo de Narvaez gave liberty to his prisoner
+without ransom, demanding merely a promise of his friendship. He
+accompanied the youthful couple and their father to Coyn, where their
+nuptials were celebrated with great rejoicings. When the festivities
+were over, Don Rodrigo de Narvaez returned to his fortress of Allora.
+
+After his departure, the Alcayde of Coyn addressed his children: "To
+your hands," said he, "I confide the disposition of my wealth. One of
+the first things I charge you, is not to forget the ransom you owe to
+the Alcayde of Allora. His magnanimity you can never repay, but you can
+prevent it from wronging him of his just dues. Give him, moreover, your
+entire friendship, for he merits it fully, though of a different faith."
+
+The Abencerrage thanked him for his generous proposition, which so truly
+accorded with his own wishes. He took a large sum of gold, and enclosed
+it in a rich coffer; and, on his own part, sent six beautiful horses,
+superbly caparisoned; with six shields and lances, mounted and embossed
+with gold. The beautiful Xarisa, at the same time, wrote a letter to the
+Alcayde, filled with expressions of gratitude and friendship, and sent
+him a box of fragrant cypress-wood, containing linen, of the finest
+quality, for his person. The valiant Alcayde disposed of the present
+in a characteristic manner. The horses and armor he shared among the
+cavaliers who had accompanied him on the night of the skirmish. The
+box of cypress-wood and its contents he retained, for the sake of the
+beautiful Xarisa; and sent her, by the hands of a messenger, the sum
+of gold paid as a ransom, entreating her to receive it as a wedding
+present. This courtesy and magnanimity raised the character of the
+Alcayde Rodrigo de Narvaez still higher in the estimation of the Moors,
+who extolled him as a perfect mirror of chivalric virtue; and from that
+time forward, there was a continual exchange of good offices between
+them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE ENCHANTED ISLAND.
+
+BY THE AUTHOR OF THE SKETCH-BOOK.
+
+  Break, Phantsie, from thy cave of cloud,
+  And wave thy purple wings,
+  Now all thy figures are allowed,
+  And various shapes of things.
+  Create of airy forms a stream;
+  It must have blood and nought of phlegm;
+  And though it be a walking dream,
+  Yet let it like an odor rise
+  To all the senses here,
+  And fall like sleep upon their eyes,
+  Or music on their ear.--BEN JONSON.
+
+"There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our
+philosophy," and among these may be placed that marvel and mystery of
+the seas, the island of St. Brandan. Every school-boy can enumerate and
+call by name the Canaries, the Fortunate Islands of the ancients; which,
+according to some ingenious speculative minds, are mere wrecks and
+remnants of the vast island of Atalantis, mentioned by Plato, as having
+been swallowed up by the ocean. Whoever has read the history of those
+isles, will remember the wonders told of another island, still more
+beautiful, seen occasionally from their shores, stretching away in the
+clear bright west, with long shadowy promontories, and high, sun-gilt
+peaks. Numerous expeditions, both in ancient and modern days, have
+launched forth from the Canaries in quest of that island; but, on their
+approach, mountain and promontory have gradually faded away, until
+nothing has remained but the blue sky above, and the deep blue water
+below. Hence it was termed by the geographers of old, Aprositus, or the
+Inaccessible; while modern navigators have called its very existence in
+question, pronouncing it a mere optical illusion, like the Fata Morgana
+of the Straits of Messina; or classing it with those unsubstantial
+regions known to mariners as Cape Flyaway, and the Coast of Cloud Land.
+
+Let not, however, the doubts of the worldly-wise sceptics of modern days
+rob us of all the glorious realms owned by happy credulity in days of
+yore. Be assured, O reader of easy faith!--thou for whom I delight to
+labor--be assured, that such an island does actually exist, and has,
+from time to time, been revealed to the gaze, and trodden by the feet,
+of favored mortals. Nay, though doubted by historians and philosophers,
+its existence is fully attested by the poets, who, being an inspired
+race, and gifted with a kind of second sight, can see into the mysteries
+of nature, hidden from the eyes of ordinary mortals. To this gifted race
+it has ever been a region of fancy and romance, teeming with all kinds
+of wonders. Here once bloomed, and perhaps still blooms, the famous
+garden of the Hesperides, with its golden fruit. Here, too, was the
+enchanted garden of Armida, in which that sorceress held the Christian
+paladin, Rinaldo, in delicious but inglorious thraldom; as is set forth
+in the immortal lay of Tasso. It was on this island, also, that Sycorax,
+the witch, held sway, when the good Prospero, and his infant daughter
+Miranda, were wafted to its shores. The isle was then
+
+  ---"full of noises,
+  Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not."
+
+Who does not know the tale, as told in the magic page of Shakspeare?
+
+In fact, the island appears to have been, at different times, under the
+sway of different powers, genii of earth, and air, and ocean; who made
+it their shadowy abode; or rather, it is the retiring place of old
+worn-out deities and dynasties, that once ruled the poetic world,
+but are now nearly shorn of all their attributes. Here Neptune and
+Amphitrite hold a diminished court, like sovereigns in exile. Their
+ocean-chariot lies bottom upward, in a cave of the island, almost a
+perfect wreck, while their pursy Tritons and haggard Nereids bask
+listlessly, like seals about the rocks. Sometimes they assume a shadow
+of their ancient pomp, and glide in state about the glassy sea; while
+the crew of some tall Indiaman, that lies becalmed with flapping sails,
+hear with astonishment the mellow note of the Triton's shell swelling
+upon the ear, as the invisible pageant sweeps by. Sometimes the quondam
+monarch of the ocean is permitted to make himself visible to mortal
+eyes, visiting the ships that cross the line, to exact a tribute from
+new-comers; the only remnant of his ancient rule, and that, alas!
+performed with tattered state, and tarnished splendor.
+
+On the shores of this wondrous island, the mighty kraken heaves his
+bulk, and wallows many a rood; here, too, the sea-serpent lies coiled
+up, during the intervals of his much-contested revelations to the
+eyes of true believers; and here it is said, even the Flying Dutchman
+finds a port and casts his anchor, and furls his shadowy sail, and
+takes a short repose from his eternal wanderings.
+
+Here all the treasures lost in the deep are safely garnered. The caverns
+of the shores are piled with golden ingots, hexes of pearls, rich bales
+of oriental silks; and their deep recesses sparkle with diamonds, or
+flame with carbuncles. Here, in deep bays and harbors, lies many a
+spell-bound ship, long given up as lost by the ruined merchant. Here,
+too, its crew, long bewailed as swallowed up in ocean, lie sleeping in
+mossy grottoes, from age to age, or wander about enchanted shores and
+groves, in pleasing oblivion of all things.
+
+Such are some of the marvels related of this island, and which may serve
+to throw some light on the following legend, of unquestionable truth,
+which I recommend to the entire belief of the reader.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_THE ADELANTADO OF THE SEVEN CITIES_.
+
+A LEGEND OF ST. BRANDAN.
+
+In the early part of the fifteenth century, when Prince Henry of
+Portugal, of worthy memory, was pushing the career of discovery along
+the western coast of Africa, and the world was resounding with reports
+of golden regions on the main land, and new-found islands in the ocean,
+there arrived at Lisbon an old bewildered pilot of the seas, who had
+been driven by tempests, he knew not whither, and who raved about an
+island far in the deep, on which he had landed, and which he had found
+peopled with Christians, and adorned with noble cities.
+
+The inhabitants, he said, gathered round, and regarded him with
+surprise, having never before been visited by a ship. They told him they
+were descendants of a band of Christians, who fled from Spain when that
+country was conquered by the Moslems. They were curious about the state
+of their fatherland, and grieved to hear that the Moslems still held
+possession of the kingdom of Granada. They would have taken the old
+navigator to church, to convince him of their orthodoxy; but, either
+through lack of devotion, or lack of faith in their words, he declined
+their invitation, and preferred to return on board of his ship. He was
+properly punished. A furious storm arose, drove him from his anchorage,
+hurried him out to sea, and he saw no more of the unknown island.
+
+This strange story caused great marvel in Lisbon and elsewhere. Those
+versed in history, remembered to have read, in an ancient chronicle,
+that, at the time of the conquest of Spain, in the eighth century, when
+the blessed cross was cast down, and the crescent erected in its place,
+and when Christian churches were turned into Moslem mosques, seven
+bishops, at the head of seven bands of pious exiles, had fled from the
+peninsula, and embarked in quest of some ocean island, or distant land,
+where they might found seven Christian cities, and enjoy their faith
+unmolested.
+
+The fate of these pious saints errant had hitherto remained a
+mystery, and their story had faded from memory; the report of the old
+tempest-tossed pilot, however, revived this long-forgotten theme; and
+it was determined by the pious and enthusiastic, that the island thus
+accidentally discovered, was the identical place of refuge, whither the
+wandering bishops had been guided by a protecting Providence, and where
+they had folded their flocks.
+
+This most excitable of worlds has always some darling object of
+chimerical enterprise: the "Island of the Seven Cities" now awakened as
+much interest and longing among zealous Christians, as has the renowned
+city of Timbuctoo among adventurous travellers, or the North-east
+Passage among hardy navigators; and it was a frequent prayer of the
+devout, that these scattered and lost portions of the Christian family
+might be discovered, and reunited to the great body of Christendom.
+
+No one, however, entered into the matter with half the zeal of Don
+Fernando de Ulmo, a young cavalier of high standing in the Portuguese
+court, and of most sanguine and romantic temperament. He had recently
+come to his estate, and had run the round of all kinds of pleasures and
+excitements, when this new theme of popular talk and wonder presented
+itself. The Island of the Seven Cities became now the constant subject
+of his thoughts by day and his dreams by night; it even rivalled his
+passion for a beautiful girl, one of the greatest belles of Lisbon, to
+whom he was betrothed. At length his imagination became so inflamed on
+the subject, that he determined to fit out an expedition, at his own
+expense, and set sail in quest of this sainted island. It could not be
+a cruise of any great extent; for according to the calculations of the
+tempest-tossed pilot, it must be somewhere in the latitude of the
+Canaries; which at that time, when the new world was as yet undiscovered,
+formed the frontier of ocean enterprise. Don Fernando applied to the
+crown for countenance and protection. As he was a favorite at court, the
+usual patronage was readily extended to him; that is to say, he received
+a commission from the king, Don Ioam II., constituting him Adelantado,
+or military governor, of any country he might discover, with the single
+proviso, that he should bear all the expenses of the discovery and pay a
+tenth of the profits to the crown.
+
+Don Fernando now set to work in the true spirit of a projector. He sold
+acre after acre of solid land, and invested the proceeds in ships, guns,
+ammunition, and sea-stores. Even his old family mansion in Lisbon was
+mortgaged without scruple, for "he looked forward to a palace in one of
+the Seven Cities of which he was to be Adelantado." This was the age of
+nautical romance, when the thoughts of all speculative dreamers were
+turned to the ocean. The scheme of Don Fernando, therefore, drew
+adventurers of every kind. The merchant promised himself new marts of
+opulent traffic; the soldier hoped to sack and plunder some one or other
+of those Seven Cities; even the fat monk shook off the sleep and sloth
+of the cloister, to join in a crusade which promised such increase to
+the possessions of the church.
+
+One person alone regarded the whole project with sovereign contempt
+and growling hostility. This was Don Ramiro Alvarez, the father of the
+beautiful Serafina, to whom Don Fernando was betrothed. He was one of
+those perverse, matter-of-fact old men who are prone to oppose every
+thing speculative and romantic. He had no faith in the Island of the
+Seven Cities; regarded the projected cruise as a crack-brained freak;
+looked with angry eye and internal heart-burning on the conduct of his
+intended son-in-law, chaffering away solid lands for lands in the moon,
+and scoffingly dubbed him Adelantado of Lubberland. In fact, he had
+never really relished the intended match, to which his consent had been
+slowly extorted by the tears and entreaties of his daughter. It is true
+he could have no reasonable objections to the youth, for Don Fernando
+was the very flower of Portuguese chivalry. No one could excel him at
+the tilting match, or the riding at the ring; none was more bold and
+dexterous in the bull-fight; none composed more gallant madrigals in
+praise of his lady's charms, or sang them with sweeter tones to the
+accompaniment of her guitar; nor could any one handle the castanets
+and dance the bolero with more captivating grace. All these admirable
+qualities and endowments, however, though they had been sufficient to
+win the heart of Serafina, were nothing in the eyes of her unreasonable
+father. O Cupid, god of Love! why will fathers always be so
+unreasonable!
+
+The engagement to Serafina had threatened at first to throw an obstacle
+in the way of the expedition of Don Fernando, and for a time perplexed
+him in the extreme. He was passionately attached to the young lady; but
+he was also passionately bent on this romantic enterprise. How should
+he reconcile the two passionate inclinations? A simple and obvious
+arrangement at length presented itself: marry Serafina, enjoy a portion
+of the honeymoon at once, and defer the rest until his return from the
+discovery of the Seven Cities!
+
+He hastened to make known this most excellent arrangement to Don Ramiro,
+when the long-smothered wrath of the old cavalier burst forth in a storm
+about his ears. He reproached him with being the dupe of wandering
+vagabonds and wild schemers, and of squandering all his real possessions
+in pursuit of empty bubbles. Don Fernando was too sanguine a projector,
+and too young a man, to listen tamely to such language. He acted with
+what is technically called "becoming spirit." A high quarrel ensued; Don
+Ramiro pronounced him a mad man, and forbade all farther intercourse
+with his daughter, until he should give proof of returning sanity by
+abandoning this mad-cap enterprise; while Don Fernando flung out of
+the house, more bent than ever on the expedition, from the idea of
+triumphing over the incredulity of the gray-beard when he should return
+successful.
+
+Don Ramiro repaired to his daughter's chamber the moment the youth had
+departed. He represented to her the sanguine, unsteady character of her
+lover and the chimerical nature of his schemes; showed her the propriety
+of suspending all intercourse with him until he should recover from his
+present hallucination; folded her to his bosom with parental fondness,
+kissed the tear that stole down her cheek, and, as he left the chamber,
+gently locked the door; for although he was a fond father, and had a
+high opinion of the submissive temper of his child, he had a still
+higher opinion of the conservative virtues of lock and key. Whether the
+damsel had been in any wise shaken in her faith as to the schemes of her
+lover, and the existence of the Island of the Seven Cities, by the sage
+representations of her father, tradition does not say; but it is certain
+that she became a firm believer the moment she heard him turn the key in
+the lock.
+
+Notwithstanding the interdict of Don Ramiro, therefore, and his
+shrewd precautions, the intercourse of the lovers continued, although
+clandestinely. Don Fernando toiled all day, hurrying forward his
+nautical enterprise, while at night he would repair, beneath the
+grated balcony of his mistress, to carry on at equal pace the no less
+interesting enterprise of the heart. At length the preparations for the
+expedition were completed. Two gallant caravels lay anchored in the
+Tagus, ready to sail with the morning dawn; while late at night, by the
+pale light of a waning moon, Don Fernando sought the stately mansion of
+Alvarez to take a last farewell of Serafina. The customary signal of a
+few low touches of a guitar brought her to the balcony. She was sad at
+heart and full of gloomy forebodings; but her lover strove to impart to
+her his own buoyant hope and youthful confidence. "A few short months,"
+said he, "and I shall return in triumph. Thy father will then blush at
+his incredulity, and will once more welcome me to his house, when
+I cross its threshold a wealthy suitor and Adelantado of the Seven
+Cities."
+
+The beautiful Serafina shook her head mournfully. It was not on those
+points that she felt doubt or dismay. She believed most implicitly in
+the Island of the Seven Cities, and trusted devoutly in the success of
+the enterprise; but she had heard of the inconstancy of the seas, and
+the inconstancy of those who roam them. Now, let the truth be spoken,
+Don Fernando, if he had any fault in the world, it was that he was a
+little too inflammable; that is to say, a little too subject to take
+fire from the sparkle of every bright eye: he had been somewhat of a
+rover among the sex on shore, what might he not be on sea? Might he
+not meet with other loves in foreign ports? Might he not behold some
+peerless beauty in one or other of those seven cities, who might efface
+the image of Serafina from his thoughts?
+
+At length she ventured to hint her doubts; but Don Fernando spurned at
+the very idea. Never could his heart be false to Serafina! Never could
+another be captivating in his eyes!--never--never! Repeatedly did he
+bend his knee, and smite his breast, and call upon the silver moon to
+witness the sincerity of his vows. But might not Serafina, herself, be
+forgetful of her plighted faith? Might not some wealthier rival present,
+while he was tossing on the sea, and, backed by the authority of her
+father, win the treasure of her hand? Alas, how little did he know
+Serafina's heart! The more her father should oppose, the more would she
+be fixed in her faith. Though years should pass before his return, he
+would find her true to her vows. Even should the salt seas swallow him
+up, (and her eyes streamed with salt tears at the very thought,) never
+would she be the wife of another--never--never! She raised her beautiful
+white arms between the iron bars of the balcony, and invoked the moon as
+a testimonial of her faith.
+
+Thus, according to immemorial usage, the lovers parted, with many a vow
+of eternal constancy. But will they keep those vows? Perish the doubt!
+Have they not called the constant moon to witness?
+
+With the morning dawn the caravels dropped down the Tagus and put
+to sea. They steered for the Canaries, in those days the regions of
+nautical romance. Scarcely had they reached those latitudes, when a
+violent tempest arose. Don Fernando soon lost sight of the accompanying
+caravel, and was driven out of all reckoning by the fury of the storm.
+For several weary days and nights he was tossed to and fro, at the mercy
+of the elements, expecting each moment to be swallowed up. At length,
+one day toward evening, the storm subsided; the clouds cleared up, as
+though a veil had suddenly been withdrawn from the face of heaven, and
+the setting sun shone gloriously upon a fair and mountainous island,
+that seemed close at hand. The tempest-tossed mariners rubbed their
+eyes, and gazed almost incredulously upon this land, that had emerged so
+suddenly from the murky gloom; yet there it lay, spread out in lovely
+landscapes; enlivened by villages, and towers, and spires, while the
+late stormy sea rolled in peaceful billows to its shores. About a league
+from the sea, on the banks of a river, stood a noble city, with lofty
+walls and towers, and a protecting castle. Don Fernando anchored off
+the mouth of the river, which appeared to form a spacious harbor. In a
+little while a barge was seen issuing from the river. It was evidently
+a barge of ceremony, for it was richly though quaintly carved and gilt,
+and decorated with a silken awning and fluttering streamers, while a
+banner, bearing the sacred emblem of the cross, floated to the breeze.
+The barge advanced slowly, impelled by sixteen oars, painted of a bright
+crimson. The oarsmen were uncouth, or rather antique, in their garb, and
+kept stroke to the regular cadence of an old Spanish ditty. Beneath the
+awning sat a cavalier, in a rich though old-fashioned doublet, with an
+enormous sombrero and feather. When the barge reached the caravel, the
+cavalier stepped on board. He was tall and gaunt, with a long, Spanish
+visage, and lack-lustre eyes, and an air of lofty and somewhat pompous
+gravity. His mustaches were curled up to his ears, his beard was forked
+and precise; he wore gauntlets that reached to his elbows, and a Toledo
+blade that strutted out behind, while, in front, its huge basket-hilt
+might have served for a porringer.
+
+Thrusting out a long spindle leg, and taking off his sombrero with a
+grave and stately sweep, he saluted Don Fernando by name, and welcomed
+him, in old Castilian language, and in the style of old Castilian
+courtesy.
+
+Don Fernando was startled at hearing himself accosted by name, by an
+utter stranger, in a strange land. As soon as he could recover from his
+surprise, he inquired what land it was at which he had arrived.
+
+"The Island of the Seven Cities!"
+
+Could this be true? Had he indeed been thus tempest-driven upon the very
+land of which he was in quest? It was even so. The other caravel, from
+which he had been separated in the storm, had made a neighboring port of
+the island, and announced the tidings of this expedition, which came to
+restore the country to the great community of Christendom. The whole
+island, he was told, was given up to rejoicings on the happy event; and
+they only awaited his arrival to acknowledge allegiance to the crown of
+Portugal, and hail him as Adelantado of the Seven Cities. A grand fete
+was to be solemnized that very night in the palace of the Alcayde or
+governor of the city; who, on beholding the most opportune arrival of
+the caravel, had despatched his grand chamberlain, in his barge of
+state, to conduct the future Adelantado to the ceremony.
+
+Don Fernando could scarcely believe but that this was all a dream.
+He fixed a scrutinizing gaze upon the grand chamberlain, who, having
+delivered his message, stood in buckram dignity, drawn up to his full
+stature, curling his whiskers, stroking his beard, and looking down upon
+him with inexpressible loftiness through his lack-lustre eyes. There was
+no doubting the word of so grave and ceremonious a hidalgo.
+
+Don Fernando now arrayed himself in gala attire. He would have launched
+his boat, and gone on shore with his own men, but he was informed the
+barge of state was expressly provided for his accommodation, and, after
+the fete, would bring him back to his ship; in which, on the following
+day, he might enter the harbor in befitting style. He accordingly
+stepped into the barge, and took his seat beneath the awning. The grand
+chamberlain seated himself on the cushion opposite. The rowers bent to
+their oars, and renewed their mournful old ditty, and the gorgeous, but
+unwieldy barge moved slowly and solemnly through the water.
+
+The night closed in, before they entered the river. They swept along,
+past rock and promontory, each guarded by its tower. The sentinels at
+every post challenged them as they passed by.
+
+"Who goes there?"
+
+"The Adelantado of the Seven Cities."
+
+"He is welcome. Pass on."
+
+On entering the harbor, they rowed close along an armed galley, of the
+most ancient form. Soldiers with cross-bows were stationed on the deck.
+
+"Who goes there?" was again demanded.
+
+"The Adelantado of the Seven Cities."
+
+"He is welcome. Pass on."
+
+They landed at a broad flight of stone steps, leading up, between two
+massive towers, to the water-gate of the city, at which they knocked for
+admission. A sentinel, in an ancient steel casque, looked over the wall.
+"Who is there?"
+
+"The Adelantado of the Seven Cities."
+
+The gate swung slowly open, grating upon its rusty hinges. They entered
+between two rows of iron-clad warriors, in battered armor, with
+cross-bows, battle-axes, and ancient maces, and with faces as
+old-fashioned and rusty as their armor. They saluted Don Fernando in
+military style, but with perfect silence, as he passed between their
+ranks. The city was illuminated, but in such manner as to give a more
+shadowy and solemn effect to its old-time architecture. There were
+bonfires in the principal streets, with groups about them in such
+old-fashioned garbs, that they looked like the fantastic figures that
+roam the streets in carnival time. Even the stately dames who gazed from
+the balconies, which they had hung with antique tapestry, looked more
+like effigies dressed up for a quaint mummery, than like ladies in their
+fashionable attire. Every thing, in short, bore the stamp of former
+ages, as if the world had suddenly rolled back a few centuries. Nor was
+this to be wondered at. Had not the Island of the Seven Cities been for
+several hundred years cut off from all communication with the rest of
+the world, and was it not natural that the inhabitants should retain
+many of the modes and customs brought here by their ancestors?
+
+One thing certainly they had conserved; the old-fashioned Spanish
+gravity and stateliness. Though this was a time of public rejoicing, and
+though Don Fernando was the object of their gratulations, every thing
+was conducted with the most solemn ceremony, and wherever he appeared,
+instead of acclamations, he was received with profound silence, and the
+most formal reverences and swayings of their sombreros.
+
+Arrived at the palace of the Alcayde, the usual ceremonial was repeated.
+The chamberlain knocked for admission.
+
+"Who is there?" demanded the porter.
+
+"The Adelantado of the Seven Cities."
+
+"He is welcome. Pass on."
+
+The grand portal was thrown open. The chamberlain led the way up a vast
+but heavily moulded marble stair-case, and so through one of those
+interminable suites of apartments, that are the pride of Spanish
+palaces. All were furnished in a style of obsolete magnificence. As they
+passed through the chambers, the title of Don Fernando was forwarded on
+by servants stationed at every door; and every where produced the most
+profound reverences and courtesies. At length they reached a magnificent
+saloon, blazing with tapers, in which the Alcayde, and the principal
+dignitaries of the city, were waiting to receive their illustrious
+guest. The grand chamberlain presented Don Fernando in due form, and
+falling back among the other officers of the household, stood as usual
+curling his whiskers and stroking his forked beard.
+
+Don Fernando was received by the Alcayde and the other dignitaries with
+the same stately and formal courtesy that he had every where remarked.
+In fact, there was so much form and ceremonial, that it seemed difficult
+to get at any thing social or substantial. Nothing but bows, and
+compliments, and old-fashioned courtesies. The Alcayde and his courtiers
+resembled, in face and form, those quaint worthies to be seen in the
+pictures of old illuminated manuscripts; while the cavaliers and dames
+who thronged the saloon, might have beep taken for the antique figures
+of gobelin tapestry suddenly vivified and put in motion.
+
+The banquet, which had been kept back until the arrival of Don Fernando,
+was now announced; and such a feast! such unknown dishes and obsolete
+dainties; with the peacock, that bird of state and ceremony, served up
+in full plumage, in a golden dish, at the head of the table. And then,
+as Don Fernando cast his eyes over the glittering board, what a vista of
+odd heads and head-dresses, of formal bearded dignitaries, and stately
+dames, with castellated locks and towering plumes!
+
+As fate would have it, on the other side of Don Fernando, was seated the
+daughter of the Alcayde. She was arrayed, it is true, in a dress that
+might have been worn before the flood; but then, she had a melting black
+Andalusian eye, that was perfectly irresistible. Her voice, too, her
+manner, her movements, all smacked of Andalusia, and showed how female
+fascination may be transmitted from age to age, and clime to clime,
+without ever losing its power, or going out of fashion. Those who know
+the witchery of the sex, in that most amorous region of old Spain, may
+judge what must have been the fascination to which Don Fernando
+was exposed, when seated beside one of the most captivating of its
+descendants. He was, as has already been hinted, of an inflammable
+temperament; with a heart ready to get in a light blaze at every
+instant. And then he had been so wearied by pompous, tedious old
+cavaliers, with their formal bows and speeches; is it to be wondered at
+that he turned with delight to the Alcayde's daughter, all smiles, and
+dimples, and melting looks, and melting accents? Beside, for I wish to
+give him every excuse in my power, he was in a particularly excitable
+mood, from the novelty of the scene before him, and his head was almost
+turned with this sudden and complete realization of all his hopes and
+fancies; and then, in the flurry of the moment, he had taken frequent
+draughts at the wine-cup, presented him at every instant by officious
+pages, and all the world knows the effect of such draughts in giving
+potency to female charms. In a word, there is no concealing the matter,
+the banquet was not half over, before Don Fernando was making love,
+outright, to the Alcayde's daughter. It was his cold habitude,
+contracted long before his matrimonial engagement. The young lady hung
+her head coyly; her eye rested upon a ruby heart, sparkling in a ring on
+the hand of Don Fernando, a parting gage of love from Serafina. A blush
+crimsoned her very temples. She darted a glance of doubt at the
+ring, and then at Don Fernando. He read her doubt, and in the giddy
+intoxication of the moment, drew off the pledge of his affianced bride,
+and slipped it on the finger of the Alcayde's daughter.
+
+At this moment the banquet broke up. The chamberlain with his lofty
+demeanor, and his lack-lustre eyes, stood before him, and announced that
+the barge was waiting to conduct him back to the caravel. Don Fernando
+took a formal leave of the Alcayde and his dignitaries, and a tender
+farewell of the Alcayde's daughter, with a promise to throw himself at
+her feet on the following day. He was rowed back to his vessel in the
+same slow and stately manner, to the cadence of the same mournful old
+ditty. He retired to his cabin, his brain whirling with all that he had
+seen, and his heart now and then giving him a twinge as he recollected
+his temporary infidelity to the beautiful Serafina. He flung himself on
+his bed, and soon fell into a feverish sleep. His dreams were wild and
+incoherent. How long he slept he knew not, but when he awoke he found
+himself in a strange cabin, with persons around him of whom he had no
+knowledge. He rubbed his eyes to ascertain whether he were really awake.
+In reply to his inquiries, he was informed that he was on board of a
+Portuguese ship, bound to Lisbon; having been taken senseless from a
+wreck drifting about the ocean.
+
+Don Fernando was confounded and perplexed. He retraced every thing
+distinctly that had happened to him in the Island of the Seven Cities,
+and until he had retired to rest on board of the caravel. Had his vessel
+been driven from her anchors, and wrecked during his sleep? The people
+about him could give him no information on the subject. He talked to
+them of the Island of the Seven Cities, and of all that had befallen him
+there. They regarded his words as the ravings of delirium, and in their
+honest solicitude, administered such rough remedies, that he was fain to
+drop the subject, and observe a cautious taciturnity.
+
+At length they arrived in the Tagus, and anchored before the famous city
+of Lisbon. Don Fernando sprang joyfully on shore, and hastened to his
+ancestral mansion. To his surprise, it was inhabited by strangers; and
+when he asked about his family, no one could give him any information
+concerning them.
+
+He now sought the mansion of Don Ramiro, for the temporary flame kindled
+by the bright eyes of the Alcayde's daughter had long since burnt itself
+out, and his genuine passion for Serafina had revived with all its
+fervor. He approached the balcony, beneath which he had so often
+serenaded her. Did his eyes deceive him? No! There was Serafina herself
+at the balcony. An exclamation of rapture burst from him, as he raised
+his arms toward her. She cast upon him a look of indignation, and
+hastily retiring, closed the casement. Could she have heard of his
+flirtation with the Alcayde's daughter? He would soon dispel every doubt
+of his constancy. The door was open. He rushed up-stairs, and entering
+the room, threw himself at her feet. She shrank back with affright, and
+took refuge in the arms of a youthful cavalier.
+
+"What mean you, Sir," cried the latter, "by this intrusion?"
+
+"What right have you," replied Don Fernando, "to ask the question?"
+
+"The right of an affianced suitor!"
+
+Don Fernando started, and turned pale. "Oh, Serafina! Serafina!" cried
+he in a tone of agony, "is this thy plighted constancy?"
+
+"Serafina?--what mean you by Serafina? If it be this young lady you
+intend, her name is Maria."
+
+"Is not this Serafina Alvarez, and is not that her portrait?" cried Don
+Fernando, pointing to a picture of his mistress.
+
+"Holy Virgin!" cried the young lady; "he is talking of my
+great-grandmother!"
+
+An explanation ensued, if that could be called an explanation, which
+plunged the unfortunate Fernando into tenfold perplexity. If he might
+believe his eyes, he saw before him his beloved Serafina; if he might
+believe his ears, it was merely her hereditary form and features,
+perpetuated in the person of her great-granddaughter.
+
+His brain began to spin. He sought tho office of the Minister of Marine,
+and made a report of his expedition, and of the Island of the Seven
+Cities, which he had so fortunately discovered. No body knew any thing
+of such an expedition, or such an island. He declared that he had
+undertaken the enterprise under a formal contract with the crown, and
+had received a regular commission, constituting him Adelantado. This
+must be matter of record, and he insisted loudly, that the books of the
+department should be consulted. The wordy strife at length attracted the
+attention of an old, gray-headed clerk, who sat perched on a high stool,
+at a high desk, with iron-rimmed spectacles on the top of a thin,
+pinched nose, copying records into an enormous folio. He had wintered
+and summered in the department for a great part of a century, until he
+had almost grown to be a piece of the desk at which he sat; his memory
+was a mere index of official facts and documents, and his brain was
+little better than red tape and parchment. After peering down for a time
+from his lofty perch, and ascertaining the matter in controversy, he
+put his pen behind his ear, and descended. He remembered to have heard
+something from his predecessor about an expedition of the kind in
+question, but then it had sailed during the reign of Don Ioam II., and
+he had been dead at least a hundred years. To put the matter beyond
+dispute, however, the archives of the Torve do Tombo, that sepulchre of
+old Portuguese documents, were diligently searched, and a record was
+found of a contract between the crown and one Fernando de Ulmo, for the
+discovery of the Island of the Seven Cities, and of a commission secured
+to him as Adelantado of the country he might discover.
+
+"There!" cried Don Fernando, triumphantly, "there you have proof, before
+your own eyes, of what I have said. I am the Fernando de Ulmo specified
+in that record. I have discovered the Island of the Seven Cities, and am
+entitled to be Adelantado, according to contract."
+
+The story of Don Fernando had certainly, what is pronounced the best
+of historical foundation, documentary evidence; but when a man, in the
+bloom of youth, talked of events that had taken place above a century
+previously, as having happened to himself, it is no wonder that he was
+set down for a mad man.
+
+The old clerk looked at him from above and below his spectacles,
+shrugged his shoulders, stroked his chin, reascended his lofty stool,
+took the pen from behind his ears, and resumed his daily and eternal
+task, copying records into the fiftieth volume of a series of gigantic
+folios. The other clerks winked at each other shrewdly, and dispersed to
+their several places, and poor Don Fernando, thus left to himself, flung
+out of the office, almost driven wild by these repeated perplexities.
+
+In the confusion of his mind, he instinctively repaired to the mansion
+of Alvarez, but it was barred against him. To break the delusion under
+which the youth apparently labored, and to convince him that the
+Serafina about whom he raved was really dead, he was conducted to her
+tomb. There she lay, a stately matron, cut out in alabaster; and there
+lay her husband beside her; a portly cavalier, in armor; and there
+knelt, on each side, the effigies of a numerous progeny, proving that
+she had been a fruitful vine. Even the very monument gave proof of the
+lapse of time, for the hands of her husband, which were folded as if in
+prayer, had lost their fingers, and the face of the once lovely Serafina
+was noseless.
+
+Don Fernando felt a transient glow of indignation at beholding this
+monumental proof of the inconstancy of his mistress; but who could
+expect a mistress to remain constant during a whole century of absence?
+And what right had he to rail about constancy, after what had passed
+between him and the Alcayde's daughter? The unfortunate cavalier
+performed one pious act of tender devotion; he had the alabaster nose of
+Serafina restored by a skilful statuary, and then tore himself from the
+tomb.
+
+He could now no longer doubt the fact that, somehow or other, he had
+skipped over a whole century, during the night he had spent at the
+Island of the Seven Cities; and he was now as complete a stranger in his
+native city, as if he had never been there. A thousand times did he
+wish himself back to that wonderful island, with its antiquated banquet
+halls, where he had been so courteously received; and now that the once
+young and beautiful Serafina was nothing but a great-grandmother in
+marble, with generations of descendants, a thousand times would he
+recall the melting black eyes of the Alcayde's daughter, who doubtless,
+like himself, was still flourishing in fresh juvenility, and breathe a
+secret wish that he were seated by her side.
+
+He would at once have set on foot another expedition, at his own
+expense, to cruise in search of the sainted island, but his means were
+exhausted. He endeavored to rouse others to the enterprise, setting
+forth the certainty of profitable results, of which his own experience
+furnished such unquestionable proof. Alas! no one would give faith to
+his tale; but looked upon it as the feverish dream of a shipwrecked
+man. He persisted in his efforts; holding forth in all places and
+all companies, until he became an object of jest and jeer to the
+light-minded, who mistook his earnest enthusiasm for a proof of
+insanity; and the very children in the streets bantered him with the
+title of "The Adelantado of the Seven Cities."
+
+Finding all his efforts in vain, in his native city of Lisbon, he took
+shipping for the Canaries, as being nearer the latitude of his former
+cruise, and inhabited by people given to nautical adventure. Here he
+found ready listeners to his story; for the old pilots and mariners of
+those parts were notorious island-hunters and devout believers in all
+the wonders of the seas. Indeed, one and all treated his adventure as a
+common occurrence, and turning to each other, with a sagacious nod of
+the head, observed, "He has been at the Island of St. Brandan."
+
+They then went on to inform him of that great marvel and enigma of
+the ocean; of its repeated appearance to the inhabitants of their
+islands; and of the many but ineffectual expeditions that had been made
+in search of it. They took him to a promontory of the island of Palma,
+from whence the shadowy St. Brandan had oftenest been descried, and they
+pointed out the very tract in the west where its mountains had been
+seen.
+
+Don Fernando listened with rapt attention. He had no longer a doubt that
+this mysterious and fugacious island must be the same with that of
+the Seven Cities; and that there must be some supernatural influence
+connected with it, that had operated upon himself, and made the events
+of a night occupy the space of a century.
+
+He endeavored, but in vain, to rouse the islanders to another attempt at
+discovery; they had given up the phantom island as indeed inaccessible.
+Fernando, however, was not to be discouraged. The idea wore itself
+deeper and deeper in his mind, until it became the engrossing subject of
+his thoughts and object of his being. Every morning he would repair to
+the promontory of Palma, and sit there throughout the live-long day, in
+hopes of seeing the fairy mountains of St. Brandan peering above the
+horizon; every evening he returned to his home, a disappointed man, but
+ready to resume his post on the following morning.
+
+His assiduity was all in vain. He grew gray in his ineffectual attempt;
+and was at length found dead at his post. His grave is still shown in
+the island of Palma, and a cross is erected on the spot where he used
+to sit and look out upon the sea, in hopes of the reappearance of the
+enchanted island.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NATIONAL NOMENCLATURE.
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
+
+Sir: I am somewhat of the same way of thinking, in regard to names, with
+that profound philosopher, Mr. Shandy, the elder, who maintained that
+some inspired high thoughts and heroic aims, while others entailed
+irretrievable meanness and vulgarity; insomuch that a man might sink
+under the insignificance of his name, and be absolutely "Nicodemused
+into nothing." I have ever, therefore, thought it a great hardship for a
+man to be obliged to struggle through life with some ridiculous or
+ignoble _Christian_ name, as it is too often falsely called, inflicted
+on him in infancy, when he could not choose for himself; and would give
+him free liberty to change it for one more to his taste, when he had
+arrived at years of discretion.
+
+I have the same notion with respect to local names. Some at once
+prepossess us in favor of a place; others repel us, by unlucky
+associations of the mind; and I have known scenes worthy of being the
+very haunt of poetry and romance, yet doomed to irretrievable vulgarity,
+by some ill-chosen name, which not even the magic numbers of a Halleck
+or a Bryant could elevate into poetical acceptation.
+
+This is an evil unfortunately too prevalent throughout our country.
+Nature has stamped the land with features of sublimity and beauty; but
+some of our noblest mountains and loveliest streams are in danger of
+remaining for ever unhonored and unsung, from bearing appellations
+totally abhorrent to the Muse. In the first place, our country is
+deluged with names taken from places in the old world, and applied to
+places having no possible affinity or resemblance to their namesakes.
+This betokens a forlorn poverty of invention, and a second-hand spirit,
+content to cover its nakedness with borrowed or cast-off clothes of
+Europe.
+
+Then we have a shallow affectation of scholarship: the whole catalogue
+of ancient worthies is shaken out from the back of Lempriere's Classical
+Dictionary, and a wide region of wild country sprinkled over with the
+names of the heroes, poets, and sages of antiquity, jumbled into the
+most whimsical juxtaposition. Then we have our political god-fathers;
+topographical engineers, perhaps, or persons employed by government to
+survey and lay out townships. These, forsooth, glorify the patrons that
+give them bread; so we have the names of the great official men of the
+day scattered over the land, as if they were the real "salt of the
+earth," with which it was to be seasoned. Well for us is it, when these
+official great men happen to have names of fair acceptation; but wo unto
+us, should a Tubbs or a Potts be in power: we are sure, in a little
+while, to find Tubbsvilles and Pottsylvanias springing up in every
+direction.
+
+Under these melancholy dispensations of taste and loyalty, therefore,
+Mr. Editor, it is with a feeling of dawning hope, that I have lately
+perceived the attention of persons of intelligence beginning to be
+awakened on this subject. I trust if the matter should once be taken
+up, it will not be readily abandoned. We are yet young enough, as a
+country, to remedy and reform much of what has been done, and to release
+many of our rising towns and cities, and our noble streams, from names
+calculated to vulgarize the land.
+
+I have, on a former occasion, suggested the expediency of searching out
+the original Indian names of places, and wherever they are striking and
+euphonious, and those by which they have been superseded are glaringly
+objectionable, to restore them. They would have the merit of
+originality, and of belonging to the country; and they would remain as
+reliques of the native lords of the soil, when every other vestige had
+disappeared. Many of these names may easily be regained, by reference to
+old title deeds, and to the archives of states and counties. In my own
+case, by examining the records of the county clerk's office, I have
+discovered the Indian names of various places and objects in the
+neighborhood, and have found them infinitely superior to the trite,
+poverty-stricken names which had been given by the settlers. A beautiful
+pastoral stream, for instance, which winds for many a mile through one
+of the loveliest little valleys in the state, has long been known by the
+common-place name of the "Saw-mill River." In the old Indian grants, it
+is designated as the Neperan. Another, a perfectly wizard stream, which
+winds through the wildest recesses of Sleepy Hollow, bears the hum-drum
+name of Mill Creek: in the Indian grants, it sustains the euphonious
+title of the Pocantico.
+
+Similar researches have released Long-Island from many of those paltry
+and vulgar names which fringed its beautiful shores; their Cow Bays, and
+Cow Necks, and Oyster Ponds, and Mosquito Coves, which spread a spell of
+vulgarity over the whole island, and kept persons of taste and fancy at
+a distance.
+
+It would be an object worthy the attention of the historical societies,
+which are springing up in various parts of the Union, to have maps
+executed of their respective states or neighborhoods, in which all the
+Indian local names should, as far as possible, be restored. In fact,
+it appears to me that the nomenclature of the country is almost of
+sufficient importance for the foundation of a distinct society; or
+rather, a corresponding association of persons of taste and judgment, of
+all parts of the Union. Such an association, if properly constituted and
+composed, comprising especially all the literary talent of the country,
+though it might not have legislative power in its enactments, yet
+would have the all-pervading power of the press; and the changes in
+nomenclature which it might dictate, being at once adopted by elegant
+writers in prose and poetry, and interwoven with the literature of the
+country, would ultimately pass into popular currency.
+
+Should such a reforming association arise, I beg to recommend to its
+attention all those mongrel names that have the adjective _New_ prefixed
+to them, and pray they may be one and all kicked out of the country.
+I am for none of these second-hand appellations, that stamp us a
+second-hand people, and that are to perpetuate us a new country to the
+end of time. Odds my life! Mr. Editor, I hope and trust we are to live
+to be an old nation, as well as our neighbors, and have no idea that
+our cities, when they shall have attained to venerable antiquity, shall
+still be dubbed _New_-York, and _New_-London, and _new_ this and _new_
+that, like the Pont-Neuf, (the New Bridge,) at Paris, which is the
+oldest bridge in that capital, or like the Vicar of Wakefield's horse,
+which continued to be called "the colt," until he died of old age.
+
+Speaking of New-York, reminds me of some observations which I met with
+some time since, in one of the public papers, about the name of our
+state and city. The writer proposes to substitute for the present names,
+those of the State of Ontario, and the CITY OF MANHATTAN. I concur in
+his suggestion most heartily. Though born and brought up in the city of
+New-York, and though I love every stick and stone about it, yet I do
+not, nor ever did, relish its name. I like neither its sound nor its
+significance. As to its _significance_, the very adjective _new_ gives
+to our great commercial metropolis a second-hand character, as if
+referring to some older, more dignified, and important place, of which
+it was a mere copy; though in fact, if I am rightly informed, the whole
+name commemorates a grant by Charles II. to his brother, the duke of
+York, made in the spirit of royal munificence, of a tract of country
+which did not belong to him. As to the _sound_, what can you make of it,
+either in poetry or prose? New-York! Why, Sir, if it were to share the
+fate of Troy itself; to suffer a ten years' siege, and be sacked and
+plundered; no modern Homer would ever be able to elevate the name to
+epic dignity.
+
+Now, Sir, ONTARIO would be a name worthy of the empire state. It bears
+with it the majesty of that internal sea which washes our northwestern
+shore. Or, if any objection should be made, from its not being
+completely embraced within our boundaries, there is the MOHEGAN, one
+of the Indian names for that glorious river, the Hudson, which would
+furnish an excellent state appellation. So also New-York might be called
+Manhatta, as it is named in some of the early records, and Manhattan
+used as the adjective. Manhattan, however, stands well as a substantive,
+and "Manhattanese," which I observe Mr. COOPER has adopted in some of
+his writings, would be a very good appellation for a citizen of the
+commercial metropolis.
+
+A word or two more, Mr. Editor, and I have done. We want a NATIONAL
+NAME. We want it poetically, and we want it politically. With the
+poetical necessity of the case I shall not trouble myself. I leave it to
+our poets to tell how they manage to steer that collocation of words,
+"The United States of North America," down the swelling tide of song,
+and to float the whole raft out upon the sea of heroic poesy. I am now
+speaking of the mere purposes of common life. How is a citizen of this
+republic to designate himself? As an American? There are two Americas,
+each subdivided into various empires, rapidly rising in importance. As a
+citizen of the United States? It is a clumsy, lumbering title, yet still
+it is not distinctive; for we have now the United States of Central
+America; and heaven knows how many "United States" may spring up under
+the Proteus changes of Spanish America.
+
+This may appear matter of small concernment; but any one that has
+travelled in foreign countries must be conscious of the embarrassment
+and circumlocution sometimes occasioned by the want of a perfectly
+distinct and explicit national appellation. In France, when I have
+announced myself as an American, I have been supposed to belong to one
+of the French colonies; in Spain, to be from Mexico, or Peru, or some
+other Spanish-American country. Repeatedly have I found myself involved
+in a long geographical and political definition of my national identity.
+
+Now, Sir, meaning no disrespect to any of our co-heirs of this great
+quarter of the world, I am for none of this coparceny in a name that is
+to mingle us up with the riff-raff colonies and off-sets of every nation
+of Europe. The title of American may serve to tell the quarter of the
+world to which I belong, the same as a Frenchman or an Englishman may
+call himself a European; but I want my own peculiar national name to
+rally under. I want an appellation that shall tell at once, and in a
+way not to be mistaken, that I belong to this very portion of America,
+geographical and political, to which it is my pride and happiness to
+belong; that I am of the Anglo-Saxon race which founded this Anglo-Saxon
+empire in the wilderness; and that I have no part or parcel with any
+other race or empire, Spanish, French, or Portuguese, in either of the
+Americas. Such an appellation, Sir, would have magic in it. It would
+bind every part of the confederacy together as with a keystone; it would
+be a passport to the citizen of our republic throughout the world.
+
+We have it in our power to furnish ourselves with such a national
+appellation, from one of the grand and eternal features of our country;
+from that noble chain of mountains which formed its back-bone, and ran
+through the "old confederacy," when it first declared our national
+independence. I allude to the Appalachian or Alleghany mountains. We
+might do this without any very inconvenient change in our present
+titles. We might still use the phrase, "The United States," substituting
+Appalachia, or Alleghania, (I should prefer the latter,) in place of
+America. The title of Appalachian, or Alleghanian, would still announce
+us as Americans, but would specify us as citizens of the Great Republic.
+Even our old national cypher of U. S. A. might remain unaltered,
+designating the United States of Alleghania.
+
+These are crude ideas, Mr. Editor, hastily thrown out to elicit the
+ideas of others, and to call attention to a subject of more national
+importance than may at first be supposed.
+
+Very respectfully yours,
+
+Geoffrey Crayon.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+DESULTORY THOUGHTS ON CRITICISM.
+
+"Let a man write never so well, there are now-a-days a sort of persons
+they call critics, that, egad, have no more wit in them than so many
+hobby-horses: but they'll laugh at you, Sir, and find fault, and censure
+things, that, egad, I'm sure they are not able to do themselves; a sort
+of envious persons, that emulate the glories of persons of parts, and
+think to build their fame by calumniation of persons that, egad, to my
+knowledge, of all persons in the world, are in nature the persons that
+do as much despise all that, as--a--In fine, I'll say no more of 'em!"
+-REHEARSAL.
+
+All the world knows the story of the tempest-tossed voyager, who, coming
+upon a strange coast, and seeing a man hanging in chains, hailed it with
+joy, as the sign of a civilized country. In like manner we may hail, as
+a proof of the rapid advancement of civilization and refinement in
+this country, the increasing number of delinquent authors daily gibbeted
+for the edification of the public.
+
+In this respect, as in every other, we are "going ahead" with
+accelerated velocity, and promising to outstrip the superannuated
+countries of Europe. It is really astonishing to see the number of
+tribunals incessantly springing up for the trial of literary offences.
+Independent of the high courts of Oyer and Terminer, the great quarterly
+reviews, we have innumerable minor tribunals, monthly and weekly, down
+to the Pie-poudre courts in the daily papers; insomuch that no culprit
+stands so little chance of escaping castigation, as an unlucky author,
+guilty of an unsuccessful attempt to please the public.
+
+Seriously speaking, however, it is questionable whether our national
+literature is sufficiently advanced, to bear this excess of criticism;
+and whether it would not thrive better, if allowed to spring up, for
+some time longer, in the freshness and vigor of native vegetation. When
+the worthy Judge Coulter, of Virginia, opened court for the first time
+in one of the upper counties, he was for enforcing all the rules and
+regulations that had grown into use in the old, long-settled counties.
+"This is all very well," said a shrewd old farmer; "but let me tell you,
+Judge Coulter, you set your coulter too deep for a new soil."
+
+For my part, I doubt whether either writer or reader is benefited by
+what is commonly called criticism. The former is rendered cautious and
+distrustful; he fears to give way to those kindling emotions, and brave
+sallies of thought, which bear him up to excellence; the latter is made
+fastidious and cynical; or rather, he surrenders his own independent
+taste and judgment, and learns to like and dislike at second hand.
+
+Let us, for a moment, consider the nature of this thing called
+criticism, which exerts such a sway over the literary world. The pronoun
+we, used by critics, has a most imposing and delusive sound. The reader
+pictures to himself a conclave of learned men, deliberating gravely and
+scrupulously on the merits of the book in question; examining it page by
+page, comparing and balancing their opinions, and when they have united
+in a conscientious verdict, publishing it for the benefit of the world:
+whereas the criticism is generally the crude and hasty production of
+an individual, scribbling to while away an idle hour, to oblige a
+book-seller, or to defray current expenses. How often is it the
+passing notion of the hour, affected by accidental circumstances; by
+indisposition, by peevishness, by vapors or indigestion; by personal
+prejudice, or party feeling. Sometimes a work is sacrificed, because
+the reviewer wishes a satirical article; sometimes because he wants
+a humorous one; and sometimes because the author reviewed has become
+offensively celebrated, and offers high game to the literary marksman.
+
+How often would the critic himself, if a conscientious man, reverse his
+opinion, had he time to revise it in a more sunny moment; but the press
+is waiting, the printer's devil is at his elbow; the article is wanted
+to make the requisite variety for the number of the review, or the
+author has pressing occasion for the sum he is to receive for the
+article, so it is sent off, all blotted and blurred; with a shrug of
+the shoulders, and the consolatory ejaculation: "Pshaw! curse it! it's
+nothing but a review!"
+
+The critic, too, who dictates thus oracularly to the world, is perhaps
+some dingy, ill-favored, ill-mannered varlet, who, were he to speak by
+word of mouth, would be disregarded, if not scoffed at; but such is the
+magic of types; such the mystic operation of anonymous writing; such the
+potential effect of the pronoun we, that his crude decisions, fulminated
+through the press, become circulated far and wide, control the opinions
+of the world, and give or destroy reputation.
+
+Many readers have grown timorous in their judgments since the
+all-pervading currency of criticism. They fear to express a revised,
+frank opinion about any new work, and to relish it honestly and
+heartily, lest it should be condemned in the next review, and they stand
+convicted of bad taste. Hence they hedge their opinions, like a gambler
+his bets, and leave an opening to retract, and retreat, and qualify,
+and neutralise every unguarded expression of delight, until their very
+praise declines into a faintness that is damning.
+
+Were every one, on the contrary, to judge for himself, and speak his
+mind frankly and fearlessly, we should have more true criticism in the
+world than at present. Whenever a person is pleased with a work, he may
+be assured that it has good qualities. An author who pleases a variety
+of readers, must possess substantial powers of pleasing; or, in other
+words, intrinsic merits; for otherwise we acknowledge an effect, and
+deny the cause. The reader, therefore, should not suffer himself to be
+readily shaken from the conviction of his own feelings, by the sweeping
+censures of pseudo critics. The author he has admired, may be chargeable
+with a thousand faults; but it is nevertheless beauties and excellencies
+that have excited his admiration; and he should recollect that taste
+and judgment are as much evinced in the perception of beauties among
+defects, as in a detection of defects among beauties. For my part, I
+honor the blessed and blessing spirit that is quick to discover and
+extol all that is pleasing and meritorious. Give me the honest bee, that
+extracts honey from the humblest weed, but save me from the ingenuity
+of the spider, which traces its venom, even in the midst of a
+flower-garden.
+
+If the mere fact of being chargeable with faults and imperfections is to
+condemn an author, who is to escape? The greatest writers of antiquity
+have, in this way, been obnoxious to criticism. Aristotle himself has
+been accused of ignorance; Aristophanes of impiety and buffoonery;
+Virgil of plagiarism, and a want of invention; Horace of obscurity;
+Cicero has been, said to want vigor and connexion, and Demosthenes to
+be deficient in nature, and in purity of language. Yet these have all
+survived the censures of the critic, and flourished on to a glorious
+immortality. Every now and then the world is startled by some new
+doctrines in matters of taste, some levelling attacks on established
+creeds; some sweeping denunciations of whole generations, or schools of
+writers, as they are called, who had seemed to be embalmed and canonized
+in public opinion. Such has been the case, for instance, with Pope, and
+Dryden, and Addison, who for a time have almost been shaken from their
+pedestals, and treated as false idols.
+
+It is singular, also, to see the fickleness of the world with respect
+to its favorites. Enthusiasm exhausts itself, and prepares the way
+for dislike. The public is always for positive sentiments, and new
+sensations. When wearied of admiring, it delights to censure; thus
+coining a double set of enjoyments out of the same subject. Scott and
+Byron are scarce cold in their graves, and already we find criticism
+beginning to call in question those powers which held the world in magic
+thraldom. Even in our own country, one of its greatest geniuses has
+had some rough passages with the censors of the press; and instantly
+criticism begins to unsay all that it has repeatedly said in his praise;
+and the public are almost led to believe that the pen which has so often
+delighted them, is absolutely destitute of the power to delight!
+
+If, then, such reverses in opinion as to matters of taste can be so
+readily brought about, when may an author feel himself secure? Where is
+the anchoring-ground of popularity, when he may thus be driven from his
+moorings, and foundered even in harbor? The reader, too, when he is to
+consider himself safe in admiring, when he sees long-established altars
+overthrown, and his household deities dashed to the ground!
+
+There is one consolatory reflection. Every abuse carries with it its
+own remedy or palliation. Thus the excess of crude and hasty criticism,
+which has of late prevailed throughout the literary world, and
+threatened to overrun our country, begins to produce its own antidote.
+Where there is a multiplicity of contradictory paths, a man must make
+his choice; in so doing, he has to exercise his judgment, and that is
+one great step to mental independence. He begins to doubt all, where all
+differ, and but one can be in the right. He is driven to trust to his
+own discernment, and his natural feelings; and here he is most likely
+to be safe. The author, too, finding that what is condemned at one
+tribunal, is applauded at another, though perplexed for a time, gives
+way at length to the spontaneous impulse of his genius, and the dictates
+of his taste, and writes in the way most natural to himself. It is thus
+that criticism, which by its severity may have held the little world of
+writers in check, may, by its very excess, disarm itself of its terrors,
+and the hardihood of talent become restored.
+
+G.C.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+SPANISH ROMANCE.
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
+
+Sir: I have already given you a legend or two drawn from ancient Spanish
+sources, and may occasionally give you a few more. I love these old
+Spanish themes, especially when they have a dash of the Morisco in them,
+and treat of the times when the Moslems maintained a foot-hold in the
+peninsula. They have a high, spicy, oriental flavor, not to be found in
+any other themes that are merely European. In fact, Spain is a country
+that stands alone in the midst of Europe; severed in habits, manners,
+and modes of thinking, from all its continental neighbors. It is a
+romantic country; but its romance has none of the sentimentality of
+modern European romance: it is chiefly derived from the brilliant
+regions of the East, and from the high-minded school of Saracenic
+chivalry.
+
+The Arab invasion and conquest brought a higher civilization and
+a nobler style of thinking into Gothic Spain. The Arabs were a
+quick-witted, sagacious, proud-spirited, and poetical people, and were
+imbued with oriental science and literature. Wherever they established a
+seat of power, it became a rallying place for the learned and ingenious;
+and they softened and refined the people whom they conquered. By
+degrees, occupancy seemed to give them a hereditary right to their
+foothold in the land; they ceased to be looked upon as invaders, and
+were regarded as rival neighbors. The peninsula, broken up into a
+variety of states, both Christian and Moslem, became for centuries
+a great campaigning ground, where the art of war seemed to be the
+principal business of man, and was carried to the highest pitch of
+romantic chivalry. The original ground of hostility, a difference of
+faith, gradually lost its rancor. Neighboring states, of opposite
+creeds, were occasionally linked together in alliances, offensive and
+defensive; so that the cross and crescent were to be seen side by side
+fighting against some common enemy. In times of peace, too, the noble
+youth of either faith resorted to the same cities, Christian or Moslem,
+to school themselves in military science. Even in the temporary truces
+of sanguinary wars, the warriors who had recently striven together in
+the deadly conflicts of the field, laid aside their animosity, met at
+tournaments, jousts, and other military festivities, and exchanged the
+courtesies of gentle and generous spirits. Thus the opposite races
+became frequently mingled together in peaceful intercourse, or if any
+rivalry took place, it was in those high courtesies and nobler acts
+which bespeak the accomplished cavalier. Warriors of opposite creeds
+became ambitious of transcending each other in magnanimity as well as
+valor. Indeed, the chivalric virtues were refined upon to a degree
+sometimes fastidious and constrained; but at other times, inexpressibly
+noble and affecting. The annals of the times teem with illustrious
+instances of high-wrought courtesy, romantic generosity, lofty
+disinterestedness, and punctilious honor, that warm the very soul to
+read them. These have furnished themes for national plays and poems, or
+have been celebrated in those all-pervading ballads which are as the
+life-breath of the people, and thus have continued to exercise an
+influence on the national character which centuries of vicissitude and
+decline have not been able to destroy; so that, with all their faults,
+and they are many, the Spaniards, even at the present day, are on many
+points the most high-minded and proud-spirited people of Europe.
+It is true, the romance of feeling derived from the sources I have
+mentioned, has, like all other romance, its affectations and extremes.
+It renders the Spaniard at times pompous and grandiloquent; prone to
+carry the "pundonor," or point of honor, beyond the bounds of sober
+sense and sound morality; disposed, in the midst of poverty, to affect
+the "grande caballero," and to look down with sovereign disdain upon
+"arts mechanical," and all the gainful pursuits of plebeian life; but
+this very inflation of spirit, while it fills his brain with vapors,
+lifts him above a thousand meannesses; and though it often keeps him in
+indigence, ever protects him from vulgarity.
+
+In the present day, when popular literature is running into the low
+levels of life and luxuriating on the vices and follies of mankind, and
+when the universal pursuit of gain is trampling down the early growth
+of poetic feeling and wearing out the verdure of the soul, I question
+whether it would not be of service for the reader occasionally to turn
+to these records of prouder times and loftier modes of thinking, and to
+steep himself to the very lips in old Spanish romance.
+
+For my own part, I have a shelf or two of venerable, parchment-bound
+tomes, picked up here and there about the peninsula, and filled with
+chronicles, plays, and ballads, about Moors and Christians, which I keep
+by me as mental tonics, in the same way that a provident housewife has
+her cupboard of cordials. Whenever I find my mind brought below par by
+the commonplace of every-day life, or jarred by the sordid collisions
+of the world, or put out of tune by the shrewd selfishness of modern
+utilitarianism, I resort to these venerable tomes, as did the worthy
+hero of La Mancha to his books of chivalry, and refresh and tone up my
+spirit by a deep draught of their contents. They have some such effect
+upon me as Falstaff ascribes to a good Sherris sack, "warming the blood
+and filling the brain with fiery and delectable shapes."
+
+I here subjoin, Mr. Editor, a small specimen of the cordials I have
+mentioned, just drawn from my Spanish cupboard, which I recommend to
+your palate. If you find it to your taste, you may pass it on to your
+readers.
+
+  Your correspondent and well-wisher,
+  GEOFFREY CRAYON.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LEGEND OF DON MUNIO SANCHO DE HINOJOSA.
+
+BY THE AUTHOR OF THE SKETCH-BOOK.
+
+In the cloisters of the ancient Benedictine convent of San Domingo, at
+Silos, in Castile, are the mouldering yet magnificent monuments of the
+once powerful and chivalrous family of Hinojosa. Among these, reclines
+the marble figure of a knight, in complete armor, with the hands pressed
+together, as if in prayer. On one side of his tomb is sculptured in
+relief a band of Christian cavaliers, capturing a cavalcade of male and
+female Moors; on the other side, the same cavaliers are represented
+kneeling before an altar. The tomb, like most of the neighboring
+monuments, is almost in ruins, and the sculpture is nearly
+unintelligible, excepting to the keen eye of the antiquary. The story
+connected with the sepulchre, however, is still preserved in the old
+Spanish chronicles, and is to the following purport.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In old times, several hundred years ago, there was a noble Castilian
+cavalier, named Don Munio Sancho de Hinojosa, lord of a border castle,
+which had stood the brunt of many a Moorish foray. He had seventy
+horsemen as his household troops, all of the ancient Castilian proof;
+stark warriors, hard riders, and men of iron; with these he scoured the
+Moorish lands, and made his name terrible throughout the borders. His
+castle hall was covered with banners, and scimitars, and Moslem helms,
+the trophies of his prowess. Don Munio was, moreover, a keen huntsman;
+and rejoiced in hounds of all kinds, steeds for the chase, and hawks for
+the towering sport of falconry. When not engaged in warfare, his delight
+was to beat up the neighboring forests; and scarcely ever did he ride
+forth, without hound and horn, a boar-spear in his hand, or a hawk upon
+his fist, and an attendant train of huntsmen.
+
+His wife, Donna Maria Palacin, was of a gentle and timid nature, little
+fitted to be the spouse of so hardy and adventurous a knight; and many
+a tear did the poor lady shed, when he sallied forth upon his daring
+enterprises, and many a prayer did she offer up for his safety.
+
+As this doughty cavalier was one day hunting, he stationed himself in a
+thicket, on the borders of a green glade of the forest, and dispersed
+his followers to rouse the game, and drive it toward his stand. He had
+not been here long, when a cavalcade of Moors, of both sexes, came
+prankling over the forest lawn. They were unarmed, and magnificently
+dressed in robes of tissue and embroidery, rich shawls of India,
+bracelets and anklets of gold, and jewels that sparkled in the sun.
+
+At the head of this gay cavalcade, rode a youthful cavalier, superior
+to the rest in dignity and loftiness of demeanor, and in splendor of
+attire; beside him was a damsel, whose veil, blown aside by the breeze,
+displayed a face of surpassing beauty, and eyes cast down in maiden
+modesty, yet beaming with tenderness and joy.
+
+Don Munio thanked his stars for sending him such a prize, and exulted at
+the thought of bearing home to his wife the glittering spoils of these
+infidels. Putting his hunting-horn to his lips, he gave a blast that
+rung through the forest. His huntsmen came running from all quarters,
+and the astonished Moors were surrounded and made captives.
+
+The beautiful Moor wrung her hands in despair, and her female attendants
+uttered the most piercing cries. The young Moorish cavalier alone
+retained self-possession. He inquired the name of the Christian knight,
+who commanded this troop of horsemen. When told that it was Don Munio
+Sancho de Hinojosa, his countenance lighted up. Approaching that
+cavalier, and kissing his hand, "Don Munio Sancho," said he, "I have
+heard of your fame as a true and valiant knight, terrible in arms, but
+schooled in the noble virtues of chivalry. Such do I trust to find you.
+In me you behold Abadil, son of a Moorish Alcayde. I am on the way to
+celebrate my nuptials with this lady; chance has thrown us in your
+power, but I confide in your magnanimity. Take all our treasure and
+jewels; demand what ransom you think proper for our person, but suffer
+us not to be insulted or dishonored."
+
+When the good knight heard this appeal, and beheld the beauty of the
+youthful pair, his heart was touched with tenderness and courtesy.
+"God forbid," said he, "that I should disturb such happy nuptials. My
+prisoners in troth shall ye be, for fifteen days, and immured within
+my castle, where I claim, as conqueror, the right of celebrating your
+espousals."
+
+So saying, he despatched one of his fleetest horsemen in advance, to
+notify Donna Maria Palacin of the coming of this bridal party; while he
+and his huntsmen escorted the cavalcade, not as captors, but as a guard
+of honor. As they drew near to the castle, the banners were hung out,
+and the trumpets sounded from the battlements; and on their nearer
+approach, the draw-bridge was lowered, and Donna Maria came forth
+to meet them, attended by her ladies and knights, her pages and her
+minstrels. She took the young bride, Allifra, in her arms, kissed her
+with the tenderness of a sister, and conducted her into the castle. In
+the mean time, Don Munio sent forth missives in every direction, and had
+viands and dainties of all kinds collected from the country round; and
+the wedding of the Moorish lovers was celebrated with all possible state
+and festivity. For fifteen days, the castle was given up to joy and
+revelry. There were tiltings and jousts at the ring, and bullfights, and
+banquets, and dances to the sound of minstrelsy. When the fifteen days
+were at an end, he made the bride and bridegroom magnificent presents,
+and conducted them and their attendants safely beyond the borders. Such,
+in old times, were the courtesy and generosity of a Spanish cavalier.
+
+Several years after this event, the King of Castile summoned his nobles
+to assist him in a campaign against the Moors. Don Munio Sancho was
+among the first to answer to the call, with seventy horsemen, all
+staunch and well-tried warriors. His wife, Donna Maria, hung about his
+neck. "Alas, my lord!" exclaimed she, "how often wilt thou tempt thy
+fate, and when will thy thirst for glory be appeased?"
+
+"One battle more," replied Don Munio, "one battle more, for the honor of
+Castile, and I here make a vow, that when this is over, I will lay by my
+sword, and repair with my cavaliers in pilgrimage to the sepulchre of
+our Lord at Jerusalem." The cavaliers all joined with him in the vow,
+and Donna Maria felt in some degree soothed in spirit: still, she saw
+with a heavy heart the departure of her husband, and watched his banner
+with wistful eyes, until it disappeared among the trees of the forest,
+
+The King of Castile led his army to the plains of Almanara, where they
+encountered the Moorish host, near to Ucles. The battle was long and
+bloody; the Christians repeatedly wavered, and were as often rallied by
+the energy of their commanders. Don Munio was covered with wounds, but
+refused to leave the field. The Christians at length gave way, and the
+king was hardly pressed, and in danger of being captured.
+
+Don Munio called upon his cavaliers to follow him to the rescue. "Now is
+the time," cried he, "to prove your loyalty. Fall to, like brave men!
+We fight for the true faith, and if we lose our lives here, we gain a
+better life hereafter."
+
+Rushing with his men between the king and his pursuers, they checked the
+latter in their career, and gave time for their monarch to escape; but
+they fell victims to their loyalty. They all fought to the last gasp.
+Don Munio was singled out by a powerful Moorish knight, but having been
+wounded in the right arm, he fought to disadvantage, and was slain. The
+battle being over, the Moor paused to possess himself of the spoils of
+this redoubtable Christian warrior. When he unlaced the helmet, however,
+and beheld the countenance of Don Munio, he gave a great cry, and smote
+his breast. "Woe is me!" cried he: "I have slain my benefactor! The
+flower of knightly virtue! the most magnanimous of cavaliers!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While the battle had been raging on the plain of Salmanara, Donna Maria
+Palacin remained in her castle, a prey to the keenest anxiety. Her eyes
+were ever fixed on the road that led from the country of the Moors, and
+often she asked the watchman of the tower, "What seest thou?"
+
+One evening, at the shadowy hour of twilight, the warden sounded his
+horn. "I see," cried he, "a numerous train winding up the valley. There
+are mingled Moors and Christians. The banner of my lord is in the
+advance. Joyful tidings!" exclaimed the old seneschal: "my lord returns
+in triumph, and brings captives!" Then the castle courts rang with
+shouts of joy; and the standard was displayed, and the trumpets were
+sounded, and the draw-bridge was lowered, and Donna Maria went forth
+with her ladies, and her knights, and her pages, and her minstrels, to
+welcome her lord from the wars. But as the train drew nigh, she beheld a
+sumptuous bier, covered with black velvet, and on it lay a warrior, as
+if taking his repose: he lay in his armor, with his helmet on his head,
+and his sword in his hand, as one who had never been conquered, and
+around the bier were the escutcheons of the house of Hinojosa.
+
+A number of Moorish cavaliers attended the bier, with emblems of
+mourning, and with dejected countenances: and their leader cast himself
+at the feet of Donna Maria, and hid his face in his hands. She beheld in
+him the gallant Abadil, whom she had once welcomed with his bride to
+her castle, but who now came with the body of her lord, whom he had
+unknowingly slain in battle!
+
+The sepulchre erected in the cloisters of the Convent of San Domingo was
+achieved at the expense of the Moor Abadil, as a feeble testimony of his
+grief for the death of the good knight Don Munio, and his reverence for
+his memory. The tender and faithful Donna Maria soon followed her lord
+to the tomb. On one of the stones of a small arch, beside his sepulchre,
+is the following simple inscription: "_Hic jacet Maria Palacin, uxor
+Munonis Sancij de Finojosa_:" Here lies Maria Palacin, wife of Munio
+Sancho de Hinojosa.
+
+The legend of Don Munio Sancho does not conclude with his death. On the
+same day on which the battle took place on the plain of Salmanara, a
+chaplain of the Holy Temple at Jerusalem, while standing at the outer
+gate, beheld a train of Christian cavaliers advancing, as if in
+pilgrimage. The chaplain was a native of Spain, and as the pilgrims
+approached, he knew the foremost to be Don Munio Sancho de Hinojosa,
+with whom he had been well acquainted in former times. Hastening to the
+patriarch, he told him of the honorable rank of the pilgrims at the
+gate. The patriarch, therefore, went forth with a grand procession of
+priests and monks, and received the pilgrims with all due honor. There
+were seventy cavaliers, beside their leader, all stark and lofty
+warriors. They carried their helmets in their hands, and their faces
+were deadly pale. They greeted no one, nor looked either to the right or
+to the left, but entered the chapel, and kneeling before the Sepulchre
+of our Saviour, performed their orisons in silence. When they had
+concluded, they rose as if to depart, and the patriarch and his
+attendants advanced to speak to them, but they were no more to be seen.
+Every one marvelled what could be the meaning of this prodigy. The
+patriarch carefully noted down the day, and sent to Castile to learn
+tidings of Don Munio Sancho de Hinojosa. He received for reply, that
+on the very day specified, that worthy knight, with seventy of his
+followers, had been slain in battle. These, therefore, must have been
+the blessed spirits of those Christian warriors, come to fulfil their
+vow of a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. Such was
+Castilian faith, in the olden time, which kept its word, even beyond the
+grave.
+
+If any one should doubt of the miraculous apparition of these phantom
+knights, let him consult the History of the Kings of Castile and Leon,
+by the learned and pious Fray Prudencio de Sandoval, Bishop of Pamplona,
+where he will find it recorded in the History of the King Don Alonzo
+VI., on the hundred and second page. It is too precious a legend to be
+lightly abandoned to the doubter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+COMMUNIPAW.
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
+
+Sir: I observe, with pleasure, that you are performing from time to time
+a pious duty, imposed upon you, I may say, by the name you have adopted
+as your titular standard, in following in the footsteps of the venerable
+KNICKERBOCKER, and gleaning every fact concerning the early times of the
+Manhattoes which may have escaped his hand. I trust, therefore, a few
+particulars, legendary and statistical, concerning a place which
+figures conspicuously in the early pages of his history, will not be
+unacceptable. I allude, Sir, to the ancient and renowned village of
+Communipaw, which, according to the veracious Diedrich, and to equally
+veracious tradition, was the first spot where our ever-to-be-lamented
+Dutch progenitors planted their standard and cast the seeds of empire,
+and from whence subsequently sailed the memorable expedition under
+Oloffe the Dreamer, which landed on the opposite island of Manhatta,
+and founded the present city of New-York, the city of dreams and
+speculations.
+
+Communipaw, therefore, may truly be called the parent of New-York; yet
+it is an astonishing fact, that though immediately opposite to the great
+city it has produced, from whence its red roofs and tin weather-cocks
+can actually be descried peering above the surrounding apple orchards,
+it should be almost as rarely visited, and as little known by the
+inhabitants of the metropolis, as if it had been locked up among the
+Rocky Mountains. Sir, I think there is something unnatural in this,
+especially in these times of ramble and research, when our citizens are
+antiquity-hunting in every part of the world. Curiosity, like charity,
+should begin at home; and I would enjoin it on our worthy burghers,
+especially those of the real Knickerbocker breed, before they send their
+sons abroad to wonder and grow wise among the remains of Greece and
+Rome, to let them make a tour of ancient Pavonia, from Weehawk even
+to the Kills, and meditate, with filial reverence, on the moss-grown
+mansions of Communipaw. Sir, I regard this much neglected village as one
+of the most remarkable places in the country. The intelligent traveller,
+as he looks down upon it from the Bergen Heights, modestly nestled among
+its cabbage-gardens, while the great flaunting city it has begotten is
+stretching far and wide on the opposite side of the bay, the intelligent
+traveller, I say, will be filled with astonishment; not, Sir, at the
+village of Communipaw, which in truth is a very small village, but at
+the almost incredible fact that so small a village should have produced
+so great a city. It looks to him, indeed, like some squat little
+dame, with a tall grenadier of a son strutting by her side; or some
+simple-hearted hen that has unwittingly hatched out a long-legged
+turkey.
+
+But this is not all for which Communipaw is remarkable. Sir, it is
+interesting on another account. It is to the ancient province of
+the New-Netherlands and the classic era of the Dutch dynasty, what
+Herculaneum and Pompeii are to ancient Rome and the glorious days of the
+empire. Here every thing remains in statu quo, as it was in the days of
+Oloffe the Dreamer, Walter the Doubter, and the other worthies of the
+golden age; the same broad-brimmed hats and broad-bottomed breeches;
+the same knee-buckles and shoe-buckles; the same close-quilled caps
+and linsey-woolsey short-gowns and petticoats; the same implements and
+utensils and forms and fashions; in a word, Communipaw at the present
+day is a picture of what New-Amsterdam was before the conquest. The
+"intelligent traveller" aforesaid, as he treads its streets, is struck
+with the primitive character of every thing around him. Instead of
+Grecian temples for dwelling-houses, with a great column of pine boards
+in the way of every window, he beholds high peaked roofs, gable ends
+to the street, with weather-cocks at top, and windows of all sorts and
+sizes; large ones for the grown-up members of the family, and little
+ones for the little folk. Instead of cold marble porches, with
+close-locked doors and brass knockers, he sees the doors hospitably
+open; the worthy burgher smoking his pipe on the old-fashioned stoop in
+front, with his "vrouw" knitting beside him; and the cat and her kittens
+at their feet sleeping in the sunshine.
+
+Astonished at the obsolete and "old world" air of every thing around
+him, the intelligent traveller demands how all this has come to pass.
+Herculaneum and Pompeii remain, it is true, unaffected by the varying
+fashions of centuries; but they were buried by a volcano and preserved
+in ashes. What charmed spell has kept this wonderful little place
+unchanged, though in sight of the most changeful city in the universe?
+Has it, too, been buried under its cabbage-gardens, and only dug out
+in modern days for the wonder and edification of the world? The reply
+involves a point of history, worthy of notice and record, and reflecting
+immortal honor on Communipaw.
+
+At the time when New-Amsterdam was invaded and conquered by British
+foes, as has been related in the history of the venerable Diedrich, a
+great dispersion took place among the Dutch inhabitants. Many, like the
+illustrious Peter Stuyvesant, buried themselves in rural retreats in the
+Bowerie; others, like Wolfert Acker, took refuge in various remote
+parts of the Hudson; but there was one staunch, unconquerable band that
+determined to keep together, and preserve themselves, like seed corn,
+for the future fructification and perpetuity of the Knickerbocker race.
+These were headed by one Garret Van Horne, a gigantic Dutchman, the
+Pelayo of the New-Netherlands. Under his guidance, they retreated across
+the bay and buried themselves among the marshes of ancient Pavonia, as
+did the followers of Pelayo among the mountains of Asturias, when Spain
+was overrun by its Arabian invaders.
+
+The gallant Van Horne set up his standard at Communipaw, and invited
+all those to rally under it, who were true Nederlanders at heart, and
+determined to resist all foreign intermixture or encroachment. A strict
+non-intercourse was observed with the captured city; not a boat ever
+crossed to it from Communipaw, and the English language was rigorously
+tabooed throughout the village and its dependencies. Every man was sworn
+to wear his hat, cut his coat, build his house, and harness his horses,
+exactly as his father had done before him; and to permit nothing but the
+Dutch language to be spoken in his household.
+
+As a citadel of the place, and a strong-hold for the preservation and
+defence of every thing Dutch, the gallant Van Horne erected a lordly
+mansion, with a chimney perched at every corner, which thence derived
+the aristocratical name of "The House of the Four Chimneys." Hither he
+transferred many of the precious reliques of New-Amsterdam; the great
+round-crowned hat that once covered the capacious head of Walter the
+Doubter, and the identical shoe with which Peter the Headstrong kicked
+his pusillanimous councillors down-stairs. St. Nicholas, it is said,
+took this loyal house under his especial protection; and a Dutch
+soothsayer predicted, that as long as it should stand, Communipaw would
+be safe from the intrusion either of Briton or Yankee.
+
+In this house would the gallant Van Home and his compeers hold frequent
+councils of war, as to the possibility of re-conquering the province
+from the British; and here would they sit for hours, nay, days, together
+smoking their pipes and keeping watch upon the growing city of New-York;
+groaning in spirit whenever they saw a new house erected or ship
+launched, and persuading themselves that Admiral Van Tromp would one
+day or other arrive to sweep out the invaders with the broom which he
+carried at his mast-head.
+
+Years rolled by, but Van Tromp never arrived. The British strengthened
+themselves in the land, and the captured city flourished under their
+domination. Still, the worthies of Communipaw would not despair;
+something or other, they were sure, would turn up to restore the power
+of the Hogen Mogens, the Lord States-General; so they kept smoking and
+smoking, and watching and watching, and turning the same few thoughts
+over and over in a perpetual circle, which is commonly called
+deliberating. In the mean time, being hemmed up within a narrow compass,
+between the broad bay and the Bergen hills, they grew poorer and poorer,
+until they had scarce the wherewithal to maintain their pipes in fuel
+during their endless deliberations.
+
+And now must I relate a circumstance which will call for a little
+exertion of faith on the part of the reader; but I can only say that if
+he doubts it, he had better not utter his doubts in Communipaw, as it is
+among the religious beliefs of the place. It is, in fact, nothing more
+nor less than a miracle, worked by the blessed St. Nicholas, for the
+relief and sustenance of this loyal community.
+
+It so happened, in this time of extremity, that in the course of
+cleaning the House of the Four Chimneys, by an ignorant housewife who
+knew nothing of the historic value of the reliques it contained, the old
+hat of Walter the Doubter and the executive shoe of Peter the Headstrong
+were thrown out of doors as rubbish. But mark the consequence. The good
+St. Nicholas kept watch over these precious reliques, and wrought out of
+them a wonderful providence.
+
+The hat of Walter the Doubter falling on a stercoraceous heap of
+compost, in the rear of the house, began forthwith to vegetate. Its
+broad brim, spread forth grandly and exfoliated, and its round crown
+swelled and crimped and consolidated until the whole became a prodigious
+cabbage, rivalling in magnitude the capacious head of the Doubter. In a
+word, it was the origin of that renowned species of cabbage known, by
+all Dutch epicures, by the name of the Governor's Head, and which is to
+this day the glory of Communipaw.
+
+On the other hand, the shoe of Peter Stuyvesant being thrown into the
+river, in front of the house, gradually hardened and concreted, and
+became covered with barnacles, and at length turned into a gigantic
+oyster; being the progenitor of that illustrious species known
+throughout the gastronomical world by the name of the Governor's Foot.
+
+These miracles were the salvation of Communipaw. The sages of the place
+immediately saw in them the hand of St. Nicholas, and understood their
+mystic signification. They set to work with all diligence to cultivate
+and multiply these great blessings; and so abundantly did the
+gubernatorial hat and shoe fructify and increase, that in a little time
+great patches of cabbages were to be seen extending from the village of
+Communipaw quite to the Bergen Hills; while the whole bottom of the
+bay in front became a vast bed of oysters. Ever since that time this
+excellent community has been divided into two great classes: those who
+cultivate the land and those who cultivate the water. The former have
+devoted themselves to the nurture and edification of cabbages, rearing
+them in all their varieties; while the latter have formed parks and
+plantations, under water, to which juvenile oysters are transplanted
+from foreign parts, to finish their education.
+
+As these great sources of profit multiplied upon their hands, the worthy
+inhabitants of Communipaw began to long for a market at which to
+dispose of their superabundance. This gradually produced once more an
+intercourse with New-York; but it was always carried on by the old
+people and the negroes; never would they permit the young folks, of
+either sex, to visit the city, lest they should get tainted with foreign
+manners and bring home foreign fashions. Even to this day, if you see an
+old burgher in the market, with hat and garb of antique Dutch fashion,
+you may be sure he is one of the old unconquered race of the "bitter
+blood," who maintain their strong-hold at Communipaw.
+
+In modern days, the hereditary bitterness against the English has lost
+much of its asperity, or rather has become merged in a new source of
+jealousy and apprehension: I allude to the incessant and wide-spreading
+irruptions from New-England. Word has been continually brought back to
+Communipaw, by those of the community who return from their trading
+voyages in cabbages and oysters, of the alarming power which the Yankees
+are gaining in the ancient city of New-Amsterdam; elbowing the genuine
+Knickerbockers out of all civic posts of honor and profit; bargaining
+them out of their hereditary homesteads; pulling down the venerable
+houses, with crow-step gables, which have stood since the time of the
+Dutch rule, and erecting, instead, granite stores, and marble banks; in
+a word, evincing a deadly determination to obliterate every vestige of
+the good old Dutch times.
+
+In consequence of the jealousy thus awakened, the worthy traders from
+Communipaw confine their dealings, as much as possible, to the genuine
+Dutch families. If they furnish the Yankees at all, it is with inferior
+articles. Never can the latter procure a real "Governor's Head," or
+"Governor's Foot," though they have offered extravagant prices for the
+same, to grace their table on the annual festival of the New-England
+Society.
+
+But what has carried this hostility to the Yankees to the highest pitch,
+was an attempt made by that all-pervading race to get possession of
+Communipaw itself. Yes, Sir; during the late mania for land speculation,
+a daring company of Yankee projectors landed before the village; stopped
+the honest burghers on the public highway, and endeavored to bargain
+them out of their hereditary acres; displayed lithographic maps,
+in which their cabbage-gardens were laid out into town lots: their
+oyster-parks into docks and quays; and even the House of the Four
+Chimneys metamorphosed into a bank, which was to enrich the whole
+neighborhood with paper money.
+
+Fortunately, the gallant Van Hornes came to the rescue, just as some of
+the worthy burghers were on the point of capitulating. The Yankees were
+put to the rout, with signal confusion, and have never since dared to
+show their faces in the place. The good people continue to cultivate
+their cabbages, and rear their oysters; they know nothing of banks, nor
+joint stock companies, but treasure up their money in stocking-feet, at
+the bottom of the family chest, or bury it in iron pots, as did their
+fathers and grandfathers before them.
+
+As to the House of the Four Chimneys, it still remains in the great and
+tall family of the Van Hornes. Here are to be seen ancient Dutch corner
+cupboards, chests of drawers, and massive clothes-presses, quaintly
+carved, and carefully waxed and polished; together with divers thick,
+black-letter volumes, with brass clasps, printed of yore in Leydon and
+Amsterdam, and handed down from generation to generation, in the family,
+but never read. They are preserved in the archives, among sundry old
+parchment deeds, in Dutch and English, bearing the seals of the early
+governors of the province.
+
+In this house, the primitive Dutch holidays of Paas and Pinxter
+are faithfully kept up; and New-Year celebrated with cookies and
+cherry-bounce; nor is the festival of the blessed St. Nicholas
+forgotten, when all the children are sure to hang up their stockings,
+and to have them filled according to their deserts; though, it is said,
+the good saint is occasionally perplexed in his nocturnal visits, which
+chimney to descend.
+
+Of late, this portentous mansion has begun to give signs of dilapidation
+and decay. Some have attributed this to the visits made by the young
+people to the city, and their bringing thence various modern fashions;
+and to their neglect of the Dutch language, which is gradually becoming
+confined to the older persons in the community. The house, too, was
+greatly shaken by high winds, during the prevalence of the speculation
+mania, especially at the time of the landing of the Yankees. Seeing how
+mysteriously the fate of Communipaw is identified with this venerable
+mansion, we cannot wonder that the older and wiser heads of the
+community should be filled with dismay, whenever a brick is toppled
+down from one of the chimneys, or a weather-cock is blown off from a
+gable-end.
+
+The present lord of this historic pile, I am happy to say, is calculated
+to maintain it in all its integrity. He is of patriarchal age, and is
+worthy of the days of the patriarchs. He has done his utmost to increase
+and multiply the true race in the land. His wife has not been inferior
+to him in zeal, and they are surrounded by a goodly progeny of children,
+and grand-children, and great-grand-children, who promise to perpetuate
+the name of Van Horne, until time shall be no more. So be it! Long may
+the horn of the Van Hornes continue to be exalted in the land! Tall as
+they are, may their shadows never be less! May the House of the Four
+Chimneys remain for ages, the citadel of Communipaw, and the smoke of
+its chimneys continue to ascend, a sweet-smelling incense in the hose of
+St. Nicholas!
+
+With great respect, Mr. Editor,
+
+Your ob't servant,
+
+HERMANUS VANDERDONK.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+CONSPIRACY OF THE COCKED HATS.
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
+
+Sir: I have read with great satisfaction the valuable paper of your
+correspondent, Mr. HERMANUS VANDERDONK, (who, I take it, is a descendant
+of the learned Adrian Vanderdonk, one of the early historians of the
+Nieuw-Nederlands,) giving sundry particulars, legendary and statistical,
+touching the venerable village of Communipaw and its fate-bound citadel,
+the House of the Four Chimneys. It goes to prove what I have repeatedly
+maintained, that we live in the midst of history and mystery and
+romance; and that there is no spot in the world more rich in themes for
+the writer of historic novels, heroic melodramas, and rough-shod epics,
+than this same business-looking city of the Manhattoes and its environs.
+He who would find these elements, however, must not seek them among the
+modern improvements and modern people of this moneyed metropolis, but
+must dig for them, as for Kidd the pirate's treasures, in out-of-the-way
+places, and among the ruins of the past.
+
+Poetry and romance received a fatal blow at the overthrow of the ancient
+Dutch dynasty, and have ever since been gradually withering under the
+growing domination of the Yankees. They abandoned our hearths when the
+old Dutch tiles were superseded by marble chimney-pieces; when brass
+andirons made way for polished grates, and the crackling and blazing
+fire of nut-wood gave place to the smoke and stench of Liverpool coal;
+and on the downfall of the last gable-end house, their requiem was
+tolled from the tower of the Dutch church in Nassau-street by the old
+bell that came from Holland. But poetry and romance still live unseen
+among us, or seen only by the enlightened few, who are able to
+contemplate this city and its environs through the medium of tradition,
+and clothed with the associations of foregone ages.
+
+Would you seek these elements in the country, Mr. Editor, avoid all
+turnpikes, rail-roads, and steamboats, those abominable inventions by
+which the usurping Yankees are strengthening themselves in the land, and
+subduing every thing to utility and common-place. Avoid all towns and
+cities of white clapboard palaces and Grecian temples, studded with
+"Academics," "Seminaries," and "Institutes," which glisten along our
+bays and rivers; these are the strong-holds of Yankee usurpation; but if
+haply you light upon some rough, rambling road, winding between stone
+fences, gray with moss, and overgrown with elder, poke-berry, mullein,
+and sweet-briar, with here and there a low, red-roofed, whitewashed
+farm-house, cowering among apple and cherry trees; an old stone church,
+with elms, willows, and button-woods, as old-looking as itself, and
+tombstones almost buried in their own graves; and, peradventure, a small
+log school-house at a cross-road, where the English is still taught with
+a thickness of the tongue, instead of a twang of the nose; should you,
+I say, light upon such a neighborhood, Mr. Editor, you may thank your
+stars that you have found one of the lingering haunts of poetry and
+romance.
+
+Your correspondent, Sir, has touched upon that sublime and affecting
+feature in the history of Communipaw, the retreat of the patriotic band
+of Nederlanders, led by Van Horne, whom he justly terms the Pelayo of
+the New-Netherlands. He has given you a picture of the manner in which
+they ensconced themselves in the House of the Four Chimneys, and awaited
+with heroic patience and perseverance the day that should see the flag
+of the Hogen Mogens once more floating on the fort of New-Amsterdam.
+
+Your correspondent, Sir, has but given you a glimpse over the threshold;
+I will now let you into the heart of the mystery of this most mysterious
+and eventful village.
+
+  Yes, sir, I will now--"unclasp a secret book;
+  And to your quick conceiving discontents,
+  I'll read you matter deep and dangerous,
+  As full of peril and adventurous spirit,
+  As to o'er walk a current, roaring loud,
+  On the unsteadfast footing of a spear."
+
+Sir, it is one of the most beautiful and interesting facts connected
+with the history of Communipaw, that the early feeling of resistance to
+foreign rule, alluded to by your correspondent, is still kept up. Yes,
+sir, a settled, secret, and determined conspiracy has been going on
+for generations among this indomitable people, the descendants of the
+refugees from New-Amsterdam; the object of which is to redeem their
+ancient seat of empire, and to drive the losel Yankees out of the land.
+
+Communipaw, it is true, has the glory of originating this conspiracy;
+and it was hatched and reared in the House of the Four Chimneys; but it
+has spread far and wide over ancient Pavonia, surmounted the heights of
+Bergen, Hoboken, and Weehawk, crept up along the banks of the Passaic
+and the Hackensack, until it pervades the whole chivalry of the country
+from Tappan Slote in the north to Piscataway in the south, including the
+pugnacious village of Rahway, more heroically denominated Spank-town.
+
+Throughout all these regions a great "in-and-in confederacy" prevails,
+that is to say, a confederacy among the Dutch families, by dint of
+diligent and exclusive intermarriage, to keep the race pure and to
+multiply. If ever, Mr. Editor, in the course of your travels between
+Spank-town and Tappan Slote, you should see a cosey, low-eaved
+farm-house, teeming with sturdy, broad-built little urchins, you may set
+it down as one of the breeding places of this grand secret confederacy,
+stocked with the embryo deliverers of New-Amsterdam.
+
+Another step in the progress of this patriotic conspiracy, is the
+establishment, in various places within the ancient boundaries of the
+Nieuw-Nederlands, of secret, or rather mysterious associations, composed
+of the genuine sons of the Nederlanders, with the ostensible object of
+keeping up the memory of old times and customs, but with the real object
+of promoting the views of this dark and mighty plot, and extending its
+ramifications throughout the land.
+
+Sir, I am descended from a long line of genuine Nederlanders, who,
+though they remained in the city of New-Amsterdam after the conquest,
+and throughout the usurpation, have never in their hearts been able to
+tolerate the yoke imposed upon them. My worthy father, who was one of
+the last of the cocked hats, had a little knot of cronies, of his own
+stamp, who used to meet in our wainscoted parlor, round a nut-wood fire,
+talk over old times, when the city was ruled by its native burgomasters,
+and groan over the monopoly of all places of power and profit by the
+Yankees. I well recollect the effect upon this worthy little conclave,
+when the Yankees first instituted then New-England Society, held their
+"national festival," toasted their "father land," and sang their foreign
+songs of triumph within the very precincts of our ancient metropolis.
+Sir, from that day, my father held the smell of codfish and potatoes,
+and the sight of pumpkin pie, in utter abomination; and whenever the
+annual dinner of the New-England Society came round, it was a sore
+anniversary for his children. He got up in an ill humor, grumbled and
+growled throughout the day, and not one of us went to bed that night,
+without having had his jacket well trounced, to the tune of "The Pilgrim
+Fathers."
+
+You may judge, then, Mr. Editor, of the exaltation of all true patriots
+of this stamp, when the Society of Saint Nicholas was set up among us,
+and intrepidly established, cheek by jole, alongside of the society of
+the invaders. Never shall I forget the effect upon my father and his
+little knot of brother groaners, when tidings were brought them that the
+ancient banner of the Manhattoes was actually floating from the window
+of the City Hotel. Sir, they nearly jumped out of their silver-buckled
+shoes for joy. They took down their cocked hats from the pegs on which
+they had hanged them, as the Israelites of yore hung their harps upon
+the willows, in token of bondage, clapped them resolutely once more upon
+their heads, and cocked them in the face of every Yankee they met on the
+way to the banqueting-room.
+
+The institution of this society was hailed with transport throughout the
+whole extent of the New-Netherlands; being considered a secret foothold
+gained in New-Amsterdam, and a flattering presage of future triumph.
+Whenever that society holds its annual feast, a sympathetic hilarity
+prevails throughout the land; ancient Pavonia sends over its
+contributions of cabbages and oysters; the House of the Four Chimneys is
+splendidly illuminated, and the traditional song of St. Nicholas, the
+mystic bond of union and conspiracy, is chaunted with closed doors, in
+every genuine Dutch family.
+
+I have thus, I trust, Mr. Editor, opened your eyes to some of the grand
+moral, poetical, and political phenomena with which you are surrounded.
+You will now be able to read the "signs of the times." You will
+now understand what is meant by those "Knickerbocker Halls," and
+"Knickerbocker Hotels," and "Knickerbocker Lunches," that are daily
+springing up in our city and what all these "Knickerbocker Omnibuses"
+are driving at. You will see in them so many clouds before a storm; so
+many mysterious but sublime intimations of the gathering vengeance of a
+great though oppressed people. Above all, you will now contemplate
+our bay and its portentous borders, with proper feelings of awe and
+admiration. Talk of the Bay of Naples, and its volcanic mountains! Why,
+Sir, little Communipaw, sleeping among its cabbage gardens, "quiet as
+gunpowder," yet with this tremendous conspiracy brewing in its bosom is
+an object ten times as sublime (in a moral point of view, mark me) as
+Vesuvius in repose, though charged with lava and brimstone, and ready
+for an eruption.
+
+Let me advert to a circumstance connected with this theme, which
+cannot but be appreciated by every heart of sensibility. You must have
+remarked, Mr. Editor, on summer evenings, and on Sunday afternoons,
+certain grave, primitive-looking personages, walking the Battery, in
+close confabulation, with their canes behind their backs, and ever and
+anon turning a wistful gaze toward the Jersey shore. These, Sir, are the
+sons of Saint Nicholas, the genuine Nederlanders; who regard Communipaw
+with pious reverence, not merely as the progenitor, but the destined
+regenerator, of this great metropolis. Yes, Sir; they are looking with
+longing eyes to the green marshes of ancient Pavonia, as did the poor
+conquered Spaniards of yore toward the stern mountains of Asturias,
+wondering whether the day of deliverance is at hand. Many is the time,
+when, in my boyhood, I have walked with my father and his confidential
+compeers on the Battery, and listened to their calculations and
+conjectures, and observed the points of their sharp cocked hats evermore
+turned toward Pavonia. Nay, Sir, I am convinced that at this moment, if
+I were to take down the cocked hat of my lamented father from the peg on
+which it has hung for years, and were to carry it to the Battery, its
+centre point, true as the needle to the pole, would turn to Communipaw.
+
+Mr. Editor, the great historic drama of New-Amsterdam, is but half
+acted. The reigns of Walter the Doubter, William the Testy, and Peter
+the Headstrong, with the rise, progress, and decline of the Dutch
+dynasty, are but so many parts of the main action, the triumphant
+catastrophe of which is yet to come. Yes, Sir! the deliverance of
+the New-Nederlands from Yankee domination will eclipse the far-famed
+redemption of Spain from the Moors, and the oft-sung conquest of Granada
+will fade before the chivalrous triumph of New-Amsterdam. Would that
+Peter Stuyvesant could rise from his grave to witness that day!
+
+Your humble servant,
+
+ROLOFF VAN RIPPER.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+P. S. Just as I had concluded the foregoing epistle, I received a piece
+of intelligence, which makes me tremble for the fate of Communipaw.
+I fear, Mr. Editor, the grand conspiracy is in danger of being
+countermined and counteracted, by those all-pervading and
+indefatigable Yankees. Would you think it, Sir! one of them has actually
+effected an entry in the place by covered way; or in other words, under
+cover of the petticoats. Finding every other mode ineffectual, he
+secretly laid siege to a Dutch heiress, who owns a great cabbage-garden
+in her own right. Being a smooth-tongued varlet, he easily prevailed on
+her to elope with him, and they were privately married at Spank-town!
+The first notice the good people of Communipaw had of this awful event,
+was a lithographed map of the cabbage garden laid out in town lots, and
+advertised for sale! On the night of the wedding, the main weather-cock
+of the House of the Four Chimneys was carried away in a whirlwind! The
+greatest consternation reigns throughout the village!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A LEGEND OF COMMUNIPAW.
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER MAGAZINE.
+
+Sir: I observed in your last month's periodical, a communication from
+a Mr. VANDERDONK, giving some information concerning Communipaw. I
+herewith send you, Mr. Editor, a legend connected with that place; and
+am much surprised it should have escaped the researches of your very
+authentic correspondent, as it relates to an edifice scarcely less fated
+than the House of the Four Chimneys. I give you the legend in its crude
+and simple state, as I heard it related; it is capable, however, of
+being dilated, inflated, and dressed up into very imposing shape and
+dimensions. Should any of your ingenious contributors in this line feel
+inclined to take it in hand, they will find ample materials, collateral
+and illustrative, among the papers of the late Reinier Skaats, many
+years since crier of the court, and keeper of the City Hall, in the
+city of the Manhattoes; or in the library of that important and utterly
+renowned functionary, Mr. Jacob Hays, long time high constable, who,
+in the course of his extensive researches, has amassed an amount of
+valuable facts, to be rivalled only by that great historical collection,
+"The Newgate Calendar."
+
+Your humble servant,
+
+BARENT VAN SCHAICK.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_GUESTS FROM GIBBET-ISLAND_.
+
+A LEGEND OF COMMUNIPAW.
+
+Whoever has visited the ancient and renowned village of Communipaw,
+may have noticed an old stone building, of most ruinous and sinister
+appearance. The doors and window-shutters are ready to drop from their
+hinges; old clothes are stuffed in the broken panes of glass, while
+legions of half-starved dogs prowl about the premises, and rush out and
+bark at every passer-by; for your beggarly house in a village is most
+apt to swarm with profligate and ill-conditioned dogs. What adds to the
+sinister appearance of this mansion, is a tall frame in front, not
+a little resembling a gallows, and which looks as if waiting to
+accommodate some of the inhabitants with a well-merited airing. It is
+not a gallows, however, but an ancient sign-post; for this dwelling, in
+the golden days of Communipaw, was one of the most orderly and peaceful
+of village taverns, where all the public affairs of Communipaw were
+talked and smoked over. In fact, it was in this very building that
+Oloffe the Dreamer, and his companions, concerted that great voyage of
+discovery and colonization, in which they explored Buttermilk Channel,
+were nearly shipwrecked in the strait of Hell-gate, and finally landed
+on the Island of Manhattan, and founded the great city of New-Amsterdam.
+
+Even after the province had been cruelly wrested from the sway of their
+High Mightinesses, by the combined forces of the British and Yankees,
+this tavern continued its ancient loyalty. It is true, the head of the
+Prince of Orange disappeared from the sign; a strange bird being painted
+over it, with the explanatory legend of "DIE WILDE GANS," or The Wild
+Goose; but this all the world knew to be a sly riddle of the landlord,
+the worthy Teunis Van Gieson, a knowing man in a small way, who laid
+his finger beside his nose and winked, when any one studied the
+signification of his sign, and observed that his goose was hatching, but
+would join the flock whenever they flew over the water; an enigma which
+was the perpetual recreation and delight of the loyal but fat-headed
+burghers of Communipaw.
+
+Under the sway of this patriotic, though discreet and quiet publican,
+the tavern continued to flourish in primeval tranquillity, and was
+the resort of all true-hearted Nederlanders, from all parts of Pavonia;
+who met here quietly and secretly, to smoke and drink the downfall of
+Briton and Yankee, and success to Admiral Van Tromp.
+
+The only drawback on the comfort of the establishment, was a nephew of
+mine host, a sister's son, Yan Yost Vanderscamp by name, and a real
+scamp by nature. This unlucky whipster showed an early propensity to
+mischief, which he gratified in a small way, by playing tricks upon the
+frequenters of the Wild Goose; putting gunpowder in their pipes, or
+squibs in their pockets, and astonishing them with an explosion, while
+they sat nodding round the fire-place in the bar-room; and if perchance
+a worthy burgher from some distant part of Pavonia had lingered until
+dark over his potation, it was odds but that young Vanderscamp would
+slip a briar under his horse's tail, as he mounted, and send him
+clattering along the road, in neck-or-nothing style, to his infinite
+astonishment and discomfiture.
+
+It may be wondered at, that mine host of the Wild Goose did not turn
+such a graceless varlet out of doors; but Teunis Van Gieson was an
+easy-tempered man, and, having no child of his own, looked upon his
+nephew with almost parental indulgence. His patience and good-nature
+were doomed to be tried by another inmate of his mansion. This was a
+cross-grained curmudgeon of a negro, named Pluto, who was a kind of
+enigma in Communipaw. Where he came from, nobody knew. He was found one
+morning, after a storm, cast like a sea-monster on the strand, in front
+of the Wild Goose, and lay there, more dead than alive. The neighbors
+gathered round, and speculated on this production of the deep; whether
+it were fish or flesh, or a compound of both, commonly yclept a merman.
+The kind-hearted Teunis Van Gieson, seeing that he wore the human form,
+took him into his house, and warmed him into life. By degrees, he showed
+signs of intelligence, and even uttered sounds very much like language,
+but which no one in Communipaw could understand. Some thought him a
+negro just from Guinea, who had either fallen overboard, or escaped from
+a slave-ship. Nothing, however, could ever draw from him any account
+of his origin. When questioned on the subject, he merely pointed to
+Gibbet-Island, a small rocky islet, which lies in the open bay, just
+opposite to Communipaw, as if that were his native place, though every
+body knew it had never been inhabited.
+
+In the process of time, he acquired something of the Dutch language,
+that is to say, he learnt all its vocabulary of oaths and maledictions,
+with just words sufficient to string them together. "Donder en
+blicksen!" (thunder and lightning,) was the gentlest of his
+ejaculations. For years he kept about the Wild Goose, more like one of
+those familiar spirits, or household goblins, that we read of, than
+like a human being. He acknowledged allegiance to no one, but performed
+various domestic offices, when it suited his humor; waiting occasionally
+on the guests; grooming the horses, cutting wood, drawing water; and all
+this without being ordered. Lay any command on him, and the stubborn
+sea-urchin was sure to rebel. He was never so much at home, however,
+as when on the water, plying about in skiff or canoe, entirely alone,
+fishing, crabbing, or grabbing for oysters, and would bring home
+quantities for the larder of the Wild Goose, which he would throw down
+at the kitchen door, with a growl. No wind nor weather deterred him from
+launching forth on his favorite element: indeed, the wilder the weather,
+the more he seemed to enjoy it. If a storm was brewing, he was sure to
+put off from shore; and would be seen far out in the bay, his light
+skiff dancing like a feather on the waves, when sea and sky were all
+in a turmoil, and the stoutest ships were fain to lower their sails.
+Sometimes, on such occasions, he would be absent for days together. How
+he weathered the tempest, and how and where he subsisted, no one
+could divine, nor did any one venture to ask, for all had an almost
+superstitious awe of him. Some of the Communipaw oystermen declared that
+they had more than once seen him suddenly disappear, canoe and all, as
+if they plunged beneath the waves, and after a while come up again, in
+quite a different part of the bay; whence they concluded that he could
+live under water like that notable species of wild duck, commonly called
+the Hell-diver. All began to consider him in the light of a foul-weather
+bird, like the Mother Carey's Chicken, or Stormy Petrel; and whenever
+they saw him putting far out in his skiff, in cloudy weather, made up
+their minds for a storm.
+
+The only being for whom he seemed to have any liking, was Yan Yost
+Vanderscamp, and him he liked for his very wickedness. He in a manner
+took the boy under his tutelage, prompted him to all kinds of mischief,
+aided him in every wild, harum-scarum freak, until the lad became the
+complete scapegrace of the village; a pest to his uncle, and to every
+one else. Nor were his pranks confined to the land; he soon learned to
+accompany old Pluto on the water. Together these worthies would cruise
+about the broad bay, and all the neighboring straits and rivers; poking
+around in skiffs and canoes; robbing the set-nets of the fishermen;
+landing on remote coasts, and laying waste orchards and water-melon
+patches; in short, carrying on a complete system of piracy, on a small
+scale, Piloted by Pluto, the youthful Vanderscamp soon became acquainted
+with all the bays, rivers, creeks, and inlets of the watery world around
+him; could navigate from the Hook to Spiting-devil on the darkest night,
+and learned to set even the terrors of Hell-gate at defiance.
+
+At length, negro and boy suddenly disappeared, and days and weeks
+elapsed, but without tidings of them. Some said they must have run away
+and gone to sea; others jocosely hinted, that old Pluto, being no other
+than his namesake in disguise, had spirited away the boy to the nether
+regions. All, however, agreed in one thing, that the village was well
+rid of them.
+
+In the process of time, the good Teunis Van Gieson slept with his
+fathers, and the tavern remained shut up, waiting for a claimant, for
+the next heir was Yan Yost Vanderscamp, and he had not been heard of for
+years. At length, one day, a boat was seen pulling for the shore, from a
+long, black, rakish-looking schooner, that lay at anchor in the bay. The
+boat's crew seemed worthy of the craft from which they debarked. Never
+had such a set of noisy, roistering, swaggering varlets landed in
+peaceful Communipaw. They were outlandish in garb and demeanor, and were
+headed by a rough, burly, bully ruffian, with fiery whiskers, a copper
+nose, a scar across his face, and a great Flaunderish beaver slouched on
+one side of his head, in whom, to their dismay, the quiet inhabitants
+were made to recognize their early pest, Yan Yost Vanderscamp. The rear
+of this hopeful gang was brought up by old Pluto, who had lost an
+eye, grown grizzly-headed, and looked more like a devil than ever.
+Vanderscamp renewed his acquaintance with the old burghers, much against
+their will, and in a manner not at all to their taste. He slapped them
+familiarly on the back, gave them an iron grip of the hand, and was hail
+fellow well met. According to his own account, he had been all the world
+over; had made money by bags full; had ships in every sea, and now meant
+to turn the Wild Goose into a country seat, where he and his comrades,
+all rich merchants from foreign parts, might enjoy themselves in the
+interval of their voyages. Sure enough, in a little while there was a
+complete metamorphose of the Wild Goose. From being a quiet, peaceful
+Dutch public house, it became a most riotous, uproarious private
+dwelling; a complete rendezvous for boisterous men of the seas, who came
+here to have what they called a "blow out" on dry land, and might be
+seen at all hours, lounging about the door, or lolling out of the
+windows; swearing among themselves, and cracking rough jokes on every
+passer-by. The house was fitted up, too, in so strange a manner:
+hammocks slung to the walls, instead of bedsteads; odd kinds of
+furniture, of foreign fashion; bamboo couches, Spanish chairs; pistols,
+cutlasses, and blunderbusses, suspended on every peg; silver crucifixes
+on the mantel-pieces, silver candle-sticks and porringers on the
+tables, contrasting oddly with the pewter and Delf ware of the original
+establishment. And then the strange amusements of these sea-monsters!
+Pitching Spanish dollars, instead of quoits; firing blunderbusses out of
+the window; shooting at a mark, or at any unhappy dog, or cat, or pig,
+or barn-door fowl, that might happen to come within reach.
+
+The only being who seemed to relish their rough waggery, was old Pluto;
+and yet he led but a dog's life of it; for they practised all kinds of
+manual jokes upon him; kicked him about like a foot-ball; shook him by
+his grizzly mop of wool, and never spoke to him without coupling a curse
+by way of adjective to his name, and consigning him to the infernal
+regions. The old fellow, however, seemed to like them the better, the
+more they cursed him, though his utmost expression of pleasure never
+amounted to more than the growl of a petted bear, when his ears are
+rubbed.
+
+Old Pluto was the ministering spirit at the orgies of the Wild Goose;
+and such orgies as took place there! Such drinking, singing, whooping,
+swearing; with an occasional interlude of quarrelling and fighting. The
+noisier grew the revel, the more old Pluto plied the potations, until
+the guests would become frantic in their merriment, smashing every thing
+to pieces, and throwing the house out of the windows. Sometimes, after a
+drinking bout, they sallied forth and scoured the village, to the dismay
+of the worthy burghers, who gathered their women within doors, and would
+have shut up the house. Vanderscamp, however, was not to be rebuffed.
+He insisted on renewing acquaintance with his old neighbors, and on
+introducing his friends, the merchants, to their families; swore he was
+on the look-out for a wife, and meant, before he stopped, to find
+husbands for all their daughters. So, will-ye, nil-ye, sociable he was;
+swaggered about their best parlors, with his hat on one side of his
+head; sat on the good wife's nicely-waxed mahogany table, kicking his
+heels against the carved and polished legs; kissed and tousled the young
+vrouws; and, if they frowned and pouted, gave them a gold rosary, or a
+sparkling cross, to put them in good humor again.
+
+Sometimes nothing would satisfy him, but he must have some of his old
+neighbors to dinner at the Wild Goose. There was no refusing him, for
+he had got the complete upper-hand of the community, and the peaceful
+burghers all stood in awe of him. But what a time would the quiet,
+worthy men have, among these rake-hells, who would delight to astound
+them with the most extravagant gunpowder tales, embroidered with all
+kinds of foreign oaths; clink the can with them; pledge them in deep
+potations; bawl drinking songs in their ears; and occasionally fire
+pistols over their heads, or under the table, and then laugh in their
+faces, and ask them how they liked the smell of gunpowder.
+
+Thus was the little village of Communipaw for a time like the
+unfortunate wight possessed with devils; until Vanderscamp and his
+brother merchants would sail on another trading voyage, when the Wild
+Goose would be shut up, and every thing relapse into quiet, only to be
+disturbed by his next visitation.
+
+The mystery of all these proceedings gradually dawned upon the tardy
+intellects of Communipaw. These were the times of the notorious
+Captain Kidd, when the American harbors were the resorts of piratical
+adventurers of all kinds, who, under pretext of mercantile voyages,
+scoured the West Indies, made plundering descents upon the Spanish Main,
+visited even the remote Indian Seas, and then came to dispose of their
+booty, have their revels, and fit out new expeditions, in the English
+colonies.
+
+Vanderscamp had served in this hopeful school, and having risen to
+importance among the bucaniers, had pitched upon his native village and
+early home, as a quiet, out-of-the-way, unsuspected place, where he and
+his comrades, while anchored at New York, might have their feasts, and
+concert their plans, without molestation.
+
+At length the attention of the British government was called to these
+piratical enterprises, that were becoming so frequent and outrageous.
+Vigorous measures were taken to check and punish them. Several of
+the most noted freebooters were caught and executed, and three of
+Vanderscamp's chosen comrades, the most riotous swash-bucklers of the
+Wild Goose, were hanged in chains on Gibbet-Island, in full sight of
+their favorite resort. As to Vanderscamp himself, he and his man Pluto
+again disappeared, and it was hoped by the people of Communipaw that he
+had fallen in some foreign brawl, or been swung on some foreign gallows.
+
+For a time, therefore, the tranquillity of the village was restored;
+the worthy Dutchmen once more smoked their pipes in peace, eying, with
+peculiar complacency, their old pests and terrors, the pirates, dangling
+and drying in the sun, on Gibbet-Island.
+
+This perfect calm was doomed at length to be ruffled. The fiery
+persecution of the pirates gradually subsided. Justice was satisfied
+with the examples that had been made, and there was no more talk of
+Kidd, and the other heroes of like kidney. On a calm summer evening, a
+boat, somewhat heavily laden, was seen pulling into Communipaw. What
+was the surprise and disquiet of the inhabitants, to see Yan Yost
+Vanderscamp seated at the helm, and his man Pluto tugging at the oars!
+Vanderscamp, however, was apparently an altered man. He brought home
+with him a wife, who seemed to be a shrew, and to have the upper-hand of
+him. He no longer was the swaggering, bully ruffian, but affected the
+regular merchant, and talked of retiring from business, and settling
+down quietly, to pass the rest of his days in his native place.
+
+The Wild Goose mansion was again opened, but with diminished splendor,
+and no riot. It is true, Vanderscamp had frequent nautical visitors, and
+the sound of revelry was occasionally overheard in his house; but every
+thing seemed to be done under the rose; and old Pluto was the only
+servant that officiated at these orgies. The visitors, indeed, were
+by no means of the turbulent stamp of their predecessors; but quiet,
+mysterious traders, full of nods, and winks, and hieroglyphic signs,
+with whom, to use their cant phrase, "every thing was smug." Their ships
+came to anchor at night in the lower bay; and, on a private signal,
+Vanderscamp would launch his boat, and accompanied solely by his man
+Pluto, would make them mysterious visits. Sometimes boats pulled in at
+night, in front of the Wild Goose, and various articles of merchandise
+were landed in the dark, and spirited away, nobody knew whither. One of
+the more curious of the inhabitants kept watch, and caught a glimpse of
+the features of some of these night visitors, by the casual glance of
+a lantern, and declared that he recognized more than one of the
+freebooting frequenters of the Wild Goose, in former times; from whence
+he concluded that Vanderscamp was at his old game, and that this
+mysterious merchandise was nothing more nor less than piratical plunder.
+The more charitable opinion, however, was, that Vanderscamp and his
+comrades, having been driven from their old line of business, by the
+"oppressions of government," had resorted to smuggling to make both ends
+meet.
+
+Be that as it may: I come now to the extraordinary fact, which is the
+butt-end of this story. It happened late one night, that Yan Yost
+Vanderscamp was returning across the broad bay, in his light skiff,
+rowed by his man Pluto. He had been carousing on board of a vessel,
+newly arrived, and was somewhat obfuscated in intellect, by the liquor
+he had imbibed. It was a still, sultry night; a heavy mass of lurid
+clouds was rising in the west, with the low muttering of distant
+thunder. Vanderscamp called on Pluto to pull lustily, that they might
+get home before the gathering storm. The old negro made no reply, but
+shaped his course so as to skirt the rocky shores of Gibbet-Island. A
+faint creaking overhead caused Vanderscamp to cast up his eyes, when,
+to his horror, he beheld the bodies of his three pot companions and
+brothers in iniquity dangling in the moonlight, their rags fluttering,
+and their chains creaking, as they were slowly swung backward and
+forward by the rising breeze.
+
+"What do you mean, you blockhead!" cried Vanderscamp, "by pulling so
+close to the island?"
+
+"I thought you'd be glad to see your old friends once more," growled the
+negro; "you were never afraid of a living man, what do you fear from the
+dead?"
+
+"Who's afraid?" hiccupped Vanderscamp, partly heated by liquor, partly
+nettled by the jeer of the negro; "who's afraid! Hang me, but I would be
+glad to see them once more, alive or dead, at the Wild Goose. Come, my
+lads in the wind!" continued he, taking a draught, and flourishing the
+bottle above his head, "here's fair weather to you in the other world;
+and if you should be walking the rounds to-night, odds fish! but I'll be
+happy if you will drop in to supper."
+
+A dismal creaking was the only reply. The wind blew loud and shrill, and
+as it whistled round the gallows, and among the bones, sounded as if
+there were laughing and gibbering in the air. Old Pluto chuckled to
+himself, and now pulled for home. The storm burst over the voyagers,
+while they were yet far from shore. The rain fell in torrents, the
+thunder crashed and pealed, and the lightning kept up an incessant
+blaze. It was stark midnight, before they landed at Communipaw.
+
+Dripping and shivering, Vanderscamp crawled homeward. He was completely
+sobered by the storm; the water soaked from without, having diluted and
+cooled the liquor within. Arrived at the Wild Goose, he knocked timidly
+and dubiously at the door, for he dreaded the reception he was to
+experience from his wife. He had reason to do so. She met him at the
+threshold, in a precious ill humor.
+
+"Is this a time," said she, "to keep people out of their beds, and to
+bring home company, to turn the house upside down?"
+
+"Company?" said Vanderscamp, meekly; "I have brought no company with me,
+wife."
+
+"No, indeed! they have got here before you, but by your invitation; and
+blessed-looking company they are, truly!"
+
+Vanderscamp's knees smote together. "For the love of heaven, where are
+they, wife?"
+
+"Where?--why, in the blue-room, up-stairs, making themselves as much at
+home as if the house were their own."
+
+Vanderscamp made a desperate effort, scrambled up to the room, and threw
+open the door. Sure enough, there at a table, on which burned a light as
+blue as brimstone, sat the three guests from Gibbet-Island, with halters
+round their necks, and bobbing their cups together, as if they were
+hob-or-nobbing, and trolling the old Dutch freebooter's glee, since
+translated into English:
+
+ "For three merry lads be we,
+  And three merry lads be we;
+  I on the land, and thou on the sand,
+  And Jack on the gallows-tree."
+
+Vanderscamp saw and heard no more. Starting back with horror, he missed
+his footing on the landing-place, and fell from the top of the stairs to
+the bottom. He was taken up speechless, and, either from the fall or the
+fright, was buried in the yard of the little Dutch church at Bergen, on
+the following Sunday.
+
+From that day forward, the fate of the Wild Goose was sealed. It was
+pronounced a _haunted house_, and avoided accordingly. No one inhabited
+it but Vanderscamp's shrew of a widow, and old Pluto, and they were
+considered but little better than its hobgoblin visitors. Pluto grew
+more and more haggard and morose, and looked more like an imp of
+darkness than a human being. He spoke to no one, but went about
+muttering to himself; or, as some hinted, talking with the devil, who,
+though unseen, was ever at his elbow. Now and then he was seen pulling
+about the bay alone, in his skiff, in dark weather, or at the approach
+of night-fall; nobody could tell why, unless on an errand to invite more
+guests from the gallows. Indeed it was affirmed that the Wild Goose
+still continued to be a house of entertainment for such guests, and that
+on stormy nights, the blue chamber was occasionally illuminated, and
+sounds of diabolical merriment were overheard, mingling with the howling
+of the tempest. Some treated these as idle stories, until on one such
+night, it was about the time of the equinox, there was a horrible uproar
+in the Wild Goose, that could not be mistaken. It was not so much
+the sound of revelry, however, as strife, with two or three piercing
+shrieks, that pervaded every part of the village. Nevertheless, no one
+thought of hastening to the spot. On the contrary, the honest burghers
+of Communipaw drew their night-caps over their ears, and buried their
+heads under the bed-clothes, at the thoughts of Vanderscamp and his
+gallows companions.
+
+The next morning, some of the bolder and more curious undertook to
+reconnoitre. All was quiet and lifeless at the Wild Goose. The door
+yawned wide open, and had evidently been open all night, for the storm
+had beaten into the house. Gathering more courage from the silence and
+apparent desertion, they gradually ventured over the threshold. The
+house had indeed the air of having been possessed by devils. Every thing
+was topsy-turvy; trunks had been broken open, and chests of drawers and
+corner cupboards turned inside out, as in a time of general sack and
+pillage; but the most woful sight was the widow of Yan Yost Vanderscamp,
+extended a corpse on the floor of the blue-chamber, with the marks of a
+deadly gripe on the wind-pipe.
+
+All now was conjecture and dismay at Communipaw; and the disappearance
+of old Pluto, who was no where to be found, gave rise to all kinds of
+wild surmises. Some suggested that the negro had betrayed the house to
+some of Vanderscamp's bucaniering associates, and that they had decamped
+together with the booty; others surmised that the negro was nothing more
+nor less than a devil incarnate, who had now accomplished his ends, and
+made off with his dues. Events, however, vindicated the negro from this
+last imputation. His skiff was picked up, drifting about the bay, bottom
+upward, as if wrecked in a tempest; and his body was found, shortly
+afterward, by some Communipaw fishermen, stranded among the rocks of
+Gibbet-Island, near the foot of the pirates' gallows. The fishermen
+shook their heads, and observed that old Pluto had ventured once too
+often to invite Guests from Gibbet-Island.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE BERMUDAS.
+
+A SHAKSPERIAN RESEARCH: BY THE AUTHOR OF THE SKETCHBOOK.
+
+"Who did not think, till within these foure yeares, but that these
+islands had been rather a habitation for Divells, than fit for men to
+dwell in? Who did not hate the name, when hee was on land, and shun the
+place when he was on the seas? But behold the misprision and conceits of
+the world! For true and large experience hath now told us, it is one of
+the sweetest paradises that be upon earth."--"A PLAINE DESCRIPT. OF THE
+BARMUDAS:" 1613.
+
+In the course of a voyage home from England, our ship had been
+struggling, for two or three weeks, with perverse headwinds, and a
+stormy sea. It was in the month of May, yet the weather had at times
+a wintry sharpness, and it was apprehended that we were in the
+neighborhood of floating islands of ice, which at that season of the
+year drift out of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, and sometimes occasion the
+wreck of noble ships.
+
+Wearied out by the continued opposition of the elements, our captain at
+length bore away to the south, in hopes of catching the expiring breath
+of the trade-winds, and making what is called the southern passage. A
+few days wrought, as it were, a magical "sea change" in every thing
+around us. We seemed to emerge into a different world. The late dark and
+angry sea, lashed up into roaring and swashing surges, became calm and
+sunny; the rude winds died away; and gradually a light breeze sprang up
+directly aft, filling out every sail, and wafting us smoothly along on
+an even keel. The air softened into a bland and delightful temperature.
+Dolphins began to play about us; the nautilus came floating by, like a
+fairy ship, with its mimic sail and rainbow tints; and flying-fish, from
+time to time, made their short excursive flights, and occasionally fell
+upon the deck. The cloaks and overcoats in which we had hitherto wrapped
+ourselves, and moped about the vessel, were thrown aside; for a summer
+warmth had succeeded to the late wintry chills. Sails were stretched as
+awnings over the quarter-deck, to protect us from the mid-day sun. Under
+these we lounged away the day, in luxurious indolence, musing, with
+half-shut eyes, upon the quiet ocean. The night was scarcely less
+beautiful than the day. The rising moon sent a quivering column of
+silver along the undulating surface of the deep, and, gradually climbing
+the heaven, lit up our towering top-sails and swelling main-sails, and
+spread a pale, mysterious light around. As our ship made her whispering
+way through this dreamy world of waters, every boisterous sound on board
+was charmed to silence; and the low whistle, or drowsy song of a sailor
+from the forecastle, or the tinkling of a guitar, and the soft warbling
+of a female voice from the quarter-deck, seemed to derive a witching
+melody from the scene and hour. I was reminded of Oberon's exquisite
+description of music and moonlight on the ocean:
+
+ --"Thou rememberest
+  Since once I sat upon a promontory,
+  And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back,
+  Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
+  That the rude sea grew civil at her song?
+  And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
+  To hear the sea-maid's music."
+
+Indeed, I was in the very mood to conjure up all the imaginary beings
+with which poetry has peopled old ocean, and almost ready to fancy
+I heard the distant song of the mermaid, or the mellow shell of the
+triton, and to picture to myself Neptune and Amphitrite with all their
+pageant sweeping along the dim horizon.
+
+A day or two of such fanciful voyaging brought us in sight of the
+Bermudas, which first looked like mere summer clouds, peering above the
+quiet ocean. All day we glided along in sight of them, with just wind
+enough to fill our sails; and never did land appear more lovely. They
+were clad in emerald verdure, beneath the serenest of skies: not an
+angry wave broke upon their quiet shores, and small fishing craft,
+riding on the crystal waves, seemed as if hung in air. It was such a
+scene that Fletcher pictured to himself, when he extolled the halcyon
+lot of the fisherman:
+
+  Ah! would thou knewest how much it better were
+  To bide among the simple fisher-swains:
+  No shrieking owl, no night-crow lodgeth here,
+  Nor is our simple pleasure mixed with pains.
+  Our sports begin with the beginning year;
+  In calms, to pull the leaping fish to land,
+  In roughs, to sing and dance along the yellow sand.
+
+In contemplating these beautiful islands, and the peaceful sea
+around them, I could hardly realize that these were the "still vexed
+Bermoothes" of Shakspeare, once the dread of mariners, and infamous in
+the narratives of the early discoverers, for the dangers and disasters
+which beset them. Such, however, was the case; and the islands derived
+additional interest in my eyes, from fancying that I could trace in
+their early history, and in the superstitious notions connected with
+them, some of the elements of Shakspeare's wild and beautiful drama of
+the Tempest. I shall take the liberty of citing a few historical facts,
+in support of this idea, which may claim some additional attention from
+the American reader, as being connected with the first settlement of
+Virginia.
+
+At the time when Shakspeare was in the fulness of his talent, and
+seizing upon everything that could furnish aliment to his imagination,
+the colonization of Virginia was a favorite object of enterprise among
+people of condition in England, and several of the courtiers of the
+court of Queen Elizabeth were personally engaged in it. In the year
+1609 a noble armament of nine ships and five hundred men sailed for the
+relief of the colony. It was commanded by Sir George Somers, as admiral,
+a gallant and generous gentleman, above sixty years of age, and
+possessed of an ample fortune, yet still bent upon hardy enterprise, and
+ambitious of signalizing himself in the service of his country.
+
+On board of his flag-ship, the Sea-Vulture, sailed also Sir Thomas
+Gates, lieutenant-general of the colony. The voyage was long and
+boisterous. On the twenty-fifth of July, the admiral's ship was
+separated from the rest, in a hurricane. For several days she was driven
+about at the mercy of the elements, and so strained and racked, that her
+seams yawned open, and her hold was half filled with water. The storm
+subsided, but left her a mere foundering wreck. The crew stood in the
+hold to their waists in water, vainly endeavoring to bail her with
+kettles, buckets, and other vessels. The leaks rapidly gained on them,
+while their strength was as rapidly declining. They lost all hope of
+keeping the ship afloat, until they should reach the American coast; and
+wearied with fruitless toil, determined, in their despair, to give up
+all farther attempt, shut down the hatches, and abandon themselves to
+Providence. Some, who had spirituous liquors, or "comfortable waters,"
+as the old record quaintly terms them, brought them forth, and shared
+them with their comrades, and they all drank a sad farewell to one
+another, as men who were soon to part company in this world.
+
+In this moment of extremity, the worthy admiral, who kept sleepless
+watch from the high stern of the vessel, gave the thrilling cry of
+"land!" All rushed on deck, in a frenzy of joy, and nothing now was to
+be seen or heard on board, but the transports of men who felt as if
+rescued from the grave. It is true the land in sight would not, in
+ordinary circumstances, have inspired much self-gratulation. It could be
+nothing else but the group of islands called after their discoverer, one
+Juan Bermudas, a Spaniard, but stigmatized among the mariners of those
+days as "the islands of devils!" "For the islands of the Bermudas," says
+the old narrative of this voyage, "as every man knoweth that hath heard
+or read of them, were never inhabited by any Christian or heathen
+people, but were ever esteemed and reputed a most prodigious and
+inchanted place, affording nothing but gusts, stormes, and foul weather,
+which made every navigator and mariner to avoide them, as Scylla and
+Charybdis, or as they would shun the Divell himself." [Footnote: "A
+Plaine Description of the Barmudas."]
+
+Sir George Somers and his tempest-tossed comrades, however, hailed them
+with rapture, as if they had been a terrestrial paradise. Every sail was
+spread, and every exertion made to urge the foundering ship to land.
+Before long, she struck upon a rock. Fortunately, the late stormy winds
+had subsided, and there was no surf. A swelling wave lifted her from off
+the rock, and bore her to another; and thus she was borne on from rock
+to rock, until she remained wedged between two, as firmly as if set upon
+the stocks. The boats were immediately lowered, and, though the shore
+was above a mile distant, the whole crew were landed in safety.
+
+Every one had now his task assigned him. Some made all haste to unload
+the ship, before she should go to pieces; some constructed wigwams of
+palmetto leaves, and others ranged the island in quest of wood and
+water. To their surprise and joy, they found it far different from the
+desolate and frightful place they had been taught, by seamen's stories,
+to expect. It was well-wooded and fertile; there were birds of various
+kinds, and herds of swine roaming about, the progeny of a number that
+had swam ashore, in former years, from a Spanish wreck. The island
+abounded with turtle, and great quantities of their eggs were to be
+found among the rocks. The bays and inlets were full of fish; so tame,
+that if any one stepped into the water, they would throng around him.
+Sir George Somers, in a little while, caught enough with hook and line
+to furnish a meal to his whole ship's company. Some of them were so
+large, that two were as much as a man could carry. Crawfish, also,
+were taken in abundance. The air was soft and salubrious, and the sky
+beautifully serene. Waller, in his "Summer Islands," has given us a
+faithful picture of the climate:
+
+  "For the kind spring, (which but salutes us here,)
+  Inhabits these, and courts them all the year:
+  Ripe fruits and blossoms on the same trees live;
+  At once they promise, and at once they give:
+  So sweet the air, so moderate the clime,
+  None sickly lives, or dies before his time.
+  Heaven sure has kept this spot of earth uncursed
+  To shew how all things were created first."
+
+We may imagine the feelings of the shipwrecked marines on finding
+themselves cast by stormy seas upon so happy a coast; where abundance
+was to be had without labor; where what in other climes constituted the
+costly luxuries of the rich, were within every man's reach; and where
+life promised to be a mere holiday. Many of the common sailors,
+especially, declared they desired no better lot than to pass the rest of
+their lives on this favored island.
+
+The commanders, however, were not so ready to console themselves
+with mere physical comforts, for the severance from the enjoyment of
+cultivated life, and all the objects of honorable ambition. Despairing
+of the arrival of any chance ship on these shunned and dreaded islands,
+they fitted out the long-boat, making a deck of the ship's hatches,
+and having manned her with eight picked men, despatched her, under
+the command of an able and hardy mariner, named Raven, to proceed to
+Virginia, and procure shipping to be sent to their relief.
+
+While waiting in anxious idleness for the arrival of the looked-for
+aid, dissensions arose between Sir George Somers and Sir Thomas Gates,
+originating, very probably, in jealousy of the lead which the nautical
+experience and professional station of the admiral gave him in the
+present emergency. Each commander, of course, had his adherents:
+these dissensions ripened into a complete schism; and this handful
+of shipwrecked men, thus thrown together, on an uninhabited island,
+separated into two parties, and lived asunder in bitter feud, as men
+rendered fickle by prosperity instead of being brought into brotherhood
+by a common calamity.
+
+Weeks and months elapsed, without bringing the looked-for aid from
+Virginia, though that colony was within but a few days' sail. Fears were
+now entertained that the long-boat had been either swallowed up in
+the sea, or wrecked on some savage coast; one or other of which most
+probably was the case, as nothing was ever heard of Raven and his
+comrades.
+
+Each party now set to work to build a vessel for itself out of the cedar
+with which the island abounded. The wreck of the Sea-Vulture furnished
+rigging, and various other articles; but they had no iron for bolts, and
+other fastenings; and for want of pitch and tar, they payed the seams of
+their vessels with lime and turtle's oil, which soon dried, and became
+as hard as stone.
+
+On the tenth of May, 1610, they set sail, having been about nine months
+on the island. They reached Virginia without farther accident, but found
+the colony in great distress for provisions. The account they gave of
+the abundance that reigned in the Bermudas, and especially of the herds
+of swine that roamed the island, determined Lord Delaware, the governor
+of Virginia, to send thither for supplies. Sir George Somers, with his
+wonted promptness and generosity, offered to undertake what was still
+considered a dangerous voyage. Accordingly, on the nineteenth of June,
+he set sail, in his own cedar vessel of thirty tons, accompanied by
+another small vessel, commanded by Captain Argall.
+
+The gallant Somers was doomed again to be tempest-tossed. His companion
+vessel was soon driven back to port, but he kept the sea; and, as usual,
+remained at his post on deck, in all weathers. His voyage was long and
+boisterous, and the fatigues and exposures which he underwent, were too
+much for a frame impaired by age, and by previous hardships. He arrived
+at Bermudas completely exhausted and broken down.
+
+His nephew, Captain Mathew Somers, attended him in his illness with
+affectionate assiduity. Finding his end approaching, the veteran called
+his men together, and exhorted them to be true to the interests of
+Virginia; to procure provisions with all possible despatch, and hasten
+back to the relief of the colony.
+
+With this dying charge, he gave up the ghost, leaving us nephew and crew
+overwhelmed with grief and consternation. Their first thought was to
+pay honor to his remains. Opening the body, they took out the heart and
+entrails, and buried them, erecting a cross over the grave. They then
+embalmed the body, and set sail with it for England; thus, while paying
+empty honors to their deceased commander, neglecting his earnest wish
+and dying injunction, that they should return with relief to Virginia.
+
+The little bark arrived safely at Whitechurch, in Dorsetshire, with its
+melancholy freight. The body of the worthy Somers was interred with the
+military honors due to a brave soldier, and many volleys were fired
+over his grave. The Bermudas have since received the name of the Somer
+Islands, as a tribute to his memory.
+
+The accounts given by Captain Mathew Somers and his crew of the
+delightful climate, and the great beauty, fertility, and abundance of
+these islands, excited the zeal of enthusiasts, and the cupidity of
+speculators, and a plan was set on foot to colonize them. The Virginia
+company sold their right to the islands to one hundred and twenty of
+their own members, who erected themselves into a distinct corporation,
+under the name of the "Somer Island Society;" and Mr. Richard More was
+sent out, in 1612, as governor, with sixty men, to found a colony: and
+this leads me to the second branch of this research.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_THE THREE KINGS OF BERMUDA_.
+
+AND THEIR TREASURE OF AMBERGRIS.
+
+At the time that Sir George Somers was preparing to launch his
+cedar-built bark, and sail for Virginia, there were three culprits among
+his men, who had been guilty of capital offences. One of them was shot;
+the others, named Christopher Carter and Edward Waters, escaped. Waters,
+indeed, made a very narrow escape, for he had actually been tied to a
+tree to be executed, but cut the rope with a knife, which he had
+concealed about his person, and fled to the woods, where he was joined by
+Carter. These two worthies kept themselves concealed in the secret parts
+of the island, until the departure of the two vessels. When Sir George
+Somers revisited the island, in quest of supplies for the Virginia
+colony, these culprits hovered about the landing-place, and succeeded in
+persuading another seaman, named Edward Chard, to join them, giving him
+the most seductive pictures of the ease and abundance in which they
+revelled.
+
+When the bark that bore Sir George's body to England had faded from the
+watery horizon, these three vagabonds walked forth in their majesty and
+might, the lords and sole inhabitants of these islands. For a time their
+little commonwealth went on prosperously and happily. They built a
+house, sowed corn, and the seeds of various fruits; and having plenty
+of hogs, wild fowl, and fish of all kinds, with turtle in abundance,
+carried on their tripartite sovereignty with great harmony and much
+feasting. All kingdoms, however, are doomed to revolution, convulsion,
+or decay; and so it fared with the empire of the three kings of Bermuda,
+albeit they were monarchs without subjects. In an evil hour, in their
+search after turtle, among the fissures of the rocks, they came upon a
+great treasure of ambergris, which had been cast on shore by the ocean.
+Beside a number of pieces of smaller dimensions, there was one great
+mass, the largest that had ever been known, weighing eighty pounds, and
+which of itself, according to the market value of ambergris in those
+days, was worth about nine or ten thousand pounds!
+
+From that moment, the happiness and harmony of the three kings of
+Bermuda were gone for ever. While poor devils, with nothing to share
+but the common blessings of the island, which administered to present
+enjoyment, but had nothing of convertible value, they were loving and
+united: but here was actual wealth, which would make them rich men,
+whenever they could transport it to a market.
+
+Adieu the delights of the island! They now became flat and insipid. Each
+pictured to himself the consequence he might now aspire to, in civilized
+life, could he once get there with this mass of ambergris. No longer a
+poor Jack Tar, frolicking in the low taveriis of Wapping, he might roll
+through London in his coach, and perchance arrive, like Whittington, at
+the dignity of Lord Mayor.
+
+With riches came envy and covetousness. Each was now for assuming the
+supreme power, and getting the monopoly of the ambergris. A civil war at
+length broke out: Chard and Waters defied each other to mortal combat,
+and the kingdom of the Bermudas was on the point of being deluged with
+royal blood. Fortunately, Carter took no part in the bloody feud.
+Ambition might have made him view it with secret exultation; for if
+either or both of his brother potentates were slain in the conflict,
+he would be a gainer in purse and ambergris. But he dreaded to be left
+alone in this uninhabited island, and to find himself the monarch of
+a solitude: so he secretly purloined and hid the weapons of the
+belligerent rivals, who, having no means of carrying on the war,
+gradually cooled down into a sullen armistice.
+
+The arrival of Governor More, with an overpowering force of sixty men,
+put an end to the empire. He took possession of the kingdom, in the
+name of the Somer Island Company, and forthwith proceeded to make a
+settlement. The three kings tacitly relinquished their sway, but stood
+up stoutly for their treasure. It was determined, however, that they
+had been fitted out at the expense, and employed in the service, of the
+Virginia Company; that they had found the ambergis while in the service
+of that company, and on that company's land; that the ambergis,
+therefore, belonged to that company, or rather to the Somer Island
+Company, in consequence of their recent purchase of the island, and all
+their appurtenances. Having thus legally established their right, and
+being moreover able to back it by might, the company laid the lion's paw
+upon the spoil; and nothing more remains on historic record of the Three
+Kings of Bermuda, and their treasure of ambergris.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The reader will now determine whether I am more extravagant than most
+of the commentators on Shakspeare, in my surmise that the story of Sir
+George Somers' shipwreck, and the subsequent occurrences that took place
+on the uninhabited island, may have furnished the bard with some of the
+elements of his drama of the Tempest. The tidings of the shipwreck, and
+of the incidents connected with it, reached England not long before the
+production of this drama, and made a great sensation there. A narrative
+of the whole matter, from which most of the foregoing particulars are
+extracted, was published at the time in London, in a pamphlet form, and
+could not fail to be eagerly perused by Shakspeare, and to make a vivid
+impression on his fancy. His expression, in the Tempest, of "the still
+vext Bermoothes," accords exactly with the storm-beaten character of
+those islands. The enchantments, too, with which he has clothed the
+island of Prospero, may they not be traced to the wild and superstitious
+notions entertained about the Bermudas? I have already cited two
+passages from a pamphlet published at the time, showing that they
+were esteemed "a most _prodigious_ and _inchanted_ place," and the
+"habitation of divells;" and another pamphlet, published shortly
+afterward, observes: "And whereas it is reported that this land of the
+Barmudas, with the islands about, (which are many, at least a hundred,)
+are inchanted and kept with evil and wicked spirits, it is a most idle
+and false report." [Footnote: "Newes from the Barmudas;" 1612.]
+
+The description, too, given in the same pamphlets, of the real beauty
+and fertility of the Bermudas, and of their serene and happy climate, so
+opposite to the dangerous and inhospitable character with which they had
+been stigmatized, accords with the eulogium of Sebastian on the island
+of Prospero:
+
+"Though this island seem to be desert, uninhabitable, and almost
+inaccessible, it must needs be of subtle, tender, and delicate
+temperance. The air breathes upon us here most sweetly. Here is every
+thing advantageous to life. How lush and lusty the grass looks! how
+green!"
+
+I think too, in the exulting consciousness of ease, security, and
+abundance felt by the late tempest-tossed mariners, while revelling in
+the plenteousness of the island, and their inclination to remain there,
+released from the labors, the cares, and the artificial restraints of
+civilized life, I can see something of the golden commonwealth of honest
+Gonzalo:
+
+  "Had I plantation of this isle, my lord,
+  And were the king of it, what would I do?
+  I' the commonwealth I would by contraries
+  Execute all things: for no kind of traffic
+  Would I admit; no name of magistrate;
+  Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,
+  And use of service, none; contract, succession,
+  Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none:
+  No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil:
+  No occupation; all men idle, all.
+
+  All things in common, nature should produce,
+  Without sweat or endeavor: Treason, felony,
+  Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine,
+  Would I not have; but nature should bring forth,
+  Of its own kind, all foizon, all abundance,
+  To feed my innocent people."
+
+But above all, in the three fugitive vagabonds who remained in
+possession of the island of Bermuda, on the departure of their comrades,
+and in their squabbles about supremacy, on the finding of their
+treasure, I see typified Sebastian, Trinculo, and their worthy companion
+Caliban:
+
+  "Trinculo, the king and all our company being drowned,
+we will inherit here."
+
+  "Monster, I will kill this man; his daughter and I will be king and
+queen, (save our graces!) and Trinculo and thyself shall be viceroys."
+
+I do not mean to hold up the incidents and characters in the narrative
+and in the play as parallel, or as being strikingly similar: neither
+would I insinuate that the narrative suggested the play; I would only
+suppose that Shakspeare, being occupied about that time on the drama of
+the Tempest, the main story of which, I believe, is of Italian origin,
+had many of the fanciful ideas of it suggested to his mind by the
+shipwreck of Sir George Somers on the "still vext Bermothes," and by the
+popular superstitions connected with these islands, and suddenly put in
+circulation by that event.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PELAYO AND THE MERCHANT'S DAUGHTER.
+
+BY THE AUTHOR OF THE SKETCH-BOOK.
+
+It is the common lamentation of Spanish historiographers, that, for an
+obscure and melancholy space of time immediately succeeding the conquest
+of their country by the Moslems, its history is a mere wilderness of
+dubious facts, groundless fables, and rash exaggerations. Learned men,
+in cells and cloisters, have worn out their lives in vainly endeavoring
+to connect incongruous events, and to account for startling
+improbabilities, recorded of this period. The worthy Jesuit, Padre
+Abarca, declares that, for more than forty years during which he had
+been employed in theological controversies, he had never found any so
+obscure and inexplicable as those which rise out of this portion of
+Spanish history, and that the only fruit of an indefatigable, prolix,
+and even prodigious study of the subject, was a melancholy and
+mortifying state of indecision. [Footnote: PADRE PEDRO ABARCA. Anales
+de Aragon, Anti Regno, F2.] During this apocryphal period, flourished
+PELAYO, the deliverer of Spain, whose name, like that of William
+Wallace, will ever be linked with the glory of his country, but linked,
+in like manner, by a bond in which fact and fiction are inextricably
+interwoven.
+
+The quaint old chronicle of the Moor Rasis, which, though wild and
+fanciful in the extreme, is frequently drawn upon for early facts by
+Spanish historians, professes to give the birth, parentage, and whole
+course of fortune of Pelayo, without the least doubt or hesitation. It
+makes him a son of the Duke of Cantabria, and descended, both by father
+and mother's side, from the Gothic kings of Spain. I shall pass over the
+romantic story of his childhood, and shall content myself with a scene
+of his youth, which was spent in a castle among the Pyrenees, under
+the eye of his widowed and noble-minded mother, who caused him to be
+instructed in everything befitting a cavalier of gentle birth. While the
+sons of the nobility were revelling amid the pleasures of a licentious
+court, and sunk in that vicious and effeminate indulgence which led
+to the perdition of unhappy Spain, the youthful Pelayo, in his rugged
+mountain school, was steeled to all kinds of hardy exercise. A great
+part of his time was spent in hunting the bears, the wild boars, and the
+wolves, with which the Pyrenees abounded; and so purely and chastely was
+he brought up, by his good lady mother, that, if the ancient chronicle
+from which I draw my facts may be relied on, he had attained his
+one-and-twentieth year, without having once sighed for woman!
+
+Nor were his hardy contests confined to the wild beasts of the forest.
+Occasionally he had to contend with adversaries of a more formidable
+character. The skirts and defiles of these border mountains were often
+infested by marauders from the Gallic plains of Gascony. The Gascons,
+says an old chronicler, were a people who used smooth words when
+expedient, but force when they had power, and were ready to lay their
+hands on every thing they met. Though poor, they were proud; for there
+was not one who did not pride himself on being a hijo-dalgo, or the son
+of somebody.
+
+At the head of a band of these needy hijodalgos of Gascony, was one
+Arnaud, a broken-down cavalier. He and four of his followers were well
+armed and mounted; the rest were a set of scamper-grounds on foot,
+furnished with darts and javelins. They were the terror of the border;
+here to-day and gone to-morrow; sometimes in one pass, sometimes in
+another. They would make sudden inroads into Spain, scour the roads,
+plunder the country, and were over the mountains and far away before a
+force could be collected to pursue them.
+
+Now it happened one day, that a wealthy burgher of Bordeaux, who was a
+merchant, trading with Biscay, set out on a journey for that province.
+As he intended to sojourn there for a season, he took with him his
+wife, who was a goodly dame, and his daughter, a gentle damsel, of
+marriageable age, and exceeding fair to look upon. He was attended by a
+trusty clerk from his comptoir, and a man servant; while another servant
+led a hackney, laden with bags of money, with which he intended to
+purchase merchandise.
+
+When the Gascons heard of this wealthy merchant and his convoy passing
+through the mountains, they thanked their stars, for they considered
+all peaceful men of traffic as lawful spoil, sent by providence for the
+benefit of hidalgos like themselves, of valor and gentle blood, who
+lived by the sword. Placing themselves in ambush, in a lonely defile, by
+which the travellers had to pass, they silently awaited their coming. In
+a little while they beheld them approaching. The merchant was a fair,
+portly man, in a buff surcoat and velvet cap. His looks bespoke the good
+cheer of his native city, and he was mounted on a stately, well-fed
+steed, while his wife and daughter paced gently on palfreys by his side.
+
+The travellers had advanced some distance in the defile, when the
+Bandoleros rushed forth and assailed them. The merchant, though but
+little used to the exercise of arms, and unwieldy in his form, yet made
+valiant defence, having his wife and daughter and money-bags at hazard.
+He was wounded in two places, and overpowered; one of his servants was
+slain, the other took to flight.
+
+The freebooters then began to ransack for spoil, but were disappointed
+at not finding the wealth they had expected. Putting their swords to the
+breast of the trembling merchant, they demanded where he had concealed
+his treasure, and learned from him of the hackney that was following,
+laden with, money. Overjoyed at this intelligence, they bound their
+captives to trees, and awaited the arrival of the golden spoil.
+
+On this same day, Pelayo was out with his huntsmen among the mountains,
+and had taken his stand on a rock, at a narrow pass, to await the
+sallying forth of a wild boar. Close by him was a page, conducting a
+horse, and at the saddle-bow hung his armor, for he was always prepared
+for fight among these border mountains. While thus posted, the servant
+of the merchant came flying from the robbers. On beholding Pelayo, he
+fell on his knees, and implored his life, for he supposed him to be
+one of the band. It was some time before he could be relieved from his
+terror, and made to tell his story. When Pelayo heard of the robbers,
+he concluded they were the crew of Gascon hidalgos, upon the scamper.
+Taking his armor from the page, he put on his helmet, slung his buckler
+round his neck, took lance in hand, and mounting his steed, compelled
+the trembling servant to guide him to the scene of action. At the same
+time he ordered the page to seek his huntsmen, and summon them to his
+assistance.
+
+When the robbers saw Pelayo advancing through the forest, with a single
+attendant on foot, and beheld his rich armor sparkling in the sun, they
+thought a new prize had fallen into their hands, and Arnaud and two of
+his companions, mounting their horses, advanced to meet him. As they
+approached, Pelayo stationed himself in a narrow pass between two rocks,
+where he could only be assailed in front, and bracing his buckler, and
+lowering his lance, awaited their coming.
+
+"Who and what are ye," cried he, "and what seek ye in this land?"
+
+"We are huntsmen," replied Arnaud, "and lo! our game runs into our
+toils!"
+
+"By my faith," replied Pelayo, "thou wilt find the game more readily
+roused than taken: have at thee for a villain!"
+
+So saying, he put spurs to his horse, and ran full speed upon him. The
+Gascon, not expecting so sudden an attack from a single horseman, was
+taken by surprise. He hastily couched his lance, but it merely glanced
+on the shield of Pelayo, who sent his own through the middle of his
+breast, and threw him out of his saddle to the earth. One of the other
+robbers made at Pelayo, and wounded him slightly in the side, but
+received a blow from the sword of the latter, which cleft his skull-cap,
+and sank into his brain. His companion, seeing him fall, put spurs to
+his steed, and galloped off through the forest.
+
+Beholding several other robbers on foot coming up, Pelayo returned to
+his station between the rocks, where he was assailed by them all at
+once. He received two of their darts on his buckler, a javelin razed his
+cuirass, and glancing down, wounded his horse. Pelayo then rushed forth,
+and struck one of the robbers dead: the others, beholding several
+huntsmen advancing, took to flight, but were pursued, and several of
+them taken.
+
+The good merchant of Bordeaux and his family beheld this scene with
+trembling and amazement, for never had they looked upon such feats of
+arms. They considered Don Pelayo as a leader of some rival band of
+robbers; and when the bonds were loosed by which they were tied to
+the trees, they fell at his feet and implored mercy. The females were
+soonest undeceived, especially the daughter; for the damsel was struck
+with the noble countenance and gentle demeanor of Pelayo, and said to
+herself: "Surely nothing evil can dwell in so goodly and gracious a
+form."
+
+Pelayo now sounded his horn, which echoed from rock to rock, and was
+answered by shouts and horns from various parts of the mountains. The
+merchant's heart misgave him at these signals, and especially when he
+beheld more than forty men gathering from glen and thicket. They were
+clad in hunters' dresses, and armed with boar-spears, darts, and
+hunting-swords, and many of them led hounds in long leashes. All this
+was a new and wild scene to the astonished merchant; nor were his fears
+abated, when he saw his servant approaching with the hackney, laden with
+money-bags; "for of a certainty," said he to himself, "this will be too
+tempting a spoil for these wild hunters of the mountains."
+
+Pelayo, however, took no more notice of the gold than if it had been
+so much dross; at which the honest burgher marvelled exceedingly. He
+ordered that the wounds of the merchant should be dressed, and his own
+examined. On taking off his cuirass, his wound was found to be but
+slight; but his men were so exasperated at seeing his blood, that
+they would have put the captive robbers to instant death, had he not
+forbidden them to do them any harm.
+
+The huntsmen now made a great fire at the foot of a tree, and bringing
+a boar which they had killed, cut off portions and roasted them, or
+broiled them on the coals. Then drawing forth loaves of bread from their
+wallets, they devoured their food half raw, with the hungry relish of
+huntsmen and mountaineers. The merchant, his wife, and daughter, looked
+at all this, and wondered, for they had never beheld so savage a repast.
+
+Pelayo then inquired of them if they did not desire to eat; they were
+too much in awe of him to decline, though they felt a loathing at the
+thought of partaking of this hunter's fare; but he ordered a linen cloth
+to be spread under the shade of a great oak, on the grassy margin of a
+clear running stream; and to their astonishment, they were served, not
+with the flesh of the boar, but with dainty cheer, such as the merchant
+had scarcely hoped to find out of the walls of his native city of
+Bordeaux.
+
+The good burgher was of a community renowned for gastronomic prowess:
+his fears having subsided, his appetite was now awakened, and he
+addressed himself manfully to the viands that were set before him. His
+daughter, however, could not eat: her eyes were ever and anon stealing
+to gaze on Pelayo, whom she regarded with gratitude for his protection,
+and admiration for his valor; and now that he had laid aside his helmet,
+and she beheld his lofty countenance, glowing with manly beauty,
+she thought him something more than mortal. The heart of the gentle
+donzella, says the ancient chronicler, was kind and yielding; and had
+Pelayo thought fit to ask the greatest boon that love and beauty could
+bestow--doubtless meaning her fair hand--she could not have had the
+cruelty to say him nay. Pelayo, however, had no such thoughts: the love
+of woman had never yet entered his heart; and though he regarded the
+damsel as the fairest maiden he had ever beheld, her beauty caused no
+perturbation in his breast.
+
+When the repast was over, Pelayo offered to conduct the merchant and
+his family through the defiles of the mountains, lest they should be
+molested by any of the scattered band of robbers. The bodies of the
+slain marauders were buried, and the corpse of the servant was laid upon
+one of the horses captured in the battle. Having formed their cavalcade,
+they pursued their way slowly up one of the steep and winding passes of
+the Pyrenees.
+
+Toward sunset, they arrived at the dwelling of a holy hermit. It was
+hewn out of the living rock; there was a cross over the door, and before
+it was a great spreading oak, with a sweet spring of water at its foot.
+The body of the faithful servant who had fallen in the defence of his
+lord, was buried close by the wall of this sacred retreat, and the
+hermit promised to perform masses for the repose of his soul. Then
+Pelayo obtained from the holy father consent that the merchant's wife
+and daughter should pass the night within his cell; and the hermit made
+beds of moss for them, and gave them his benediction; but the damsel
+found little rest, so much were her thoughts occupied by the youthful
+champion who had rescued her from death or dishonor.
+
+Pelayo, however, was visited by no such wandering of the mind; but,
+wrapping himself in his mantle, slept soundly by the fountain under the
+tree. At midnight, when every thing was buried in deep repose, he was
+awakened from his sleep and beheld the hermit before him, with the beams
+of the moon shining upon his silver hair and beard.
+
+"This is no time," said the latter, "to be sleeping; arise and listen to
+my words, and hear of the great work for which thou art chosen!"
+
+Then Pelayo arose and seated himself on a rock, and the hermit continued
+his discourse.
+
+"Behold," said he, "the ruin of Spain is at hand! It will be delivered
+into the hands of strangers, and will become a prey to the spoiler. Its
+children will be slain or carried into captivity; or such as may escape
+these evils, will harbor with the beasts of the forest or the eagles of
+the mountain. The thorn and bramble will spring up where now are seen
+the cornfield, the vine, and the olive; and hungry wolves will roam in
+place of peaceful flocks and herds. But thou, my son! tarry not thou
+to see these things, for thou canst not prevent them. Depart on a
+pilgrimage to the sepulchre of our blessed Lord in Palestine; purify
+thyself by prayer; enroll thyself in the order of chivalry, and prepare
+for the great work of the redemption of thy country; for to thee it will
+be given to raise it from the depth of its affliction."
+
+Pelayo would have inquired farther into the evils thus foretold, but the
+hermit rebuked his curiosity.
+
+"Seek not to know more," said he, "than heaven is pleased to reveal.
+Clouds and darkness cover its designs, and prophecy is never permitted
+to lift up but in part the veil that rests upon the future."
+
+The hermit ceased to speak, and Pelayo laid himself down again to take
+repose, but sleep was a stranger to his eyes.
+
+When the first rays of the rising sun shone upon the tops of the
+mountains, the travellers assembled round the fountain beneath the tree
+and made their morning's repast. Then, having received the benediction
+of the hermit, they departed in the freshness of the day, and descended
+along the hollow defiles leading into the interior of Spain. The good
+merchant was refreshed by sleep and by his morning's meal; and when he
+beheld his wife and daughter thus secure by his side, and the hackney
+laden with his treasure close behind him, his heart was light in his
+bosom, and he carolled a chanson as he went, and the woodlands echoed to
+his song. But Pelayo rode in silence, for he revolved in his mind the
+portentous words of the hermit; and the daughter of the merchant ever
+and anon stole looks at him full of tenderness and admiration, and deep
+sighs betrayed the agitation of her bosom.
+
+At length they came to the foot of the mountains, where the forests and
+the rocks terminated, and an open and secure country lay before the
+travellers. Here they halted, for their roads were widely different.
+When they came to part, the merchant and his wife were loud in thanks
+and benedictions, and the good burgher would fain have given Pelayo the
+largest of his sacks of gold; but the young man put it aside with a
+smile. "Silver and gold," said he, "need I not, but if I have deserved
+aught at thy hands, give me thy prayers, for the prayers of a good man
+are above all price."
+
+In the mean time the daughter had spoken never a word. At length she
+raised her eyes, which were filled with tears, and looked timidly at
+Pelayo, and her bosom throbbed; and after a violent struggle between
+strong affection and virgin modesty, her heart relieved itself by words.
+
+"Senor," said she, "I know that I am unworthy of the notice of so noble
+a cavalier; but suffer me to place this ring upon a finger of that hand
+which has so bravely rescued us from death; and when you regard it, you
+may consider it as a memorial of your own valor, and not of one who is
+too humble to be remembered by you."
+
+With these words, she drew a ring from her finger and put it upon the
+finger of Pelayo; and having done this, she blushed and trembled at her
+own boldness, and stood as one abashed, with her eyes cast down upon the
+earth.
+
+Pelayo was moved at the words of the simple maiden, and at the touch of
+her fair hand, and at her beauty, as she stood thus trembling and in
+tears before him; but as yet he knew nothing of woman, and his heart was
+free from the snares of love. "Amiga," (friend,) said he, "I accept thy
+present, and will wear it in remembrance of thy goodness;" so saying, he
+kissed her on the cheek.
+
+The damsel was cheered by these words, and hoped that she had awakened
+some tenderness in his bosom; but it was no such thing, says the grave
+old chronicler, for his heart was devoted to higher and more sacred
+matters; yet certain it is, that he always guarded well that ring.
+
+When they parted, Pelayo remained with his huntsmen on a cliff, watching
+that no evil befell them, until they were far beyond the skirts of the
+mountain; and the damsel often turned to look at him, until she could no
+longer discern him, for the distance and the tears that dimmed her eyes.
+
+And for that he had accepted her ring, says the ancient chronicler, she
+considered herself wedded to him in her heart, and would never marry;
+nor could she be brought to look with eyes of affection upon any other
+man; but for the true love which she bore Pelayo, she lived and died a
+virgin. And she composed a book which treated of love and chivalry,
+and the temptations of this mortal life; and one part discoursed of
+celestial matters, and it was called "The Contemplations of Love;"
+because at the time she wrote it, she thought of Pelayo, and of his
+having accepted her jewel and called her by the gentle appellation of
+"Amiga." And often thinking of him in tender sadness, and of her never
+having beheld him more, she would take the book and would read it as
+if in his stead; and while she repeated the words of love which it
+contained, she would endeavor to fancy them uttered by Pelayo, and that
+he stood before her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE KNIGHT OF MALTA.
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER
+
+
+SIR: In the course of a tour which I made in Sicily, in the days of my
+juvenility, I passed some little time at the ancient city of Catania,
+at the foot of Mount AEtna. Here I became acquainted with the Chevalier
+L----, an old Knight of Malta. It was not many years after the time that
+Napoleon had dislodged the knights from their island, and he still wore
+the insignia of his order. He was not, however, one of those reliques of
+that once chivalrous body, who had been described was "a few worn-out
+old men, creeping about certain parts of Europe, with the Maltese cross
+on their breasts;" on the contrary, though advanced in life, his form
+was still light and vigorous; he had a pale, thin, intellectual visage,
+with a high forehead, and a bright, visionary eye. He seemed to take a
+fancy to me, as I certainly did to him, and we soon became intimate,
+I visited him occasionally, at his apartments, in the wing of an old
+palace, looking toward Mount AEtna. He was an antiquary, a virtuoso, and
+a connoisseur. His rooms were decorated with mutilated statues, dug up
+from Grecian and Roman ruins; old vases, lachrymals, and sepulchral
+lamps. He had astronomical and chemical instruments, and black-letter
+books, in various languages. I found that he had dipped a little in
+chimerical studies and had a hankering after astrology and alchymy. He
+affected to believe in dreams and visions, and delighted in the fanciful
+Rosicrucian doctrines. I cannot persuade myself, however, that he really
+believed in all these: I rather think he loved to let his imagination
+carry him away into the boundless fairy land which they unfolded.
+
+In company with the chevalier, I took several excursions on horseback
+about the environs of Catania, and the picturesque skirts of Mount Etna.
+One of these led through a village, which had sprung up on the very
+tract of an ancient eruption, the houses being built of lava. At one
+time we passed, for some distance, along a narrow lane, between two high
+dead convent walls. It was a cut-throat-looking place, in a country
+where assassinations are frequent; and just about midway through it,
+we observed blood upon the pavement and the walls, as if a murder had
+actually been committed there.
+
+The chevalier spurred on his horse, until he had extricated himself
+completely from this suspicious neighborhood. He then observed, that it
+reminded him of a similar blind alley in Malta, infamous on account of
+the many assassinations that had taken place there; concerning one
+of which, he related a long and tragical story, that lasted until
+we reached Catania. It involved various circumstances of a wild and
+supernatural character, but which he assured me were handed down in
+tradition, and generally credited by the old inhabitants of Malta.
+
+As I like to pick up strange stories, and as I was particularly struck
+with several parts of this, I made a minute of it, on my return to my
+lodgings. The memorandum was lost, with several others of my travelling
+papers, and the story had faded from my mind, when recently, in perusing
+a French memoir, I came suddenly upon it, dressed up, it is true, in a
+very different manner, but agreeing in the leading facts, and given upon
+the word of that famous adventurer, the Count Cagliostro.
+
+I have amused myself, during a snowy day in the country, by rendering it
+roughly into English, for the entertainment of a youthful circle round
+the Christmas fire. It was well received by my auditors, who, however,
+are rather easily pleased. One proof of its merits is that it sent
+some of the youngest of them quaking to their beds, and gave them very
+fearful dreams. Hoping that it may have the same effect upon your
+ghost-hunting readers, I offer it, Mr. Editor, for insertion in your
+Magazine. I would observe, that wherever I have modified the French
+version of the Story, it has been in conformity to some recollection of
+the narrative of my friend, the Knight of Malta.
+
+Your obt. servt.,
+
+GEOFFREY CRAYON.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_THE GRAND PRIOR OF MINORCA,_
+
+A VERITABLE GHOST STORY.
+
+  "Keep my wits, heaven! They say spirits appear
+  To melancholy minds, and the graves open!"--FLETCHER.
+
+About the middle of the last century, while the Knights of Saint John of
+Jerusalem still maintained something of their ancient state and sway in
+the Island of Malta, a tragical event took place there, which is the
+groundwork of the following narrative.
+
+It may be as well to premise, that at the time we are treating of,
+the order of Saint John of Jerusalem, grown excessively wealthy, had
+degenerated from its originally devout and warlike character. Instead
+of being a hardy body of "monk-knights," sworn soldiers of the cross,
+fighting the Paynim in the Holy Land, or scouring the Mediterranean, and
+scourging the Barbary coasts with their galleys, or feeding the poor,
+and attending upon the sick at their hospitals, they led a life of
+luxury and libertinism, and were to be found in the most voluptuous
+courts of Europe. The order, in fact, had become a mode of providing
+for the needy branches of the Catholic aristocracy of Europe. "A
+commandery," we are told, was a splendid provision for a younger
+brother; and men of rank, however dissolute, provided they belonged
+to the highest aristocracy, became Knights of Malta, just as they did
+bishops, or colonels of regiments, or court chamberlains. After a brief
+Residence at Malta, the knights passed the rest of their time in their
+own countries, or only made a visit now and then to the island. While
+there, having but little military duty to perform, they beguiled their
+idleness by paying attentions to the fair.
+
+There was one circle of society, however, into which they could not
+obtain currency. This was composed of a few families of the old Maltese
+nobility, natives of the island. These families, not being permitted
+to enroll any of their members in the order, affected to hold no
+intercourse with its chevaliers; admitting none into their exclusive
+coteries but the Grand Master, whom they acknowledged as their
+sovereign, and the members of the chapter which composed his council.
+
+To indemnify themselves for this exclusion, the chevaliers carried their
+gallantries into the next class of society, composed of those who held
+civil, administrative, and judicial situations. The ladies of this class
+were called _honorate_, or honorables, to distinguish them from the
+inferior orders; and among them were many of superior grace, beauty, and
+fascination.
+
+Even in this more hospitable class, the chevaliers were not all equally
+favored. Those of Germany had the decided preference, owing to their
+fair and fresh complexions, and the kindliness of their manners: next
+to these came the Spanish cavaliers, on account of their profound and
+courteous devotion, and most discreet secrecy. Singular as it may seem,
+the chevaliers of France fared the worst. The Maltese ladies dreaded
+their volatility, and their proneness to boast of their amours, and
+shunned all entanglement with them. They were forced, therefore, to
+content themselves with conquests among females of the lower orders.
+They revenged themselves, after the gay French manner, by making the
+"honorate" the objects of all kinds of jests and mystifications; by
+prying into their tender affairs with the more favored chevaliers, and
+making them the theme of song and epigram.
+
+About this time, a French vessel arrived at Malta, bringing out a
+distinguished personage of the order of Saint John of Jerusalem,
+the Commander de Foulquerre, who came to solicit the post of
+commander-in-chief of the galleys. He was descended from an old and
+warrior line of French nobility, his ancestors having long been
+seneschals of Poitou, and claiming descent from the first counts of
+Angouleme.
+
+The arrival of the commander caused a little uneasiness among the
+peaceably inclined, for he bore the character, in the island, of being
+fiery, arrogant, and quarrelsome. He had already been three times at
+Malta, and on each visit had signalized himself by some rash and deadly
+affray.
+
+As he was now thirty-five years of age, however, it was hoped that time
+might have taken off the fiery edge of his spirit, and that he might
+prove more quiet and sedate than formerly. The commander set up an
+establishment befitting his rank and pretensions; for he arrogated to
+himself an importance greater even than that of the Grand Master. His
+house immediately became the rallying place of all the young French
+chevaliers. They informed him of all the slights they had experienced or
+imagined, and indulged their petulant and satirical vein at the expense
+of the honorate and their admirers. The chevaliers of other nations soon
+found the topics and tone of conversation at the commander's irksome and
+offensive, and gradually ceased to visit there. The commander remained
+the head of a national _clique_, who looked up to him as their model.
+If he was not as boisterous and quarrelsome as formerly, he had become
+haughty and overbearing. He was fond of talking over his past affairs of
+punctilio and bloody duel. When walking the streets, he was generally
+attended by a ruffling train of young French cavaliers, who caught his
+own air of assumption and bravado. These he would conduct to the scenes
+of his deadly encounters, point out the very spot where each fatal lunge
+had been given, and dwell vaingloriously on every particular.
+
+Under his tuition, the young French chevaliers began to add bluster and
+arrogance to their former petulance and levity; they fired up on the
+most trivial occasions, particularly with those who had been most
+successful with the fair; and would put on the most intolerable
+drawcansir airs. The other chevaliers conducted themselves with all
+possible forbearance and reserve; but they saw it would be impossible to
+keep on long, in this manner, without coming to an open rupture.
+
+Among the Spanish cavaliers was one named Don Luis de Lima Vasconcellos.
+He was distantly related to the Grand Master; and had been enrolled at
+an early age among his pages, but had been rapidly promoted by him,
+until, at the age of twenty-six, he had been given the richest Spanish
+commandery in the order. He had, moreover, been fortunate with the fair,
+with one of whom, the most beautiful honorata of Malta, he had long
+maintained the most tender correspondence.
+
+The character, rank, and connexions of Don Luis put him on a par with
+the imperious Commander de Foulquerre, and pointed him out as a leader
+and champion to his countrymen. The Spanish chevaliers repaired to him,
+therefore, in a body; represented all the grievances they had sustained,
+and the evils they apprehended, and urged him to use his influence with
+the commander and his adherents to put a stop to the growing abuses.
+
+Don Luis was gratified by this mark of confidence and esteem on the part
+of his countrymen, and promised to have an interview with the Commander
+de Foulquerre on the subject. He resolved to conduct himself with
+the utmost caution and delicacy on the occasion; to represent to
+the commander the evil consequences which might result from the
+inconsiderate conduct of the young French chevaliers, and to entreat him
+to exert the great influence he so deservedly possessed over them, to
+restrain their excesses. Don Luis was aware, however, of the peril that
+attended any interview of the kind with this imperious and fractious
+man, and apprehended, however it might commence, that it would terminate
+in a duel. Still, it was an affair of honor, in which Castilian dignity
+was concerned; beside, he had a lurking disgust at the overbearing
+manners of De Foulquerre, and perhaps had been somewhat offended by
+certain intrusive attentions which he had presumed to pay to the
+beautiful honorata.
+
+It was now Holy Week; a time too sacred for worldly feuds and passions,
+especially in a community under the dominion of a religious order; it
+was agreed, therefore, that the dangerous interview in question should
+not take place until after the Easter holidays. It is probable, from
+subsequent circumstances, that the Commander de Foulquerre had some
+information of this arrangement among the Spanish chevaliers, and was
+determined to be beforehand, and to mortify the pride of their champion,
+who was thus preparing to read him a lecture. He chose Good Friday for
+his purpose. On this sacred day, it is customary in Catholic countries
+to make a tour of all the churches, offering up prayers in each. In
+every Catholic church, as is well known, there is a vessel of holy water
+near the door. In this, every one, on entering, dips his fingers, and
+makes therewith the sign of the cross on his forehead and breast. An
+office of gallantry, among the young Spaniards, is to stand near the
+door, dip their hands in the holy vessel, and extend them courteously
+and respectfully to any lady of their acquaintance who may enter; who
+thus receives the sacred water at second hand, on the tips of her
+fingers, and proceeds to cross herself, with all due decorum. The
+Spaniards, who are the most jealous of lovers, are impatient when this
+piece of devotional gallantry is proffered to the object of their
+affections by any other hand: on Good Friday, therefore, when a lady
+makes a tour of the churches, it is the usage among them for the
+inamorato to follow her from church to church, so as to present her the
+holy water at the door of each; thus testifying his own devotion, and at
+the same time preventing the officious services of a rival.
+
+On the day in question, Don Luis followed the beautiful honorata, to
+whom, as has already been observed, he had long been devoted. At the
+very first church she visited, the Commander de Foulquerre was stationed
+at the portal, with several of the young French chevaliers about him.
+Before Don Luis could offer her the holy water, he was anticipated by
+the commander, who thrust himself between them, and, while he performed
+the gallant office to the lady, rudely turned his back upon her admirer,
+and trod upon his feet. The insult was enjoyed by the young Frenchmen
+who were present: it was too deep and grave to be forgiven by Spanish
+pride; and at once put an end to all Don Luis' plans of caution and
+forbearance. He repressed his passion for the moment, however, and
+waited until all the parties left the church; then, accosting the
+commander with an air of coolness and unconcern, he inquired after his
+health, and asked to what church he proposed making his second visit.
+"To the Magisterial Church of Saint John." Don Luis offered to conduct
+him thither, by the shortest route. His offer was accepted, apparently
+without suspicion, and they proceeded together. After walking some
+distance, they entered a long, narrow lane, without door or window
+opening upon it, called the "Strada Stretta," or narrow street. It was a
+street in which duels were tacitly permitted, or connived at, in Malta,
+and were suffered to pass as accidental encounters. Every where else
+they were prohibited. This restriction had been instituted to diminish
+the number of duels, formerly so frequent in Malta. As a farther
+precaution to render these encounters less fatal, it was an offence,
+punishable with death, for any one to enter this street armed with
+either poniard or pistol. It was a lonely, dismal street, just wide
+enough for two men to stand upon their guard, and cross their swords;
+few persons ever traversed it, unless with some sinister design; and on
+any preconcerted duello, the seconds posted themselves at each end, to
+stop all passengers, and prevent interruption.
+
+In the present instance, the parties had scarce entered the street,
+when Don Luis drew his sword, and called upon the commander to defend
+himself.
+
+De Foulquerre was evidently taken by surprise: he drew back, and
+attempted to expostulate; but Don Luis persisted in defying him to the
+combat.
+
+After a second or two, he likewise drew his sword, but immediately
+lowered the point.
+
+"Good Friday!" ejaculated he, shaking his head: "one word with you; it
+is full six years since I have been in a confessional: I am shocked at
+the state of my conscience; but within three days--that is to say, on
+Monday next--"
+
+Don Luis would listen to nothing. Though naturally of a peaceable
+disposition, he had been stung to fury, and people of that character,
+when once incensed, are deaf to reason. He compelled the commander to
+put himself on his guard. The latter, though a man accustomed to brawl
+in battle, was singularly dismayed. Terror was visible in all his
+features. He placed himself with his back to the wall, and the weapons
+were crossed. The contest was brief and fatal. At the very first thrust,
+the sword of Don Luis passed through the body of his antagonist. The
+commander staggered to the wall, and leaned against it.
+
+"On Good Friday!" ejaculated he again, with a failing voice, and
+despairing accents. "Heaven pardon you!" added he; "take my sword to
+Tetefoulques, and have a hundred masses performed in the chapel of the
+castle, for the repose of my soul!" With these words he expired.
+
+The fury of Don Luis was at an end. He stood aghast, gazing at the
+bleeding body of the commander. He called to mind the prayer of the
+deceased for three days' respite, to make his peace with heaven; he had
+refused it; had sent him to the grave, with all his sins upon his head!
+His conscience smote him to the core; he gathered up the sword of the
+commander, which he had been enjoined to take to Tetefoulques, and
+hurried from the fatal Strada Stretta.
+
+The duel of course made a great noise in Malta, but had no injurious
+effect upon the worldly fortunes of Don Luis. He made a full declaration
+of the whole matter, before the proper authorities; the Chapter of
+the Order considered it one of those casual encounters of the Strada
+Stretta, which were mourned over, but tolerated; the public, by whom
+the late commander had been generally detested, declared that he had
+deserved his fate. It was but three days after the event, that Don
+Luis was advanced to one of the highest dignities of the Order, being
+invested by the Grand Master with the priorship of the kingdom of
+Minorca.
+
+From that time forward, however, the whole character and conduct of Don
+Luis underwent a change. He became a prey to a dark melancholy, which
+nothing could assuage. The most austere piety, the severest penances,
+had no effect in allaying the horror which preyed upon his mind. He was
+absent for a long time from Malta; having gone, it was said, on remote
+pilgrimages: when he returned, he was more haggard than ever. There
+seemed something mysterious and inexplicable in this disorder of his
+mind. The following is the revelation made by himself, of the horrible
+visions, or chimeras, by which he was haunted:
+
+"When I had made my declaration before the Chapter," said he, "and my
+provocations were publicly known, I had made my peace with man; but it
+was not so with God, nor with my confessor, nor with my own conscience.
+My act was doubly criminal, from the day on which it was committed,
+and from my refusal to a delay of three days, for the victim of my
+resentment to receive the sacraments. His despairing ejaculation, 'Good
+Friday! Good Friday!' continually rang in my ears. 'Why did I not grant
+the respite!' cried I to myself; 'was it not enough to kill the body,
+but must I seek to kill the soul!'
+
+"On the night of the following Friday, I started suddenly from my sleep.
+An unaccountable horror was upon me. I looked wildly around. It seemed
+as if I were not in my apartment, nor in my bed, but in the fatal Strada
+Stretta, lying on the pavement. I again saw the commander leaning
+against the wall; I again heard his dying words: 'Take my sword to
+Tetefoulques, and have a hundred masses performed in the chapel of the
+castle, for the repose of my soul!'
+
+"On the following night, I caused one of my servants to sleep in the
+same room with me. I saw and heard nothing, either on that night, or any
+of the nights following, until the next Friday; when I had again the
+same vision, with this difference, that my valet seemed to be lying at
+some distance from me on the pavement of the Strada Stretta. The vision
+continued to be repeated on every Friday night, the commander always
+appearing in the same manner, and uttering the same words: 'Take my
+sword to Tetefoulques, and have a hundred masses performed in the chapel
+of the castle for the repose of my soul!' On questioning my servant on
+the subject, he stated, that on these occasions he dreamed that he was
+lying in a very narrow street, but he neither saw nor heard any thing of
+the commander.
+
+"I knew nothing of this Tetefoulques, whither the defunct was so urgent
+I should carry his sword. I made inquiries, therefore, concerning it
+among the French chevaliers. They informed me that it was an old castle,
+situated about four leagues from Poitiers, in the midst of a forest.
+It had been built in old times, several centuries since, by Foulques
+Taillefer, (or Fulke Hackiron,) a redoubtable, hard-fighting Count of
+Angouleme, who gave it to an illegitimate son, afterward created Grand
+Seneschal of Poitou, which son became the pro genitor of the Foulquerres
+of Tetefoulques, hereditary Seneschals of Poitou. They farther
+informed me, that strange stories were told of this old castle, in the
+surrounding country, and that it contained many curious reliques. Among
+these, were the arms of Foulques Taillefer, together with all those of
+the warriors he had slain; and that it was an immemorial usage with the
+Foulquerres to have the weapons deposited there which they had wielded
+either in war or in single combat. This, then, was the reason of the
+dying injunction of the commander respecting his sword. I carried this
+weapon with me, wherever I went, but still I neglected to comply with
+his request.
+
+"The visions still continued to harass me with undiminished horror.
+I repaired to Rome, where I confessed myself to the Grand Cardinal
+penitentiary, and informed him of the terrors with which I was haunted.
+He promised me absolution, after I should have performed certain acts of
+penance, the principal of which was, to execute the dying request of the
+commander, by carrying the sword to Tetefoulques, and having the hundred
+masses performed in the chapel of the castle for the repose of his soul.
+
+"I set out for France as speedily as possible, and made no delay in my
+journey. On arriving at Poitiers, I found that the tidings of the death
+of the commander had reached there, but had caused no more affliction
+than among the people of Malta. Leaving my equipage in the town, I
+put on the garb of a pilgrim, and taking a guide, set out on foot
+for Tetefoulques, Indeed the roads in this part of the country were
+impracticable for carriages.
+
+"I found the castle of Tetefoulques a grand but gloomy and dilapidated
+pile. All the gates were closed, and there reigned over the whole place
+an air of almost savage loneliness and desertion. I had understood that
+its only inhabitant were the concierge, or warder, and a kind of hermit
+who had charge of the chapel. After ringing for some time at the gate,
+I at length succeeded in bringing forth the warder, who bowed with
+reverence to my pilgrim's garb. I begged him to conduct me to the
+chapel, that being the end of my pilgrimage. We found the hermit there,
+chanting the funeral service; a dismal sound to one who came to perform
+a penance for the death of a member of the family. When he had ceased
+to chant, I informed him that I came to accomplish an obligation of
+conscience, and that I wished him to perform a hundred masses for the
+repose of the soul of the commander. He replied that, not being in
+orders, he was not authorized to perform mass, but that he would
+willingly undertake to see that my debt of conscience was discharged. I
+laid my offering on the altar, and would have placed the sword of the
+commander there, likewise. 'Hold!' said the hermit, with a melancholy
+shake of the head,'this is no place for so deadly a weapon, that has so
+often been bathed in Christian blood. Take it to the armory; you will
+find there trophies enough of like character. It is a place into which I
+never enter.'
+
+"The warder here took up the theme abandoned by the peaceful man of
+God. He assured me that I would see in the armory the swords of all the
+warrior race of Foulquerres, together with those of the enemies over
+whom they had triumphed. This, he observed, had been a usage kept
+up since the time of Mellusine, and of her husband, Geoffrey a la
+Grand-dent, or Geoffrey with the Great-tooth.
+
+"I followed the gossiping warder to the armory. It was a great dusty
+hall, hung round with Gothic-looking portraits, of a stark line of
+warriors, each with his weapon, and the weapons of those he had slain in
+battle, hung beside his picture. The most conspicuous portrait was that
+of Foulques Taillefer, (Fulke Hackiron,) Count of Angouleme, and founder
+of the castle. He was represented at full-length, armed cap-a-pie, and
+grasping a huge buckler, on which were emblazoned three lions passant.
+The figure was so striking, that it seemed ready to start from the
+canvas: and I observed beneath this picture, a trophy composed of many
+weapons, proofs of the numerous triumphs of this hard-fighting old
+cavalier. Beside the weapons connected with the portraits, there were
+swords of all shapes, sizes, and centuries, hung round the hall; with
+piles of armor, placed as it were in effigy.
+
+"On each side of an immense chimney, were suspended the portraits of the
+first seneschal of Poitou (the illegitimate son of Foulques Taillefer)
+and his wife Isabella de Lusignan; the progenitors of the grim race of
+Foulquerres that frowned around. They had the look of being perfect
+likenesses; and as I gazed on them, I fancied I could trace in their
+antiquated features some family resemblance to their unfortunate
+descendant, whom I had slain! This was a dismal neighborhood, yet the
+armory was the only part of the castle that had a habitable air; so I
+asked the warder whether he could not make a fire, and give me something
+for supper there, and prepare me a bed in one corner.
+
+"'A fire and a supper you shall have, and that cheerfully, most worthy
+pilgrim,' said he; 'but as to a bed, I advise you to come and sleep in
+my chamber.'
+
+"'Why so?' inquired I; 'why shall I not sleep in this hall?'
+
+"'I have my reasons; I will make a bed for you close to mine.'
+
+"I made no objections, for I recollected that it was Friday, and I
+dreaded the return of my vision. He brought in billets of wood, kindled
+a fire in the great overhanging chimney, and then went forth to prepare
+my supper. I drew a heavy chair before the fire, and seating myself in
+it, gazed muzingly round upon the portraits of the Foulquerres, and the
+antiquated armor and weapons, the mementos of many a bloody deed. As
+the day declined, the smoky draperies of the hall gradually became
+confounded with the dark ground of the paintings, and the lurid gleams
+from the chimney only enabled me to see visages staring at me from the
+gathering darkness. All this was dismal in the extreme, and somewhat
+appalling; perhaps it was the state of my conscience that rendered me
+peculiarly sensitive, and prone to fearful imaginings.
+
+"At length the warder brought in my supper. It consisted of a dish of
+trout, and some crawfish taken in the fosse of the castle. He procured
+also a bottle of wine, which he informed me was wine of Poitou. I
+requested him to invite the hermit to join me in my repast; but the holy
+man sent back word that he allowed himself nothing but roots and herbs,
+cooked with water. I took my meal, therefore, alone, but prolonged it as
+much as possible, and sought to cheer my drooping spirits by the wine of
+Poitou, which I found very tolerable.
+
+"When supper was over, I prepared for my evening devotions. I have
+always been very punctual in reciting my breviary; it is the prescribed
+and bounden duty of all chevaliers of the religious orders; and I can
+answer for it, is faithfully performed by those of Spain. I accordingly
+drew forth from my pocket a small missal and a rosary, and told the
+warder he need only designate to me the way to his chamber, where I
+could come and rejoin him, when I had finished my prayers.
+
+"He accordingly pointed out a winding stair-case, opening from the hall.
+'You will descend this stair-case,' said he, 'until you come to the
+fourth landing-place, where you enter a vaulted passage, terminated by
+an arcade, with a statue of the blessed Jeanne of France; you cannot
+help finding my room, the door of which I will leave open; it is the
+sixth door from the landing-place. I advise you not to remain in this
+hall after midnight. Before that hour, you will hear the hermit ring the
+bell, in going the rounds of the corridors. Do not linger here after
+that signal.'
+
+"The warder retired, and I commenced my devotions. I continued at them
+earnestly; pausing from time to time to put wood upon the fire. I did
+not dare to look much around me, for I felt myself becoming a prey to
+fearful fancies. The pictures appeared to become animated. If I regarded
+one attentively, for any length of time, it seemed to move the eyes and
+lips. Above all, the portraits of the Grand Seneschal and his lady,
+which hung on each side of the great chimney, the progenitors of the
+Foulquerres of Tetefoulque, regarded me, I thought, with angry and
+baleful eyes: I even fancied they exchanged significant glances with
+each other. Just then a terrible blast of wind shook all the casements,
+and, rushing through the hall, made a fearful rattling and clashing
+among the armor. To my startled fancy, it seemed something supernatural.
+
+"At length I heard the bell of the hermit, and hastened to quit the
+hall. Taking a solitary light, which stood on the supper-table, I
+descended the winding stair-case; but before I had reached the vaulted
+passage leading to the statue of the blessed Jeanne of France, a blast
+of wind extinguished my taper. I hastily remounted the stairs, to light
+it again at the chimney; but judge of my feelings, when, on arriving at
+the entrance to the armory, I beheld the Seneschal and his lady, who had
+descended from their frames, and seated themselves on each side of the
+fire-place! "'Madam, my love,' said the Seneschal, with great formality,
+and in antiquated phrase, 'what think you of the presumption of this
+Castilian, who comes to harbor himself and make wassail in this our
+castle, after having slain our descendant, the commander, and that
+without granting him time for confession?'
+
+"'Truly, my lord,' answered the female spectre, with no less stateliness
+of manner, and with great asperity of tone; 'truly, my lord, I opine
+that this Castilian did a grievous wrong in this encounter; and he
+should never be suffered to depart hence, without your throwing him the
+gauntlet.' I paused to hear no more, but rushed again down-stairs, to
+seek the chamber of the warder. It was impossible to find it in the
+darkness, and in the perturbation of my mind. After an hour and a half
+of fruitless search, and mortal horror and anxieties, I endeavored
+to persuade myself that the day was about to break, and listened
+impatiently for the crowing of the cock; for I thought if I could hear
+his cheerful note, I should be reassured; catching, in the disordered
+state of my nerves, at the popular notion that ghosts never appear after
+the first crowing of the cock.
+
+"At length I rallied myself, and endeavored to shake off the vague
+terrors which haunted me. I tried to persuade myself that the two
+figures which I had seemed to see and hear, had existed only in my
+troubled imagination. I still had the end of the candle in my hand, and
+determined to make another effort to re-light it, and find my way to
+bed; for I was ready to sink with fatigue. I accordingly sprang up the
+stair-case, three steps at a time, stopped at the door of the armory,
+and peeped cautiously in. The two Gothic figures were no longer in the
+chimney corners, but I neglected to notice whether they had reascended
+to their frames. I entered, and made desperately for the fire-place, but
+scarce had I advanced three strides, when Messire Foolques Taillefer
+stood before me, in the centre of the hall, armed cap-a-pie, and
+standing in guard, with the point of his sword silently presented to
+me. I would have retreated to the stair-case, but the door of it was
+occupied by the phantom figure of an esquire, who rudely flung a
+gauntlet in my face. Driven to fury, I snatched down a sword from the
+wall: by chance, it was that of the commander which I had placed there.
+I rushed upon my fantastic adversary, and seemed to pierce him through
+and through; but at the same time I felt as if something pierced my
+heart, burning like a red-hot iron. My blood inundated the hall, and I
+fell senseless.
+
+"When I recovered consciousness, it was broad day, and I found myself in
+a small chamber, attended by the warder and the hermit. The former told
+me that on the previous night, he had awakened long after the midnight
+hour, and perceiving that I had not come to his chamber, he had
+furnished himself with a vase of holy water, and set out to seek me. He
+found me stretched senseless on the pavement of the armory, and bore me
+to this room. I spoke of my wound, and of the quantity of blood that I
+had lost. He shook his head, and knew nothing about it; and to my
+surprise, on examination, I found myself perfectly sound and unharmed.
+The wound and blood, therefore, had been all delusion. Neither the
+warder nor the hermit put any questions to me, but advised me to leave
+the castle as soon as possible. I lost no time in complying with their
+counsel, and felt my heart relieved from an oppressive weight, as I left
+the gloomy and fate-bound battlements of Tetefoulques behind me.
+
+"I arrived at Bayonne, on my way to Spain, on the following Friday. At
+midnight I was startled from my sleep, as I had formerly been; but it
+was no longer by the vision of the dying commander. It was old Foulques
+Taillefer who stood before me, armed cap-a-pie, and presenting the point
+of his sword. I made the sign of the cross, and the spectre vanished,
+but I received the same red-hot thrust in the heart which I had felt in
+the armory, and I seemed to be bathed in blood. I would have called out,
+or have arisen from my bed and gone in quest of succor, but I could
+neither speak nor stir. This agony endured until the crowing of the
+cock, when I fell asleep again; but the next day I was ill, and in a
+most pitiable state. I have continued to be harassed by the same vision
+every Friday night; no acts of penitence and devotion have been able to
+relieve me from it; and it is only a lingering hope in divine mercy,
+that sustains me, and enables me to support so lamentable a visitation."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Grand Prior of Minorca wasted gradually away under this constant
+remorse of conscience, and this horrible incubus. He died some time
+after having revealed the preceding particulars of his case, evidently
+the victim of a diseased imagination.
+
+The above relation has been rendered, in many parts literally, from the
+French memoir, in which it is given as a true story: if so, it is one of
+those instances in which truth is more romantic than fiction.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LEGEND OF
+THE ENGULPHED CONVENT.
+
+BY GEOFFREY CRAYON, GENT.
+
+At the dark and melancholy period when Don Roderick the Goth and his
+chivalry were overthrown on the banks of the Guadalete, and all Spain
+was overrun by the Moors, great was the devastation of churches and
+convents throughout that pious kingdom. The miraculous fate of one of
+those holy piles is thus recorded in one of the authentic legends of
+those days.
+
+On the summit of a hill, not very distant from the capital city of
+Toledo, stood an ancient convent and chapel, dedicated to the invocation
+of Saint Benedict, and inhabited by a sisterhood of Benedictine nuns.
+This holy asylum was confined to females of noble lineage. The younger
+sisters of the highest families were here given in religious marriage to
+their Saviour, in order that the portions of their elder sisters might
+be increased, and they enabled to make suitable matches on earth, or
+that the family wealth might go undivided to elder brothers, and the
+dignity of their ancient houses be protected from decay. The convent was
+renowned, therefore, for enshrining within its walls a sisterhood of the
+purest blood, the most immaculate virtue, and most resplendent beauty,
+of all Gothic Spain.
+
+When the Moors overran the kingdom, there was nothing that more
+excited their hostility than these virgin asylums. The very sight of a
+convent-spire was sufficient to set their Moslem blood in a foment, and
+they sacked it with as fierce a zeal as though the sacking of a nunnery
+were a sure passport to Elysium.
+
+Tidings of such outrages committed in various parts of the kingdom
+reached this noble sanctuary and filled it with dismay. The danger
+came nearer and nearer; the infidel hosts were spreading all over the
+country; Toledo itself was captured; there was no flying from the
+convent, and no security within its walls.
+
+In the midst of this agitation, the alarm was given one day that a great
+band of Saracens were spurring across the plain. In an instant the whole
+convent was a scene of confusion. Some of the nuns wrung their fair
+hands at the windows; others waved their veils and uttered shrieks from
+the tops of the towers, vainly hoping to draw relief from a country
+over-run by the foe. The sight of these innocent doves thus fluttering
+about their dove-cote, but increased the zealot fury of the whiskered
+Moors. They thundered at the portal, and at every blow the ponderous
+gates trembled on their hinges.
+
+The nuns now crowded round the abbess. They had been accustomed to look
+up to her as all-powerful, and they now implored her protection. The
+mother abbess looked with a rueful eye upon the treasures of beauty
+and vestal virtue exposed to such imminent peril. Alas! how was she to
+protect them from the spoiler! She had, it is true, experienced many
+signal inter-positions of providence in her individual favor. Her early
+days had been passed amid the temptations of a court, where her virtue
+had been purified by repeated trials, from none of which had she escaped
+but by a miracle. But were miracles never to cease? Could she hope that
+the marvelous protection shown to herself would be extended to a
+whole sisterhood? There was no other resource. The Moors were at the
+threshold; a few moments more and the convent would be at their mercy.
+Summoning her nuns to follow her, she hurried into the chapel; and
+throwing herself on her knees before the image of the blessed Mary, "Oh,
+holy Lady!" exclaimed she, "oh, most pure and immaculate of virgins!
+thou seest our extremity. The ravager is at the gate, and there is none
+on earth to help us! Look down with pity, and grant that the earth may
+gape and swallow us rather than that our cloister vows should suffer
+violation!"
+
+The Moors redoubled their assault upon the portal; the gates gave way,
+with a tremendous crash; a savage yell of exultation arose; when of a
+sudden the earth yawned; down sank the convent, with its cloisters, its
+dormitories, and all its nuns. The chapel tower was the last that sank,
+the bell ringing forth a peal of triumph in the very teeth of the
+infidels.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Forty years had passed and gone, since the period of this miracle. The
+subjugation of Spain was complete. The Moors lorded it over city and
+country; and such of the Christian population as remained, and were
+permitted to exercise their religion, did it in humble resignation to
+the Moslem sway.
+
+At this time, a Christian cavalier, of Cordova, hearing that a patriotic
+band of his countrymen had raised the standard of the cross in the
+mountains of the Asturias, resolved to join them, and unite in breaking
+the yoke of bondage. Secretly arming himself, and caparisoning his
+steed, he set forth from Cordova, and pursued his course by unfrequented
+mule-paths, and along the dry channels made by winter torrents. His
+spirit burned with indignation, whenever, on commanding a view over a
+long sweeping plain, he beheld the mosque swelling in the distance, and
+the Arab horsemen careering about, as if the rightful lords of the soil.
+Many a deep-drawn sigh, and heavy groan, also, did the good cavalier
+utter, on passing the ruins of churches and convents desolated by the
+conquerors.
+
+It was on a sultry midsummer evening, that this wandering cavalier, in
+skirting a hill thickly covered with forest, heard the faint tones of a
+vesper bell sounding melodiously in the air, and seeming to come from
+the summit of the hill. The cavalier crossed himself with wonder, at
+this unwonted and Christian sound. He supposed it to proceed from one
+of those humble chapels and hermitages permitted to exist through the
+indulgence of the Moslem conquerors. Turning his steed up a narrow
+path of the forest, he sought this sanctuary, in hopes of finding a
+hospitable shelter for the night. As he advanced, the trees threw a deep
+gloom around him, and the bat flitted across his path. The bell ceased
+to toll, and all was silence.
+
+Presently a choir of female voices came stealing sweetly through the
+forest, chanting the evening service, to the solemn accompaniment of
+an organ. The heart of the good cavalier melted at the sound, for it
+recalled the happier days of his country. Urging forward his weary
+steed, he at length arrived at a broad grassy area, on the summit of the
+hill, surrounded by the forest. Here the melodious voices rose in full
+chorus, like the swelling of the breeze; but whence they came, he could
+not tell. Sometimes they were before, sometimes behind him; sometimes in
+the air, sometimes as if from within the bosom of the earth. At length
+they died away, and a holy stillness settled on the place.
+
+The cavalier gazed around with bewildered eye. There was neither chapel
+nor convent, nor humble hermitage, to be seen; nothing but a moss-grown
+stone pinnacle, rising out of the centre of the area, surmounted by a
+cross. The greensward around appeared to have been sacred from the tread
+of man or beast, and the surrounding trees bent toward the cross, as if
+in adoration.
+
+The cavalier felt a sensation of holy awe. He alighted and tethered
+his steed on the skirts of the forest, where he might crop the tender
+herbage; then approaching the cross, he knelt and poured forth his
+evening prayers before this relique of the Christian days of Spain.
+His orisons being concluded, he laid himself down at the foot of the
+pinnacle, and reclining his head against one of its stones, fell into a
+deep sleep.
+
+About midnight, he was awakened by the tolling of a bell, and found
+himself lying before the gate of an ancient convent. A train of nuns
+passed by, each bearing a taper. The cavalier rose and followed them
+into the chapel; in the centre of which was a bier, on which lay the
+corpse of an aged nun. The organ performed a solemn requiem: the nuns
+joining in chorus. When the funeral service was finished, a melodious
+voice chanted, "_Requiescat in pace!_"--"May she rest in peace!" The
+lights immediately vanished; the whole passed away as a dream; and the
+cavalier found himself at the foot of the cross, and beheld, by the
+faint rays of the rising moon, his steed quietly grazing near him.
+
+When the day dawned, the cavalier descended the hill, and following the
+course of a small brook, came to a cave, at the entrance of which was
+seated an ancient man, clad in hermit's garb, with rosary and cross,
+and a beard that descended to his girdle. He was one of those holy
+anchorites permitted by the Moors to live unmolested in dens and caves,
+and humble hermitages, and even to practise the rites of their religion.
+The cavalier checked his horse, and dismounting, knelt and craved a
+benediction. He then related all that had befallen him in the night, and
+besought the hermit to explain the mystery.
+
+"What thou hast heard and seen, my son," replied the other, "is but type
+and shadow of the woes of Spain."
+
+He then related the foregoing story of the miraculous deliverance of the
+convent.
+
+"Forty years," added the holy man, "have elapsed since this event, yet
+the bells of that sacred edifice are still heard, from time to time,
+sounding from under ground, together with the pealing of the organ, and
+the chanting of the choir. The Moors avoid this neighborhood, as haunted
+ground, and the whole place, as thou mayest perceive, has become covered
+with a thick and lonely forest."
+
+The cavalier listened with wonder to the story of this engulphed
+convent, as related by the holy man. For three days and nights did they
+keep vigils beside the cross; but nothing more was to be seen of nun or
+convent. It is supposed that, forty years having elapsed, the natural
+lives of all the nuns were finished, and that the cavalier had beheld
+the obsequies of the last of the sisterhood. Certain it is, that from
+that time, bell, and organ, and choral chant have never more been heard.
+
+The mouldering pinnacle, surmounted by the cross, still remains an
+object of pious pilgrimage. Some say that it anciently stood in front
+of the convent, but others assert that it was the spire of the sacred
+edifice, and that, when the main body of the building sank, this
+remained above ground, like the top-mast of some tall ship that
+has foundered. These pious believers maintain, that the convent is
+miraculously preserved entire in the centre of the mountain, where, if
+proper excavations were made, it would be found, with all its treasures,
+and monuments, and shrines, and reliques, and the tombs of its virgin
+nuns.
+
+Should any one doubt the truth of this marvelous interposition of the
+Virgin, to protect the vestal purity of her votaries, let him read the
+excellent work entitled "Espana Triumphante," written by Padre Fray
+Antonio de Sancta Maria, a bare-foot friar of the Carmelite order, and
+he will doubt no longer.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE COUNT VAN HORN.
+
+
+During the minority of Louis XV., while the Duke of Orleans was Regent
+of France, a young Flemish nobleman, the Count Antoine Joseph Van Horn,
+made his sudden appearance in Paris, and by his character, conduct, and
+the subsequent disasters in which he became involved, created a great
+sensation in the high circles of the proud aristocracy. He was about
+twenty-two years of age, tall, finely formed, with a pale, romantic
+countenance, and eyes of remarkable brilliancy and wildness.
+
+He was of one of the most ancient and highly-esteemed families of
+European nobility, being of the line of the Princes of Horn and
+Overique, sovereign Counts of Hautekerke, and hereditary Grand Veneurs
+of the empire.
+
+The family took its name from the little town and seigneurie of Horn, in
+Brabant; and was known as early as the eleventh century among the little
+dynasties of the Netherlands, and since that time by a long line of
+illustrious generations. At the peace of Utrecht, when the Netherlands
+passed under subjection to Austria, the house of Van Horn came under the
+domination of the emperor. At the time we treat of, two of the branches
+of this ancient house were extinct; the third and only surviving branch
+was represented by the reigning prince, Maximilian Emanuel Van Horn,
+twenty-four years of age, who resided in honorable and courtly style
+on his hereditary domains at Baussigny, in the Netherlands, and his
+brother, the Count Antoine Joseph, who is the subject of this memoir.
+
+The ancient house of Van Horn, by the intermarriage of its various
+branches with the noble families of the continent, had become widely
+connected and interwoven with the high aristocracy of Europe. The Count
+Antoine, therefore, could claim relationship to many of the proudest
+names in Paris. In fact, he was grandson, by the mother's side, of the
+Prince de Ligne, and even might boast of affinity to the Regent (the
+Duke of Orleans) himself. There were circumstances, however, connected
+with his sudden appearance in Paris, and his previous story, that placed
+him in what is termed "a false position;" a word of baleful significance
+in the fashionable vocabulary of France.
+
+The young count had been a captain in the service of Austria, but had
+been cashiered for irregular conduct, and for disrespect to Prince Louis
+of Baden, commander-in-chief. To check him in his wild career, and
+bring him to sober reflection, his brother the prince caused him to be
+arrested and sent to the old castle of Van Wert, in the domains of Horn.
+This was the same castle in which, in former times, John Van Horn,
+Stadtholder of Gueldres, had imprisoned his father; a circumstance which
+has furnished Rembrandt with the subject of an admirable painting. The
+governor of the castle was one Van Wert, grandson of the famous John Van
+Wert, the hero of many a popular song and legend. It was the intention
+of the prince that his brother should be held in honorable durance, for
+his object was to sober and improve, not to punish and afflict him. Van
+Wert, however, was a stern, harsh man of violent passions. He treated
+the youth in a manner that prisoners and offenders were treated in the
+strong-holds of the robber counts of Germany in old times; confined him
+in a dungeon and inflicted on him such hardships and indignities that
+the irritable temperament of the young count was roused to continual
+fury, which ended in insanity. For six months was the unfortunate youth
+kept in this horrible state, without his brother the prince being
+informed of his melancholy condition or of the cruel treatment to which
+he was subjected. At length, one day, in a paroxysm of frenzy, the count
+knocked down two of his gaolers with a beetle, escaped from the castle
+of Van Wert, and eluded all pursuit; and after roving about in a state
+of distraction, made his way to Baussigny and appeared like a sceptre
+before his brother.
+
+The prince was shocked at his wretched, emaciated appearance and his
+lamentable state of mental alienation. He received him with the most
+compassionate tenderness; lodged him in his own room, appointed three
+servants to attend and watch over him day and night, and endeavored by
+the most soothing and affectionate assiduity to atone for the past act
+of rigor with which he reproached himself. When he learned, however, the
+manner in which his unfortunate brother had been treated in confinement,
+and the course of brutalities that had led to his mental malady, he was
+roused to indignation. His first step was to cashier Van Wert from his
+command. That violent man set the prince at defiance, and attempted to
+maintain himself in his government and his castle by instigating the
+peasants, for several leagues round, to revolt. His insurrection might
+have been formidable against the power of a petty prince; but he was put
+under the ban of the empire and seized as a state prisoner. The memory
+of his grandfather, the oft-sung John Van Wert, alone saved him from a
+gibbet; but he was imprisoned in the strong tower of Horn-op-Zee. There
+he remained until he was eighty-two years of age, savage, violent, and
+unconquered to the last; for we are told that he never ceased fighting
+and thumping as long as he could close a fist or wield a cudgel.
+
+In the mean time a course of kind and gentle treatment and wholesome
+regimen, and, above all, the tender and affectionate assiduity of his
+brother, the prince, produced the most salutary effects upon Count
+Antoine. He gradually recovered his reason; but a degree of violence
+seemed always lurking at the bottom of his character, and he required
+to be treated with the greatest caution and mildness, for the least
+contradiction exasperated him.
+
+In this state of mental convalescence, he began to find the supervision
+and restraints of brotherly affection insupportable; so he left the
+Netherlands furtively, and repaired to Paris, whither, in fact, it
+is said he was called by motives of interest, to make arrangements
+concerning a valuable estate which he inherited from his relative, the
+Princess d'Epinay.
+
+On his arrival in Paris, he called upon the Marquis of Crequi, and other
+of the high nobility with whom he was connected. He was received with
+great courtesy; but, as he brought no letters from his elder brother,
+the prince, and as various circumstances of his previous history had
+transpired, they did not receive him into their families, nor introduce
+him to their ladies. Still they feted him in bachelor style, gave him
+gay and elegant suppers at their separate apartments, and took him to
+their boxes at the theatres. He was often noticed, too, at the doors of
+the most fashionable churches, taking his stand among the young men
+of fashion; and at such times, his tall, elegant figure, his pale but
+handsome countenance, and his flashing eyes, distinguished him from
+among the crowd; and the ladies declared that it was almost impossible
+to support his ardent gaze.
+
+The Count did not afflict himself much at his limited circulation in the
+fastidious circles of the high aristocracy. He relished society of a
+wilder and less ceremonious cast; and meeting with loose companions to
+his taste, soon ran into all the excesses of the capital, in that most
+licentious period. It is said that, in the course of his wild career, he
+had an intrigue with a lady of quality, a favorite of the Regent; that
+he was surprised by that prince in one of his interviews; that sharp
+words passed between them; and that the jealousy and vengeance thus
+awakened, ended only with his life.
+
+About this time, the famous Mississippi scheme of Law was at its height,
+or rather it began to threaten that disastrous catastrophe which
+convulsed the whole financial world. Every effort was making to keep the
+bubble inflated. The vagrant population of France was swept off from the
+streets at night, and conveyed to Havre de Grace, to be shipped to the
+projected colonies; even laboring people and mechanics were thus crimped
+and spirited away. As Count Antoine was in the habit of sallying forth
+at night, in disguise, in pursuit of his pleasures, he came near being
+carried off by a gang of crimps; it seemed, in fact, as if they had been
+lying in wait for him, as he had experienced very rough treatment at
+their hands. Complaint was made of his case by his relation, the Marquis
+de Crequi, who took much interest in the youth; but the Marquis received
+mysterious intimations not to interfere in the matter, but to advise the
+Count to quit Paris immediately; "If he lingers, he is lost!" This has
+been cited as a proof that vengeance was dogging at the heels of the
+unfortunate youth, and only watching for an opportunity to destroy him.
+
+Such opportunity occurred but too soon. Among the loose companions with
+whom the Count had become intimate, were two who lodged in the same
+hotel with him. One was a youth only twenty years of age, who passed
+himself off as the Chevalier d'Etampes, but whose real name was Lestang,
+the prodigal son of a Flemish banker. The other, named Laurent de Mille,
+a Piedmontese, was a cashiered captain, and at the time an esquire
+in the service of the dissolute Princess de Carignan, who kept
+gambling-tables in her palace. It is probable that gambling propensities
+had driven these young men together, and that their losses had brought
+them to desperate measures: certain it is, that all Paris was suddenly
+astounded by a murder which they were said to have committed. What made
+the crime more startling, was, that it seemed connected with the great
+Mississippi scheme, at that time the fruitful source of all kinds of
+panics and agitations. A Jew, a stock-broker, who dealt largely in
+shares of the bank of Law, founded on the Mississippi scheme, was the
+victim. The story of his death is variously related. The darkest account
+states, that the Jew was decoyed by these young men into an obscure
+tavern, under pretext of negotiating with him for bank shares to the
+amount of one hundred thousand crowns, which he had with him in his
+pocket-book. Lestang kept watch upon the stairs. The Count and De Mille
+entered with the Jew into a chamber. In a little while there were heard
+cries and struggles from within. A waiter passing by the room, looked
+in, and seeing the Jew weltering in his blood, shut the door again,
+double-locked it, and alarmed the house. Lestang rushed downstairs, made
+his way to the hotel, secured his most portable effects, and fled the
+country. The Count and De Mille endeavored to escape by the window, but
+were both taken, and conducted to prison.
+
+A circumstance which occurs in this part of the Count's story, seems to
+point him out as a fated man. His mother, and his brother, the Prince
+Van Horn, had received intelligence some time before at Baussigny, of
+the dissolute life the Count was leading at Paris, and of his losses at
+play. They despatched a gentleman of the prince's household to Paris, to
+pay the debts of the Count, and persuade him to return to Flanders; or,
+if he should refuse, to obtain an order from the Regent for him to quit
+the capital. Unfortunately the gentleman did not arrive at Paris until
+the day after the murder.
+
+The news of the Count's arrest and imprisonment on a charge of murder,
+caused a violent sensation among the high aristocracy. All those
+connected with him, who had treated him hitherto with indifference,
+found their dignity deeply involved in the question of his guilt or
+innocence. A general convocation was held at the hotel of the Marquis de
+Crequi, of all the relatives and allies of the house of Horn. It was
+an assemblage of the most proud and aristocratic personages of Paris.
+Inquiries were made into the circumstances of the affair. It was
+ascertained, beyond a doubt, that the Jew was dead, and that he had been
+killed by several stabs of a poniard. In escaping by the window, it was
+said that the Count had fallen, and been immediately taken; but that De
+Mille had fled through the streets, pursued by the populace, and had
+been arrested at some distance from the scene of the murder; that the
+Count had declared himself innocent of the death of the Jew, and that
+he had risked his own life in endeavoring to protect him; but that De
+Mille, on being brought back to the tavern, confessed to a plot to
+murder the broker, and rob him of his pocket-book, and inculpated the
+Count in the crime.
+
+Another version of the story was, that the Count Van Horn had deposited
+with the broker, bank shares to the amount of eighty-eight thousand
+livres; that he had sought him in this tavern, which was one of his
+resorts, and had demanded the shares; that the Jew had denied the
+deposit; that a quarrel had ensued, in the course of which the Jew
+struck the Count in the face; that the latter, transported with rage,
+had snatched up a knife from a table, and wounded the Jew in the
+shoulder; and that thereupon De Mille, who was present, and who had
+likewise been defrauded by the broker, fell on him, and despatched him
+with blows of a poniard, and seized upon his pocket-book; that he had
+offered to divide the contents of the latter with the Count, _pro rata_,
+of what the usurer had defrauded them; that the latter had refused the
+proposition with disdain, and that, at a noise of persons approaching,
+both had attempted to escape from the premises, but had been taken.
+
+Regard the story in any way they might, appearances were terribly
+against the Count, and the noble assemblage was in great consternation.
+What was to be done to ward off so foul a disgrace and to save their
+illustrious escutcheons from this murderous stain of blood? Their
+first attempt was to prevent the affair from going to trial, and their
+relative from being dragged before a criminal tribunal, on so horrible
+and degrading a charge. They applied, therefore, to the Regent, to
+intervene his power; to treat the Count as having acted under an access
+of his mental malady; and to shut him up in a madhouse. The Regent was
+deaf to their solicitations. He replied, coldly, that if the Count was a
+madman, one could not get rid too quickly of madmen who were furious in
+their insanity. The crime was too public and atrocious to be hushed up
+or slurred over; justice must take its course.
+
+Seeing there was no avoiding the humiliating scene of a public trial,
+the noble relatives of the Count endeavored to predispose the minds of
+the magistrates before whom he was to be arraigned. They accordingly
+made urgent and eloquent representations of the high descent, and noble
+and powerful connexions of the Count; set forth the circumstances of his
+early history; his mental malady; the nervous irritability to which he
+was subject, and his extreme sensitiveness to insult or contradiction.
+By these means they sought to prepare the judges to interpret every
+thing in favor of the Count, and, even if it should prove that he had
+inflicted the mortal blow on the usurer, to attribute it to access of
+insanity, provoked by insult.
+
+To give full effect to these representations, the noble conclave
+determined to bring upon the judges the dazzling rays of the whole
+assembled aristocracy. Accordingly, on the day that the trial took
+place, the relations of the Count, to the number of fifty-seven persons,
+of both sexes, and of the highest rank, repaired in a body to the Palace
+of Justice, and took their stations in a long corridor which led to the
+court-room. Here, as the judges entered, they had to pass in review this
+array of lofty and noble personages, who saluted them mournfully and
+significantly, as they passed. Any one conversant with the stately pride
+and jealous dignity of the French noblesse of that day, may imagine the
+extreme state of sensitiveness that produced this self-abasement. It was
+confidently presumed, however, by the noble suppliants, that having once
+brought themselves to this measure, their influence over the tribunal
+would be irresistible. There was one lady present, however, Madame de
+Beauffremont, who was affected with the Scottish gift of second sight,
+and related such dismal and sinister apparitions as passing before
+her eyes, that many of her female companions were filled with doleful
+presentiments.
+
+Unfortunately for the Count, there was another interest at work, more
+powerful even than the high aristocracy. The all-potent Abbe Dubois, the
+grand favorite and bosom counsellor of the Regent, was deeply interested
+in the scheme of Law, and the prosperity of his bank, and of course in
+the security of the stock-brokers. Indeed, the Regent himself is said to
+have dipped deep in the Mississippi scheme. Dubois and Law, therefore,
+exerted their influence to the utmost to have the tragic affair pushed
+to the extremity of the law, and the murder of the broker punished in
+the most signal and appalling manner. Certain it is, the trial was
+neither long nor intricate. The Count and his fellow prisoner were
+equally inculpated in the crime; and both were condemned to a death the
+most horrible and ignominious--to be broken alive on the wheel!
+
+As soon as the sentence of the court was made public, all the nobility,
+in any degree related to the house of Van Horn, went into mourning.
+Another grand aristocratical assemblage was held, and a petition to the
+Regent, on behalf of the Count, was drawn out and left with the Marquis
+de Crequi for signature. This petition set forth the previous insanity
+of the Count, and showed that it was a hereditary malady of his family.
+It stated various circumstances in mitigation of his offence, and
+implored that his sentence might be commuted to perpetual imprisonment.
+
+Upward of fifty names of the highest nobility, beginning with the Prince
+de Ligne, and including cardinals, archbishops, dukes, marquises, etc.,
+together with ladies of equal rank, were signed to this petition. By
+one of the caprices of human pride and vanity, it became an object of
+ambition to get enrolled among the illustrious suppliants; a kind of
+testimonial of noble blood, to prove relationship to a murderer! The
+Marquis de Crequi was absolutely besieged by applicants to sign, and had
+to refer their claims to this singular honor, to the Prince de Ligne,
+the grandfather of the Count. Many who were excluded, were highly
+incensed, and numerous feuds took place. Nay, the affronts thus given to
+the morbid pride of some aristocratical families, passed from generation
+to generation; for, fifty years afterward, the Duchess of Mazarin
+complained of a slight which her father had received from the Marquis
+de Crequi; which proved to be something connected with the signature of
+this petition. This important document being completed, the illustrious
+body of petitioners, male and female, on Saturday evening, the eve of
+Palm Sunday, repaired to the Palais Royal, the residence of the Regent,
+and were ushered, with great ceremony but profound silence, into his
+hall of council. They had appointed four of their number as deputies, to
+present the petition, viz.: the Cardinal de Rohan, the Duke de Havre,
+the Prince de Ligne, and the Marquis de Crequi. After a little while,
+the deputies were summoned to the cabinet of the Regent. They entered,
+leaving the assembled petitioners in a state of the greatest anxiety.
+As time slowly wore away, and the evening advanced, the gloom of the
+company increased. Several of the ladies prayed devoutly; the good
+Princess of Armagnac told her beads.
+
+The petition was received by the Regent with a most unpropitious aspect.
+"In asking the pardon of the criminal," said he, "you display more zeal
+for the house of Van Horn, than for the service of the king." The noble
+deputies enforced the petition by every argument in their power. They
+supplicated the Regent to consider that the infamous punishment in
+question would reach not merely the person of the condemned, not
+merely the house of Van Horn, but also the genealogies of princely
+and illustrious families, in whose armorial bearings might be found
+quarterings of this dishonored name.
+
+"Gentlemen," replied the Regent, "it appears to me the disgrace consists
+in the crime, rather than in the punishment."
+
+The Prince de Ligne spoke with warmth: "I have in my genealogical
+standard," said he, "four escutcheons of Van Horn, and of course have
+four ancestors of that house. I must have them erased and effaced, and
+there would be so many blank spaces, like holes, in my heraldic ensigns.
+There is not a sovereign family which would not suffer, through the
+rigor of your Royal Highness; nay, all the world knows, that in the
+thirty-two quarterings of Madame, your mother, there is an escutcheon of
+Van Horn."
+
+"Very well," replied the Regent, "I will share the disgrace with you,
+gentlemen."
+
+Seeing that a pardon could not be obtained, the Cardinal de Rohan and
+the Marquis de Crequi left the cabinet; but the Prince de Ligne and the
+Duke de Havre remained behind. The honor of their houses, more than the
+life of the unhappy Count, was the great object of their solicitude.
+They now endeavored to obtain a minor grace. They represented that in
+the Netherlands, and in Germany, there was an important difference in
+the public mind as to the mode of inflicting the punishment of death
+upon persons of quality. That decapitation had no influence on the
+fortunes of the family of the executed, but that the punishment of the
+wheel was such an infamy, that the uncles, aunts, brothers, and sisters
+of the criminal, and his whole family, for three succeeding generations,
+were excluded from all noble chapters, princely abbeys, sovereign
+bishoprics, and even Teutonic commanderies of the Order of Malta. They
+showed how this would operate immediately upon the fortunes of a sister
+of the Count, who was on the point of being received as a canoness into
+one of the noble chapters.
+
+While this scene was going on in the cabinet of the Regent, the
+illustrious assemblage of petitioners remained in the hall of council,
+in the most gloomy state of suspense. The re-entrance from the cabinet
+of the Cardinal de Rohan and the Marquis de Crequi, with pale, downcast
+countenances, had struck a chill into every heart. Still they lingered
+until near midnight, to learn the result of the after application. At
+length the cabinet conference was at an end. The Regent came forth, and
+saluted the high personages of the assemblage in a courtly manner. One
+old lady of quality, Madame de Guyon, whom he had known in his infancy,
+he kissed on the cheek, calling her his "good aunt." He made a most
+ceremonious salutation to the stately Marchioness de Crequi, telling
+her he was charmed to see her at the Palais Royal; "a compliment very
+ill-timed," said the Marchioness, "considering the circumstance which
+brought me there." He then conducted the ladies to the door of the
+second saloon, and there dismissed them, with the most ceremonious
+politeness.
+
+The application of the Prince de Ligne and the Duke de Havre, for a
+change of the mode of punishment, had, after much difficulty, been
+successful. The Regent had promised solemnly to send a letter of
+commutation to the attorney-general on Holy Monday, the 25th of March,
+at five o'clock in the morning. According to the same promise, a
+scaffold would be arranged in the cloister of the Conciergerie,
+or prison, where the Count would be beheaded on the same morning,
+immediately after having received absolution. This mitigation of the
+form of punishment gave but little consolation to the great body of
+petitioners, who had been anxious for the pardon of the youth: it was
+looked upon as all-important, however, by the Prince de Ligne, who, as
+has been before observed,--was exquisitely alive to the dignity of his
+family.
+
+The Bishop of Bayeux and the Marquis de Crequi visited the unfortunate
+youth in prison. He had just received the communion in the chapel of the
+Conciergerie, and was kneeling before the altar, listening to a mass for
+the dead, which was performed at his request. He protested his innocence
+of any intention to murder the Jew, but did not deign to allude to the
+accusation of robbery. He made the bishop and the Marquis promise to see
+his brother the prince, and inform him of this his dying asseveration.
+
+Two other of his relations, the Prince Rebecq-Montmorency and the
+Marshal Van Isenghien, visited him secretly, and offered him poison, as
+a means of evading the disgrace of a public execution. On his refusing
+to take it, they left him with high indignation. "Miserable man!" said
+they, "you are fit only to perish by the hand of the executioner!"
+
+The Marquis de Crequi sought the executioner of Paris, to bespeak an
+easy and decent death--for the unfortunate youth. "Do not make him
+suffer," said he; "uncover no part of him but the neck; and have his
+body placed in a coffin, before you deliver it to his family." The
+executioner promised all that was requested, but declined a rouleau of a
+hundred louis-d'ors which the Marquis would have put into his hand. "I
+am paid by the king for fulfilling my office," said he; and added that
+he had already refused a like sum, offered by another relation of the
+Marquis.
+
+The Marquis de Crequi returned home in a state of deep affliction. There
+he found a letter from the Duke de St. Simon, the familiar friend of the
+Regent, repeating the promise of that prince, that the punishment of the
+wheel should be commuted to decapitation.
+
+"Imagine," says the Marchioness de Crequi, who in her memoirs gives a
+detailed account of this affair, "imagine what we experienced, and what
+was our astonishment, our grief, and indignation, when, on Tuesday, the
+26th of March, an hour after midday, word was brought us that the Count
+Van Horn had been exposed on the wheel, in the Place de Greve, since
+half-past six in the morning, on the same scaffold with the Piedmontese
+de Mille, and that he had been tortured previous to execution!"
+
+One more scene of aristocratic pride closed this tragic story. The
+Marquis de Crequi, on receiving this astounding news, immediately
+arrayed himself in the uniform of a general officer, with his cordon
+of nobility on the coat. He ordered six valets to attend him in grand
+livery, and two of his carriages, each with six horses, to be brought
+forth. In this sumptuous state, he set off for the Place de Greve, where
+he had been preceded by the Princes de Ligne, de Rohan, de Crouey, and
+the Duke de Havre.
+
+The Count Van Horn was already dead, and it was believed that the
+executioner had had the charity to give him the coup de grace, or
+"death-blow," at eight o'clock in the morning. At five o'clock in the
+evening, when the Judge Commissary left his post at the Hotel de Ville,
+these noblemen, with their own hands, aided to detach the mutilated
+remains of their relation; the Marquis de Crequi placed them in one of
+his carriages, and bore them off to his hotel, to receive the last sad
+obsequies.
+
+The conduct of the Regent in this affair excited general indignation.
+His needless severity was attributed by some to vindictive jealousy; by
+others to the persevering machinations of Law. The house of Van Horn,
+and the high nobility of Flanders and Germany, considered themselves
+flagrantly outraged: many schemes of vengeance were talked of, and a
+hatred engendered against the Regent, that followed him through life,
+and was wreaked with bitterness upon his memory after his death.
+
+The following letter is said to have been written to the Regent by the
+Prince Van Horn, to whom the former had adjudged the confiscated effects
+of the Count:
+
+"I do not complain, Sir, of the death of my brother, but I complain
+that your Royal Highness has violated in his person the rights of the
+kingdom, the nobility, and the nation. I thank you for the confiscation
+of his effects; but I should think myself as much disgraced as he,
+should I accept any favor at your hands. _I hope that God and the
+King may render to you as strict justice as you have rendered to my
+unfortunate brother._"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies
+by Washington Irving
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOLFERT'S ROOST AND MISCELLANIES ***
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+  <head>
+    <title>Wolfert&rsquo's Roost and Miscellanies, by Washington Irving</title>
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+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
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+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+Project Gutenberg&rsquo;s Wolfert&rsquo;s Roost and Miscellanies, by Washington Irving
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Wolfert&rsquo;s Roost and Miscellanies
+
+Author: Washington Irving
+
+Posting Date: October 8, 2012 [EBook #8571]
+Release Date: July, 2005
+First Posted: July 24, 2003
+Last Updated: June 1, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOLFERT&rsquo;S ROOST AND MISCELLANIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Etext produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, David Widger
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+HTML file produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      WOLFERT&rsquo;S ROOST AND MISCELLANIES
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Washington Irving
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <b>CONTENTS</b>
+    </p>
+
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> A CHRONICLE OF WOLFERT&rsquo;S ROOST. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> A CHRONICLE OF WOLFERT&rsquo;S ROOST. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> SLEEPY HOLLOW. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> THE BIRDS OF SPRING. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> RECOLLECTIONS OF THE ALHAMBRA. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> THE ABENCERRAGE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> THE ENCHANTED ISLAND. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> <i>THE ADELANTADO OF THE SEVEN CITIES</i>. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> NATIONAL NOMENCLATURE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> DESULTORY THOUGHTS ON CRITICISM. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> SPANISH ROMANCE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> LEGEND OF DON MUNIO SANCHO DE HINOJOSA. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> COMMUNIPAW. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> CONSPIRACY OF THE COCKED HATS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> A LEGEND OF COMMUNIPAW. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> <i>GUESTS FROM GIBBET-ISLAND</i>. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> THE BERMUDAS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0019"> <i>THE THREE KINGS OF BERMUDA</i>. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0020"> PELAYO AND THE MERCHANT&rsquo;S DAUGHTER. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0021"> THE KNIGHT OF MALTA. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0022"> <i>THE GRAND PRIOR OF MINORCA,</i> </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0023"> LEGEND OF THE ENGULPHED CONVENT. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0024"> THE COUNT VAN HORN. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A CHRONICLE OF WOLFERT&rsquo;S ROOST.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Sir: I have observed that as a man advances in life, he is subject to a
+      kind of plethora of the mind, doubtless occasioned by the vast
+      accumulation of wisdom and experience upon the brain. Hence he is apt to
+      become narrative and admonitory, that is to say, fond of telling long
+      stories, and of doling out advice, to the small profit and great annoyance
+      of his friends. As I have a great horror of becoming the oracle, or, more
+      technically speaking, the &ldquo;bore,&rdquo; of the domestic circle, and
+      would much rather bestow my wisdom and tediousness upon the world at
+      large, I have always sought to ease off this surcharge of the intellect by
+      means of my pen, and hence have inflicted divers gossiping volumes upon
+      the patience of the public. I am tired, however, of writing volumes; they
+      do not afford exactly the relief I require; there is too much preparation,
+      arrangement, and parade, in this set form of coming before the public. I
+      am growing too indolent and unambitious for any thing that requires labor
+      or display. I have thought, therefore, of securing to myself a snug corner
+      in some periodical work where I might, as it were, loll at my ease in my
+      elbow-chair, and chat sociably with the public, as with an old friend, on
+      any chance subject that might pop into my brain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In looking around, for this purpose, upon the various excellent
+      periodicals with which our country abounds, my eye was struck by the title
+      of your work&mdash;&ldquo;THE KNICKERBOCKER.&rdquo; My heart leaped at the
+      sight. DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER, Sir, was one of my earliest and most valued
+      friends, and the recollection of him is associated with some of the
+      pleasantest scenes of my youthful days. To explain this, and to show how I
+      came into possession of sundry of his posthumous works, which I have from
+      time to time given to the world, permit me to relate a few particulars of
+      our early intercourse. I give them with the more confidence, as I know the
+      interest you take in that departed worthy, whose name and effigy are
+      stamped upon your title-page, and as they will be found important to the
+      better understanding and relishing divers communications I may have to
+      make to you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My first acquaintance with that great and good man, for such I may venture
+      to call him, now that the lapse of some thirty years has shrouded his name
+      with venerable antiquity, and the popular voice has elevated him to the
+      rank of the classic historians of yore, my first acquaintance with him was
+      formed on the banks of the Hudson, not far from the wizard region of
+      Sleepy Hollow. He had come there in the course of his researches among the
+      Dutch neighborhoods for materials for his immortal history. For this
+      purpose, he was ransacking the archives of one of the most ancient and
+      historical mansions in the country. It was a lowly edifice, built in the
+      time of the Dutch dynasty, and stood on a green bank, overshadowed by
+      trees, from which it peeped forth upon the Great Tappan Zee, so famous
+      among early Dutch navigators. A bright pure spring welled up at the foot
+      of the green bank; a wild brook came babbling down a neighboring ravine,
+      and threw itself into a little woody cove, in front of the mansion. It was
+      indeed as quiet and sheltered a nook as the heart of man could require, in
+      which to take refuge from the cares and troubles of the world; and as
+      such, it had been chosen in old times, by Wolfert Acker, one of the privy
+      councillors of the renowned Peter Stuyvesant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This worthy but ill-starred man had led a weary and worried life,
+      throughout the stormy reign of the chivalric Peter, being one of those
+      unlucky wights with whom the world is ever at variance, and who are kept
+      in a continual fume and fret, by the wickedness of mankind. At the time of
+      the subjugation of the province by the English, he retired hither in high
+      dudgeon; with the bitter determination to bury himself from the world, and
+      live here in peace and quietness for the remainder of his days. In token
+      of this fixed resolution, he inscribed over his door the favorite Dutch
+      motto, &ldquo;Lust in Rust,&rdquo; (pleasure in repose.) The mansion was
+      thence called &ldquo;Wolfert&rsquo;s Rust&rdquo;&mdash;Wolfert&rsquo;s
+      Rest; but in process of time, the name was vitiated into Wolfert&rsquo;s
+      Roost, probably from its quaint cock-loft look, or from its having a
+      weather-cock perched on every gable. This name it continued to bear, long
+      after the unlucky Wolfert was driven forth once more upon a wrangling
+      world, by the tongue of a termagant wife; for it passed into a proverb
+      through the neighborhood, and has been handed down by tradition, that the
+      cock of the Roost was the most hen-pecked bird in the country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This primitive and historical mansion has since passed through many
+      changes and trials, which it may be my lot hereafter to notice. At the
+      time of the sojourn of Diedrich Knickerbocker it was in possession of the
+      gallant family of the Van Tassels, who have figured so conspicuously in
+      his writings. What appears to have given it peculiar value, in his eyes,
+      was the rich treasury of historical facts here secretly hoarded up, like
+      buried gold; for it is said that Wolfert Acker, when he retreated from New
+      Amsterdam, carried off with him many of the records and journals of the
+      province, pertaining to the Dutch dynasty; swearing that they should never
+      fall into the hands of the English. These, like the lost books of Livy,
+      had baffled the research of former historians; but these did I find the
+      indefatigable Diedrich diligently deciphering. He was already a sage in
+      year&rsquo;s and experience, I but an idle stripling; yet he did not
+      despise my youth and ignorance, but took me kindly by the hand, and led me
+      gently into those paths of local and traditional lore which he was so fond
+      of exploring. I sat with him in his little chamber at the Roost, and
+      watched the antiquarian patience and perseverance with which he deciphered
+      those venerable Dutch documents, worse than Herculanean manuscripts. I sat
+      with him by the spring, at the foot of the green bank, and listened to his
+      heroic tales about the worthies of the olden time, the paladins of New
+      Amsterdam. I accompanied him in his legendary researches about Tarrytown
+      and Sing-Sing, and explored with him the spell-bound recesses of Sleepy
+      Hollow. I was present at many of his conferences with the good old Dutch
+      burghers and their wives, from whom he derived many of those marvelous
+      facts not laid down in books or records, and which give such superior
+      value and authenticity to his history, over all others that have been
+      written concerning the New Netherlands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But let me check my proneness to dilate upon this favorite theme; I may
+      recur to it hereafter. Suffice it to say, the intimacy thus formed,
+      continued for a considerable time; and in company with the worthy
+      Diedrich, I visited many of the places celebrated by his pen. The currents
+      of our lives at length diverged. He remained at home to complete his
+      mighty work, while a vagrant fancy led me to wander about the world. Many,
+      many years elapsed, before I returned to the parent soil. In the interim,
+      the venerable historian of the New Netherlands had been gathered to his
+      fathers, but his name had risen to renown. His native city, that city in
+      which he so much delighted, had decreed all manner of costly honors to his
+      memory. I found his effigy imprinted upon new-year cakes, and devoured
+      with eager relish by holiday urchins; a great oyster-house bore the name
+      of &ldquo;Knickerbocker Hall;&rdquo; and I narrowly escaped the pleasure
+      of being run over by a Knickerbocker omnibus!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Proud of having associated with a man who had achieved such greatness, I
+      now recalled our early intimacy with tenfold pleasure, and sought to
+      revisit the scenes we had trodden together. The most important of these
+      was the mansion of the Van Tassels, the Roost of the unfortunate Wolfert.
+      Time, which changes all things, is but slow in its operations upon a
+      Dutchman&rsquo;s dwelling. I found the venerable and quaint little edifice
+      much as I had seen it during the sojourn of Diedrich. There stood his
+      elbow-chair in the corner of the room he had occupied; the old-fashioned
+      Dutch writing-desk at which he had pored over the chronicles of the
+      Manhattoes; there was the old wooden chest, with the archives left by
+      Wolfert Acker, many of which, however, had been fired off as wadding from
+      the long duck gun of the Van Tassels. The scene around the mansion was
+      still the same; the green bank; the spring beside which I had listened to
+      the legendary narratives of the historian; the wild brook babbling down to
+      the woody cove, and the overshadowing locust trees, half shutting out the
+      prospect of the great Tappan Zee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I looked round upon the scene, my heart yearned at the recollection of
+      my departed friend, and I wistfully eyed the mansion which he had
+      inhabited, and which was fast mouldering to decay. The thought struck me
+      to arrest the desolating hand of Time; to rescue the historic pile from
+      utter ruin, and to make it the closing scene of my wanderings; a quiet
+      home, where I might enjoy &ldquo;lust in rust&rdquo; for the remainder of
+      my days. It is true, the fate of the unlucky Wolfert passed across my
+      mind; but I consoled myself with the reflection that I was a bachelor, and
+      that I had no termagant wife to dispute the sovereignty of the Roost with
+      me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have become possessor of the Roost! I have repaired and renovated it
+      with religious care, in the genuine Dutch style, and have adorned and
+      illustrated it with sundry reliques of the glorious days of the New
+      Netherlands. A venerable weathercock, of portly Dutch dimensions, which
+      once battled with the wind on the top of the Stadt-House of New Amsterdam,
+      in the time of Peter Stuyvesant, now erects its crest on the gable end of
+      my edifice; a gilded horse in full gallop, once the weathercock of the
+      great Vander Heyden Palace of Albany, now glitters in the sunshine, and
+      veers with every breeze, on the peaked turret over my portal; my sanctum
+      sanctorum is the chamber once honored by the illustrious Diedrich, and it
+      is from his elbow-chair, and his identical old Dutch writing-desk, that I
+      pen this rambling epistle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here, then, have I set up my rest, surrounded by the recollections of
+      early days, and the mementoes of the historian of the Manhattoes, with
+      that glorious river before me, which flows with such majesty through his
+      works, and which has ever been to me a river of delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I thank God I was born on the banks of the Hudson! I think it an
+      invaluable advantage to be born and brought up in the neighborhood of some
+      grand and noble object in nature; a river, a lake, or a mountain. We make
+      a friendship with it, we in a manner ally ourselves to it for life. It
+      remains an object of our pride and affections, a rallying point, to call
+      us home again after all our wanderings. &ldquo;The things which we have
+      learned in our childhood,&rdquo; says an old writer, &ldquo;grow up with
+      our souls, and unite themselves to it.&rdquo; So it is with the scenes
+      among which we have passed our early days; they influence the whole course
+      of our thoughts and feelings; and I fancy I can trace much of what is good
+      and pleasant in my own heterogeneous compound to my early companionship
+      with this glorious river. In the warmth of my youthful enthusiasm, I used
+      to clothe it with moral attributes, and almost to give it a soul. I
+      admired its frank, bold, honest character; its noble sincerity and perfect
+      truth. Here was no specious, smiling surface, covering the dangerous
+      sand-bar or perfidious rock; but a stream deep as it was broad, and
+      bearing with honorable faith the bark that trusted to its waves. I gloried
+      in its simple, quiet, majestic, epic flow; ever straight forward. Once,
+      indeed, it turns aside for a moment, forced from its course by opposing
+      mountains, but it struggles bravely through them, and immediately resumes
+      its straightforward march. Behold, thought I, an emblem of a good man&rsquo;s
+      course through life; ever simple, open, and direct; or if, overpowered by
+      adverse circumstances, he deviate into error, it is but momentary; he soon
+      recovers his onward and honorable career, and continues it to the end of
+      his pilgrimage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Excuse this rhapsody, into which I have been betrayed by a revival of
+      early feelings. The Hudson is, in a manner, my first and last love; and
+      after all my wanderings and seeming infidelities, I return to it with a
+      heart-felt preference over all the other rivers in the world. I seem to
+      catch new life as I bathe in its ample billows and inhale the pure breezes
+      of its hills. It is true, the romance of youth is past, that once spread
+      illusions over every scene. I can no longer picture an Arcadia in every
+      green valley; nor a fairy land among the distant mountains; nor a peerless
+      beauty in every villa gleaming among the trees; but though the illusions
+      of youth have faded from the landscape, the recollections of departed
+      years and departed pleasures shed over it the mellow charm of evening
+      sunshine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Permit me, then, Mr. Editor, through the medium of your work, to hold
+      occasional discourse from my retreat with the busy world I have abandoned.
+      I have much to say about what I have seen, heard, felt, and thought
+      through the course of a varied and rambling life, and some lucubrations
+      that have long been encumbering my portfolio; together with divers
+      reminiscences of the venerable historian of the New Netherlands, that may
+      not be unacceptable to those who have taken an interest in his writings,
+      and are desirous of any thing that may cast a light back upon our early
+      history. Let your readers rest assured of one thing, that, though retired
+      from the world, I am not disgusted with it; and that if in my communings
+      with it I do not prove very wise, I trust I shall at least prove very
+      good-natured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Which is all at present, from
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yours, etc.,
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      GEOFFREY CRAYON.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Worthy Sir: In a preceding communication, I have given you some brief
+      notice of Wolfert&rsquo;s Roost, the mansion where I first had the good
+      fortune to become acquainted with the venerable historian of the New
+      Netherlands. As this ancient edifice is likely to be the place whence I
+      shall date many of my lucubrations, and as it is really a very remarkable
+      little pile, intimately connected with all the great epochs of our local
+      and national history, I have thought it but right to give some farther
+      particulars concerning it. Fortunately, in rummaging a ponderous Dutch
+      chest of drawers, which serves as the archives of the Roost, and in which
+      are preserved many inedited manuscripts of Mr. KNICKERBOCKER, together
+      with the precious records of New-Amsterdam, brought hither by Wolfert
+      Acker at the downfall of the Dutch dynasty, as has been already mentioned,
+      I found in one corner, among dried pumpkin-seeds, bunches of thyme, and
+      pennyroyal, and crumbs of new-year cakes, a manuscript, carefully wrapped
+      up in the fragment of an old parchment deed, but much blotted, and the ink
+      grown foxy by time, which, on inspection, I discovered to be a faithful
+      chronicle of the Roost. The hand-writing, and certain internal evidences,
+      leave no doubt in my mind, that it is a genuine production of the
+      venerable historian of the New-Netherlands, written, very probably, during
+      his residence at the Roost, in gratitude for the hospitality of its
+      proprietor. As such, I submit it for publication. As the entire chronicle
+      is too long for the pages of your Magazine, and as it contains many minute
+      particulars, which might prove tedious to the general reader, I have
+      abbreviated and occasionally omitted some of its details; but may
+      hereafter furnish them separately, should they seem to be required by the
+      curiosity of an enlightened and document-hunting public.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Respectfully yours, GEOFFREY CRAYON.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A CHRONICLE OF WOLFERT&rsquo;S ROOST.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      FOUND AMONG THE PAPERS OF THE LATE DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      About five-and-twenty miles from the ancient and renowned city of
+      Manhattan, formerly called New-Amsterdam, and vulgarly called New-York, on
+      the eastern bank of that expansion of the Hudson, known among Dutch
+      mariners of yore, as the Tappan Zee, being in fact the great Mediterranean
+      Sea of the New-Netherlands, stands a little old-fashioned stone mansion,
+      all made up of gable-ends, and as full of angles and corners as an old
+      cocked hat. Though but of small dimensions, yet, like many small people,
+      it is of mighty spirit, and values itself greatly on its antiquity, being
+      one of the oldest edifices, for its size, in the whole country. It claims
+      to be an ancient seat of empire, I may rather say an empire in itself, and
+      like all empires, great and small, has had its grand historical epochs. In
+      speaking of this doughty and valorous little pile, I shall call it by its
+      usual appellation of &ldquo;The Roost;&rdquo; though that is a name given
+      to it in modern days, since it became the abode of the white man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Its origin, in truth, dates far back in that remote region commonly called
+      the fabulous age, in which vulgar fact becomes mystified, and tinted up
+      with delectable fiction. The eastern shore of the Tappan Sea was inhabited
+      in those days by an unsophisticated race, existing in all the simplicity
+      of nature; that is to say, they lived by hunting and fishing, and
+      recreated themselves occasionally with a little tomahawking and scalping.
+      Each stream that flows down from the hills into the Hudson, had its petty
+      sachem, who ruled over a hand&rsquo;s-breadth of forest on either side,
+      and had his seat of government at its mouth. The chieftain who ruled at
+      the Roost, was not merely a great warrior, but a medicine-man, or prophet,
+      or conjurer, for they all mean the same thing, in Indian parlance. Of his
+      fighting propensities, evidences still remain, in various arrowheads of
+      flint, and stone battle-axes, occasionally digged up about the Roost: of
+      his wizard powers, we have a token in a spring which wells up at the foot
+      of the bank, on the very margin of the river, which, it is said, was
+      gifted by him with rejuvenating powers, something like the renowned
+      Fountain of Youth in the Floridas, so anxiously but vainly sought after by
+      the veteran Ponce de Leon. This story, however, is stoutly contradicted by
+      an old Dutch matter-of-fact tradition, which declares that the spring in
+      question was smuggled over from Holland in a churn, by Femmetie Van
+      Slocum, wife of Goosen Garret Van Slocum, one of the first settlers, and
+      that she took it up by night, unknown to her husband, from beside their
+      farm-house near Rotterdam; being sure she should find no water equal to it
+      in the new country&mdash;and she was right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wizard sachem had a great passion for discussing territorial
+      questions, and settling boundary lines; this kept him in continual feud
+      with the neighboring sachems, each of whom stood up stoutly for his
+      hand-breadth of territory; so that there is not a petty stream nor ragged
+      hill in the neighborhood, that has not been the subject of long talks and
+      hard battles. The sachem, however, as has been observed, was a
+      medicine-man, as well as warrior, and vindicated his claims by arts as
+      well as arms; so that, by dint of a little hard fighting here, and
+      hocus-pocus there, he managed to extend his boundary-line from field to
+      field and stream to stream, until he found himself in legitimate
+      possession of that region of hills and valleys, bright fountains and
+      limpid brooks, locked in by the mazy windings of the Neperan and the
+      Pocantico. [Footnote: As every one may not recognize these boundaries by
+      their original Indian names, it may be well to observe, that the Neperan
+      is that beautiful stream, vulgarly called the Saw-Mill River, which, after
+      winding gracefully for many miles through a lovely valley, shrouded by
+      groves, and dotted by Dutch farm-houses, empties itself into the Hudson,
+      at the ancient drop of Yonkers. The Pocantico is that hitherto nameless
+      brook, that, rising among woody hills, winds in many a wizard maze through
+      the sequestered banks of Sleepy Hollow. We owe it to the indefatigable
+      researches of Mr. KNICKERBOCKER, that those beautiful streams are rescued
+      from modern common-place, and reinvested with their ancient Indian names.
+      The correctness of the venerable historian may be ascertained, by
+      reference to the records of the original Indian grants to the Herr
+      Frederick Philipsen, preserved in the county clerk&rsquo;s office, at
+      White Plains.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This last-mentioned stream, or rather the valley through which it flows,
+      was the most difficult of all his acquisitions. It lay half way to the
+      strong-hold of the redoubtable sachem of Sing-Sing, and was claimed by him
+      as an integral part of his domains. Many were the sharp conflicts between
+      the rival chieftains for the sovereignty of this valley, and many the
+      ambuscades, surprisals, and deadly onslaughts that took place among its
+      fastnesses, of which it grieves me much that I cannot furnish the details
+      for the gratification of those gentle but bloody-minded readers of both
+      sexes, who delight in the romance of the tomahawk and scalping-knife.
+      Suffice it to say that the wizard chieftain was at length victorious,
+      though his victory is attributed in Indian tradition to a great medicine
+      or charm by which he laid the sachem of Sing-Sing and his warriors asleep
+      among the rocks and recesses of the valley, where they remain asleep to
+      the present day with their bows and war-clubs beside them. This was the
+      origin of that potent and drowsy spell which still prevails over the
+      valley of the Pocantico, and which has gained it the well-merited
+      appellation of Sleepy Hollow. Often, in secluded and quiet parts of that
+      valley, where the stream is overhung by dark woods and rocks, the
+      ploughman, on some calm and sunny day as he shouts to his oxen, is
+      surprised at hearing faint shouts from the hill-sides in reply; being, it
+      is said, the spell-bound warriors, who half start from their rocky couches
+      and grasp their weapons, but sink to sleep again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The conquest of the Pocantico was the last triumph of the wizard sachem.
+      Notwithstanding all his medicine and charms, he fell in battle in
+      attempting to extend his boundary line to the east so as to take in the
+      little wild valley of the Sprain, and his grave is still shown near the
+      banks of that pastoral stream. He left, however, a great empire to his
+      successors, extending along the Tappan Zee, from Yonkers quite to Sleepy
+      Hollow; all which delectable region, if every one had his right, would
+      still acknowledge allegiance to the lord of the Roost&mdash;whoever he
+      might be. [Footnote: In recording the contest for the sovereignty of
+      Sleepy Hollow, I have called one sachem by the modern name of his castle
+      or strong-hold, viz.: Sing-Sing. This, I would observe for the sake of
+      historical exactness, is a corruption of the old Indian name, O-sin-sing,
+      or rather O-sin-song; that is to say, a place where any thing may be had
+      for a song&mdash;a great recommendation for a market town. The modern and
+      melodious alteration of the name to Sing-Sing is said to have been made in
+      compliment to an eminent Methodist singing-master, who first introduced
+      into the neighborhood the art of singing through the nose. D. K.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wizard sachem was succeeded by a line of chiefs, of whom nothing
+      remarkable remains on record. The last who makes any figure in history is
+      the one who ruled here at the time of the discovery of the country by the
+      white man. This sachem is said to have been a renowned trencherman, who
+      maintained almost as potent a sway by dint of good feeding as his warlike
+      predecessor had done by hard fighting. He diligently cultivated the growth
+      of oysters along the aquatic borders of his territories, and founded those
+      great oyster-beds which yet exist along the shores of the Tappan Zee. Did
+      any dispute occur between him and a neighboring sachem, he invited him and
+      all his principal sages and fighting-men to a solemn banquet, and seldom
+      failed of feeding them into terms. Enormous heaps of oyster-shells, which
+      encumber the lofty banks of the river, remain as monuments of his
+      gastronomical victories, and have been occasionally adduced through
+      mistake by amateur geologists from town, as additional proofs of the
+      deluge. Modern investigators, who are making such indefatigable researches
+      into our early history, have even affirmed that this sachem was the very
+      individual on whom Master Hendrick Hudson and his mate, Robert Juet, made
+      that sage and astounding experiment so gravely recorded by the latter in
+      his narrative of the voyage: &ldquo;Our master and his mate determined to
+      try some of the cheefe men of the country whether they had any treacherie
+      in them. So they took them down into the cabin and gave them so much wine
+      and aqua vitae that they were all very merrie; one of them had his wife
+      with him, which sate so modestly as any of our countrywomen would do in a
+      strange place. In the end one of them was drunke; and that was strange to
+      them, for they could not tell how to take it.&rdquo; [Footnote: See Juet&rsquo;s
+      Journal, Purchas Pilgrim.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How far Master Hendrick Hudson and his worthy mate carried their
+      experiment with the sachem&rsquo;s wife is not recorded, neither does the
+      curious Robert Juet make any mention of the after-consequences of this
+      grand moral test; tradition, however, affirms that the sachem on landing
+      gave his modest spouse a hearty rib-roasting, according to the connubial
+      discipline of the aboriginals; it farther affirms that he remained a hard
+      drinker to the day of his death, trading away all his lands, acre by acre,
+      for aqua vitae; by which means the Roost and all its domains, from Yonkers
+      to Sleepy Hollow, came, in the regular course of trade and by right of
+      purchase, into the possession of the Dutchmen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Never has a territorial right in these new countries been more
+      legitimately and tradefully established; yet, I grieve to say, the worthy
+      government of the New Netherlands was not suffered to enjoy this grand
+      acquisition unmolested; for, in the year 1654, the local Yankees of
+      Connecticut&mdash;those swapping, bargaining, squatting enemies of the
+      Manhattoes&mdash;made a daring inroad into this neighborhood and founded a
+      colony called Westchester, or, as the ancient Dutch records term it, Vest
+      Dorp, in the right of one Thomas Pell, who pretended to have purchased the
+      whole surrounding country of the Indians, and stood ready to argue their
+      claims before any tribunal of Christendom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This happened during the chivalrous reign of Peter Stuyvesant, and it
+      roused the ire of that gunpowder old hero; who, without waiting to discuss
+      claims and titles, pounced at once upon the nest of nefarious squatters,
+      carried off twenty-five of them in chains to the Manhattoes, nor did he
+      stay his hand, nor give rest to his wooden leg, until he had driven every
+      Yankee back into the bounds of Connecticut, or obliged him to acknowledge
+      allegiance to their High Mightinesses. He then established certain
+      out-posts, far in the Indian country, to keep an eye over these debateable
+      lands; one of these border-holds was the Roost, being accessible from New
+      Amsterdam by water, and easily kept supplied. The Yankees, however, had
+      too great a hankering after this delectable region to give it up entirely.
+      Some remained and swore allegiance to the Manhattoes; but, while they kept
+      this open semblance of fealty, they went to work secretly and vigorously
+      to intermarry and multiply, and by these nefarious means, artfully
+      propagated themselves into possession of a wide tract of those open,
+      arable parts of Westchester county, lying along the Sound, where their
+      descendants may be found at the present day; while the mountainous regions
+      along the Hudson, with the valleys of the Neperan and the Pocantico, are
+      tenaciously held by the lineal descendants of the Copperheads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chronicle of the venerable Diedrich here goes on to relate how that,
+      shortly after the above-mentioned events, the whole province of the New
+      Netherlands &lsquo;was subjugated by the British; how that Wolfert Acker,
+      one of the wrangling councillors of Peter Stuyvesant, retired in dudgeon
+      to this fastness in the wilderness, determining to enjoy &ldquo;lust in
+      rust&rdquo; for the remainder of his days, whence the place first received
+      its name of Wolfert&rsquo;s Roost. As these and sundry other matters have
+      been laid before the public in a preceding article, I shall pass them
+      over, and resume the chronicle where it treats of matters not hitherto
+      recorded:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Like many men who retire from a worrying world, says DIEDRICH
+      KNICKERBOCKER, to enjoy quiet in the country, Wolfert Acker soon found
+      himself up to the ears in trouble. He had a termagant wife at home, and
+      there was what is profanely called &ldquo;the deuce to pay,&rdquo; abroad.
+      The recent irruption of the Yankees into the bounds of the New
+      Netherlands, had left behind it a doleful pestilence, such as is apt to
+      follow the steps of invading armies. This was the deadly plague of
+      witchcraft, which had long been prevalent to the eastward. The malady
+      broke out at Vest Dorp, and threatened to spread throughout the country.
+      The Dutch burghers along the Hudson, from Yonkers to Sleepy Hollow,
+      hastened to nail horseshoes to their doors, which have ever been found of
+      sovereign virtue to repel this awful visitation. This is the origin of the
+      horse-shoes which may still be seen nailed to the doors of barns and
+      farmhouses, in various parts of this sage and sober-thoughted region.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The evil, however, bore hard upon the Roost; partly, perhaps, from its
+      having in old times been subject to supernatural influences, during the
+      sway of the Wizard Sachem; but it has always, in fact, been considered a
+      fated mansion. The unlucky Wolfert had no rest day nor night. When the
+      weather was quiet all over the country, the wind would howl and whistle
+      round his roof; witches would ride and whirl upon his weathercocks, and
+      scream down his chimneys. His cows gave bloody milk, and his horses broke
+      bounds, and scampered into the woods. There were not wanting evil tongues
+      to whisper that Wolfert&rsquo;s termagant wife had some tampering with the
+      enemy; and that she even attended a witches&rsquo; Sabbath in Sleepy
+      Hollow; nay, a neighbor, who lived hard by, declared that he saw her
+      harnessing a rampant broom-stick, and about to ride to the meeting; though
+      others presume it was merely flourished in the course of one of her
+      curtain lectures, to give energy and emphasis to a period. Certain it is,
+      that Wolfert Acker nailed a horse-shoe to the front door, during one of
+      her nocturnal excursions, to prevent her return; but as she re-entered the
+      house without any difficulty, it is probable she was not so much of a
+      witch as she was represented. [Footnote: HISTORICAL NOTE.&mdash;The
+      annexed extracts from the early colonial records, relate to the irruption
+      of witchcraft into Westchester county, as mentioned in the chronicle:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;JULY 7, 1670.&mdash;Katharine Harryson, accused of witchcraft on
+      complaint of Thomas Hunt and Edward Waters, in behalf of the town, who
+      pray that she may be driven from the town of Westchester. The woman
+      appears before the council.... She was a native of England, and had lived
+      a year in Weathersfield, Connecticut, where she had been tried for
+      witchcraft, found guilty by the jury, acquitted by the bench, and released
+      out of prison, upon condition she would remove. Affair adjourned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;AUGUST 24.&mdash;Affair taken up again, when, being heard at large,
+      it was referred to the general court of assize. Woman ordered to give
+      security for good behavior,&rdquo; etc.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In another place is the following entry:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Order given for Katharine Harryson, charged with witchcraft, to
+      leave Westchester, as the inhabitants are uneasy at her residing there,
+      and she is ordered to go off.&rdquo;]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the time of Wolfert Acker, a long interval elapses, about which but
+      little is known. It is hoped, however, that the antiquarian researches so
+      diligently making in every part of this new country, may yet throw some
+      light upon what may be termed the Dark Ages of the Roost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next period at which we find this venerable and eventful pile rising
+      to importance, and resuming its old belligerent character, is during the
+      revolutionary war. It was at that time owned by Jacob Van Tassel, or Van
+      Texel, as the name was originally spelled, after the place in Holland
+      which gave birth to this heroic line. He was strong-built, long-limbed,
+      and as stout in soul as in body; a fit successor to the warrior sachem of
+      yore, and, like him, delighting in extravagant enterprises and hardy deeds
+      of arms. But, before I enter upon the exploits of this worthy cock of the
+      Boost, it is fitting I should throw some light upon the state of the
+      mansion, and of the surrounding country, at the time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The situation of the Roost is in the very heart of what was the debateable
+      ground between the American and British lines, during the war. The British
+      held possession of the city of New York, and the island of Manhattan on
+      which it stands. The Americans drew up toward the Highlands, holding their
+      headquarters at Peekskill. The intervening country, from Croton River to
+      Spiting Devil Creek, was the debateable land, subject to be harried by
+      friend and foe, like the Scottish borders of yore. It is a rugged country,
+      with a line of rocky hills extending through it, like a back bone, sending
+      ribs on either side; but among these rude hills are beautiful winding
+      valleys, like those watered by the Pocantico and the Neperan. In the
+      fastnesses of these hills, and along these valleys, exist a race of
+      hard-headed, hard-handed, stout-hearted Dutchmen, descendants of the
+      primitive Nederlanders. Most of these were strong whigs throughout the
+      war, and have ever remained obstinately attached to the soil, and neither
+      to be fought nor bought out of their paternal acres. Others were tories,
+      and adherents to the old kingly rule; some of whom took refuge within the
+      British lines, joined the royal bands of refugees, a name odious to the
+      American ear, and occasionally returned to harass their ancient neighbors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a little while, this debateable land was overrun by predatory bands
+      from either side; sacking hen-roosts, plundering farm-houses, and driving
+      off cattle. Hence arose those two great orders of border chivalry, the
+      Skinners and the Cowboys, famous in the heroic annals of Westchester
+      county. The former fought, or rather marauded, under the American, the
+      latter under the British banner; but both, in the hurry of their military
+      ardor, were apt to err on the safe side, and rob friend as well as foe.
+      Neither of them stopped to ask the politics of horse or cow, which they
+      drove into captivity; nor, when they wrung the neck of a rooster, did they
+      trouble their heads to ascertain whether he were crowing for Congress or
+      King George.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While this marauding system prevailed on shore, the Great Tappan Sea,
+      which washes this belligerent region, was domineered over by British
+      frigates and other vessels of war, anchored here and there, to keep an eye
+      upon the river, and maintain a communication between the various military
+      posts. Stout galleys, also, armed with eighteen-pounders, and navigated
+      with sails and oars, cruised about like hawks, ready to pounce upon their
+      prey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All these were eyed with bitter hostility by the Dutch yeomanry along
+      shore, who were indignant at seeing their great Mediterranean ploughed by
+      hostile prows; and would occasionally throw up a mud breast-work on a
+      point or promontory, mount an old iron field-piece, and fire away at the
+      enemy, though the greatest harm was apt to happen to themselves from the
+      bursting of their ordnance; nay, there was scarce a Dutchman along the
+      river that would hesitate to fire with his long duck gun at any British
+      cruiser that came within reach, as he had been accustomed to fire at
+      water-fowl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have been thus particular in my account of the times and neighborhood,
+      that the reader might the more readily comprehend the surrounding dangers
+      in this the Heroic Age of the Roost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was commanded at the time, as I have already observed, by the stout
+      Jacob Van Tassel. As I wish to be extremely accurate in this part of my
+      chronicle, I beg that this Jacob Van Tassel of the Roost may not be
+      confounded with another Jacob Van Tassel, commonly known in border story
+      by the name of &ldquo;Clump-footed Jake,&rdquo; a noted tory, and one of
+      the refugee band of Spiting Devil. On the contrary, he of the Roost was a
+      patriot of the first water, and, if we may take his own word for granted,
+      a thorn in the side of the enemy. As the Roost, from its lonely situation
+      on the water&rsquo;s edge, might be liable to attack, he took measures for
+      defence. On a row of hooks above his fire-place, reposed his great piece
+      of ordnance, ready charged and primed for action. This was a duck, or
+      rather goose-gun, of unparalleled longitude, with which it was said he
+      could kill a wild goose, though half-way across the Tappan Sea. Indeed,
+      there are as many wonders told of this renowned gun, as of the enchanted
+      weapons of the heroes of classic story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In different parts of the stone walls of his mansion, he had made
+      loop-holes, through which he might fire upon an assailant. His wife was
+      stout-hearted as himself, and could load as fast as he could fire; and
+      then he had an ancient and redoubtable sister, Nochie Van Wurmer, a match,
+      as he said, for the stoutest man in the country. Thus garrisoned, the
+      little Roost was fit to stand a siege, and Jacob Van Tassel was the man to
+      defend it to the last charge of powder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was, as I have already hinted, of pugnacious propensities; and, not
+      content with being a patriot at home, and fighting for the security of his
+      own fireside, he extended his thoughts abroad, and entered into a
+      confederacy with certain of the bold, hard-riding lads of Tarrytown,
+      Petticoat Lane, and Sleepy Hollow, who formed a kind of Holy Brotherhood,
+      scouring the country to clear it of Skinner and Cow-boy, and all other
+      border vermin. The Roost was one of their rallying points. Did a band of
+      marauders from Manhattan island come sweeping through the neighborhood,
+      and driving off cattle, the stout Jacob and his compeers were soon
+      clattering at their heels, and fortunate did the rogues esteem themselves
+      if they could but get a part of their booty across the lines, or escape
+      themselves without a rough handling. Should the mosstroopers succeed in
+      passing with their cavalcade, with thundering tramp and dusty whirlwind,
+      across Kingsbridge, the Holy Brotherhood of the Roost would rein up at
+      that perilous pass, and, wheeling about, would indemnify themselves by
+      foraging the refugee region of Morrisania.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When at home at the Roost, the stout Jacob was not idle; but was prone to
+      carry on a petty warfare of his own, for his private recreation and
+      refreshment. Did he ever chance to espy, from his look-out place, a
+      hostile ship or galley anchored or becalmed near shore, he would take down
+      his long goose-gun from the hooks over the fire-place, sally out alone,
+      and lurk along shore, dodging behind rocks and trees, and watching for
+      hours together, like a veteran mouser intent on a rat-hole. So sure as a
+      boat put off for shore, and came within shot, bang! went the great
+      goose-gun; a shower of slugs and buck-shot whistled about the ears of the
+      enemy, and before the boat could reach the shore, Jacob had scuttled up
+      some woody ravine, and left no trace behind. About this time, the Roost
+      experienced a vast accession of warlike importance, in being made one of
+      the stations of the water-guard. This was a kind of aquatic corps of
+      observation, composed of long, sharp, canoe-shaped boats, technically
+      called whale-boats, that lay lightly on the water, and could be rowed with
+      great rapidity. They were manned by resolute fellows, skilled at pulling
+      an oar, or handling a musket. These lurked about in nooks and bays, and
+      behind those long promontories which run out into the Tappan Sea, keeping
+      a look-out, to give notice of the approach or movements of hostile ships.
+      They roved about in pairs; sometimes at night, with muffled oars, gliding
+      like spectres about frigates and guard-ships riding at anchor, cutting off
+      any boats that made for shore, and keeping the enemy in constant
+      uneasiness. These mosquito-cruisers generally kept aloof by day, so that
+      their harboring places might not be discovered, but would pull quietly
+      along, under shadow of the shore, at night, to take up their quarters at
+      the Roost. Hither, at such time, would also repair the hard-riding lads of
+      the hills, to hold secret councils of war with the &ldquo;ocean chivalry;&rdquo;
+      and in these nocturnal meetings were concerted many of those daring
+      forays, by land and water, that resounded throughout the border.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chronicle here goes on to recount divers wonderful stories of the wars
+      of the Roost, from which it would seem, that this little warrior nest
+      carried the terror of its arms into every sea, from Spiting Devil Creek to
+      Antony&rsquo;s Nose; that it even bearded the stout island of Manhattan,
+      invading it at night, penetrating to its centre, and burning down the
+      famous Delancey house, the conflagration of which makes such a blaze in
+      revolutionary history. Nay more, in their extravagant daring, these cocks
+      of the Roost meditated a nocturnal descent upon New York itself, to swoop
+      upon the British commanders, Howe and Clinton, by surprise, bear them off
+      captive, and perhaps put a triumphant close to the war!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All these and many similar exploits are recorded by the worthy Diedrich,
+      with his usual minuteness and enthusiasm, whenever the deeds in arms of
+      his kindred Dutchmen are in question; but though most of these warlike
+      stories rest upon the best of all authority, that of the warriors
+      themselves, and though many of them are still current among the
+      revolutionary patriarchs of this heroic neighborhood, yet I dare not
+      expose them to the incredulity of a tamer and less chivalric age, Suffice
+      it to say, the frequent gatherings at the Roost, and the hardy projects
+      set on foot there, at length drew on it the fiery indignation of the
+      enemy; and this was quickened by the conduct of the stout Jacob Van
+      Tassel; with whose valorous achievements we resume the course of the
+      chronicle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THIS doughty Dutchman, continues the sage DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER, was not
+      content with taking a share in all the magnanimous enterprises concocted
+      at the Roost, but still continued his petty warfare along shore. A series
+      of exploits at length raised his confidence in his prowess to such a
+      height, that he began to think himself and his goose-gun a match for any
+      thing. Unluckily, in the course of one of his prowlings, he descried a
+      British transport aground, not far from shore, with her stern swung toward
+      the land, within point-blank shot. The temptation was too great to be
+      resisted; bang! as usual, went the great goose-gun, shivering the cabin
+      windows, and driving all hands forward. Bang! bang! the shots were
+      repeated. The reports brought several sharp-shooters of the neighborhood
+      to the spot; before the transport could bring a gun to bear, or land a
+      boat, to take revenge, she was soundly peppered, and the coast evacuated.
+      This was the last of Jacob&rsquo;s triumphs. He fared like some heroic
+      spider, that has unwittingly ensnared a hornet, to his immortal glory,
+      perhaps, but to the utter ruin of his web.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not long after this, during the absence of Jacob Van Tassel on one
+      of his forays, and when no one was in garrison but his stout-hearted
+      spouse, his redoubtable sister, Nochie Van Wurmer, and a strapping negro
+      wench, called Dinah, that an armed vessel came to anchor off the Roost,
+      and a boat full of men pulled to shore. The garrison flew to arms, that is
+      to say, to mops, broom-sticks, shovels, tongs, and all kinds of domestic
+      weapons; for, unluckily, the great piece of ordnance, the goose-gun, was
+      absent with its owner. Above all, a vigorous defence was made with that
+      most potent of female weapons, the tongue. Never did invaded hen-roost
+      make a more vociferous outcry. It was all in vain. The house was sacked
+      and plundered, fire was set to each corner, and in a few moments its blaze
+      shed a baleful light far over the Tappan Sea. The invaders then pounced
+      upon the blooming Laney Van Tassel, the beauty of the Roost, and
+      endeavored to bear her off to the boat. But here was the real tug of war.
+      The mother, the aunt, and the strapping negro wench, all flew to the
+      rescue. The struggle continued down to the very water&rsquo;s edge; when a
+      voice from the armed vessel at anchor, ordered the spoilers to let go
+      their hold; they relinquished their prize, jumped into their boats, and
+      pulled off, and the heroine of the Roost escaped with a mere rumpling of
+      the feathers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fear of tiring my readers, who may not take such an interest as myself
+      in these heroic themes, induces me to close here my extracts from this
+      precious chronicle of the venerable Diedrich. Suffice it briefly to say,
+      that shortly after the catastrophe of the Roost, Jacob Van Tassel, in the
+      course of one of his forays, fell into the hands of the British; was sent
+      prisoner to New York, and was detained in captivity for the greater part
+      of the war. In the mean time, the Roost remained a melancholy ruin; its
+      stone walls and brick chimneys alone standing, blackened by fire, and the
+      resort of bats and owlets. It was not until the return of peace, when this
+      belligerent neighborhood once more resumed its quiet agricultural
+      pursuits, that the stout Jacob sought the scene of his triumphs and
+      disasters; rebuilt the Roost, and reared again on high its glittering
+      weather-cocks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Does any one want further particulars of the fortunes of this eventful
+      little pile? Let him go to the fountain-head, and drink deep of historic
+      truth. Reader! the stout Jacob Van Tassel still lives, a venerable,
+      gray-headed patriarch of the revolution, now in his ninety-fifth year! He
+      sits by his fireside, in the ancient city of the Manhattoes, and passes
+      the long winter evenings, surrounded by his children, and grand-children,
+      and great-grand-children, all listening to his tales of the border wars,
+      and the heroic days of the Roost. His great goose-gun, too, is still in
+      existence, having been preserved for many years in a hollow tree, and
+      passed from hand to hand among the Dutch burghers, as a precious relique
+      of the revolution. It is now actually in possession of a contemporary of
+      the stout Jacob, one almost his equal in years, who treasures it up at his
+      house in the Bowerie of New-Amsterdam, hard by the ancient rural retreat
+      of the chivalric Peter Stuyvesant. I am not without hopes of one day
+      seeing this formidable piece of ordinance restored to its proper station
+      in the arsenal of the Roost. Before closing this historic document, I
+      cannot but advert to certain notions and traditions concerning the
+      venerable pile in question. Old-time edifices are apt to gather odd
+      fancies and superstitions about them, as they do moss and weather-stains;
+      and this is in a neighborhood a little given to old-fashioned notions, and
+      who look upon the Roost as somewhat of a fated mansion. A lonely,
+      rambling, down-hill lane leads to it, overhung with trees, with a wild
+      brook dashing along, and crossing and re-crossing it. This lane I found
+      some of the good people of the neighborhood shy of treading at night; why,
+      I could not for a long time ascertain; until I learned that one or two of
+      the rovers of the Tappan Sea, shot by the stout Jacob during the war, had
+      been buried hereabout, in unconsecrated ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another local superstition is of a less gloomy kind, and one which I
+      confess I am somewhat disposed to cherish. The Tappan Sea, in front of the
+      Roost, is about three miles wide, bordered by a lofty line of waving and
+      rocky hills. Often, in the still twilight of a summer evening, when the
+      sea is like glass, with the opposite hills throwing their purple shadows
+      half across it, a low sound is heard, as of the steady, vigorous pull of
+      oars, far out in the middle of the stream, though not a boat is to be
+      descried. This I should have been apt to ascribe to some boat rowed along
+      under the shadows of the western shore, for sounds are conveyed to a great
+      distance by water, at such quiet hours, and I can distinctly hear the
+      baying of the watch-dogs at night, from the farms on the sides of the
+      opposite mountains. The ancient traditionists of the neighborhood,
+      however, religiously ascribed these sounds to a judgment upon one Rumbout
+      Van Dam, of Spiting Devil, who danced and drank late one Saturday night,
+      at a Dutch quilting frolic, at Kakiat, and set off alone for home in his
+      boat, on the verge of Sunday morning; swearing he would not land till he
+      reached Spiting Devil, if it took him a month of Sundays. He was never
+      seen afterward, but is often heard plying his oars across the Tappan Sea,
+      a Flying Dutchman on a small scale, suited to the size of his
+      cruising-ground; being doomed to ply between Kakiat and Spiting Devil till
+      the day of judgment, but never to reach the land.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is one room in the mansion which almost overhangs the river, and is
+      reputed to be haunted by the ghost of a young lady who died of love and
+      green apples. I have been awakened at night by the sound of oars and the
+      tinkling of guitars beneath the window; and seeing a boat loitering in the
+      moonlight, have been tempted to believe it the Flying Dutchman of Spiting
+      Devil, and to try whether a silver bullet might not put an end to his
+      unhappy cruisings; but, happening to recollect that there was a living
+      young lady in the haunted room, who might be terrified by the report of
+      fire-arms, I have refrained from pulling trigger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As to the enchanted fountain, said to have been gifted by the wizard
+      sachem with supernatural powers, it still wells up at the foot of the
+      bank, on the margin of the river, and goes by the name of the Indian
+      spring; but I have my doubts as to its rejuvenating powers, for though I
+      have drank oft and copiously of it, I cannot boast that I find myself
+      growing younger.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      GEOFFREY CRAYON.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      SLEEPY HOLLOW.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      HAVING pitched my tent, probably for the remainder of my days, in the
+      neighborhood of Sleepy Hollow, I am tempted to give some few particulars
+      concerning that spell-bound region; especially as it has risen to historic
+      importance under the pen of my revered friend and master, the sage
+      historian of the New Netherlands. Beside, I find the very existence of the
+      place has been held in question by many; who, judging from its odd name
+      and from the odd stories current among the vulgar concerning it, have
+      rashly deemed the whole to be a fanciful creation, like the Lubber Land of
+      mariners. I must confess there is some apparent cause for doubt, in
+      consequence of the coloring given by the worthy Diedrich to his
+      descriptions of the Hollow; who, in this instance, has departed a little
+      from his usually sober if not severe style; beguiled, very probably, by
+      his predilection for the haunts of his youth, and by a certain lurking
+      taint of romance whenever any thing connected with the Dutch was to be
+      described. I shall endeavor to make up for this amiable error on the part
+      of my venerable and venerated friend by presenting the reader with a more
+      precise and statistical account of the Hollow; though I am not sure that I
+      shall not be prone to lapse in the end into the very error I am speaking
+      of, so potent is the witchery of the theme.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I believe it was the very peculiarity of its name and the idea of
+      something mystic and dreamy connected with it that first led me in my
+      boyish ramblings into Sleepy Hollow. The character of the valley seemed to
+      answer to the name; the slumber of past ages apparently reigned over it;
+      it had not awakened to the stir of improvement which had put all the rest
+      of the world in a bustle. Here reigned good, old long-forgotten fashions;
+      the men were in home-spun garbs, evidently the product of their own farms
+      and the manufacture of their own wives; the women were in primitive short
+      gowns and petticoats, with the venerable sun-bonnets of Holland origin.
+      The lower part of the valley was cut up into small farms, each consisting
+      of a little meadow and corn-field; an orchard of sprawling, gnarled
+      apple-trees, and a garden, where the rose, the marigold, and the hollyhock
+      were permitted to skirt the domains of the capacious cabbage, the aspiring
+      pea, and the portly pumpkin. Each had its prolific little mansion teeming
+      with children; with an old hat nailed against the wall for the
+      housekeeping wren; a motherly hen, under a coop on the grass-plot,
+      clucking to keep around her a brood of vagrant chickens; a cool, stone
+      well, with the moss-covered bucket suspended to the long balancing-pole,
+      according to the antediluvian idea of hydraulics; and its spinning-wheel
+      humming within doors, the patriarchal music of home manufacture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Hollow at that time was inhabited by families which had existed there
+      from the earliest times, and which, by frequent intermarriage, had become
+      so interwoven, as to make a kind of natural commonwealth. As the families
+      had grown larger the farms had grown smaller; every new generation
+      requiring a new subdivision, and few thinking of swarming from the native
+      hive. In this way that happy golden mean had been produced, so much
+      extolled by the poets, in which there was no gold and very little silver.
+      One thing which doubtless contributed to keep up this amiable mean was a
+      general repugnance to sordid labor. The sage inhabitants of Sleepy Hollow
+      had read in their Bible, which was the only book they studied, that labor
+      was originally inflicted upon man as a punishment of sin; they regarded
+      it, therefore, with pious abhorrence, and never humiliated themselves to
+      it but in cases of extremity. There seemed, in fact, to be a league and
+      covenant against it throughout the Hollow as against a common enemy. Was
+      any one compelled by dire necessity to repair his house, mend his fences,
+      build a barn, or get in a harvest, he considered it a great evil that
+      entitled him to call in the assistance or his friend? He accordingly
+      proclaimed a &lsquo;bee&rsquo; or rustic gathering, whereupon all his
+      neighbors hurried to his aid like faithful allies; attacked the task with
+      the desperate energy of lazy men eager to overcome a job; and, when it was
+      accomplished, fell to eating and drinking, fiddling and dancing for very
+      joy that so great an amount of labor had been vanquished with so little
+      sweating of the brow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet, let it not be supposed that this worthy community was without its
+      periods of arduous activity. Let but a flock of wild pigeons fly across
+      the valley and all Sleepy Hollow was wide awake in an instant. The pigeon
+      season had arrived. Every gun and net was forthwith in requisition. The
+      flail was thrown down on the barn floor; the spade rusted in the garden;
+      the plough stood idle in the furrow; every one was to the hillside and
+      stubble-field at daybreak to shoot or entrap the pigeons in their
+      periodical migrations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So, likewise, let but the word be given that the shad were ascending the
+      Hudson, and the worthies of the Hollow were to be seen launched in boats
+      upon the river setting great stakes, and stretching their nets like
+      gigantic spider-webs half across the stream to the great annoyance of
+      navigators. Such are the wise provisions of Nature, by which she equalizes
+      rural affairs. A laggard at the plough is often extremely industrious with
+      the fowling-piece and fishing-net; and, whenever a man is an indifferent
+      farmer, he is apt to be a first-rate sportsman. For catching shad and wild
+      pigeons there were none throughout the country to compare with the lads of
+      Sleepy Hollow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I have observed, it was the dreamy nature of the name that first
+      beguiled me in the holiday rovings of boyhood into this sequestered
+      region. I shunned, however, the populous parts of the Hollow, and sought
+      its retired haunts far in the foldings of the hills, where the Pocantico
+      &ldquo;winds its wizard stream&rdquo; sometimes silently and darkly
+      through solemn woodlands; sometimes sparkling between grassy borders in
+      fresh, green meadows; sometimes stealing along the feet of rugged heights
+      under the balancing sprays of beech and chestnut trees. A thousand crystal
+      springs, with which this neighborhood abounds, sent down from the
+      hill-sides their whimpering rills, as if to pay tribute to the Pocantico.
+      In this stream I first essayed my unskilful hand at angling. I loved to
+      loiter along it with rod in hand, watching my float as it whirled amid the
+      eddies or drifted into dark holes under twisted roots and sunken logs,
+      where the largest fish are apt to lurk. I delighted to follow it into the
+      brown accesses of the woods; to throw by my fishing-gear and sit upon
+      rocks beneath towering oaks and clambering grape-vines; bathe my feet in
+      the cool current, and listen to the summer breeze playing among the
+      tree-tops. My boyish fancy clothed all nature around me with ideal charms,
+      and peopled it with the fairy beings I had read of in poetry and fable.
+      Here it was I gave full scope to my incipient habit of day dreaming, and
+      to a certain propensity, to weave up and tint sober realities with my own
+      whims and imaginings, which has sometimes made life a little too much like
+      an Arabian tale to me, and this &ldquo;working-day world&rdquo; rather
+      like a region of romance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great gathering-place of Sleepy Hollow in those days was the church.
+      It stood outside of the Hollow, near the great highway, on a green bank
+      shaded by trees, with the Pocantico sweeping round it and emptying itself
+      into a spacious mill-pond. At that time the Sleepy Hollow church was the
+      only place of worship for a wide neighborhood. It was a venerable edifice,
+      partly of stone and partly of brick, the latter having been brought from
+      Holland in the early days of the province, before the arts in the New
+      Netherlands could aspire to such a fabrication. On a stone above the porch
+      were inscribed the names of the founders, Frederick Filipsen, a mighty
+      patroon of the olden time, who reigned over a wide extent of this
+      neighborhood and held his seat of power at Yonkers; and his wife, Katrina
+      Van Courtlandt, of the no less potent line of the Van Courtlandts of
+      Croton, who lorded it over a great part of the Highlands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The capacious pulpit, with its wide-spreading sounding-board, were
+      likewise early importations from Holland; as also the communion-table, of
+      massive form and curious fabric. The same might be said of a weather-cock
+      perched on top of the belfry, and which was considered orthodox in all
+      windy matters, until a small pragmatical rival was set up on the other end
+      of the church above the chancel. This latter bore, and still bears, the
+      initials of Frederick Filipsen, and assumed great airs in consequence. The
+      usual contradiction ensued that always exists among church weather-cocks,
+      which can never be brought to agree as to the point from which the wind
+      blows, having doubtless acquired, from their position, the Christian
+      propensity to schism and controversy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Behind the church, and sloping up a gentle acclivity, was its capacious
+      burying-ground, in which slept the earliest fathers of this rural
+      neighborhood. Here were tombstones of the rudest sculpture; on which were
+      inscribed, in Dutch, the names and virtues of many of the first settlers,
+      with their portraitures curiously carved in similitude of cherubs. Long
+      rows of grave-stones, side by side, of similar names, but various dates,
+      showed that generation after generation of the same families had followed
+      each other and been garnered together in this last gathering-place of
+      kindred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let me speak of this quiet grave-yard with all due reverence, for I owe it
+      amends for the heedlessness of my boyish days. I blush to acknowledge the
+      thoughtless frolic with which, in company with other whipsters, I have
+      sported within its sacred bounds during the intervals of worship; chasing
+      butterflies, plucking wild flowers, or vying with each other who could
+      leap over the tallest tomb-stones, until checked by the stern voice of the
+      sexton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The congregation was, in those days, of a really rural character. City
+      fashions were as yet unknown, or unregarded, by the country people of the
+      neighborhood. Steam-boats had not as yet confounded town with country. A
+      weekly market-boat from Tarry town, the &ldquo;Farmers&rsquo; Daughter,&rdquo;
+      navigated by the worthy Gabriel Requa, was the only communication between
+      all these parts and the metropolis. A rustic belle in those days
+      considered a visit to the city in much the same light as one of our modern
+      fashionable ladies regards a visit to Europe; an event that may possibly
+      take place once in the course of a lifetime, but to be hoped for, rather
+      than expected. Hence the array of the congregation was chiefly after the
+      primitive fashions existing in Sleepy Hollow; or if, by chance, there was
+      a departure from the Dutch sun-bonnet, or the apparition of a bright gown
+      of flowered calico, it caused quite a sensation throughout the church. As
+      the dominie generally preached by the hour, a bucket of water was
+      providently placed on a bench near the door, in summer, with a tin cup
+      beside it, for the solace of those who might be athirst, either from the
+      heat of the weather, or the drouth of the sermon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Around the pulpit, and behind the communion-table, sat the elders of the
+      church, reverend, gray-headed, leathern-visaged men, whom I regarded with
+      awe, as so many apostles. They were stern in their sanctity, kept a
+      vigilant eye upon my giggling companions and myself, and shook a rebuking
+      finger at any boyish device to relieve the tediousness of compulsory
+      devotion. Vain, however, were all their efforts at vigilance. Scarcely had
+      the preacher held forth for half an hour, on one of his interminable
+      sermons, than it seemed as if the drowsy influence of Sleepy Hollow
+      breathed into the place; one by one the congregation sank into slumber;
+      the sanctified elders leaned back in their pews, spreading their
+      handkerchiefs over their faces, as if to keep off the flies; while the
+      locusts in the neighboring trees would spin out their sultry summer notes,
+      as if in imitation of the sleep-provoking tones of the dominie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have thus endeavored to give an idea of Sleepy Hollow and its church, as
+      I recollect them to have been in the days of my boyhood. It was in my
+      stripling days, when a few years had passed over my head, that I revisited
+      them, in company with the venerable Diedrich. I shall never forget the
+      antiquarian reverence with which that sage and excellent man contemplated
+      the church. It seemed as if all his pious enthusiasm for the ancient Dutch
+      dynasty swelled within his bosom at the sight. The tears stood in his
+      eyes, as he regarded the pulpit and the communion-table; even the very
+      bricks that had come from the mother country, seemed to touch a filial
+      chord within his bosom. He almost bowed in deference to the stone above
+      the porch, containing the names of Frederick Filipsen and Katrina Van
+      Courtlandt, regarding it as the linking together of those patronymic
+      names, once so famous along the banks of the Hudson; or rather as a
+      key-stone, binding that mighty Dutch family connexion of yore, one foot of
+      which rested on Yonkers, and the other on the Groton. Nor did he forbear
+      to notice with admiration, the windy contest which had been carried on,
+      since time immemorial, and with real Dutch perseverance, between the two
+      weather-cocks; though I could easily perceive he coincided with the one
+      which had come from Holland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Together we paced the ample church-yard. With deep veneration would he
+      turn down the weeds and brambles that obscured the modest brown
+      grave-stones, half sunk in earth, on which were recorded, in Dutch, the
+      names of the patriarchs of ancient days, the Ackers, the Van Tassels, and
+      the Van Warts. As we sat on one of the tomb-stones, he recounted to me the
+      exploits of many of these worthies; and my heart smote me, when I heard of
+      their great doings in days of yore, to think how heedlessly I had once
+      sported over their graves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the church, the venerable Diedrich proceeded in his researches up the
+      Hollow. The genius of the place seemed to hail its future historian. All
+      nature was alive with gratulation. The quail whistled a greeting from the
+      corn-field; the robin carolled a song of praise from the orchard; the
+      loquacious catbird flew from bush to bush, with restless wing, proclaiming
+      his approach in every variety of note, and anon would whisk about, and
+      perk inquisitively into his face, as if to get a knowledge of his
+      physiognomy; the wood-pecker, also, tapped a tattoo on the hollow
+      apple-tree, and then peered knowingly round the trunk, to see how the
+      great Diedrich relished his salutation; while the ground-squirrel
+      scampered along the fence, and occasionally whisked his tail over his
+      head, by way of a huzza!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The worthy Diedrich pursued his researches in the valley with
+      characteristic devotion; entering familiarly into the various cottages,
+      and gossiping with the simple folk, in the style of their own simplicity.
+      I confess my heart yearned with admiration, to see so great a man, in his
+      eager quest after knowledge, humbly demeaning himself to curry favor with
+      the humblest; sitting patiently on a three-legged stool, patting the
+      children, and taking a purring grimalkin on his lap, while he conciliated
+      the good-will of the old Dutch housewife, and drew from her long ghost
+      stories, spun out to the humming accompaniment of her wheel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His greatest treasure of historic lore, however, was discovered in an old
+      goblin-looking mill, situated among rocks and waterfalls, with clanking
+      wheels, and rushing streams, and all kinds of uncouth noises. A
+      horse-shoe, nailed to the door to keep off witches and evil spirits,
+      showed that this mill was subject to awful visitations. As we approached
+      it, an old negro thrust his head, all dabbled with flour, out of a hole
+      above the water-wheel, and grinned, and rolled his eyes, and looked like
+      the very hobgoblin of the place. The illustrious Diedrich fixed upon him,
+      at once, as the very one to give him that invaluable kind of information
+      never to be acquired from books. He beckoned him from his nest, sat with
+      him by the hour on a broken mill-stone, by the side of the waterfall,
+      heedless of the noise of the water, and the clatter of the mill; and I
+      verily believe it was to his conference with this African sage, and the
+      precious revelations of the good dame of the spinning-wheel, that we are
+      indebted for the surprising though true history of Ichabod Crane and the
+      headless horseman, which has since astounded and edified the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I have said enough of the good old times of my youthful days; let me
+      speak of the Hollow as I found it, after an absence of many years, when it
+      was kindly given me once more to revisit the haunts of my boyhood. It was
+      a genial day, as I approached that fated region. The warm sunshine was
+      tempered by a slight haze, so as to give a dreamy effect to the landscape.
+      Not a breath of air shook the foliage. The broad Tappan Sea was without a
+      ripple, and the sloops, with drooping sails, slept on its grassy bosom.
+      Columns of smoke, from burning brush-wood, rose lazily from the folds of
+      the hills, on the opposite side of the river, and slowly expanded in
+      mid-air. The distant lowing of a cow, or the noontide crowing of a cock,
+      coming faintly to the ear, seemed to illustrate, rather than disturb, the
+      drowsy quiet of the scene.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I entered the hollow with a beating heart. Contrary to my apprehensions, I
+      found it but little changed. The march of intellect, which had made such
+      rapid strides along every river and highway, had not yet, apparently,
+      turned down into this favored valley. Perhaps the wizard spell of ancient
+      days still reigned over the place, binding up the faculties of the
+      inhabitants in happy contentment with things as they had been handed down
+      to them from yore. There were the same little farms and farmhouses, with
+      their old hats for the housekeeping wren; their stone wells, moss-covered
+      buckets, and long balancing poles. There were the same little rills,
+      whimpering down to pay their tributes to the Pocantico; while that wizard
+      stream still kept on its course, as of old, through solemn woodlands and
+      fresh green meadows: nor were there wanting joyous holiday boys to loiter
+      along its banks, as I have done; throw their pin-hooks in the stream, or
+      launch their mimic barks. I watched them with a kind of melancholy
+      pleasure, wondering whether they were under the same spell of the fancy
+      that once rendered this valley a fairy land to me. Alas! alas! to me every
+      thing now stood revealed in its simple reality. The echoes no longer
+      answered with wizard tongues; the dream of youth was at an end; the spell
+      of Sleepy Hollow was broken!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I sought the ancient church on the following Sunday. There it stood, on
+      its green bank, among the trees; the Pocantico swept by it in a deep dark
+      stream, where I had so often angled; there expanded the mill-pond, as of
+      old, with the cows under the willows on its margin, knee-deep in water,
+      chewing the cud, and lashing the flies from their sides with their tails.
+      The hand of improvement, however, had been busy with the venerable pile.
+      The pulpit, fabricated in Holland, had been superseded by one of modern
+      construction, and the front of the semi-Gothic edifice was decorated by a
+      semi-Grecian portico. Fortunately, the two weather-cocks remained
+      undisturbed on their perches at each end of the church, and still kept up
+      a diametrical opposition to each other on all points of windy doctrine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On entering the church the changes of time continued to be apparent. The
+      elders round the pulpit were men whom I had left in the gamesome frolic of
+      their youth, but who had succeeded to the sanctity of station of which
+      they once had stood so much in awe. What most struck my eye was the change
+      in the female part of the congregation. Instead of the primitive garbs of
+      homespun manufacture and antique Dutch fashion, I beheld French sleeves,
+      French capes, and French collars, and a fearful-fluttering of French
+      ribbands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the service was ended I sought the church-yard, in which I had
+      sported in my unthinking days of boyhood. Several of the modest brown
+      stones, on which were recorded in Dutch the names and virtues of the
+      patriarchs, had disappeared, and had been succeeded by others of white
+      marble, with urns and wreaths, and scraps of English tomb-stone poetry,
+      marking the intrusion of taste and literature and the English language in
+      this once unsophisticated Dutch neighborhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I was stumbling about among these silent yet eloquent memorials of the
+      dead, I came upon names familiar to me; of those who had paid the debt of
+      nature during the long interval of my absence. Some, I remembered, my
+      companions in boyhood, who had sported with me on the very sod under which
+      they were now mouldering; others who in those days had been the flower of
+      the yeomanry, figuring in Sunday finery on the church green; others, the
+      white-haired elders of the sanctuary, once arrayed in awful sanctity
+      around the pulpit, and ever ready to rebuke the ill-timed mirth of the
+      wanton stripling who, now a man, sobered by years and schooled by
+      vicissitudes, looked down pensively upon their graves. &ldquo;Our fathers,&rdquo;
+      thought I, &ldquo;where are they!&mdash;and the prophets, can they live
+      for ever!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was disturbed in my meditations by the noise of a troop of idle urchins,
+      who came gambolling about the place where I had so often gambolled. They
+      were checked, as I and my playmates had often been, by the voice of the
+      sexton, a man staid in years and demeanor. I looked wistfully in his face;
+      had I met him any where else, I should probably have passed him by without
+      remark; but here I was alive to the traces of former times, and detected
+      in the demure features of this guardian of the sanctuary the lurking
+      lineaments of one of the very playmates I have alluded to. We renewed our
+      acquaintance. He sat down beside me, on one of the tomb-stones over which
+      we had leaped in our juvenile sports, and we talked together about our
+      boyish days, and held edifying discourse on the instability of all
+      sublunary things, as instanced in the scene around us. He was rich in
+      historic lore, as to the events of the last thirty years and the
+      circumference of thirty miles, and from him I learned the appalling
+      revolution that was taking place throughout the neighborhood. All this I
+      clearly perceived he attributed to the boasted march of intellect, or
+      rather to the all-pervading influence of steam. He bewailed the times when
+      the only communication with town was by the weekly market-boat, the
+      &ldquo;Farmers&rsquo; Daughter,&rdquo; which, under the pilotage of the
+      worthy Gabriel Requa, braved the perils of the Tappan Sea. Alas! Gabriel
+      and the &ldquo;Farmer&rsquo;s Daughter&rdquo; slept in peace. Two
+      steamboats now splashed and paddled up daily to the little rural port of
+      Tarrytown. The spirit of speculation and improvement had seized even upon
+      that once quiet and unambitious little dorp. The whole neighborhood was
+      laid out into town lots. Instead of the little tavern below the hill,
+      where the farmers used to loiter on market days and indulge in cider and
+      gingerbread, an ambitious hotel, with cupola and verandas, now crested the
+      summit, among churches built in the Grecian and Gothic styles, showing the
+      great increase of piety and polite taste in the neighborhood. As to Dutch
+      dresses and sun-bonnets, they were no longer tolerated, or even thought
+      of; not a farmer&rsquo;s daughter but now went to town for the fashions;
+      nay, a city milliner had recently set up in the village, who threatened to
+      reform the heads of the whole neighborhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had heard enough! I thanked my old playmate for his intelligence, and
+      departed from the Sleepy Hollow church with the sad conviction that I had
+      beheld the last lingerings of the good old Dutch times in this once
+      favored region. If any thing were wanting to confirm this impression, it
+      would be the intelligence which has just reached me, that a bank is about
+      to be established in the aspiring little port just mentioned. The fate of
+      the neighborhood is therefore sealed. I see no hope of averting it. The
+      golden mean is at an end, The country is suddenly to be deluged with
+      wealth. The late simple farmers are to become bank directors and drink
+      claret and champagne; and their wives and daughters to figure in French
+      hats and feathers; for French wines and French fashions commonly keep pace
+      with paper money. How can I hope that even Sleepy Hollow can escape the
+      general inundation? In a little while, I fear the slumber of ages will be
+      at end&mdash;the strum of the piano will succeed to the hum of the
+      spinning-wheel; the trill of the Italian opera to the nasal quaver of
+      Ichabod Crane; and the antiquarian visitor to the Hollow, in the petulance
+      of his disappointment, may pronounce all that I have recorded of that once
+      favored region a fable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE BIRDS OF SPRING.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      My quiet residence in the country, aloof from fashion, politics, and the
+      money market, leaves me rather at a loss for important occupation, and
+      drives me to the study of nature, and other low pursuits. Having few
+      neighbors, also, on whom to keep a watch, and exercise my habits of
+      observation, I am fain to amuse myself with prying into the domestic
+      concerns and peculiarities of the animals around me; and, during the
+      present season, have derived considerable entertainment from certain
+      sociable little birds, almost the only visitors we have, during this early
+      part of the year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those who have passed the winter in the country, are sensible of the
+      delightful influences that accompany the earliest indications of spring;
+      and of these, none are more delightful than the first notes of the birds.
+      There is one modest little sad-colored bird, much resembling a wren, which
+      came about the house just on the skirts of winter, when not a blade of
+      grass was to be seen, and when a few prematurely warm days had given a
+      flattering foretaste of soft weather. He sang early in the dawning, long
+      before sun-rise, and late in the evening, just before the closing in of
+      night, his matin and his vesper hymns. It is true, he sang occasionally
+      throughout the day; but at these still hours, his song was more remarked.
+      He sat on a leafless tree, just before the window, and warbled forth his
+      notes, free and simple, but singularly sweet, with something of a
+      plaintive tone, that heightened their effect. The first morning that he
+      was heard, was a joyous one among the young folks of my household. The
+      long, deathlike sleep of winter was at an end; nature was once more
+      awakening; they now promised themselves the immediate appearance of buds
+      and blossoms. I was reminded of the tempest-tossed crew of Columbus, when,
+      after their long dubious voyage, the field birds came singing round the
+      ship, though still far at sea, rejoicing them with the belief of the
+      immediate proximity of land. A sharp return of winter almost silenced my
+      little songster, and dashed the hilarity of the household; yet still he
+      poured forth, now and then, a few plaintive notes, between the frosty
+      pipings of the breeze, like gleams of sunshine between wintry clouds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have consulted my book of ornithology in vain, to find out the name of
+      this kindly little bird, who certainly deserves honor and favor far beyond
+      his modest pretensions. He comes like the lowly violet, the most
+      unpretending, but welcomest of flowers, breathing the sweet promise of the
+      early year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another of our feathered visitors, who follows close upon the steps of
+      winter, is the Pe-wit, or Pe-wee, or Phoebe-bird; for he is called by each
+      of these names, from a fancied resemblance to the sound of his monotonous
+      note. He is a sociable little being, and seeks the habitation of man. A
+      pair of them have built beneath my porch, and have reared several broods
+      there for two years past, their nest being never disturbed. They arrive
+      early in the spring, just when the crocus and the snow-drop begin to peep
+      forth. Their first chirp spreads gladness through the house. &ldquo;The
+      Phoebe-birds have come!&rdquo; is heard on all sides; they are welcomed
+      back like members of the family, and speculations are made upon where they
+      have been, and what countries they have seen during their long absence.
+      Their arrival is the more cheering, as it is pronounced, by the old
+      weather-wise people of the country, the sure sign that the severe frosts
+      are at an end, and that the gardener may resume his labors with
+      confidence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About this time, too, arrives the blue-bird, so poetically yet truly
+      described by Wilson. His appearance gladdens the whole landscape. You hear
+      his soft warble in every field. He sociably approaches your habitation,
+      and takes up his residence in your vicinity. But why should I attempt to
+      describe him, when I have Wilson&rsquo;s own graphic verses to place him
+      before the reader?
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  When winter&rsquo;s cold tempests and snows are no more,
+  Green meadows and brown furrowed fields re-appearing:
+  The fishermen hauling their shad to the shore,
+  And cloud-cleaving geese to the lakes are a-steering;
+  When first the lone butterfly flits on the wing,
+  When red glow the maples, so fresh and so pleasing,
+  O then comes the blue-bird, the herald of spring,
+  And hails with his warblings the charms of the season.
+
+  The loud-piping frogs make the marshes to ring;
+  Then warm glows the sunshine, and warm glows the weather;
+  The blue woodland flowers just beginning to spring,
+  And spice-wood and sassafras budding together;
+  O then to your gardens, ye housewives, repair,
+  Your walks border up, sow and plant at your leisure;
+  The blue-bird will chant from his box such an air,
+  That all your hard toils will seem truly a pleasure.
+
+  He flits through the orchard, he visits each tree,
+  The red flowering peach, and the apple&rsquo;s sweet blossoms;
+  He snaps up destroyers, wherever they be,
+  And seizes the caitiffs that lurk in their bosoms;
+  He drags the vile grub from the corn it devours,
+  The worms from the webs where they riot and welter;
+  His song and his services freely are ours,
+  And all that he asks is, in summer a shelter.
+
+  The ploughman is pleased when he gleams in his train,
+  Now searching the furrows, now mounting to cheer him;
+  The gard&rsquo;ner delights in his sweet simple strain,
+  And leans on his spade to survey and to hear him.
+  The slow lingering school-boys forget they&rsquo;ll be chid,
+  While gazing intent, as he warbles before them,
+  In mantle of sky-blue, and bosom so red,
+  That each little loiterer seems to adore him.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The happiest bird of our spring, however, and one that rivals the European
+      lark, in my estimation, is the Boblincon, or Boblink, as he is commonly
+      called. He arrives at that choice portion of our year, which, in this
+      latitude, answers to the description of the month of May, so often given
+      by the poets. With us, it begins about the middle of May, and lasts until
+      nearly the middle of June. Earlier than this, winter is apt to return on
+      its traces, and to blight the opening beauties of the year; and later than
+      this, begin the parching, and panting, and dissolving heats of summer. But
+      in this genial interval, nature is in all her freshness and fragrance:
+      &ldquo;the rains are over and gone, the flowers appear upon the earth, the
+      time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard
+      in the land.&rdquo; The trees are now in their fullest foliage and
+      brightest verdure; the woods are gay with the clustered flowers of the
+      laurel; the air is perfumed by the sweet-briar and the wild rose; the
+      meadows are enamelled with clover-blossoms; while the young apple, the
+      peach, and the plum, begin to swell, and the cherry to glow, among the
+      green leaves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is the chosen season of revelry of the Boblink. He comes amidst the
+      pomp and fragrance of the season; his life seems all sensibility and
+      enjoyment, all song and sunshine. He is to be found in the soft bosoms of
+      the freshest and sweetest meadows; and is most in song when the clover is
+      in blossom. He perches on the topmost twig of a tree, or on some long
+      flaunting weed; and as he rises and sinks with the breeze, pours forth a
+      succession of rich tinkling notes; crowding one upon another, like the
+      outpouring melody of the skylark, and possessing the same rapturous
+      character. Sometimes he pitches from the summit of a tree, begins his song
+      as soon as he gets upon the wing, and flutters tremulously down to the
+      earth, as if overcome with ecstasy at his own music. Sometimes he is in
+      pursuit of his paramour; always in full song, as if he would win her by
+      his melody; and always with the same appearance of intoxication and
+      delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of all the birds of our groves and meadows, the Boblink was the envy of my
+      boyhood. He crossed my path in the sweetest weather, and the sweetest
+      season of the year, when all nature called to the fields, and the rural
+      feeling throbbed in every bosom; but when I, luckless urchin! was doomed
+      to be mewed up, during the livelong day, in that purgatory of boyhood, a
+      school-room. It seemed as if the little varlet mocked at me, as he flew by
+      in full song, and sought to taunt me with his happier lot. Oh, how I
+      envied him! No lessons, no tasks, no hateful school; nothing but holiday,
+      frolic, green fields, and fine weather. Had I been then more versed in
+      poetry, I might have addressed him in the words of Logan to the cuckoo:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green,
+  Thy sky is ever clear;
+  Thou hast no sorrow in thy note,
+  No winter in thy year.
+
+  Oh! could I fly, I&rsquo;d fly with thee;
+  We&rsquo;d make, on joyful wing,
+  Our annual visit round the globe,
+  Companions of the spring!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Farther observation and experience have given me a different idea of this
+      little feathered voluptuary, which I will venture to impart, for the
+      benefit of my school-boy readers, who may regard him with the same
+      unqualified envy and admiration which I once indulged. I have shown him
+      only as I saw him at first, in what I may call the poetical part of his
+      career, when he in a manner devoted himself to elegant pursuits and
+      enjoyments, and was a bird of music, and song, and taste, and sensibility,
+      and refinement. While this lasted, he was sacred from injury; the very
+      school-boy would not fling a stone at him, and the merest rustic would
+      pause to listen to his strain. But mark the difference. As the year
+      advances, as the clover-blossoms disappear, and the spring fades into
+      summer, his notes cease to vibrate on the ear. He gradually gives up his
+      elegant tastes and habits, doffs his poetical and professional suit of
+      black, assumes a russet or rather dusty garb, and enters into the gross
+      enjoyments of common, vulgar birds. He becomes a bon-vivant, a mere
+      gourmand; thinking of nothing but good cheer, and gormandizing on the
+      seeds of the long grasses on which he lately swung, and chaunted so
+      musically. He begins to think there is nothing like &ldquo;the joys of the
+      table,&rdquo; if I may be allowed to apply that convivial phrase to his
+      indulgences. He now grows discontented with plain, every-day fare, and
+      sets out on a gastronomical tour, in search of foreign luxuries. He is to
+      be found in myriads among the reeds of the Delaware, banqueting on their
+      seeds; grows corpulent with good feeding, and soon acquires the unlucky
+      renown of the ortolan. Whereever he goes, pop! pop! pop! the rusty
+      firelocks of the country are cracking on every side; he sees his
+      companions falling by the thousands around him; he is the <i>reed-bird</i>,
+      the much-sought-for tit-bit of the Pennsylvanian epicure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Does he take warning and reform? Not he! He wings his flight still farther
+      south, in search of other luxuries. We hear of him gorging himself in the
+      rice swamps; filling himself with rice almost to bursting; he can hardly
+      fly for corpulency. Last stage of his career, we hear of him spitted by
+      dozens, and served up on the table of the gourmand, the most vaunted of
+      southern dainties, the <i>rice-bird</i> of the Carolinas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such is the story of the once musical and admired, but finally sensual and
+      persecuted Boblink. It contains a moral, worthy the attention of all
+      little birds and little boys; warning them to keep to those refined and
+      intellectual pursuits, which raised him to so high a pitch of popularity,
+      during the early part of his career; but to eschew all tendency to that
+      gross and dissipated indulgence, which brought this mistaken little bird
+      to an untimely end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Which is all at present, from the well-wisher of little boys and little
+      birds,
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      GEOFFREY CRAYON.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      RECOLLECTIONS OF THE ALHAMBRA.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      By The Author Of The Sketch-Book.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      During a summer&rsquo;s residence in the old Moorish palace of the
+      Alhambra, of which I have already given numerous anecdotes to the public,
+      I used to pass much of my time in the beautiful hall of the Abencerrages,
+      beside the fountain celebrated in the tragic story of that devoted race.
+      Here it was, that thirty-six cavaliers of that heroic line were
+      treacherously sacrificed, to appease the jealousy or allay the fears of a
+      tyrant. The fountain which now throws up its sparkling jet, and sheds a
+      dewy freshness around, ran red with the noblest blood of Granada, and a
+      deep stain on the marble pavement is still pointed out, by the cicerones
+      of the pile, as a sanguinary record of the massacre. I have regarded it
+      with the same determined faith with which I have regarded the traditional
+      stains of Rizzio&rsquo;s blood on the floor of the chamber of the
+      unfortunate Mary, at Holyrood. I thank no one for endeavoring to enlighten
+      my credulity, on such points of popular belief. It is like breaking up the
+      shrine of the pilgrim; it is robbing a poor traveller of half the reward
+      of his toils; for, strip travelling of its historical illusions, and what
+      a mere fag you make of it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For my part, I gave myself up, during my sojourn in the Alhambra, to all
+      the romantic and fabulous traditions connected with the pile. I lived in
+      the midst of an Arabian tale, and shut my eyes, as much as possible, to
+      every thing that called me back to every-day life; and if there is any
+      country in Europe where one can do so, it is in poor, wild, legendary,
+      proud-spirited, romantic Spain; where the old magnificent barbaric spirit
+      still contends against the utilitarianism of modern civilization.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the silent and deserted halls of the Alhambra; surrounded with the
+      insignia of regal sway, and the still vivid, though dilapidated traces of
+      oriental voluptuousness, I was in the strong-hold of Moorish story, and
+      every thing spoke and breathed of the glorious days of Granada, when under
+      the dominion of the crescent. When I sat in the hall of the Abencerrages,
+      I suffered my mind to conjure up all that I had read of that illustrious
+      line. In the proudest days of Moslem domination, the Abencerrages were the
+      soul of every thing noble and chivalrous. The veterans of the family, who
+      sat in the royal council, were the foremost to devise those heroic
+      enterprises, which carried dismay into the territories of the Christians;
+      and what the sages of the family devised, the young men of the name were
+      the foremost to execute. In all services of hazard; in all adventurous
+      forays, and hair-breadth hazards; the Abencerrages were sure to win the
+      brightest laurels. In those noble recreations, too, which bear so close an
+      affinity to war; in the tilt and tourney, the riding at the ring, and the
+      daring bull-fight; still the Abencerrages carried off the palm. None could
+      equal them for the splendor of their array, the gallantry of their
+      devices; for their noble bearing, and glorious horsemanship. Their
+      open-handed munificence made them the idols of the populace, while their
+      lofty magnanimity, and perfect faith, gained them golden opinions from the
+      generous and high-minded. Never were they known to decry the merits of a
+      rival, or to betray the confidings of a friend; and the &ldquo;word of an
+      Abencerrage&rdquo; was a guarantee that never admitted of a doubt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then their devotion to the fair! Never did Moorish beauty consider the
+      fame of her charms established, until she had an Abencerrage for a lover;
+      and never did an Abencerrage prove recreant to his vows. Lovely Granada!
+      City of delights! Who ever bore the favors of thy dames more proudly on
+      their casques, or championed them more gallantly in the chivalrous tilts
+      of the Vivarambla? Or who ever made thy moon-lit balconies, thy gardens of
+      myrtles and roses, of oranges, citrons, and pomegranates, respond to more
+      tender serenades?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I speak with enthusiasm on this theme; for it is connected with the
+      recollection of one of the sweetest evenings and sweetest scenes that ever
+      I enjoyed in Spain. One of the greatest pleasures of the Spaniards is, to
+      sit in the beautiful summer evenings, and listen to traditional ballads,
+      and tales about the wars of the Moors and Christians, and the &ldquo;buenas
+      andanzas&rdquo; and &ldquo;grandes hechos,&rdquo; the &ldquo;good fortunes&rdquo;
+      and &ldquo;great exploits&rdquo; of the hardy warriors of yore. It is
+      worthy of remark, also, that many of these songs, or romances, as they are
+      called, celebrate the prowess and magnanimity in war, and the tenderness
+      and, fidelity in love, of the Moorish cavaliers, once their most
+      formidable and hated foes. But centuries have elapsed, to extinguish the
+      bigotry of the zealot; and the once detested warriors of Granada are now
+      held up by Spanish poets, as the mirrors of chivalric virtue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the amusement of the evening in question. A number of us were
+      seated in the Hall of the Abencerrages, listening to one of the most
+      gifted and fascinating beings that I had ever met with in my wanderings.
+      She was young and beautiful; and light and ethereal; full of fire, and
+      spirit, and pure enthusiasm. She wore the fanciful Andalusian dress;
+      touched the guitar with speaking eloquence; improvised with wonderful
+      facility; and, as she became excited by her theme, or by the rapt
+      attention of her auditors, would pour forth, in the richest and most
+      melodious strains, a succession of couplets, full of striking description,
+      or stirring narration, and composed, as I was assured, at the moment. Most
+      of these were suggested by the place, and related to the ancient glories
+      of Granada, and the prowess of her chivalry. The Abencerrages were her
+      favorite heroes; she felt a woman&rsquo;s admiration of their gallant
+      courtesy, and high-souled honor; and it was touching and inspiring to hear
+      the praises of that generous but devoted race, chanted in this fated hall
+      of their calamity, by the lips of Spanish beauty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among the subjects of which she treated, was a tale of Moslem honor, and
+      old-fashioned Spanish courtesy, which made a strong impression on me. She
+      disclaimed all merit of invention, however, and said she had merely
+      dilated into verse a popular tradition; and, indeed, I have since found
+      the main facts inserted at the end of Conde&rsquo;s History of the
+      Domination of the Arabs, and the story itself embodied in the form of an
+      episode in the Diana of Montemayor. From these sources I have drawn it
+      forth, and endeavored to shape it according to my recollection of the
+      version of the beautiful minstrel; but, alas! what can supply the want of
+      that voice, that look, that form, that action, which gave magical effect
+      to her chant, and held every one rapt in breathless admiration! Should
+      this mere travestie of her inspired numbers ever meet her eye, in her
+      stately abode at Granada, may it meet with that indulgence which belongs
+      to her benignant nature. Happy should I be, if it could awaken in her
+      bosom one kind recollection of the lonely stranger and sojourner, for
+      whose gratification she did not think it beneath her to exert those
+      fascinating powers which were the delight of brilliant circles; and who
+      will ever recall with enthusiasm the happy evening passed in listening to
+      her strains, in the moon-lit halls of the Alhambra.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE ABENCERRAGE.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A SPANISH TALE.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      On the summit of a craggy hill, a spur of the mountains of Ronda, stands
+      the castle of Allora, now a mere ruin, infested by bats and owlets, but in
+      old times one of the strong border holds of the Christians, to keep watch
+      upon the frontiers of the warlike kingdom of Granada, and to hold the
+      Moors in check. It was a post always confided to some well-tried
+      commander; and, at the time of which we treat, was held by Rodrigo de
+      Narvaez, a veteran, famed, both among Moors and Christians, not only for
+      his hardy feats of arms, but also for that magnanimous courtesy which
+      should ever be entwined with the sterner virtues of the soldier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The castle of Allora was a mere part of his command; he was Alcayde, or
+      military governor of Antiquera, but he passed most of his time at this
+      frontier post, because its situation on the borders gave more frequent
+      opportunity for those adventurous exploits which were the delight of the
+      Spanish chivalry. His garrison consisted of fifty chosen cavaliers, all
+      well mounted and well appointed: with these he kept vigilant watch upon
+      the Moslems; patrolling the roads, and paths, and defiles of the
+      mountains, so that nothing could escape his eye; and now and then
+      signalizing himself by some dashing foray into the very Vega of Granada.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On a fair and beautiful night in summer, when the freshness of the evening
+      breeze had tempered the heat of day, the worthy Alcayde sallied forth,
+      with nine of his cavaliers, to patrol the neighborhood, and seek
+      adventures. They rode quietly and cautiously, lest they should be
+      overheard by Moorish scout or traveller; and kept along ravines and hollow
+      ways, lest they should be betrayed by the glittering of the full moon upon
+      their armor. Coming to where the road divided, the Alcayde directed five
+      of his cavaliers to take one of the branches, while he, with the remaining
+      four, would take the other. Should either party be in danger, the blast of
+      a horn was to be the signal to bring their comrades to their aid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The party of five had not proceeded far, when, in passing through a
+      defile, overhung with trees, they heard the voice of a man, singing. They
+      immediately concealed themselves in a grove, on the brow of a declivity,
+      up which the stranger would have to ascend. The moonlight, which left the
+      grove in deep shadow, lit up the whole person of the wayfarer, as he
+      advanced, and enabled them to distinguish his dress and appearance with
+      perfect accuracy. He was a Moorish cavalier, and his noble demeanor,
+      graceful carriage, and splendid attire showed him to be of lofty rank. He
+      was superbly mounted, on a dapple-gray steed, of powerful frame, and
+      generous spirit, and magnificently caparisoned. His dress was a marlota,
+      or tunic, and an Albernoz of crimson damask, fringed with gold. His
+      Tunisian turban, of many folds, was of silk and cotton, striped, and
+      bordered with golden fringe. At his girdle hung a scimitar of Damascus
+      steel, with loops and tassels of silk and gold. On his left arm he bore an
+      ample target, and his right hand grasped a long double-pointed lance. Thus
+      equipped, he sat negligently on his steed, as one who dreamed of no
+      danger, gazing on the moon, and singing, with a sweet and manly voice, a
+      Moorish love ditty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just opposite the place where the Spanish cavaliers were concealed, was a
+      small fountain in the rock, beside the road, to which the horse turned to
+      drink; the rider threw the reins on his neck, and continued his song.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Spanish cavaliers conferred together; they were all so pleased with
+      the gallant and gentle appearance of the Moor, that they resolved not to
+      harm, but to capture him, which, in his negligent mood, promised to be an
+      easy task; rushing, therefore, from their concealment, they thought to
+      surround and seize him. Never were men more mistaken. To gather up his
+      reins, wheel round his steed, brace his buckler, and couch his lance, was
+      the work of an instant; and there he sat, fixed like a castle in his
+      saddle, beside the fountain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Christian cavaliers checked their steeds and reconnoitered him warily,
+      loth to come to an encounter, which must end in his destruction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Moor now held a parley: &ldquo;If you be true knights,&rdquo; said he,
+      &ldquo;and seek for honorable fame, come on, singly, and I am ready to
+      meet each in succession; but if you be mere lurkers of the road, intent on
+      spoil, come all at once, and do your worst!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cavaliers communed for a moment apart, when one, advancing singly,
+      exclaimed: &ldquo;Although no law of chivalry obliges us to risk the loss
+      of a prize, when clearly in our power, yet we willingly grant, as a
+      courtesy, what we might refuse as a right. Valiant Moor! defend thyself!&rdquo;
+      So saying, he wheeled, took proper distance, couched his lance, and
+      putting spurs to his horse, made at the stranger. The latter met him in
+      mid career, transpierced him with his lance, and threw him headlong from
+      his saddle. A second and a third succeeded, but were unhorsed with equal
+      facility, and thrown to the earth, severely wounded. The remaining two,
+      seeing their comrades thus roughly treated, forgot all compact of
+      courtesy, and charged both at once upon the Moor. He parried the thrust of
+      one, but was wounded by the other in the thigh, and, in the shock and
+      confusion, dropped his lance. Thus disarmed, and closely pressed, he
+      pretended to fly, and was hotly pursued. Having drawn the two cavaliers
+      some distance from the spot, he suddenly wheeled short about, with one of
+      those dexterous movements for which the Moorish horsemen are renowned;
+      passed swiftly between them, swung himself down from his saddle, so as to
+      catch up his lance, then, lightly replacing himself, turned to renew the
+      combat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seeing him thus fresh for the encounter, as if just issued from his tent,
+      one of the cavaliers put his lips to his horn, and blew a blast, that soon
+      brought the Alcayde and his four companions to the spot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The valiant Narvaez, seeing three of his cavaliers extended on the earth,
+      and two others hotly engaged with the Moor, was struck with admiration,
+      and coveted a contest with so accomplished a warrior. Interfering in the
+      fight, he called upon his followers to desist, and addressing the Moor,
+      with courteous words, invited him to a more equal combat. The latter
+      readily accepted the challenge. For some time, their contest was fierce
+      and doubtful; and the Alcayde had need of all his skill and strength to
+      ward off the blows of his antagonist. The Moor, however, was exhausted by
+      previous fighting, and by loss of blood. He no longer sat his horse
+      firmly, nor managed him with his wonted skill. Collecting all his strength
+      for a last assault, he rose in his stirrups, and made a violent thrust
+      with his lance; the Alcayde received it upon his shield, and at the same
+      time wounded the Moor in the right arm; then closing, in the shock, he
+      grasped him in his arms, dragged him from his saddle, and fell with him to
+      the earth: when putting his knee upon his breast, and his dagger to his
+      throat, &ldquo;Cavalier,&rdquo; exclaimed he, &ldquo;render thyself my
+      prisoner, for thy life is in my hands!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kill me, rather,&rdquo; replied the Moor, &ldquo;for death would be
+      less grievous than loss of liberty.&rdquo; The Alcayde, however, with the
+      clemency of the truly brave, assisted the Moor to rise, ministered to his
+      wounds with his own hands, and had him conveyed with great care to the
+      castle of Allora. His wounds were slight, and in a few days were nearly
+      cured; but the deepest wound had been inflicted on his spirit. He was
+      constantly buried in a profound melancholy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Alcayde, who had conceived a great regard for him, treated him more as
+      a friend than a captive, and tried in every way to cheer him, but in vain;
+      he was always sad and moody, and, when on the battlements of the castle,
+      would keep his eyes turned to the south, with a fixed and wistful gaze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is this?&rdquo; exclaimed the Alcayde, reproachfully, &ldquo;that
+      you, who were so hardy and fearless in the field, should lose all spirit
+      in prison? If any secret grief preys on your heart, confide it to me, as
+      to a friend, and I promise you, on the faith of a cavalier, that you shall
+      have no cause to repent the disclosure.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Moorish knight kissed the hand of the Alcayde. &ldquo;Noble cavalier,&rdquo;
+      said he &ldquo;that I am cast down in spirit, is not from my wounds, which
+      are slight, nor from my captivity, for your kindness has robbed it of all
+      gloom; nor from my defeat, for to be conquered by so accomplished and
+      renowned a cavalier, is no disgrace. But to explain to you the cause of my
+      grief, it is necessary to give you some particulars of my story; and this
+      I am moved to do, by the great sympathy you have manifested toward me, and
+      the magnanimity that shines through all your actions.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Know, then, that my name is Abendaraez, and that I am of the noble
+      but unfortunate line of the Abencerrages of Granada. You have doubtless
+      heard of the destruction that fell upon our race. Charged with treasonable
+      designs, of which they were entirely innocent, many of them were beheaded,
+      the rest banished; so that not an Abencerrages was permitted to remain in
+      Granada, excepting my father and my uncle, whose innocence was proved,
+      even to the satisfaction of their persecutors. It was decreed, however,
+      that, should they have children, the sons should be educated at a distance
+      from Granada, and the daughters should be married out of the kingdom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Conformably to this decree, I was sent, while yet an infant, to be
+      reared in the fortress of Cartama, the worthy Alcayde of which was an
+      ancient friend of my father. He had no children, and received me into his
+      family as his own child, treating me with the kindness and affection of a
+      father; and I grew up in the belief that he really was such. A few years
+      afterward, his wife gave birth to a daughter, but his tenderness toward me
+      continued undiminished. I thus grew up with Xarisa, for so the infant
+      daughter of the Alcayde was called, as her own brother, and thought the
+      growing passion which I felt for her, was mere fraternal affection. I
+      beheld her charms unfolding, as it were, leaf by leaf, like the morning
+      rose, each moment disclosing fresh beauty and sweetness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At this period, I overheard a conversation between the Alcayde and
+      his confidential domestic, and found myself to be the subject. &lsquo;It
+      is time,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;to apprise him of his parentage, that he
+      may adopt a career in life. I have deferred the communication as long as
+      possible, through reluctance to inform him that he is of a proscribed and
+      an unlucky race.&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This intelligence would have overwhelmed me at an earlier period,
+      but the intimation that Xarisa was not my sister, operated like magic, and
+      in an instant transformed my brotherly affection into ardent love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I sought Xarisa, to impart to her the secret I had learned. I found
+      her in the garden, in a bower of jessamines, arranging her beautiful hair
+      by the mirror of a crystal fountain. The radiance of her beauty dazzled
+      me. I ran to her with open arms, and she received me with a sister&rsquo;s
+      embraces. When we had seated ourselves beside the fountain, she began to
+      upbraid me for leaving her so long alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In reply, I informed her of the conversation I had overheard. The
+      recital shocked and distressed her. &lsquo;Alas!&rsquo; cried she, &lsquo;then
+      is our happiness at an end!&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;How!&rsquo; exclaimed I; &lsquo;wilt thou cease to love me,
+      because I am not thy brother?&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Not so,&rsquo; replied she; &lsquo;but do you not know that
+      when it is once known we are not brother and sister, we can no longer be
+      permitted to be thus always together?&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In fact, from that moment our intercourse took a new character. We
+      met often at the fountain among the jessamines, but Xarisa no longer
+      advanced with open arms to meet me. She became reserved and silent, and
+      would blush, and cast down her eyes, when I seated myself beside her. My
+      heart became a prey to the thousand doubts and fears that ever attend upon
+      true love. I was restless and uneasy, and looked back with regret to the
+      unreserved intercourse that had existed between us, when we supposed
+      ourselves brother and sister; yet I would not have had the relationship
+      true, for the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;While matters were in this state between us, an order came from the
+      King of Granada for the Alcayde to take command of the fortress of Coyn,
+      which lies directly on the Christian frontier. He prepared to remove, with
+      all his family, but signified that I should remain at Cartama. I exclaimed
+      against the separation, and declared that I could not be parted from
+      Xarisa. &lsquo;That is the very cause,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;why I leave
+      thee behind. It is time, Abendaraez, that thou shouldst know the secret of
+      thy birth; that thou art no son of mine, neither is Xarisa thy sister.&rsquo;
+      ‘I know it all,&rsquo; exclaimed I, &lsquo;and I love her with tenfold the
+      affection of a brother. You have brought us up together; you have made us
+      necessary to each other&rsquo;s happiness; our hearts have entwined
+      themselves with our growth; do not now tear them asunder. Fill up the
+      measure of your kindness; be indeed a father to me, by giving me Xarisa
+      for my wife.&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The brow of the Alcayde darkened as I spoke. &lsquo;Have I then
+      been deceived?&rsquo; said he. &lsquo;Have those nurtured in my very
+      bosom, been conspiring against me? Is this your return for my paternal
+      tenderness?&mdash;to beguile the affections of my child, and teach her to
+      deceive her father? It was cause enough to refuse thee the hand of my
+      daughter, that thou wert of a proscribed race, who can never approach the
+      walls of Granada; this, however, I might have passed over; but never will
+      I give my daughter to a man who has endeavored to win her from me by
+      deception.&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All my attempts to vindicate myself and Xarisa were unavailing. I
+      retired in anguish from his presence, and seeking Xarisa, told her of this
+      blow, which was worse than death to me. &lsquo;Xarisa,&rsquo; said I,
+      &lsquo;we part for ever! I shall never see thee more! Thy father will
+      guard thee rigidly. Thy beauty and his wealth will soon attract some
+      happier rival, and I shall be forgotten!&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Xarisa reproached me with my want of faith, and promised me eternal
+      constancy. I still doubted and desponded, until, moved by my anguish and
+      despair, she agreed to a secret union. Our espousals made, we parted, with
+      a promise on her part to send me word from Coyn, should her father absent
+      himself from the fortress. The very day after our secret nuptials, I
+      beheld the whole train of the Alcayde depart from Cartama, nor would he
+      admit me to his presence, or permit me to bid farewell to Xarisa. I
+      remained at Cartama, somewhat pacified in spirit by this secret bond of
+      union; but every thing around me fed my passion, and reminded me of
+      Xarisa. I saw the windows at which I had so often beheld her. I wandered
+      through the apartment she had inhabited; the chamber in which she had
+      slept. I visited the bower of jessamines, and lingered beside the fountain
+      in which she had delighted. Every thing recalled her to my imagination,
+      and filled my heart with tender melancholy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At length, a confidential servant brought me word, that her father
+      was to depart that day for Granada, on a short absence, inviting me to
+      hasten to Coyn, describing a secret portal at which I should apply, and
+      the signal by which I would obtain admittance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If ever you have loved, most valiant Alcayde, you may judge of the
+      transport of my bosom. That very night I arrayed myself in my most gallant
+      attire, to pay due honor to my bride; and arming myself against any casual
+      attack, issued forth privately from Cartama. You know the rest, and by
+      what sad fortune of war I found myself, instead of a happy bridegroom, in
+      the nuptial bower of Coyn, vanquished, wounded, and a prisoner, withing
+      the walls of Allora. The term of absence of the father of Xarisa is nearly
+      expired. Within three days he will return to Coyn, and our meeting will no
+      longer be possible. Judge, then, whether I grieve without cause, and
+      whether I may not well be excused for showing impatience under
+      confinement.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Rodrigo de Narvaez was greatly moved by this recital; for, though more
+      used to rugged war, than scenes of amorous softness, he was of a kind and
+      generous nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Abendaraez,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I did not seek thy confidence to
+      gratify an idle curiosity. It grieves me much that the good fortune which
+      delivered thee into my hands, should have marred so fair an enterprise.
+      Give me thy faith, as a true knight, to return prisoner to my castle,
+      within three days, and I will grant thee permission to accomplish thy
+      nuptials.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Abencerrage would have thrown himself at his feet, to pour out
+      protestations of eternal gratitude, but the Alcayde prevented him. Calling
+      in his cavaliers, he took the Abencerrage by the right hand, in their
+      presence, exclaiming solemnly, &ldquo;You promise, on the faith of a
+      cavalier, to return to my castle of Allora within three days, and render
+      yourself my prisoner?&rdquo; And the Abencerrage said, &ldquo;I promise.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then said the Alcayde, &ldquo;Go! and may good fortune attend you. If you
+      require any safeguard, I and my cavaliers are ready to be your companions.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Abencerrage kissed the hand of the Alcayde, in grateful
+      acknowledgment. &ldquo;Give me,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;my own armor, and
+      my steed, and I require no guard. It is not likely that I shall again meet
+      with so valorous a foe.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The shades of night had fallen, when the tramp of the dapple-gray steed
+      sounded over the drawbridge, and immediately afterward the light clatter
+      of hoofs along the road, bespoke the fleetness with which the youthful
+      lover hastened to his bride. It was deep night when the Moor arrived at
+      the castle of Coyn. He silently and cautiously walked his panting steed
+      under its dark walls, and having nearly passed round them, came to the
+      portal denoted by Xarisa. He paused and looked around to see that he was
+      not observed, and then knocked three times with the butt of his lance. In
+      a little while the portal was timidly unclosed by the duenna of Xarisa.
+      &ldquo;Alas! senor,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;what has detained you thus
+      long? Every night have I watched for you; and my lady is sick at heart
+      with doubt and anxiety.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Abencerrage hung his lance, and shield, and scimitar against the wall,
+      and then followed the duenna, with silent steps, up a winding stair-case,
+      to the apartment of Xarisa. Vain would be the attempt to describe the
+      raptures of that meeting. Time flew too swiftly, and the Abencerrage had
+      nearly forgotten, until too late, his promise to return a prisoner to the
+      Alcayde of Allora. The recollection of it came to him with a pang, and
+      suddenly awoke him from his dream of bliss. Xarisa saw his altered looks,
+      and heard with alarm his stifled sighs; but her countenance brightened,
+      when she heard the cause. &ldquo;Let not thy spirit be cast down,&rdquo;
+      said she, throwing her white arms around him. &ldquo;I have the keys of my
+      father&rsquo;s treasures; send ransom more than enough to satisfy the
+      Christian, and remain with me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Abendaraez, &ldquo;I have given my word to return
+      in person, and like a true knight, must fulfil my promise. After that,
+      fortune must do with me as it pleases.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; said Xarisa, &ldquo;I will accompany thee. Never shall
+      you return a prisoner, and I remain at liberty.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Abencerrage was transported with joy at this new proof of devotion in
+      his beautiful bride. All preparations were speedily made for their
+      departure. Xarisa mounted behind the Moor, on his powerful steed; they
+      left the castle walls before daybreak, nor did they pause, until they
+      arrived at the gate of the castle of Allora, which was flung wide to
+      receive them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alighting in the court, the Abencerrage supported the steps of his
+      trembling bride, who remained closely veiled, into the presence of Rodrigo
+      de Narvaez. &ldquo;Behold, valiant Alcayde!&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;the way
+      in which an Abencerrage keeps his word. I promised to return to thee a
+      prisoner, but I deliver two captives into your power. Behold Xarisa, and
+      judge whether I grieved without reason, over the loss of such a treasure.
+      Receive us as your own, for I confide my life and her honor to your hands.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Alcayde was lost in admiration of the beauty of the lady, and the
+      noble spirit of the Moor. &ldquo;I know not,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;which
+      of you surpasses the other; but I know that my castle is graced and
+      honored by your presence. Enter into it, and consider it your own, while
+      you deign to reside with me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For several days the lovers remained at Allora, happy in each other&rsquo;s
+      love, and in the friendship of the brave Alcayde. The latter wrote a
+      letter, full of courtesy, to the Moorish king of Granada, relating the
+      whole event, extolling the valor and good faith of the Abencerrage, and
+      craving for him the royal countenance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The king was moved by the story, and was pleased with an opportunity of
+      showing attention to the wishes of a gallant and chivalrous enemy; for
+      though he had often suffered from the prowess of Don Rodigro de Narvaez,
+      he admired the heroic character he had gained throughout the land. Calling
+      the Alcayde of Coyn into his presence, he gave him the letter to read. The
+      Alcayde turned pale, and trembled with rage, on the perusal. &ldquo;Restrain
+      thine anger,&rdquo; said the king; &ldquo;there is nothing that the
+      Alcayde of Allora could ask, that I would not grant, if in my power. Go
+      thou to Allora; pardon thy children; take them to thy home. I receive this
+      Abencerrage into my favor, and it will be my delight to heap benefits upon
+      you all.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The kindling ire of the Alcayde was suddenly appeased. He hastened to
+      Allora; and folded his children to his bosom, who would have fallen at his
+      feet. The gallant Rodrigo de Narvaez gave liberty to his prisoner without
+      ransom, demanding merely a promise of his friendship. He accompanied the
+      youthful couple and their father to Coyn, where their nuptials were
+      celebrated with great rejoicings. When the festivities were over, Don
+      Rodrigo de Narvaez returned to his fortress of Allora.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After his departure, the Alcayde of Coyn addressed his children: &ldquo;To
+      your hands,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I confide the disposition of my wealth.
+      One of the first things I charge you, is not to forget the ransom you owe
+      to the Alcayde of Allora. His magnanimity you can never repay, but you can
+      prevent it from wronging him of his just dues. Give him, moreover, your
+      entire friendship, for he merits it fully, though of a different faith.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Abencerrage thanked him for his generous proposition, which so truly
+      accorded with his own wishes. He took a large sum of gold, and enclosed it
+      in a rich coffer; and, on his own part, sent six beautiful horses,
+      superbly caparisoned; with six shields and lances, mounted and embossed
+      with gold. The beautiful Xarisa, at the same time, wrote a letter to the
+      Alcayde, filled with expressions of gratitude and friendship, and sent him
+      a box of fragrant cypress-wood, containing linen, of the finest quality,
+      for his person. The valiant Alcayde disposed of the present in a
+      characteristic manner. The horses and armor he shared among the cavaliers
+      who had accompanied him on the night of the skirmish. The box of
+      cypress-wood and its contents he retained, for the sake of the beautiful
+      Xarisa; and sent her, by the hands of a messenger, the sum of gold paid as
+      a ransom, entreating her to receive it as a wedding present. This courtesy
+      and magnanimity raised the character of the Alcayde Rodrigo de Narvaez
+      still higher in the estimation of the Moors, who extolled him as a perfect
+      mirror of chivalric virtue; and from that time forward, there was a
+      continual exchange of good offices between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE ENCHANTED ISLAND.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      By The Author Of The Sketch-Book.
+    </h3>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Break, Phantsie, from thy cave of cloud,
+  And wave thy purple wings,
+  Now all thy figures are allowed,
+  And various shapes of things.
+  Create of airy forms a stream;
+  It must have blood and nought of phlegm;
+  And though it be a walking dream,
+  Yet let it like an odor rise
+  To all the senses here,
+  And fall like sleep upon their eyes,
+  Or music on their ear.&mdash;BEN JONSON.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in
+      our philosophy,&rdquo; and among these may be placed that marvel and
+      mystery of the seas, the island of St. Brandan. Every school-boy can
+      enumerate and call by name the Canaries, the Fortunate Islands of the
+      ancients; which, according to some ingenious speculative minds, are mere
+      wrecks and remnants of the vast island of Atalantis, mentioned by Plato,
+      as having been swallowed up by the ocean. Whoever has read the history of
+      those isles, will remember the wonders told of another island, still more
+      beautiful, seen occasionally from their shores, stretching away in the
+      clear bright west, with long shadowy promontories, and high, sun-gilt
+      peaks. Numerous expeditions, both in ancient and modern days, have
+      launched forth from the Canaries in quest of that island; but, on their
+      approach, mountain and promontory have gradually faded away, until nothing
+      has remained but the blue sky above, and the deep blue water below. Hence
+      it was termed by the geographers of old, Aprositus, or the Inaccessible;
+      while modern navigators have called its very existence in question,
+      pronouncing it a mere optical illusion, like the Fata Morgana of the
+      Straits of Messina; or classing it with those unsubstantial regions known
+      to mariners as Cape Flyaway, and the Coast of Cloud Land.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let not, however, the doubts of the worldly-wise sceptics of modern days
+      rob us of all the glorious realms owned by happy credulity in days of
+      yore. Be assured, O reader of easy faith!&mdash;thou for whom I delight to
+      labor&mdash;be assured, that such an island does actually exist, and has,
+      from time to time, been revealed to the gaze, and trodden by the feet, of
+      favored mortals. Nay, though doubted by historians and philosophers, its
+      existence is fully attested by the poets, who, being an inspired race, and
+      gifted with a kind of second sight, can see into the mysteries of nature,
+      hidden from the eyes of ordinary mortals. To this gifted race it has ever
+      been a region of fancy and romance, teeming with all kinds of wonders.
+      Here once bloomed, and perhaps still blooms, the famous garden of the
+      Hesperides, with its golden fruit. Here, too, was the enchanted garden of
+      Armida, in which that sorceress held the Christian paladin, Rinaldo, in
+      delicious but inglorious thraldom; as is set forth in the immortal lay of
+      Tasso. It was on this island, also, that Sycorax, the witch, held sway,
+      when the good Prospero, and his infant daughter Miranda, were wafted to
+      its shores. The isle was then
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &mdash;-&ldquo;full of noises,
+  Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Who does not know the tale, as told in the magic page of Shakspeare?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In fact, the island appears to have been, at different times, under the
+      sway of different powers, genii of earth, and air, and ocean; who made it
+      their shadowy abode; or rather, it is the retiring place of old worn-out
+      deities and dynasties, that once ruled the poetic world, but are now
+      nearly shorn of all their attributes. Here Neptune and Amphitrite hold a
+      diminished court, like sovereigns in exile. Their ocean-chariot lies
+      bottom upward, in a cave of the island, almost a perfect wreck, while
+      their pursy Tritons and haggard Nereids bask listlessly, like seals about
+      the rocks. Sometimes they assume a shadow of their ancient pomp, and glide
+      in state about the glassy sea; while the crew of some tall Indiaman, that
+      lies becalmed with flapping sails, hear with astonishment the mellow note
+      of the Triton&rsquo;s shell swelling upon the ear, as the invisible
+      pageant sweeps by. Sometimes the quondam monarch of the ocean is permitted
+      to make himself visible to mortal eyes, visiting the ships that cross the
+      line, to exact a tribute from new-comers; the only remnant of his ancient
+      rule, and that, alas! performed with tattered state, and tarnished
+      splendor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the shores of this wondrous island, the mighty kraken heaves his bulk,
+      and wallows many a rood; here, too, the sea-serpent lies coiled up, during
+      the intervals of his much-contested revelations to the eyes of true
+      believers; and here it is said, even the Flying Dutchman finds a port and
+      casts his anchor, and furls his shadowy sail, and takes a short repose
+      from his eternal wanderings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here all the treasures lost in the deep are safely garnered. The caverns
+      of the shores are piled with golden ingots, hexes of pearls, rich bales of
+      oriental silks; and their deep recesses sparkle with diamonds, or flame
+      with carbuncles. Here, in deep bays and harbors, lies many a spell-bound
+      ship, long given up as lost by the ruined merchant. Here, too, its crew,
+      long bewailed as swallowed up in ocean, lie sleeping in mossy grottoes,
+      from age to age, or wander about enchanted shores and groves, in pleasing
+      oblivion of all things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such are some of the marvels related of this island, and which may serve
+      to throw some light on the following legend, of unquestionable truth,
+      which I recommend to the entire belief of the reader.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      <i>THE ADELANTADO OF THE SEVEN CITIES</i>.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A LEGEND OF ST. BRANDAN.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      In the early part of the fifteenth century, when Prince Henry of Portugal,
+      of worthy memory, was pushing the career of discovery along the western
+      coast of Africa, and the world was resounding with reports of golden
+      regions on the main land, and new-found islands in the ocean, there
+      arrived at Lisbon an old bewildered pilot of the seas, who had been driven
+      by tempests, he knew not whither, and who raved about an island far in the
+      deep, on which he had landed, and which he had found peopled with
+      Christians, and adorned with noble cities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The inhabitants, he said, gathered round, and regarded him with surprise,
+      having never before been visited by a ship. They told him they were
+      descendants of a band of Christians, who fled from Spain when that country
+      was conquered by the Moslems. They were curious about the state of their
+      fatherland, and grieved to hear that the Moslems still held possession of
+      the kingdom of Granada. They would have taken the old navigator to church,
+      to convince him of their orthodoxy; but, either through lack of devotion,
+      or lack of faith in their words, he declined their invitation, and
+      preferred to return on board of his ship. He was properly punished. A
+      furious storm arose, drove him from his anchorage, hurried him out to sea,
+      and he saw no more of the unknown island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This strange story caused great marvel in Lisbon and elsewhere. Those
+      versed in history, remembered to have read, in an ancient chronicle, that,
+      at the time of the conquest of Spain, in the eighth century, when the
+      blessed cross was cast down, and the crescent erected in its place, and
+      when Christian churches were turned into Moslem mosques, seven bishops, at
+      the head of seven bands of pious exiles, had fled from the peninsula, and
+      embarked in quest of some ocean island, or distant land, where they might
+      found seven Christian cities, and enjoy their faith unmolested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fate of these pious saints errant had hitherto remained a mystery, and
+      their story had faded from memory; the report of the old tempest-tossed
+      pilot, however, revived this long-forgotten theme; and it was determined
+      by the pious and enthusiastic, that the island thus accidentally
+      discovered, was the identical place of refuge, whither the wandering
+      bishops had been guided by a protecting Providence, and where they had
+      folded their flocks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This most excitable of worlds has always some darling object of chimerical
+      enterprise: the &ldquo;Island of the Seven Cities&rdquo; now awakened as
+      much interest and longing among zealous Christians, as has the renowned
+      city of Timbuctoo among adventurous travellers, or the North-east Passage
+      among hardy navigators; and it was a frequent prayer of the devout, that
+      these scattered and lost portions of the Christian family might be
+      discovered, and reunited to the great body of Christendom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one, however, entered into the matter with half the zeal of Don
+      Fernando de Ulmo, a young cavalier of high standing in the Portuguese
+      court, and of most sanguine and romantic temperament. He had recently come
+      to his estate, and had run the round of all kinds of pleasures and
+      excitements, when this new theme of popular talk and wonder presented
+      itself. The Island of the Seven Cities became now the constant subject of
+      his thoughts by day and his dreams by night; it even rivalled his passion
+      for a beautiful girl, one of the greatest belles of Lisbon, to whom he was
+      betrothed. At length his imagination became so inflamed on the subject,
+      that he determined to fit out an expedition, at his own expense, and set
+      sail in quest of this sainted island. It could not be a cruise of any
+      great extent; for according to the calculations of the tempest-tossed
+      pilot, it must be somewhere in the latitude of the Canaries; which at that
+      time, when the new world was as yet undiscovered, formed the frontier of
+      ocean enterprise. Don Fernando applied to the crown for countenance and
+      protection. As he was a favorite at court, the usual patronage was readily
+      extended to him; that is to say, he received a commission from the king,
+      Don Ioam II., constituting him Adelantado, or military governor, of any
+      country he might discover, with the single proviso, that he should bear
+      all the expenses of the discovery and pay a tenth of the profits to the
+      crown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Fernando now set to work in the true spirit of a projector. He sold
+      acre after acre of solid land, and invested the proceeds in ships, guns,
+      ammunition, and sea-stores. Even his old family mansion in Lisbon was
+      mortgaged without scruple, for &ldquo;he looked forward to a palace in one
+      of the Seven Cities of which he was to be Adelantado.&rdquo; This was the
+      age of nautical romance, when the thoughts of all speculative dreamers
+      were turned to the ocean. The scheme of Don Fernando, therefore, drew
+      adventurers of every kind. The merchant promised himself new marts of
+      opulent traffic; the soldier hoped to sack and plunder some one or other
+      of those Seven Cities; even the fat monk shook off the sleep and sloth of
+      the cloister, to join in a crusade which promised such increase to the
+      possessions of the church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One person alone regarded the whole project with sovereign contempt and
+      growling hostility. This was Don Ramiro Alvarez, the father of the
+      beautiful Serafina, to whom Don Fernando was betrothed. He was one of
+      those perverse, matter-of-fact old men who are prone to oppose every thing
+      speculative and romantic. He had no faith in the Island of the Seven
+      Cities; regarded the projected cruise as a crack-brained freak; looked
+      with angry eye and internal heart-burning on the conduct of his intended
+      son-in-law, chaffering away solid lands for lands in the moon, and
+      scoffingly dubbed him Adelantado of Lubberland. In fact, he had never
+      really relished the intended match, to which his consent had been slowly
+      extorted by the tears and entreaties of his daughter. It is true he could
+      have no reasonable objections to the youth, for Don Fernando was the very
+      flower of Portuguese chivalry. No one could excel him at the tilting
+      match, or the riding at the ring; none was more bold and dexterous in the
+      bull-fight; none composed more gallant madrigals in praise of his lady&rsquo;s
+      charms, or sang them with sweeter tones to the accompaniment of her
+      guitar; nor could any one handle the castanets and dance the bolero with
+      more captivating grace. All these admirable qualities and endowments,
+      however, though they had been sufficient to win the heart of Serafina,
+      were nothing in the eyes of her unreasonable father. O Cupid, god of Love!
+      why will fathers always be so unreasonable!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The engagement to Serafina had threatened at first to throw an obstacle in
+      the way of the expedition of Don Fernando, and for a time perplexed him in
+      the extreme. He was passionately attached to the young lady; but he was
+      also passionately bent on this romantic enterprise. How should he
+      reconcile the two passionate inclinations? A simple and obvious
+      arrangement at length presented itself: marry Serafina, enjoy a portion of
+      the honeymoon at once, and defer the rest until his return from the
+      discovery of the Seven Cities!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He hastened to make known this most excellent arrangement to Don Ramiro,
+      when the long-smothered wrath of the old cavalier burst forth in a storm
+      about his ears. He reproached him with being the dupe of wandering
+      vagabonds and wild schemers, and of squandering all his real possessions
+      in pursuit of empty bubbles. Don Fernando was too sanguine a projector,
+      and too young a man, to listen tamely to such language. He acted with what
+      is technically called &ldquo;becoming spirit.&rdquo; A high quarrel
+      ensued; Don Ramiro pronounced him a mad man, and forbade all farther
+      intercourse with his daughter, until he should give proof of returning
+      sanity by abandoning this mad-cap enterprise; while Don Fernando flung out
+      of the house, more bent than ever on the expedition, from the idea of
+      triumphing over the incredulity of the gray-beard when he should return
+      successful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Ramiro repaired to his daughter&rsquo;s chamber the moment the youth
+      had departed. He represented to her the sanguine, unsteady character of
+      her lover and the chimerical nature of his schemes; showed her the
+      propriety of suspending all intercourse with him until he should recover
+      from his present hallucination; folded her to his bosom with parental
+      fondness, kissed the tear that stole down her cheek, and, as he left the
+      chamber, gently locked the door; for although he was a fond father, and
+      had a high opinion of the submissive temper of his child, he had a still
+      higher opinion of the conservative virtues of lock and key. Whether the
+      damsel had been in any wise shaken in her faith as to the schemes of her
+      lover, and the existence of the Island of the Seven Cities, by the sage
+      representations of her father, tradition does not say; but it is certain
+      that she became a firm believer the moment she heard him turn the key in
+      the lock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Notwithstanding the interdict of Don Ramiro, therefore, and his shrewd
+      precautions, the intercourse of the lovers continued, although
+      clandestinely. Don Fernando toiled all day, hurrying forward his nautical
+      enterprise, while at night he would repair, beneath the grated balcony of
+      his mistress, to carry on at equal pace the no less interesting enterprise
+      of the heart. At length the preparations for the expedition were
+      completed. Two gallant caravels lay anchored in the Tagus, ready to sail
+      with the morning dawn; while late at night, by the pale light of a waning
+      moon, Don Fernando sought the stately mansion of Alvarez to take a last
+      farewell of Serafina. The customary signal of a few low touches of a
+      guitar brought her to the balcony. She was sad at heart and full of gloomy
+      forebodings; but her lover strove to impart to her his own buoyant hope
+      and youthful confidence. &ldquo;A few short months,&rdquo; said he,
+      &ldquo;and I shall return in triumph. Thy father will then blush at his
+      incredulity, and will once more welcome me to his house, when I cross its
+      threshold a wealthy suitor and Adelantado of the Seven Cities.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The beautiful Serafina shook her head mournfully. It was not on those
+      points that she felt doubt or dismay. She believed most implicitly in the
+      Island of the Seven Cities, and trusted devoutly in the success of the
+      enterprise; but she had heard of the inconstancy of the seas, and the
+      inconstancy of those who roam them. Now, let the truth be spoken, Don
+      Fernando, if he had any fault in the world, it was that he was a little
+      too inflammable; that is to say, a little too subject to take fire from
+      the sparkle of every bright eye: he had been somewhat of a rover among the
+      sex on shore, what might he not be on sea? Might he not meet with other
+      loves in foreign ports? Might he not behold some peerless beauty in one or
+      other of those seven cities, who might efface the image of Serafina from
+      his thoughts?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length she ventured to hint her doubts; but Don Fernando spurned at the
+      very idea. Never could his heart be false to Serafina! Never could another
+      be captivating in his eyes!&mdash;never&mdash;never! Repeatedly did he
+      bend his knee, and smite his breast, and call upon the silver moon to
+      witness the sincerity of his vows. But might not Serafina, herself, be
+      forgetful of her plighted faith? Might not some wealthier rival present,
+      while he was tossing on the sea, and, backed by the authority of her
+      father, win the treasure of her hand? Alas, how little did he know
+      Serafina&rsquo;s heart! The more her father should oppose, the more would
+      she be fixed in her faith. Though years should pass before his return, he
+      would find her true to her vows. Even should the salt seas swallow him up,
+      (and her eyes streamed with salt tears at the very thought,) never would
+      she be the wife of another&mdash;never&mdash;never! She raised her
+      beautiful white arms between the iron bars of the balcony, and invoked the
+      moon as a testimonial of her faith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, according to immemorial usage, the lovers parted, with many a vow of
+      eternal constancy. But will they keep those vows? Perish the doubt! Have
+      they not called the constant moon to witness?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the morning dawn the caravels dropped down the Tagus and put to sea.
+      They steered for the Canaries, in those days the regions of nautical
+      romance. Scarcely had they reached those latitudes, when a violent tempest
+      arose. Don Fernando soon lost sight of the accompanying caravel, and was
+      driven out of all reckoning by the fury of the storm. For several weary
+      days and nights he was tossed to and fro, at the mercy of the elements,
+      expecting each moment to be swallowed up. At length, one day toward
+      evening, the storm subsided; the clouds cleared up, as though a veil had
+      suddenly been withdrawn from the face of heaven, and the setting sun shone
+      gloriously upon a fair and mountainous island, that seemed close at hand.
+      The tempest-tossed mariners rubbed their eyes, and gazed almost
+      incredulously upon this land, that had emerged so suddenly from the murky
+      gloom; yet there it lay, spread out in lovely landscapes; enlivened by
+      villages, and towers, and spires, while the late stormy sea rolled in
+      peaceful billows to its shores. About a league from the sea, on the banks
+      of a river, stood a noble city, with lofty walls and towers, and a
+      protecting castle. Don Fernando anchored off the mouth of the river, which
+      appeared to form a spacious harbor. In a little while a barge was seen
+      issuing from the river. It was evidently a barge of ceremony, for it was
+      richly though quaintly carved and gilt, and decorated with a silken awning
+      and fluttering streamers, while a banner, bearing the sacred emblem of the
+      cross, floated to the breeze. The barge advanced slowly, impelled by
+      sixteen oars, painted of a bright crimson. The oarsmen were uncouth, or
+      rather antique, in their garb, and kept stroke to the regular cadence of
+      an old Spanish ditty. Beneath the awning sat a cavalier, in a rich though
+      old-fashioned doublet, with an enormous sombrero and feather. When the
+      barge reached the caravel, the cavalier stepped on board. He was tall and
+      gaunt, with a long, Spanish visage, and lack-lustre eyes, and an air of
+      lofty and somewhat pompous gravity. His mustaches were curled up to his
+      ears, his beard was forked and precise; he wore gauntlets that reached to
+      his elbows, and a Toledo blade that strutted out behind, while, in front,
+      its huge basket-hilt might have served for a porringer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thrusting out a long spindle leg, and taking off his sombrero with a grave
+      and stately sweep, he saluted Don Fernando by name, and welcomed him, in
+      old Castilian language, and in the style of old Castilian courtesy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Fernando was startled at hearing himself accosted by name, by an utter
+      stranger, in a strange land. As soon as he could recover from his
+      surprise, he inquired what land it was at which he had arrived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Island of the Seven Cities!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Could this be true? Had he indeed been thus tempest-driven upon the very
+      land of which he was in quest? It was even so. The other caravel, from
+      which he had been separated in the storm, had made a neighboring port of
+      the island, and announced the tidings of this expedition, which came to
+      restore the country to the great community of Christendom. The whole
+      island, he was told, was given up to rejoicings on the happy event; and
+      they only awaited his arrival to acknowledge allegiance to the crown of
+      Portugal, and hail him as Adelantado of the Seven Cities. A grand fête was
+      to be solemnized that very night in the palace of the Alcayde or governor
+      of the city; who, on beholding the most opportune arrival of the caravel,
+      had despatched his grand chamberlain, in his barge of state, to conduct
+      the future Adelantado to the ceremony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Fernando could scarcely believe but that this was all a dream. He
+      fixed a scrutinizing gaze upon the grand chamberlain, who, having
+      delivered his message, stood in buckram dignity, drawn up to his full
+      stature, curling his whiskers, stroking his beard, and looking down upon
+      him with inexpressible loftiness through his lack-lustre eyes. There was
+      no doubting the word of so grave and ceremonious a hidalgo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Fernando now arrayed himself in gala attire. He would have launched
+      his boat, and gone on shore with his own men, but he was informed the
+      barge of state was expressly provided for his accommodation, and, after
+      the fête, would bring him back to his ship; in which, on the following
+      day, he might enter the harbor in befitting style. He accordingly stepped
+      into the barge, and took his seat beneath the awning. The grand
+      chamberlain seated himself on the cushion opposite. The rowers bent to
+      their oars, and renewed their mournful old ditty, and the gorgeous, but
+      unwieldy barge moved slowly and solemnly through the water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The night closed in, before they entered the river. They swept along, past
+      rock and promontory, each guarded by its tower. The sentinels at every
+      post challenged them as they passed by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who goes there?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Adelantado of the Seven Cities.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is welcome. Pass on.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On entering the harbor, they rowed close along an armed galley, of the
+      most ancient form. Soldiers with cross-bows were stationed on the deck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who goes there?&rdquo; was again demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Adelantado of the Seven Cities.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is welcome. Pass on.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They landed at a broad flight of stone steps, leading up, between two
+      massive towers, to the water-gate of the city, at which they knocked for
+      admission. A sentinel, in an ancient steel casque, looked over the wall.
+      &ldquo;Who is there?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Adelantado of the Seven Cities.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gate swung slowly open, grating upon its rusty hinges. They entered
+      between two rows of iron-clad warriors, in battered armor, with
+      cross-bows, battle-axes, and ancient maces, and with faces as
+      old-fashioned and rusty as their armor. They saluted Don Fernando in
+      military style, but with perfect silence, as he passed between their
+      ranks. The city was illuminated, but in such manner as to give a more
+      shadowy and solemn effect to its old-time architecture. There were
+      bonfires in the principal streets, with groups about them in such
+      old-fashioned garbs, that they looked like the fantastic figures that roam
+      the streets in carnival time. Even the stately dames who gazed from the
+      balconies, which they had hung with antique tapestry, looked more like
+      effigies dressed up for a quaint mummery, than like ladies in their
+      fashionable attire. Every thing, in short, bore the stamp of former ages,
+      as if the world had suddenly rolled back a few centuries. Nor was this to
+      be wondered at. Had not the Island of the Seven Cities been for several
+      hundred years cut off from all communication with the rest of the world,
+      and was it not natural that the inhabitants should retain many of the
+      modes and customs brought here by their ancestors?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One thing certainly they had conserved; the old-fashioned Spanish gravity
+      and stateliness. Though this was a time of public rejoicing, and though
+      Don Fernando was the object of their gratulations, every thing was
+      conducted with the most solemn ceremony, and wherever he appeared, instead
+      of acclamations, he was received with profound silence, and the most
+      formal reverences and swayings of their sombreros.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arrived at the palace of the Alcayde, the usual ceremonial was repeated.
+      The chamberlain knocked for admission.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is there?&rdquo; demanded the porter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Adelantado of the Seven Cities.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is welcome. Pass on.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The grand portal was thrown open. The chamberlain led the way up a vast
+      but heavily moulded marble stair-case, and so through one of those
+      interminable suites of apartments, that are the pride of Spanish palaces.
+      All were furnished in a style of obsolete magnificence. As they passed
+      through the chambers, the title of Don Fernando was forwarded on by
+      servants stationed at every door; and every where produced the most
+      profound reverences and courtesies. At length they reached a magnificent
+      saloon, blazing with tapers, in which the Alcayde, and the principal
+      dignitaries of the city, were waiting to receive their illustrious guest.
+      The grand chamberlain presented Don Fernando in due form, and falling back
+      among the other officers of the household, stood as usual curling his
+      whiskers and stroking his forked beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Fernando was received by the Alcayde and the other dignitaries with
+      the same stately and formal courtesy that he had every where remarked. In
+      fact, there was so much form and ceremonial, that it seemed difficult to
+      get at any thing social or substantial. Nothing but bows, and compliments,
+      and old-fashioned courtesies. The Alcayde and his courtiers resembled, in
+      face and form, those quaint worthies to be seen in the pictures of old
+      illuminated manuscripts; while the cavaliers and dames who thronged the
+      saloon, might have beep taken for the antique figures of gobelin tapestry
+      suddenly vivified and put in motion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The banquet, which had been kept back until the arrival of Don Fernando,
+      was now announced; and such a feast! such unknown dishes and obsolete
+      dainties; with the peacock, that bird of state and ceremony, served up in
+      full plumage, in a golden dish, at the head of the table. And then, as Don
+      Fernando cast his eyes over the glittering board, what a vista of odd
+      heads and head-dresses, of formal bearded dignitaries, and stately dames,
+      with castellated locks and towering plumes!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As fate would have it, on the other side of Don Fernando, was seated the
+      daughter of the Alcayde. She was arrayed, it is true, in a dress that
+      might have been worn before the flood; but then, she had a melting black
+      Andalusian eye, that was perfectly irresistible. Her voice, too, her
+      manner, her movements, all smacked of Andalusia, and showed how female
+      fascination may be transmitted from age to age, and clime to clime,
+      without ever losing its power, or going out of fashion. Those who know the
+      witchery of the sex, in that most amorous region of old Spain, may judge
+      what must have been the fascination to which Don Fernando was exposed,
+      when seated beside one of the most captivating of its descendants. He was,
+      as has already been hinted, of an inflammable temperament; with a heart
+      ready to get in a light blaze at every instant. And then he had been so
+      wearied by pompous, tedious old cavaliers, with their formal bows and
+      speeches; is it to be wondered at that he turned with delight to the
+      Alcayde&rsquo;s daughter, all smiles, and dimples, and melting looks, and
+      melting accents? Beside, for I wish to give him every excuse in my power,
+      he was in a particularly excitable mood, from the novelty of the scene
+      before him, and his head was almost turned with this sudden and complete
+      realization of all his hopes and fancies; and then, in the flurry of the
+      moment, he had taken frequent draughts at the wine-cup, presented him at
+      every instant by officious pages, and all the world knows the effect of
+      such draughts in giving potency to female charms. In a word, there is no
+      concealing the matter, the banquet was not half over, before Don Fernando
+      was making love, outright, to the Alcayde&rsquo;s daughter. It was his
+      cold habitude, contracted long before his matrimonial engagement. The
+      young lady hung her head coyly; her eye rested upon a ruby heart,
+      sparkling in a ring on the hand of Don Fernando, a parting gage of love
+      from Serafina. A blush crimsoned her very temples. She darted a glance of
+      doubt at the ring, and then at Don Fernando. He read her doubt, and in the
+      giddy intoxication of the moment, drew off the pledge of his affianced
+      bride, and slipped it on the finger of the Alcayde&rsquo;s daughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment the banquet broke up. The chamberlain with his lofty
+      demeanor, and his lack-lustre eyes, stood before him, and announced that
+      the barge was waiting to conduct him back to the caravel. Don Fernando
+      took a formal leave of the Alcayde and his dignitaries, and a tender
+      farewell of the Alcayde&rsquo;s daughter, with a promise to throw himself
+      at her feet on the following day. He was rowed back to his vessel in the
+      same slow and stately manner, to the cadence of the same mournful old
+      ditty. He retired to his cabin, his brain whirling with all that he had
+      seen, and his heart now and then giving him a twinge as he recollected his
+      temporary infidelity to the beautiful Serafina. He flung himself on his
+      bed, and soon fell into a feverish sleep. His dreams were wild and
+      incoherent. How long he slept he knew not, but when he awoke he found
+      himself in a strange cabin, with persons around him of whom he had no
+      knowledge. He rubbed his eyes to ascertain whether he were really awake.
+      In reply to his inquiries, he was informed that he was on board of a
+      Portuguese ship, bound to Lisbon; having been taken senseless from a wreck
+      drifting about the ocean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Fernando was confounded and perplexed. He retraced every thing
+      distinctly that had happened to him in the Island of the Seven Cities, and
+      until he had retired to rest on board of the caravel. Had his vessel been
+      driven from her anchors, and wrecked during his sleep? The people about
+      him could give him no information on the subject. He talked to them of the
+      Island of the Seven Cities, and of all that had befallen him there. They
+      regarded his words as the ravings of delirium, and in their honest
+      solicitude, administered such rough remedies, that he was fain to drop the
+      subject, and observe a cautious taciturnity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length they arrived in the Tagus, and anchored before the famous city
+      of Lisbon. Don Fernando sprang joyfully on shore, and hastened to his
+      ancestral mansion. To his surprise, it was inhabited by strangers; and
+      when he asked about his family, no one could give him any information
+      concerning them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He now sought the mansion of Don Ramiro, for the temporary flame kindled
+      by the bright eyes of the Alcayde&rsquo;s daughter had long since burnt
+      itself out, and his genuine passion for Serafina had revived with all its
+      fervor. He approached the balcony, beneath which he had so often serenaded
+      her. Did his eyes deceive him? No! There was Serafina herself at the
+      balcony. An exclamation of rapture burst from him, as he raised his arms
+      toward her. She cast upon him a look of indignation, and hastily retiring,
+      closed the casement. Could she have heard of his flirtation with the
+      Alcayde&rsquo;s daughter? He would soon dispel every doubt of his
+      constancy. The door was open. He rushed up-stairs, and entering the room,
+      threw himself at her feet. She shrank back with affright, and took refuge
+      in the arms of a youthful cavalier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What mean you, Sir,&rdquo; cried the latter, &ldquo;by this
+      intrusion?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What right have you,&rdquo; replied Don Fernando, &ldquo;to ask the
+      question?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The right of an affianced suitor!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Fernando started, and turned pale. &ldquo;Oh, Serafina! Serafina!&rdquo;
+      cried he in a tone of agony, &ldquo;is this thy plighted constancy?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Serafina?&mdash;what mean you by Serafina? If it be this young lady
+      you intend, her name is Maria.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is not this Serafina Alvarez, and is not that her portrait?&rdquo;
+      cried Don Fernando, pointing to a picture of his mistress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Holy Virgin!&rdquo; cried the young lady; &ldquo;he is talking of
+      my great-grandmother!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An explanation ensued, if that could be called an explanation, which
+      plunged the unfortunate Fernando into tenfold perplexity. If he might
+      believe his eyes, he saw before him his beloved Serafina; if he might
+      believe his ears, it was merely her hereditary form and features,
+      perpetuated in the person of her great-granddaughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His brain began to spin. He sought tho office of the Minister of Marine,
+      and made a report of his expedition, and of the Island of the Seven
+      Cities, which he had so fortunately discovered. No body knew any thing of
+      such an expedition, or such an island. He declared that he had undertaken
+      the enterprise under a formal contract with the crown, and had received a
+      regular commission, constituting him Adelantado. This must be matter of
+      record, and he insisted loudly, that the books of the department should be
+      consulted. The wordy strife at length attracted the attention of an old,
+      gray-headed clerk, who sat perched on a high stool, at a high desk, with
+      iron-rimmed spectacles on the top of a thin, pinched nose, copying records
+      into an enormous folio. He had wintered and summered in the department for
+      a great part of a century, until he had almost grown to be a piece of the
+      desk at which he sat; his memory was a mere index of official facts and
+      documents, and his brain was little better than red tape and parchment.
+      After peering down for a time from his lofty perch, and ascertaining the
+      matter in controversy, he put his pen behind his ear, and descended. He
+      remembered to have heard something from his predecessor about an
+      expedition of the kind in question, but then it had sailed during the
+      reign of Don Ioam II., and he had been dead at least a hundred years. To
+      put the matter beyond dispute, however, the archives of the Torve do
+      Tombo, that sepulchre of old Portuguese documents, were diligently
+      searched, and a record was found of a contract between the crown and one
+      Fernando de Ulmo, for the discovery of the Island of the Seven Cities, and
+      of a commission secured to him as Adelantado of the country he might
+      discover.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There!&rdquo; cried Don Fernando, triumphantly, &ldquo;there you
+      have proof, before your own eyes, of what I have said. I am the Fernando
+      de Ulmo specified in that record. I have discovered the Island of the
+      Seven Cities, and am entitled to be Adelantado, according to contract.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The story of Don Fernando had certainly, what is pronounced the best of
+      historical foundation, documentary evidence; but when a man, in the bloom
+      of youth, talked of events that had taken place above a century
+      previously, as having happened to himself, it is no wonder that he was set
+      down for a mad man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old clerk looked at him from above and below his spectacles, shrugged
+      his shoulders, stroked his chin, reascended his lofty stool, took the pen
+      from behind his ears, and resumed his daily and eternal task, copying
+      records into the fiftieth volume of a series of gigantic folios. The other
+      clerks winked at each other shrewdly, and dispersed to their several
+      places, and poor Don Fernando, thus left to himself, flung out of the
+      office, almost driven wild by these repeated perplexities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the confusion of his mind, he instinctively repaired to the mansion of
+      Alvarez, but it was barred against him. To break the delusion under which
+      the youth apparently labored, and to convince him that the Serafina about
+      whom he raved was really dead, he was conducted to her tomb. There she
+      lay, a stately matron, cut out in alabaster; and there lay her husband
+      beside her; a portly cavalier, in armor; and there knelt, on each side,
+      the effigies of a numerous progeny, proving that she had been a fruitful
+      vine. Even the very monument gave proof of the lapse of time, for the
+      hands of her husband, which were folded as if in prayer, had lost their
+      fingers, and the face of the once lovely Serafina was noseless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Fernando felt a transient glow of indignation at beholding this
+      monumental proof of the inconstancy of his mistress; but who could expect
+      a mistress to remain constant during a whole century of absence? And what
+      right had he to rail about constancy, after what had passed between him
+      and the Alcayde&rsquo;s daughter? The unfortunate cavalier performed one
+      pious act of tender devotion; he had the alabaster nose of Serafina
+      restored by a skilful statuary, and then tore himself from the tomb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He could now no longer doubt the fact that, somehow or other, he had
+      skipped over a whole century, during the night he had spent at the Island
+      of the Seven Cities; and he was now as complete a stranger in his native
+      city, as if he had never been there. A thousand times did he wish himself
+      back to that wonderful island, with its antiquated banquet halls, where he
+      had been so courteously received; and now that the once young and
+      beautiful Serafina was nothing but a great-grandmother in marble, with
+      generations of descendants, a thousand times would he recall the melting
+      black eyes of the Alcayde&rsquo;s daughter, who doubtless, like himself,
+      was still flourishing in fresh juvenility, and breathe a secret wish that
+      he were seated by her side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He would at once have set on foot another expedition, at his own expense,
+      to cruise in search of the sainted island, but his means were exhausted.
+      He endeavored to rouse others to the enterprise, setting forth the
+      certainty of profitable results, of which his own experience furnished
+      such unquestionable proof. Alas! no one would give faith to his tale; but
+      looked upon it as the feverish dream of a shipwrecked man. He persisted in
+      his efforts; holding forth in all places and all companies, until he
+      became an object of jest and jeer to the light-minded, who mistook his
+      earnest enthusiasm for a proof of insanity; and the very children in the
+      streets bantered him with the title of &ldquo;The Adelantado of the Seven
+      Cities.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finding all his efforts in vain, in his native city of Lisbon, he took
+      shipping for the Canaries, as being nearer the latitude of his former
+      cruise, and inhabited by people given to nautical adventure. Here he found
+      ready listeners to his story; for the old pilots and mariners of those
+      parts were notorious island-hunters and devout believers in all the
+      wonders of the seas. Indeed, one and all treated his adventure as a common
+      occurrence, and turning to each other, with a sagacious nod of the head,
+      observed, &ldquo;He has been at the Island of St. Brandan.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They then went on to inform him of that great marvel and enigma of the
+      ocean; of its repeated appearance to the inhabitants of their islands; and
+      of the many but ineffectual expeditions that had been made in search of
+      it. They took him to a promontory of the island of Palma, from whence the
+      shadowy St. Brandan had oftenest been descried, and they pointed out the
+      very tract in the west where its mountains had been seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Fernando listened with rapt attention. He had no longer a doubt that
+      this mysterious and fugacious island must be the same with that of the
+      Seven Cities; and that there must be some supernatural influence connected
+      with it, that had operated upon himself, and made the events of a night
+      occupy the space of a century.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He endeavored, but in vain, to rouse the islanders to another attempt at
+      discovery; they had given up the phantom island as indeed inaccessible.
+      Fernando, however, was not to be discouraged. The idea wore itself deeper
+      and deeper in his mind, until it became the engrossing subject of his
+      thoughts and object of his being. Every morning he would repair to the
+      promontory of Palma, and sit there throughout the live-long day, in hopes
+      of seeing the fairy mountains of St. Brandan peering above the horizon;
+      every evening he returned to his home, a disappointed man, but ready to
+      resume his post on the following morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His assiduity was all in vain. He grew gray in his ineffectual attempt;
+      and was at length found dead at his post. His grave is still shown in the
+      island of Palma, and a cross is erected on the spot where he used to sit
+      and look out upon the sea, in hopes of the reappearance of the enchanted
+      island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      NATIONAL NOMENCLATURE.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Sir: I am somewhat of the same way of thinking, in regard to names, with
+      that profound philosopher, Mr. Shandy, the elder, who maintained that some
+      inspired high thoughts and heroic aims, while others entailed
+      irretrievable meanness and vulgarity; insomuch that a man might sink under
+      the insignificance of his name, and be absolutely &ldquo;Nicodemused into
+      nothing.&rdquo; I have ever, therefore, thought it a great hardship for a
+      man to be obliged to struggle through life with some ridiculous or ignoble
+      <i>Christian</i> name, as it is too often falsely called, inflicted on him
+      in infancy, when he could not choose for himself; and would give him free
+      liberty to change it for one more to his taste, when he had arrived at
+      years of discretion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have the same notion with respect to local names. Some at once
+      prepossess us in favor of a place; others repel us, by unlucky
+      associations of the mind; and I have known scenes worthy of being the very
+      haunt of poetry and romance, yet doomed to irretrievable vulgarity, by
+      some ill-chosen name, which not even the magic numbers of a Halleck or a
+      Bryant could elevate into poetical acceptation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is an evil unfortunately too prevalent throughout our country. Nature
+      has stamped the land with features of sublimity and beauty; but some of
+      our noblest mountains and loveliest streams are in danger of remaining for
+      ever unhonored and unsung, from bearing appellations totally abhorrent to
+      the Muse. In the first place, our country is deluged with names taken from
+      places in the old world, and applied to places having no possible affinity
+      or resemblance to their namesakes. This betokens a forlorn poverty of
+      invention, and a second-hand spirit, content to cover its nakedness with
+      borrowed or cast-off clothes of Europe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then we have a shallow affectation of scholarship: the whole catalogue of
+      ancient worthies is shaken out from the back of Lempriere&rsquo;s
+      Classical Dictionary, and a wide region of wild country sprinkled over
+      with the names of the heroes, poets, and sages of antiquity, jumbled into
+      the most whimsical juxtaposition. Then we have our political god-fathers;
+      topographical engineers, perhaps, or persons employed by government to
+      survey and lay out townships. These, forsooth, glorify the patrons that
+      give them bread; so we have the names of the great official men of the day
+      scattered over the land, as if they were the real &ldquo;salt of the
+      earth,&rdquo; with which it was to be seasoned. Well for us is it, when
+      these official great men happen to have names of fair acceptation; but wo
+      unto us, should a Tubbs or a Potts be in power: we are sure, in a little
+      while, to find Tubbsvilles and Pottsylvanias springing up in every
+      direction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Under these melancholy dispensations of taste and loyalty, therefore, Mr.
+      Editor, it is with a feeling of dawning hope, that I have lately perceived
+      the attention of persons of intelligence beginning to be awakened on this
+      subject. I trust if the matter should once be taken up, it will not be
+      readily abandoned. We are yet young enough, as a country, to remedy and
+      reform much of what has been done, and to release many of our rising towns
+      and cities, and our noble streams, from names calculated to vulgarize the
+      land.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have, on a former occasion, suggested the expediency of searching out
+      the original Indian names of places, and wherever they are striking and
+      euphonious, and those by which they have been superseded are glaringly
+      objectionable, to restore them. They would have the merit of originality,
+      and of belonging to the country; and they would remain as reliques of the
+      native lords of the soil, when every other vestige had disappeared. Many
+      of these names may easily be regained, by reference to old title deeds,
+      and to the archives of states and counties. In my own case, by examining
+      the records of the county clerk&rsquo;s office, I have discovered the
+      Indian names of various places and objects in the neighborhood, and have
+      found them infinitely superior to the trite, poverty-stricken names which
+      had been given by the settlers. A beautiful pastoral stream, for instance,
+      which winds for many a mile through one of the loveliest little valleys in
+      the state, has long been known by the common-place name of the &ldquo;Saw-mill
+      River.&rdquo; In the old Indian grants, it is designated as the Neperan.
+      Another, a perfectly wizard stream, which winds through the wildest
+      recesses of Sleepy Hollow, bears the hum-drum name of Mill Creek: in the
+      Indian grants, it sustains the euphonious title of the Pocantico.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Similar researches have released Long-Island from many of those paltry and
+      vulgar names which fringed its beautiful shores; their Cow Bays, and Cow
+      Necks, and Oyster Ponds, and Mosquito Coves, which spread a spell of
+      vulgarity over the whole island, and kept persons of taste and fancy at a
+      distance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It would be an object worthy the attention of the historical societies,
+      which are springing up in various parts of the Union, to have maps
+      executed of their respective states or neighborhoods, in which all the
+      Indian local names should, as far as possible, be restored. In fact, it
+      appears to me that the nomenclature of the country is almost of sufficient
+      importance for the foundation of a distinct society; or rather, a
+      corresponding association of persons of taste and judgment, of all parts
+      of the Union. Such an association, if properly constituted and composed,
+      comprising especially all the literary talent of the country, though it
+      might not have legislative power in its enactments, yet would have the
+      all-pervading power of the press; and the changes in nomenclature which it
+      might dictate, being at once adopted by elegant writers in prose and
+      poetry, and interwoven with the literature of the country, would
+      ultimately pass into popular currency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Should such a reforming association arise, I beg to recommend to its
+      attention all those mongrel names that have the adjective <i>New</i>
+      prefixed to them, and pray they may be one and all kicked out of the
+      country. I am for none of these second-hand appellations, that stamp us a
+      second-hand people, and that are to perpetuate us a new country to the end
+      of time. Odds my life! Mr. Editor, I hope and trust we are to live to be
+      an old nation, as well as our neighbors, and have no idea that our cities,
+      when they shall have attained to venerable antiquity, shall still be
+      dubbed <i>New</i>-York, and <i>New</i>-London, and <i>new</i> this and <i>new</i>
+      that, like the Pont-Neuf, (the New Bridge,) at Paris, which is the oldest
+      bridge in that capital, or like the Vicar of Wakefield&rsquo;s horse,
+      which continued to be called &ldquo;the colt,&rdquo; until he died of old
+      age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Speaking of New-York, reminds me of some observations which I met with
+      some time since, in one of the public papers, about the name of our state
+      and city. The writer proposes to substitute for the present names, those
+      of the State of Ontario, and the CITY OF MANHATTAN. I concur in his
+      suggestion most heartily. Though born and brought up in the city of
+      New-York, and though I love every stick and stone about it, yet I do not,
+      nor ever did, relish its name. I like neither its sound nor its
+      significance. As to its <i>significance</i>, the very adjective <i>new</i>
+      gives to our great commercial metropolis a second-hand character, as if
+      referring to some older, more dignified, and important place, of which it
+      was a mere copy; though in fact, if I am rightly informed, the whole name
+      commemorates a grant by Charles II. to his brother, the duke of York, made
+      in the spirit of royal munificence, of a tract of country which did not
+      belong to him. As to the <i>sound</i>, what can you make of it, either in
+      poetry or prose? New-York! Why, Sir, if it were to share the fate of Troy
+      itself; to suffer a ten years&rsquo; siege, and be sacked and plundered;
+      no modern Homer would ever be able to elevate the name to epic dignity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, Sir, ONTARIO would be a name worthy of the empire state. It bears
+      with it the majesty of that internal sea which washes our northwestern
+      shore. Or, if any objection should be made, from its not being completely
+      embraced within our boundaries, there is the MOHEGAN, one of the Indian
+      names for that glorious river, the Hudson, which would furnish an
+      excellent state appellation. So also New-York might be called Manhatta, as
+      it is named in some of the early records, and Manhattan used as the
+      adjective. Manhattan, however, stands well as a substantive, and &ldquo;Manhattanese,&rdquo;
+      which I observe Mr. COOPER has adopted in some of his writings, would be a
+      very good appellation for a citizen of the commercial metropolis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A word or two more, Mr. Editor, and I have done. We want a NATIONAL NAME.
+      We want it poetically, and we want it politically. With the poetical
+      necessity of the case I shall not trouble myself. I leave it to our poets
+      to tell how they manage to steer that collocation of words, &ldquo;The
+      United States of North America,&rdquo; down the swelling tide of song, and
+      to float the whole raft out upon the sea of heroic poesy. I am now
+      speaking of the mere purposes of common life. How is a citizen of this
+      republic to designate himself? As an American? There are two Americas,
+      each subdivided into various empires, rapidly rising in importance. As a
+      citizen of the United States? It is a clumsy, lumbering title, yet still
+      it is not distinctive; for we have now the United States of Central
+      America; and heaven knows how many &ldquo;United States&rdquo; may spring
+      up under the Proteus changes of Spanish America.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This may appear matter of small concernment; but any one that has
+      travelled in foreign countries must be conscious of the embarrassment and
+      circumlocution sometimes occasioned by the want of a perfectly distinct
+      and explicit national appellation. In France, when I have announced myself
+      as an American, I have been supposed to belong to one of the French
+      colonies; in Spain, to be from Mexico, or Peru, or some other
+      Spanish-American country. Repeatedly have I found myself involved in a
+      long geographical and political definition of my national identity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, Sir, meaning no disrespect to any of our co-heirs of this great
+      quarter of the world, I am for none of this coparceny in a name that is to
+      mingle us up with the riff-raff colonies and off-sets of every nation of
+      Europe. The title of American may serve to tell the quarter of the world
+      to which I belong, the same as a Frenchman or an Englishman may call
+      himself a European; but I want my own peculiar national name to rally
+      under. I want an appellation that shall tell at once, and in a way not to
+      be mistaken, that I belong to this very portion of America, geographical
+      and political, to which it is my pride and happiness to belong; that I am
+      of the Anglo-Saxon race which founded this Anglo-Saxon empire in the
+      wilderness; and that I have no part or parcel with any other race or
+      empire, Spanish, French, or Portuguese, in either of the Americas. Such an
+      appellation, Sir, would have magic in it. It would bind every part of the
+      confederacy together as with a keystone; it would be a passport to the
+      citizen of our republic throughout the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have it in our power to furnish ourselves with such a national
+      appellation, from one of the grand and eternal features of our country;
+      from that noble chain of mountains which formed its back-bone, and ran
+      through the &ldquo;old confederacy,&rdquo; when it first declared our
+      national independence. I allude to the Appalachian or Alleghany mountains.
+      We might do this without any very inconvenient change in our present
+      titles. We might still use the phrase, &ldquo;The United States,&rdquo;
+      substituting Appalachia, or Alleghania, (I should prefer the latter,) in
+      place of America. The title of Appalachian, or Alleghanian, would still
+      announce us as Americans, but would specify us as citizens of the Great
+      Republic. Even our old national cypher of U. S. A. might remain unaltered,
+      designating the United States of Alleghania.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These are crude ideas, Mr. Editor, hastily thrown out to elicit the ideas
+      of others, and to call attention to a subject of more national importance
+      than may at first be supposed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very respectfully yours,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Geoffrey Crayon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      DESULTORY THOUGHTS ON CRITICISM.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let a man write never so well, there are now-a-days a sort of
+      persons they call critics, that, egad, have no more wit in them than so
+      many hobby-horses: but they&rsquo;ll laugh at you, Sir, and find fault,
+      and censure things, that, egad, I&rsquo;m sure they are not able to do
+      themselves; a sort of envious persons, that emulate the glories of persons
+      of parts, and think to build their fame by calumniation of persons that,
+      egad, to my knowledge, of all persons in the world, are in nature the
+      persons that do as much despise all that, as&mdash;a&mdash;In fine, I&rsquo;ll
+      say no more of &lsquo;em!&rdquo; -REHEARSAL.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the world knows the story of the tempest-tossed voyager, who, coming
+      upon a strange coast, and seeing a man hanging in chains, hailed it with
+      joy, as the sign of a civilized country. In like manner we may hail, as a
+      proof of the rapid advancement of civilization and refinement in this
+      country, the increasing number of delinquent authors daily gibbeted for
+      the edification of the public.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this respect, as in every other, we are &ldquo;going ahead&rdquo; with
+      accelerated velocity, and promising to outstrip the superannuated
+      countries of Europe. It is really astonishing to see the number of
+      tribunals incessantly springing up for the trial of literary offences.
+      Independent of the high courts of Oyer and Terminer, the great quarterly
+      reviews, we have innumerable minor tribunals, monthly and weekly, down to
+      the Pie-poudre courts in the daily papers; insomuch that no culprit stands
+      so little chance of escaping castigation, as an unlucky author, guilty of
+      an unsuccessful attempt to please the public.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seriously speaking, however, it is questionable whether our national
+      literature is sufficiently advanced, to bear this excess of criticism; and
+      whether it would not thrive better, if allowed to spring up, for some time
+      longer, in the freshness and vigor of native vegetation. When the worthy
+      Judge Coulter, of Virginia, opened court for the first time in one of the
+      upper counties, he was for enforcing all the rules and regulations that
+      had grown into use in the old, long-settled counties. &ldquo;This is all
+      very well,&rdquo; said a shrewd old farmer; &ldquo;but let me tell you,
+      Judge Coulter, you set your coulter too deep for a new soil.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For my part, I doubt whether either writer or reader is benefited by what
+      is commonly called criticism. The former is rendered cautious and
+      distrustful; he fears to give way to those kindling emotions, and brave
+      sallies of thought, which bear him up to excellence; the latter is made
+      fastidious and cynical; or rather, he surrenders his own independent taste
+      and judgment, and learns to like and dislike at second hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us, for a moment, consider the nature of this thing called criticism,
+      which exerts such a sway over the literary world. The pronoun we, used by
+      critics, has a most imposing and delusive sound. The reader pictures to
+      himself a conclave of learned men, deliberating gravely and scrupulously
+      on the merits of the book in question; examining it page by page,
+      comparing and balancing their opinions, and when they have united in a
+      conscientious verdict, publishing it for the benefit of the world: whereas
+      the criticism is generally the crude and hasty production of an
+      individual, scribbling to while away an idle hour, to oblige a
+      book-seller, or to defray current expenses. How often is it the passing
+      notion of the hour, affected by accidental circumstances; by
+      indisposition, by peevishness, by vapors or indigestion; by personal
+      prejudice, or party feeling. Sometimes a work is sacrificed, because the
+      reviewer wishes a satirical article; sometimes because he wants a humorous
+      one; and sometimes because the author reviewed has become offensively
+      celebrated, and offers high game to the literary marksman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How often would the critic himself, if a conscientious man, reverse his
+      opinion, had he time to revise it in a more sunny moment; but the press is
+      waiting, the printer&rsquo;s devil is at his elbow; the article is wanted
+      to make the requisite variety for the number of the review, or the author
+      has pressing occasion for the sum he is to receive for the article, so it
+      is sent off, all blotted and blurred; with a shrug of the shoulders, and
+      the consolatory ejaculation: &ldquo;Pshaw! curse it! it&rsquo;s nothing
+      but a review!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The critic, too, who dictates thus oracularly to the world, is perhaps
+      some dingy, ill-favored, ill-mannered varlet, who, were he to speak by
+      word of mouth, would be disregarded, if not scoffed at; but such is the
+      magic of types; such the mystic operation of anonymous writing; such the
+      potential effect of the pronoun we, that his crude decisions, fulminated
+      through the press, become circulated far and wide, control the opinions of
+      the world, and give or destroy reputation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Many readers have grown timorous in their judgments since the
+      all-pervading currency of criticism. They fear to express a revised, frank
+      opinion about any new work, and to relish it honestly and heartily, lest
+      it should be condemned in the next review, and they stand convicted of bad
+      taste. Hence they hedge their opinions, like a gambler his bets, and leave
+      an opening to retract, and retreat, and qualify, and neutralise every
+      unguarded expression of delight, until their very praise declines into a
+      faintness that is damning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Were every one, on the contrary, to judge for himself, and speak his mind
+      frankly and fearlessly, we should have more true criticism in the world
+      than at present. Whenever a person is pleased with a work, he may be
+      assured that it has good qualities. An author who pleases a variety of
+      readers, must possess substantial powers of pleasing; or, in other words,
+      intrinsic merits; for otherwise we acknowledge an effect, and deny the
+      cause. The reader, therefore, should not suffer himself to be readily
+      shaken from the conviction of his own feelings, by the sweeping censures
+      of pseudo critics. The author he has admired, may be chargeable with a
+      thousand faults; but it is nevertheless beauties and excellencies that
+      have excited his admiration; and he should recollect that taste and
+      judgment are as much evinced in the perception of beauties among defects,
+      as in a detection of defects among beauties. For my part, I honor the
+      blessed and blessing spirit that is quick to discover and extol all that
+      is pleasing and meritorious. Give me the honest bee, that extracts honey
+      from the humblest weed, but save me from the ingenuity of the spider,
+      which traces its venom, even in the midst of a flower-garden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the mere fact of being chargeable with faults and imperfections is to
+      condemn an author, who is to escape? The greatest writers of antiquity
+      have, in this way, been obnoxious to criticism. Aristotle himself has been
+      accused of ignorance; Aristophanes of impiety and buffoonery; Virgil of
+      plagiarism, and a want of invention; Horace of obscurity; Cicero has been,
+      said to want vigor and connexion, and Demosthenes to be deficient in
+      nature, and in purity of language. Yet these have all survived the
+      censures of the critic, and flourished on to a glorious immortality. Every
+      now and then the world is startled by some new doctrines in matters of
+      taste, some levelling attacks on established creeds; some sweeping
+      denunciations of whole generations, or schools of writers, as they are
+      called, who had seemed to be embalmed and canonized in public opinion.
+      Such has been the case, for instance, with Pope, and Dryden, and Addison,
+      who for a time have almost been shaken from their pedestals, and treated
+      as false idols.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is singular, also, to see the fickleness of the world with respect to
+      its favorites. Enthusiasm exhausts itself, and prepares the way for
+      dislike. The public is always for positive sentiments, and new sensations.
+      When wearied of admiring, it delights to censure; thus coining a double
+      set of enjoyments out of the same subject. Scott and Byron are scarce cold
+      in their graves, and already we find criticism beginning to call in
+      question those powers which held the world in magic thraldom. Even in our
+      own country, one of its greatest geniuses has had some rough passages with
+      the censors of the press; and instantly criticism begins to unsay all that
+      it has repeatedly said in his praise; and the public are almost led to
+      believe that the pen which has so often delighted them, is absolutely
+      destitute of the power to delight!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If, then, such reverses in opinion as to matters of taste can be so
+      readily brought about, when may an author feel himself secure? Where is
+      the anchoring-ground of popularity, when he may thus be driven from his
+      moorings, and foundered even in harbor? The reader, too, when he is to
+      consider himself safe in admiring, when he sees long-established altars
+      overthrown, and his household deities dashed to the ground!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is one consolatory reflection. Every abuse carries with it its own
+      remedy or palliation. Thus the excess of crude and hasty criticism, which
+      has of late prevailed throughout the literary world, and threatened to
+      overrun our country, begins to produce its own antidote. Where there is a
+      multiplicity of contradictory paths, a man must make his choice; in so
+      doing, he has to exercise his judgment, and that is one great step to
+      mental independence. He begins to doubt all, where all differ, and but one
+      can be in the right. He is driven to trust to his own discernment, and his
+      natural feelings; and here he is most likely to be safe. The author, too,
+      finding that what is condemned at one tribunal, is applauded at another,
+      though perplexed for a time, gives way at length to the spontaneous
+      impulse of his genius, and the dictates of his taste, and writes in the
+      way most natural to himself. It is thus that criticism, which by its
+      severity may have held the little world of writers in check, may, by its
+      very excess, disarm itself of its terrors, and the hardihood of talent
+      become restored.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      G.C.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      SPANISH ROMANCE.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Sir: I have already given you a legend or two drawn from ancient Spanish
+      sources, and may occasionally give you a few more. I love these old
+      Spanish themes, especially when they have a dash of the Morisco in them,
+      and treat of the times when the Moslems maintained a foot-hold in the
+      peninsula. They have a high, spicy, oriental flavor, not to be found in
+      any other themes that are merely European. In fact, Spain is a country
+      that stands alone in the midst of Europe; severed in habits, manners, and
+      modes of thinking, from all its continental neighbors. It is a romantic
+      country; but its romance has none of the sentimentality of modern European
+      romance: it is chiefly derived from the brilliant regions of the East, and
+      from the high-minded school of Saracenic chivalry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Arab invasion and conquest brought a higher civilization and a nobler
+      style of thinking into Gothic Spain. The Arabs were a quick-witted,
+      sagacious, proud-spirited, and poetical people, and were imbued with
+      oriental science and literature. Wherever they established a seat of
+      power, it became a rallying place for the learned and ingenious; and they
+      softened and refined the people whom they conquered. By degrees, occupancy
+      seemed to give them a hereditary right to their foothold in the land; they
+      ceased to be looked upon as invaders, and were regarded as rival
+      neighbors. The peninsula, broken up into a variety of states, both
+      Christian and Moslem, became for centuries a great campaigning ground,
+      where the art of war seemed to be the principal business of man, and was
+      carried to the highest pitch of romantic chivalry. The original ground of
+      hostility, a difference of faith, gradually lost its rancor. Neighboring
+      states, of opposite creeds, were occasionally linked together in
+      alliances, offensive and defensive; so that the cross and crescent were to
+      be seen side by side fighting against some common enemy. In times of
+      peace, too, the noble youth of either faith resorted to the same cities,
+      Christian or Moslem, to school themselves in military science. Even in the
+      temporary truces of sanguinary wars, the warriors who had recently striven
+      together in the deadly conflicts of the field, laid aside their animosity,
+      met at tournaments, jousts, and other military festivities, and exchanged
+      the courtesies of gentle and generous spirits. Thus the opposite races
+      became frequently mingled together in peaceful intercourse, or if any
+      rivalry took place, it was in those high courtesies and nobler acts which
+      bespeak the accomplished cavalier. Warriors of opposite creeds became
+      ambitious of transcending each other in magnanimity as well as valor.
+      Indeed, the chivalric virtues were refined upon to a degree sometimes
+      fastidious and constrained; but at other times, inexpressibly noble and
+      affecting. The annals of the times teem with illustrious instances of
+      high-wrought courtesy, romantic generosity, lofty disinterestedness, and
+      punctilious honor, that warm the very soul to read them. These have
+      furnished themes for national plays and poems, or have been celebrated in
+      those all-pervading ballads which are as the life-breath of the people,
+      and thus have continued to exercise an influence on the national character
+      which centuries of vicissitude and decline have not been able to destroy;
+      so that, with all their faults, and they are many, the Spaniards, even at
+      the present day, are on many points the most high-minded and
+      proud-spirited people of Europe. It is true, the romance of feeling
+      derived from the sources I have mentioned, has, like all other romance,
+      its affectations and extremes. It renders the Spaniard at times pompous
+      and grandiloquent; prone to carry the &ldquo;pundonor,&rdquo; or point of
+      honor, beyond the bounds of sober sense and sound morality; disposed, in
+      the midst of poverty, to affect the &ldquo;grande caballero,&rdquo; and to
+      look down with sovereign disdain upon &ldquo;arts mechanical,&rdquo; and
+      all the gainful pursuits of plebeian life; but this very inflation of
+      spirit, while it fills his brain with vapors, lifts him above a thousand
+      meannesses; and though it often keeps him in indigence, ever protects him
+      from vulgarity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the present day, when popular literature is running into the low levels
+      of life and luxuriating on the vices and follies of mankind, and when the
+      universal pursuit of gain is trampling down the early growth of poetic
+      feeling and wearing out the verdure of the soul, I question whether it
+      would not be of service for the reader occasionally to turn to these
+      records of prouder times and loftier modes of thinking, and to steep
+      himself to the very lips in old Spanish romance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For my own part, I have a shelf or two of venerable, parchment-bound
+      tomes, picked up here and there about the peninsula, and filled with
+      chronicles, plays, and ballads, about Moors and Christians, which I keep
+      by me as mental tonics, in the same way that a provident housewife has her
+      cupboard of cordials. Whenever I find my mind brought below par by the
+      commonplace of every-day life, or jarred by the sordid collisions of the
+      world, or put out of tune by the shrewd selfishness of modern
+      utilitarianism, I resort to these venerable tomes, as did the worthy hero
+      of La Mancha to his books of chivalry, and refresh and tone up my spirit
+      by a deep draught of their contents. They have some such effect upon me as
+      Falstaff ascribes to a good Sherris sack, &ldquo;warming the blood and
+      filling the brain with fiery and delectable shapes.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I here subjoin, Mr. Editor, a small specimen of the cordials I have
+      mentioned, just drawn from my Spanish cupboard, which I recommend to your
+      palate. If you find it to your taste, you may pass it on to your readers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Your correspondent and well-wisher,
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      GEOFFREY CRAYON.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      LEGEND OF DON MUNIO SANCHO DE HINOJOSA.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      By The Author Of The Sketch-Book.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      In the cloisters of the ancient Benedictine convent of San Domingo, at
+      Silos, in Castile, are the mouldering yet magnificent monuments of the
+      once powerful and chivalrous family of Hinojosa. Among these, reclines the
+      marble figure of a knight, in complete armor, with the hands pressed
+      together, as if in prayer. On one side of his tomb is sculptured in relief
+      a band of Christian cavaliers, capturing a cavalcade of male and female
+      Moors; on the other side, the same cavaliers are represented kneeling
+      before an altar. The tomb, like most of the neighboring monuments, is
+      almost in ruins, and the sculpture is nearly unintelligible, excepting to
+      the keen eye of the antiquary. The story connected with the sepulchre,
+      however, is still preserved in the old Spanish chronicles, and is to the
+      following purport.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In old times, several hundred years ago, there was a noble Castilian
+      cavalier, named Don Munio Sancho de Hinojosa, lord of a border castle,
+      which had stood the brunt of many a Moorish foray. He had seventy horsemen
+      as his household troops, all of the ancient Castilian proof; stark
+      warriors, hard riders, and men of iron; with these he scoured the Moorish
+      lands, and made his name terrible throughout the borders. His castle hall
+      was covered with banners, and scimitars, and Moslem helms, the trophies of
+      his prowess. Don Munio was, moreover, a keen huntsman; and rejoiced in
+      hounds of all kinds, steeds for the chase, and hawks for the towering
+      sport of falconry. When not engaged in warfare, his delight was to beat up
+      the neighboring forests; and scarcely ever did he ride forth, without
+      hound and horn, a boar-spear in his hand, or a hawk upon his fist, and an
+      attendant train of huntsmen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His wife, Donna Maria Palacin, was of a gentle and timid nature, little
+      fitted to be the spouse of so hardy and adventurous a knight; and many a
+      tear did the poor lady shed, when he sallied forth upon his daring
+      enterprises, and many a prayer did she offer up for his safety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As this doughty cavalier was one day hunting, he stationed himself in a
+      thicket, on the borders of a green glade of the forest, and dispersed his
+      followers to rouse the game, and drive it toward his stand. He had not
+      been here long, when a cavalcade of Moors, of both sexes, came prankling
+      over the forest lawn. They were unarmed, and magnificently dressed in
+      robes of tissue and embroidery, rich shawls of India, bracelets and
+      anklets of gold, and jewels that sparkled in the sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the head of this gay cavalcade, rode a youthful cavalier, superior to
+      the rest in dignity and loftiness of demeanor, and in splendor of attire;
+      beside him was a damsel, whose veil, blown aside by the breeze, displayed
+      a face of surpassing beauty, and eyes cast down in maiden modesty, yet
+      beaming with tenderness and joy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Munio thanked his stars for sending him such a prize, and exulted at
+      the thought of bearing home to his wife the glittering spoils of these
+      infidels. Putting his hunting-horn to his lips, he gave a blast that rung
+      through the forest. His huntsmen came running from all quarters, and the
+      astonished Moors were surrounded and made captives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The beautiful Moor wrung her hands in despair, and her female attendants
+      uttered the most piercing cries. The young Moorish cavalier alone retained
+      self-possession. He inquired the name of the Christian knight, who
+      commanded this troop of horsemen. When told that it was Don Munio Sancho
+      de Hinojosa, his countenance lighted up. Approaching that cavalier, and
+      kissing his hand, &ldquo;Don Munio Sancho,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I have
+      heard of your fame as a true and valiant knight, terrible in arms, but
+      schooled in the noble virtues of chivalry. Such do I trust to find you. In
+      me you behold Abadil, son of a Moorish Alcayde. I am on the way to
+      celebrate my nuptials with this lady; chance has thrown us in your power,
+      but I confide in your magnanimity. Take all our treasure and jewels;
+      demand what ransom you think proper for our person, but suffer us not to
+      be insulted or dishonored.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the good knight heard this appeal, and beheld the beauty of the
+      youthful pair, his heart was touched with tenderness and courtesy. &ldquo;God
+      forbid,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;that I should disturb such happy nuptials.
+      My prisoners in troth shall ye be, for fifteen days, and immured within my
+      castle, where I claim, as conqueror, the right of celebrating your
+      espousals.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So saying, he despatched one of his fleetest horsemen in advance, to
+      notify Donna Maria Palacin of the coming of this bridal party; while he
+      and his huntsmen escorted the cavalcade, not as captors, but as a guard of
+      honor. As they drew near to the castle, the banners were hung out, and the
+      trumpets sounded from the battlements; and on their nearer approach, the
+      draw-bridge was lowered, and Donna Maria came forth to meet them, attended
+      by her ladies and knights, her pages and her minstrels. She took the young
+      bride, Allifra, in her arms, kissed her with the tenderness of a sister,
+      and conducted her into the castle. In the mean time, Don Munio sent forth
+      missives in every direction, and had viands and dainties of all kinds
+      collected from the country round; and the wedding of the Moorish lovers
+      was celebrated with all possible state and festivity. For fifteen days,
+      the castle was given up to joy and revelry. There were tiltings and jousts
+      at the ring, and bullfights, and banquets, and dances to the sound of
+      minstrelsy. When the fifteen days were at an end, he made the bride and
+      bridegroom magnificent presents, and conducted them and their attendants
+      safely beyond the borders. Such, in old times, were the courtesy and
+      generosity of a Spanish cavalier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Several years after this event, the King of Castile summoned his nobles to
+      assist him in a campaign against the Moors. Don Munio Sancho was among the
+      first to answer to the call, with seventy horsemen, all staunch and
+      well-tried warriors. His wife, Donna Maria, hung about his neck. &ldquo;Alas,
+      my lord!&rdquo; exclaimed she, &ldquo;how often wilt thou tempt thy fate,
+      and when will thy thirst for glory be appeased?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One battle more,&rdquo; replied Don Munio, &ldquo;one battle more,
+      for the honor of Castile, and I here make a vow, that when this is over, I
+      will lay by my sword, and repair with my cavaliers in pilgrimage to the
+      sepulchre of our Lord at Jerusalem.&rdquo; The cavaliers all joined with
+      him in the vow, and Donna Maria felt in some degree soothed in spirit:
+      still, she saw with a heavy heart the departure of her husband, and
+      watched his banner with wistful eyes, until it disappeared among the trees
+      of the forest,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Castile led his army to the plains of Almanara, where they
+      encountered the Moorish host, near to Ucles. The battle was long and
+      bloody; the Christians repeatedly wavered, and were as often rallied by
+      the energy of their commanders. Don Munio was covered with wounds, but
+      refused to leave the field. The Christians at length gave way, and the
+      king was hardly pressed, and in danger of being captured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Munio called upon his cavaliers to follow him to the rescue. &ldquo;Now
+      is the time,&rdquo; cried he, &ldquo;to prove your loyalty. Fall to, like
+      brave men! We fight for the true faith, and if we lose our lives here, we
+      gain a better life hereafter.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rushing with his men between the king and his pursuers, they checked the
+      latter in their career, and gave time for their monarch to escape; but
+      they fell victims to their loyalty. They all fought to the last gasp. Don
+      Munio was singled out by a powerful Moorish knight, but having been
+      wounded in the right arm, he fought to disadvantage, and was slain. The
+      battle being over, the Moor paused to possess himself of the spoils of
+      this redoubtable Christian warrior. When he unlaced the helmet, however,
+      and beheld the countenance of Don Munio, he gave a great cry, and smote
+      his breast. &ldquo;Woe is me!&rdquo; cried he: &ldquo;I have slain my
+      benefactor! The flower of knightly virtue! the most magnanimous of
+      cavaliers!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While the battle had been raging on the plain of Salmanara, Donna Maria
+      Palacin remained in her castle, a prey to the keenest anxiety. Her eyes
+      were ever fixed on the road that led from the country of the Moors, and
+      often she asked the watchman of the tower, &ldquo;What seest thou?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening, at the shadowy hour of twilight, the warden sounded his horn.
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; cried he, &ldquo;a numerous train winding up the
+      valley. There are mingled Moors and Christians. The banner of my lord is
+      in the advance. Joyful tidings!&rdquo; exclaimed the old seneschal:
+      &ldquo;my lord returns in triumph, and brings captives!&rdquo; Then the
+      castle courts rang with shouts of joy; and the standard was displayed, and
+      the trumpets were sounded, and the draw-bridge was lowered, and Donna
+      Maria went forth with her ladies, and her knights, and her pages, and her
+      minstrels, to welcome her lord from the wars. But as the train drew nigh,
+      she beheld a sumptuous bier, covered with black velvet, and on it lay a
+      warrior, as if taking his repose: he lay in his armor, with his helmet on
+      his head, and his sword in his hand, as one who had never been conquered,
+      and around the bier were the escutcheons of the house of Hinojosa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A number of Moorish cavaliers attended the bier, with emblems of mourning,
+      and with dejected countenances: and their leader cast himself at the feet
+      of Donna Maria, and hid his face in his hands. She beheld in him the
+      gallant Abadil, whom she had once welcomed with his bride to her castle,
+      but who now came with the body of her lord, whom he had unknowingly slain
+      in battle!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sepulchre erected in the cloisters of the Convent of San Domingo was
+      achieved at the expense of the Moor Abadil, as a feeble testimony of his
+      grief for the death of the good knight Don Munio, and his reverence for
+      his memory. The tender and faithful Donna Maria soon followed her lord to
+      the tomb. On one of the stones of a small arch, beside his sepulchre, is
+      the following simple inscription: &ldquo;<i>Hic jacet Maria Palacin, uxor
+      Munonis Sancij de Finojosa</i>:&rdquo; Here lies Maria Palacin, wife of
+      Munio Sancho de Hinojosa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The legend of Don Munio Sancho does not conclude with his death. On the
+      same day on which the battle took place on the plain of Salmanara, a
+      chaplain of the Holy Temple at Jerusalem, while standing at the outer
+      gate, beheld a train of Christian cavaliers advancing, as if in
+      pilgrimage. The chaplain was a native of Spain, and as the pilgrims
+      approached, he knew the foremost to be Don Munio Sancho de Hinojosa, with
+      whom he had been well acquainted in former times. Hastening to the
+      patriarch, he told him of the honorable rank of the pilgrims at the gate.
+      The patriarch, therefore, went forth with a grand procession of priests
+      and monks, and received the pilgrims with all due honor. There were
+      seventy cavaliers, beside their leader, all stark and lofty warriors. They
+      carried their helmets in their hands, and their faces were deadly pale.
+      They greeted no one, nor looked either to the right or to the left, but
+      entered the chapel, and kneeling before the Sepulchre of our Saviour,
+      performed their orisons in silence. When they had concluded, they rose as
+      if to depart, and the patriarch and his attendants advanced to speak to
+      them, but they were no more to be seen. Every one marvelled what could be
+      the meaning of this prodigy. The patriarch carefully noted down the day,
+      and sent to Castile to learn tidings of Don Munio Sancho de Hinojosa. He
+      received for reply, that on the very day specified, that worthy knight,
+      with seventy of his followers, had been slain in battle. These, therefore,
+      must have been the blessed spirits of those Christian warriors, come to
+      fulfil their vow of a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. Such
+      was Castilian faith, in the olden time, which kept its word, even beyond
+      the grave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If any one should doubt of the miraculous apparition of these phantom
+      knights, let him consult the History of the Kings of Castile and Leon, by
+      the learned and pious Fray Prudencio de Sandoval, Bishop of Pamplona,
+      where he will find it recorded in the History of the King Don Alonzo VI.,
+      on the hundred and second page. It is too precious a legend to be lightly
+      abandoned to the doubter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      COMMUNIPAW.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Sir: I observe, with pleasure, that you are performing from time to time a
+      pious duty, imposed upon you, I may say, by the name you have adopted as
+      your titular standard, in following in the footsteps of the venerable
+      KNICKERBOCKER, and gleaning every fact concerning the early times of the
+      Manhattoes which may have escaped his hand. I trust, therefore, a few
+      particulars, legendary and statistical, concerning a place which figures
+      conspicuously in the early pages of his history, will not be unacceptable.
+      I allude, Sir, to the ancient and renowned village of Communipaw, which,
+      according to the veracious Diedrich, and to equally veracious tradition,
+      was the first spot where our ever-to-be-lamented Dutch progenitors planted
+      their standard and cast the seeds of empire, and from whence subsequently
+      sailed the memorable expedition under Oloffe the Dreamer, which landed on
+      the opposite island of Manhatta, and founded the present city of New-York,
+      the city of dreams and speculations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Communipaw, therefore, may truly be called the parent of New-York; yet it
+      is an astonishing fact, that though immediately opposite to the great city
+      it has produced, from whence its red roofs and tin weather-cocks can
+      actually be descried peering above the surrounding apple orchards, it
+      should be almost as rarely visited, and as little known by the inhabitants
+      of the metropolis, as if it had been locked up among the Rocky Mountains.
+      Sir, I think there is something unnatural in this, especially in these
+      times of ramble and research, when our citizens are antiquity-hunting in
+      every part of the world. Curiosity, like charity, should begin at home;
+      and I would enjoin it on our worthy burghers, especially those of the real
+      Knickerbocker breed, before they send their sons abroad to wonder and grow
+      wise among the remains of Greece and Rome, to let them make a tour of
+      ancient Pavonia, from Weehawk even to the Kills, and meditate, with filial
+      reverence, on the moss-grown mansions of Communipaw. Sir, I regard this
+      much neglected village as one of the most remarkable places in the
+      country. The intelligent traveller, as he looks down upon it from the
+      Bergen Heights, modestly nestled among its cabbage-gardens, while the
+      great flaunting city it has begotten is stretching far and wide on the
+      opposite side of the bay, the intelligent traveller, I say, will be filled
+      with astonishment; not, Sir, at the village of Communipaw, which in truth
+      is a very small village, but at the almost incredible fact that so small a
+      village should have produced so great a city. It looks to him, indeed,
+      like some squat little dame, with a tall grenadier of a son strutting by
+      her side; or some simple-hearted hen that has unwittingly hatched out a
+      long-legged turkey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this is not all for which Communipaw is remarkable. Sir, it is
+      interesting on another account. It is to the ancient province of the
+      New-Netherlands and the classic era of the Dutch dynasty, what Herculaneum
+      and Pompeii are to ancient Rome and the glorious days of the empire. Here
+      every thing remains in statu quo, as it was in the days of Oloffe the
+      Dreamer, Walter the Doubter, and the other worthies of the golden age; the
+      same broad-brimmed hats and broad-bottomed breeches; the same knee-buckles
+      and shoe-buckles; the same close-quilled caps and linsey-woolsey
+      short-gowns and petticoats; the same implements and utensils and forms and
+      fashions; in a word, Communipaw at the present day is a picture of what
+      New-Amsterdam was before the conquest. The &ldquo;intelligent traveller&rdquo;
+      aforesaid, as he treads its streets, is struck with the primitive
+      character of every thing around him. Instead of Grecian temples for
+      dwelling-houses, with a great column of pine boards in the way of every
+      window, he beholds high peaked roofs, gable ends to the street, with
+      weather-cocks at top, and windows of all sorts and sizes; large ones for
+      the grown-up members of the family, and little ones for the little folk.
+      Instead of cold marble porches, with close-locked doors and brass
+      knockers, he sees the doors hospitably open; the worthy burgher smoking
+      his pipe on the old-fashioned stoop in front, with his &ldquo;vrouw&rdquo;
+      knitting beside him; and the cat and her kittens at their feet sleeping in
+      the sunshine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Astonished at the obsolete and &ldquo;old world&rdquo; air of every thing
+      around him, the intelligent traveller demands how all this has come to
+      pass. Herculaneum and Pompeii remain, it is true, unaffected by the
+      varying fashions of centuries; but they were buried by a volcano and
+      preserved in ashes. What charmed spell has kept this wonderful little
+      place unchanged, though in sight of the most changeful city in the
+      universe? Has it, too, been buried under its cabbage-gardens, and only dug
+      out in modern days for the wonder and edification of the world? The reply
+      involves a point of history, worthy of notice and record, and reflecting
+      immortal honor on Communipaw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the time when New-Amsterdam was invaded and conquered by British foes,
+      as has been related in the history of the venerable Diedrich, a great
+      dispersion took place among the Dutch inhabitants. Many, like the
+      illustrious Peter Stuyvesant, buried themselves in rural retreats in the
+      Bowerie; others, like Wolfert Acker, took refuge in various remote parts
+      of the Hudson; but there was one staunch, unconquerable band that
+      determined to keep together, and preserve themselves, like seed corn, for
+      the future fructification and perpetuity of the Knickerbocker race. These
+      were headed by one Garret Van Horne, a gigantic Dutchman, the Pelayo of
+      the New-Netherlands. Under his guidance, they retreated across the bay and
+      buried themselves among the marshes of ancient Pavonia, as did the
+      followers of Pelayo among the mountains of Asturias, when Spain was
+      overrun by its Arabian invaders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gallant Van Horne set up his standard at Communipaw, and invited all
+      those to rally under it, who were true Nederlanders at heart, and
+      determined to resist all foreign intermixture or encroachment. A strict
+      non-intercourse was observed with the captured city; not a boat ever
+      crossed to it from Communipaw, and the English language was rigorously
+      tabooed throughout the village and its dependencies. Every man was sworn
+      to wear his hat, cut his coat, build his house, and harness his horses,
+      exactly as his father had done before him; and to permit nothing but the
+      Dutch language to be spoken in his household.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a citadel of the place, and a strong-hold for the preservation and
+      defence of every thing Dutch, the gallant Van Horne erected a lordly
+      mansion, with a chimney perched at every corner, which thence derived the
+      aristocratical name of &ldquo;The House of the Four Chimneys.&rdquo;
+      Hither he transferred many of the precious reliques of New-Amsterdam; the
+      great round-crowned hat that once covered the capacious head of Walter the
+      Doubter, and the identical shoe with which Peter the Headstrong kicked his
+      pusillanimous councillors down-stairs. St. Nicholas, it is said, took this
+      loyal house under his especial protection; and a Dutch soothsayer
+      predicted, that as long as it should stand, Communipaw would be safe from
+      the intrusion either of Briton or Yankee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this house would the gallant Van Home and his compeers hold frequent
+      councils of war, as to the possibility of re-conquering the province from
+      the British; and here would they sit for hours, nay, days, together
+      smoking their pipes and keeping watch upon the growing city of New-York;
+      groaning in spirit whenever they saw a new house erected or ship launched,
+      and persuading themselves that Admiral Van Tromp would one day or other
+      arrive to sweep out the invaders with the broom which he carried at his
+      mast-head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Years rolled by, but Van Tromp never arrived. The British strengthened
+      themselves in the land, and the captured city flourished under their
+      domination. Still, the worthies of Communipaw would not despair; something
+      or other, they were sure, would turn up to restore the power of the Hogen
+      Mogens, the Lord States-General; so they kept smoking and smoking, and
+      watching and watching, and turning the same few thoughts over and over in
+      a perpetual circle, which is commonly called deliberating. In the mean
+      time, being hemmed up within a narrow compass, between the broad bay and
+      the Bergen hills, they grew poorer and poorer, until they had scarce the
+      wherewithal to maintain their pipes in fuel during their endless
+      deliberations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now must I relate a circumstance which will call for a little exertion
+      of faith on the part of the reader; but I can only say that if he doubts
+      it, he had better not utter his doubts in Communipaw, as it is among the
+      religious beliefs of the place. It is, in fact, nothing more nor less than
+      a miracle, worked by the blessed St. Nicholas, for the relief and
+      sustenance of this loyal community.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It so happened, in this time of extremity, that in the course of cleaning
+      the House of the Four Chimneys, by an ignorant housewife who knew nothing
+      of the historic value of the reliques it contained, the old hat of Walter
+      the Doubter and the executive shoe of Peter the Headstrong were thrown out
+      of doors as rubbish. But mark the consequence. The good St. Nicholas kept
+      watch over these precious reliques, and wrought out of them a wonderful
+      providence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hat of Walter the Doubter falling on a stercoraceous heap of compost,
+      in the rear of the house, began forthwith to vegetate. Its broad brim,
+      spread forth grandly and exfoliated, and its round crown swelled and
+      crimped and consolidated until the whole became a prodigious cabbage,
+      rivalling in magnitude the capacious head of the Doubter. In a word, it
+      was the origin of that renowned species of cabbage known, by all Dutch
+      epicures, by the name of the Governor&rsquo;s Head, and which is to this
+      day the glory of Communipaw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the other hand, the shoe of Peter Stuyvesant being thrown into the
+      river, in front of the house, gradually hardened and concreted, and became
+      covered with barnacles, and at length turned into a gigantic oyster; being
+      the progenitor of that illustrious species known throughout the
+      gastronomical world by the name of the Governor&rsquo;s Foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These miracles were the salvation of Communipaw. The sages of the place
+      immediately saw in them the hand of St. Nicholas, and understood their
+      mystic signification. They set to work with all diligence to cultivate and
+      multiply these great blessings; and so abundantly did the gubernatorial
+      hat and shoe fructify and increase, that in a little time great patches of
+      cabbages were to be seen extending from the village of Communipaw quite to
+      the Bergen Hills; while the whole bottom of the bay in front became a vast
+      bed of oysters. Ever since that time this excellent community has been
+      divided into two great classes: those who cultivate the land and those who
+      cultivate the water. The former have devoted themselves to the nurture and
+      edification of cabbages, rearing them in all their varieties; while the
+      latter have formed parks and plantations, under water, to which juvenile
+      oysters are transplanted from foreign parts, to finish their education.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As these great sources of profit multiplied upon their hands, the worthy
+      inhabitants of Communipaw began to long for a market at which to dispose
+      of their superabundance. This gradually produced once more an intercourse
+      with New-York; but it was always carried on by the old people and the
+      negroes; never would they permit the young folks, of either sex, to visit
+      the city, lest they should get tainted with foreign manners and bring home
+      foreign fashions. Even to this day, if you see an old burgher in the
+      market, with hat and garb of antique Dutch fashion, you may be sure he is
+      one of the old unconquered race of the &ldquo;bitter blood,&rdquo; who
+      maintain their strong-hold at Communipaw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In modern days, the hereditary bitterness against the English has lost
+      much of its asperity, or rather has become merged in a new source of
+      jealousy and apprehension: I allude to the incessant and wide-spreading
+      irruptions from New-England. Word has been continually brought back to
+      Communipaw, by those of the community who return from their trading
+      voyages in cabbages and oysters, of the alarming power which the Yankees
+      are gaining in the ancient city of New-Amsterdam; elbowing the genuine
+      Knickerbockers out of all civic posts of honor and profit; bargaining them
+      out of their hereditary homesteads; pulling down the venerable houses,
+      with crow-step gables, which have stood since the time of the Dutch rule,
+      and erecting, instead, granite stores, and marble banks; in a word,
+      evincing a deadly determination to obliterate every vestige of the good
+      old Dutch times.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In consequence of the jealousy thus awakened, the worthy traders from
+      Communipaw confine their dealings, as much as possible, to the genuine
+      Dutch families. If they furnish the Yankees at all, it is with inferior
+      articles. Never can the latter procure a real &ldquo;Governor&rsquo;s
+      Head,&rdquo; or &ldquo;Governor&rsquo;s Foot,&rdquo; though they have
+      offered extravagant prices for the same, to grace their table on the
+      annual festival of the New-England Society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But what has carried this hostility to the Yankees to the highest pitch,
+      was an attempt made by that all-pervading race to get possession of
+      Communipaw itself. Yes, Sir; during the late mania for land speculation, a
+      daring company of Yankee projectors landed before the village; stopped the
+      honest burghers on the public highway, and endeavored to bargain them out
+      of their hereditary acres; displayed lithographic maps, in which their
+      cabbage-gardens were laid out into town lots: their oyster-parks into
+      docks and quays; and even the House of the Four Chimneys metamorphosed
+      into a bank, which was to enrich the whole neighborhood with paper money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fortunately, the gallant Van Hornes came to the rescue, just as some of
+      the worthy burghers were on the point of capitulating. The Yankees were
+      put to the rout, with signal confusion, and have never since dared to show
+      their faces in the place. The good people continue to cultivate their
+      cabbages, and rear their oysters; they know nothing of banks, nor joint
+      stock companies, but treasure up their money in stocking-feet, at the
+      bottom of the family chest, or bury it in iron pots, as did their fathers
+      and grandfathers before them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As to the House of the Four Chimneys, it still remains in the great and
+      tall family of the Van Hornes. Here are to be seen ancient Dutch corner
+      cupboards, chests of drawers, and massive clothes-presses, quaintly
+      carved, and carefully waxed and polished; together with divers thick,
+      black-letter volumes, with brass clasps, printed of yore in Leydon and
+      Amsterdam, and handed down from generation to generation, in the family,
+      but never read. They are preserved in the archives, among sundry old
+      parchment deeds, in Dutch and English, bearing the seals of the early
+      governors of the province.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this house, the primitive Dutch holidays of Paas and Pinxter are
+      faithfully kept up; and New-Year celebrated with cookies and
+      cherry-bounce; nor is the festival of the blessed St. Nicholas forgotten,
+      when all the children are sure to hang up their stockings, and to have
+      them filled according to their deserts; though, it is said, the good saint
+      is occasionally perplexed in his nocturnal visits, which chimney to
+      descend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of late, this portentous mansion has begun to give signs of dilapidation
+      and decay. Some have attributed this to the visits made by the young
+      people to the city, and their bringing thence various modern fashions; and
+      to their neglect of the Dutch language, which is gradually becoming
+      confined to the older persons in the community. The house, too, was
+      greatly shaken by high winds, during the prevalence of the speculation
+      mania, especially at the time of the landing of the Yankees. Seeing how
+      mysteriously the fate of Communipaw is identified with this venerable
+      mansion, we cannot wonder that the older and wiser heads of the community
+      should be filled with dismay, whenever a brick is toppled down from one of
+      the chimneys, or a weather-cock is blown off from a gable-end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The present lord of this historic pile, I am happy to say, is calculated
+      to maintain it in all its integrity. He is of patriarchal age, and is
+      worthy of the days of the patriarchs. He has done his utmost to increase
+      and multiply the true race in the land. His wife has not been inferior to
+      him in zeal, and they are surrounded by a goodly progeny of children, and
+      grand-children, and great-grand-children, who promise to perpetuate the
+      name of Van Horne, until time shall be no more. So be it! Long may the
+      horn of the Van Hornes continue to be exalted in the land! Tall as they
+      are, may their shadows never be less! May the House of the Four Chimneys
+      remain for ages, the citadel of Communipaw, and the smoke of its chimneys
+      continue to ascend, a sweet-smelling incense in the hose of St. Nicholas!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With great respect, Mr. Editor,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Your ob&rsquo;t servant,
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      HERMANUS VANDERDONK.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CONSPIRACY OF THE COCKED HATS.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Sir: I have read with great satisfaction the valuable paper of your
+      correspondent, Mr. HERMANUS VANDERDONK, (who, I take it, is a descendant
+      of the learned Adrian Vanderdonk, one of the early historians of the
+      Nieuw-Nederlands,) giving sundry particulars, legendary and statistical,
+      touching the venerable village of Communipaw and its fate-bound citadel,
+      the House of the Four Chimneys. It goes to prove what I have repeatedly
+      maintained, that we live in the midst of history and mystery and romance;
+      and that there is no spot in the world more rich in themes for the writer
+      of historic novels, heroic melodramas, and rough-shod epics, than this
+      same business-looking city of the Manhattoes and its environs. He who
+      would find these elements, however, must not seek them among the modern
+      improvements and modern people of this moneyed metropolis, but must dig
+      for them, as for Kidd the pirate&rsquo;s treasures, in out-of-the-way
+      places, and among the ruins of the past.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Poetry and romance received a fatal blow at the overthrow of the ancient
+      Dutch dynasty, and have ever since been gradually withering under the
+      growing domination of the Yankees. They abandoned our hearths when the old
+      Dutch tiles were superseded by marble chimney-pieces; when brass andirons
+      made way for polished grates, and the crackling and blazing fire of
+      nut-wood gave place to the smoke and stench of Liverpool coal; and on the
+      downfall of the last gable-end house, their requiem was tolled from the
+      tower of the Dutch church in Nassau-street by the old bell that came from
+      Holland. But poetry and romance still live unseen among us, or seen only
+      by the enlightened few, who are able to contemplate this city and its
+      environs through the medium of tradition, and clothed with the
+      associations of foregone ages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Would you seek these elements in the country, Mr. Editor, avoid all
+      turnpikes, rail-roads, and steamboats, those abominable inventions by
+      which the usurping Yankees are strengthening themselves in the land, and
+      subduing every thing to utility and common-place. Avoid all towns and
+      cities of white clapboard palaces and Grecian temples, studded with
+      &ldquo;Academics,&rdquo; &ldquo;Seminaries,&rdquo; and &ldquo;Institutes,&rdquo;
+      which glisten along our bays and rivers; these are the strong-holds of
+      Yankee usurpation; but if haply you light upon some rough, rambling road,
+      winding between stone fences, gray with moss, and overgrown with elder,
+      poke-berry, mullein, and sweet-briar, with here and there a low,
+      red-roofed, whitewashed farm-house, cowering among apple and cherry trees;
+      an old stone church, with elms, willows, and button-woods, as old-looking
+      as itself, and tombstones almost buried in their own graves; and,
+      peradventure, a small log school-house at a cross-road, where the English
+      is still taught with a thickness of the tongue, instead of a twang of the
+      nose; should you, I say, light upon such a neighborhood, Mr. Editor, you
+      may thank your stars that you have found one of the lingering haunts of
+      poetry and romance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Your correspondent, Sir, has touched upon that sublime and affecting
+      feature in the history of Communipaw, the retreat of the patriotic band of
+      Nederlanders, led by Van Horne, whom he justly terms the Pelayo of the
+      New-Netherlands. He has given you a picture of the manner in which they
+      ensconced themselves in the House of the Four Chimneys, and awaited with
+      heroic patience and perseverance the day that should see the flag of the
+      Hogen Mogens once more floating on the fort of New-Amsterdam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Your correspondent, Sir, has but given you a glimpse over the threshold; I
+      will now let you into the heart of the mystery of this most mysterious and
+      eventful village.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Yes, sir, I will now&mdash;&ldquo;unclasp a secret book;
+  And to your quick conceiving discontents,
+  I&rsquo;ll read you matter deep and dangerous,
+  As full of peril and adventurous spirit,
+  As to o&rsquo;er walk a current, roaring loud,
+  On the unsteadfast footing of a spear.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Sir, it is one of the most beautiful and interesting facts connected with
+      the history of Communipaw, that the early feeling of resistance to foreign
+      rule, alluded to by your correspondent, is still kept up. Yes, sir, a
+      settled, secret, and determined conspiracy has been going on for
+      generations among this indomitable people, the descendants of the refugees
+      from New-Amsterdam; the object of which is to redeem their ancient seat of
+      empire, and to drive the losel Yankees out of the land.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Communipaw, it is true, has the glory of originating this conspiracy; and
+      it was hatched and reared in the House of the Four Chimneys; but it has
+      spread far and wide over ancient Pavonia, surmounted the heights of
+      Bergen, Hoboken, and Weehawk, crept up along the banks of the Passaic and
+      the Hackensack, until it pervades the whole chivalry of the country from
+      Tappan Slote in the north to Piscataway in the south, including the
+      pugnacious village of Rahway, more heroically denominated Spank-town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Throughout all these regions a great &ldquo;in-and-in confederacy&rdquo;
+      prevails, that is to say, a confederacy among the Dutch families, by dint
+      of diligent and exclusive intermarriage, to keep the race pure and to
+      multiply. If ever, Mr. Editor, in the course of your travels between
+      Spank-town and Tappan Slote, you should see a cosey, low-eaved farm-house,
+      teeming with sturdy, broad-built little urchins, you may set it down as
+      one of the breeding places of this grand secret confederacy, stocked with
+      the embryo deliverers of New-Amsterdam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another step in the progress of this patriotic conspiracy, is the
+      establishment, in various places within the ancient boundaries of the
+      Nieuw-Nederlands, of secret, or rather mysterious associations, composed
+      of the genuine sons of the Nederlanders, with the ostensible object of
+      keeping up the memory of old times and customs, but with the real object
+      of promoting the views of this dark and mighty plot, and extending its
+      ramifications throughout the land.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sir, I am descended from a long line of genuine Nederlanders, who, though
+      they remained in the city of New-Amsterdam after the conquest, and
+      throughout the usurpation, have never in their hearts been able to
+      tolerate the yoke imposed upon them. My worthy father, who was one of the
+      last of the cocked hats, had a little knot of cronies, of his own stamp,
+      who used to meet in our wainscoted parlor, round a nut-wood fire, talk
+      over old times, when the city was ruled by its native burgomasters, and
+      groan over the monopoly of all places of power and profit by the Yankees.
+      I well recollect the effect upon this worthy little conclave, when the
+      Yankees first instituted then New-England Society, held their &ldquo;national
+      festival,&rdquo; toasted their &ldquo;father land,&rdquo; and sang their
+      foreign songs of triumph within the very precincts of our ancient
+      metropolis. Sir, from that day, my father held the smell of codfish and
+      potatoes, and the sight of pumpkin pie, in utter abomination; and whenever
+      the annual dinner of the New-England Society came round, it was a sore
+      anniversary for his children. He got up in an ill humor, grumbled and
+      growled throughout the day, and not one of us went to bed that night,
+      without having had his jacket well trounced, to the tune of &ldquo;The
+      Pilgrim Fathers.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You may judge, then, Mr. Editor, of the exaltation of all true patriots of
+      this stamp, when the Society of Saint Nicholas was set up among us, and
+      intrepidly established, cheek by jole, alongside of the society of the
+      invaders. Never shall I forget the effect upon my father and his little
+      knot of brother groaners, when tidings were brought them that the ancient
+      banner of the Manhattoes was actually floating from the window of the City
+      Hotel. Sir, they nearly jumped out of their silver-buckled shoes for joy.
+      They took down their cocked hats from the pegs on which they had hanged
+      them, as the Israelites of yore hung their harps upon the willows, in
+      token of bondage, clapped them resolutely once more upon their heads, and
+      cocked them in the face of every Yankee they met on the way to the
+      banqueting-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The institution of this society was hailed with transport throughout the
+      whole extent of the New-Netherlands; being considered a secret foothold
+      gained in New-Amsterdam, and a flattering presage of future triumph.
+      Whenever that society holds its annual feast, a sympathetic hilarity
+      prevails throughout the land; ancient Pavonia sends over its contributions
+      of cabbages and oysters; the House of the Four Chimneys is splendidly
+      illuminated, and the traditional song of St. Nicholas, the mystic bond of
+      union and conspiracy, is chaunted with closed doors, in every genuine
+      Dutch family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have thus, I trust, Mr. Editor, opened your eyes to some of the grand
+      moral, poetical, and political phenomena with which you are surrounded.
+      You will now be able to read the &ldquo;signs of the times.&rdquo; You
+      will now understand what is meant by those &ldquo;Knickerbocker Halls,&rdquo;
+      and &ldquo;Knickerbocker Hotels,&rdquo; and &ldquo;Knickerbocker Lunches,&rdquo;
+      that are daily springing up in our city and what all these &ldquo;Knickerbocker
+      Omnibuses&rdquo; are driving at. You will see in them so many clouds
+      before a storm; so many mysterious but sublime intimations of the
+      gathering vengeance of a great though oppressed people. Above all, you
+      will now contemplate our bay and its portentous borders, with proper
+      feelings of awe and admiration. Talk of the Bay of Naples, and its
+      volcanic mountains! Why, Sir, little Communipaw, sleeping among its
+      cabbage gardens, &ldquo;quiet as gunpowder,&rdquo; yet with this
+      tremendous conspiracy brewing in its bosom is an object ten times as
+      sublime (in a moral point of view, mark me) as Vesuvius in repose, though
+      charged with lava and brimstone, and ready for an eruption.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let me advert to a circumstance connected with this theme, which cannot
+      but be appreciated by every heart of sensibility. You must have remarked,
+      Mr. Editor, on summer evenings, and on Sunday afternoons, certain grave,
+      primitive-looking personages, walking the Battery, in close confabulation,
+      with their canes behind their backs, and ever and anon turning a wistful
+      gaze toward the Jersey shore. These, Sir, are the sons of Saint Nicholas,
+      the genuine Nederlanders; who regard Communipaw with pious reverence, not
+      merely as the progenitor, but the destined regenerator, of this great
+      metropolis. Yes, Sir; they are looking with longing eyes to the green
+      marshes of ancient Pavonia, as did the poor conquered Spaniards of yore
+      toward the stern mountains of Asturias, wondering whether the day of
+      deliverance is at hand. Many is the time, when, in my boyhood, I have
+      walked with my father and his confidential compeers on the Battery, and
+      listened to their calculations and conjectures, and observed the points of
+      their sharp cocked hats evermore turned toward Pavonia. Nay, Sir, I am
+      convinced that at this moment, if I were to take down the cocked hat of my
+      lamented father from the peg on which it has hung for years, and were to
+      carry it to the Battery, its centre point, true as the needle to the pole,
+      would turn to Communipaw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Editor, the great historic drama of New-Amsterdam, is but half acted.
+      The reigns of Walter the Doubter, William the Testy, and Peter the
+      Headstrong, with the rise, progress, and decline of the Dutch dynasty, are
+      but so many parts of the main action, the triumphant catastrophe of which
+      is yet to come. Yes, Sir! the deliverance of the New-Nederlands from
+      Yankee domination will eclipse the far-famed redemption of Spain from the
+      Moors, and the oft-sung conquest of Granada will fade before the
+      chivalrous triumph of New-Amsterdam. Would that Peter Stuyvesant could
+      rise from his grave to witness that day!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Your humble servant,
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      ROLOFF VAN RIPPER.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      P. S. Just as I had concluded the foregoing epistle, I received a piece of
+      intelligence, which makes me tremble for the fate of Communipaw. I fear,
+      Mr. Editor, the grand conspiracy is in danger of being countermined and
+      counteracted, by those all-pervading and indefatigable Yankees. Would you
+      think it, Sir! one of them has actually effected an entry in the place by
+      covered way; or in other words, under cover of the petticoats. Finding
+      every other mode ineffectual, he secretly laid siege to a Dutch heiress,
+      who owns a great cabbage-garden in her own right. Being a smooth-tongued
+      varlet, he easily prevailed on her to elope with him, and they were
+      privately married at Spank-town! The first notice the good people of
+      Communipaw had of this awful event, was a lithographed map of the cabbage
+      garden laid out in town lots, and advertised for sale! On the night of the
+      wedding, the main weather-cock of the House of the Four Chimneys was
+      carried away in a whirlwind! The greatest consternation reigns throughout
+      the village!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A LEGEND OF COMMUNIPAW.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER MAGAZINE.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Sir: I observed in your last month&rsquo;s periodical, a communication
+      from a Mr. VANDERDONK, giving some information concerning Communipaw. I
+      herewith send you, Mr. Editor, a legend connected with that place; and am
+      much surprised it should have escaped the researches of your very
+      authentic correspondent, as it relates to an edifice scarcely less fated
+      than the House of the Four Chimneys. I give you the legend in its crude
+      and simple state, as I heard it related; it is capable, however, of being
+      dilated, inflated, and dressed up into very imposing shape and dimensions.
+      Should any of your ingenious contributors in this line feel inclined to
+      take it in hand, they will find ample materials, collateral and
+      illustrative, among the papers of the late Reinier Skaats, many years
+      since crier of the court, and keeper of the City Hall, in the city of the
+      Manhattoes; or in the library of that important and utterly renowned
+      functionary, Mr. Jacob Hays, long time high constable, who, in the course
+      of his extensive researches, has amassed an amount of valuable facts, to
+      be rivalled only by that great historical collection, &ldquo;The Newgate
+      Calendar.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Your humble servant,
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      BARENT VAN SCHAICK.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      <i>GUESTS FROM GIBBET-ISLAND</i>.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A LEGEND OF COMMUNIPAW.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Whoever has visited the ancient and renowned village of Communipaw, may
+      have noticed an old stone building, of most ruinous and sinister
+      appearance. The doors and window-shutters are ready to drop from their
+      hinges; old clothes are stuffed in the broken panes of glass, while
+      legions of half-starved dogs prowl about the premises, and rush out and
+      bark at every passer-by; for your beggarly house in a village is most apt
+      to swarm with profligate and ill-conditioned dogs. What adds to the
+      sinister appearance of this mansion, is a tall frame in front, not a
+      little resembling a gallows, and which looks as if waiting to accommodate
+      some of the inhabitants with a well-merited airing. It is not a gallows,
+      however, but an ancient sign-post; for this dwelling, in the golden days
+      of Communipaw, was one of the most orderly and peaceful of village
+      taverns, where all the public affairs of Communipaw were talked and smoked
+      over. In fact, it was in this very building that Oloffe the Dreamer, and
+      his companions, concerted that great voyage of discovery and colonization,
+      in which they explored Buttermilk Channel, were nearly shipwrecked in the
+      strait of Hell-gate, and finally landed on the Island of Manhattan, and
+      founded the great city of New-Amsterdam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even after the province had been cruelly wrested from the sway of their
+      High Mightinesses, by the combined forces of the British and Yankees, this
+      tavern continued its ancient loyalty. It is true, the head of the Prince
+      of Orange disappeared from the sign; a strange bird being painted over it,
+      with the explanatory legend of &ldquo;DIE WILDE GANS,&rdquo; or The Wild
+      Goose; but this all the world knew to be a sly riddle of the landlord, the
+      worthy Teunis Van Gieson, a knowing man in a small way, who laid his
+      finger beside his nose and winked, when any one studied the signification
+      of his sign, and observed that his goose was hatching, but would join the
+      flock whenever they flew over the water; an enigma which was the perpetual
+      recreation and delight of the loyal but fat-headed burghers of Communipaw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Under the sway of this patriotic, though discreet and quiet publican, the
+      tavern continued to flourish in primeval tranquillity, and was the resort
+      of all true-hearted Nederlanders, from all parts of Pavonia; who met here
+      quietly and secretly, to smoke and drink the downfall of Briton and
+      Yankee, and success to Admiral Van Tromp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only drawback on the comfort of the establishment, was a nephew of
+      mine host, a sister&rsquo;s son, Yan Yost Vanderscamp by name, and a real
+      scamp by nature. This unlucky whipster showed an early propensity to
+      mischief, which he gratified in a small way, by playing tricks upon the
+      frequenters of the Wild Goose; putting gunpowder in their pipes, or squibs
+      in their pockets, and astonishing them with an explosion, while they sat
+      nodding round the fire-place in the bar-room; and if perchance a worthy
+      burgher from some distant part of Pavonia had lingered until dark over his
+      potation, it was odds but that young Vanderscamp would slip a briar under
+      his horse&rsquo;s tail, as he mounted, and send him clattering along the
+      road, in neck-or-nothing style, to his infinite astonishment and
+      discomfiture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may be wondered at, that mine host of the Wild Goose did not turn such
+      a graceless varlet out of doors; but Teunis Van Gieson was an
+      easy-tempered man, and, having no child of his own, looked upon his nephew
+      with almost parental indulgence. His patience and good-nature were doomed
+      to be tried by another inmate of his mansion. This was a cross-grained
+      curmudgeon of a negro, named Pluto, who was a kind of enigma in
+      Communipaw. Where he came from, nobody knew. He was found one morning,
+      after a storm, cast like a sea-monster on the strand, in front of the Wild
+      Goose, and lay there, more dead than alive. The neighbors gathered round,
+      and speculated on this production of the deep; whether it were fish or
+      flesh, or a compound of both, commonly yclept a merman. The kind-hearted
+      Teunis Van Gieson, seeing that he wore the human form, took him into his
+      house, and warmed him into life. By degrees, he showed signs of
+      intelligence, and even uttered sounds very much like language, but which
+      no one in Communipaw could understand. Some thought him a negro just from
+      Guinea, who had either fallen overboard, or escaped from a slave-ship.
+      Nothing, however, could ever draw from him any account of his origin. When
+      questioned on the subject, he merely pointed to Gibbet-Island, a small
+      rocky islet, which lies in the open bay, just opposite to Communipaw, as
+      if that were his native place, though every body knew it had never been
+      inhabited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the process of time, he acquired something of the Dutch language, that
+      is to say, he learnt all its vocabulary of oaths and maledictions, with
+      just words sufficient to string them together. &ldquo;Donder en blicksen!&rdquo;
+      (thunder and lightning,) was the gentlest of his ejaculations. For years
+      he kept about the Wild Goose, more like one of those familiar spirits, or
+      household goblins, that we read of, than like a human being. He
+      acknowledged allegiance to no one, but performed various domestic offices,
+      when it suited his humor; waiting occasionally on the guests; grooming the
+      horses, cutting wood, drawing water; and all this without being ordered.
+      Lay any command on him, and the stubborn sea-urchin was sure to rebel. He
+      was never so much at home, however, as when on the water, plying about in
+      skiff or canoe, entirely alone, fishing, crabbing, or grabbing for
+      oysters, and would bring home quantities for the larder of the Wild Goose,
+      which he would throw down at the kitchen door, with a growl. No wind nor
+      weather deterred him from launching forth on his favorite element: indeed,
+      the wilder the weather, the more he seemed to enjoy it. If a storm was
+      brewing, he was sure to put off from shore; and would be seen far out in
+      the bay, his light skiff dancing like a feather on the waves, when sea and
+      sky were all in a turmoil, and the stoutest ships were fain to lower their
+      sails. Sometimes, on such occasions, he would be absent for days together.
+      How he weathered the tempest, and how and where he subsisted, no one could
+      divine, nor did any one venture to ask, for all had an almost
+      superstitious awe of him. Some of the Communipaw oystermen declared that
+      they had more than once seen him suddenly disappear, canoe and all, as if
+      they plunged beneath the waves, and after a while come up again, in quite
+      a different part of the bay; whence they concluded that he could live
+      under water like that notable species of wild duck, commonly called the
+      Hell-diver. All began to consider him in the light of a foul-weather bird,
+      like the Mother Carey&rsquo;s Chicken, or Stormy Petrel; and whenever they
+      saw him putting far out in his skiff, in cloudy weather, made up their
+      minds for a storm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only being for whom he seemed to have any liking, was Yan Yost
+      Vanderscamp, and him he liked for his very wickedness. He in a manner took
+      the boy under his tutelage, prompted him to all kinds of mischief, aided
+      him in every wild, harum-scarum freak, until the lad became the complete
+      scapegrace of the village; a pest to his uncle, and to every one else. Nor
+      were his pranks confined to the land; he soon learned to accompany old
+      Pluto on the water. Together these worthies would cruise about the broad
+      bay, and all the neighboring straits and rivers; poking around in skiffs
+      and canoes; robbing the set-nets of the fishermen; landing on remote
+      coasts, and laying waste orchards and water-melon patches; in short,
+      carrying on a complete system of piracy, on a small scale, Piloted by
+      Pluto, the youthful Vanderscamp soon became acquainted with all the bays,
+      rivers, creeks, and inlets of the watery world around him; could navigate
+      from the Hook to Spiting-devil on the darkest night, and learned to set
+      even the terrors of Hell-gate at defiance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length, negro and boy suddenly disappeared, and days and weeks elapsed,
+      but without tidings of them. Some said they must have run away and gone to
+      sea; others jocosely hinted, that old Pluto, being no other than his
+      namesake in disguise, had spirited away the boy to the nether regions.
+      All, however, agreed in one thing, that the village was well rid of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the process of time, the good Teunis Van Gieson slept with his fathers,
+      and the tavern remained shut up, waiting for a claimant, for the next heir
+      was Yan Yost Vanderscamp, and he had not been heard of for years. At
+      length, one day, a boat was seen pulling for the shore, from a long,
+      black, rakish-looking schooner, that lay at anchor in the bay. The boat&rsquo;s
+      crew seemed worthy of the craft from which they debarked. Never had such a
+      set of noisy, roistering, swaggering varlets landed in peaceful
+      Communipaw. They were outlandish in garb and demeanor, and were headed by
+      a rough, burly, bully ruffian, with fiery whiskers, a copper nose, a scar
+      across his face, and a great Flaunderish beaver slouched on one side of
+      his head, in whom, to their dismay, the quiet inhabitants were made to
+      recognize their early pest, Yan Yost Vanderscamp. The rear of this hopeful
+      gang was brought up by old Pluto, who had lost an eye, grown
+      grizzly-headed, and looked more like a devil than ever. Vanderscamp
+      renewed his acquaintance with the old burghers, much against their will,
+      and in a manner not at all to their taste. He slapped them familiarly on
+      the back, gave them an iron grip of the hand, and was hail fellow well
+      met. According to his own account, he had been all the world over; had
+      made money by bags full; had ships in every sea, and now meant to turn the
+      Wild Goose into a country seat, where he and his comrades, all rich
+      merchants from foreign parts, might enjoy themselves in the interval of
+      their voyages. Sure enough, in a little while there was a complete
+      metamorphose of the Wild Goose. From being a quiet, peaceful Dutch public
+      house, it became a most riotous, uproarious private dwelling; a complete
+      rendezvous for boisterous men of the seas, who came here to have what they
+      called a &ldquo;blow out&rdquo; on dry land, and might be seen at all
+      hours, lounging about the door, or lolling out of the windows; swearing
+      among themselves, and cracking rough jokes on every passer-by. The house
+      was fitted up, too, in so strange a manner: hammocks slung to the walls,
+      instead of bedsteads; odd kinds of furniture, of foreign fashion; bamboo
+      couches, Spanish chairs; pistols, cutlasses, and blunderbusses, suspended
+      on every peg; silver crucifixes on the mantel-pieces, silver candle-sticks
+      and porringers on the tables, contrasting oddly with the pewter and Delf
+      ware of the original establishment. And then the strange amusements of
+      these sea-monsters! Pitching Spanish dollars, instead of quoits; firing
+      blunderbusses out of the window; shooting at a mark, or at any unhappy
+      dog, or cat, or pig, or barn-door fowl, that might happen to come within
+      reach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only being who seemed to relish their rough waggery, was old Pluto;
+      and yet he led but a dog&rsquo;s life of it; for they practised all kinds
+      of manual jokes upon him; kicked him about like a foot-ball; shook him by
+      his grizzly mop of wool, and never spoke to him without coupling a curse
+      by way of adjective to his name, and consigning him to the infernal
+      regions. The old fellow, however, seemed to like them the better, the more
+      they cursed him, though his utmost expression of pleasure never amounted
+      to more than the growl of a petted bear, when his ears are rubbed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Pluto was the ministering spirit at the orgies of the Wild Goose; and
+      such orgies as took place there! Such drinking, singing, whooping,
+      swearing; with an occasional interlude of quarrelling and fighting. The
+      noisier grew the revel, the more old Pluto plied the potations, until the
+      guests would become frantic in their merriment, smashing every thing to
+      pieces, and throwing the house out of the windows. Sometimes, after a
+      drinking bout, they sallied forth and scoured the village, to the dismay
+      of the worthy burghers, who gathered their women within doors, and would
+      have shut up the house. Vanderscamp, however, was not to be rebuffed. He
+      insisted on renewing acquaintance with his old neighbors, and on
+      introducing his friends, the merchants, to their families; swore he was on
+      the look-out for a wife, and meant, before he stopped, to find husbands
+      for all their daughters. So, will-ye, nil-ye, sociable he was; swaggered
+      about their best parlors, with his hat on one side of his head; sat on the
+      good wife&rsquo;s nicely-waxed mahogany table, kicking his heels against
+      the carved and polished legs; kissed and tousled the young vrouws; and, if
+      they frowned and pouted, gave them a gold rosary, or a sparkling cross, to
+      put them in good humor again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes nothing would satisfy him, but he must have some of his old
+      neighbors to dinner at the Wild Goose. There was no refusing him, for he
+      had got the complete upper-hand of the community, and the peaceful
+      burghers all stood in awe of him. But what a time would the quiet, worthy
+      men have, among these rake-hells, who would delight to astound them with
+      the most extravagant gunpowder tales, embroidered with all kinds of
+      foreign oaths; clink the can with them; pledge them in deep potations;
+      bawl drinking songs in their ears; and occasionally fire pistols over
+      their heads, or under the table, and then laugh in their faces, and ask
+      them how they liked the smell of gunpowder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus was the little village of Communipaw for a time like the unfortunate
+      wight possessed with devils; until Vanderscamp and his brother merchants
+      would sail on another trading voyage, when the Wild Goose would be shut
+      up, and every thing relapse into quiet, only to be disturbed by his next
+      visitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mystery of all these proceedings gradually dawned upon the tardy
+      intellects of Communipaw. These were the times of the notorious Captain
+      Kidd, when the American harbors were the resorts of piratical adventurers
+      of all kinds, who, under pretext of mercantile voyages, scoured the West
+      Indies, made plundering descents upon the Spanish Main, visited even the
+      remote Indian Seas, and then came to dispose of their booty, have their
+      revels, and fit out new expeditions, in the English colonies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vanderscamp had served in this hopeful school, and having risen to
+      importance among the bucaniers, had pitched upon his native village and
+      early home, as a quiet, out-of-the-way, unsuspected place, where he and
+      his comrades, while anchored at New York, might have their feasts, and
+      concert their plans, without molestation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length the attention of the British government was called to these
+      piratical enterprises, that were becoming so frequent and outrageous.
+      Vigorous measures were taken to check and punish them. Several of the most
+      noted freebooters were caught and executed, and three of Vanderscamp&rsquo;s
+      chosen comrades, the most riotous swash-bucklers of the Wild Goose, were
+      hanged in chains on Gibbet-Island, in full sight of their favorite resort.
+      As to Vanderscamp himself, he and his man Pluto again disappeared, and it
+      was hoped by the people of Communipaw that he had fallen in some foreign
+      brawl, or been swung on some foreign gallows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a time, therefore, the tranquillity of the village was restored; the
+      worthy Dutchmen once more smoked their pipes in peace, eying, with
+      peculiar complacency, their old pests and terrors, the pirates, dangling
+      and drying in the sun, on Gibbet-Island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This perfect calm was doomed at length to be ruffled. The fiery
+      persecution of the pirates gradually subsided. Justice was satisfied with
+      the examples that had been made, and there was no more talk of Kidd, and
+      the other heroes of like kidney. On a calm summer evening, a boat,
+      somewhat heavily laden, was seen pulling into Communipaw. What was the
+      surprise and disquiet of the inhabitants, to see Yan Yost Vanderscamp
+      seated at the helm, and his man Pluto tugging at the oars! Vanderscamp,
+      however, was apparently an altered man. He brought home with him a wife,
+      who seemed to be a shrew, and to have the upper-hand of him. He no longer
+      was the swaggering, bully ruffian, but affected the regular merchant, and
+      talked of retiring from business, and settling down quietly, to pass the
+      rest of his days in his native place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Wild Goose mansion was again opened, but with diminished splendor, and
+      no riot. It is true, Vanderscamp had frequent nautical visitors, and the
+      sound of revelry was occasionally overheard in his house; but every thing
+      seemed to be done under the rose; and old Pluto was the only servant that
+      officiated at these orgies. The visitors, indeed, were by no means of the
+      turbulent stamp of their predecessors; but quiet, mysterious traders, full
+      of nods, and winks, and hieroglyphic signs, with whom, to use their cant
+      phrase, &ldquo;every thing was smug.&rdquo; Their ships came to anchor at
+      night in the lower bay; and, on a private signal, Vanderscamp would launch
+      his boat, and accompanied solely by his man Pluto, would make them
+      mysterious visits. Sometimes boats pulled in at night, in front of the
+      Wild Goose, and various articles of merchandise were landed in the dark,
+      and spirited away, nobody knew whither. One of the more curious of the
+      inhabitants kept watch, and caught a glimpse of the features of some of
+      these night visitors, by the casual glance of a lantern, and declared that
+      he recognized more than one of the freebooting frequenters of the Wild
+      Goose, in former times; from whence he concluded that Vanderscamp was at
+      his old game, and that this mysterious merchandise was nothing more nor
+      less than piratical plunder. The more charitable opinion, however, was,
+      that Vanderscamp and his comrades, having been driven from their old line
+      of business, by the &ldquo;oppressions of government,&rdquo; had resorted
+      to smuggling to make both ends meet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Be that as it may: I come now to the extraordinary fact, which is the
+      butt-end of this story. It happened late one night, that Yan Yost
+      Vanderscamp was returning across the broad bay, in his light skiff, rowed
+      by his man Pluto. He had been carousing on board of a vessel, newly
+      arrived, and was somewhat obfuscated in intellect, by the liquor he had
+      imbibed. It was a still, sultry night; a heavy mass of lurid clouds was
+      rising in the west, with the low muttering of distant thunder. Vanderscamp
+      called on Pluto to pull lustily, that they might get home before the
+      gathering storm. The old negro made no reply, but shaped his course so as
+      to skirt the rocky shores of Gibbet-Island. A faint creaking overhead
+      caused Vanderscamp to cast up his eyes, when, to his horror, he beheld the
+      bodies of his three pot companions and brothers in iniquity dangling in
+      the moonlight, their rags fluttering, and their chains creaking, as they
+      were slowly swung backward and forward by the rising breeze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean, you blockhead!&rdquo; cried Vanderscamp, &ldquo;by
+      pulling so close to the island?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you&rsquo;d be glad to see your old friends once more,&rdquo;
+      growled the negro; &ldquo;you were never afraid of a living man, what do
+      you fear from the dead?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who&rsquo;s afraid?&rdquo; hiccupped Vanderscamp, partly heated by
+      liquor, partly nettled by the jeer of the negro; &ldquo;who&rsquo;s
+      afraid! Hang me, but I would be glad to see them once more, alive or dead,
+      at the Wild Goose. Come, my lads in the wind!&rdquo; continued he, taking
+      a draught, and flourishing the bottle above his head, &ldquo;here&rsquo;s
+      fair weather to you in the other world; and if you should be walking the
+      rounds to-night, odds fish! but I&rsquo;ll be happy if you will drop in to
+      supper.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A dismal creaking was the only reply. The wind blew loud and shrill, and
+      as it whistled round the gallows, and among the bones, sounded as if there
+      were laughing and gibbering in the air. Old Pluto chuckled to himself, and
+      now pulled for home. The storm burst over the voyagers, while they were
+      yet far from shore. The rain fell in torrents, the thunder crashed and
+      pealed, and the lightning kept up an incessant blaze. It was stark
+      midnight, before they landed at Communipaw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dripping and shivering, Vanderscamp crawled homeward. He was completely
+      sobered by the storm; the water soaked from without, having diluted and
+      cooled the liquor within. Arrived at the Wild Goose, he knocked timidly
+      and dubiously at the door, for he dreaded the reception he was to
+      experience from his wife. He had reason to do so. She met him at the
+      threshold, in a precious ill humor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is this a time,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;to keep people out of their
+      beds, and to bring home company, to turn the house upside down?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Company?&rdquo; said Vanderscamp, meekly; &ldquo;I have brought no
+      company with me, wife.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, indeed! they have got here before you, but by your invitation;
+      and blessed-looking company they are, truly!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vanderscamp&rsquo;s knees smote together. &ldquo;For the love of heaven,
+      where are they, wife?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where?&mdash;why, in the blue-room, up-stairs, making themselves as
+      much at home as if the house were their own.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vanderscamp made a desperate effort, scrambled up to the room, and threw
+      open the door. Sure enough, there at a table, on which burned a light as
+      blue as brimstone, sat the three guests from Gibbet-Island, with halters
+      round their necks, and bobbing their cups together, as if they were
+      hob-or-nobbing, and trolling the old Dutch freebooter&rsquo;s glee, since
+      translated into English:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+ &ldquo;For three merry lads be we,
+  And three merry lads be we;
+  I on the land, and thou on the sand,
+  And Jack on the gallows-tree.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Vanderscamp saw and heard no more. Starting back with horror, he missed
+      his footing on the landing-place, and fell from the top of the stairs to
+      the bottom. He was taken up speechless, and, either from the fall or the
+      fright, was buried in the yard of the little Dutch church at Bergen, on
+      the following Sunday.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From that day forward, the fate of the Wild Goose was sealed. It was
+      pronounced a <i>haunted house</i>, and avoided accordingly. No one
+      inhabited it but Vanderscamp&rsquo;s shrew of a widow, and old Pluto, and
+      they were considered but little better than its hobgoblin visitors. Pluto
+      grew more and more haggard and morose, and looked more like an imp of
+      darkness than a human being. He spoke to no one, but went about muttering
+      to himself; or, as some hinted, talking with the devil, who, though
+      unseen, was ever at his elbow. Now and then he was seen pulling about the
+      bay alone, in his skiff, in dark weather, or at the approach of
+      night-fall; nobody could tell why, unless on an errand to invite more
+      guests from the gallows. Indeed it was affirmed that the Wild Goose still
+      continued to be a house of entertainment for such guests, and that on
+      stormy nights, the blue chamber was occasionally illuminated, and sounds
+      of diabolical merriment were overheard, mingling with the howling of the
+      tempest. Some treated these as idle stories, until on one such night, it
+      was about the time of the equinox, there was a horrible uproar in the Wild
+      Goose, that could not be mistaken. It was not so much the sound of
+      revelry, however, as strife, with two or three piercing shrieks, that
+      pervaded every part of the village. Nevertheless, no one thought of
+      hastening to the spot. On the contrary, the honest burghers of Communipaw
+      drew their night-caps over their ears, and buried their heads under the
+      bed-clothes, at the thoughts of Vanderscamp and his gallows companions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning, some of the bolder and more curious undertook to
+      reconnoitre. All was quiet and lifeless at the Wild Goose. The door yawned
+      wide open, and had evidently been open all night, for the storm had beaten
+      into the house. Gathering more courage from the silence and apparent
+      desertion, they gradually ventured over the threshold. The house had
+      indeed the air of having been possessed by devils. Every thing was
+      topsy-turvy; trunks had been broken open, and chests of drawers and corner
+      cupboards turned inside out, as in a time of general sack and pillage; but
+      the most woful sight was the widow of Yan Yost Vanderscamp, extended a
+      corpse on the floor of the blue-chamber, with the marks of a deadly gripe
+      on the wind-pipe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All now was conjecture and dismay at Communipaw; and the disappearance of
+      old Pluto, who was no where to be found, gave rise to all kinds of wild
+      surmises. Some suggested that the negro had betrayed the house to some of
+      Vanderscamp&rsquo;s bucaniering associates, and that they had decamped
+      together with the booty; others surmised that the negro was nothing more
+      nor less than a devil incarnate, who had now accomplished his ends, and
+      made off with his dues. Events, however, vindicated the negro from this
+      last imputation. His skiff was picked up, drifting about the bay, bottom
+      upward, as if wrecked in a tempest; and his body was found, shortly
+      afterward, by some Communipaw fishermen, stranded among the rocks of
+      Gibbet-Island, near the foot of the pirates&rsquo; gallows. The fishermen
+      shook their heads, and observed that old Pluto had ventured once too often
+      to invite Guests from Gibbet-Island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE BERMUDAS.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A SHAKSPERIAN RESEARCH: BY THE AUTHOR OF THE SKETCHBOOK.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who did not think, till within these foure yeares, but that these
+      islands had been rather a habitation for Divells, than fit for men to
+      dwell in? Who did not hate the name, when hee was on land, and shun the
+      place when he was on the seas? But behold the misprision and conceits of
+      the world! For true and large experience hath now told us, it is one of
+      the sweetest paradises that be upon earth.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;A PLAINE
+      DESCRIPT. OF THE BARMUDAS:&rdquo; 1613.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the course of a voyage home from England, our ship had been struggling,
+      for two or three weeks, with perverse headwinds, and a stormy sea. It was
+      in the month of May, yet the weather had at times a wintry sharpness, and
+      it was apprehended that we were in the neighborhood of floating islands of
+      ice, which at that season of the year drift out of the Gulf of Saint
+      Lawrence, and sometimes occasion the wreck of noble ships.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wearied out by the continued opposition of the elements, our captain at
+      length bore away to the south, in hopes of catching the expiring breath of
+      the trade-winds, and making what is called the southern passage. A few
+      days wrought, as it were, a magical &ldquo;sea change&rdquo; in every
+      thing around us. We seemed to emerge into a different world. The late dark
+      and angry sea, lashed up into roaring and swashing surges, became calm and
+      sunny; the rude winds died away; and gradually a light breeze sprang up
+      directly aft, filling out every sail, and wafting us smoothly along on an
+      even keel. The air softened into a bland and delightful temperature.
+      Dolphins began to play about us; the nautilus came floating by, like a
+      fairy ship, with its mimic sail and rainbow tints; and flying-fish, from
+      time to time, made their short excursive flights, and occasionally fell
+      upon the deck. The cloaks and overcoats in which we had hitherto wrapped
+      ourselves, and moped about the vessel, were thrown aside; for a summer
+      warmth had succeeded to the late wintry chills. Sails were stretched as
+      awnings over the quarter-deck, to protect us from the mid-day sun. Under
+      these we lounged away the day, in luxurious indolence, musing, with
+      half-shut eyes, upon the quiet ocean. The night was scarcely less
+      beautiful than the day. The rising moon sent a quivering column of silver
+      along the undulating surface of the deep, and, gradually climbing the
+      heaven, lit up our towering top-sails and swelling main-sails, and spread
+      a pale, mysterious light around. As our ship made her whispering way
+      through this dreamy world of waters, every boisterous sound on board was
+      charmed to silence; and the low whistle, or drowsy song of a sailor from
+      the forecastle, or the tinkling of a guitar, and the soft warbling of a
+      female voice from the quarter-deck, seemed to derive a witching melody
+      from the scene and hour. I was reminded of Oberon&rsquo;s exquisite
+      description of music and moonlight on the ocean:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+ &mdash;&ldquo;Thou rememberest
+  Since once I sat upon a promontory,
+  And heard a mermaid on a dolphin&rsquo;s back,
+  Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
+  That the rude sea grew civil at her song?
+  And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
+  To hear the sea-maid&rsquo;s music.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Indeed, I was in the very mood to conjure up all the imaginary beings with
+      which poetry has peopled old ocean, and almost ready to fancy I heard the
+      distant song of the mermaid, or the mellow shell of the triton, and to
+      picture to myself Neptune and Amphitrite with all their pageant sweeping
+      along the dim horizon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A day or two of such fanciful voyaging brought us in sight of the
+      Bermudas, which first looked like mere summer clouds, peering above the
+      quiet ocean. All day we glided along in sight of them, with just wind
+      enough to fill our sails; and never did land appear more lovely. They were
+      clad in emerald verdure, beneath the serenest of skies: not an angry wave
+      broke upon their quiet shores, and small fishing craft, riding on the
+      crystal waves, seemed as if hung in air. It was such a scene that Fletcher
+      pictured to himself, when he extolled the halcyon lot of the fisherman:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Ah! would thou knewest how much it better were
+  To bide among the simple fisher-swains:
+  No shrieking owl, no night-crow lodgeth here,
+  Nor is our simple pleasure mixed with pains.
+  Our sports begin with the beginning year;
+  In calms, to pull the leaping fish to land,
+  In roughs, to sing and dance along the yellow sand.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      In contemplating these beautiful islands, and the peaceful sea around
+      them, I could hardly realize that these were the &ldquo;still vexed
+      Bermoothes&rdquo; of Shakspeare, once the dread of mariners, and infamous
+      in the narratives of the early discoverers, for the dangers and disasters
+      which beset them. Such, however, was the case; and the islands derived
+      additional interest in my eyes, from fancying that I could trace in their
+      early history, and in the superstitious notions connected with them, some
+      of the elements of Shakspeare&rsquo;s wild and beautiful drama of the
+      Tempest. I shall take the liberty of citing a few historical facts, in
+      support of this idea, which may claim some additional attention from the
+      American reader, as being connected with the first settlement of Virginia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the time when Shakspeare was in the fulness of his talent, and seizing
+      upon everything that could furnish aliment to his imagination, the
+      colonization of Virginia was a favorite object of enterprise among people
+      of condition in England, and several of the courtiers of the court of
+      Queen Elizabeth were personally engaged in it. In the year 1609 a noble
+      armament of nine ships and five hundred men sailed for the relief of the
+      colony. It was commanded by Sir George Somers, as admiral, a gallant and
+      generous gentleman, above sixty years of age, and possessed of an ample
+      fortune, yet still bent upon hardy enterprise, and ambitious of
+      signalizing himself in the service of his country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On board of his flag-ship, the Sea-Vulture, sailed also Sir Thomas Gates,
+      lieutenant-general of the colony. The voyage was long and boisterous. On
+      the twenty-fifth of July, the admiral&rsquo;s ship was separated from the
+      rest, in a hurricane. For several days she was driven about at the mercy
+      of the elements, and so strained and racked, that her seams yawned open,
+      and her hold was half filled with water. The storm subsided, but left her
+      a mere foundering wreck. The crew stood in the hold to their waists in
+      water, vainly endeavoring to bail her with kettles, buckets, and other
+      vessels. The leaks rapidly gained on them, while their strength was as
+      rapidly declining. They lost all hope of keeping the ship afloat, until
+      they should reach the American coast; and wearied with fruitless toil,
+      determined, in their despair, to give up all farther attempt, shut down
+      the hatches, and abandon themselves to Providence. Some, who had
+      spirituous liquors, or &ldquo;comfortable waters,&rdquo; as the old record
+      quaintly terms them, brought them forth, and shared them with their
+      comrades, and they all drank a sad farewell to one another, as men who
+      were soon to part company in this world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this moment of extremity, the worthy admiral, who kept sleepless watch
+      from the high stern of the vessel, gave the thrilling cry of &ldquo;land!&rdquo;
+      All rushed on deck, in a frenzy of joy, and nothing now was to be seen or
+      heard on board, but the transports of men who felt as if rescued from the
+      grave. It is true the land in sight would not, in ordinary circumstances,
+      have inspired much self-gratulation. It could be nothing else but the
+      group of islands called after their discoverer, one Juan Bermudas, a
+      Spaniard, but stigmatized among the mariners of those days as &ldquo;the
+      islands of devils!&rdquo; &ldquo;For the islands of the Bermudas,&rdquo;
+      says the old narrative of this voyage, &ldquo;as every man knoweth that
+      hath heard or read of them, were never inhabited by any Christian or
+      heathen people, but were ever esteemed and reputed a most prodigious and
+      inchanted place, affording nothing but gusts, stormes, and foul weather,
+      which made every navigator and mariner to avoide them, as Scylla and
+      Charybdis, or as they would shun the Divell himself.&rdquo; [Footnote:
+      &ldquo;A Plaine Description of the Barmudas.&rdquo;]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sir George Somers and his tempest-tossed comrades, however, hailed them
+      with rapture, as if they had been a terrestrial paradise. Every sail was
+      spread, and every exertion made to urge the foundering ship to land.
+      Before long, she struck upon a rock. Fortunately, the late stormy winds
+      had subsided, and there was no surf. A swelling wave lifted her from off
+      the rock, and bore her to another; and thus she was borne on from rock to
+      rock, until she remained wedged between two, as firmly as if set upon the
+      stocks. The boats were immediately lowered, and, though the shore was
+      above a mile distant, the whole crew were landed in safety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every one had now his task assigned him. Some made all haste to unload the
+      ship, before she should go to pieces; some constructed wigwams of palmetto
+      leaves, and others ranged the island in quest of wood and water. To their
+      surprise and joy, they found it far different from the desolate and
+      frightful place they had been taught, by seamen&rsquo;s stories, to
+      expect. It was well-wooded and fertile; there were birds of various kinds,
+      and herds of swine roaming about, the progeny of a number that had swam
+      ashore, in former years, from a Spanish wreck. The island abounded with
+      turtle, and great quantities of their eggs were to be found among the
+      rocks. The bays and inlets were full of fish; so tame, that if any one
+      stepped into the water, they would throng around him. Sir George Somers,
+      in a little while, caught enough with hook and line to furnish a meal to
+      his whole ship&rsquo;s company. Some of them were so large, that two were
+      as much as a man could carry. Crawfish, also, were taken in abundance. The
+      air was soft and salubrious, and the sky beautifully serene. Waller, in
+      his &ldquo;Summer Islands,&rdquo; has given us a faithful picture of the
+      climate:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;For the kind spring, (which but salutes us here,)
+  Inhabits these, and courts them all the year:
+  Ripe fruits and blossoms on the same trees live;
+  At once they promise, and at once they give:
+  So sweet the air, so moderate the clime,
+  None sickly lives, or dies before his time.
+  Heaven sure has kept this spot of earth uncursed
+  To shew how all things were created first.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      We may imagine the feelings of the shipwrecked marines on finding
+      themselves cast by stormy seas upon so happy a coast; where abundance was
+      to be had without labor; where what in other climes constituted the costly
+      luxuries of the rich, were within every man&rsquo;s reach; and where life
+      promised to be a mere holiday. Many of the common sailors, especially,
+      declared they desired no better lot than to pass the rest of their lives
+      on this favored island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The commanders, however, were not so ready to console themselves with mere
+      physical comforts, for the severance from the enjoyment of cultivated
+      life, and all the objects of honorable ambition. Despairing of the arrival
+      of any chance ship on these shunned and dreaded islands, they fitted out
+      the long-boat, making a deck of the ship&rsquo;s hatches, and having
+      manned her with eight picked men, despatched her, under the command of an
+      able and hardy mariner, named Raven, to proceed to Virginia, and procure
+      shipping to be sent to their relief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While waiting in anxious idleness for the arrival of the looked-for aid,
+      dissensions arose between Sir George Somers and Sir Thomas Gates,
+      originating, very probably, in jealousy of the lead which the nautical
+      experience and professional station of the admiral gave him in the present
+      emergency. Each commander, of course, had his adherents: these dissensions
+      ripened into a complete schism; and this handful of shipwrecked men, thus
+      thrown together, on an uninhabited island, separated into two parties, and
+      lived asunder in bitter feud, as men rendered fickle by prosperity instead
+      of being brought into brotherhood by a common calamity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Weeks and months elapsed, without bringing the looked-for aid from
+      Virginia, though that colony was within but a few days&rsquo; sail. Fears
+      were now entertained that the long-boat had been either swallowed up in
+      the sea, or wrecked on some savage coast; one or other of which most
+      probably was the case, as nothing was ever heard of Raven and his
+      comrades.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Each party now set to work to build a vessel for itself out of the cedar
+      with which the island abounded. The wreck of the Sea-Vulture furnished
+      rigging, and various other articles; but they had no iron for bolts, and
+      other fastenings; and for want of pitch and tar, they payed the seams of
+      their vessels with lime and turtle&rsquo;s oil, which soon dried, and
+      became as hard as stone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the tenth of May, 1610, they set sail, having been about nine months on
+      the island. They reached Virginia without farther accident, but found the
+      colony in great distress for provisions. The account they gave of the
+      abundance that reigned in the Bermudas, and especially of the herds of
+      swine that roamed the island, determined Lord Delaware, the governor of
+      Virginia, to send thither for supplies. Sir George Somers, with his wonted
+      promptness and generosity, offered to undertake what was still considered
+      a dangerous voyage. Accordingly, on the nineteenth of June, he set sail,
+      in his own cedar vessel of thirty tons, accompanied by another small
+      vessel, commanded by Captain Argall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gallant Somers was doomed again to be tempest-tossed. His companion
+      vessel was soon driven back to port, but he kept the sea; and, as usual,
+      remained at his post on deck, in all weathers. His voyage was long and
+      boisterous, and the fatigues and exposures which he underwent, were too
+      much for a frame impaired by age, and by previous hardships. He arrived at
+      Bermudas completely exhausted and broken down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His nephew, Captain Mathew Somers, attended him in his illness with
+      affectionate assiduity. Finding his end approaching, the veteran called
+      his men together, and exhorted them to be true to the interests of
+      Virginia; to procure provisions with all possible despatch, and hasten
+      back to the relief of the colony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With this dying charge, he gave up the ghost, leaving us nephew and crew
+      overwhelmed with grief and consternation. Their first thought was to pay
+      honor to his remains. Opening the body, they took out the heart and
+      entrails, and buried them, erecting a cross over the grave. They then
+      embalmed the body, and set sail with it for England; thus, while paying
+      empty honors to their deceased commander, neglecting his earnest wish and
+      dying injunction, that they should return with relief to Virginia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little bark arrived safely at Whitechurch, in Dorsetshire, with its
+      melancholy freight. The body of the worthy Somers was interred with the
+      military honors due to a brave soldier, and many volleys were fired over
+      his grave. The Bermudas have since received the name of the Somer Islands,
+      as a tribute to his memory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The accounts given by Captain Mathew Somers and his crew of the delightful
+      climate, and the great beauty, fertility, and abundance of these islands,
+      excited the zeal of enthusiasts, and the cupidity of speculators, and a
+      plan was set on foot to colonize them. The Virginia company sold their
+      right to the islands to one hundred and twenty of their own members, who
+      erected themselves into a distinct corporation, under the name of the
+      &ldquo;Somer Island Society;&rdquo; and Mr. Richard More was sent out, in
+      1612, as governor, with sixty men, to found a colony: and this leads me to
+      the second branch of this research.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0019" id="link2H_4_0019"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      <i>THE THREE KINGS OF BERMUDA</i>.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      AND THEIR TREASURE OF AMBERGRIS.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      At the time that Sir George Somers was preparing to launch his cedar-built
+      bark, and sail for Virginia, there were three culprits among his men, who
+      had been guilty of capital offences. One of them was shot; the others,
+      named Christopher Carter and Edward Waters, escaped. Waters, indeed, made
+      a very narrow escape, for he had actually been tied to a tree to be
+      executed, but cut the rope with a knife, which he had concealed about his
+      person, and fled to the woods, where he was joined by Carter. These two
+      worthies kept themselves concealed in the secret parts of the island,
+      until the departure of the two vessels. When Sir George Somers revisited
+      the island, in quest of supplies for the Virginia colony, these culprits
+      hovered about the landing-place, and succeeded in persuading another
+      seaman, named Edward Chard, to join them, giving him the most seductive
+      pictures of the ease and abundance in which they revelled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the bark that bore Sir George&rsquo;s body to England had faded from
+      the watery horizon, these three vagabonds walked forth in their majesty
+      and might, the lords and sole inhabitants of these islands. For a time
+      their little commonwealth went on prosperously and happily. They built a
+      house, sowed corn, and the seeds of various fruits; and having plenty of
+      hogs, wild fowl, and fish of all kinds, with turtle in abundance, carried
+      on their tripartite sovereignty with great harmony and much feasting. All
+      kingdoms, however, are doomed to revolution, convulsion, or decay; and so
+      it fared with the empire of the three kings of Bermuda, albeit they were
+      monarchs without subjects. In an evil hour, in their search after turtle,
+      among the fissures of the rocks, they came upon a great treasure of
+      ambergris, which had been cast on shore by the ocean. Beside a number of
+      pieces of smaller dimensions, there was one great mass, the largest that
+      had ever been known, weighing eighty pounds, and which of itself,
+      according to the market value of ambergris in those days, was worth about
+      nine or ten thousand pounds!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From that moment, the happiness and harmony of the three kings of Bermuda
+      were gone for ever. While poor devils, with nothing to share but the
+      common blessings of the island, which administered to present enjoyment,
+      but had nothing of convertible value, they were loving and united: but
+      here was actual wealth, which would make them rich men, whenever they
+      could transport it to a market.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Adieu the delights of the island! They now became flat and insipid. Each
+      pictured to himself the consequence he might now aspire to, in civilized
+      life, could he once get there with this mass of ambergris. No longer a
+      poor Jack Tar, frolicking in the low taveriis of Wapping, he might roll
+      through London in his coach, and perchance arrive, like Whittington, at
+      the dignity of Lord Mayor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With riches came envy and covetousness. Each was now for assuming the
+      supreme power, and getting the monopoly of the ambergris. A civil war at
+      length broke out: Chard and Waters defied each other to mortal combat, and
+      the kingdom of the Bermudas was on the point of being deluged with royal
+      blood. Fortunately, Carter took no part in the bloody feud. Ambition might
+      have made him view it with secret exultation; for if either or both of his
+      brother potentates were slain in the conflict, he would be a gainer in
+      purse and ambergris. But he dreaded to be left alone in this uninhabited
+      island, and to find himself the monarch of a solitude: so he secretly
+      purloined and hid the weapons of the belligerent rivals, who, having no
+      means of carrying on the war, gradually cooled down into a sullen
+      armistice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The arrival of Governor More, with an overpowering force of sixty men, put
+      an end to the empire. He took possession of the kingdom, in the name of
+      the Somer Island Company, and forthwith proceeded to make a settlement.
+      The three kings tacitly relinquished their sway, but stood up stoutly for
+      their treasure. It was determined, however, that they had been fitted out
+      at the expense, and employed in the service, of the Virginia Company; that
+      they had found the ambergis while in the service of that company, and on
+      that company&rsquo;s land; that the ambergis, therefore, belonged to that
+      company, or rather to the Somer Island Company, in consequence of their
+      recent purchase of the island, and all their appurtenances. Having thus
+      legally established their right, and being moreover able to back it by
+      might, the company laid the lion&rsquo;s paw upon the spoil; and nothing
+      more remains on historic record of the Three Kings of Bermuda, and their
+      treasure of ambergris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reader will now determine whether I am more extravagant than most of
+      the commentators on Shakspeare, in my surmise that the story of Sir George
+      Somers&rsquo; shipwreck, and the subsequent occurrences that took place on
+      the uninhabited island, may have furnished the bard with some of the
+      elements of his drama of the Tempest. The tidings of the shipwreck, and of
+      the incidents connected with it, reached England not long before the
+      production of this drama, and made a great sensation there. A narrative of
+      the whole matter, from which most of the foregoing particulars are
+      extracted, was published at the time in London, in a pamphlet form, and
+      could not fail to be eagerly perused by Shakspeare, and to make a vivid
+      impression on his fancy. His expression, in the Tempest, of &ldquo;the
+      still vext Bermoothes,&rdquo; accords exactly with the storm-beaten
+      character of those islands. The enchantments, too, with which he has
+      clothed the island of Prospero, may they not be traced to the wild and
+      superstitious notions entertained about the Bermudas? I have already cited
+      two passages from a pamphlet published at the time, showing that they were
+      esteemed &ldquo;a most <i>prodigious</i> and <i>inchanted</i> place,&rdquo;
+      and the &ldquo;habitation of divells;&rdquo; and another pamphlet,
+      published shortly afterward, observes: &ldquo;And whereas it is reported
+      that this land of the Barmudas, with the islands about, (which are many,
+      at least a hundred,) are inchanted and kept with evil and wicked spirits,
+      it is a most idle and false report.&rdquo; [Footnote: &ldquo;Newes from
+      the Barmudas;&rdquo; 1612.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The description, too, given in the same pamphlets, of the real beauty and
+      fertility of the Bermudas, and of their serene and happy climate, so
+      opposite to the dangerous and inhospitable character with which they had
+      been stigmatized, accords with the eulogium of Sebastian on the island of
+      Prospero:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Though this island seem to be desert, uninhabitable, and almost
+      inaccessible, it must needs be of subtle, tender, and delicate temperance.
+      The air breathes upon us here most sweetly. Here is every thing
+      advantageous to life. How lush and lusty the grass looks! how green!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I think too, in the exulting consciousness of ease, security, and
+      abundance felt by the late tempest-tossed mariners, while revelling in the
+      plenteousness of the island, and their inclination to remain there,
+      released from the labors, the cares, and the artificial restraints of
+      civilized life, I can see something of the golden commonwealth of honest
+      Gonzalo:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;Had I plantation of this isle, my lord,
+  And were the king of it, what would I do?
+  I&rsquo; the commonwealth I would by contraries
+  Execute all things: for no kind of traffic
+  Would I admit; no name of magistrate;
+  Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,
+  And use of service, none; contract, succession,
+  Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none:
+  No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil:
+  No occupation; all men idle, all.
+
+  All things in common, nature should produce,
+  Without sweat or endeavor: Treason, felony,
+  Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine,
+  Would I not have; but nature should bring forth,
+  Of its own kind, all foizon, all abundance,
+  To feed my innocent people.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+But above all, in the three fugitive vagabonds who remained in
+possession of the island of Bermuda, on the departure of their comrades,
+and in their squabbles about supremacy, on the finding of their
+treasure, I see typified Sebastian, Trinculo, and their worthy companion
+Caliban:
+
+  &ldquo;Trinculo, the king and all our company being drowned,
+we will inherit here.&rdquo;
+
+  &ldquo;Monster, I will kill this man; his daughter and I will be king and
+queen, (save our graces!) and Trinculo and thyself shall be viceroys.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      I do not mean to hold up the incidents and characters in the narrative and
+      in the play as parallel, or as being strikingly similar: neither would I
+      insinuate that the narrative suggested the play; I would only suppose that
+      Shakspeare, being occupied about that time on the drama of the Tempest,
+      the main story of which, I believe, is of Italian origin, had many of the
+      fanciful ideas of it suggested to his mind by the shipwreck of Sir George
+      Somers on the &ldquo;still vext Bermothes,&rdquo; and by the popular
+      superstitions connected with these islands, and suddenly put in
+      circulation by that event.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0020" id="link2H_4_0020"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PELAYO AND THE MERCHANT&rsquo;S DAUGHTER.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      By The Author Of The Sketch-Book.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It is the common lamentation of Spanish historiographers, that, for an
+      obscure and melancholy space of time immediately succeeding the conquest
+      of their country by the Moslems, its history is a mere wilderness of
+      dubious facts, groundless fables, and rash exaggerations. Learned men, in
+      cells and cloisters, have worn out their lives in vainly endeavoring to
+      connect incongruous events, and to account for startling improbabilities,
+      recorded of this period. The worthy Jesuit, Padre Abarca, declares that,
+      for more than forty years during which he had been employed in theological
+      controversies, he had never found any so obscure and inexplicable as those
+      which rise out of this portion of Spanish history, and that the only fruit
+      of an indefatigable, prolix, and even prodigious study of the subject, was
+      a melancholy and mortifying state of indecision. [Footnote: PADRE PEDRO
+      ABARCA. Anales de Aragon, Anti Regno, F2.] During this apocryphal period,
+      flourished PELAYO, the deliverer of Spain, whose name, like that of
+      William Wallace, will ever be linked with the glory of his country, but
+      linked, in like manner, by a bond in which fact and fiction are
+      inextricably interwoven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The quaint old chronicle of the Moor Rasis, which, though wild and
+      fanciful in the extreme, is frequently drawn upon for early facts by
+      Spanish historians, professes to give the birth, parentage, and whole
+      course of fortune of Pelayo, without the least doubt or hesitation. It
+      makes him a son of the Duke of Cantabria, and descended, both by father
+      and mother&rsquo;s side, from the Gothic kings of Spain. I shall pass over
+      the romantic story of his childhood, and shall content myself with a scene
+      of his youth, which was spent in a castle among the Pyrenees, under the
+      eye of his widowed and noble-minded mother, who caused him to be
+      instructed in everything befitting a cavalier of gentle birth. While the
+      sons of the nobility were revelling amid the pleasures of a licentious
+      court, and sunk in that vicious and effeminate indulgence which led to the
+      perdition of unhappy Spain, the youthful Pelayo, in his rugged mountain
+      school, was steeled to all kinds of hardy exercise. A great part of his
+      time was spent in hunting the bears, the wild boars, and the wolves, with
+      which the Pyrenees abounded; and so purely and chastely was he brought up,
+      by his good lady mother, that, if the ancient chronicle from which I draw
+      my facts may be relied on, he had attained his one-and-twentieth year,
+      without having once sighed for woman!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor were his hardy contests confined to the wild beasts of the forest.
+      Occasionally he had to contend with adversaries of a more formidable
+      character. The skirts and defiles of these border mountains were often
+      infested by marauders from the Gallic plains of Gascony. The Gascons, says
+      an old chronicler, were a people who used smooth words when expedient, but
+      force when they had power, and were ready to lay their hands on every
+      thing they met. Though poor, they were proud; for there was not one who
+      did not pride himself on being a hijo-dalgo, or the son of somebody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the head of a band of these needy hijodalgos of Gascony, was one
+      Arnaud, a broken-down cavalier. He and four of his followers were well
+      armed and mounted; the rest were a set of scamper-grounds on foot,
+      furnished with darts and javelins. They were the terror of the border;
+      here to-day and gone to-morrow; sometimes in one pass, sometimes in
+      another. They would make sudden inroads into Spain, scour the roads,
+      plunder the country, and were over the mountains and far away before a
+      force could be collected to pursue them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now it happened one day, that a wealthy burgher of Bordeaux, who was a
+      merchant, trading with Biscay, set out on a journey for that province. As
+      he intended to sojourn there for a season, he took with him his wife, who
+      was a goodly dame, and his daughter, a gentle damsel, of marriageable age,
+      and exceeding fair to look upon. He was attended by a trusty clerk from
+      his comptoir, and a man servant; while another servant led a hackney,
+      laden with bags of money, with which he intended to purchase merchandise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the Gascons heard of this wealthy merchant and his convoy passing
+      through the mountains, they thanked their stars, for they considered all
+      peaceful men of traffic as lawful spoil, sent by providence for the
+      benefit of hidalgos like themselves, of valor and gentle blood, who lived
+      by the sword. Placing themselves in ambush, in a lonely defile, by which
+      the travellers had to pass, they silently awaited their coming. In a
+      little while they beheld them approaching. The merchant was a fair, portly
+      man, in a buff surcoat and velvet cap. His looks bespoke the good cheer of
+      his native city, and he was mounted on a stately, well-fed steed, while
+      his wife and daughter paced gently on palfreys by his side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The travellers had advanced some distance in the defile, when the
+      Bandoleros rushed forth and assailed them. The merchant, though but little
+      used to the exercise of arms, and unwieldy in his form, yet made valiant
+      defence, having his wife and daughter and money-bags at hazard. He was
+      wounded in two places, and overpowered; one of his servants was slain, the
+      other took to flight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The freebooters then began to ransack for spoil, but were disappointed at
+      not finding the wealth they had expected. Putting their swords to the
+      breast of the trembling merchant, they demanded where he had concealed his
+      treasure, and learned from him of the hackney that was following, laden
+      with, money. Overjoyed at this intelligence, they bound their captives to
+      trees, and awaited the arrival of the golden spoil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On this same day, Pelayo was out with his huntsmen among the mountains,
+      and had taken his stand on a rock, at a narrow pass, to await the sallying
+      forth of a wild boar. Close by him was a page, conducting a horse, and at
+      the saddle-bow hung his armor, for he was always prepared for fight among
+      these border mountains. While thus posted, the servant of the merchant
+      came flying from the robbers. On beholding Pelayo, he fell on his knees,
+      and implored his life, for he supposed him to be one of the band. It was
+      some time before he could be relieved from his terror, and made to tell
+      his story. When Pelayo heard of the robbers, he concluded they were the
+      crew of Gascon hidalgos, upon the scamper. Taking his armor from the page,
+      he put on his helmet, slung his buckler round his neck, took lance in
+      hand, and mounting his steed, compelled the trembling servant to guide him
+      to the scene of action. At the same time he ordered the page to seek his
+      huntsmen, and summon them to his assistance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the robbers saw Pelayo advancing through the forest, with a single
+      attendant on foot, and beheld his rich armor sparkling in the sun, they
+      thought a new prize had fallen into their hands, and Arnaud and two of his
+      companions, mounting their horses, advanced to meet him. As they
+      approached, Pelayo stationed himself in a narrow pass between two rocks,
+      where he could only be assailed in front, and bracing his buckler, and
+      lowering his lance, awaited their coming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who and what are ye,&rdquo; cried he, &ldquo;and what seek ye in
+      this land?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are huntsmen,&rdquo; replied Arnaud, &ldquo;and lo! our game
+      runs into our toils!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By my faith,&rdquo; replied Pelayo, &ldquo;thou wilt find the game
+      more readily roused than taken: have at thee for a villain!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So saying, he put spurs to his horse, and ran full speed upon him. The
+      Gascon, not expecting so sudden an attack from a single horseman, was
+      taken by surprise. He hastily couched his lance, but it merely glanced on
+      the shield of Pelayo, who sent his own through the middle of his breast,
+      and threw him out of his saddle to the earth. One of the other robbers
+      made at Pelayo, and wounded him slightly in the side, but received a blow
+      from the sword of the latter, which cleft his skull-cap, and sank into his
+      brain. His companion, seeing him fall, put spurs to his steed, and
+      galloped off through the forest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Beholding several other robbers on foot coming up, Pelayo returned to his
+      station between the rocks, where he was assailed by them all at once. He
+      received two of their darts on his buckler, a javelin razed his cuirass,
+      and glancing down, wounded his horse. Pelayo then rushed forth, and struck
+      one of the robbers dead: the others, beholding several huntsmen advancing,
+      took to flight, but were pursued, and several of them taken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The good merchant of Bordeaux and his family beheld this scene with
+      trembling and amazement, for never had they looked upon such feats of
+      arms. They considered Don Pelayo as a leader of some rival band of
+      robbers; and when the bonds were loosed by which they were tied to the
+      trees, they fell at his feet and implored mercy. The females were soonest
+      undeceived, especially the daughter; for the damsel was struck with the
+      noble countenance and gentle demeanor of Pelayo, and said to herself:
+      &ldquo;Surely nothing evil can dwell in so goodly and gracious a form.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pelayo now sounded his horn, which echoed from rock to rock, and was
+      answered by shouts and horns from various parts of the mountains. The
+      merchant&rsquo;s heart misgave him at these signals, and especially when
+      he beheld more than forty men gathering from glen and thicket. They were
+      clad in hunters&rsquo; dresses, and armed with boar-spears, darts, and
+      hunting-swords, and many of them led hounds in long leashes. All this was
+      a new and wild scene to the astonished merchant; nor were his fears
+      abated, when he saw his servant approaching with the hackney, laden with
+      money-bags; &ldquo;for of a certainty,&rdquo; said he to himself, &ldquo;this
+      will be too tempting a spoil for these wild hunters of the mountains.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pelayo, however, took no more notice of the gold than if it had been so
+      much dross; at which the honest burgher marvelled exceedingly. He ordered
+      that the wounds of the merchant should be dressed, and his own examined.
+      On taking off his cuirass, his wound was found to be but slight; but his
+      men were so exasperated at seeing his blood, that they would have put the
+      captive robbers to instant death, had he not forbidden them to do them any
+      harm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The huntsmen now made a great fire at the foot of a tree, and bringing a
+      boar which they had killed, cut off portions and roasted them, or broiled
+      them on the coals. Then drawing forth loaves of bread from their wallets,
+      they devoured their food half raw, with the hungry relish of huntsmen and
+      mountaineers. The merchant, his wife, and daughter, looked at all this,
+      and wondered, for they had never beheld so savage a repast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pelayo then inquired of them if they did not desire to eat; they were too
+      much in awe of him to decline, though they felt a loathing at the thought
+      of partaking of this hunter&rsquo;s fare; but he ordered a linen cloth to
+      be spread under the shade of a great oak, on the grassy margin of a clear
+      running stream; and to their astonishment, they were served, not with the
+      flesh of the boar, but with dainty cheer, such as the merchant had
+      scarcely hoped to find out of the walls of his native city of Bordeaux.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The good burgher was of a community renowned for gastronomic prowess: his
+      fears having subsided, his appetite was now awakened, and he addressed
+      himself manfully to the viands that were set before him. His daughter,
+      however, could not eat: her eyes were ever and anon stealing to gaze on
+      Pelayo, whom she regarded with gratitude for his protection, and
+      admiration for his valor; and now that he had laid aside his helmet, and
+      she beheld his lofty countenance, glowing with manly beauty, she thought
+      him something more than mortal. The heart of the gentle donzella, says the
+      ancient chronicler, was kind and yielding; and had Pelayo thought fit to
+      ask the greatest boon that love and beauty could bestow&mdash;doubtless
+      meaning her fair hand&mdash;she could not have had the cruelty to say him
+      nay. Pelayo, however, had no such thoughts: the love of woman had never
+      yet entered his heart; and though he regarded the damsel as the fairest
+      maiden he had ever beheld, her beauty caused no perturbation in his
+      breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the repast was over, Pelayo offered to conduct the merchant and his
+      family through the defiles of the mountains, lest they should be molested
+      by any of the scattered band of robbers. The bodies of the slain marauders
+      were buried, and the corpse of the servant was laid upon one of the horses
+      captured in the battle. Having formed their cavalcade, they pursued their
+      way slowly up one of the steep and winding passes of the Pyrenees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Toward sunset, they arrived at the dwelling of a holy hermit. It was hewn
+      out of the living rock; there was a cross over the door, and before it was
+      a great spreading oak, with a sweet spring of water at its foot. The body
+      of the faithful servant who had fallen in the defence of his lord, was
+      buried close by the wall of this sacred retreat, and the hermit promised
+      to perform masses for the repose of his soul. Then Pelayo obtained from
+      the holy father consent that the merchant&rsquo;s wife and daughter should
+      pass the night within his cell; and the hermit made beds of moss for them,
+      and gave them his benediction; but the damsel found little rest, so much
+      were her thoughts occupied by the youthful champion who had rescued her
+      from death or dishonor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pelayo, however, was visited by no such wandering of the mind; but,
+      wrapping himself in his mantle, slept soundly by the fountain under the
+      tree. At midnight, when every thing was buried in deep repose, he was
+      awakened from his sleep and beheld the hermit before him, with the beams
+      of the moon shining upon his silver hair and beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is no time,&rdquo; said the latter, &ldquo;to be sleeping;
+      arise and listen to my words, and hear of the great work for which thou
+      art chosen!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Pelayo arose and seated himself on a rock, and the hermit continued
+      his discourse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Behold,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;the ruin of Spain is at hand! It
+      will be delivered into the hands of strangers, and will become a prey to
+      the spoiler. Its children will be slain or carried into captivity; or such
+      as may escape these evils, will harbor with the beasts of the forest or
+      the eagles of the mountain. The thorn and bramble will spring up where now
+      are seen the cornfield, the vine, and the olive; and hungry wolves will
+      roam in place of peaceful flocks and herds. But thou, my son! tarry not
+      thou to see these things, for thou canst not prevent them. Depart on a
+      pilgrimage to the sepulchre of our blessed Lord in Palestine; purify
+      thyself by prayer; enroll thyself in the order of chivalry, and prepare
+      for the great work of the redemption of thy country; for to thee it will
+      be given to raise it from the depth of its affliction.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pelayo would have inquired farther into the evils thus foretold, but the
+      hermit rebuked his curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seek not to know more,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;than heaven is
+      pleased to reveal. Clouds and darkness cover its designs, and prophecy is
+      never permitted to lift up but in part the veil that rests upon the
+      future.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hermit ceased to speak, and Pelayo laid himself down again to take
+      repose, but sleep was a stranger to his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the first rays of the rising sun shone upon the tops of the
+      mountains, the travellers assembled round the fountain beneath the tree
+      and made their morning&rsquo;s repast. Then, having received the
+      benediction of the hermit, they departed in the freshness of the day, and
+      descended along the hollow defiles leading into the interior of Spain. The
+      good merchant was refreshed by sleep and by his morning&rsquo;s meal; and
+      when he beheld his wife and daughter thus secure by his side, and the
+      hackney laden with his treasure close behind him, his heart was light in
+      his bosom, and he carolled a chanson as he went, and the woodlands echoed
+      to his song. But Pelayo rode in silence, for he revolved in his mind the
+      portentous words of the hermit; and the daughter of the merchant ever and
+      anon stole looks at him full of tenderness and admiration, and deep sighs
+      betrayed the agitation of her bosom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length they came to the foot of the mountains, where the forests and
+      the rocks terminated, and an open and secure country lay before the
+      travellers. Here they halted, for their roads were widely different. When
+      they came to part, the merchant and his wife were loud in thanks and
+      benedictions, and the good burgher would fain have given Pelayo the
+      largest of his sacks of gold; but the young man put it aside with a smile.
+      &ldquo;Silver and gold,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;need I not, but if I have
+      deserved aught at thy hands, give me thy prayers, for the prayers of a
+      good man are above all price.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the mean time the daughter had spoken never a word. At length she
+      raised her eyes, which were filled with tears, and looked timidly at
+      Pelayo, and her bosom throbbed; and after a violent struggle between
+      strong affection and virgin modesty, her heart relieved itself by words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Senor,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;I know that I am unworthy of the
+      notice of so noble a cavalier; but suffer me to place this ring upon a
+      finger of that hand which has so bravely rescued us from death; and when
+      you regard it, you may consider it as a memorial of your own valor, and
+      not of one who is too humble to be remembered by you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With these words, she drew a ring from her finger and put it upon the
+      finger of Pelayo; and having done this, she blushed and trembled at her
+      own boldness, and stood as one abashed, with her eyes cast down upon the
+      earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pelayo was moved at the words of the simple maiden, and at the touch of
+      her fair hand, and at her beauty, as she stood thus trembling and in tears
+      before him; but as yet he knew nothing of woman, and his heart was free
+      from the snares of love. &ldquo;Amiga,&rdquo; (friend,) said he, &ldquo;I
+      accept thy present, and will wear it in remembrance of thy goodness;&rdquo;
+      so saying, he kissed her on the cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The damsel was cheered by these words, and hoped that she had awakened
+      some tenderness in his bosom; but it was no such thing, says the grave old
+      chronicler, for his heart was devoted to higher and more sacred matters;
+      yet certain it is, that he always guarded well that ring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they parted, Pelayo remained with his huntsmen on a cliff, watching
+      that no evil befell them, until they were far beyond the skirts of the
+      mountain; and the damsel often turned to look at him, until she could no
+      longer discern him, for the distance and the tears that dimmed her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And for that he had accepted her ring, says the ancient chronicler, she
+      considered herself wedded to him in her heart, and would never marry; nor
+      could she be brought to look with eyes of affection upon any other man;
+      but for the true love which she bore Pelayo, she lived and died a virgin.
+      And she composed a book which treated of love and chivalry, and the
+      temptations of this mortal life; and one part discoursed of celestial
+      matters, and it was called &ldquo;The Contemplations of Love;&rdquo;
+      because at the time she wrote it, she thought of Pelayo, and of his having
+      accepted her jewel and called her by the gentle appellation of &ldquo;Amiga.&rdquo;
+      And often thinking of him in tender sadness, and of her never having
+      beheld him more, she would take the book and would read it as if in his
+      stead; and while she repeated the words of love which it contained, she
+      would endeavor to fancy them uttered by Pelayo, and that he stood before
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0021" id="link2H_4_0021"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE KNIGHT OF MALTA.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      SIR: In the course of a tour which I made in Sicily, in the days of my
+      juvenility, I passed some little time at the ancient city of Catania, at
+      the foot of Mount Ætna. Here I became acquainted with the Chevalier L&mdash;&mdash;,
+      an old Knight of Malta. It was not many years after the time that Napoleon
+      had dislodged the knights from their island, and he still wore the
+      insignia of his order. He was not, however, one of those reliques of that
+      once chivalrous body, who had been described was &ldquo;a few worn-out old
+      men, creeping about certain parts of Europe, with the Maltese cross on
+      their breasts;&rdquo; on the contrary, though advanced in life, his form
+      was still light and vigorous; he had a pale, thin, intellectual visage,
+      with a high forehead, and a bright, visionary eye. He seemed to take a
+      fancy to me, as I certainly did to him, and we soon became intimate, I
+      visited him occasionally, at his apartments, in the wing of an old palace,
+      looking toward Mount Ætna. He was an antiquary, a virtuoso, and a
+      connoisseur. His rooms were decorated with mutilated statues, dug up from
+      Grecian and Roman ruins; old vases, lachrymals, and sepulchral lamps. He
+      had astronomical and chemical instruments, and black-letter books, in
+      various languages. I found that he had dipped a little in chimerical
+      studies and had a hankering after astrology and alchymy. He affected to
+      believe in dreams and visions, and delighted in the fanciful Rosicrucian
+      doctrines. I cannot persuade myself, however, that he really believed in
+      all these: I rather think he loved to let his imagination carry him away
+      into the boundless fairy land which they unfolded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In company with the chevalier, I took several excursions on horseback
+      about the environs of Catania, and the picturesque skirts of Mount Etna.
+      One of these led through a village, which had sprung up on the very tract
+      of an ancient eruption, the houses being built of lava. At one time we
+      passed, for some distance, along a narrow lane, between two high dead
+      convent walls. It was a cut-throat-looking place, in a country where
+      assassinations are frequent; and just about midway through it, we observed
+      blood upon the pavement and the walls, as if a murder had actually been
+      committed there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chevalier spurred on his horse, until he had extricated himself
+      completely from this suspicious neighborhood. He then observed, that it
+      reminded him of a similar blind alley in Malta, infamous on account of the
+      many assassinations that had taken place there; concerning one of which,
+      he related a long and tragical story, that lasted until we reached
+      Catania. It involved various circumstances of a wild and supernatural
+      character, but which he assured me were handed down in tradition, and
+      generally credited by the old inhabitants of Malta.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I like to pick up strange stories, and as I was particularly struck
+      with several parts of this, I made a minute of it, on my return to my
+      lodgings. The memorandum was lost, with several others of my travelling
+      papers, and the story had faded from my mind, when recently, in perusing a
+      French memoir, I came suddenly upon it, dressed up, it is true, in a very
+      different manner, but agreeing in the leading facts, and given upon the
+      word of that famous adventurer, the Count Cagliostro.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have amused myself, during a snowy day in the country, by rendering it
+      roughly into English, for the entertainment of a youthful circle round the
+      Christmas fire. It was well received by my auditors, who, however, are
+      rather easily pleased. One proof of its merits is that it sent some of the
+      youngest of them quaking to their beds, and gave them very fearful dreams.
+      Hoping that it may have the same effect upon your ghost-hunting readers, I
+      offer it, Mr. Editor, for insertion in your Magazine. I would observe,
+      that wherever I have modified the French version of the Story, it has been
+      in conformity to some recollection of the narrative of my friend, the
+      Knight of Malta.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Your obt. servt.,
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      GEOFFREY CRAYON.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0022" id="link2H_4_0022"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      <i>THE GRAND PRIOR OF MINORCA,</i>
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A VERITABLE GHOST STORY.
+    </h3>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;Keep my wits, heaven! They say spirits appear
+  To melancholy minds, and the graves open!&rdquo;&mdash;FLETCHER.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      About the middle of the last century, while the Knights of Saint John of
+      Jerusalem still maintained something of their ancient state and sway in
+      the Island of Malta, a tragical event took place there, which is the
+      groundwork of the following narrative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may be as well to premise, that at the time we are treating of, the
+      order of Saint John of Jerusalem, grown excessively wealthy, had
+      degenerated from its originally devout and warlike character. Instead of
+      being a hardy body of &ldquo;monk-knights,&rdquo; sworn soldiers of the
+      cross, fighting the Paynim in the Holy Land, or scouring the
+      Mediterranean, and scourging the Barbary coasts with their galleys, or
+      feeding the poor, and attending upon the sick at their hospitals, they led
+      a life of luxury and libertinism, and were to be found in the most
+      voluptuous courts of Europe. The order, in fact, had become a mode of
+      providing for the needy branches of the Catholic aristocracy of Europe.
+      &ldquo;A commandery,&rdquo; we are told, was a splendid provision for a
+      younger brother; and men of rank, however dissolute, provided they
+      belonged to the highest aristocracy, became Knights of Malta, just as they
+      did bishops, or colonels of regiments, or court chamberlains. After a
+      brief Residence at Malta, the knights passed the rest of their time in
+      their own countries, or only made a visit now and then to the island.
+      While there, having but little military duty to perform, they beguiled
+      their idleness by paying attentions to the fair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was one circle of society, however, into which they could not obtain
+      currency. This was composed of a few families of the old Maltese nobility,
+      natives of the island. These families, not being permitted to enroll any
+      of their members in the order, affected to hold no intercourse with its
+      chevaliers; admitting none into their exclusive coteries but the Grand
+      Master, whom they acknowledged as their sovereign, and the members of the
+      chapter which composed his council.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To indemnify themselves for this exclusion, the chevaliers carried their
+      gallantries into the next class of society, composed of those who held
+      civil, administrative, and judicial situations. The ladies of this class
+      were called <i>honorate</i>, or honorables, to distinguish them from the
+      inferior orders; and among them were many of superior grace, beauty, and
+      fascination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even in this more hospitable class, the chevaliers were not all equally
+      favored. Those of Germany had the decided preference, owing to their fair
+      and fresh complexions, and the kindliness of their manners: next to these
+      came the Spanish cavaliers, on account of their profound and courteous
+      devotion, and most discreet secrecy. Singular as it may seem, the
+      chevaliers of France fared the worst. The Maltese ladies dreaded their
+      volatility, and their proneness to boast of their amours, and shunned all
+      entanglement with them. They were forced, therefore, to content themselves
+      with conquests among females of the lower orders. They revenged
+      themselves, after the gay French manner, by making the &ldquo;honorate&rdquo;
+      the objects of all kinds of jests and mystifications; by prying into their
+      tender affairs with the more favored chevaliers, and making them the theme
+      of song and epigram.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About this time, a French vessel arrived at Malta, bringing out a
+      distinguished personage of the order of Saint John of Jerusalem, the
+      Commander de Foulquerre, who came to solicit the post of
+      commander-in-chief of the galleys. He was descended from an old and
+      warrior line of French nobility, his ancestors having long been seneschals
+      of Poitou, and claiming descent from the first counts of Angouleme.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The arrival of the commander caused a little uneasiness among the
+      peaceably inclined, for he bore the character, in the island, of being
+      fiery, arrogant, and quarrelsome. He had already been three times at
+      Malta, and on each visit had signalized himself by some rash and deadly
+      affray.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he was now thirty-five years of age, however, it was hoped that time
+      might have taken off the fiery edge of his spirit, and that he might prove
+      more quiet and sedate than formerly. The commander set up an establishment
+      befitting his rank and pretensions; for he arrogated to himself an
+      importance greater even than that of the Grand Master. His house
+      immediately became the rallying place of all the young French chevaliers.
+      They informed him of all the slights they had experienced or imagined, and
+      indulged their petulant and satirical vein at the expense of the honorate
+      and their admirers. The chevaliers of other nations soon found the topics
+      and tone of conversation at the commander&rsquo;s irksome and offensive,
+      and gradually ceased to visit there. The commander remained the head of a
+      national <i>clique</i>, who looked up to him as their model. If he was not
+      as boisterous and quarrelsome as formerly, he had become haughty and
+      overbearing. He was fond of talking over his past affairs of punctilio and
+      bloody duel. When walking the streets, he was generally attended by a
+      ruffling train of young French cavaliers, who caught his own air of
+      assumption and bravado. These he would conduct to the scenes of his deadly
+      encounters, point out the very spot where each fatal lunge had been given,
+      and dwell vaingloriously on every particular.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Under his tuition, the young French chevaliers began to add bluster and
+      arrogance to their former petulance and levity; they fired up on the most
+      trivial occasions, particularly with those who had been most successful
+      with the fair; and would put on the most intolerable drawcansir airs. The
+      other chevaliers conducted themselves with all possible forbearance and
+      reserve; but they saw it would be impossible to keep on long, in this
+      manner, without coming to an open rupture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among the Spanish cavaliers was one named Don Luis de Lima Vasconcellos.
+      He was distantly related to the Grand Master; and had been enrolled at an
+      early age among his pages, but had been rapidly promoted by him, until, at
+      the age of twenty-six, he had been given the richest Spanish commandery in
+      the order. He had, moreover, been fortunate with the fair, with one of
+      whom, the most beautiful honorata of Malta, he had long maintained the
+      most tender correspondence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The character, rank, and connexions of Don Luis put him on a par with the
+      imperious Commander de Foulquerre, and pointed him out as a leader and
+      champion to his countrymen. The Spanish chevaliers repaired to him,
+      therefore, in a body; represented all the grievances they had sustained,
+      and the evils they apprehended, and urged him to use his influence with
+      the commander and his adherents to put a stop to the growing abuses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Luis was gratified by this mark of confidence and esteem on the part
+      of his countrymen, and promised to have an interview with the Commander de
+      Foulquerre on the subject. He resolved to conduct himself with the utmost
+      caution and delicacy on the occasion; to represent to the commander the
+      evil consequences which might result from the inconsiderate conduct of the
+      young French chevaliers, and to entreat him to exert the great influence
+      he so deservedly possessed over them, to restrain their excesses. Don Luis
+      was aware, however, of the peril that attended any interview of the kind
+      with this imperious and fractious man, and apprehended, however it might
+      commence, that it would terminate in a duel. Still, it was an affair of
+      honor, in which Castilian dignity was concerned; beside, he had a lurking
+      disgust at the overbearing manners of De Foulquerre, and perhaps had been
+      somewhat offended by certain intrusive attentions which he had presumed to
+      pay to the beautiful honorata.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was now Holy Week; a time too sacred for worldly feuds and passions,
+      especially in a community under the dominion of a religious order; it was
+      agreed, therefore, that the dangerous interview in question should not
+      take place until after the Easter holidays. It is probable, from
+      subsequent circumstances, that the Commander de Foulquerre had some
+      information of this arrangement among the Spanish chevaliers, and was
+      determined to be beforehand, and to mortify the pride of their champion,
+      who was thus preparing to read him a lecture. He chose Good Friday for his
+      purpose. On this sacred day, it is customary in Catholic countries to make
+      a tour of all the churches, offering up prayers in each. In every Catholic
+      church, as is well known, there is a vessel of holy water near the door.
+      In this, every one, on entering, dips his fingers, and makes therewith the
+      sign of the cross on his forehead and breast. An office of gallantry,
+      among the young Spaniards, is to stand near the door, dip their hands in
+      the holy vessel, and extend them courteously and respectfully to any lady
+      of their acquaintance who may enter; who thus receives the sacred water at
+      second hand, on the tips of her fingers, and proceeds to cross herself,
+      with all due decorum. The Spaniards, who are the most jealous of lovers,
+      are impatient when this piece of devotional gallantry is proffered to the
+      object of their affections by any other hand: on Good Friday, therefore,
+      when a lady makes a tour of the churches, it is the usage among them for
+      the inamorato to follow her from church to church, so as to present her
+      the holy water at the door of each; thus testifying his own devotion, and
+      at the same time preventing the officious services of a rival.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the day in question, Don Luis followed the beautiful honorata, to whom,
+      as has already been observed, he had long been devoted. At the very first
+      church she visited, the Commander de Foulquerre was stationed at the
+      portal, with several of the young French chevaliers about him. Before Don
+      Luis could offer her the holy water, he was anticipated by the commander,
+      who thrust himself between them, and, while he performed the gallant
+      office to the lady, rudely turned his back upon her admirer, and trod upon
+      his feet. The insult was enjoyed by the young Frenchmen who were present:
+      it was too deep and grave to be forgiven by Spanish pride; and at once put
+      an end to all Don Luis&rsquo; plans of caution and forbearance. He
+      repressed his passion for the moment, however, and waited until all the
+      parties left the church; then, accosting the commander with an air of
+      coolness and unconcern, he inquired after his health, and asked to what
+      church he proposed making his second visit. &ldquo;To the Magisterial
+      Church of Saint John.&rdquo; Don Luis offered to conduct him thither, by
+      the shortest route. His offer was accepted, apparently without suspicion,
+      and they proceeded together. After walking some distance, they entered a
+      long, narrow lane, without door or window opening upon it, called the
+      &ldquo;Strada Stretta,&rdquo; or narrow street. It was a street in which
+      duels were tacitly permitted, or connived at, in Malta, and were suffered
+      to pass as accidental encounters. Every where else they were prohibited.
+      This restriction had been instituted to diminish the number of duels,
+      formerly so frequent in Malta. As a farther precaution to render these
+      encounters less fatal, it was an offence, punishable with death, for any
+      one to enter this street armed with either poniard or pistol. It was a
+      lonely, dismal street, just wide enough for two men to stand upon their
+      guard, and cross their swords; few persons ever traversed it, unless with
+      some sinister design; and on any preconcerted duello, the seconds posted
+      themselves at each end, to stop all passengers, and prevent interruption.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the present instance, the parties had scarce entered the street, when
+      Don Luis drew his sword, and called upon the commander to defend himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      De Foulquerre was evidently taken by surprise: he drew back, and attempted
+      to expostulate; but Don Luis persisted in defying him to the combat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a second or two, he likewise drew his sword, but immediately lowered
+      the point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good Friday!&rdquo; ejaculated he, shaking his head: &ldquo;one
+      word with you; it is full six years since I have been in a confessional: I
+      am shocked at the state of my conscience; but within three days&mdash;that
+      is to say, on Monday next&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don Luis would listen to nothing. Though naturally of a peaceable
+      disposition, he had been stung to fury, and people of that character, when
+      once incensed, are deaf to reason. He compelled the commander to put
+      himself on his guard. The latter, though a man accustomed to brawl in
+      battle, was singularly dismayed. Terror was visible in all his features.
+      He placed himself with his back to the wall, and the weapons were crossed.
+      The contest was brief and fatal. At the very first thrust, the sword of
+      Don Luis passed through the body of his antagonist. The commander
+      staggered to the wall, and leaned against it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On Good Friday!&rdquo; ejaculated he again, with a failing voice,
+      and despairing accents. &ldquo;Heaven pardon you!&rdquo; added he; &ldquo;take
+      my sword to Têtefoulques, and have a hundred masses performed in the
+      chapel of the castle, for the repose of my soul!&rdquo; With these words
+      he expired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fury of Don Luis was at an end. He stood aghast, gazing at the
+      bleeding body of the commander. He called to mind the prayer of the
+      deceased for three days&rsquo; respite, to make his peace with heaven; he
+      had refused it; had sent him to the grave, with all his sins upon his
+      head! His conscience smote him to the core; he gathered up the sword of
+      the commander, which he had been enjoined to take to Têtefoulques, and
+      hurried from the fatal Strada Stretta.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The duel of course made a great noise in Malta, but had no injurious
+      effect upon the worldly fortunes of Don Luis. He made a full declaration
+      of the whole matter, before the proper authorities; the Chapter of the
+      Order considered it one of those casual encounters of the Strada Stretta,
+      which were mourned over, but tolerated; the public, by whom the late
+      commander had been generally detested, declared that he had deserved his
+      fate. It was but three days after the event, that Don Luis was advanced to
+      one of the highest dignities of the Order, being invested by the Grand
+      Master with the priorship of the kingdom of Minorca.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From that time forward, however, the whole character and conduct of Don
+      Luis underwent a change. He became a prey to a dark melancholy, which
+      nothing could assuage. The most austere piety, the severest penances, had
+      no effect in allaying the horror which preyed upon his mind. He was absent
+      for a long time from Malta; having gone, it was said, on remote
+      pilgrimages: when he returned, he was more haggard than ever. There seemed
+      something mysterious and inexplicable in this disorder of his mind. The
+      following is the revelation made by himself, of the horrible visions, or
+      chimeras, by which he was haunted:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I had made my declaration before the Chapter,&rdquo; said he,
+      &ldquo;and my provocations were publicly known, I had made my peace with
+      man; but it was not so with God, nor with my confessor, nor with my own
+      conscience. My act was doubly criminal, from the day on which it was
+      committed, and from my refusal to a delay of three days, for the victim of
+      my resentment to receive the sacraments. His despairing ejaculation,
+      &lsquo;Good Friday! Good Friday!&rsquo; continually rang in my ears.
+      &lsquo;Why did I not grant the respite!&rsquo; cried I to myself; &lsquo;was
+      it not enough to kill the body, but must I seek to kill the soul!&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the night of the following Friday, I started suddenly from my
+      sleep. An unaccountable horror was upon me. I looked wildly around. It
+      seemed as if I were not in my apartment, nor in my bed, but in the fatal
+      Strada Stretta, lying on the pavement. I again saw the commander leaning
+      against the wall; I again heard his dying words: &lsquo;Take my sword to
+      Têtefoulques, and have a hundred masses performed in the chapel of the
+      castle, for the repose of my soul!&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the following night, I caused one of my servants to sleep in the
+      same room with me. I saw and heard nothing, either on that night, or any
+      of the nights following, until the next Friday; when I had again the same
+      vision, with this difference, that my valet seemed to be lying at some
+      distance from me on the pavement of the Strada Stretta. The vision
+      continued to be repeated on every Friday night, the commander always
+      appearing in the same manner, and uttering the same words: &lsquo;Take my
+      sword to Têtefoulques, and have a hundred masses performed in the chapel
+      of the castle for the repose of my soul!&rsquo; On questioning my servant
+      on the subject, he stated, that on these occasions he dreamed that he was
+      lying in a very narrow street, but he neither saw nor heard any thing of
+      the commander.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew nothing of this Têtefoulques, whither the defunct was so
+      urgent I should carry his sword. I made inquiries, therefore, concerning
+      it among the French chevaliers. They informed me that it was an old
+      castle, situated about four leagues from Poitiers, in the midst of a
+      forest. It had been built in old times, several centuries since, by
+      Foulques Taillefer, (or Fulke Hackiron,) a redoubtable, hard-fighting
+      Count of Angouleme, who gave it to an illegitimate son, afterward created
+      Grand Seneschal of Poitou, which son became the pro genitor of the
+      Foulquerres of Têtefoulques, hereditary Seneschals of Poitou. They farther
+      informed me, that strange stories were told of this old castle, in the
+      surrounding country, and that it contained many curious reliques. Among
+      these, were the arms of Foulques Taillefer, together with all those of the
+      warriors he had slain; and that it was an immemorial usage with the
+      Foulquerres to have the weapons deposited there which they had wielded
+      either in war or in single combat. This, then, was the reason of the dying
+      injunction of the commander respecting his sword. I carried this weapon
+      with me, wherever I went, but still I neglected to comply with his
+      request.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The visions still continued to harass me with undiminished horror.
+      I repaired to Rome, where I confessed myself to the Grand Cardinal
+      penitentiary, and informed him of the terrors with which I was haunted. He
+      promised me absolution, after I should have performed certain acts of
+      penance, the principal of which was, to execute the dying request of the
+      commander, by carrying the sword to Têtefoulques, and having the hundred
+      masses performed in the chapel of the castle for the repose of his soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I set out for France as speedily as possible, and made no delay in
+      my journey. On arriving at Poitiers, I found that the tidings of the death
+      of the commander had reached there, but had caused no more affliction than
+      among the people of Malta. Leaving my equipage in the town, I put on the
+      garb of a pilgrim, and taking a guide, set out on foot for Têtefoulques,
+      Indeed the roads in this part of the country were impracticable for
+      carriages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I found the castle of Têtefoulques a grand but gloomy and
+      dilapidated pile. All the gates were closed, and there reigned over the
+      whole place an air of almost savage loneliness and desertion. I had
+      understood that its only inhabitant were the concierge, or warder, and a
+      kind of hermit who had charge of the chapel. After ringing for some time
+      at the gate, I at length succeeded in bringing forth the warder, who bowed
+      with reverence to my pilgrim&rsquo;s garb. I begged him to conduct me to
+      the chapel, that being the end of my pilgrimage. We found the hermit
+      there, chanting the funeral service; a dismal sound to one who came to
+      perform a penance for the death of a member of the family. When he had
+      ceased to chant, I informed him that I came to accomplish an obligation of
+      conscience, and that I wished him to perform a hundred masses for the
+      repose of the soul of the commander. He replied that, not being in orders,
+      he was not authorized to perform mass, but that he would willingly
+      undertake to see that my debt of conscience was discharged. I laid my
+      offering on the altar, and would have placed the sword of the commander
+      there, likewise. &lsquo;Hold!&rsquo; said the hermit, with a melancholy
+      shake of the head,'this is no place for so deadly a weapon, that has so
+      often been bathed in Christian blood. Take it to the armory; you will find
+      there trophies enough of like character. It is a place into which I never
+      enter.&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The warder here took up the theme abandoned by the peaceful man of
+      God. He assured me that I would see in the armory the swords of all the
+      warrior race of Foulquerres, together with those of the enemies over whom
+      they had triumphed. This, he observed, had been a usage kept up since the
+      time of Mellusine, and of her husband, Geoffrey a la Grand-dent, or
+      Geoffrey with the Great-tooth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I followed the gossiping warder to the armory. It was a great dusty
+      hall, hung round with Gothic-looking portraits, of a stark line of
+      warriors, each with his weapon, and the weapons of those he had slain in
+      battle, hung beside his picture. The most conspicuous portrait was that of
+      Foulques Taillefer, (Fulke Hackiron,) Count of Angouleme, and founder of
+      the castle. He was represented at full-length, armed cap-a-pie, and
+      grasping a huge buckler, on which were emblazoned three lions passant. The
+      figure was so striking, that it seemed ready to start from the canvas: and
+      I observed beneath this picture, a trophy composed of many weapons, proofs
+      of the numerous triumphs of this hard-fighting old cavalier. Beside the
+      weapons connected with the portraits, there were swords of all shapes,
+      sizes, and centuries, hung round the hall; with piles of armor, placed as
+      it were in effigy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On each side of an immense chimney, were suspended the portraits of
+      the first seneschal of Poitou (the illegitimate son of Foulques Taillefer)
+      and his wife Isabella de Lusignan; the progenitors of the grim race of
+      Foulquerres that frowned around. They had the look of being perfect
+      likenesses; and as I gazed on them, I fancied I could trace in their
+      antiquated features some family resemblance to their unfortunate
+      descendant, whom I had slain! This was a dismal neighborhood, yet the
+      armory was the only part of the castle that had a habitable air; so I
+      asked the warder whether he could not make a fire, and give me something
+      for supper there, and prepare me a bed in one corner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;A fire and a supper you shall have, and that cheerfully,
+      most worthy pilgrim,&rsquo; said he; &lsquo;but as to a bed, I advise you
+      to come and sleep in my chamber.&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Why so?&rsquo; inquired I; &lsquo;why shall I not sleep in
+      this hall?&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;I have my reasons; I will make a bed for you close to mine.&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I made no objections, for I recollected that it was Friday, and I
+      dreaded the return of my vision. He brought in billets of wood, kindled a
+      fire in the great overhanging chimney, and then went forth to prepare my
+      supper. I drew a heavy chair before the fire, and seating myself in it,
+      gazed muzingly round upon the portraits of the Foulquerres, and the
+      antiquated armor and weapons, the mementos of many a bloody deed. As the
+      day declined, the smoky draperies of the hall gradually became confounded
+      with the dark ground of the paintings, and the lurid gleams from the
+      chimney only enabled me to see visages staring at me from the gathering
+      darkness. All this was dismal in the extreme, and somewhat appalling;
+      perhaps it was the state of my conscience that rendered me peculiarly
+      sensitive, and prone to fearful imaginings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At length the warder brought in my supper. It consisted of a dish
+      of trout, and some crawfish taken in the fosse of the castle. He procured
+      also a bottle of wine, which he informed me was wine of Poitou. I
+      requested him to invite the hermit to join me in my repast; but the holy
+      man sent back word that he allowed himself nothing but roots and herbs,
+      cooked with water. I took my meal, therefore, alone, but prolonged it as
+      much as possible, and sought to cheer my drooping spirits by the wine of
+      Poitou, which I found very tolerable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When supper was over, I prepared for my evening devotions. I have
+      always been very punctual in reciting my breviary; it is the prescribed
+      and bounden duty of all chevaliers of the religious orders; and I can
+      answer for it, is faithfully performed by those of Spain. I accordingly
+      drew forth from my pocket a small missal and a rosary, and told the warder
+      he need only designate to me the way to his chamber, where I could come
+      and rejoin him, when I had finished my prayers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He accordingly pointed out a winding stair-case, opening from the
+      hall. ‘You will descend this stair-case,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;until you
+      come to the fourth landing-place, where you enter a vaulted passage,
+      terminated by an arcade, with a statue of the blessed Jeanne of France;
+      you cannot help finding my room, the door of which I will leave open; it
+      is the sixth door from the landing-place. I advise you not to remain in
+      this hall after midnight. Before that hour, you will hear the hermit ring
+      the bell, in going the rounds of the corridors. Do not linger here after
+      that signal.&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The warder retired, and I commenced my devotions. I continued at
+      them earnestly; pausing from time to time to put wood upon the fire. I did
+      not dare to look much around me, for I felt myself becoming a prey to
+      fearful fancies. The pictures appeared to become animated. If I regarded
+      one attentively, for any length of time, it seemed to move the eyes and
+      lips. Above all, the portraits of the Grand Seneschal and his lady, which
+      hung on each side of the great chimney, the progenitors of the Foulquerres
+      of Têtefoulque, regarded me, I thought, with angry and baleful eyes: I
+      even fancied they exchanged significant glances with each other. Just then
+      a terrible blast of wind shook all the casements, and, rushing through the
+      hall, made a fearful rattling and clashing among the armor. To my startled
+      fancy, it seemed something supernatural.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At length I heard the bell of the hermit, and hastened to quit the
+      hall. Taking a solitary light, which stood on the supper-table, I
+      descended the winding stair-case; but before I had reached the vaulted
+      passage leading to the statue of the blessed Jeanne of France, a blast of
+      wind extinguished my taper. I hastily remounted the stairs, to light it
+      again at the chimney; but judge of my feelings, when, on arriving at the
+      entrance to the armory, I beheld the Seneschal and his lady, who had
+      descended from their frames, and seated themselves on each side of the
+      fire-place! &ldquo;&lsquo;Madam, my love,&rsquo; said the Seneschal, with
+      great formality, and in antiquated phrase, &lsquo;what think you of the
+      presumption of this Castilian, who comes to harbor himself and make
+      wassail in this our castle, after having slain our descendant, the
+      commander, and that without granting him time for confession?&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Truly, my lord,&rsquo; answered the female spectre, with no
+      less stateliness of manner, and with great asperity of tone; &lsquo;truly,
+      my lord, I opine that this Castilian did a grievous wrong in this
+      encounter; and he should never be suffered to depart hence, without your
+      throwing him the gauntlet.&rsquo; I paused to hear no more, but rushed
+      again down-stairs, to seek the chamber of the warder. It was impossible to
+      find it in the darkness, and in the perturbation of my mind. After an hour
+      and a half of fruitless search, and mortal horror and anxieties, I
+      endeavored to persuade myself that the day was about to break, and
+      listened impatiently for the crowing of the cock; for I thought if I could
+      hear his cheerful note, I should be reassured; catching, in the disordered
+      state of my nerves, at the popular notion that ghosts never appear after
+      the first crowing of the cock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At length I rallied myself, and endeavored to shake off the vague
+      terrors which haunted me. I tried to persuade myself that the two figures
+      which I had seemed to see and hear, had existed only in my troubled
+      imagination. I still had the end of the candle in my hand, and determined
+      to make another effort to re-light it, and find my way to bed; for I was
+      ready to sink with fatigue. I accordingly sprang up the stair-case, three
+      steps at a time, stopped at the door of the armory, and peeped cautiously
+      in. The two Gothic figures were no longer in the chimney corners, but I
+      neglected to notice whether they had reascended to their frames. I
+      entered, and made desperately for the fire-place, but scarce had I
+      advanced three strides, when Messire Foolques Taillefer stood before me,
+      in the centre of the hall, armed cap-à-pie, and standing in guard, with
+      the point of his sword silently presented to me. I would have retreated to
+      the stair-case, but the door of it was occupied by the phantom figure of
+      an esquire, who rudely flung a gauntlet in my face. Driven to fury, I
+      snatched down a sword from the wall: by chance, it was that of the
+      commander which I had placed there. I rushed upon my fantastic adversary,
+      and seemed to pierce him through and through; but at the same time I felt
+      as if something pierced my heart, burning like a red-hot iron. My blood
+      inundated the hall, and I fell senseless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I recovered consciousness, it was broad day, and I found
+      myself in a small chamber, attended by the warder and the hermit. The
+      former told me that on the previous night, he had awakened long after the
+      midnight hour, and perceiving that I had not come to his chamber, he had
+      furnished himself with a vase of holy water, and set out to seek me. He
+      found me stretched senseless on the pavement of the armory, and bore me to
+      this room. I spoke of my wound, and of the quantity of blood that I had
+      lost. He shook his head, and knew nothing about it; and to my surprise, on
+      examination, I found myself perfectly sound and unharmed. The wound and
+      blood, therefore, had been all delusion. Neither the warder nor the hermit
+      put any questions to me, but advised me to leave the castle as soon as
+      possible. I lost no time in complying with their counsel, and felt my
+      heart relieved from an oppressive weight, as I left the gloomy and
+      fate-bound battlements of Têtefoulques behind me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I arrived at Bayonne, on my way to Spain, on the following Friday.
+      At midnight I was startled from my sleep, as I had formerly been; but it
+      was no longer by the vision of the dying commander. It was old Foulques
+      Taillefer who stood before me, armed cap-à-pie, and presenting the point
+      of his sword. I made the sign of the cross, and the spectre vanished, but
+      I received the same red-hot thrust in the heart which I had felt in the
+      armory, and I seemed to be bathed in blood. I would have called out, or
+      have arisen from my bed and gone in quest of succor, but I could neither
+      speak nor stir. This agony endured until the crowing of the cock, when I
+      fell asleep again; but the next day I was ill, and in a most pitiable
+      state. I have continued to be harassed by the same vision every Friday
+      night; no acts of penitence and devotion have been able to relieve me from
+      it; and it is only a lingering hope in divine mercy, that sustains me, and
+      enables me to support so lamentable a visitation.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Grand Prior of Minorca wasted gradually away under this constant
+      remorse of conscience, and this horrible incubus. He died some time after
+      having revealed the preceding particulars of his case, evidently the
+      victim of a diseased imagination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The above relation has been rendered, in many parts literally, from the
+      French memoir, in which it is given as a true story: if so, it is one of
+      those instances in which truth is more romantic than fiction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0023" id="link2H_4_0023"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      LEGEND OF THE ENGULPHED CONVENT.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      At the dark and melancholy period when Don Roderick the Goth and his
+      chivalry were overthrown on the banks of the Guadalete, and all Spain was
+      overrun by the Moors, great was the devastation of churches and convents
+      throughout that pious kingdom. The miraculous fate of one of those holy
+      piles is thus recorded in one of the authentic legends of those days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the summit of a hill, not very distant from the capital city of Toledo,
+      stood an ancient convent and chapel, dedicated to the invocation of Saint
+      Benedict, and inhabited by a sisterhood of Benedictine nuns. This holy
+      asylum was confined to females of noble lineage. The younger sisters of
+      the highest families were here given in religious marriage to their
+      Saviour, in order that the portions of their elder sisters might be
+      increased, and they enabled to make suitable matches on earth, or that the
+      family wealth might go undivided to elder brothers, and the dignity of
+      their ancient houses be protected from decay. The convent was renowned,
+      therefore, for enshrining within its walls a sisterhood of the purest
+      blood, the most immaculate virtue, and most resplendent beauty, of all
+      Gothic Spain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the Moors overran the kingdom, there was nothing that more excited
+      their hostility than these virgin asylums. The very sight of a
+      convent-spire was sufficient to set their Moslem blood in a foment, and
+      they sacked it with as fierce a zeal as though the sacking of a nunnery
+      were a sure passport to Elysium.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tidings of such outrages committed in various parts of the kingdom reached
+      this noble sanctuary and filled it with dismay. The danger came nearer and
+      nearer; the infidel hosts were spreading all over the country; Toledo
+      itself was captured; there was no flying from the convent, and no security
+      within its walls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the midst of this agitation, the alarm was given one day that a great
+      band of Saracens were spurring across the plain. In an instant the whole
+      convent was a scene of confusion. Some of the nuns wrung their fair hands
+      at the windows; others waved their veils and uttered shrieks from the tops
+      of the towers, vainly hoping to draw relief from a country over-run by the
+      foe. The sight of these innocent doves thus fluttering about their
+      dove-cote, but increased the zealot fury of the whiskered Moors. They
+      thundered at the portal, and at every blow the ponderous gates trembled on
+      their hinges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The nuns now crowded round the abbess. They had been accustomed to look up
+      to her as all-powerful, and they now implored her protection. The mother
+      abbess looked with a rueful eye upon the treasures of beauty and vestal
+      virtue exposed to such imminent peril. Alas! how was she to protect them
+      from the spoiler! She had, it is true, experienced many signal
+      inter-positions of providence in her individual favor. Her early days had
+      been passed amid the temptations of a court, where her virtue had been
+      purified by repeated trials, from none of which had she escaped but by a
+      miracle. But were miracles never to cease? Could she hope that the
+      marvelous protection shown to herself would be extended to a whole
+      sisterhood? There was no other resource. The Moors were at the threshold;
+      a few moments more and the convent would be at their mercy. Summoning her
+      nuns to follow her, she hurried into the chapel; and throwing herself on
+      her knees before the image of the blessed Mary, &ldquo;Oh, holy Lady!&rdquo;
+      exclaimed she, &ldquo;oh, most pure and immaculate of virgins! thou seest
+      our extremity. The ravager is at the gate, and there is none on earth to
+      help us! Look down with pity, and grant that the earth may gape and
+      swallow us rather than that our cloister vows should suffer violation!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Moors redoubled their assault upon the portal; the gates gave way,
+      with a tremendous crash; a savage yell of exultation arose; when of a
+      sudden the earth yawned; down sank the convent, with its cloisters, its
+      dormitories, and all its nuns. The chapel tower was the last that sank,
+      the bell ringing forth a peal of triumph in the very teeth of the
+      infidels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Forty years had passed and gone, since the period of this miracle. The
+      subjugation of Spain was complete. The Moors lorded it over city and
+      country; and such of the Christian population as remained, and were
+      permitted to exercise their religion, did it in humble resignation to the
+      Moslem sway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this time, a Christian cavalier, of Cordova, hearing that a patriotic
+      band of his countrymen had raised the standard of the cross in the
+      mountains of the Asturias, resolved to join them, and unite in breaking
+      the yoke of bondage. Secretly arming himself, and caparisoning his steed,
+      he set forth from Cordova, and pursued his course by unfrequented
+      mule-paths, and along the dry channels made by winter torrents. His spirit
+      burned with indignation, whenever, on commanding a view over a long
+      sweeping plain, he beheld the mosque swelling in the distance, and the
+      Arab horsemen careering about, as if the rightful lords of the soil. Many
+      a deep-drawn sigh, and heavy groan, also, did the good cavalier utter, on
+      passing the ruins of churches and convents desolated by the conquerors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was on a sultry midsummer evening, that this wandering cavalier, in
+      skirting a hill thickly covered with forest, heard the faint tones of a
+      vesper bell sounding melodiously in the air, and seeming to come from the
+      summit of the hill. The cavalier crossed himself with wonder, at this
+      unwonted and Christian sound. He supposed it to proceed from one of those
+      humble chapels and hermitages permitted to exist through the indulgence of
+      the Moslem conquerors. Turning his steed up a narrow path of the forest,
+      he sought this sanctuary, in hopes of finding a hospitable shelter for the
+      night. As he advanced, the trees threw a deep gloom around him, and the
+      bat flitted across his path. The bell ceased to toll, and all was silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently a choir of female voices came stealing sweetly through the
+      forest, chanting the evening service, to the solemn accompaniment of an
+      organ. The heart of the good cavalier melted at the sound, for it recalled
+      the happier days of his country. Urging forward his weary steed, he at
+      length arrived at a broad grassy area, on the summit of the hill,
+      surrounded by the forest. Here the melodious voices rose in full chorus,
+      like the swelling of the breeze; but whence they came, he could not tell.
+      Sometimes they were before, sometimes behind him; sometimes in the air,
+      sometimes as if from within the bosom of the earth. At length they died
+      away, and a holy stillness settled on the place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cavalier gazed around with bewildered eye. There was neither chapel
+      nor convent, nor humble hermitage, to be seen; nothing but a moss-grown
+      stone pinnacle, rising out of the centre of the area, surmounted by a
+      cross. The greensward around appeared to have been sacred from the tread
+      of man or beast, and the surrounding trees bent toward the cross, as if in
+      adoration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cavalier felt a sensation of holy awe. He alighted and tethered his
+      steed on the skirts of the forest, where he might crop the tender herbage;
+      then approaching the cross, he knelt and poured forth his evening prayers
+      before this relique of the Christian days of Spain. His orisons being
+      concluded, he laid himself down at the foot of the pinnacle, and reclining
+      his head against one of its stones, fell into a deep sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About midnight, he was awakened by the tolling of a bell, and found
+      himself lying before the gate of an ancient convent. A train of nuns
+      passed by, each bearing a taper. The cavalier rose and followed them into
+      the chapel; in the centre of which was a bier, on which lay the corpse of
+      an aged nun. The organ performed a solemn requiem: the nuns joining in
+      chorus. When the funeral service was finished, a melodious voice chanted,
+      &ldquo;<i>Requiescat in pace!</i>&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;May she rest in
+      peace!&rdquo; The lights immediately vanished; the whole passed away as a
+      dream; and the cavalier found himself at the foot of the cross, and
+      beheld, by the faint rays of the rising moon, his steed quietly grazing
+      near him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the day dawned, the cavalier descended the hill, and following the
+      course of a small brook, came to a cave, at the entrance of which was
+      seated an ancient man, clad in hermit&rsquo;s garb, with rosary and cross,
+      and a beard that descended to his girdle. He was one of those holy
+      anchorites permitted by the Moors to live unmolested in dens and caves,
+      and humble hermitages, and even to practise the rites of their religion.
+      The cavalier checked his horse, and dismounting, knelt and craved a
+      benediction. He then related all that had befallen him in the night, and
+      besought the hermit to explain the mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What thou hast heard and seen, my son,&rdquo; replied the other,
+      &ldquo;is but type and shadow of the woes of Spain.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He then related the foregoing story of the miraculous deliverance of the
+      convent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forty years,&rdquo; added the holy man, &ldquo;have elapsed since
+      this event, yet the bells of that sacred edifice are still heard, from
+      time to time, sounding from under ground, together with the pealing of the
+      organ, and the chanting of the choir. The Moors avoid this neighborhood,
+      as haunted ground, and the whole place, as thou mayest perceive, has
+      become covered with a thick and lonely forest.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cavalier listened with wonder to the story of this engulphed convent,
+      as related by the holy man. For three days and nights did they keep vigils
+      beside the cross; but nothing more was to be seen of nun or convent. It is
+      supposed that, forty years having elapsed, the natural lives of all the
+      nuns were finished, and that the cavalier had beheld the obsequies of the
+      last of the sisterhood. Certain it is, that from that time, bell, and
+      organ, and choral chant have never more been heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mouldering pinnacle, surmounted by the cross, still remains an object
+      of pious pilgrimage. Some say that it anciently stood in front of the
+      convent, but others assert that it was the spire of the sacred edifice,
+      and that, when the main body of the building sank, this remained above
+      ground, like the top-mast of some tall ship that has foundered. These
+      pious believers maintain, that the convent is miraculously preserved
+      entire in the centre of the mountain, where, if proper excavations were
+      made, it would be found, with all its treasures, and monuments, and
+      shrines, and reliques, and the tombs of its virgin nuns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Should any one doubt the truth of this marvelous interposition of the
+      Virgin, to protect the vestal purity of her votaries, let him read the
+      excellent work entitled &ldquo;España Triumphante,&rdquo; written by Padre
+      Fray Antonio de Sancta Maria, a bare-foot friar of the Carmelite order,
+      and he will doubt no longer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0024" id="link2H_4_0024"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE COUNT VAN HORN.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      During the minority of Louis XV., while the Duke of Orleans was Regent of
+      France, a young Flemish nobleman, the Count Antoine Joseph Van Horn, made
+      his sudden appearance in Paris, and by his character, conduct, and the
+      subsequent disasters in which he became involved, created a great
+      sensation in the high circles of the proud aristocracy. He was about
+      twenty-two years of age, tall, finely formed, with a pale, romantic
+      countenance, and eyes of remarkable brilliancy and wildness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was of one of the most ancient and highly-esteemed families of European
+      nobility, being of the line of the Princes of Horn and Overique, sovereign
+      Counts of Hautekerke, and hereditary Grand Veneurs of the empire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The family took its name from the little town and seigneurie of Horn, in
+      Brabant; and was known as early as the eleventh century among the little
+      dynasties of the Netherlands, and since that time by a long line of
+      illustrious generations. At the peace of Utrecht, when the Netherlands
+      passed under subjection to Austria, the house of Van Horn came under the
+      domination of the emperor. At the time we treat of, two of the branches of
+      this ancient house were extinct; the third and only surviving branch was
+      represented by the reigning prince, Maximilian Emanuel Van Horn,
+      twenty-four years of age, who resided in honorable and courtly style on
+      his hereditary domains at Baussigny, in the Netherlands, and his brother,
+      the Count Antoine Joseph, who is the subject of this memoir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ancient house of Van Horn, by the intermarriage of its various
+      branches with the noble families of the continent, had become widely
+      connected and interwoven with the high aristocracy of Europe. The Count
+      Antoine, therefore, could claim relationship to many of the proudest names
+      in Paris. In fact, he was grandson, by the mother&rsquo;s side, of the
+      Prince de Ligne, and even might boast of affinity to the Regent (the Duke
+      of Orleans) himself. There were circumstances, however, connected with his
+      sudden appearance in Paris, and his previous story, that placed him in
+      what is termed &ldquo;a false position;&rdquo; a word of baleful
+      significance in the fashionable vocabulary of France.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young count had been a captain in the service of Austria, but had been
+      cashiered for irregular conduct, and for disrespect to Prince Louis of
+      Baden, commander-in-chief. To check him in his wild career, and bring him
+      to sober reflection, his brother the prince caused him to be arrested and
+      sent to the old castle of Van Wert, in the domains of Horn. This was the
+      same castle in which, in former times, John Van Horn, Stadtholder of
+      Gueldres, had imprisoned his father; a circumstance which has furnished
+      Rembrandt with the subject of an admirable painting. The governor of the
+      castle was one Van Wert, grandson of the famous John Van Wert, the hero of
+      many a popular song and legend. It was the intention of the prince that
+      his brother should be held in honorable durance, for his object was to
+      sober and improve, not to punish and afflict him. Van Wert, however, was a
+      stern, harsh man of violent passions. He treated the youth in a manner
+      that prisoners and offenders were treated in the strong-holds of the
+      robber counts of Germany in old times; confined him in a dungeon and
+      inflicted on him such hardships and indignities that the irritable
+      temperament of the young count was roused to continual fury, which ended
+      in insanity. For six months was the unfortunate youth kept in this
+      horrible state, without his brother the prince being informed of his
+      melancholy condition or of the cruel treatment to which he was subjected.
+      At length, one day, in a paroxysm of frenzy, the count knocked down two of
+      his gaolers with a beetle, escaped from the castle of Van Wert, and eluded
+      all pursuit; and after roving about in a state of distraction, made his
+      way to Baussigny and appeared like a sceptre before his brother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince was shocked at his wretched, emaciated appearance and his
+      lamentable state of mental alienation. He received him with the most
+      compassionate tenderness; lodged him in his own room, appointed three
+      servants to attend and watch over him day and night, and endeavored by the
+      most soothing and affectionate assiduity to atone for the past act of
+      rigor with which he reproached himself. When he learned, however, the
+      manner in which his unfortunate brother had been treated in confinement,
+      and the course of brutalities that had led to his mental malady, he was
+      roused to indignation. His first step was to cashier Van Wert from his
+      command. That violent man set the prince at defiance, and attempted to
+      maintain himself in his government and his castle by instigating the
+      peasants, for several leagues round, to revolt. His insurrection might
+      have been formidable against the power of a petty prince; but he was put
+      under the ban of the empire and seized as a state prisoner. The memory of
+      his grandfather, the oft-sung John Van Wert, alone saved him from a
+      gibbet; but he was imprisoned in the strong tower of Horn-op-Zee. There he
+      remained until he was eighty-two years of age, savage, violent, and
+      unconquered to the last; for we are told that he never ceased fighting and
+      thumping as long as he could close a fist or wield a cudgel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the mean time a course of kind and gentle treatment and wholesome
+      regimen, and, above all, the tender and affectionate assiduity of his
+      brother, the prince, produced the most salutary effects upon Count
+      Antoine. He gradually recovered his reason; but a degree of violence
+      seemed always lurking at the bottom of his character, and he required to
+      be treated with the greatest caution and mildness, for the least
+      contradiction exasperated him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this state of mental convalescence, he began to find the supervision
+      and restraints of brotherly affection insupportable; so he left the
+      Netherlands furtively, and repaired to Paris, whither, in fact, it is said
+      he was called by motives of interest, to make arrangements concerning a
+      valuable estate which he inherited from his relative, the Princess d&rsquo;Epinay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On his arrival in Paris, he called upon the Marquis of Créqui, and other
+      of the high nobility with whom he was connected. He was received with
+      great courtesy; but, as he brought no letters from his elder brother, the
+      prince, and as various circumstances of his previous history had
+      transpired, they did not receive him into their families, nor introduce
+      him to their ladies. Still they fêted him in bachelor style, gave him gay
+      and elegant suppers at their separate apartments, and took him to their
+      boxes at the theatres. He was often noticed, too, at the doors of the most
+      fashionable churches, taking his stand among the young men of fashion; and
+      at such times, his tall, elegant figure, his pale but handsome
+      countenance, and his flashing eyes, distinguished him from among the
+      crowd; and the ladies declared that it was almost impossible to support
+      his ardent gaze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Count did not afflict himself much at his limited circulation in the
+      fastidious circles of the high aristocracy. He relished society of a
+      wilder and less ceremonious cast; and meeting with loose companions to his
+      taste, soon ran into all the excesses of the capital, in that most
+      licentious period. It is said that, in the course of his wild career, he
+      had an intrigue with a lady of quality, a favorite of the Regent; that he
+      was surprised by that prince in one of his interviews; that sharp words
+      passed between them; and that the jealousy and vengeance thus awakened,
+      ended only with his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About this time, the famous Mississippi scheme of Law was at its height,
+      or rather it began to threaten that disastrous catastrophe which convulsed
+      the whole financial world. Every effort was making to keep the bubble
+      inflated. The vagrant population of France was swept off from the streets
+      at night, and conveyed to Havre de Grace, to be shipped to the projected
+      colonies; even laboring people and mechanics were thus crimped and
+      spirited away. As Count Antoine was in the habit of sallying forth at
+      night, in disguise, in pursuit of his pleasures, he came near being
+      carried off by a gang of crimps; it seemed, in fact, as if they had been
+      lying in wait for him, as he had experienced very rough treatment at their
+      hands. Complaint was made of his case by his relation, the Marquis de
+      Créqui, who took much interest in the youth; but the Marquis received
+      mysterious intimations not to interfere in the matter, but to advise the
+      Count to quit Paris immediately; &ldquo;If he lingers, he is lost!&rdquo;
+      This has been cited as a proof that vengeance was dogging at the heels of
+      the unfortunate youth, and only watching for an opportunity to destroy
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such opportunity occurred but too soon. Among the loose companions with
+      whom the Count had become intimate, were two who lodged in the same hotel
+      with him. One was a youth only twenty years of age, who passed himself off
+      as the Chevalier d&rsquo;Etampes, but whose real name was Lestang, the
+      prodigal son of a Flemish banker. The other, named Laurent de Mille, a
+      Piedmontese, was a cashiered captain, and at the time an esquire in the
+      service of the dissolute Princess de Carignan, who kept gambling-tables in
+      her palace. It is probable that gambling propensities had driven these
+      young men together, and that their losses had brought them to desperate
+      measures: certain it is, that all Paris was suddenly astounded by a murder
+      which they were said to have committed. What made the crime more
+      startling, was, that it seemed connected with the great Mississippi
+      scheme, at that time the fruitful source of all kinds of panics and
+      agitations. A Jew, a stock-broker, who dealt largely in shares of the bank
+      of Law, founded on the Mississippi scheme, was the victim. The story of
+      his death is variously related. The darkest account states, that the Jew
+      was decoyed by these young men into an obscure tavern, under pretext of
+      negotiating with him for bank shares to the amount of one hundred thousand
+      crowns, which he had with him in his pocket-book. Lestang kept watch upon
+      the stairs. The Count and De Mille entered with the Jew into a chamber. In
+      a little while there were heard cries and struggles from within. A waiter
+      passing by the room, looked in, and seeing the Jew weltering in his blood,
+      shut the door again, double-locked it, and alarmed the house. Lestang
+      rushed downstairs, made his way to the hotel, secured his most portable
+      effects, and fled the country. The Count and De Mille endeavored to escape
+      by the window, but were both taken, and conducted to prison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A circumstance which occurs in this part of the Count&rsquo;s story, seems
+      to point him out as a fated man. His mother, and his brother, the Prince
+      Van Horn, had received intelligence some time before at Baussigny, of the
+      dissolute life the Count was leading at Paris, and of his losses at play.
+      They despatched a gentleman of the prince&rsquo;s household to Paris, to
+      pay the debts of the Count, and persuade him to return to Flanders; or, if
+      he should refuse, to obtain an order from the Regent for him to quit the
+      capital. Unfortunately the gentleman did not arrive at Paris until the day
+      after the murder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The news of the Count&rsquo;s arrest and imprisonment on a charge of
+      murder, caused a violent sensation among the high aristocracy. All those
+      connected with him, who had treated him hitherto with indifference, found
+      their dignity deeply involved in the question of his guilt or innocence. A
+      general convocation was held at the hotel of the Marquis de Créqui, of all
+      the relatives and allies of the house of Horn. It was an assemblage of the
+      most proud and aristocratic personages of Paris. Inquiries were made into
+      the circumstances of the affair. It was ascertained, beyond a doubt, that
+      the Jew was dead, and that he had been killed by several stabs of a
+      poniard. In escaping by the window, it was said that the Count had fallen,
+      and been immediately taken; but that De Mille had fled through the
+      streets, pursued by the populace, and had been arrested at some distance
+      from the scene of the murder; that the Count had declared himself innocent
+      of the death of the Jew, and that he had risked his own life in
+      endeavoring to protect him; but that De Mille, on being brought back to
+      the tavern, confessed to a plot to murder the broker, and rob him of his
+      pocket-book, and inculpated the Count in the crime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another version of the story was, that the Count Van Horn had deposited
+      with the broker, bank shares to the amount of eighty-eight thousand
+      livres; that he had sought him in this tavern, which was one of his
+      resorts, and had demanded the shares; that the Jew had denied the deposit;
+      that a quarrel had ensued, in the course of which the Jew struck the Count
+      in the face; that the latter, transported with rage, had snatched up a
+      knife from a table, and wounded the Jew in the shoulder; and that
+      thereupon De Mille, who was present, and who had likewise been defrauded
+      by the broker, fell on him, and despatched him with blows of a poniard,
+      and seized upon his pocket-book; that he had offered to divide the
+      contents of the latter with the Count, <i>pro rata</i>, of what the usurer
+      had defrauded them; that the latter had refused the proposition with
+      disdain, and that, at a noise of persons approaching, both had attempted
+      to escape from the premises, but had been taken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Regard the story in any way they might, appearances were terribly against
+      the Count, and the noble assemblage was in great consternation. What was
+      to be done to ward off so foul a disgrace and to save their illustrious
+      escutcheons from this murderous stain of blood? Their first attempt was to
+      prevent the affair from going to trial, and their relative from being
+      dragged before a criminal tribunal, on so horrible and degrading a charge.
+      They applied, therefore, to the Regent, to intervene his power; to treat
+      the Count as having acted under an access of his mental malady; and to
+      shut him up in a madhouse. The Regent was deaf to their solicitations. He
+      replied, coldly, that if the Count was a madman, one could not get rid too
+      quickly of madmen who were furious in their insanity. The crime was too
+      public and atrocious to be hushed up or slurred over; justice must take
+      its course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seeing there was no avoiding the humiliating scene of a public trial, the
+      noble relatives of the Count endeavored to predispose the minds of the
+      magistrates before whom he was to be arraigned. They accordingly made
+      urgent and eloquent representations of the high descent, and noble and
+      powerful connexions of the Count; set forth the circumstances of his early
+      history; his mental malady; the nervous irritability to which he was
+      subject, and his extreme sensitiveness to insult or contradiction. By
+      these means they sought to prepare the judges to interpret every thing in
+      favor of the Count, and, even if it should prove that he had inflicted the
+      mortal blow on the usurer, to attribute it to access of insanity, provoked
+      by insult.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To give full effect to these representations, the noble conclave
+      determined to bring upon the judges the dazzling rays of the whole
+      assembled aristocracy. Accordingly, on the day that the trial took place,
+      the relations of the Count, to the number of fifty-seven persons, of both
+      sexes, and of the highest rank, repaired in a body to the Palace of
+      Justice, and took their stations in a long corridor which led to the
+      court-room. Here, as the judges entered, they had to pass in review this
+      array of lofty and noble personages, who saluted them mournfully and
+      significantly, as they passed. Any one conversant with the stately pride
+      and jealous dignity of the French noblesse of that day, may imagine the
+      extreme state of sensitiveness that produced this self-abasement. It was
+      confidently presumed, however, by the noble suppliants, that having once
+      brought themselves to this measure, their influence over the tribunal
+      would be irresistible. There was one lady present, however, Madame de
+      Beauffremont, who was affected with the Scottish gift of second sight, and
+      related such dismal and sinister apparitions as passing before her eyes,
+      that many of her female companions were filled with doleful presentiments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unfortunately for the Count, there was another interest at work, more
+      powerful even than the high aristocracy. The all-potent Abbé Dubois, the
+      grand favorite and bosom counsellor of the Regent, was deeply interested
+      in the scheme of Law, and the prosperity of his bank, and of course in the
+      security of the stock-brokers. Indeed, the Regent himself is said to have
+      dipped deep in the Mississippi scheme. Dubois and Law, therefore, exerted
+      their influence to the utmost to have the tragic affair pushed to the
+      extremity of the law, and the murder of the broker punished in the most
+      signal and appalling manner. Certain it is, the trial was neither long nor
+      intricate. The Count and his fellow prisoner were equally inculpated in
+      the crime; and both were condemned to a death the most horrible and
+      ignominious&mdash;to be broken alive on the wheel!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as the sentence of the court was made public, all the nobility, in
+      any degree related to the house of Van Horn, went into mourning. Another
+      grand aristocratical assemblage was held, and a petition to the Regent, on
+      behalf of the Count, was drawn out and left with the Marquis de Créqui for
+      signature. This petition set forth the previous insanity of the Count, and
+      showed that it was a hereditary malady of his family. It stated various
+      circumstances in mitigation of his offence, and implored that his sentence
+      might be commuted to perpetual imprisonment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upward of fifty names of the highest nobility, beginning with the Prince
+      de Ligne, and including cardinals, archbishops, dukes, marquises, etc.,
+      together with ladies of equal rank, were signed to this petition. By one
+      of the caprices of human pride and vanity, it became an object of ambition
+      to get enrolled among the illustrious suppliants; a kind of testimonial of
+      noble blood, to prove relationship to a murderer! The Marquis de Créqui
+      was absolutely besieged by applicants to sign, and had to refer their
+      claims to this singular honor, to the Prince de Ligne, the grandfather of
+      the Count. Many who were excluded, were highly incensed, and numerous
+      feuds took place. Nay, the affronts thus given to the morbid pride of some
+      aristocratical families, passed from generation to generation; for, fifty
+      years afterward, the Duchess of Mazarin complained of a slight which her
+      father had received from the Marquis de Créqui; which proved to be
+      something connected with the signature of this petition. This important
+      document being completed, the illustrious body of petitioners, male and
+      female, on Saturday evening, the eve of Palm Sunday, repaired to the
+      Palais Royal, the residence of the Regent, and were ushered, with great
+      ceremony but profound silence, into his hall of council. They had
+      appointed four of their number as deputies, to present the petition, viz.:
+      the Cardinal de Rohan, the Duke de Havré, the Prince de Ligne, and the
+      Marquis de Créqui. After a little while, the deputies were summoned to the
+      cabinet of the Regent. They entered, leaving the assembled petitioners in
+      a state of the greatest anxiety. As time slowly wore away, and the evening
+      advanced, the gloom of the company increased. Several of the ladies prayed
+      devoutly; the good Princess of Armagnac told her beads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The petition was received by the Regent with a most unpropitious aspect.
+      &ldquo;In asking the pardon of the criminal,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;you
+      display more zeal for the house of Van Horn, than for the service of the
+      king.&rdquo; The noble deputies enforced the petition by every argument in
+      their power. They supplicated the Regent to consider that the infamous
+      punishment in question would reach not merely the person of the condemned,
+      not merely the house of Van Horn, but also the genealogies of princely and
+      illustrious families, in whose armorial bearings might be found
+      quarterings of this dishonored name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gentlemen,&rdquo; replied the Regent, &ldquo;it appears to me the
+      disgrace consists in the crime, rather than in the punishment.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Prince de Ligne spoke with warmth: &ldquo;I have in my genealogical
+      standard,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;four escutcheons of Van Horn, and of
+      course have four ancestors of that house. I must have them erased and
+      effaced, and there would be so many blank spaces, like holes, in my
+      heraldic ensigns. There is not a sovereign family which would not suffer,
+      through the rigor of your Royal Highness; nay, all the world knows, that
+      in the thirty-two quarterings of Madame, your mother, there is an
+      escutcheon of Van Horn.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; replied the Regent, &ldquo;I will share the
+      disgrace with you, gentlemen.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seeing that a pardon could not be obtained, the Cardinal de Rohan and the
+      Marquis de Créqui left the cabinet; but the Prince de Ligne and the Duke
+      de Havré remained behind. The honor of their houses, more than the life of
+      the unhappy Count, was the great object of their solicitude. They now
+      endeavored to obtain a minor grace. They represented that in the
+      Netherlands, and in Germany, there was an important difference in the
+      public mind as to the mode of inflicting the punishment of death upon
+      persons of quality. That decapitation had no influence on the fortunes of
+      the family of the executed, but that the punishment of the wheel was such
+      an infamy, that the uncles, aunts, brothers, and sisters of the criminal,
+      and his whole family, for three succeeding generations, were excluded from
+      all noble chapters, princely abbeys, sovereign bishoprics, and even
+      Teutonic commanderies of the Order of Malta. They showed how this would
+      operate immediately upon the fortunes of a sister of the Count, who was on
+      the point of being received as a canoness into one of the noble chapters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While this scene was going on in the cabinet of the Regent, the
+      illustrious assemblage of petitioners remained in the hall of council, in
+      the most gloomy state of suspense. The re-entrance from the cabinet of the
+      Cardinal de Rohan and the Marquis de Créqui, with pale, downcast
+      countenances, had struck a chill into every heart. Still they lingered
+      until near midnight, to learn the result of the after application. At
+      length the cabinet conference was at an end. The Regent came forth, and
+      saluted the high personages of the assemblage in a courtly manner. One old
+      lady of quality, Madame de Guyon, whom he had known in his infancy, he
+      kissed on the cheek, calling her his &ldquo;good aunt.&rdquo; He made a
+      most ceremonious salutation to the stately Marchioness de Créqui, telling
+      her he was charmed to see her at the Palais Royal; &ldquo;a compliment
+      very ill-timed,&rdquo; said the Marchioness, &ldquo;considering the
+      circumstance which brought me there.&rdquo; He then conducted the ladies
+      to the door of the second saloon, and there dismissed them, with the most
+      ceremonious politeness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The application of the Prince de Ligne and the Duke de Havré, for a change
+      of the mode of punishment, had, after much difficulty, been successful.
+      The Regent had promised solemnly to send a letter of commutation to the
+      attorney-general on Holy Monday, the 25th of March, at five o&rsquo;clock
+      in the morning. According to the same promise, a scaffold would be
+      arranged in the cloister of the Conciergerie, or prison, where the Count
+      would be beheaded on the same morning, immediately after having received
+      absolution. This mitigation of the form of punishment gave but little
+      consolation to the great body of petitioners, who had been anxious for the
+      pardon of the youth: it was looked upon as all-important, however, by the
+      Prince de Ligne, who, as has been before observed,&mdash;was exquisitely
+      alive to the dignity of his family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Bishop of Bayeux and the Marquis de Créqui visited the unfortunate
+      youth in prison. He had just received the communion in the chapel of the
+      Conciergerie, and was kneeling before the altar, listening to a mass for
+      the dead, which was performed at his request. He protested his innocence
+      of any intention to murder the Jew, but did not deign to allude to the
+      accusation of robbery. He made the bishop and the Marquis promise to see
+      his brother the prince, and inform him of this his dying asseveration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two other of his relations, the Prince Rebecq-Montmorency and the Marshal
+      Van Isenghien, visited him secretly, and offered him poison, as a means of
+      evading the disgrace of a public execution. On his refusing to take it,
+      they left him with high indignation. &ldquo;Miserable man!&rdquo; said
+      they, &ldquo;you are fit only to perish by the hand of the executioner!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquis de Créqui sought the executioner of Paris, to bespeak an easy
+      and decent death&mdash;for the unfortunate youth. &ldquo;Do not make him
+      suffer,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;uncover no part of him but the neck; and
+      have his body placed in a coffin, before you deliver it to his family.&rdquo;
+      The executioner promised all that was requested, but declined a rouleau of
+      a hundred louis-d&rsquo;ors which the Marquis would have put into his
+      hand. &ldquo;I am paid by the king for fulfilling my office,&rdquo; said
+      he; and added that he had already refused a like sum, offered by another
+      relation of the Marquis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquis de Créqui returned home in a state of deep affliction. There
+      he found a letter from the Duke de St. Simon, the familiar friend of the
+      Regent, repeating the promise of that prince, that the punishment of the
+      wheel should be commuted to decapitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Imagine,&rdquo; says the Marchioness de Créqui, who in her memoirs
+      gives a detailed account of this affair, &ldquo;imagine what we
+      experienced, and what was our astonishment, our grief, and indignation,
+      when, on Tuesday, the 26th of March, an hour after midday, word was
+      brought us that the Count Van Horn had been exposed on the wheel, in the
+      Place de Gréve, since half-past six in the morning, on the same scaffold
+      with the Piedmontese de Mille, and that he had been tortured previous to
+      execution!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One more scene of aristocratic pride closed this tragic story. The Marquis
+      de Créqui, on receiving this astounding news, immediately arrayed himself
+      in the uniform of a general officer, with his cordon of nobility on the
+      coat. He ordered six valets to attend him in grand livery, and two of his
+      carriages, each with six horses, to be brought forth. In this sumptuous
+      state, he set off for the Place de Gréve, where he had been preceded by
+      the Princes de Ligne, de Rohan, de Croüy, and the Duke de Havré.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Count Van Horn was already dead, and it was believed that the
+      executioner had had the charity to give him the coup de grace, or &ldquo;death-blow,&rdquo;
+      at eight o&rsquo;clock in the morning. At five o&rsquo;clock in the
+      evening, when the Judge Commissary left his post at the Hotel de Ville,
+      these noblemen, with their own hands, aided to detach the mutilated
+      remains of their relation; the Marquis de Crequi placed them in one of his
+      carriages, and bore them off to his hotel, to receive the last sad
+      obsequies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The conduct of the Regent in this affair excited general indignation. His
+      needless severity was attributed by some to vindictive jealousy; by others
+      to the persevering machinations of Law. The house of Van Horn, and the
+      high nobility of Flanders and Germany, considered themselves flagrantly
+      outraged: many schemes of vengeance were talked of, and a hatred
+      engendered against the Regent, that followed him through life, and was
+      wreaked with bitterness upon his memory after his death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The following letter is said to have been written to the Regent by the
+      Prince Van Horn, to whom the former had adjudged the confiscated effects
+      of the Count:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not complain, Sir, of the death of my brother, but I complain
+      that your Royal Highness has violated in his person the rights of the
+      kingdom, the nobility, and the nation. I thank you for the confiscation of
+      his effects; but I should think myself as much disgraced as he, should I
+      accept any favor at your hands. <i>I hope that God and the King may render
+      to you as strict justice as you have rendered to my unfortunate brother.</i>&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Wolfert&rsquo;s Roost and Miscellanies, by
+Washington Irving
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+Project Gutenberg's Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies, by Washington Irving
+#10 in our series by Washington Irving
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+Title: Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies
+
+Author: Washington Irving
+
+Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8571]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on July 24, 2003]
+[Date last updated: December 7, 2005]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOLFERT'S ROOST AND MISCELLANIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, David Widger
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+WOLFERT'S ROOST
+
+AND
+
+MISCELLANIES
+
+BY
+
+WASHINGTON IRVING
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+CHRONICLE OF WOLFERT'S ROOST
+
+SLEEPY HOLLOW
+
+BIRDS OF SPRING
+
+RECOLLECTIONS OF THE ALHAMBRA
+
+ABENCERRAGE
+
+ENCHANTED ISLAND
+
+ADELANTADO OF THE SEVEN CITIES
+
+NATIONAL NOMENCLATURE
+
+DESULTORY THOUGHTS ON CRITICISM
+
+SPANISH ROMANCE
+
+LEGEND OF DON MUIO SANCHO DE HINOJOSA
+
+COMMUNIPAW
+
+CONSPIRACY OF THE COCKED HATS
+
+LEGEND OF COMMUNIPAW
+
+BERMUDAS, THE
+
+PELAYO AND THE MERCHANT'S DAUGHTER
+
+KNIGHT OF MALTA
+
+LEGEND OF THE ENGULPHED CONVENT
+
+
+
+
+COUNT VAN HORN WOLFERT'S ROOST
+
+AND
+
+MISCELLANIES.
+
+
+A CHRONICLE OF WOLFERT'S ROOST.
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
+
+Sir: I have observed that as a man advances in life, he is subject to
+a kind of plethora of the mind, doubtless occasioned by the vast
+accumulation of wisdom and experience upon the brain. Hence he is apt to
+become narrative and admonitory, that is to say, fond of telling long
+stories, and of doling out advice, to the small profit and great
+annoyance of his friends. As I have a great horror of becoming the
+oracle, or, more technically speaking, the "bore," of the domestic
+circle, and would much rather bestow my wisdom and tediousness upon the
+world at large, I have always sought to ease off this surcharge of the
+intellect by means of my pen, and hence have inflicted divers gossiping
+volumes upon the patience of the public. I am tired, however, of writing
+volumes; they do not afford exactly the relief I require; there is too
+much preparation, arrangement, and parade, in this set form of coming
+before the public. I am growing too indolent and unambitious for any
+thing that requires labor or display. I have thought, therefore, of
+securing to myself a snug corner in some periodical work where I might,
+as it were, loll at my ease in my elbow-chair, and chat sociably with
+the public, as with an old friend, on any chance subject that might pop
+into my brain.
+
+In looking around, for this purpose, upon the various excellent
+periodicals with which our country abounds, my eye was struck by the
+title of your work--"THE KNICKERBOCKER." My heart leaped at the sight.
+DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER, Sir, was one of my earliest and most valued
+friends, and the recollection of him is associated with some of the
+pleasantest scenes of my youthful days. To explain this, and to show how
+I came into possession of sundry of his posthumous works, which I
+have from time to time given to the world, permit me to relate a
+few particulars of our early intercourse. I give them with the more
+confidence, as I know the interest you take in that departed worthy,
+whose name and effigy are stamped upon your title-page, and as they will
+be found important to the better understanding and relishing divers
+communications I may have to make to you.
+
+My first acquaintance with that great and good man, for such I may
+venture to call him, now that the lapse of some thirty years has
+shrouded his name with venerable antiquity, and the popular voice has
+elevated him to the rank of the classic historians of yore, my first
+acquaintance with him was formed on the banks of the Hudson, not far
+from the wizard region of Sleepy Hollow. He had come there in the course
+of his researches among the Dutch neighborhoods for materials for his
+immortal history. For this purpose, he was ransacking the archives of
+one of the most ancient and historical mansions in the country. It was
+a lowly edifice, built in the time of the Dutch dynasty, and stood on a
+green bank, overshadowed by trees, from which it peeped forth upon the
+Great Tappan Zee, so famous among early Dutch navigators. A bright
+pure spring welled up at the foot of the green bank; a wild brook came
+babbling down a neighboring ravine, and threw itself into a little woody
+cove, in front of the mansion. It was indeed as quiet and sheltered a
+nook as the heart of man could require, in which to take refuge from the
+cares and troubles of the world; and as such, it had been chosen in old
+times, by Wolfert Acker, one of the privy councillors of the renowned
+Peter Stuyvesant.
+
+This worthy but ill-starred man had led a weary and worried life,
+throughout the stormy reign of the chivalric Peter, being one of those
+unlucky wights with whom the world is ever at variance, and who are kept
+in a continual fume and fret, by the wickedness of mankind. At the time
+of the subjugation of the province by the English, he retired hither in
+high dudgeon; with the bitter determination to bury himself from the
+world, and live here in peace and quietness for the remainder of his
+days. In token of this fixed resolution, he inscribed over his door the
+favorite Dutch motto, "Lust in Rust," (pleasure in repose.) The mansion
+was thence called "Wolfert's Rust"--Wolfert's Rest; but in process of
+time, the name was vitiated into Wolfert's Roost, probably from its
+quaint cock-loft look, or from its having a weather-cock perched on
+every gable. This name it continued to bear, long after the unlucky
+Wolfert was driven forth once more upon a wrangling world, by the
+tongue of a termagant wife; for it passed into a proverb through the
+neighborhood, and has been handed down by tradition, that the cock of
+the Roost was the most hen-pecked bird in the country.
+
+This primitive and historical mansion has since passed through many
+changes and trials, which it may be my lot hereafter to notice. At the
+time of the sojourn of Diedrich Knickerbocker it was in possession of
+the gallant family of the Van Tassels, who have figured so conspicuously
+in his writings. What appears to have given it peculiar value, in his
+eyes, was the rich treasury of historical facts here secretly hoarded
+up, like buried gold; for it is said that Wolfert Acker, when he
+retreated from New Amsterdam, carried off with him many of the records
+and journals of the province, pertaining to the Dutch dynasty; swearing
+that they should never fall into the hands of the English. These, like
+the lost books of Livy, had baffled the research of former historians;
+but these did I find the indefatigable Diedrich diligently deciphering.
+He was already a sage in year's and experience, I but an idle stripling;
+yet he did not despise my youth and ignorance, but took me kindly by the
+hand, and led me gently into those paths of local and traditional lore
+which he was so fond of exploring. I sat with him in his little chamber
+at the Roost, and watched the antiquarian patience and perseverance
+with which he deciphered those venerable Dutch documents, worse than
+Herculanean manuscripts. I sat with him by the spring, at the foot of
+the green bank, and listened to his heroic tales about the worthies of
+the olden time, the paladins of New Amsterdam. I accompanied him in his
+legendary researches about Tarrytown and Sing-Sing, and explored with
+him the spell-bound recesses of Sleepy Hollow. I was present at many of
+his conferences with the good old Dutch burghers and their wives, from
+whom he derived many of those marvelous facts not laid down in books
+or records, and which give such superior value and authenticity to his
+history, over all others that have been written concerning the New
+Netherlands.
+
+But let me check my proneness to dilate upon this favorite theme; I may
+recur to it hereafter. Suffice it to say, the intimacy thus formed,
+continued for a considerable time; and in company with the worthy
+Diedrich, I visited many of the places celebrated by his pen. The
+currents of our lives at length diverged. He remained at home to
+complete his mighty work, while a vagrant fancy led me to wander about
+the world. Many, many years elapsed, before I returned to the parent
+soil. In the interim, the venerable historian of the New Netherlands
+had been gathered to his fathers, but his name had risen to renown. His
+native city, that city in which he so much delighted, had decreed all
+manner of costly honors to his memory. I found his effigy imprinted upon
+new-year cakes, and devoured with eager relish by holiday urchins; a
+great oyster-house bore the name of "Knickerbocker Hall;" and I narrowly
+escaped the pleasure of being run over by a Knickerbocker omnibus!
+
+Proud of having associated with a man who had achieved such greatness,
+I now recalled our early intimacy with tenfold pleasure, and sought to
+revisit the scenes we had trodden together. The most important of
+these was the mansion of the Van Tassels, the Roost of the unfortunate
+Wolfert. Time, which changes all things, is but slow in its operations
+upon a Dutchman's dwelling. I found the venerable and quaint little
+edifice much as I had seen it during the sojourn of Diedrich. There
+stood his elbow-chair in the corner of the room he had occupied;
+the old-fashioned Dutch writing-desk at which he had pored over the
+chronicles of the Manhattoes; there was the old wooden chest, with the
+archives left by Wolfert Acker, many of which, however, had been fired
+off as wadding from the long duck gun of the Van Tassels. The scene
+around the mansion was still the same; the green bank; the spring beside
+which I had listened to the legendary narratives of the historian; the
+wild brook babbling down to the woody cove, and the overshadowing locust
+trees, half shutting out the prospect of the great Tappan Zee.
+
+As I looked round upon the scene, my heart yearned at the recollection
+of my departed friend, and I wistfully eyed the mansion which he had
+inhabited, and which was fast mouldering to decay. The thought struck me
+to arrest the desolating hand of Time; to rescue the historic pile from
+utter ruin, and to make it the closing scene of my wanderings; a quiet
+home, where I might enjoy "lust in rust" for the remainder of my days.
+It is true, the fate of the unlucky Wolfert passed across my mind; but
+I consoled myself with the reflection that I was a bachelor, and that I
+had no termagant wife to dispute the sovereignty of the Roost with me.
+
+I have become possessor of the Roost! I have repaired and renovated it
+with religious care, in the genuine Dutch style, and have adorned and
+illustrated it with sundry reliques of the glorious days of the New
+Netherlands. A venerable weathercock, of portly Dutch dimensions,
+which once battled with the wind on the top of the Stadt-House of New
+Amsterdam, in the time of Peter Stuyvesant, now erects its crest on
+the gable end of my edifice; a gilded horse in full gallop, once the
+weathercock of the great Vander Heyden Palace of Albany, now glitters in
+the sunshine, and veers with every breeze, on the peaked turret over
+my portal; my sanctum sanctorum is the chamber once honored by the
+illustrious Diedrich, and it is from his elbow-chair, and his identical
+old Dutch writing-desk, that I pen this rambling epistle.
+
+Here, then, have I set up my rest, surrounded by the recollections of
+early days, and the mementoes of the historian of the Manhattoes, with
+that glorious river before me, which flows with such majesty through his
+works, and which has ever been to me a river of delight.
+
+I thank God I was born on the banks of the Hudson! I think it an
+invaluable advantage to be born and brought up in the neighborhood of
+some grand and noble object in nature; a river, a lake, or a mountain.
+We make a friendship with it, we in a manner ally ourselves to it for
+life. It remains an object of our pride and affections, a rallying
+point, to call us home again after all our wanderings. "The things which
+we have learned in our childhood," says an old writer, "grow up with our
+souls, and unite themselves to it." So it is with the scenes among which
+we have passed our early days; they influence the whole course of our
+thoughts and feelings; and I fancy I can trace much of what is good and
+pleasant in my own heterogeneous compound to my early companionship with
+this glorious river. In the warmth of my youthful enthusiasm, I used to
+clothe it with moral attributes, and almost to give it a soul. I admired
+its frank, bold, honest character; its noble sincerity and perfect
+truth. Here was no specious, smiling surface, covering the dangerous
+sand-bar or perfidious rock; but a stream deep as it was broad, and
+bearing with honorable faith the bark that trusted to its waves. I
+gloried in its simple, quiet, majestic, epic flow; ever straight
+forward. Once, indeed, it turns aside for a moment, forced from its
+course by opposing mountains, but it struggles bravely through them, and
+immediately resumes its straightforward march. Behold, thought I, an
+emblem of a good man's course through life; ever simple, open, and
+direct; or if, overpowered by adverse circumstances, he deviate into
+error, it is but momentary; he soon recovers his onward and honorable
+career, and continues it to the end of his pilgrimage.
+
+Excuse this rhapsody, into which I have been betrayed by a revival of
+early feelings. The Hudson is, in a manner, my first and last love; and
+after all my wanderings and seeming infidelities, I return to it with a
+heart-felt preference over all the other rivers in the world. I seem
+to catch new life as I bathe in its ample billows and inhale the pure
+breezes of its hills. It is true, the romance of youth is past, that
+once spread illusions over every scene. I can no longer picture an
+Arcadia in every green valley; nor a fairy land among the distant
+mountains; nor a peerless beauty in every villa gleaming among the
+trees; but though the illusions of youth have faded from the landscape,
+the recollections of departed years and departed pleasures shed over it
+the mellow charm of evening sunshine.
+
+Permit me, then, Mr. Editor, through the medium of your work, to
+hold occasional discourse from my retreat with the busy world I have
+abandoned. I have much to say about what I have seen, heard, felt, and
+thought through the course of a varied and rambling life, and some
+lucubrations that have long been encumbering my portfolio; together with
+divers reminiscences of the venerable historian of the New Netherlands,
+that may not be unacceptable to those who have taken an interest in his
+writings, and are desirous of any thing that may cast a light back upon
+our early history. Let your readers rest assured of one thing, that,
+though retired from the world, I am not disgusted with it; and that if
+in my communings with it I do not prove very wise, I trust I shall at
+least prove very good-natured.
+
+Which is all at present, from
+
+Yours, etc.,
+
+GEOFFREY CRAYON.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
+
+Worthy Sir: In a preceding communication, I have given you some brief
+notice of Wolfert's Roost, the mansion where I first had the good
+fortune to become acquainted with the venerable historian of the New
+Netherlands. As this ancient edifice is likely to be the place whence
+I shall date many of my lucubrations, and as it is really a very
+remarkable little pile, intimately connected with all the great epochs
+of our local and national history, I have thought it but right to give
+some farther particulars concerning it. Fortunately, in rummaging a
+ponderous Dutch chest of drawers, which serves as the archives of the
+Roost, and in which are preserved many inedited manuscripts of Mr.
+KNICKERBOCKER, together with the precious records of New-Amsterdam,
+brought hither by Wolfert Acker at the downfall of the Dutch dynasty,
+as has been already mentioned, I found in one corner, among dried
+pumpkin-seeds, bunches of thyme, and pennyroyal, and crumbs of new-year
+cakes, a manuscript, carefully wrapped up in the fragment of an old
+parchment deed, but much blotted, and the ink grown foxy by time, which,
+on inspection, I discovered to be a faithful chronicle of the Roost. The
+hand-writing, and certain internal evidences, leave no doubt in my
+mind, that it is a genuine production of the venerable historian of the
+New-Netherlands, written, very probably, during his residence at the
+Roost, in gratitude for the hospitality of its proprietor. As such, I
+submit it for publication. As the entire chronicle is too long for the
+pages of your Magazine, and as it contains many minute particulars,
+which might prove tedious to the general reader, I have abbreviated and
+occasionally omitted some of its details; but may hereafter furnish
+them separately, should they seem to be required by the curiosity of an
+enlightened and document-hunting public. Respectfully yours, GEOFFREY
+CRAYON.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A CHRONICLE OF WOLFERT'S ROOST.
+
+FOUND AMONG THE PAPERS OF THE LATE DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER.
+
+About five-and-twenty miles from the ancient and renowned city of
+Manhattan, formerly called New-Amsterdam, and vulgarly called New-York,
+on the eastern bank of that expansion of the Hudson, known among
+Dutch mariners of yore, as the Tappan Zee, being in fact the great
+Mediterranean Sea of the New-Netherlands, stands a little old-fashioned
+stone mansion, all made up of gable-ends, and as full of angles and
+corners as an old cocked hat. Though but of small dimensions, yet, like
+many small people, it is of mighty spirit, and values itself greatly on
+its antiquity, being one of the oldest edifices, for its size, in the
+whole country. It claims to be an ancient seat of empire, I may rather
+say an empire in itself, and like all empires, great and small, has had
+its grand historical epochs. In speaking of this doughty and valorous
+little pile, I shall call it by its usual appellation of "The Roost;"
+though that is a name given to it in modern days, since it became the
+abode of the white man.
+
+Its origin, in truth, dates far back in that remote region commonly
+called the fabulous age, in which vulgar fact becomes mystified, and
+tinted up with delectable fiction. The eastern shore of the Tappan Sea
+was inhabited in those days by an unsophisticated race, existing in all
+the simplicity of nature; that is to say, they lived by hunting and
+fishing, and recreated themselves occasionally with a little tomahawking
+and scalping. Each stream that flows down from the hills into the
+Hudson, had its petty sachem, who ruled over a hand's-breadth of forest
+on either side, and had his seat of government at its mouth. The
+chieftain who ruled at the Roost, was not merely a great warrior, but a
+medicine-man, or prophet, or conjurer, for they all mean the same thing,
+in Indian parlance. Of his fighting propensities, evidences still
+remain, in various arrowheads of flint, and stone battle-axes,
+occasionally digged up about the Roost: of his wizard powers, we have a
+token in a spring which wells up at the foot of the bank, on the
+very margin of the river, which, it is said, was gifted by him with
+rejuvenating powers, something like the renowned Fountain of Youth in
+the Floridas, so anxiously but vainly sought after by the veteran Ponce
+de Leon. This story, however, is stoutly contradicted by an old Dutch
+matter-of-fact tradition, which declares that the spring in question was
+smuggled over from Holland in a churn, by Femmetie Van Slocum, wife of
+Goosen Garret Van Slocum, one of the first settlers, and that she took
+it up by night, unknown to her husband, from beside their farm-house
+near Rotterdam; being sure she should find no water equal to it in the
+new country--and she was right.
+
+The wizard sachem had a great passion for discussing territorial
+questions, and settling boundary lines; this kept him in continual feud
+with the neighboring sachems, each of whom stood up stoutly for his
+hand-breadth of territory; so that there is not a petty stream nor
+ragged hill in the neighborhood, that has not been the subject of long
+talks and hard battles. The sachem, however, as has been observed, was a
+medicine-man, as well as warrior, and vindicated his claims by arts
+as well as arms; so that, by dint of a little hard fighting here, and
+hocus-pocus there, he managed to extend his boundary-line from field
+to field and stream to stream, until he found himself in legitimate
+possession of that region of hills and valleys, bright fountains and
+limpid brooks, locked in by the mazy windings of the Neperan and the
+Pocantico. [Footnote: As every one may not recognize these boundaries
+by their original Indian names, it may be well to observe, that the
+Neperan is that beautiful stream, vulgarly called the Saw-Mill River,
+which, after winding gracefully for many miles through a lovely valley,
+shrouded by groves, and dotted by Dutch farm-houses, empties itself
+into the Hudson, at the ancient drop of Yonkers. The Pocantico is that
+hitherto nameless brook, that, rising among woody hills, winds in many a
+wizard maze through the sequestered banks of Sleepy Hollow. We owe it to
+the indefatigable researches of Mr. KNICKERBOCKER, that those beautiful
+streams are rescued from modern common-place, and reinvested with their
+ancient Indian names. The correctness of the venerable historian may be
+ascertained, by reference to the records of the original Indian grants
+to the Herr Frederick Philipsen, preserved in the county clerk's office,
+at White Plains.]
+
+This last-mentioned stream, or rather the valley through which it flows,
+was the most difficult of all his acquisitions. It lay half way to the
+strong-hold of the redoubtable sachem of Sing-Sing, and was claimed by
+him as an integral part of his domains. Many were the sharp conflicts
+between the rival chieftains for the sovereignty of this valley, and
+many the ambuscades, surprisals, and deadly onslaughts that took place
+among its fastnesses, of which it grieves me much that I cannot furnish
+the details for the gratification of those gentle but bloody-minded
+readers of both sexes, who delight in the romance of the tomahawk and
+scalping-knife. Suffice it to say that the wizard chieftain was at
+length victorious, though his victory is attributed in Indian tradition
+to a great medicine or charm by which he laid the sachem of Sing-Sing
+and his warriors asleep among the rocks and recesses of the valley,
+where they remain asleep to the present day with their bows and
+war-clubs beside them. This was the origin of that potent and drowsy
+spell which still prevails over the valley of the Pocantico, and which
+has gained it the well-merited appellation of Sleepy Hollow. Often, in
+secluded and quiet parts of that valley, where the stream is overhung by
+dark woods and rocks, the ploughman, on some calm and sunny day as
+he shouts to his oxen, is surprised at hearing faint shouts from the
+hill-sides in reply; being, it is said, the spell-bound warriors, who
+half start from their rocky couches and grasp their weapons, but sink to
+sleep again.
+
+The conquest of the Pocantico was the last triumph of the wizard sachem.
+Notwithstanding all his medicine and charms, he fell in battle in
+attempting to extend his boundary line to the east so as to take in the
+little wild valley of the Sprain, and his grave is still shown near the
+banks of that pastoral stream. He left, however, a great empire to his
+successors, extending along the Tappan Zee, from Yonkers quite to Sleepy
+Hollow; all which delectable region, if every one had his right, would
+still acknowledge allegiance to the lord of the Roost--whoever he might
+be. [Footnote: In recording the contest for the sovereignty of Sleepy
+Hollow, I have called one sachem by the modern name of his castle or
+strong-hold, viz.: Sing-Sing. This, I would observe for the sake
+of historical exactness, is a corruption of the old Indian name,
+O-sin-sing, or rather O-sin-song; that is to say, a place where any
+thing may be had for a song--a great recommendation for a market town.
+The modern and melodious alteration of the name to Sing-Sing is said to
+have been made in compliment to an eminent Methodist singing-master, who
+first introduced into the neighborhood the art of singing through the
+nose. D. K.]
+
+The wizard sachem was succeeded by a line of chiefs, of whom nothing
+remarkable remains on record. The last who makes any figure in history
+is the one who ruled here at the time of the discovery of the country by
+the white man. This sachem is said to have been a renowned trencherman,
+who maintained almost as potent a sway by dint of good feeding as his
+warlike predecessor had done by hard fighting. He diligently cultivated
+the growth of oysters along the aquatic borders of his territories, and
+founded those great oyster-beds which yet exist along the shores of the
+Tappan Zee. Did any dispute occur between him and a neighboring sachem,
+he invited him and all his principal sages and fighting-men to a solemn
+banquet, and seldom failed of feeding them into terms. Enormous heaps of
+oyster-shells, which encumber the lofty banks of the river, remain as
+monuments of his gastronomical victories, and have been occasionally
+adduced through mistake by amateur geologists from town, as additional
+proofs of the deluge. Modern investigators, who are making such
+indefatigable researches into our early history, have even affirmed that
+this sachem was the very individual on whom Master Hendrick Hudson and
+his mate, Robert Juet, made that sage and astounding experiment so
+gravely recorded by the latter in his narrative of the voyage: "Our
+master and his mate determined to try some of the cheefe men of the
+country whether they had any treacherie in them. So they took them down
+into the cabin and gave them so much wine and aqua vitae that they
+were all very merrie; one of them had his wife with him, which sate so
+modestly as any of our countrywomen would do in a strange place. In the
+end one of them was drunke; and that was strange to them, for they
+could not tell how to take it." [Footnote: See Juet's Journal, Purchas
+Pilgrim.]
+
+How far Master Hendrick Hudson and his worthy mate carried their
+experiment with the sachem's wife is not recorded, neither does the
+curious Robert Juet make any mention of the after-consequences of this
+grand moral test; tradition, however, affirms that the sachem on landing
+gave his modest spouse a hearty rib-roasting, according to the connubial
+discipline of the aboriginals; it farther affirms that he remained a
+hard drinker to the day of his death, trading away all his lands, acre
+by acre, for aqua vitae; by which means the Roost and all its domains,
+from Yonkers to Sleepy Hollow, came, in the regular course of trade and
+by right of purchase, into the possession of the Dutchmen.
+
+Never has a territorial right in these new countries been more
+legitimately and tradefully established; yet, I grieve to say, the
+worthy government of the New Netherlands was not suffered to enjoy this
+grand acquisition unmolested; for, in the year 1654, the local Yankees
+of Connecticut--those swapping, bargaining, squatting enemies of the
+Manhattoes--made a daring inroad into this neighborhood and founded a
+colony called Westchester, or, as the ancient Dutch records term it,
+Vest Dorp, in the right of one Thomas Pell, who pretended to have
+purchased the whole surrounding country of the Indians, and stood ready
+to argue their claims before any tribunal of Christendom.
+
+This happened during the chivalrous reign of Peter Stuyvesant, and it
+roused the ire of that gunpowder old hero; who, without waiting to
+discuss claims and titles, pounced at once upon the nest of nefarious
+squatters, carried off twenty-five of them in chains to the Manhattoes,
+nor did he stay his hand, nor give rest to his wooden leg, until he had
+driven every Yankee back into the bounds of Connecticut, or obliged
+him to acknowledge allegiance to their High Mightinesses. He then
+established certain out-posts, far in the Indian country, to keep an eye
+over these debateable lands; one of these border-holds was the Roost,
+being accessible from New Amsterdam by water, and easily kept supplied.
+The Yankees, however, had too great a hankering after this delectable
+region to give it up entirely. Some remained and swore allegiance to the
+Manhattoes; but, while they kept this open semblance of fealty, they
+went to work secretly and vigorously to intermarry and multiply, and by
+these nefarious means, artfully propagated themselves into possession of
+a wide tract of those open, arable parts of Westchester county, lying
+along the Sound, where their descendants may be found at the present
+day; while the mountainous regions along the Hudson, with the valleys
+of the Neperan and the Pocantico, are tenaciously held by the lineal
+descendants of the Copperheads.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The chronicle of the venerable Diedrich here goes on to relate how that,
+shortly after the above-mentioned events, the whole province of the New
+Netherlands 'was subjugated by the British; how that Wolfert Acker, one
+of the wrangling councillors of Peter Stuyvesant, retired in dudgeon to
+this fastness in the wilderness, determining to enjoy "lust in rust" for
+the remainder of his days, whence the place first received its name of
+Wolfert's Roost. As these and sundry other matters have been laid before
+the public in a preceding article, I shall pass them over, and resume
+the chronicle where it treats of matters not hitherto recorded:
+
+Like many men who retire from a worrying world, says DIEDRICH
+KNICKERBOCKER, to enjoy quiet in the country, Wolfert Acker soon found
+himself up to the ears in trouble. He had a termagant wife at home,
+and there was what is profanely called "the deuce to pay," abroad. The
+recent irruption of the Yankees into the bounds of the New Netherlands,
+had left behind it a doleful pestilence, such as is apt to follow the
+steps of invading armies. This was the deadly plague of witchcraft,
+which had long been prevalent to the eastward. The malady broke out at
+Vest Dorp, and threatened to spread throughout the country. The Dutch
+burghers along the Hudson, from Yonkers to Sleepy Hollow, hastened to
+nail horseshoes to their doors, which have ever been found of sovereign
+virtue to repel this awful visitation. This is the origin of the
+horse-shoes which may still be seen nailed to the doors of barns and
+farmhouses, in various parts of this sage and sober-thoughted region.
+
+The evil, however, bore hard upon the Roost; partly, perhaps, from its
+having in old times been subject to supernatural influences, during the
+sway of the Wizard Sachem; but it has always, in fact, been considered a
+fated mansion. The unlucky Wolfert had no rest day nor night. When the
+weather was quiet all over the country, the wind would howl and whistle
+round his roof; witches would ride and whirl upon his weathercocks, and
+scream down his chimneys. His cows gave bloody milk, and his horses
+broke bounds, and scampered into the woods. There were not wanting evil
+tongues to whisper that Wolfert's termagant wife had some tampering
+with the enemy; and that she even attended a witches' Sabbath in Sleepy
+Hollow; nay, a neighbor, who lived hard by, declared that he saw her
+harnessing a rampant broom-stick, and about to ride to the meeting;
+though others presume it was merely flourished in the course of one of
+her curtain lectures, to give energy and emphasis to a period. Certain
+it is, that Wolfert Acker nailed a horse-shoe to the front door, during
+one of her nocturnal excursions, to prevent her return; but as she
+re-entered the house without any difficulty, it is probable she was
+not so much of a witch as she was represented. [Footnote: HISTORICAL
+NOTE.--The annexed extracts from the early colonial records, relate to
+the irruption of witchcraft into Westchester county, as mentioned in the
+chronicle:
+
+"JULY 7, 1670.--Katharine Harryson, accused of witchcraft on complaint of
+Thomas Hunt and Edward Waters, in behalf of the town, who pray that she
+may be driven from the town of Westchester. The woman appears before
+the council.... She was a native of England, and had lived a year in
+Weathersfield, Connecticut, where she had been tried for witchcraft,
+found guilty by the jury, acquitted by the bench, and released out of
+prison, upon condition she would remove. Affair adjourned.
+
+"AUGUST 24.--Affair taken up again, when, being heard at large, it was
+referred to the general court of assize. Woman ordered to give security
+for good behavior," etc.
+
+In another place is the following entry:
+
+"Order given for Katharine Harryson, charged with witchcraft, to leave
+Westchester, as the inhabitants are uneasy at her residing there, and
+she is ordered to go off."]
+
+After the time of Wolfert Acker, a long interval elapses, about which
+but little is known. It is hoped, however, that the antiquarian
+researches so diligently making in every part of this new country, may
+yet throw some light upon what may be termed the Dark Ages of the Roost.
+
+The next period at which we find this venerable and eventful pile rising
+to importance, and resuming its old belligerent character, is during the
+revolutionary war. It was at that time owned by Jacob Van Tassel, or Van
+Texel, as the name was originally spelled, after the place in Holland
+which gave birth to this heroic line. He was strong-built, long-limbed,
+and as stout in soul as in body; a fit successor to the warrior sachem
+of yore, and, like him, delighting in extravagant enterprises and hardy
+deeds of arms. But, before I enter upon the exploits of this worthy cock
+of the Boost, it is fitting I should throw some light upon the state of
+the mansion, and of the surrounding country, at the time.
+
+The situation of the Roost is in the very heart of what was the
+debateable ground between the American and British lines, during the
+war. The British held possession of the city of New York, and the island
+of Manhattan on which it stands. The Americans drew up toward the
+Highlands, holding their headquarters at Peekskill. The intervening
+country, from Croton River to Spiting Devil Creek, was the debateable
+land, subject to be harried by friend and foe, like the Scottish borders
+of yore. It is a rugged country, with a line of rocky hills extending
+through it, like a back bone, sending ribs on either side; but among
+these rude hills are beautiful winding valleys, like those watered by
+the Pocantico and the Neperan. In the fastnesses of these hills,
+and along these valleys, exist a race of hard-headed, hard-handed,
+stout-hearted Dutchmen, descendants of the primitive Nederlanders. Most
+of these were strong whigs throughout the war, and have ever remained
+obstinately attached to the soil, and neither to be fought nor bought
+out of their paternal acres. Others were tories, and adherents to the
+old kingly rule; some of whom took refuge within the British lines,
+joined the royal bands of refugees, a name odious to the American ear,
+and occasionally returned to harass their ancient neighbors.
+
+In a little while, this debateable land was overrun by predatory bands
+from either side; sacking hen-roosts, plundering farm-houses, and
+driving off cattle. Hence arose those two great orders of border
+chivalry, the Skinners and the Cowboys, famous in the heroic annals of
+Westchester county. The former fought, or rather marauded, under the
+American, the latter under the British banner; but both, in the hurry of
+their military ardor, were apt to err on the safe side, and rob friend
+as well as foe. Neither of them stopped to ask the politics of horse or
+cow, which they drove into captivity; nor, when they wrung the neck of
+a rooster, did they trouble their heads to ascertain whether he were
+crowing for Congress or King George.
+
+While this marauding system prevailed on shore, the Great Tappan Sea,
+which washes this belligerent region, was domineered over by British
+frigates and other vessels of war, anchored here and there, to keep an
+eye upon the river, and maintain a communication between the various
+military posts. Stout galleys, also, armed with eighteen-pounders, and
+navigated with sails and oars, cruised about like hawks, ready to pounce
+upon their prey.
+
+All these were eyed with bitter hostility by the Dutch yeomanry along
+shore, who were indignant at seeing their great Mediterranean ploughed
+by hostile prows; and would occasionally throw up a mud breast-work on a
+point or promontory, mount an old iron field-piece, and fire away at the
+enemy, though the greatest harm was apt to happen to themselves from the
+bursting of their ordnance; nay, there was scarce a Dutchman along the
+river that would hesitate to fire with his long duck gun at any British
+cruiser that came within reach, as he had been accustomed to fire at
+water-fowl.
+
+I have been thus particular in my account of the times and neighborhood,
+that the reader might the more readily comprehend the surrounding
+dangers in this the Heroic Age of the Roost.
+
+It was commanded at the time, as I have already observed, by the stout
+Jacob Van Tassel. As I wish to be extremely accurate in this part of
+my chronicle, I beg that this Jacob Van Tassel of the Roost may not be
+confounded with another Jacob Van Tassel, commonly known in border story
+by the name of "Clump-footed Jake," a noted tory, and one of the refugee
+band of Spiting Devil. On the contrary, he of the Roost was a patriot of
+the first water, and, if we may take his own word for granted, a thorn
+in the side of the enemy. As the Roost, from its lonely situation on the
+water's edge, might be liable to attack, he took measures for defence.
+On a row of hooks above his fire-place, reposed his great piece of
+ordnance, ready charged and primed for action. This was a duck, or
+rather goose-gun, of unparalleled longitude, with which it was said he
+could kill a wild goose, though half-way across the Tappan Sea. Indeed,
+there are as many wonders told of this renowned gun, as of the enchanted
+weapons of the heroes of classic story.
+
+In different parts of the stone walls of his mansion, he had made
+loop-holes, through which he might fire upon an assailant. His wife was
+stout-hearted as himself, and could load as fast as he could fire; and
+then he had an ancient and redoubtable sister, Nochie Van Wurmer, a
+match, as he said, for the stoutest man in the country. Thus garrisoned,
+the little Roost was fit to stand a siege, and Jacob Van Tassel was the
+man to defend it to the last charge of powder.
+
+He was, as I have already hinted, of pugnacious propensities; and, not
+content with being a patriot at home, and fighting for the security of
+his own fireside, he extended his thoughts abroad, and entered into a
+confederacy with certain of the bold, hard-riding lads of Tarrytown,
+Petticoat Lane, and Sleepy Hollow, who formed a kind of Holy
+Brotherhood, scouring the country to clear it of Skinner and Cow-boy,
+and all other border vermin. The Roost was one of their rallying points.
+Did a band of marauders from Manhattan island come sweeping through the
+neighborhood, and driving off cattle, the stout Jacob and his compeers
+were soon clattering at their heels, and fortunate did the rogues esteem
+themselves if they could but get a part of their booty across the lines,
+or escape themselves without a rough handling. Should the mosstroopers
+succeed in passing with their cavalcade, with thundering tramp and dusty
+whirlwind, across Kingsbridge, the Holy Brotherhood of the Roost would
+rein up at that perilous pass, and, wheeling about, would indemnify
+themselves by foraging the refugee region of Morrisania.
+
+When at home at the Roost, the stout Jacob was not idle; but was prone
+to carry on a petty warfare of his own, for his private recreation and
+refreshment. Did he ever chance to espy, from his look-out place, a
+hostile ship or galley anchored or becalmed near shore, he would take
+down his long goose-gun from the hooks over the fire-place, sally
+out alone, and lurk along shore, dodging behind rocks and trees, and
+watching for hours together, like a veteran mouser intent on a rat-hole.
+So sure as a boat put off for shore, and came within shot, bang! went
+the great goose-gun; a shower of slugs and buck-shot whistled about the
+ears of the enemy, and before the boat could reach the shore, Jacob had
+scuttled up some woody ravine, and left no trace behind. About this
+time, the Roost experienced a vast accession of warlike importance, in
+being made one of the stations of the water-guard. This was a kind of
+aquatic corps of observation, composed of long, sharp, canoe-shaped
+boats, technically called whale-boats, that lay lightly on the water,
+and could be rowed with great rapidity. They were manned by resolute
+fellows, skilled at pulling an oar, or handling a musket. These lurked
+about in nooks and bays, and behind those long promontories which run
+out into the Tappan Sea, keeping a look-out, to give notice of the
+approach or movements of hostile ships. They roved about in pairs;
+sometimes at night, with muffled oars, gliding like spectres about
+frigates and guard-ships riding at anchor, cutting off any boats that
+made for shore, and keeping the enemy in constant uneasiness. These
+mosquito-cruisers generally kept aloof by day, so that their harboring
+places might not be discovered, but would pull quietly along, under
+shadow of the shore, at night, to take up their quarters at the Roost.
+Hither, at such time, would also repair the hard-riding lads of the
+hills, to hold secret councils of war with the "ocean chivalry;" and in
+these nocturnal meetings were concerted many of those daring forays, by
+land and water, that resounded throughout the border.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The chronicle here goes on to recount divers wonderful stories of the
+wars of the Roost, from which it would seem, that this little warrior
+nest carried the terror of its arms into every sea, from Spiting Devil
+Creek to Antony's Nose; that it even bearded the stout island of
+Manhattan, invading it at night, penetrating to its centre, and burning
+down the famous Delancey house, the conflagration of which makes such a
+blaze in revolutionary history. Nay more, in their extravagant daring,
+these cocks of the Roost meditated a nocturnal descent upon New York
+itself, to swoop upon the British commanders, Howe and Clinton, by
+surprise, bear them off captive, and perhaps put a triumphant close to
+the war!
+
+All these and many similar exploits are recorded by the worthy Diedrich,
+with his usual minuteness and enthusiasm, whenever the deeds in arms of
+his kindred Dutchmen are in question; but though most of these warlike
+stories rest upon the best of all authority, that of the warriors
+themselves, and though many of them are still current among the
+revolutionary patriarchs of this heroic neighborhood, yet I dare not
+expose them to the incredulity of a tamer and less chivalric age,
+Suffice it to say, the frequent gatherings at the Roost, and the hardy
+projects set on foot there, at length drew on it the fiery indignation
+of the enemy; and this was quickened by the conduct of the stout Jacob
+Van Tassel; with whose valorous achievements we resume the course of the
+chronicle.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THIS doughty Dutchman, continues the sage DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER, was
+not content with taking a share in all the magnanimous enterprises
+concocted at the Roost, but still continued his petty warfare along
+shore. A series of exploits at length raised his confidence in his
+prowess to such a height, that he began to think himself and his
+goose-gun a match for any thing. Unluckily, in the course of one of his
+prowlings, he descried a British transport aground, not far from shore,
+with her stern swung toward the land, within point-blank shot. The
+temptation was too great to be resisted; bang! as usual, went the great
+goose-gun, shivering the cabin windows, and driving all hands forward.
+Bang! bang! the shots were repeated. The reports brought several
+sharp-shooters of the neighborhood to the spot; before the transport
+could bring a gun to bear, or land a boat, to take revenge, she was
+soundly peppered, and the coast evacuated. This was the last of Jacob's
+triumphs. He fared like some heroic spider, that has unwittingly
+ensnared a hornet, to his immortal glory, perhaps, but to the utter ruin
+of his web.
+
+It was not long after this, during the absence of Jacob Van Tassel on
+one of his forays, and when no one was in garrison but his stout-hearted
+spouse, his redoubtable sister, Nochie Van Wurmer, and a strapping negro
+wench, called Dinah, that an armed vessel came to anchor off the Roost,
+and a boat full of men pulled to shore. The garrison flew to arms, that
+is to say, to mops, broom-sticks, shovels, tongs, and all kinds of
+domestic weapons; for, unluckily, the great piece of ordnance, the
+goose-gun, was absent with its owner. Above all, a vigorous defence was
+made with that most potent of female weapons, the tongue. Never did
+invaded hen-roost make a more vociferous outcry. It was all in vain. The
+house was sacked and plundered, fire was set to each corner, and in a
+few moments its blaze shed a baleful light far over the Tappan Sea. The
+invaders then pounced upon the blooming Laney Van Tassel, the beauty of
+the Roost, and endeavored to bear her off to the boat. But here was the
+real tug of war. The mother, the aunt, and the strapping negro wench,
+all flew to the rescue. The struggle continued down to the very water's
+edge; when a voice from the armed vessel at anchor, ordered the spoilers
+to let go their hold; they relinquished their prize, jumped into their
+boats, and pulled off, and the heroine of the Roost escaped with a mere
+rumpling of the feathers.
+
+The fear of tiring my readers, who may not take such an interest as
+myself in these heroic themes, induces me to close here my extracts from
+this precious chronicle of the venerable Diedrich. Suffice it briefly to
+say, that shortly after the catastrophe of the Roost, Jacob Van Tassel,
+in the course of one of his forays, fell into the hands of the British;
+was sent prisoner to New York, and was detained in captivity for
+the greater part of the war. In the mean time, the Roost remained a
+melancholy ruin; its stone walls and brick chimneys alone standing,
+blackened by fire, and the resort of bats and owlets. It was not until
+the return of peace, when this belligerent neighborhood once more
+resumed its quiet agricultural pursuits, that the stout Jacob sought the
+scene of his triumphs and disasters; rebuilt the Roost, and reared again
+on high its glittering weather-cocks.
+
+Does any one want further particulars of the fortunes of this eventful
+little pile? Let him go to the fountain-head, and drink deep of historic
+truth. Reader! the stout Jacob Van Tassel still lives, a venerable,
+gray-headed patriarch of the revolution, now in his ninety-fifth year!
+He sits by his fireside, in the ancient city of the Manhattoes, and
+passes the long winter evenings, surrounded by his children, and
+grand-children, and great-grand-children, all listening to his tales of
+the border wars, and the heroic days of the Roost. His great goose-gun,
+too, is still in existence, having been preserved for many years in a
+hollow tree, and passed from hand to hand among the Dutch burghers, as a
+precious relique of the revolution. It is now actually in possession of
+a contemporary of the stout Jacob, one almost his equal in years, who
+treasures it up at his house in the Bowerie of New-Amsterdam, hard by
+the ancient rural retreat of the chivalric Peter Stuyvesant. I am not
+without hopes of one day seeing this formidable piece of ordinance
+restored to its proper station in the arsenal of the Roost. Before
+closing this historic document, I cannot but advert to certain notions
+and traditions concerning the venerable pile in question. Old-time
+edifices are apt to gather odd fancies and superstitions about them, as
+they do moss and weather-stains; and this is in a neighborhood a little
+given to old-fashioned notions, and who look upon the Roost as somewhat
+of a fated mansion. A lonely, rambling, down-hill lane leads to it,
+overhung with trees, with a wild brook dashing along, and crossing
+and re-crossing it. This lane I found some of the good people of the
+neighborhood shy of treading at night; why, I could not for a long time
+ascertain; until I learned that one or two of the rovers of the Tappan
+Sea, shot by the stout Jacob during the war, had been buried hereabout,
+in unconsecrated ground.
+
+Another local superstition is of a less gloomy kind, and one which I
+confess I am somewhat disposed to cherish. The Tappan Sea, in front of
+the Roost, is about three miles wide, bordered by a lofty line of waving
+and rocky hills. Often, in the still twilight of a summer evening, when
+the sea is like glass, with the opposite hills throwing their purple
+shadows half across it, a low sound is heard, as of the steady, vigorous
+pull of oars, far out in the middle of the stream, though not a boat
+is to be descried. This I should have been apt to ascribe to some boat
+rowed along under the shadows of the western shore, for sounds are
+conveyed to a great distance by water, at such quiet hours, and I can
+distinctly hear the baying of the watch-dogs at night, from the farms on
+the sides of the opposite mountains. The ancient traditionists of the
+neighborhood, however, religiously ascribed these sounds to a judgment
+upon one Rumbout Van Dam, of Spiting Devil, who danced and drank late
+one Saturday night, at a Dutch quilting frolic, at Kakiat, and set off
+alone for home in his boat, on the verge of Sunday morning; swearing he
+would not land till he reached Spiting Devil, if it took him a month of
+Sundays. He was never seen afterward, but is often heard plying his oars
+across the Tappan Sea, a Flying Dutchman on a small scale, suited to
+the size of his cruising-ground; being doomed to ply between Kakiat and
+Spiting Devil till the day of judgment, but never to reach the land.
+
+There is one room in the mansion which almost overhangs the river, and
+is reputed to be haunted by the ghost of a young lady who died of love
+and green apples. I have been awakened at night by the sound of oars and
+the tinkling of guitars beneath the window; and seeing a boat loitering
+in the moonlight, have been tempted to believe it the Flying Dutchman of
+Spiting Devil, and to try whether a silver bullet might not put an end
+to his unhappy cruisings; but, happening to recollect that there was a
+living young lady in the haunted room, who might be terrified by the
+report of fire-arms, I have refrained from pulling trigger.
+
+As to the enchanted fountain, said to have been gifted by the wizard
+sachem with supernatural powers, it still wells up at the foot of the
+bank, on the margin of the river, and goes by the name of the Indian
+spring; but I have my doubts as to its rejuvenating powers, for though
+I have drank oft and copiously of it, I cannot boast that I find myself
+growing younger.
+
+GEOFFREY CRAYON.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+SLEEPY HOLLOW.
+
+BY GEOFFREY CRAYON, GENT.
+
+HAVING pitched my tent, probably for the remainder of my days, in the
+neighborhood of Sleepy Hollow, I am tempted to give some few particulars
+concerning that spell-bound region; especially as it has risen to
+historic importance under the pen of my revered friend and master, the
+sage historian of the New Netherlands. Beside, I find the very existence
+of the place has been held in question by many; who, judging from its
+odd name and from the odd stories current among the vulgar concerning
+it, have rashly deemed the whole to be a fanciful creation, like the
+Lubber Land of mariners. I must confess there is some apparent cause for
+doubt, in consequence of the coloring given by the worthy Diedrich to
+his descriptions of the Hollow; who, in this instance, has departed
+a little from his usually sober if not severe style; beguiled, very
+probably, by his predilection for the haunts of his youth, and by a
+certain lurking taint of romance whenever any thing connected with the
+Dutch was to be described. I shall endeavor to make up for this amiable
+error on the part of my venerable and venerated friend by presenting the
+reader with a more precise and statistical account of the Hollow; though
+I am not sure that I shall not be prone to lapse in the end into the
+very error I am speaking of, so potent is the witchery of the theme.
+
+I believe it was the very peculiarity of its name and the idea of
+something mystic and dreamy connected with it that first led me in my
+boyish ramblings into Sleepy Hollow. The character of the valley seemed
+to answer to the name; the slumber of past ages apparently reigned over
+it; it had not awakened to the stir of improvement which had put all the
+rest of the world in a bustle. Here reigned good, old long-forgotten
+fashions; the men were in home-spun garbs, evidently the product of
+their own farms and the manufacture of their own wives; the women were
+in primitive short gowns and petticoats, with the venerable sun-bonnets
+of Holland origin. The lower part of the valley was cut up into small
+farms, each consisting of a little meadow and corn-field; an orchard
+of sprawling, gnarled apple-trees, and a garden, where the rose, the
+marigold, and the hollyhock were permitted to skirt the domains of the
+capacious cabbage, the aspiring pea, and the portly pumpkin. Each had
+its prolific little mansion teeming with children; with an old hat
+nailed against the wall for the housekeeping wren; a motherly hen, under
+a coop on the grass-plot, clucking to keep around her a brood of vagrant
+chickens; a cool, stone well, with the moss-covered bucket suspended
+to the long balancing-pole, according to the antediluvian idea of
+hydraulics; and its spinning-wheel humming within doors, the patriarchal
+music of home manufacture.
+
+The Hollow at that time was inhabited by families which had existed
+there from the earliest times, and which, by frequent intermarriage, had
+become so interwoven, as to make a kind of natural commonwealth. As
+the families had grown larger the farms had grown smaller; every new
+generation requiring a new subdivision, and few thinking of swarming
+from the native hive. In this way that happy golden mean had been
+produced, so much extolled by the poets, in which there was no gold and
+very little silver. One thing which doubtless contributed to keep up
+this amiable mean was a general repugnance to sordid labor. The sage
+inhabitants of Sleepy Hollow had read in their Bible, which was the only
+book they studied, that labor was originally inflicted upon man as a
+punishment of sin; they regarded it, therefore, with pious abhorrence,
+and never humiliated themselves to it but in cases of extremity. There
+seemed, in fact, to be a league and covenant against it throughout
+the Hollow as against a common enemy. Was any one compelled by dire
+necessity to repair his house, mend his fences, build a barn, or get in
+a harvest, he considered it a great evil that entitled him to call in
+the assistance or his friend? He accordingly proclaimed a 'bee' or
+rustic gathering, whereupon all his neighbors hurried to his aid like
+faithful allies; attacked the task with the desperate energy of lazy men
+eager to overcome a job; and, when it was accomplished, fell to eating
+and drinking, fiddling and dancing for very joy that so great an amount
+of labor had been vanquished with so little sweating of the brow.
+
+Yet, let it not be supposed that this worthy community was without its
+periods of arduous activity. Let but a flock of wild pigeons fly across
+the valley and all Sleepy Hollow was wide awake in an instant.
+The pigeon season had arrived. Every gun and net was forthwith in
+requisition. The flail was thrown down on the barn floor; the spade
+rusted in the garden; the plough stood idle in the furrow; every one was
+to the hillside and stubble-field at daybreak to shoot or entrap the
+pigeons in their periodical migrations.
+
+So, likewise, let but the word be given that the shad were ascending the
+Hudson, and the worthies of the Hollow were to be seen launched in boats
+upon the river setting great stakes, and stretching their nets like
+gigantic spider-webs half across the stream to the great annoyance
+of navigators. Such are the wise provisions of Nature, by which she
+equalizes rural affairs. A laggard at the plough is often extremely
+industrious with the fowling-piece and fishing-net; and, whenever a man
+is an indifferent farmer, he is apt to be a first-rate sportsman. For
+catching shad and wild pigeons there were none throughout the country to
+compare with the lads of Sleepy Hollow.
+
+As I have observed, it was the dreamy nature of the name that first
+beguiled me in the holiday rovings of boyhood into this sequestered
+region. I shunned, however, the populous parts of the Hollow, and sought
+its retired haunts far in the foldings of the hills, where the Pocantico
+"winds its wizard stream" sometimes silently and darkly through solemn
+woodlands; sometimes sparkling between grassy borders in fresh, green
+meadows; sometimes stealing along the feet of rugged heights under
+the balancing sprays of beech and chestnut trees. A thousand crystal
+springs, with which this neighborhood abounds, sent down from the
+hill-sides their whimpering rills, as if to pay tribute to the
+Pocantico. In this stream I first essayed my unskilful hand at angling.
+I loved to loiter along it with rod in hand, watching my float as it
+whirled amid the eddies or drifted into dark holes under twisted roots
+and sunken logs, where the largest fish are apt to lurk. I delighted
+to follow it into the brown accesses of the woods; to throw by my
+fishing-gear and sit upon rocks beneath towering oaks and clambering
+grape-vines; bathe my feet in the cool current, and listen to the summer
+breeze playing among the tree-tops. My boyish fancy clothed all nature
+around me with ideal charms, and peopled it with the fairy beings I
+had read of in poetry and fable. Here it was I gave full scope to my
+incipient habit of day dreaming, and to a certain propensity, to weave
+up and tint sober realities with my own whims and imaginings, which has
+sometimes made life a little too much like an Arabian tale to me, and
+this "working-day world" rather like a region of romance.
+
+The great gathering-place of Sleepy Hollow in those days was the church.
+It stood outside of the Hollow, near the great highway, on a green bank
+shaded by trees, with the Pocantico sweeping round it and emptying
+itself into a spacious mill-pond. At that time the Sleepy Hollow
+church was the only place of worship for a wide neighborhood. It was
+a venerable edifice, partly of stone and partly of brick, the latter
+having been brought from Holland in the early days of the province,
+before the arts in the New Netherlands could aspire to such a
+fabrication. On a stone above the porch were inscribed the names of the
+founders, Frederick Filipsen, a mighty patroon of the olden time, who
+reigned over a wide extent of this neighborhood and held his seat of
+power at Yonkers; and his wife, Katrina Van Courtlandt, of the no less
+potent line of the Van Courtlandts of Croton, who lorded it over a great
+part of the Highlands.
+
+The capacious pulpit, with its wide-spreading sounding-board, were
+likewise early importations from Holland; as also the communion-table,
+of massive form and curious fabric. The same might be said of a
+weather-cock perched on top of the belfry, and which was considered
+orthodox in all windy matters, until a small pragmatical rival was set
+up on the other end of the church above the chancel. This latter bore,
+and still bears, the initials of Frederick Filipsen, and assumed great
+airs in consequence. The usual contradiction ensued that always exists
+among church weather-cocks, which can never be brought to agree as to
+the point from which the wind blows, having doubtless acquired, from
+their position, the Christian propensity to schism and controversy.
+
+Behind the church, and sloping up a gentle acclivity, was its capacious
+burying-ground, in which slept the earliest fathers of this rural
+neighborhood. Here were tombstones of the rudest sculpture; on which
+were inscribed, in Dutch, the names and virtues of many of the first
+settlers, with their portraitures curiously carved in similitude of
+cherubs. Long rows of grave-stones, side by side, of similar names,
+but various dates, showed that generation after generation of the same
+families had followed each other and been garnered together in this last
+gathering-place of kindred.
+
+Let me speak of this quiet grave-yard with all due reverence, for I owe
+it amends for the heedlessness of my boyish days. I blush to acknowledge
+the thoughtless frolic with which, in company with other whipsters, I
+have sported within its sacred bounds during the intervals of worship;
+chasing butterflies, plucking wild flowers, or vying with each other
+who could leap over the tallest tomb-stones, until checked by the stern
+voice of the sexton.
+
+The congregation was, in those days, of a really rural character. City
+fashions were as yet unknown, or unregarded, by the country people
+of the neighborhood. Steam-boats had not as yet confounded town with
+country. A weekly market-boat from Tarry town, the "Farmers' Daughter,"
+navigated by the worthy Gabriel Requa, was the only communication
+between all these parts and the metropolis. A rustic belle in those days
+considered a visit to the city in much the same light as one of our
+modern fashionable ladies regards a visit to Europe; an event that may
+possibly take place once in the course of a lifetime, but to be hoped
+for, rather than expected. Hence the array of the congregation was
+chiefly after the primitive fashions existing in Sleepy Hollow; or if,
+by chance, there was a departure from the Dutch sun-bonnet, or the
+apparition of a bright gown of flowered calico, it caused quite a
+sensation throughout the church. As the dominie generally preached by
+the hour, a bucket of water was providently placed on a bench near the
+door, in summer, with a tin cup beside it, for the solace of those who
+might be athirst, either from the heat of the weather, or the drouth of
+the sermon.
+
+Around the pulpit, and behind the communion-table, sat the elders of the
+church, reverend, gray-headed, leathern-visaged men, whom I regarded
+with awe, as so many apostles. They were stern in their sanctity, kept
+a vigilant eye upon my giggling companions and myself, and shook a
+rebuking finger at any boyish device to relieve the tediousness of
+compulsory devotion. Vain, however, were all their efforts at vigilance.
+Scarcely had the preacher held forth for half an hour, on one of his
+interminable sermons, than it seemed as if the drowsy influence of
+Sleepy Hollow breathed into the place; one by one the congregation sank
+into slumber; the sanctified elders leaned back in their pews, spreading
+their handkerchiefs over their faces, as if to keep off the flies; while
+the locusts in the neighboring trees would spin out their sultry summer
+notes, as if in imitation of the sleep-provoking tones of the dominie.
+
+I have thus endeavored to give an idea of Sleepy Hollow and its church,
+as I recollect them to have been in the days of my boyhood. It was in
+my stripling days, when a few years had passed over my head, that I
+revisited them, in company with the venerable Diedrich. I shall never
+forget the antiquarian reverence with which that sage and excellent man
+contemplated the church. It seemed as if all his pious enthusiasm for
+the ancient Dutch dynasty swelled within his bosom at the sight.
+The tears stood in his eyes, as he regarded the pulpit and the
+communion-table; even the very bricks that had come from the mother
+country, seemed to touch a filial chord within his bosom. He almost
+bowed in deference to the stone above the porch, containing the names
+of Frederick Filipsen and Katrina Van Courtlandt, regarding it as the
+linking together of those patronymic names, once so famous along the
+banks of the Hudson; or rather as a key-stone, binding that mighty Dutch
+family connexion of yore, one foot of which rested on Yonkers, and the
+other on the Groton. Nor did he forbear to notice with admiration, the
+windy contest which had been carried on, since time immemorial, and with
+real Dutch perseverance, between the two weather-cocks; though I could
+easily perceive he coincided with the one which had come from Holland.
+
+Together we paced the ample church-yard. With deep veneration would
+he turn down the weeds and brambles that obscured the modest brown
+grave-stones, half sunk in earth, on which were recorded, in Dutch, the
+names of the patriarchs of ancient days, the Ackers, the Van Tassels,
+and the Van Warts. As we sat on one of the tomb-stones, he recounted to
+me the exploits of many of these worthies; and my heart smote me, when I
+heard of their great doings in days of yore, to think how heedlessly I
+had once sported over their graves.
+
+From the church, the venerable Diedrich proceeded in his researches up
+the Hollow. The genius of the place seemed to hail its future historian.
+All nature was alive with gratulation. The quail whistled a greeting
+from the corn-field; the robin carolled a song of praise from the
+orchard; the loquacious catbird flew from bush to bush, with restless
+wing, proclaiming his approach in every variety of note, and anon would
+whisk about, and perk inquisitively into his face, as if to get a
+knowledge of his physiognomy; the wood-pecker, also, tapped a tattoo on
+the hollow apple-tree, and then peered knowingly round the trunk, to
+see how the great Diedrich relished his salutation; while the
+ground-squirrel scampered along the fence, and occasionally whisked his
+tail over his head, by way of a huzza!
+
+The worthy Diedrich pursued his researches in the valley with
+characteristic devotion; entering familiarly into the various cottages,
+and gossiping with the simple folk, in the style of their own
+simplicity. I confess my heart yearned with admiration, to see so great
+a man, in his eager quest after knowledge, humbly demeaning himself
+to curry favor with the humblest; sitting patiently on a three-legged
+stool, patting the children, and taking a purring grimalkin on his lap,
+while he conciliated the good-will of the old Dutch housewife, and drew
+from her long ghost stories, spun out to the humming accompaniment of
+her wheel.
+
+His greatest treasure of historic lore, however, was discovered in an
+old goblin-looking mill, situated among rocks and waterfalls, with
+clanking wheels, and rushing streams, and all kinds of uncouth noises.
+A horse-shoe, nailed to the door to keep off witches and evil spirits,
+showed that this mill was subject to awful visitations. As we approached
+it, an old negro thrust his head, all dabbled with flour, out of a hole
+above the water-wheel, and grinned, and rolled his eyes, and looked like
+the very hobgoblin of the place. The illustrious Diedrich fixed upon
+him, at once, as the very one to give him that invaluable kind of
+information never to be acquired from books. He beckoned him from his
+nest, sat with him by the hour on a broken mill-stone, by the side of
+the waterfall, heedless of the noise of the water, and the clatter
+of the mill; and I verily believe it was to his conference with this
+African sage, and the precious revelations of the good dame of the
+spinning-wheel, that we are indebted for the surprising though true
+history of Ichabod Crane and the headless horseman, which has since
+astounded and edified the world.
+
+But I have said enough of the good old times of my youthful days; let me
+speak of the Hollow as I found it, after an absence of many years,
+when it was kindly given me once more to revisit the haunts of my
+boyhood. It was a genial day, as I approached that fated region. The
+warm sunshine was tempered by a slight haze, so as to give a dreamy
+effect to the landscape. Not a breath of air shook the foliage. The
+broad Tappan Sea was without a ripple, and the sloops, with drooping
+sails, slept on its grassy bosom. Columns of smoke, from burning
+brush-wood, rose lazily from the folds of the hills, on the opposite
+side of the river, and slowly expanded in mid-air. The distant lowing
+of a cow, or the noontide crowing of a cock, coming faintly to the ear,
+seemed to illustrate, rather than disturb, the drowsy quiet of the
+scene.
+
+I entered the hollow with a beating heart. Contrary to my apprehensions,
+I found it but little changed. The march of intellect, which had
+made such rapid strides along every river and highway, had not yet,
+apparently, turned down into this favored valley. Perhaps the wizard
+spell of ancient days still reigned over the place, binding up the
+faculties of the inhabitants in happy contentment with things as they
+had been handed down to them from yore. There were the same little farms
+and farmhouses, with their old hats for the housekeeping wren; their
+stone wells, moss-covered buckets, and long balancing poles. There were
+the same little rills, whimpering down to pay their tributes to the
+Pocantico; while that wizard stream still kept on its course, as of old,
+through solemn woodlands and fresh green meadows: nor were there wanting
+joyous holiday boys to loiter along its banks, as I have done; throw
+their pin-hooks in the stream, or launch their mimic barks. I watched
+them with a kind of melancholy pleasure, wondering whether they were
+under the same spell of the fancy that once rendered this valley a fairy
+land to me. Alas! alas! to me every thing now stood revealed in its
+simple reality. The echoes no longer answered with wizard tongues; the
+dream of youth was at an end; the spell of Sleepy Hollow was broken!
+
+I sought the ancient church on the following Sunday. There it stood, on
+its green bank, among the trees; the Pocantico swept by it in a deep
+dark stream, where I had so often angled; there expanded the mill-pond,
+as of old, with the cows under the willows on its margin, knee-deep in
+water, chewing the cud, and lashing the flies from their sides with
+their tails. The hand of improvement, however, had been busy with the
+venerable pile. The pulpit, fabricated in Holland, had been superseded
+by one of modern construction, and the front of the semi-Gothic
+edifice was decorated by a semi-Grecian portico. Fortunately, the two
+weather-cocks remained undisturbed on their perches at each end of the
+church, and still kept up a diametrical opposition to each other on all
+points of windy doctrine.
+
+On entering the church the changes of time continued to be apparent. The
+elders round the pulpit were men whom I had left in the gamesome frolic
+of their youth, but who had succeeded to the sanctity of station of
+which they once had stood so much in awe. What most struck my eye was
+the change in the female part of the congregation. Instead of the
+primitive garbs of homespun manufacture and antique Dutch fashion,
+I beheld French sleeves, French capes, and French collars, and a
+fearful-fluttering of French ribbands.
+
+When the service was ended I sought the church-yard, in which I had
+sported in my unthinking days of boyhood. Several of the modest brown
+stones, on which were recorded in Dutch the names and virtues of the
+patriarchs, had disappeared, and had been succeeded by others of white
+marble, with urns and wreaths, and scraps of English tomb-stone poetry,
+marking the intrusion of taste and literature and the English language
+in this once unsophisticated Dutch neighborhood.
+
+As I was stumbling about among these silent yet eloquent memorials of
+the dead, I came upon names familiar to me; of those who had paid
+the debt of nature during the long interval of my absence. Some, I
+remembered, my companions in boyhood, who had sported with me on the
+very sod under which they were now mouldering; others who in those days
+had been the flower of the yeomanry, figuring in Sunday finery on the
+church green; others, the white-haired elders of the sanctuary, once
+arrayed in awful sanctity around the pulpit, and ever ready to rebuke
+the ill-timed mirth of the wanton stripling who, now a man, sobered by
+years and schooled by vicissitudes, looked down pensively upon their
+graves. "Our fathers," thought I, "where are they!--and the prophets,
+can they live for ever!"
+
+I was disturbed in my meditations by the noise of a troop of idle
+urchins, who came gambolling about the place where I had so often
+gambolled. They were checked, as I and my playmates had often been, by
+the voice of the sexton, a man staid in years and demeanor. I looked
+wistfully in his face; had I met him any where else, I should probably
+have passed him by without remark; but here I was alive to the traces of
+former times, and detected in the demure features of this guardian of
+the sanctuary the lurking lineaments of one of the very playmates I have
+alluded to. We renewed our acquaintance. He sat down beside me, on one
+of the tomb-stones over which we had leaped in our juvenile sports, and
+we talked together about our boyish days, and held edifying discourse
+on the instability of all sublunary things, as instanced in the scene
+around us. He was rich in historic lore, as to the events of the last
+thirty years and the circumference of thirty miles, and from him I
+learned the appalling revolution that was taking place throughout the
+neighborhood. All this I clearly perceived he attributed to the boasted
+march of intellect, or rather to the all-pervading influence of steam.
+He bewailed the times when the only communication with town was by the
+weekly market-boat, the "Farmers' Daughter," which, under the pilotage
+of the worthy Gabriel Requa, braved the perils of the Tappan Sea. Alas!
+Gabriel and the "Farmer's Daughter" slept in peace. Two steamboats now
+splashed and paddled up daily to the little rural port of Tarrytown. The
+spirit of speculation and improvement had seized even upon that once
+quiet and unambitious little dorp. The whole neighborhood was laid out
+into town lots. Instead of the little tavern below the hill, where
+the farmers used to loiter on market days and indulge in cider and
+gingerbread, an ambitious hotel, with cupola and verandas, now crested
+the summit, among churches built in the Grecian and Gothic styles,
+showing the great increase of piety and polite taste in the
+neighborhood. As to Dutch dresses and sun-bonnets, they were no longer
+tolerated, or even thought of; not a farmer's daughter but now went to
+town for the fashions; nay, a city milliner had recently set up in the
+village, who threatened to reform the heads of the whole neighborhood.
+
+I had heard enough! I thanked my old playmate for his intelligence, and
+departed from the Sleepy Hollow church with the sad conviction that I
+had beheld the last lingerings of the good old Dutch times in this once
+favored region. If any thing were wanting to confirm this impression,
+it would be the intelligence which has just reached me, that a bank is
+about to be established in the aspiring little port just mentioned. The
+fate of the neighborhood is therefore sealed. I see no hope of averting
+it. The golden mean is at an end, The country is suddenly to be deluged
+with wealth. The late simple farmers are to become bank directors and
+drink claret and champagne; and their wives and daughters to figure in
+French hats and feathers; for French wines and French fashions commonly
+keep pace with paper money. How can I hope that even Sleepy Hollow can
+escape the general inundation? In a little while, I fear the slumber of
+ages will be at end--the strum of the piano will succeed to the hum of
+the spinning-wheel; the trill of the Italian opera to the nasal quaver
+of Ichabod Crane; and the antiquarian visitor to the Hollow, in the
+petulance of his disappointment, may pronounce all that I have recorded
+of that once favored region a fable.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE BIRDS OF SPRING.
+
+BY GEOFFREY CRAYON, GENT.
+
+My quiet residence in the country, aloof from fashion, politics, and the
+money market, leaves me rather at a loss for important occupation, and
+drives me to the study of nature, and other low pursuits. Having few
+neighbors, also, on whom to keep a watch, and exercise my habits of
+observation, I am fain to amuse myself with prying into the domestic
+concerns and peculiarities of the animals around me; and, during the
+present season, have derived considerable entertainment from certain
+sociable little birds, almost the only visitors we have, during this
+early part of the year.
+
+Those who have passed the winter in the country, are sensible of the
+delightful influences that accompany the earliest indications of spring;
+and of these, none are more delightful than the first notes of the
+birds. There is one modest little sad-colored bird, much resembling a
+wren, which came about the house just on the skirts of winter, when not
+a blade of grass was to be seen, and when a few prematurely warm days
+had given a flattering foretaste of soft weather. He sang early in the
+dawning, long before sun-rise, and late in the evening, just before the
+closing in of night, his matin and his vesper hymns. It is true, he sang
+occasionally throughout the day; but at these still hours, his song was
+more remarked. He sat on a leafless tree, just before the window, and
+warbled forth his notes, free and simple, but singularly sweet, with
+something of a plaintive tone, that heightened their effect. The first
+morning that he was heard, was a joyous one among the young folks of my
+household. The long, deathlike sleep of winter was at an end; nature
+was once more awakening; they now promised themselves the immediate
+appearance of buds and blossoms. I was reminded of the tempest-tossed
+crew of Columbus, when, after their long dubious voyage, the field birds
+came singing round the ship, though still far at sea, rejoicing them
+with the belief of the immediate proximity of land. A sharp return of
+winter almost silenced my little songster, and dashed the hilarity of
+the household; yet still he poured forth, now and then, a few plaintive
+notes, between the frosty pipings of the breeze, like gleams of sunshine
+between wintry clouds.
+
+I have consulted my book of ornithology in vain, to find out the name
+of this kindly little bird, who certainly deserves honor and favor far
+beyond his modest pretensions. He comes like the lowly violet, the most
+unpretending, but welcomest of flowers, breathing the sweet promise of
+the early year.
+
+Another of our feathered visitors, who follows close upon the steps of
+winter, is the Pe-wit, or Pe-wee, or Phoebe-bird; for he is called by
+each of these names, from a fancied resemblance to the sound of his
+monotonous note. He is a sociable little being, and seeks the habitation
+of man. A pair of them have built beneath my porch, and have reared
+several broods there for two years past, their nest being never
+disturbed. They arrive early in the spring, just when the crocus and
+the snow-drop begin to peep forth. Their first chirp spreads gladness
+through the house. "The Phoebe-birds have come!" is heard on all sides;
+they are welcomed back like members of the family, and speculations are
+made upon where they have been, and what countries they have seen
+during their long absence. Their arrival is the more cheering, as it is
+pronounced, by the old weather-wise people of the country, the sure sign
+that the severe frosts are at an end, and that the gardener may resume
+his labors with confidence.
+
+About this time, too, arrives the blue-bird, so poetically yet truly
+described by Wilson. His appearance gladdens the whole landscape.
+You hear his soft warble in every field. He sociably approaches your
+habitation, and takes up his residence in your vicinity. But why should
+I attempt to describe him, when I have Wilson's own graphic verses to
+place him before the reader?
+
+  When winter's cold tempests and snows are no more,
+  Green meadows and brown furrowed fields re-appearing:
+  The fishermen hauling their shad to the shore,
+  And cloud-cleaving geese to the lakes are a-steering;
+  When first the lone butterfly flits on the wing,
+  When red glow the maples, so fresh and so pleasing,
+  O then comes the blue-bird, the herald of spring,
+  And hails with his warblings the charms of the season.
+
+  The loud-piping frogs make the marshes to ring;
+  Then warm glows the sunshine, and warm glows the weather;
+  The blue woodland flowers just beginning to spring,
+  And spice-wood and sassafras budding together;
+  O then to your gardens, ye housewives, repair,
+  Your walks border up, sow and plant at your leisure;
+  The blue-bird will chant from his box such an air,
+  That all your hard toils will seem truly a pleasure.
+
+  He flits through the orchard, he visits each tree,
+  The red flowering peach, and the apple's sweet blossoms;
+  He snaps up destroyers, wherever they be,
+  And seizes the caitiffs that lurk in their bosoms;
+  He drags the vile grub from the corn it devours,
+  The worms from the webs where they riot and welter;
+  His song and his services freely are ours,
+  And all that he asks is, in summer a shelter.
+
+  The ploughman is pleased when he gleams in his train,
+  Now searching the furrows, now mounting to cheer him;
+  The gard'ner delights in his sweet simple strain,
+  And leans on his spade to survey and to hear him.
+  The slow lingering school-boys forget they'll be chid,
+  While gazing intent, as he warbles before them,
+  In mantle of sky-blue, and bosom so red,
+  That each little loiterer seems to adore him.
+
+The happiest bird of our spring, however, and one that rivals the
+European lark, in my estimation, is the Boblincon, or Boblink, as he is
+commonly called. He arrives at that choice portion of our year, which,
+in this latitude, answers to the description of the month of May, so
+often given by the poets. With us, it begins about the middle of May,
+and lasts until nearly the middle of June. Earlier than this, winter is
+apt to return on its traces, and to blight the opening beauties of
+the year; and later than this, begin the parching, and panting, and
+dissolving heats of summer. But in this genial interval, nature is in
+all her freshness and fragrance: "the rains are over and gone, the
+flowers appear upon the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come,
+and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land." The trees are now in
+their fullest foliage and brightest verdure; the woods are gay with the
+clustered flowers of the laurel; the air is perfumed by the sweet-briar
+and the wild rose; the meadows are enamelled with clover-blossoms; while
+the young apple, the peach, and the plum, begin to swell, and the cherry
+to glow, among the green leaves.
+
+This is the chosen season of revelry of the Boblink. He comes amidst the
+pomp and fragrance of the season; his life seems all sensibility and
+enjoyment, all song and sunshine. He is to be found in the soft bosoms
+of the freshest and sweetest meadows; and is most in song when the
+clover is in blossom. He perches on the topmost twig of a tree, or on
+some long flaunting weed; and as he rises and sinks with the breeze,
+pours forth a succession of rich tinkling notes; crowding one upon
+another, like the outpouring melody of the skylark, and possessing the
+same rapturous character. Sometimes he pitches from the summit of a
+tree, begins his song as soon as he gets upon the wing, and flutters
+tremulously down to the earth, as if overcome with ecstasy at his own
+music. Sometimes he is in pursuit of his paramour; always in full
+song, as if he would win her by his melody; and always with the same
+appearance of intoxication and delight.
+
+Of all the birds of our groves and meadows, the Boblink was the envy of
+my boyhood. He crossed my path in the sweetest weather, and the sweetest
+season of the year, when all nature called to the fields, and the rural
+feeling throbbed in every bosom; but when I, luckless urchin! was doomed
+to be mewed up, during the livelong day, in that purgatory of boyhood, a
+school-room. It seemed as if the little varlet mocked at me, as he flew
+by in full song, and sought to taunt me with his happier lot. Oh, how
+I envied him! No lessons, no tasks, no hateful school; nothing but
+holiday, frolic, green fields, and fine weather. Had I been then more
+versed in poetry, I might have addressed him in the words of Logan to
+the cuckoo:
+
+  Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green,
+  Thy sky is ever clear;
+  Thou hast no sorrow in thy note,
+  No winter in thy year.
+
+  Oh! could I fly, I'd fly with thee;
+  We'd make, on joyful wing,
+  Our annual visit round the globe,
+  Companions of the spring!
+
+Farther observation and experience have given me a different idea of
+this little feathered voluptuary, which I will venture to impart, for
+the benefit of my school-boy readers, who may regard him with the same
+unqualified envy and admiration which I once indulged. I have shown him
+only as I saw him at first, in what I may call the poetical part of his
+career, when he in a manner devoted himself to elegant pursuits
+and enjoyments, and was a bird of music, and song, and taste, and
+sensibility, and refinement. While this lasted, he was sacred from
+injury; the very school-boy would not fling a stone at him, and the
+merest rustic would pause to listen to his strain. But mark the
+difference. As the year advances, as the clover-blossoms disappear, and
+the spring fades into summer, his notes cease to vibrate on the ear. He
+gradually gives up his elegant tastes and habits, doffs his poetical and
+professional suit of black, assumes a russet or rather dusty garb, and
+enters into the gross enjoyments of common, vulgar birds. He becomes a
+bon-vivant, a mere gourmand; thinking of nothing but good cheer, and
+gormandizing on the seeds of the long grasses on which he lately swung,
+and chaunted so musically. He begins to think there is nothing like "the
+joys of the table," if I may be allowed to apply that convivial phrase
+to his indulgences. He now grows discontented with plain, every-day
+fare, and sets out on a gastronomical tour, in search of foreign
+luxuries. He is to be found in myriads among the reeds of the Delaware,
+banqueting on their seeds; grows corpulent with good feeding, and soon
+acquires the unlucky renown of the ortolan. Whereever he goes, pop! pop!
+pop! the rusty firelocks of the country are cracking on every side;
+he sees his companions falling by the thousands around him; he is
+the _reed-bird_, the much-sought-for tit-bit of the Pennsylvanian
+epicure.
+
+Does he take warning and reform? Not he! He wings his flight still
+farther south, in search of other luxuries. We hear of him gorging
+himself in the rice swamps; filling himself with rice almost to
+bursting; he can hardly fly for corpulency. Last stage of his career,
+we hear of him spitted by dozens, and served up on the table of the
+gourmand, the most vaunted of southern dainties, the _rice-bird_ of the
+Carolinas.
+
+Such is the story of the once musical and admired, but finally sensual
+and persecuted Boblink. It contains a moral, worthy the attention of all
+little birds and little boys; warning them to keep to those refined
+and intellectual pursuits, which raised him to so high a pitch of
+popularity, during the early part of his career; but to eschew all
+tendency to that gross and dissipated indulgence, which brought this
+mistaken little bird to an untimely end.
+
+Which is all at present, from the well-wisher of little boys and little
+birds,
+
+GEOFFREY CRAYON.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+RECOLLECTIONS OF THE ALHAMBRA.
+
+BY THE AUTHOR OF THE SKETCH-BOOK.
+
+During a summer's residence in the old Moorish palace of the Alhambra,
+of which I have already given numerous anecdotes to the public, I used
+to pass much of my time in the beautiful hall of the Abencerrages,
+beside the fountain celebrated in the tragic story of that devoted
+race. Here it was, that thirty-six cavaliers of that heroic line were
+treacherously sacrificed, to appease the jealousy or allay the fears of
+a tyrant. The fountain which now throws up its sparkling jet, and sheds
+a dewy freshness around, ran red with the noblest blood of Granada,
+and a deep stain on the marble pavement is still pointed out, by the
+cicerones of the pile, as a sanguinary record of the massacre. I have
+regarded it with the same determined faith with which I have regarded
+the traditional stains of Rizzio's blood on the floor of the chamber of
+the unfortunate Mary, at Holyrood. I thank no one for endeavoring to
+enlighten my credulity, on such points of popular belief. It is like
+breaking up the shrine of the pilgrim; it is robbing a poor traveller of
+half the reward of his toils; for, strip travelling of its historical
+illusions, and what a mere fag you make of it!
+
+For my part, I gave myself up, during my sojourn in the Alhambra, to all
+the romantic and fabulous traditions connected with the pile. I lived in
+the midst of an Arabian tale, and shut my eyes, as much as possible, to
+every thing that called me back to every-day life; and if there is any
+country in Europe where one can do so, it is in poor, wild, legendary,
+proud-spirited, romantic Spain; where the old magnificent barbaric
+spirit still contends against the utilitarianism of modern civilization.
+
+In the silent and deserted halls of the Alhambra; surrounded with the
+insignia of regal sway, and the still vivid, though dilapidated traces
+of oriental voluptuousness, I was in the strong-hold of Moorish story,
+and every thing spoke and breathed of the glorious days of Granada,
+when under the dominion of the crescent. When I sat in the hall of the
+Abencerrages, I suffered my mind to conjure up all that I had read of
+that illustrious line. In the proudest days of Moslem domination, the
+Abencerrages were the soul of every thing noble and chivalrous. The
+veterans of the family, who sat in the royal council, were the foremost
+to devise those heroic enterprises, which carried dismay into the
+territories of the Christians; and what the sages of the family devised,
+the young men of the name were the foremost to execute. In all services
+of hazard; in all adventurous forays, and hair-breadth hazards; the
+Abencerrages were sure to win the brightest laurels. In those noble
+recreations, too, which bear so close an affinity to war; in the tilt
+and tourney, the riding at the ring, and the daring bull-fight; still
+the Abencerrages carried off the palm. None could equal them for the
+splendor of their array, the gallantry of their devices; for their noble
+bearing, and glorious horsemanship. Their open-handed munificence made
+them the idols of the populace, while their lofty magnanimity, and
+perfect faith, gained them golden opinions from the generous and
+high-minded. Never were they known to decry the merits of a rival, or to
+betray the confidings of a friend; and the "word of an Abencerrage" was
+a guarantee that never admitted of a doubt.
+
+And then their devotion to the fair! Never did Moorish beauty consider
+the fame of her charms established, until she had an Abencerrage for a
+lover; and never did an Abencerrage prove recreant to his vows. Lovely
+Granada! City of delights! Who ever bore the favors of thy dames more
+proudly on their casques, or championed them more gallantly in the
+chivalrous tilts of the Vivarambla? Or who ever made thy moon-lit
+balconies, thy gardens of myrtles and roses, of oranges, citrons, and
+pomegranates, respond to more tender serenades?
+
+I speak with enthusiasm on this theme; for it is connected with the
+recollection of one of the sweetest evenings and sweetest scenes that
+ever I enjoyed in Spain. One of the greatest pleasures of the Spaniards
+is, to sit in the beautiful summer evenings, and listen to traditional
+ballads, and tales about the wars of the Moors and Christians, and the
+"buenas andanzas" and "grandes hechos," the "good fortunes" and "great
+exploits" of the hardy warriors of yore. It is worthy of remark, also,
+that many of these songs, or romances, as they are called, celebrate
+the prowess and magnanimity in war, and the tenderness and, fidelity in
+love, of the Moorish cavaliers, once their most formidable and hated
+foes. But centuries have elapsed, to extinguish the bigotry of the
+zealot; and the once detested warriors of Granada are now held up by
+Spanish poets, as the mirrors of chivalric virtue.
+
+Such was the amusement of the evening in question. A number of us were
+seated in the Hall of the Abencerrages, listening to one of the most
+gifted and fascinating beings that I had ever met with in my wanderings.
+She was young and beautiful; and light and ethereal; full of fire, and
+spirit, and pure enthusiasm. She wore the fanciful Andalusian dress;
+touched the guitar with speaking eloquence; improvised with wonderful
+facility; and, as she became excited by her theme, or by the rapt
+attention of her auditors, would pour forth, in the richest and
+most melodious strains, a succession of couplets, full of striking
+description, or stirring narration, and composed, as I was assured, at
+the moment. Most of these were suggested by the place, and related to
+the ancient glories of Granada, and the prowess of her chivalry. The
+Abencerrages were her favorite heroes; she felt a woman's admiration of
+their gallant courtesy, and high-souled honor; and it was touching and
+inspiring to hear the praises of that generous but devoted race, chanted
+in this fated hall of their calamity, by the lips of Spanish beauty.
+
+Among the subjects of which she treated, was a tale of Moslem honor, and
+old-fashioned Spanish courtesy, which made a strong impression on me.
+She disclaimed all merit of invention, however, and said she had merely
+dilated into verse a popular tradition; and, indeed, I have since found
+the main facts inserted at the end of Conde's History of the Domination
+of the Arabs, and the story itself embodied in the form of an episode in
+the Diana of Montemayor. From these sources I have drawn it forth, and
+endeavored to shape it according to my recollection of the version of
+the beautiful minstrel; but, alas! what can supply the want of that
+voice, that look, that form, that action, which gave magical effect to
+her chant, and held every one rapt in breathless admiration! Should this
+mere travestie of her inspired numbers ever meet her eye, in her stately
+abode at Granada, may it meet with that indulgence which belongs to her
+benignant nature. Happy should I be, if it could awaken in her bosom
+one kind recollection of the lonely stranger and sojourner, for
+whose gratification she did not think it beneath her to exert those
+fascinating powers which were the delight of brilliant circles; and who
+will ever recall with enthusiasm the happy evening passed in listening
+to her strains, in the moon-lit halls of the Alhambra.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+GEOFFREY CRAYON.
+
+THE ABENCERRAGE.
+
+A SPANISH TALE.
+
+On the summit of a craggy hill, a spur of the mountains of Ronda, stands
+the castle of Allora, now a mere ruin, infested by bats and owlets, but
+in old times one of the strong border holds of the Christians, to keep
+watch upon the frontiers of the warlike kingdom of Granada, and to hold
+the Moors in check. It was a post always confided to some well-tried
+commander; and, at the time of which we treat, was held by Rodrigo de
+Narvaez, a veteran, famed, both among Moors and Christians, not only for
+his hardy feats of arms, but also for that magnanimous courtesy which
+should ever be entwined with the sterner virtues of the soldier.
+
+The castle of Allora was a mere part of his command; he was Alcayde, or
+military governor of Antiquera, but he passed most of his time at this
+frontier post, because its situation on the borders gave more frequent
+opportunity for those adventurous exploits which were the delight of the
+Spanish chivalry. His garrison consisted of fifty chosen cavaliers, all
+well mounted and well appointed: with these he kept vigilant watch
+upon the Moslems; patrolling the roads, and paths, and defiles of the
+mountains, so that nothing could escape his eye; and now and then
+signalizing himself by some dashing foray into the very Vega of Granada.
+
+On a fair and beautiful night in summer, when the freshness of the
+evening breeze had tempered the heat of day, the worthy Alcayde sallied
+forth, with nine of his cavaliers, to patrol the neighborhood, and
+seek adventures. They rode quietly and cautiously, lest they should be
+overheard by Moorish scout or traveller; and kept along ravines and
+hollow ways, lest they should be betrayed by the glittering of the full
+moon upon their armor. Coming to where the road divided, the Alcayde
+directed five of his cavaliers to take one of the branches, while he,
+with the remaining four, would take the other. Should either party be in
+danger, the blast of a horn was to be the signal to bring their comrades
+to their aid.
+
+The party of five had not proceeded far, when, in passing through a
+defile, overhung with trees, they heard the voice of a man, singing.
+They immediately concealed themselves in a grove, on the brow of a
+declivity, up which the stranger would have to ascend. The moonlight,
+which left the grove in deep shadow, lit up the whole person of the
+wayfarer, as he advanced, and enabled them to distinguish his dress and
+appearance with perfect accuracy. He was a Moorish cavalier, and his
+noble demeanor, graceful carriage, and splendid attire showed him to
+be of lofty rank. He was superbly mounted, on a dapple-gray steed, of
+powerful frame, and generous spirit, and magnificently caparisoned.
+His dress was a marlota, or tunic, and an Albernoz of crimson damask,
+fringed with gold. His Tunisian turban, of many folds, was of silk and
+cotton, striped, and bordered with golden fringe. At his girdle hung a
+scimitar of Damascus steel, with loops and tassels of silk and gold. On
+his left arm he bore an ample target, and his right hand grasped a long
+double-pointed lance. Thus equipped, he sat negligently on his steed, as
+one who dreamed of no danger, gazing on the moon, and singing, with a
+sweet and manly voice, a Moorish love ditty.
+
+Just opposite the place where the Spanish cavaliers were concealed, was
+a small fountain in the rock, beside the road, to which the horse turned
+to drink; the rider threw the reins on his neck, and continued his song.
+
+The Spanish cavaliers conferred together; they were all so pleased with
+the gallant and gentle appearance of the Moor, that they resolved not to
+harm, but to capture him, which, in his negligent mood, promised to be
+an easy task; rushing, therefore, from their concealment, they thought
+to surround and seize him. Never were men more mistaken. To gather up
+his reins, wheel round his steed, brace his buckler, and couch his
+lance, was the work of an instant; and there he sat, fixed like a castle
+in his saddle, beside the fountain.
+
+The Christian cavaliers checked their steeds and reconnoitered him
+warily, loth to come to an encounter, which must end in his destruction.
+
+The Moor now held a parley: "If you be true knights," said he, "and seek
+for honorable fame, come on, singly, and I am ready to meet each in
+succession; but if you be mere lurkers of the road, intent on spoil,
+come all at once, and do your worst!"
+
+The cavaliers communed for a moment apart, when one, advancing singly,
+exclaimed: "Although no law of chivalry obliges us to risk the loss of a
+prize, when clearly in our power, yet we willingly grant, as a courtesy,
+what we might refuse as a right. Valiant Moor! defend thyself!" So
+saying, he wheeled, took proper distance, couched his lance, and putting
+spurs to his horse, made at the stranger. The latter met him in mid
+career, transpierced him with his lance, and threw him headlong from his
+saddle. A second and a third succeeded, but were unhorsed with equal
+facility, and thrown to the earth, severely wounded. The remaining
+two, seeing their comrades thus roughly treated, forgot all compact of
+courtesy, and charged both at once upon the Moor. He parried the thrust
+of one, but was wounded by the other in the thigh, and, in the shock and
+confusion, dropped his lance. Thus disarmed, and closely pressed, he
+pretended to fly, and was hotly pursued. Having drawn the two cavaliers
+some distance from the spot, he suddenly wheeled short about, with
+one of those dexterous movements for which the Moorish horsemen are
+renowned; passed swiftly between them, swung himself down from his
+saddle, so as to catch up his lance, then, lightly replacing himself,
+turned to renew the combat.
+
+Seeing him thus fresh for the encounter, as if just issued from his
+tent, one of the cavaliers put his lips to his horn, and blew a blast,
+that soon brought the Alcayde and his four companions to the spot.
+
+The valiant Narvaez, seeing three of his cavaliers extended on the
+earth, and two others hotly engaged with the Moor, was struck with
+admiration, and coveted a contest with so accomplished a warrior.
+Interfering in the fight, he called upon his followers to desist, and
+addressing the Moor, with courteous words, invited him to a more equal
+combat. The latter readily accepted the challenge. For some time, their
+contest was fierce and doubtful; and the Alcayde had need of all his
+skill and strength to ward off the blows of his antagonist. The Moor,
+however, was exhausted by previous fighting, and by loss of blood. He
+no longer sat his horse firmly, nor managed him with his wonted skill.
+Collecting all his strength for a last assault, he rose in his stirrups,
+and made a violent thrust with his lance; the Alcayde received it upon
+his shield, and at the same time wounded the Moor in the right arm; then
+closing, in the shock, he grasped him in his arms, dragged him from his
+saddle, and fell with him to the earth: when putting his knee upon his
+breast, and his dagger to his throat, "Cavalier," exclaimed he, "render
+thyself my prisoner, for thy life is in my hands!"
+
+"Kill me, rather," replied the Moor, "for death would be less grievous
+than loss of liberty." The Alcayde, however, with the clemency of the
+truly brave, assisted the Moor to rise, ministered to his wounds with
+his own hands, and had him conveyed with great care to the castle of
+Allora. His wounds were slight, and in a few days were nearly cured; but
+the deepest wound had been inflicted on his spirit. He was constantly
+buried in a profound melancholy.
+
+The Alcayde, who had conceived a great regard for him, treated him more
+as a friend than a captive, and tried in every way to cheer him, but in
+vain; he was always sad and moody, and, when on the battlements of
+the castle, would keep his eyes turned to the south, with a fixed and
+wistful gaze.
+
+"How is this?" exclaimed the Alcayde, reproachfully, "that you, who were
+so hardy and fearless in the field, should lose all spirit in prison? If
+any secret grief preys on your heart, confide it to me, as to a friend,
+and I promise you, on the faith of a cavalier, that you shall have no
+cause to repent the disclosure."
+
+The Moorish knight kissed the hand of the Alcayde. "Noble cavalier,"
+said he "that I am cast down in spirit, is not from my wounds, which are
+slight, nor from my captivity, for your kindness has robbed it of all
+gloom; nor from my defeat, for to be conquered by so accomplished and
+renowned a cavalier, is no disgrace. But to explain to you the cause of
+my grief, it is necessary to give you some particulars of my story; and
+this I am moved to do, by the great sympathy you have manifested toward
+me, and the magnanimity that shines through all your actions."
+
+"Know, then, that my name is Abendaraez, and that I am of the noble but
+unfortunate line of the Abencerrages of Granada. You have doubtless
+heard of the destruction that fell upon our race. Charged with
+treasonable designs, of which they were entirely innocent, many of
+them were beheaded, the rest banished; so that not an Abencerrages was
+permitted to remain in Granada, excepting my father and my uncle, whose
+innocence was proved, even to the satisfaction of their persecutors. It
+was decreed, however, that, should they have children, the sons should
+be educated at a distance from Granada, and the daughters should be
+married out of the kingdom.
+
+"Conformably to this decree, I was sent, while yet an infant, to be
+reared in the fortress of Cartama, the worthy Alcayde of which was an
+ancient friend of my father. He had no children, and received me into
+his family as his own child, treating me with the kindness and affection
+of a father; and I grew up in the belief that he really was such. A few
+years afterward, his wife gave birth to a daughter, but his tenderness
+toward me continued undiminished. I thus grew up with Xarisa, for so
+the infant daughter of the Alcayde was called, as her own brother, and
+thought the growing passion which I felt for her, was mere fraternal
+affection. I beheld her charms unfolding, as it were, leaf by leaf, like
+the morning rose, each moment disclosing fresh beauty and sweetness.
+
+"At this period, I overheard a conversation between the Alcayde and his
+confidential domestic, and found myself to be the subject. 'It is time,'
+said he, 'to apprise him of his parentage, that he may adopt a career
+in life. I have deferred the communication as long as possible, through
+reluctance to inform him that he is of a proscribed and an unlucky
+race.'
+
+"This intelligence would have overwhelmed me at an earlier period, but
+the intimation that Xarisa was not my sister, operated like magic, and
+in an instant transformed my brotherly affection into ardent love.
+
+"I sought Xarisa, to impart to her the secret I had learned. I found her
+in the garden, in a bower of jessamines, arranging her beautiful hair by
+the mirror of a crystal fountain. The radiance of her beauty dazzled
+me. I ran to her with open arms, and she received me with a sister's
+embraces. When we had seated ourselves beside the fountain, she began to
+upbraid me for leaving her so long alone.
+
+"In reply, I informed her of the conversation I had overheard. The
+recital shocked and distressed her. 'Alas!' cried she, 'then is our
+happiness at an end!'
+
+"'How!' exclaimed I; 'wilt thou cease to love me, because I am not thy
+brother?'
+
+"'Not so,' replied she; 'but do you not know that when it is once known
+we are not brother and sister, we can no longer be permitted to be thus
+always together?'
+
+"In fact, from that moment our intercourse took a new character. We
+met often at the fountain among the jessamines, but Xarisa no longer
+advanced with open arms to meet me. She became reserved and silent, and
+would blush, and cast down her eyes, when I seated myself beside her. My
+heart became a prey to the thousand doubts and fears that ever attend
+upon true love. I was restless and uneasy, and looked back with regret
+to the unreserved intercourse that had existed between us, when we
+supposed ourselves brother and sister; yet I would not have had the
+relationship true, for the world.
+
+"While matters were in this state between us, an order came from the
+King of Granada for the Alcayde to take command of the fortress of Coyn,
+which lies directly on the Christian frontier. He prepared to remove,
+with all his family, but signified that I should remain at Cartama. I
+exclaimed against the separation, and declared that I could not be
+parted from Xarisa. 'That is the very cause,' said he, 'why I leave thee
+behind. It is time, Abendaraez, that thou shouldst know the secret of
+thy birth; that thou art no son of mine, neither is Xarisa thy sister.'
+'I know it all,' exclaimed I, 'and I love her with tenfold the
+affection of a brother. You have brought us up together; you have made
+us necessary to each other's happiness; our hearts have entwined
+themselves with our growth; do not now tear them asunder. Fill up the
+measure of your kindness; be indeed a father to me, by giving me Xarisa
+for my wife.'
+
+"The brow of the Alcayde darkened as I spoke. 'Have I then been
+deceived?' said he. 'Have those nurtured in my very bosom, been
+conspiring against me? Is this your return for my paternal
+tenderness?--to beguile the affections of my child, and teach her to
+deceive her father? It was cause enough to refuse thee the hand of my
+daughter, that thou wert of a proscribed race, who can never approach
+the walls of Granada; this, however, I might have passed over; but never
+will I give my daughter to a man who has endeavored to win her from me
+by deception.'
+
+"All my attempts to vindicate myself and Xarisa were unavailing. I
+retired in anguish from his presence, and seeking Xarisa, told her of
+this blow, which was worse than death to me. 'Xarisa,' said I, 'we
+part for ever! I shall never see thee more! Thy father will guard thee
+rigidly. Thy beauty and his wealth will soon attract some happier rival,
+and I shall be forgotten!'
+
+"Xarisa reproached me with my want of faith, and promised me eternal
+constancy. I still doubted and desponded, until, moved by my anguish and
+despair, she agreed to a secret union. Our espousals made, we parted,
+with a promise on her part to send me word from Coyn, should her
+father absent himself from the fortress. The very day after our secret
+nuptials, I beheld the whole train of the Alcayde depart from Cartama,
+nor would he admit me to his presence, or permit me to bid farewell
+to Xarisa. I remained at Cartama, somewhat pacified in spirit by this
+secret bond of union; but every thing around me fed my passion, and
+reminded me of Xarisa. I saw the windows at which I had so often beheld
+her. I wandered through the apartment she had inhabited; the chamber in
+which she had slept. I visited the bower of jessamines, and lingered
+beside the fountain in which she had delighted. Every thing recalled her
+to my imagination, and filled my heart with tender melancholy.
+
+"At length, a confidential servant brought me word, that her father
+was to depart that day for Granada, on a short absence, inviting me to
+hasten to Coyn, describing a secret portal at which I should apply, and
+the signal by which I would obtain admittance.
+
+"If ever you have loved, most valiant Alcayde, you may judge of the
+transport of my bosom. That very night I arrayed myself in my most
+gallant attire, to pay due honor to my bride; and arming myself against
+any casual attack, issued forth privately from Cartama. You know the
+rest, and by what sad fortune of war I found myself, instead of a happy
+bridegroom, in the nuptial bower of Coyn, vanquished, wounded, and a
+prisoner, withing the walls of Allora. The term of absence of the father
+of Xarisa is nearly expired. Within three days he will return to Coyn,
+and our meeting will no longer be possible. Judge, then, whether I
+grieve without cause, and whether I may not well be excused for showing
+impatience under confinement."
+
+Don Rodrigo de Narvaez was greatly moved by this recital; for, though
+more used to rugged war, than scenes of amorous softness, he was of a
+kind and generous nature.
+
+"Abendaraez," said he, "I did not seek thy confidence to gratify an idle
+curiosity. It grieves me much that the good fortune which delivered thee
+into my hands, should have marred so fair an enterprise. Give me thy
+faith, as a true knight, to return prisoner to my castle, within three
+days, and I will grant thee permission to accomplish thy nuptials."
+
+The Abencerrage would have thrown himself at his feet, to pour out
+protestations of eternal gratitude, but the Alcayde prevented him.
+Calling in his cavaliers, he took the Abencerrage by the right hand, in
+their presence, exclaiming solemnly, "You promise, on the faith of a
+cavalier, to return to my castle of Allora within three days, and render
+yourself my prisoner?" And the Abencerrage said, "I promise."
+
+Then said the Alcayde, "Go! and may good fortune attend you. If
+you require any safeguard, I and my cavaliers are ready to be your
+companions."
+
+The Abencerrage kissed the hand of the Alcayde, in grateful
+acknowledgment. "Give me," said he, "my own armor, and my steed, and
+I require no guard. It is not likely that I shall again meet with so
+valorous a foe."
+
+The shades of night had fallen, when the tramp of the dapple-gray steed
+sounded over the drawbridge, and immediately afterward the light clatter
+of hoofs along the road, bespoke the fleetness with which the youthful
+lover hastened to his bride. It was deep night when the Moor arrived at
+the castle of Coyn. He silently and cautiously walked his panting steed
+under its dark walls, and having nearly passed round them, came to the
+portal denoted by Xarisa. He paused and looked around to see that he was
+not observed, and then knocked three times with the butt of his lance.
+In a little while the portal was timidly unclosed by the duenna of
+Xarisa. "Alas! senor," said she, "what has detained you thus long? Every
+night have I watched for you; and my lady is sick at heart with doubt
+and anxiety."
+
+The Abencerrage hung his lance, and shield, and scimitar against the
+wall, and then followed the duenna, with silent steps, up a winding
+stair-case, to the apartment of Xarisa. Vain would be the attempt to
+describe the raptures of that meeting. Time flew too swiftly, and the
+Abencerrage had nearly forgotten, until too late, his promise to return
+a prisoner to the Alcayde of Allora. The recollection of it came to him
+with a pang, and suddenly awoke him from his dream of bliss. Xarisa
+saw his altered looks, and heard with alarm his stifled sighs; but her
+countenance brightened, when she heard the cause. "Let not thy spirit be
+cast down," said she, throwing her white arms around him. "I have the
+keys of my father's treasures; send ransom more than enough to satisfy
+the Christian, and remain with me."
+
+"No," said Abendaraez, "I have given my word to return in person, and
+like a true knight, must fulfil my promise. After that, fortune must do
+with me as it pleases."
+
+"Then," said Xarisa, "I will accompany thee. Never shall you return a
+prisoner, and I remain at liberty."
+
+The Abencerrage was transported with joy at this new proof of devotion
+in his beautiful bride. All preparations were speedily made for their
+departure. Xarisa mounted behind the Moor, on his powerful steed; they
+left the castle walls before daybreak, nor did they pause, until they
+arrived at the gate of the castle of Allora, which was flung wide to
+receive them.
+
+Alighting in the court, the Abencerrage supported the steps of his
+trembling bride, who remained closely veiled, into the presence of
+Rodrigo de Narvaez. "Behold, valiant Alcayde!" said he, "the way in
+which an Abencerrage keeps his word. I promised to return to thee a
+prisoner, but I deliver two captives into your power. Behold Xarisa,
+and judge whether I grieved without reason, over the loss of such a
+treasure. Receive us as your own, for I confide my life and her honor to
+your hands."
+
+The Alcayde was lost in admiration of the beauty of the lady, and the
+noble spirit of the Moor. "I know not," said he, "which of you surpasses
+the other; but I know that my castle is graced and honored by your
+presence. Enter into it, and consider it your own, while you deign to
+reside with me."
+
+For several days the lovers remained at Allora, happy in each other's
+love, and in the friendship of the brave Alcayde. The latter wrote a
+letter, full of courtesy, to the Moorish king of Granada, relating the
+whole event, extolling the valor and good faith of the Abencerrage, and
+craving for him the royal countenance.
+
+The king was moved by the story, and was pleased with an opportunity of
+showing attention to the wishes of a gallant and chivalrous enemy; for
+though he had often suffered from the prowess of Don Rodigro de Narvaez,
+he admired the heroic character he had gained throughout the land.
+Calling the Alcayde of Coyn into his presence, he gave him the letter to
+read. The Alcayde turned pale, and trembled with rage, on the perusal.
+"Restrain thine anger," said the king; "there is nothing that the
+Alcayde of Allora could ask, that I would not grant, if in my power. Go
+thou to Allora; pardon thy children; take them to thy home. I receive
+this Abencerrage into my favor, and it will be my delight to heap
+benefits upon you all."
+
+The kindling ire of the Alcayde was suddenly appeased. He hastened to
+Allora; and folded his children to his bosom, who would have fallen at
+his feet. The gallant Rodrigo de Narvaez gave liberty to his prisoner
+without ransom, demanding merely a promise of his friendship. He
+accompanied the youthful couple and their father to Coyn, where their
+nuptials were celebrated with great rejoicings. When the festivities
+were over, Don Rodrigo de Narvaez returned to his fortress of Allora.
+
+After his departure, the Alcayde of Coyn addressed his children: "To
+your hands," said he, "I confide the disposition of my wealth. One of
+the first things I charge you, is not to forget the ransom you owe to
+the Alcayde of Allora. His magnanimity you can never repay, but you can
+prevent it from wronging him of his just dues. Give him, moreover, your
+entire friendship, for he merits it fully, though of a different faith."
+
+The Abencerrage thanked him for his generous proposition, which so truly
+accorded with his own wishes. He took a large sum of gold, and enclosed
+it in a rich coffer; and, on his own part, sent six beautiful horses,
+superbly caparisoned; with six shields and lances, mounted and embossed
+with gold. The beautiful Xarisa, at the same time, wrote a letter to the
+Alcayde, filled with expressions of gratitude and friendship, and sent
+him a box of fragrant cypress-wood, containing linen, of the finest
+quality, for his person. The valiant Alcayde disposed of the present
+in a characteristic manner. The horses and armor he shared among the
+cavaliers who had accompanied him on the night of the skirmish. The
+box of cypress-wood and its contents he retained, for the sake of the
+beautiful Xarisa; and sent her, by the hands of a messenger, the sum
+of gold paid as a ransom, entreating her to receive it as a wedding
+present. This courtesy and magnanimity raised the character of the
+Alcayde Rodrigo de Narvaez still higher in the estimation of the Moors,
+who extolled him as a perfect mirror of chivalric virtue; and from that
+time forward, there was a continual exchange of good offices between
+them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE ENCHANTED ISLAND.
+
+BY THE AUTHOR OF THE SKETCH-BOOK.
+
+  Break, Phantsie, from thy cave of cloud,
+  And wave thy purple wings,
+  Now all thy figures are allowed,
+  And various shapes of things.
+  Create of airy forms a stream;
+  It must have blood and nought of phlegm;
+  And though it be a walking dream,
+  Yet let it like an odor rise
+  To all the senses here,
+  And fall like sleep upon their eyes,
+  Or music on their ear.--BEN JONSON.
+
+"There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our
+philosophy," and among these may be placed that marvel and mystery of
+the seas, the island of St. Brandan. Every school-boy can enumerate and
+call by name the Canaries, the Fortunate Islands of the ancients; which,
+according to some ingenious speculative minds, are mere wrecks and
+remnants of the vast island of Atalantis, mentioned by Plato, as having
+been swallowed up by the ocean. Whoever has read the history of those
+isles, will remember the wonders told of another island, still more
+beautiful, seen occasionally from their shores, stretching away in the
+clear bright west, with long shadowy promontories, and high, sun-gilt
+peaks. Numerous expeditions, both in ancient and modern days, have
+launched forth from the Canaries in quest of that island; but, on their
+approach, mountain and promontory have gradually faded away, until
+nothing has remained but the blue sky above, and the deep blue water
+below. Hence it was termed by the geographers of old, Aprositus, or the
+Inaccessible; while modern navigators have called its very existence in
+question, pronouncing it a mere optical illusion, like the Fata Morgana
+of the Straits of Messina; or classing it with those unsubstantial
+regions known to mariners as Cape Flyaway, and the Coast of Cloud Land.
+
+Let not, however, the doubts of the worldly-wise sceptics of modern days
+rob us of all the glorious realms owned by happy credulity in days of
+yore. Be assured, O reader of easy faith!--thou for whom I delight to
+labor--be assured, that such an island does actually exist, and has,
+from time to time, been revealed to the gaze, and trodden by the feet,
+of favored mortals. Nay, though doubted by historians and philosophers,
+its existence is fully attested by the poets, who, being an inspired
+race, and gifted with a kind of second sight, can see into the mysteries
+of nature, hidden from the eyes of ordinary mortals. To this gifted race
+it has ever been a region of fancy and romance, teeming with all kinds
+of wonders. Here once bloomed, and perhaps still blooms, the famous
+garden of the Hesperides, with its golden fruit. Here, too, was the
+enchanted garden of Armida, in which that sorceress held the Christian
+paladin, Rinaldo, in delicious but inglorious thraldom; as is set forth
+in the immortal lay of Tasso. It was on this island, also, that Sycorax,
+the witch, held sway, when the good Prospero, and his infant daughter
+Miranda, were wafted to its shores. The isle was then
+
+  ---"full of noises,
+  Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not."
+
+Who does not know the tale, as told in the magic page of Shakspeare?
+
+In fact, the island appears to have been, at different times, under the
+sway of different powers, genii of earth, and air, and ocean; who made
+it their shadowy abode; or rather, it is the retiring place of old
+worn-out deities and dynasties, that once ruled the poetic world,
+but are now nearly shorn of all their attributes. Here Neptune and
+Amphitrite hold a diminished court, like sovereigns in exile. Their
+ocean-chariot lies bottom upward, in a cave of the island, almost a
+perfect wreck, while their pursy Tritons and haggard Nereids bask
+listlessly, like seals about the rocks. Sometimes they assume a shadow
+of their ancient pomp, and glide in state about the glassy sea; while
+the crew of some tall Indiaman, that lies becalmed with flapping sails,
+hear with astonishment the mellow note of the Triton's shell swelling
+upon the ear, as the invisible pageant sweeps by. Sometimes the quondam
+monarch of the ocean is permitted to make himself visible to mortal
+eyes, visiting the ships that cross the line, to exact a tribute from
+new-comers; the only remnant of his ancient rule, and that, alas!
+performed with tattered state, and tarnished splendor.
+
+On the shores of this wondrous island, the mighty kraken heaves his
+bulk, and wallows many a rood; here, too, the sea-serpent lies coiled
+up, during the intervals of his much-contested revelations to the
+eyes of true believers; and here it is said, even the Flying Dutchman
+finds a port and casts his anchor, and furls his shadowy sail, and
+takes a short repose from his eternal wanderings.
+
+Here all the treasures lost in the deep are safely garnered. The caverns
+of the shores are piled with golden ingots, hexes of pearls, rich bales
+of oriental silks; and their deep recesses sparkle with diamonds, or
+flame with carbuncles. Here, in deep bays and harbors, lies many a
+spell-bound ship, long given up as lost by the ruined merchant. Here,
+too, its crew, long bewailed as swallowed up in ocean, lie sleeping in
+mossy grottoes, from age to age, or wander about enchanted shores and
+groves, in pleasing oblivion of all things.
+
+Such are some of the marvels related of this island, and which may serve
+to throw some light on the following legend, of unquestionable truth,
+which I recommend to the entire belief of the reader.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_THE ADELANTADO OF THE SEVEN CITIES_.
+
+A LEGEND OF ST. BRANDAN.
+
+In the early part of the fifteenth century, when Prince Henry of
+Portugal, of worthy memory, was pushing the career of discovery along
+the western coast of Africa, and the world was resounding with reports
+of golden regions on the main land, and new-found islands in the ocean,
+there arrived at Lisbon an old bewildered pilot of the seas, who had
+been driven by tempests, he knew not whither, and who raved about an
+island far in the deep, on which he had landed, and which he had found
+peopled with Christians, and adorned with noble cities.
+
+The inhabitants, he said, gathered round, and regarded him with
+surprise, having never before been visited by a ship. They told him they
+were descendants of a band of Christians, who fled from Spain when that
+country was conquered by the Moslems. They were curious about the state
+of their fatherland, and grieved to hear that the Moslems still held
+possession of the kingdom of Granada. They would have taken the old
+navigator to church, to convince him of their orthodoxy; but, either
+through lack of devotion, or lack of faith in their words, he declined
+their invitation, and preferred to return on board of his ship. He was
+properly punished. A furious storm arose, drove him from his anchorage,
+hurried him out to sea, and he saw no more of the unknown island.
+
+This strange story caused great marvel in Lisbon and elsewhere. Those
+versed in history, remembered to have read, in an ancient chronicle,
+that, at the time of the conquest of Spain, in the eighth century, when
+the blessed cross was cast down, and the crescent erected in its place,
+and when Christian churches were turned into Moslem mosques, seven
+bishops, at the head of seven bands of pious exiles, had fled from the
+peninsula, and embarked in quest of some ocean island, or distant land,
+where they might found seven Christian cities, and enjoy their faith
+unmolested.
+
+The fate of these pious saints errant had hitherto remained a
+mystery, and their story had faded from memory; the report of the old
+tempest-tossed pilot, however, revived this long-forgotten theme; and
+it was determined by the pious and enthusiastic, that the island thus
+accidentally discovered, was the identical place of refuge, whither the
+wandering bishops had been guided by a protecting Providence, and where
+they had folded their flocks.
+
+This most excitable of worlds has always some darling object of
+chimerical enterprise: the "Island of the Seven Cities" now awakened as
+much interest and longing among zealous Christians, as has the renowned
+city of Timbuctoo among adventurous travellers, or the North-east
+Passage among hardy navigators; and it was a frequent prayer of the
+devout, that these scattered and lost portions of the Christian family
+might be discovered, and reunited to the great body of Christendom.
+
+No one, however, entered into the matter with half the zeal of Don
+Fernando de Ulmo, a young cavalier of high standing in the Portuguese
+court, and of most sanguine and romantic temperament. He had recently
+come to his estate, and had run the round of all kinds of pleasures and
+excitements, when this new theme of popular talk and wonder presented
+itself. The Island of the Seven Cities became now the constant subject
+of his thoughts by day and his dreams by night; it even rivalled his
+passion for a beautiful girl, one of the greatest belles of Lisbon, to
+whom he was betrothed. At length his imagination became so inflamed on
+the subject, that he determined to fit out an expedition, at his own
+expense, and set sail in quest of this sainted island. It could not be
+a cruise of any great extent; for according to the calculations of the
+tempest-tossed pilot, it must be somewhere in the latitude of the
+Canaries; which at that time, when the new world was as yet undiscovered,
+formed the frontier of ocean enterprise. Don Fernando applied to the
+crown for countenance and protection. As he was a favorite at court, the
+usual patronage was readily extended to him; that is to say, he received
+a commission from the king, Don Ioam II., constituting him Adelantado,
+or military governor, of any country he might discover, with the single
+proviso, that he should bear all the expenses of the discovery and pay a
+tenth of the profits to the crown.
+
+Don Fernando now set to work in the true spirit of a projector. He sold
+acre after acre of solid land, and invested the proceeds in ships, guns,
+ammunition, and sea-stores. Even his old family mansion in Lisbon was
+mortgaged without scruple, for "he looked forward to a palace in one of
+the Seven Cities of which he was to be Adelantado." This was the age of
+nautical romance, when the thoughts of all speculative dreamers were
+turned to the ocean. The scheme of Don Fernando, therefore, drew
+adventurers of every kind. The merchant promised himself new marts of
+opulent traffic; the soldier hoped to sack and plunder some one or other
+of those Seven Cities; even the fat monk shook off the sleep and sloth
+of the cloister, to join in a crusade which promised such increase to
+the possessions of the church.
+
+One person alone regarded the whole project with sovereign contempt
+and growling hostility. This was Don Ramiro Alvarez, the father of the
+beautiful Serafina, to whom Don Fernando was betrothed. He was one of
+those perverse, matter-of-fact old men who are prone to oppose every
+thing speculative and romantic. He had no faith in the Island of the
+Seven Cities; regarded the projected cruise as a crack-brained freak;
+looked with angry eye and internal heart-burning on the conduct of his
+intended son-in-law, chaffering away solid lands for lands in the moon,
+and scoffingly dubbed him Adelantado of Lubberland. In fact, he had
+never really relished the intended match, to which his consent had been
+slowly extorted by the tears and entreaties of his daughter. It is true
+he could have no reasonable objections to the youth, for Don Fernando
+was the very flower of Portuguese chivalry. No one could excel him at
+the tilting match, or the riding at the ring; none was more bold and
+dexterous in the bull-fight; none composed more gallant madrigals in
+praise of his lady's charms, or sang them with sweeter tones to the
+accompaniment of her guitar; nor could any one handle the castanets
+and dance the bolero with more captivating grace. All these admirable
+qualities and endowments, however, though they had been sufficient to
+win the heart of Serafina, were nothing in the eyes of her unreasonable
+father. O Cupid, god of Love! why will fathers always be so
+unreasonable!
+
+The engagement to Serafina had threatened at first to throw an obstacle
+in the way of the expedition of Don Fernando, and for a time perplexed
+him in the extreme. He was passionately attached to the young lady; but
+he was also passionately bent on this romantic enterprise. How should
+he reconcile the two passionate inclinations? A simple and obvious
+arrangement at length presented itself: marry Serafina, enjoy a portion
+of the honeymoon at once, and defer the rest until his return from the
+discovery of the Seven Cities!
+
+He hastened to make known this most excellent arrangement to Don Ramiro,
+when the long-smothered wrath of the old cavalier burst forth in a storm
+about his ears. He reproached him with being the dupe of wandering
+vagabonds and wild schemers, and of squandering all his real possessions
+in pursuit of empty bubbles. Don Fernando was too sanguine a projector,
+and too young a man, to listen tamely to such language. He acted with
+what is technically called "becoming spirit." A high quarrel ensued; Don
+Ramiro pronounced him a mad man, and forbade all farther intercourse
+with his daughter, until he should give proof of returning sanity by
+abandoning this mad-cap enterprise; while Don Fernando flung out of
+the house, more bent than ever on the expedition, from the idea of
+triumphing over the incredulity of the gray-beard when he should return
+successful.
+
+Don Ramiro repaired to his daughter's chamber the moment the youth had
+departed. He represented to her the sanguine, unsteady character of her
+lover and the chimerical nature of his schemes; showed her the propriety
+of suspending all intercourse with him until he should recover from his
+present hallucination; folded her to his bosom with parental fondness,
+kissed the tear that stole down her cheek, and, as he left the chamber,
+gently locked the door; for although he was a fond father, and had a
+high opinion of the submissive temper of his child, he had a still
+higher opinion of the conservative virtues of lock and key. Whether the
+damsel had been in any wise shaken in her faith as to the schemes of her
+lover, and the existence of the Island of the Seven Cities, by the sage
+representations of her father, tradition does not say; but it is certain
+that she became a firm believer the moment she heard him turn the key in
+the lock.
+
+Notwithstanding the interdict of Don Ramiro, therefore, and his
+shrewd precautions, the intercourse of the lovers continued, although
+clandestinely. Don Fernando toiled all day, hurrying forward his
+nautical enterprise, while at night he would repair, beneath the
+grated balcony of his mistress, to carry on at equal pace the no less
+interesting enterprise of the heart. At length the preparations for the
+expedition were completed. Two gallant caravels lay anchored in the
+Tagus, ready to sail with the morning dawn; while late at night, by the
+pale light of a waning moon, Don Fernando sought the stately mansion of
+Alvarez to take a last farewell of Serafina. The customary signal of a
+few low touches of a guitar brought her to the balcony. She was sad at
+heart and full of gloomy forebodings; but her lover strove to impart to
+her his own buoyant hope and youthful confidence. "A few short months,"
+said he, "and I shall return in triumph. Thy father will then blush at
+his incredulity, and will once more welcome me to his house, when
+I cross its threshold a wealthy suitor and Adelantado of the Seven
+Cities."
+
+The beautiful Serafina shook her head mournfully. It was not on those
+points that she felt doubt or dismay. She believed most implicitly in
+the Island of the Seven Cities, and trusted devoutly in the success of
+the enterprise; but she had heard of the inconstancy of the seas, and
+the inconstancy of those who roam them. Now, let the truth be spoken,
+Don Fernando, if he had any fault in the world, it was that he was a
+little too inflammable; that is to say, a little too subject to take
+fire from the sparkle of every bright eye: he had been somewhat of a
+rover among the sex on shore, what might he not be on sea? Might he
+not meet with other loves in foreign ports? Might he not behold some
+peerless beauty in one or other of those seven cities, who might efface
+the image of Serafina from his thoughts?
+
+At length she ventured to hint her doubts; but Don Fernando spurned at
+the very idea. Never could his heart be false to Serafina! Never could
+another be captivating in his eyes!--never--never! Repeatedly did he
+bend his knee, and smite his breast, and call upon the silver moon to
+witness the sincerity of his vows. But might not Serafina, herself, be
+forgetful of her plighted faith? Might not some wealthier rival present,
+while he was tossing on the sea, and, backed by the authority of her
+father, win the treasure of her hand? Alas, how little did he know
+Serafina's heart! The more her father should oppose, the more would she
+be fixed in her faith. Though years should pass before his return, he
+would find her true to her vows. Even should the salt seas swallow him
+up, (and her eyes streamed with salt tears at the very thought,) never
+would she be the wife of another--never--never! She raised her beautiful
+white arms between the iron bars of the balcony, and invoked the moon as
+a testimonial of her faith.
+
+Thus, according to immemorial usage, the lovers parted, with many a vow
+of eternal constancy. But will they keep those vows? Perish the doubt!
+Have they not called the constant moon to witness?
+
+With the morning dawn the caravels dropped down the Tagus and put
+to sea. They steered for the Canaries, in those days the regions of
+nautical romance. Scarcely had they reached those latitudes, when a
+violent tempest arose. Don Fernando soon lost sight of the accompanying
+caravel, and was driven out of all reckoning by the fury of the storm.
+For several weary days and nights he was tossed to and fro, at the mercy
+of the elements, expecting each moment to be swallowed up. At length,
+one day toward evening, the storm subsided; the clouds cleared up, as
+though a veil had suddenly been withdrawn from the face of heaven, and
+the setting sun shone gloriously upon a fair and mountainous island,
+that seemed close at hand. The tempest-tossed mariners rubbed their
+eyes, and gazed almost incredulously upon this land, that had emerged so
+suddenly from the murky gloom; yet there it lay, spread out in lovely
+landscapes; enlivened by villages, and towers, and spires, while the
+late stormy sea rolled in peaceful billows to its shores. About a league
+from the sea, on the banks of a river, stood a noble city, with lofty
+walls and towers, and a protecting castle. Don Fernando anchored off
+the mouth of the river, which appeared to form a spacious harbor. In a
+little while a barge was seen issuing from the river. It was evidently
+a barge of ceremony, for it was richly though quaintly carved and gilt,
+and decorated with a silken awning and fluttering streamers, while a
+banner, bearing the sacred emblem of the cross, floated to the breeze.
+The barge advanced slowly, impelled by sixteen oars, painted of a bright
+crimson. The oarsmen were uncouth, or rather antique, in their garb, and
+kept stroke to the regular cadence of an old Spanish ditty. Beneath the
+awning sat a cavalier, in a rich though old-fashioned doublet, with an
+enormous sombrero and feather. When the barge reached the caravel, the
+cavalier stepped on board. He was tall and gaunt, with a long, Spanish
+visage, and lack-lustre eyes, and an air of lofty and somewhat pompous
+gravity. His mustaches were curled up to his ears, his beard was forked
+and precise; he wore gauntlets that reached to his elbows, and a Toledo
+blade that strutted out behind, while, in front, its huge basket-hilt
+might have served for a porringer.
+
+Thrusting out a long spindle leg, and taking off his sombrero with a
+grave and stately sweep, he saluted Don Fernando by name, and welcomed
+him, in old Castilian language, and in the style of old Castilian
+courtesy.
+
+Don Fernando was startled at hearing himself accosted by name, by an
+utter stranger, in a strange land. As soon as he could recover from his
+surprise, he inquired what land it was at which he had arrived.
+
+"The Island of the Seven Cities!"
+
+Could this be true? Had he indeed been thus tempest-driven upon the very
+land of which he was in quest? It was even so. The other caravel, from
+which he had been separated in the storm, had made a neighboring port of
+the island, and announced the tidings of this expedition, which came to
+restore the country to the great community of Christendom. The whole
+island, he was told, was given up to rejoicings on the happy event; and
+they only awaited his arrival to acknowledge allegiance to the crown of
+Portugal, and hail him as Adelantado of the Seven Cities. A grand fête
+was to be solemnized that very night in the palace of the Alcayde or
+governor of the city; who, on beholding the most opportune arrival of
+the caravel, had despatched his grand chamberlain, in his barge of
+state, to conduct the future Adelantado to the ceremony.
+
+Don Fernando could scarcely believe but that this was all a dream.
+He fixed a scrutinizing gaze upon the grand chamberlain, who, having
+delivered his message, stood in buckram dignity, drawn up to his full
+stature, curling his whiskers, stroking his beard, and looking down upon
+him with inexpressible loftiness through his lack-lustre eyes. There was
+no doubting the word of so grave and ceremonious a hidalgo.
+
+Don Fernando now arrayed himself in gala attire. He would have launched
+his boat, and gone on shore with his own men, but he was informed the
+barge of state was expressly provided for his accommodation, and, after
+the fête, would bring him back to his ship; in which, on the following
+day, he might enter the harbor in befitting style. He accordingly
+stepped into the barge, and took his seat beneath the awning. The grand
+chamberlain seated himself on the cushion opposite. The rowers bent to
+their oars, and renewed their mournful old ditty, and the gorgeous, but
+unwieldy barge moved slowly and solemnly through the water.
+
+The night closed in, before they entered the river. They swept along,
+past rock and promontory, each guarded by its tower. The sentinels at
+every post challenged them as they passed by.
+
+"Who goes there?"
+
+"The Adelantado of the Seven Cities."
+
+"He is welcome. Pass on."
+
+On entering the harbor, they rowed close along an armed galley, of the
+most ancient form. Soldiers with cross-bows were stationed on the deck.
+
+"Who goes there?" was again demanded.
+
+"The Adelantado of the Seven Cities."
+
+"He is welcome. Pass on."
+
+They landed at a broad flight of stone steps, leading up, between two
+massive towers, to the water-gate of the city, at which they knocked for
+admission. A sentinel, in an ancient steel casque, looked over the wall.
+"Who is there?"
+
+"The Adelantado of the Seven Cities."
+
+The gate swung slowly open, grating upon its rusty hinges. They entered
+between two rows of iron-clad warriors, in battered armor, with
+cross-bows, battle-axes, and ancient maces, and with faces as
+old-fashioned and rusty as their armor. They saluted Don Fernando in
+military style, but with perfect silence, as he passed between their
+ranks. The city was illuminated, but in such manner as to give a more
+shadowy and solemn effect to its old-time architecture. There were
+bonfires in the principal streets, with groups about them in such
+old-fashioned garbs, that they looked like the fantastic figures that
+roam the streets in carnival time. Even the stately dames who gazed from
+the balconies, which they had hung with antique tapestry, looked more
+like effigies dressed up for a quaint mummery, than like ladies in their
+fashionable attire. Every thing, in short, bore the stamp of former
+ages, as if the world had suddenly rolled back a few centuries. Nor was
+this to be wondered at. Had not the Island of the Seven Cities been for
+several hundred years cut off from all communication with the rest of
+the world, and was it not natural that the inhabitants should retain
+many of the modes and customs brought here by their ancestors?
+
+One thing certainly they had conserved; the old-fashioned Spanish
+gravity and stateliness. Though this was a time of public rejoicing, and
+though Don Fernando was the object of their gratulations, every thing
+was conducted with the most solemn ceremony, and wherever he appeared,
+instead of acclamations, he was received with profound silence, and the
+most formal reverences and swayings of their sombreros.
+
+Arrived at the palace of the Alcayde, the usual ceremonial was repeated.
+The chamberlain knocked for admission.
+
+"Who is there?" demanded the porter.
+
+"The Adelantado of the Seven Cities."
+
+"He is welcome. Pass on."
+
+The grand portal was thrown open. The chamberlain led the way up a vast
+but heavily moulded marble stair-case, and so through one of those
+interminable suites of apartments, that are the pride of Spanish
+palaces. All were furnished in a style of obsolete magnificence. As they
+passed through the chambers, the title of Don Fernando was forwarded on
+by servants stationed at every door; and every where produced the most
+profound reverences and courtesies. At length they reached a magnificent
+saloon, blazing with tapers, in which the Alcayde, and the principal
+dignitaries of the city, were waiting to receive their illustrious
+guest. The grand chamberlain presented Don Fernando in due form, and
+falling back among the other officers of the household, stood as usual
+curling his whiskers and stroking his forked beard.
+
+Don Fernando was received by the Alcayde and the other dignitaries with
+the same stately and formal courtesy that he had every where remarked.
+In fact, there was so much form and ceremonial, that it seemed difficult
+to get at any thing social or substantial. Nothing but bows, and
+compliments, and old-fashioned courtesies. The Alcayde and his courtiers
+resembled, in face and form, those quaint worthies to be seen in the
+pictures of old illuminated manuscripts; while the cavaliers and dames
+who thronged the saloon, might have beep taken for the antique figures
+of gobelin tapestry suddenly vivified and put in motion.
+
+The banquet, which had been kept back until the arrival of Don Fernando,
+was now announced; and such a feast! such unknown dishes and obsolete
+dainties; with the peacock, that bird of state and ceremony, served up
+in full plumage, in a golden dish, at the head of the table. And then,
+as Don Fernando cast his eyes over the glittering board, what a vista of
+odd heads and head-dresses, of formal bearded dignitaries, and stately
+dames, with castellated locks and towering plumes!
+
+As fate would have it, on the other side of Don Fernando, was seated the
+daughter of the Alcayde. She was arrayed, it is true, in a dress that
+might have been worn before the flood; but then, she had a melting black
+Andalusian eye, that was perfectly irresistible. Her voice, too, her
+manner, her movements, all smacked of Andalusia, and showed how female
+fascination may be transmitted from age to age, and clime to clime,
+without ever losing its power, or going out of fashion. Those who know
+the witchery of the sex, in that most amorous region of old Spain, may
+judge what must have been the fascination to which Don Fernando
+was exposed, when seated beside one of the most captivating of its
+descendants. He was, as has already been hinted, of an inflammable
+temperament; with a heart ready to get in a light blaze at every
+instant. And then he had been so wearied by pompous, tedious old
+cavaliers, with their formal bows and speeches; is it to be wondered at
+that he turned with delight to the Alcayde's daughter, all smiles, and
+dimples, and melting looks, and melting accents? Beside, for I wish to
+give him every excuse in my power, he was in a particularly excitable
+mood, from the novelty of the scene before him, and his head was almost
+turned with this sudden and complete realization of all his hopes and
+fancies; and then, in the flurry of the moment, he had taken frequent
+draughts at the wine-cup, presented him at every instant by officious
+pages, and all the world knows the effect of such draughts in giving
+potency to female charms. In a word, there is no concealing the matter,
+the banquet was not half over, before Don Fernando was making love,
+outright, to the Alcayde's daughter. It was his cold habitude,
+contracted long before his matrimonial engagement. The young lady hung
+her head coyly; her eye rested upon a ruby heart, sparkling in a ring on
+the hand of Don Fernando, a parting gage of love from Serafina. A blush
+crimsoned her very temples. She darted a glance of doubt at the
+ring, and then at Don Fernando. He read her doubt, and in the giddy
+intoxication of the moment, drew off the pledge of his affianced bride,
+and slipped it on the finger of the Alcayde's daughter.
+
+At this moment the banquet broke up. The chamberlain with his lofty
+demeanor, and his lack-lustre eyes, stood before him, and announced that
+the barge was waiting to conduct him back to the caravel. Don Fernando
+took a formal leave of the Alcayde and his dignitaries, and a tender
+farewell of the Alcayde's daughter, with a promise to throw himself at
+her feet on the following day. He was rowed back to his vessel in the
+same slow and stately manner, to the cadence of the same mournful old
+ditty. He retired to his cabin, his brain whirling with all that he had
+seen, and his heart now and then giving him a twinge as he recollected
+his temporary infidelity to the beautiful Serafina. He flung himself on
+his bed, and soon fell into a feverish sleep. His dreams were wild and
+incoherent. How long he slept he knew not, but when he awoke he found
+himself in a strange cabin, with persons around him of whom he had no
+knowledge. He rubbed his eyes to ascertain whether he were really awake.
+In reply to his inquiries, he was informed that he was on board of a
+Portuguese ship, bound to Lisbon; having been taken senseless from a
+wreck drifting about the ocean.
+
+Don Fernando was confounded and perplexed. He retraced every thing
+distinctly that had happened to him in the Island of the Seven Cities,
+and until he had retired to rest on board of the caravel. Had his vessel
+been driven from her anchors, and wrecked during his sleep? The people
+about him could give him no information on the subject. He talked to
+them of the Island of the Seven Cities, and of all that had befallen him
+there. They regarded his words as the ravings of delirium, and in their
+honest solicitude, administered such rough remedies, that he was fain to
+drop the subject, and observe a cautious taciturnity.
+
+At length they arrived in the Tagus, and anchored before the famous city
+of Lisbon. Don Fernando sprang joyfully on shore, and hastened to his
+ancestral mansion. To his surprise, it was inhabited by strangers; and
+when he asked about his family, no one could give him any information
+concerning them.
+
+He now sought the mansion of Don Ramiro, for the temporary flame kindled
+by the bright eyes of the Alcayde's daughter had long since burnt itself
+out, and his genuine passion for Serafina had revived with all its
+fervor. He approached the balcony, beneath which he had so often
+serenaded her. Did his eyes deceive him? No! There was Serafina herself
+at the balcony. An exclamation of rapture burst from him, as he raised
+his arms toward her. She cast upon him a look of indignation, and
+hastily retiring, closed the casement. Could she have heard of his
+flirtation with the Alcayde's daughter? He would soon dispel every doubt
+of his constancy. The door was open. He rushed up-stairs, and entering
+the room, threw himself at her feet. She shrank back with affright, and
+took refuge in the arms of a youthful cavalier.
+
+"What mean you, Sir," cried the latter, "by this intrusion?"
+
+"What right have you," replied Don Fernando, "to ask the question?"
+
+"The right of an affianced suitor!"
+
+Don Fernando started, and turned pale. "Oh, Serafina! Serafina!" cried
+he in a tone of agony, "is this thy plighted constancy?"
+
+"Serafina?--what mean you by Serafina? If it be this young lady you
+intend, her name is Maria."
+
+"Is not this Serafina Alvarez, and is not that her portrait?" cried Don
+Fernando, pointing to a picture of his mistress.
+
+"Holy Virgin!" cried the young lady; "he is talking of my
+great-grandmother!"
+
+An explanation ensued, if that could be called an explanation, which
+plunged the unfortunate Fernando into tenfold perplexity. If he might
+believe his eyes, he saw before him his beloved Serafina; if he might
+believe his ears, it was merely her hereditary form and features,
+perpetuated in the person of her great-granddaughter.
+
+His brain began to spin. He sought tho office of the Minister of Marine,
+and made a report of his expedition, and of the Island of the Seven
+Cities, which he had so fortunately discovered. No body knew any thing
+of such an expedition, or such an island. He declared that he had
+undertaken the enterprise under a formal contract with the crown, and
+had received a regular commission, constituting him Adelantado. This
+must be matter of record, and he insisted loudly, that the books of the
+department should be consulted. The wordy strife at length attracted the
+attention of an old, gray-headed clerk, who sat perched on a high stool,
+at a high desk, with iron-rimmed spectacles on the top of a thin,
+pinched nose, copying records into an enormous folio. He had wintered
+and summered in the department for a great part of a century, until he
+had almost grown to be a piece of the desk at which he sat; his memory
+was a mere index of official facts and documents, and his brain was
+little better than red tape and parchment. After peering down for a time
+from his lofty perch, and ascertaining the matter in controversy, he
+put his pen behind his ear, and descended. He remembered to have heard
+something from his predecessor about an expedition of the kind in
+question, but then it had sailed during the reign of Don Ioam II., and
+he had been dead at least a hundred years. To put the matter beyond
+dispute, however, the archives of the Torve do Tombo, that sepulchre of
+old Portuguese documents, were diligently searched, and a record was
+found of a contract between the crown and one Fernando de Ulmo, for the
+discovery of the Island of the Seven Cities, and of a commission secured
+to him as Adelantado of the country he might discover.
+
+"There!" cried Don Fernando, triumphantly, "there you have proof, before
+your own eyes, of what I have said. I am the Fernando de Ulmo specified
+in that record. I have discovered the Island of the Seven Cities, and am
+entitled to be Adelantado, according to contract."
+
+The story of Don Fernando had certainly, what is pronounced the best
+of historical foundation, documentary evidence; but when a man, in the
+bloom of youth, talked of events that had taken place above a century
+previously, as having happened to himself, it is no wonder that he was
+set down for a mad man.
+
+The old clerk looked at him from above and below his spectacles,
+shrugged his shoulders, stroked his chin, reascended his lofty stool,
+took the pen from behind his ears, and resumed his daily and eternal
+task, copying records into the fiftieth volume of a series of gigantic
+folios. The other clerks winked at each other shrewdly, and dispersed to
+their several places, and poor Don Fernando, thus left to himself, flung
+out of the office, almost driven wild by these repeated perplexities.
+
+In the confusion of his mind, he instinctively repaired to the mansion
+of Alvarez, but it was barred against him. To break the delusion under
+which the youth apparently labored, and to convince him that the
+Serafina about whom he raved was really dead, he was conducted to her
+tomb. There she lay, a stately matron, cut out in alabaster; and there
+lay her husband beside her; a portly cavalier, in armor; and there
+knelt, on each side, the effigies of a numerous progeny, proving that
+she had been a fruitful vine. Even the very monument gave proof of the
+lapse of time, for the hands of her husband, which were folded as if in
+prayer, had lost their fingers, and the face of the once lovely Serafina
+was noseless.
+
+Don Fernando felt a transient glow of indignation at beholding this
+monumental proof of the inconstancy of his mistress; but who could
+expect a mistress to remain constant during a whole century of absence?
+And what right had he to rail about constancy, after what had passed
+between him and the Alcayde's daughter? The unfortunate cavalier
+performed one pious act of tender devotion; he had the alabaster nose of
+Serafina restored by a skilful statuary, and then tore himself from the
+tomb.
+
+He could now no longer doubt the fact that, somehow or other, he had
+skipped over a whole century, during the night he had spent at the
+Island of the Seven Cities; and he was now as complete a stranger in his
+native city, as if he had never been there. A thousand times did he
+wish himself back to that wonderful island, with its antiquated banquet
+halls, where he had been so courteously received; and now that the once
+young and beautiful Serafina was nothing but a great-grandmother in
+marble, with generations of descendants, a thousand times would he
+recall the melting black eyes of the Alcayde's daughter, who doubtless,
+like himself, was still flourishing in fresh juvenility, and breathe a
+secret wish that he were seated by her side.
+
+He would at once have set on foot another expedition, at his own
+expense, to cruise in search of the sainted island, but his means were
+exhausted. He endeavored to rouse others to the enterprise, setting
+forth the certainty of profitable results, of which his own experience
+furnished such unquestionable proof. Alas! no one would give faith to
+his tale; but looked upon it as the feverish dream of a shipwrecked
+man. He persisted in his efforts; holding forth in all places and
+all companies, until he became an object of jest and jeer to the
+light-minded, who mistook his earnest enthusiasm for a proof of
+insanity; and the very children in the streets bantered him with the
+title of "The Adelantado of the Seven Cities."
+
+Finding all his efforts in vain, in his native city of Lisbon, he took
+shipping for the Canaries, as being nearer the latitude of his former
+cruise, and inhabited by people given to nautical adventure. Here he
+found ready listeners to his story; for the old pilots and mariners of
+those parts were notorious island-hunters and devout believers in all
+the wonders of the seas. Indeed, one and all treated his adventure as a
+common occurrence, and turning to each other, with a sagacious nod of
+the head, observed, "He has been at the Island of St. Brandan."
+
+They then went on to inform him of that great marvel and enigma of
+the ocean; of its repeated appearance to the inhabitants of their
+islands; and of the many but ineffectual expeditions that had been made
+in search of it. They took him to a promontory of the island of Palma,
+from whence the shadowy St. Brandan had oftenest been descried, and they
+pointed out the very tract in the west where its mountains had been
+seen.
+
+Don Fernando listened with rapt attention. He had no longer a doubt that
+this mysterious and fugacious island must be the same with that of
+the Seven Cities; and that there must be some supernatural influence
+connected with it, that had operated upon himself, and made the events
+of a night occupy the space of a century.
+
+He endeavored, but in vain, to rouse the islanders to another attempt at
+discovery; they had given up the phantom island as indeed inaccessible.
+Fernando, however, was not to be discouraged. The idea wore itself
+deeper and deeper in his mind, until it became the engrossing subject of
+his thoughts and object of his being. Every morning he would repair to
+the promontory of Palma, and sit there throughout the live-long day, in
+hopes of seeing the fairy mountains of St. Brandan peering above the
+horizon; every evening he returned to his home, a disappointed man, but
+ready to resume his post on the following morning.
+
+His assiduity was all in vain. He grew gray in his ineffectual attempt;
+and was at length found dead at his post. His grave is still shown in
+the island of Palma, and a cross is erected on the spot where he used
+to sit and look out upon the sea, in hopes of the reappearance of the
+enchanted island.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NATIONAL NOMENCLATURE.
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
+
+Sir: I am somewhat of the same way of thinking, in regard to names, with
+that profound philosopher, Mr. Shandy, the elder, who maintained that
+some inspired high thoughts and heroic aims, while others entailed
+irretrievable meanness and vulgarity; insomuch that a man might sink
+under the insignificance of his name, and be absolutely "Nicodemused
+into nothing." I have ever, therefore, thought it a great hardship for a
+man to be obliged to struggle through life with some ridiculous or
+ignoble _Christian_ name, as it is too often falsely called, inflicted
+on him in infancy, when he could not choose for himself; and would give
+him free liberty to change it for one more to his taste, when he had
+arrived at years of discretion.
+
+I have the same notion with respect to local names. Some at once
+prepossess us in favor of a place; others repel us, by unlucky
+associations of the mind; and I have known scenes worthy of being the
+very haunt of poetry and romance, yet doomed to irretrievable vulgarity,
+by some ill-chosen name, which not even the magic numbers of a Halleck
+or a Bryant could elevate into poetical acceptation.
+
+This is an evil unfortunately too prevalent throughout our country.
+Nature has stamped the land with features of sublimity and beauty; but
+some of our noblest mountains and loveliest streams are in danger of
+remaining for ever unhonored and unsung, from bearing appellations
+totally abhorrent to the Muse. In the first place, our country is
+deluged with names taken from places in the old world, and applied to
+places having no possible affinity or resemblance to their namesakes.
+This betokens a forlorn poverty of invention, and a second-hand spirit,
+content to cover its nakedness with borrowed or cast-off clothes of
+Europe.
+
+Then we have a shallow affectation of scholarship: the whole catalogue
+of ancient worthies is shaken out from the back of Lempriere's Classical
+Dictionary, and a wide region of wild country sprinkled over with the
+names of the heroes, poets, and sages of antiquity, jumbled into the
+most whimsical juxtaposition. Then we have our political god-fathers;
+topographical engineers, perhaps, or persons employed by government to
+survey and lay out townships. These, forsooth, glorify the patrons that
+give them bread; so we have the names of the great official men of the
+day scattered over the land, as if they were the real "salt of the
+earth," with which it was to be seasoned. Well for us is it, when these
+official great men happen to have names of fair acceptation; but wo unto
+us, should a Tubbs or a Potts be in power: we are sure, in a little
+while, to find Tubbsvilles and Pottsylvanias springing up in every
+direction.
+
+Under these melancholy dispensations of taste and loyalty, therefore,
+Mr. Editor, it is with a feeling of dawning hope, that I have lately
+perceived the attention of persons of intelligence beginning to be
+awakened on this subject. I trust if the matter should once be taken
+up, it will not be readily abandoned. We are yet young enough, as a
+country, to remedy and reform much of what has been done, and to release
+many of our rising towns and cities, and our noble streams, from names
+calculated to vulgarize the land.
+
+I have, on a former occasion, suggested the expediency of searching out
+the original Indian names of places, and wherever they are striking and
+euphonious, and those by which they have been superseded are glaringly
+objectionable, to restore them. They would have the merit of
+originality, and of belonging to the country; and they would remain as
+reliques of the native lords of the soil, when every other vestige had
+disappeared. Many of these names may easily be regained, by reference to
+old title deeds, and to the archives of states and counties. In my own
+case, by examining the records of the county clerk's office, I have
+discovered the Indian names of various places and objects in the
+neighborhood, and have found them infinitely superior to the trite,
+poverty-stricken names which had been given by the settlers. A beautiful
+pastoral stream, for instance, which winds for many a mile through one
+of the loveliest little valleys in the state, has long been known by the
+common-place name of the "Saw-mill River." In the old Indian grants, it
+is designated as the Neperan. Another, a perfectly wizard stream, which
+winds through the wildest recesses of Sleepy Hollow, bears the hum-drum
+name of Mill Creek: in the Indian grants, it sustains the euphonious
+title of the Pocantico.
+
+Similar researches have released Long-Island from many of those paltry
+and vulgar names which fringed its beautiful shores; their Cow Bays, and
+Cow Necks, and Oyster Ponds, and Mosquito Coves, which spread a spell of
+vulgarity over the whole island, and kept persons of taste and fancy at
+a distance.
+
+It would be an object worthy the attention of the historical societies,
+which are springing up in various parts of the Union, to have maps
+executed of their respective states or neighborhoods, in which all the
+Indian local names should, as far as possible, be restored. In fact,
+it appears to me that the nomenclature of the country is almost of
+sufficient importance for the foundation of a distinct society; or
+rather, a corresponding association of persons of taste and judgment, of
+all parts of the Union. Such an association, if properly constituted and
+composed, comprising especially all the literary talent of the country,
+though it might not have legislative power in its enactments, yet
+would have the all-pervading power of the press; and the changes in
+nomenclature which it might dictate, being at once adopted by elegant
+writers in prose and poetry, and interwoven with the literature of the
+country, would ultimately pass into popular currency.
+
+Should such a reforming association arise, I beg to recommend to its
+attention all those mongrel names that have the adjective _New_ prefixed
+to them, and pray they may be one and all kicked out of the country.
+I am for none of these second-hand appellations, that stamp us a
+second-hand people, and that are to perpetuate us a new country to the
+end of time. Odds my life! Mr. Editor, I hope and trust we are to live
+to be an old nation, as well as our neighbors, and have no idea that
+our cities, when they shall have attained to venerable antiquity, shall
+still be dubbed _New_-York, and _New_-London, and _new_ this and _new_
+that, like the Pont-Neuf, (the New Bridge,) at Paris, which is the
+oldest bridge in that capital, or like the Vicar of Wakefield's horse,
+which continued to be called "the colt," until he died of old age.
+
+Speaking of New-York, reminds me of some observations which I met with
+some time since, in one of the public papers, about the name of our
+state and city. The writer proposes to substitute for the present names,
+those of the State of Ontario, and the CITY OF MANHATTAN. I concur in
+his suggestion most heartily. Though born and brought up in the city of
+New-York, and though I love every stick and stone about it, yet I do
+not, nor ever did, relish its name. I like neither its sound nor its
+significance. As to its _significance_, the very adjective _new_ gives
+to our great commercial metropolis a second-hand character, as if
+referring to some older, more dignified, and important place, of which
+it was a mere copy; though in fact, if I am rightly informed, the whole
+name commemorates a grant by Charles II. to his brother, the duke of
+York, made in the spirit of royal munificence, of a tract of country
+which did not belong to him. As to the _sound_, what can you make of it,
+either in poetry or prose? New-York! Why, Sir, if it were to share the
+fate of Troy itself; to suffer a ten years' siege, and be sacked and
+plundered; no modern Homer would ever be able to elevate the name to
+epic dignity.
+
+Now, Sir, ONTARIO would be a name worthy of the empire state. It bears
+with it the majesty of that internal sea which washes our northwestern
+shore. Or, if any objection should be made, from its not being
+completely embraced within our boundaries, there is the MOHEGAN, one
+of the Indian names for that glorious river, the Hudson, which would
+furnish an excellent state appellation. So also New-York might be called
+Manhatta, as it is named in some of the early records, and Manhattan
+used as the adjective. Manhattan, however, stands well as a substantive,
+and "Manhattanese," which I observe Mr. COOPER has adopted in some of
+his writings, would be a very good appellation for a citizen of the
+commercial metropolis.
+
+A word or two more, Mr. Editor, and I have done. We want a NATIONAL
+NAME. We want it poetically, and we want it politically. With the
+poetical necessity of the case I shall not trouble myself. I leave it to
+our poets to tell how they manage to steer that collocation of words,
+"The United States of North America," down the swelling tide of song,
+and to float the whole raft out upon the sea of heroic poesy. I am now
+speaking of the mere purposes of common life. How is a citizen of this
+republic to designate himself? As an American? There are two Americas,
+each subdivided into various empires, rapidly rising in importance. As a
+citizen of the United States? It is a clumsy, lumbering title, yet still
+it is not distinctive; for we have now the United States of Central
+America; and heaven knows how many "United States" may spring up under
+the Proteus changes of Spanish America.
+
+This may appear matter of small concernment; but any one that has
+travelled in foreign countries must be conscious of the embarrassment
+and circumlocution sometimes occasioned by the want of a perfectly
+distinct and explicit national appellation. In France, when I have
+announced myself as an American, I have been supposed to belong to one
+of the French colonies; in Spain, to be from Mexico, or Peru, or some
+other Spanish-American country. Repeatedly have I found myself involved
+in a long geographical and political definition of my national identity.
+
+Now, Sir, meaning no disrespect to any of our co-heirs of this great
+quarter of the world, I am for none of this coparceny in a name that is
+to mingle us up with the riff-raff colonies and off-sets of every nation
+of Europe. The title of American may serve to tell the quarter of the
+world to which I belong, the same as a Frenchman or an Englishman may
+call himself a European; but I want my own peculiar national name to
+rally under. I want an appellation that shall tell at once, and in a
+way not to be mistaken, that I belong to this very portion of America,
+geographical and political, to which it is my pride and happiness to
+belong; that I am of the Anglo-Saxon race which founded this Anglo-Saxon
+empire in the wilderness; and that I have no part or parcel with any
+other race or empire, Spanish, French, or Portuguese, in either of the
+Americas. Such an appellation, Sir, would have magic in it. It would
+bind every part of the confederacy together as with a keystone; it would
+be a passport to the citizen of our republic throughout the world.
+
+We have it in our power to furnish ourselves with such a national
+appellation, from one of the grand and eternal features of our country;
+from that noble chain of mountains which formed its back-bone, and ran
+through the "old confederacy," when it first declared our national
+independence. I allude to the Appalachian or Alleghany mountains. We
+might do this without any very inconvenient change in our present
+titles. We might still use the phrase, "The United States," substituting
+Appalachia, or Alleghania, (I should prefer the latter,) in place of
+America. The title of Appalachian, or Alleghanian, would still announce
+us as Americans, but would specify us as citizens of the Great Republic.
+Even our old national cypher of U. S. A. might remain unaltered,
+designating the United States of Alleghania.
+
+These are crude ideas, Mr. Editor, hastily thrown out to elicit the
+ideas of others, and to call attention to a subject of more national
+importance than may at first be supposed.
+
+Very respectfully yours,
+
+Geoffrey Crayon.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+DESULTORY THOUGHTS ON CRITICISM.
+
+"Let a man write never so well, there are now-a-days a sort of persons
+they call critics, that, egad, have no more wit in them than so many
+hobby-horses: but they'll laugh at you, Sir, and find fault, and censure
+things, that, egad, I'm sure they are not able to do themselves; a sort
+of envious persons, that emulate the glories of persons of parts, and
+think to build their fame by calumniation of persons that, egad, to my
+knowledge, of all persons in the world, are in nature the persons that
+do as much despise all that, as--a--In fine, I'll say no more of 'em!"
+-REHEARSAL.
+
+All the world knows the story of the tempest-tossed voyager, who, coming
+upon a strange coast, and seeing a man hanging in chains, hailed it with
+joy, as the sign of a civilized country. In like manner we may hail, as
+a proof of the rapid advancement of civilization and refinement in
+this country, the increasing number of delinquent authors daily gibbeted
+for the edification of the public.
+
+In this respect, as in every other, we are "going ahead" with
+accelerated velocity, and promising to outstrip the superannuated
+countries of Europe. It is really astonishing to see the number of
+tribunals incessantly springing up for the trial of literary offences.
+Independent of the high courts of Oyer and Terminer, the great quarterly
+reviews, we have innumerable minor tribunals, monthly and weekly, down
+to the Pie-poudre courts in the daily papers; insomuch that no culprit
+stands so little chance of escaping castigation, as an unlucky author,
+guilty of an unsuccessful attempt to please the public.
+
+Seriously speaking, however, it is questionable whether our national
+literature is sufficiently advanced, to bear this excess of criticism;
+and whether it would not thrive better, if allowed to spring up, for
+some time longer, in the freshness and vigor of native vegetation. When
+the worthy Judge Coulter, of Virginia, opened court for the first time
+in one of the upper counties, he was for enforcing all the rules and
+regulations that had grown into use in the old, long-settled counties.
+"This is all very well," said a shrewd old farmer; "but let me tell you,
+Judge Coulter, you set your coulter too deep for a new soil."
+
+For my part, I doubt whether either writer or reader is benefited by
+what is commonly called criticism. The former is rendered cautious and
+distrustful; he fears to give way to those kindling emotions, and brave
+sallies of thought, which bear him up to excellence; the latter is made
+fastidious and cynical; or rather, he surrenders his own independent
+taste and judgment, and learns to like and dislike at second hand.
+
+Let us, for a moment, consider the nature of this thing called
+criticism, which exerts such a sway over the literary world. The pronoun
+we, used by critics, has a most imposing and delusive sound. The reader
+pictures to himself a conclave of learned men, deliberating gravely and
+scrupulously on the merits of the book in question; examining it page by
+page, comparing and balancing their opinions, and when they have united
+in a conscientious verdict, publishing it for the benefit of the world:
+whereas the criticism is generally the crude and hasty production of
+an individual, scribbling to while away an idle hour, to oblige a
+book-seller, or to defray current expenses. How often is it the
+passing notion of the hour, affected by accidental circumstances; by
+indisposition, by peevishness, by vapors or indigestion; by personal
+prejudice, or party feeling. Sometimes a work is sacrificed, because
+the reviewer wishes a satirical article; sometimes because he wants
+a humorous one; and sometimes because the author reviewed has become
+offensively celebrated, and offers high game to the literary marksman.
+
+How often would the critic himself, if a conscientious man, reverse his
+opinion, had he time to revise it in a more sunny moment; but the press
+is waiting, the printer's devil is at his elbow; the article is wanted
+to make the requisite variety for the number of the review, or the
+author has pressing occasion for the sum he is to receive for the
+article, so it is sent off, all blotted and blurred; with a shrug of
+the shoulders, and the consolatory ejaculation: "Pshaw! curse it! it's
+nothing but a review!"
+
+The critic, too, who dictates thus oracularly to the world, is perhaps
+some dingy, ill-favored, ill-mannered varlet, who, were he to speak by
+word of mouth, would be disregarded, if not scoffed at; but such is the
+magic of types; such the mystic operation of anonymous writing; such the
+potential effect of the pronoun we, that his crude decisions, fulminated
+through the press, become circulated far and wide, control the opinions
+of the world, and give or destroy reputation.
+
+Many readers have grown timorous in their judgments since the
+all-pervading currency of criticism. They fear to express a revised,
+frank opinion about any new work, and to relish it honestly and
+heartily, lest it should be condemned in the next review, and they stand
+convicted of bad taste. Hence they hedge their opinions, like a gambler
+his bets, and leave an opening to retract, and retreat, and qualify,
+and neutralise every unguarded expression of delight, until their very
+praise declines into a faintness that is damning.
+
+Were every one, on the contrary, to judge for himself, and speak his
+mind frankly and fearlessly, we should have more true criticism in the
+world than at present. Whenever a person is pleased with a work, he may
+be assured that it has good qualities. An author who pleases a variety
+of readers, must possess substantial powers of pleasing; or, in other
+words, intrinsic merits; for otherwise we acknowledge an effect, and
+deny the cause. The reader, therefore, should not suffer himself to be
+readily shaken from the conviction of his own feelings, by the sweeping
+censures of pseudo critics. The author he has admired, may be chargeable
+with a thousand faults; but it is nevertheless beauties and excellencies
+that have excited his admiration; and he should recollect that taste
+and judgment are as much evinced in the perception of beauties among
+defects, as in a detection of defects among beauties. For my part, I
+honor the blessed and blessing spirit that is quick to discover and
+extol all that is pleasing and meritorious. Give me the honest bee, that
+extracts honey from the humblest weed, but save me from the ingenuity
+of the spider, which traces its venom, even in the midst of a
+flower-garden.
+
+If the mere fact of being chargeable with faults and imperfections is to
+condemn an author, who is to escape? The greatest writers of antiquity
+have, in this way, been obnoxious to criticism. Aristotle himself has
+been accused of ignorance; Aristophanes of impiety and buffoonery;
+Virgil of plagiarism, and a want of invention; Horace of obscurity;
+Cicero has been, said to want vigor and connexion, and Demosthenes to
+be deficient in nature, and in purity of language. Yet these have all
+survived the censures of the critic, and flourished on to a glorious
+immortality. Every now and then the world is startled by some new
+doctrines in matters of taste, some levelling attacks on established
+creeds; some sweeping denunciations of whole generations, or schools of
+writers, as they are called, who had seemed to be embalmed and canonized
+in public opinion. Such has been the case, for instance, with Pope, and
+Dryden, and Addison, who for a time have almost been shaken from their
+pedestals, and treated as false idols.
+
+It is singular, also, to see the fickleness of the world with respect
+to its favorites. Enthusiasm exhausts itself, and prepares the way
+for dislike. The public is always for positive sentiments, and new
+sensations. When wearied of admiring, it delights to censure; thus
+coining a double set of enjoyments out of the same subject. Scott and
+Byron are scarce cold in their graves, and already we find criticism
+beginning to call in question those powers which held the world in magic
+thraldom. Even in our own country, one of its greatest geniuses has
+had some rough passages with the censors of the press; and instantly
+criticism begins to unsay all that it has repeatedly said in his praise;
+and the public are almost led to believe that the pen which has so often
+delighted them, is absolutely destitute of the power to delight!
+
+If, then, such reverses in opinion as to matters of taste can be so
+readily brought about, when may an author feel himself secure? Where is
+the anchoring-ground of popularity, when he may thus be driven from his
+moorings, and foundered even in harbor? The reader, too, when he is to
+consider himself safe in admiring, when he sees long-established altars
+overthrown, and his household deities dashed to the ground!
+
+There is one consolatory reflection. Every abuse carries with it its
+own remedy or palliation. Thus the excess of crude and hasty criticism,
+which has of late prevailed throughout the literary world, and
+threatened to overrun our country, begins to produce its own antidote.
+Where there is a multiplicity of contradictory paths, a man must make
+his choice; in so doing, he has to exercise his judgment, and that is
+one great step to mental independence. He begins to doubt all, where all
+differ, and but one can be in the right. He is driven to trust to his
+own discernment, and his natural feelings; and here he is most likely
+to be safe. The author, too, finding that what is condemned at one
+tribunal, is applauded at another, though perplexed for a time, gives
+way at length to the spontaneous impulse of his genius, and the dictates
+of his taste, and writes in the way most natural to himself. It is thus
+that criticism, which by its severity may have held the little world of
+writers in check, may, by its very excess, disarm itself of its terrors,
+and the hardihood of talent become restored.
+
+G.C.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+SPANISH ROMANCE.
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
+
+Sir: I have already given you a legend or two drawn from ancient Spanish
+sources, and may occasionally give you a few more. I love these old
+Spanish themes, especially when they have a dash of the Morisco in them,
+and treat of the times when the Moslems maintained a foot-hold in the
+peninsula. They have a high, spicy, oriental flavor, not to be found in
+any other themes that are merely European. In fact, Spain is a country
+that stands alone in the midst of Europe; severed in habits, manners,
+and modes of thinking, from all its continental neighbors. It is a
+romantic country; but its romance has none of the sentimentality of
+modern European romance: it is chiefly derived from the brilliant
+regions of the East, and from the high-minded school of Saracenic
+chivalry.
+
+The Arab invasion and conquest brought a higher civilization and
+a nobler style of thinking into Gothic Spain. The Arabs were a
+quick-witted, sagacious, proud-spirited, and poetical people, and were
+imbued with oriental science and literature. Wherever they established a
+seat of power, it became a rallying place for the learned and ingenious;
+and they softened and refined the people whom they conquered. By
+degrees, occupancy seemed to give them a hereditary right to their
+foothold in the land; they ceased to be looked upon as invaders, and
+were regarded as rival neighbors. The peninsula, broken up into a
+variety of states, both Christian and Moslem, became for centuries
+a great campaigning ground, where the art of war seemed to be the
+principal business of man, and was carried to the highest pitch of
+romantic chivalry. The original ground of hostility, a difference of
+faith, gradually lost its rancor. Neighboring states, of opposite
+creeds, were occasionally linked together in alliances, offensive and
+defensive; so that the cross and crescent were to be seen side by side
+fighting against some common enemy. In times of peace, too, the noble
+youth of either faith resorted to the same cities, Christian or Moslem,
+to school themselves in military science. Even in the temporary truces
+of sanguinary wars, the warriors who had recently striven together in
+the deadly conflicts of the field, laid aside their animosity, met at
+tournaments, jousts, and other military festivities, and exchanged the
+courtesies of gentle and generous spirits. Thus the opposite races
+became frequently mingled together in peaceful intercourse, or if any
+rivalry took place, it was in those high courtesies and nobler acts
+which bespeak the accomplished cavalier. Warriors of opposite creeds
+became ambitious of transcending each other in magnanimity as well as
+valor. Indeed, the chivalric virtues were refined upon to a degree
+sometimes fastidious and constrained; but at other times, inexpressibly
+noble and affecting. The annals of the times teem with illustrious
+instances of high-wrought courtesy, romantic generosity, lofty
+disinterestedness, and punctilious honor, that warm the very soul to
+read them. These have furnished themes for national plays and poems, or
+have been celebrated in those all-pervading ballads which are as the
+life-breath of the people, and thus have continued to exercise an
+influence on the national character which centuries of vicissitude and
+decline have not been able to destroy; so that, with all their faults,
+and they are many, the Spaniards, even at the present day, are on many
+points the most high-minded and proud-spirited people of Europe.
+It is true, the romance of feeling derived from the sources I have
+mentioned, has, like all other romance, its affectations and extremes.
+It renders the Spaniard at times pompous and grandiloquent; prone to
+carry the "pundonor," or point of honor, beyond the bounds of sober
+sense and sound morality; disposed, in the midst of poverty, to affect
+the "grande caballero," and to look down with sovereign disdain upon
+"arts mechanical," and all the gainful pursuits of plebeian life; but
+this very inflation of spirit, while it fills his brain with vapors,
+lifts him above a thousand meannesses; and though it often keeps him in
+indigence, ever protects him from vulgarity.
+
+In the present day, when popular literature is running into the low
+levels of life and luxuriating on the vices and follies of mankind, and
+when the universal pursuit of gain is trampling down the early growth
+of poetic feeling and wearing out the verdure of the soul, I question
+whether it would not be of service for the reader occasionally to turn
+to these records of prouder times and loftier modes of thinking, and to
+steep himself to the very lips in old Spanish romance.
+
+For my own part, I have a shelf or two of venerable, parchment-bound
+tomes, picked up here and there about the peninsula, and filled with
+chronicles, plays, and ballads, about Moors and Christians, which I keep
+by me as mental tonics, in the same way that a provident housewife has
+her cupboard of cordials. Whenever I find my mind brought below par by
+the commonplace of every-day life, or jarred by the sordid collisions
+of the world, or put out of tune by the shrewd selfishness of modern
+utilitarianism, I resort to these venerable tomes, as did the worthy
+hero of La Mancha to his books of chivalry, and refresh and tone up my
+spirit by a deep draught of their contents. They have some such effect
+upon me as Falstaff ascribes to a good Sherris sack, "warming the blood
+and filling the brain with fiery and delectable shapes."
+
+I here subjoin, Mr. Editor, a small specimen of the cordials I have
+mentioned, just drawn from my Spanish cupboard, which I recommend to
+your palate. If you find it to your taste, you may pass it on to your
+readers.
+
+  Your correspondent and well-wisher,
+  GEOFFREY CRAYON.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LEGEND OF DON MUNIO SANCHO DE HINOJOSA.
+
+BY THE AUTHOR OF THE SKETCH-BOOK.
+
+In the cloisters of the ancient Benedictine convent of San Domingo, at
+Silos, in Castile, are the mouldering yet magnificent monuments of the
+once powerful and chivalrous family of Hinojosa. Among these, reclines
+the marble figure of a knight, in complete armor, with the hands pressed
+together, as if in prayer. On one side of his tomb is sculptured in
+relief a band of Christian cavaliers, capturing a cavalcade of male and
+female Moors; on the other side, the same cavaliers are represented
+kneeling before an altar. The tomb, like most of the neighboring
+monuments, is almost in ruins, and the sculpture is nearly
+unintelligible, excepting to the keen eye of the antiquary. The story
+connected with the sepulchre, however, is still preserved in the old
+Spanish chronicles, and is to the following purport.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In old times, several hundred years ago, there was a noble Castilian
+cavalier, named Don Munio Sancho de Hinojosa, lord of a border castle,
+which had stood the brunt of many a Moorish foray. He had seventy
+horsemen as his household troops, all of the ancient Castilian proof;
+stark warriors, hard riders, and men of iron; with these he scoured the
+Moorish lands, and made his name terrible throughout the borders. His
+castle hall was covered with banners, and scimitars, and Moslem helms,
+the trophies of his prowess. Don Munio was, moreover, a keen huntsman;
+and rejoiced in hounds of all kinds, steeds for the chase, and hawks for
+the towering sport of falconry. When not engaged in warfare, his delight
+was to beat up the neighboring forests; and scarcely ever did he ride
+forth, without hound and horn, a boar-spear in his hand, or a hawk upon
+his fist, and an attendant train of huntsmen.
+
+His wife, Donna Maria Palacin, was of a gentle and timid nature, little
+fitted to be the spouse of so hardy and adventurous a knight; and many
+a tear did the poor lady shed, when he sallied forth upon his daring
+enterprises, and many a prayer did she offer up for his safety.
+
+As this doughty cavalier was one day hunting, he stationed himself in a
+thicket, on the borders of a green glade of the forest, and dispersed
+his followers to rouse the game, and drive it toward his stand. He had
+not been here long, when a cavalcade of Moors, of both sexes, came
+prankling over the forest lawn. They were unarmed, and magnificently
+dressed in robes of tissue and embroidery, rich shawls of India,
+bracelets and anklets of gold, and jewels that sparkled in the sun.
+
+At the head of this gay cavalcade, rode a youthful cavalier, superior
+to the rest in dignity and loftiness of demeanor, and in splendor of
+attire; beside him was a damsel, whose veil, blown aside by the breeze,
+displayed a face of surpassing beauty, and eyes cast down in maiden
+modesty, yet beaming with tenderness and joy.
+
+Don Munio thanked his stars for sending him such a prize, and exulted at
+the thought of bearing home to his wife the glittering spoils of these
+infidels. Putting his hunting-horn to his lips, he gave a blast that
+rung through the forest. His huntsmen came running from all quarters,
+and the astonished Moors were surrounded and made captives.
+
+The beautiful Moor wrung her hands in despair, and her female attendants
+uttered the most piercing cries. The young Moorish cavalier alone
+retained self-possession. He inquired the name of the Christian knight,
+who commanded this troop of horsemen. When told that it was Don Munio
+Sancho de Hinojosa, his countenance lighted up. Approaching that
+cavalier, and kissing his hand, "Don Munio Sancho," said he, "I have
+heard of your fame as a true and valiant knight, terrible in arms, but
+schooled in the noble virtues of chivalry. Such do I trust to find you.
+In me you behold Abadil, son of a Moorish Alcayde. I am on the way to
+celebrate my nuptials with this lady; chance has thrown us in your
+power, but I confide in your magnanimity. Take all our treasure and
+jewels; demand what ransom you think proper for our person, but suffer
+us not to be insulted or dishonored."
+
+When the good knight heard this appeal, and beheld the beauty of the
+youthful pair, his heart was touched with tenderness and courtesy.
+"God forbid," said he, "that I should disturb such happy nuptials. My
+prisoners in troth shall ye be, for fifteen days, and immured within
+my castle, where I claim, as conqueror, the right of celebrating your
+espousals."
+
+So saying, he despatched one of his fleetest horsemen in advance, to
+notify Donna Maria Palacin of the coming of this bridal party; while he
+and his huntsmen escorted the cavalcade, not as captors, but as a guard
+of honor. As they drew near to the castle, the banners were hung out,
+and the trumpets sounded from the battlements; and on their nearer
+approach, the draw-bridge was lowered, and Donna Maria came forth
+to meet them, attended by her ladies and knights, her pages and her
+minstrels. She took the young bride, Allifra, in her arms, kissed her
+with the tenderness of a sister, and conducted her into the castle. In
+the mean time, Don Munio sent forth missives in every direction, and had
+viands and dainties of all kinds collected from the country round; and
+the wedding of the Moorish lovers was celebrated with all possible state
+and festivity. For fifteen days, the castle was given up to joy and
+revelry. There were tiltings and jousts at the ring, and bullfights, and
+banquets, and dances to the sound of minstrelsy. When the fifteen days
+were at an end, he made the bride and bridegroom magnificent presents,
+and conducted them and their attendants safely beyond the borders. Such,
+in old times, were the courtesy and generosity of a Spanish cavalier.
+
+Several years after this event, the King of Castile summoned his nobles
+to assist him in a campaign against the Moors. Don Munio Sancho was
+among the first to answer to the call, with seventy horsemen, all
+staunch and well-tried warriors. His wife, Donna Maria, hung about his
+neck. "Alas, my lord!" exclaimed she, "how often wilt thou tempt thy
+fate, and when will thy thirst for glory be appeased?"
+
+"One battle more," replied Don Munio, "one battle more, for the honor of
+Castile, and I here make a vow, that when this is over, I will lay by my
+sword, and repair with my cavaliers in pilgrimage to the sepulchre of
+our Lord at Jerusalem." The cavaliers all joined with him in the vow,
+and Donna Maria felt in some degree soothed in spirit: still, she saw
+with a heavy heart the departure of her husband, and watched his banner
+with wistful eyes, until it disappeared among the trees of the forest,
+
+The King of Castile led his army to the plains of Almanara, where they
+encountered the Moorish host, near to Ucles. The battle was long and
+bloody; the Christians repeatedly wavered, and were as often rallied by
+the energy of their commanders. Don Munio was covered with wounds, but
+refused to leave the field. The Christians at length gave way, and the
+king was hardly pressed, and in danger of being captured.
+
+Don Munio called upon his cavaliers to follow him to the rescue. "Now is
+the time," cried he, "to prove your loyalty. Fall to, like brave men!
+We fight for the true faith, and if we lose our lives here, we gain a
+better life hereafter."
+
+Rushing with his men between the king and his pursuers, they checked the
+latter in their career, and gave time for their monarch to escape; but
+they fell victims to their loyalty. They all fought to the last gasp.
+Don Munio was singled out by a powerful Moorish knight, but having been
+wounded in the right arm, he fought to disadvantage, and was slain. The
+battle being over, the Moor paused to possess himself of the spoils of
+this redoubtable Christian warrior. When he unlaced the helmet, however,
+and beheld the countenance of Don Munio, he gave a great cry, and smote
+his breast. "Woe is me!" cried he: "I have slain my benefactor! The
+flower of knightly virtue! the most magnanimous of cavaliers!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While the battle had been raging on the plain of Salmanara, Donna Maria
+Palacin remained in her castle, a prey to the keenest anxiety. Her eyes
+were ever fixed on the road that led from the country of the Moors, and
+often she asked the watchman of the tower, "What seest thou?"
+
+One evening, at the shadowy hour of twilight, the warden sounded his
+horn. "I see," cried he, "a numerous train winding up the valley. There
+are mingled Moors and Christians. The banner of my lord is in the
+advance. Joyful tidings!" exclaimed the old seneschal: "my lord returns
+in triumph, and brings captives!" Then the castle courts rang with
+shouts of joy; and the standard was displayed, and the trumpets were
+sounded, and the draw-bridge was lowered, and Donna Maria went forth
+with her ladies, and her knights, and her pages, and her minstrels, to
+welcome her lord from the wars. But as the train drew nigh, she beheld a
+sumptuous bier, covered with black velvet, and on it lay a warrior, as
+if taking his repose: he lay in his armor, with his helmet on his head,
+and his sword in his hand, as one who had never been conquered, and
+around the bier were the escutcheons of the house of Hinojosa.
+
+A number of Moorish cavaliers attended the bier, with emblems of
+mourning, and with dejected countenances: and their leader cast himself
+at the feet of Donna Maria, and hid his face in his hands. She beheld in
+him the gallant Abadil, whom she had once welcomed with his bride to
+her castle, but who now came with the body of her lord, whom he had
+unknowingly slain in battle!
+
+The sepulchre erected in the cloisters of the Convent of San Domingo was
+achieved at the expense of the Moor Abadil, as a feeble testimony of his
+grief for the death of the good knight Don Munio, and his reverence for
+his memory. The tender and faithful Donna Maria soon followed her lord
+to the tomb. On one of the stones of a small arch, beside his sepulchre,
+is the following simple inscription: "_Hic jacet Maria Palacin, uxor
+Munonis Sancij de Finojosa_:" Here lies Maria Palacin, wife of Munio
+Sancho de Hinojosa.
+
+The legend of Don Munio Sancho does not conclude with his death. On the
+same day on which the battle took place on the plain of Salmanara, a
+chaplain of the Holy Temple at Jerusalem, while standing at the outer
+gate, beheld a train of Christian cavaliers advancing, as if in
+pilgrimage. The chaplain was a native of Spain, and as the pilgrims
+approached, he knew the foremost to be Don Munio Sancho de Hinojosa,
+with whom he had been well acquainted in former times. Hastening to the
+patriarch, he told him of the honorable rank of the pilgrims at the
+gate. The patriarch, therefore, went forth with a grand procession of
+priests and monks, and received the pilgrims with all due honor. There
+were seventy cavaliers, beside their leader, all stark and lofty
+warriors. They carried their helmets in their hands, and their faces
+were deadly pale. They greeted no one, nor looked either to the right or
+to the left, but entered the chapel, and kneeling before the Sepulchre
+of our Saviour, performed their orisons in silence. When they had
+concluded, they rose as if to depart, and the patriarch and his
+attendants advanced to speak to them, but they were no more to be seen.
+Every one marvelled what could be the meaning of this prodigy. The
+patriarch carefully noted down the day, and sent to Castile to learn
+tidings of Don Munio Sancho de Hinojosa. He received for reply, that
+on the very day specified, that worthy knight, with seventy of his
+followers, had been slain in battle. These, therefore, must have been
+the blessed spirits of those Christian warriors, come to fulfil their
+vow of a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. Such was
+Castilian faith, in the olden time, which kept its word, even beyond the
+grave.
+
+If any one should doubt of the miraculous apparition of these phantom
+knights, let him consult the History of the Kings of Castile and Leon,
+by the learned and pious Fray Prudencio de Sandoval, Bishop of Pamplona,
+where he will find it recorded in the History of the King Don Alonzo
+VI., on the hundred and second page. It is too precious a legend to be
+lightly abandoned to the doubter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+COMMUNIPAW.
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
+
+Sir: I observe, with pleasure, that you are performing from time to time
+a pious duty, imposed upon you, I may say, by the name you have adopted
+as your titular standard, in following in the footsteps of the venerable
+KNICKERBOCKER, and gleaning every fact concerning the early times of the
+Manhattoes which may have escaped his hand. I trust, therefore, a few
+particulars, legendary and statistical, concerning a place which
+figures conspicuously in the early pages of his history, will not be
+unacceptable. I allude, Sir, to the ancient and renowned village of
+Communipaw, which, according to the veracious Diedrich, and to equally
+veracious tradition, was the first spot where our ever-to-be-lamented
+Dutch progenitors planted their standard and cast the seeds of empire,
+and from whence subsequently sailed the memorable expedition under
+Oloffe the Dreamer, which landed on the opposite island of Manhatta,
+and founded the present city of New-York, the city of dreams and
+speculations.
+
+Communipaw, therefore, may truly be called the parent of New-York; yet
+it is an astonishing fact, that though immediately opposite to the great
+city it has produced, from whence its red roofs and tin weather-cocks
+can actually be descried peering above the surrounding apple orchards,
+it should be almost as rarely visited, and as little known by the
+inhabitants of the metropolis, as if it had been locked up among the
+Rocky Mountains. Sir, I think there is something unnatural in this,
+especially in these times of ramble and research, when our citizens are
+antiquity-hunting in every part of the world. Curiosity, like charity,
+should begin at home; and I would enjoin it on our worthy burghers,
+especially those of the real Knickerbocker breed, before they send their
+sons abroad to wonder and grow wise among the remains of Greece and
+Rome, to let them make a tour of ancient Pavonia, from Weehawk even
+to the Kills, and meditate, with filial reverence, on the moss-grown
+mansions of Communipaw. Sir, I regard this much neglected village as one
+of the most remarkable places in the country. The intelligent traveller,
+as he looks down upon it from the Bergen Heights, modestly nestled among
+its cabbage-gardens, while the great flaunting city it has begotten is
+stretching far and wide on the opposite side of the bay, the intelligent
+traveller, I say, will be filled with astonishment; not, Sir, at the
+village of Communipaw, which in truth is a very small village, but at
+the almost incredible fact that so small a village should have produced
+so great a city. It looks to him, indeed, like some squat little
+dame, with a tall grenadier of a son strutting by her side; or some
+simple-hearted hen that has unwittingly hatched out a long-legged
+turkey.
+
+But this is not all for which Communipaw is remarkable. Sir, it is
+interesting on another account. It is to the ancient province of
+the New-Netherlands and the classic era of the Dutch dynasty, what
+Herculaneum and Pompeii are to ancient Rome and the glorious days of the
+empire. Here every thing remains in statu quo, as it was in the days of
+Oloffe the Dreamer, Walter the Doubter, and the other worthies of the
+golden age; the same broad-brimmed hats and broad-bottomed breeches;
+the same knee-buckles and shoe-buckles; the same close-quilled caps
+and linsey-woolsey short-gowns and petticoats; the same implements and
+utensils and forms and fashions; in a word, Communipaw at the present
+day is a picture of what New-Amsterdam was before the conquest. The
+"intelligent traveller" aforesaid, as he treads its streets, is struck
+with the primitive character of every thing around him. Instead of
+Grecian temples for dwelling-houses, with a great column of pine boards
+in the way of every window, he beholds high peaked roofs, gable ends
+to the street, with weather-cocks at top, and windows of all sorts and
+sizes; large ones for the grown-up members of the family, and little
+ones for the little folk. Instead of cold marble porches, with
+close-locked doors and brass knockers, he sees the doors hospitably
+open; the worthy burgher smoking his pipe on the old-fashioned stoop in
+front, with his "vrouw" knitting beside him; and the cat and her kittens
+at their feet sleeping in the sunshine.
+
+Astonished at the obsolete and "old world" air of every thing around
+him, the intelligent traveller demands how all this has come to pass.
+Herculaneum and Pompeii remain, it is true, unaffected by the varying
+fashions of centuries; but they were buried by a volcano and preserved
+in ashes. What charmed spell has kept this wonderful little place
+unchanged, though in sight of the most changeful city in the universe?
+Has it, too, been buried under its cabbage-gardens, and only dug out
+in modern days for the wonder and edification of the world? The reply
+involves a point of history, worthy of notice and record, and reflecting
+immortal honor on Communipaw.
+
+At the time when New-Amsterdam was invaded and conquered by British
+foes, as has been related in the history of the venerable Diedrich, a
+great dispersion took place among the Dutch inhabitants. Many, like the
+illustrious Peter Stuyvesant, buried themselves in rural retreats in the
+Bowerie; others, like Wolfert Acker, took refuge in various remote
+parts of the Hudson; but there was one staunch, unconquerable band that
+determined to keep together, and preserve themselves, like seed corn,
+for the future fructification and perpetuity of the Knickerbocker race.
+These were headed by one Garret Van Horne, a gigantic Dutchman, the
+Pelayo of the New-Netherlands. Under his guidance, they retreated across
+the bay and buried themselves among the marshes of ancient Pavonia, as
+did the followers of Pelayo among the mountains of Asturias, when Spain
+was overrun by its Arabian invaders.
+
+The gallant Van Horne set up his standard at Communipaw, and invited
+all those to rally under it, who were true Nederlanders at heart, and
+determined to resist all foreign intermixture or encroachment. A strict
+non-intercourse was observed with the captured city; not a boat ever
+crossed to it from Communipaw, and the English language was rigorously
+tabooed throughout the village and its dependencies. Every man was sworn
+to wear his hat, cut his coat, build his house, and harness his horses,
+exactly as his father had done before him; and to permit nothing but the
+Dutch language to be spoken in his household.
+
+As a citadel of the place, and a strong-hold for the preservation and
+defence of every thing Dutch, the gallant Van Horne erected a lordly
+mansion, with a chimney perched at every corner, which thence derived
+the aristocratical name of "The House of the Four Chimneys." Hither he
+transferred many of the precious reliques of New-Amsterdam; the great
+round-crowned hat that once covered the capacious head of Walter the
+Doubter, and the identical shoe with which Peter the Headstrong kicked
+his pusillanimous councillors down-stairs. St. Nicholas, it is said,
+took this loyal house under his especial protection; and a Dutch
+soothsayer predicted, that as long as it should stand, Communipaw would
+be safe from the intrusion either of Briton or Yankee.
+
+In this house would the gallant Van Home and his compeers hold frequent
+councils of war, as to the possibility of re-conquering the province
+from the British; and here would they sit for hours, nay, days, together
+smoking their pipes and keeping watch upon the growing city of New-York;
+groaning in spirit whenever they saw a new house erected or ship
+launched, and persuading themselves that Admiral Van Tromp would one
+day or other arrive to sweep out the invaders with the broom which he
+carried at his mast-head.
+
+Years rolled by, but Van Tromp never arrived. The British strengthened
+themselves in the land, and the captured city flourished under their
+domination. Still, the worthies of Communipaw would not despair;
+something or other, they were sure, would turn up to restore the power
+of the Hogen Mogens, the Lord States-General; so they kept smoking and
+smoking, and watching and watching, and turning the same few thoughts
+over and over in a perpetual circle, which is commonly called
+deliberating. In the mean time, being hemmed up within a narrow compass,
+between the broad bay and the Bergen hills, they grew poorer and poorer,
+until they had scarce the wherewithal to maintain their pipes in fuel
+during their endless deliberations.
+
+And now must I relate a circumstance which will call for a little
+exertion of faith on the part of the reader; but I can only say that if
+he doubts it, he had better not utter his doubts in Communipaw, as it is
+among the religious beliefs of the place. It is, in fact, nothing more
+nor less than a miracle, worked by the blessed St. Nicholas, for the
+relief and sustenance of this loyal community.
+
+It so happened, in this time of extremity, that in the course of
+cleaning the House of the Four Chimneys, by an ignorant housewife who
+knew nothing of the historic value of the reliques it contained, the old
+hat of Walter the Doubter and the executive shoe of Peter the Headstrong
+were thrown out of doors as rubbish. But mark the consequence. The good
+St. Nicholas kept watch over these precious reliques, and wrought out of
+them a wonderful providence.
+
+The hat of Walter the Doubter falling on a stercoraceous heap of
+compost, in the rear of the house, began forthwith to vegetate. Its
+broad brim, spread forth grandly and exfoliated, and its round crown
+swelled and crimped and consolidated until the whole became a prodigious
+cabbage, rivalling in magnitude the capacious head of the Doubter. In a
+word, it was the origin of that renowned species of cabbage known, by
+all Dutch epicures, by the name of the Governor's Head, and which is to
+this day the glory of Communipaw.
+
+On the other hand, the shoe of Peter Stuyvesant being thrown into the
+river, in front of the house, gradually hardened and concreted, and
+became covered with barnacles, and at length turned into a gigantic
+oyster; being the progenitor of that illustrious species known
+throughout the gastronomical world by the name of the Governor's Foot.
+
+These miracles were the salvation of Communipaw. The sages of the place
+immediately saw in them the hand of St. Nicholas, and understood their
+mystic signification. They set to work with all diligence to cultivate
+and multiply these great blessings; and so abundantly did the
+gubernatorial hat and shoe fructify and increase, that in a little time
+great patches of cabbages were to be seen extending from the village of
+Communipaw quite to the Bergen Hills; while the whole bottom of the
+bay in front became a vast bed of oysters. Ever since that time this
+excellent community has been divided into two great classes: those who
+cultivate the land and those who cultivate the water. The former have
+devoted themselves to the nurture and edification of cabbages, rearing
+them in all their varieties; while the latter have formed parks and
+plantations, under water, to which juvenile oysters are transplanted
+from foreign parts, to finish their education.
+
+As these great sources of profit multiplied upon their hands, the worthy
+inhabitants of Communipaw began to long for a market at which to
+dispose of their superabundance. This gradually produced once more an
+intercourse with New-York; but it was always carried on by the old
+people and the negroes; never would they permit the young folks, of
+either sex, to visit the city, lest they should get tainted with foreign
+manners and bring home foreign fashions. Even to this day, if you see an
+old burgher in the market, with hat and garb of antique Dutch fashion,
+you may be sure he is one of the old unconquered race of the "bitter
+blood," who maintain their strong-hold at Communipaw.
+
+In modern days, the hereditary bitterness against the English has lost
+much of its asperity, or rather has become merged in a new source of
+jealousy and apprehension: I allude to the incessant and wide-spreading
+irruptions from New-England. Word has been continually brought back to
+Communipaw, by those of the community who return from their trading
+voyages in cabbages and oysters, of the alarming power which the Yankees
+are gaining in the ancient city of New-Amsterdam; elbowing the genuine
+Knickerbockers out of all civic posts of honor and profit; bargaining
+them out of their hereditary homesteads; pulling down the venerable
+houses, with crow-step gables, which have stood since the time of the
+Dutch rule, and erecting, instead, granite stores, and marble banks; in
+a word, evincing a deadly determination to obliterate every vestige of
+the good old Dutch times.
+
+In consequence of the jealousy thus awakened, the worthy traders from
+Communipaw confine their dealings, as much as possible, to the genuine
+Dutch families. If they furnish the Yankees at all, it is with inferior
+articles. Never can the latter procure a real "Governor's Head," or
+"Governor's Foot," though they have offered extravagant prices for the
+same, to grace their table on the annual festival of the New-England
+Society.
+
+But what has carried this hostility to the Yankees to the highest pitch,
+was an attempt made by that all-pervading race to get possession of
+Communipaw itself. Yes, Sir; during the late mania for land speculation,
+a daring company of Yankee projectors landed before the village; stopped
+the honest burghers on the public highway, and endeavored to bargain
+them out of their hereditary acres; displayed lithographic maps,
+in which their cabbage-gardens were laid out into town lots: their
+oyster-parks into docks and quays; and even the House of the Four
+Chimneys metamorphosed into a bank, which was to enrich the whole
+neighborhood with paper money.
+
+Fortunately, the gallant Van Hornes came to the rescue, just as some of
+the worthy burghers were on the point of capitulating. The Yankees were
+put to the rout, with signal confusion, and have never since dared to
+show their faces in the place. The good people continue to cultivate
+their cabbages, and rear their oysters; they know nothing of banks, nor
+joint stock companies, but treasure up their money in stocking-feet, at
+the bottom of the family chest, or bury it in iron pots, as did their
+fathers and grandfathers before them.
+
+As to the House of the Four Chimneys, it still remains in the great and
+tall family of the Van Hornes. Here are to be seen ancient Dutch corner
+cupboards, chests of drawers, and massive clothes-presses, quaintly
+carved, and carefully waxed and polished; together with divers thick,
+black-letter volumes, with brass clasps, printed of yore in Leydon and
+Amsterdam, and handed down from generation to generation, in the family,
+but never read. They are preserved in the archives, among sundry old
+parchment deeds, in Dutch and English, bearing the seals of the early
+governors of the province.
+
+In this house, the primitive Dutch holidays of Paas and Pinxter
+are faithfully kept up; and New-Year celebrated with cookies and
+cherry-bounce; nor is the festival of the blessed St. Nicholas
+forgotten, when all the children are sure to hang up their stockings,
+and to have them filled according to their deserts; though, it is said,
+the good saint is occasionally perplexed in his nocturnal visits, which
+chimney to descend.
+
+Of late, this portentous mansion has begun to give signs of dilapidation
+and decay. Some have attributed this to the visits made by the young
+people to the city, and their bringing thence various modern fashions;
+and to their neglect of the Dutch language, which is gradually becoming
+confined to the older persons in the community. The house, too, was
+greatly shaken by high winds, during the prevalence of the speculation
+mania, especially at the time of the landing of the Yankees. Seeing how
+mysteriously the fate of Communipaw is identified with this venerable
+mansion, we cannot wonder that the older and wiser heads of the
+community should be filled with dismay, whenever a brick is toppled
+down from one of the chimneys, or a weather-cock is blown off from a
+gable-end.
+
+The present lord of this historic pile, I am happy to say, is calculated
+to maintain it in all its integrity. He is of patriarchal age, and is
+worthy of the days of the patriarchs. He has done his utmost to increase
+and multiply the true race in the land. His wife has not been inferior
+to him in zeal, and they are surrounded by a goodly progeny of children,
+and grand-children, and great-grand-children, who promise to perpetuate
+the name of Van Horne, until time shall be no more. So be it! Long may
+the horn of the Van Hornes continue to be exalted in the land! Tall as
+they are, may their shadows never be less! May the House of the Four
+Chimneys remain for ages, the citadel of Communipaw, and the smoke of
+its chimneys continue to ascend, a sweet-smelling incense in the hose of
+St. Nicholas!
+
+With great respect, Mr. Editor,
+
+Your ob't servant,
+
+HERMANUS VANDERDONK.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+CONSPIRACY OF THE COCKED HATS.
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
+
+Sir: I have read with great satisfaction the valuable paper of your
+correspondent, Mr. HERMANUS VANDERDONK, (who, I take it, is a descendant
+of the learned Adrian Vanderdonk, one of the early historians of the
+Nieuw-Nederlands,) giving sundry particulars, legendary and statistical,
+touching the venerable village of Communipaw and its fate-bound citadel,
+the House of the Four Chimneys. It goes to prove what I have repeatedly
+maintained, that we live in the midst of history and mystery and
+romance; and that there is no spot in the world more rich in themes for
+the writer of historic novels, heroic melodramas, and rough-shod epics,
+than this same business-looking city of the Manhattoes and its environs.
+He who would find these elements, however, must not seek them among the
+modern improvements and modern people of this moneyed metropolis, but
+must dig for them, as for Kidd the pirate's treasures, in out-of-the-way
+places, and among the ruins of the past.
+
+Poetry and romance received a fatal blow at the overthrow of the ancient
+Dutch dynasty, and have ever since been gradually withering under the
+growing domination of the Yankees. They abandoned our hearths when the
+old Dutch tiles were superseded by marble chimney-pieces; when brass
+andirons made way for polished grates, and the crackling and blazing
+fire of nut-wood gave place to the smoke and stench of Liverpool coal;
+and on the downfall of the last gable-end house, their requiem was
+tolled from the tower of the Dutch church in Nassau-street by the old
+bell that came from Holland. But poetry and romance still live unseen
+among us, or seen only by the enlightened few, who are able to
+contemplate this city and its environs through the medium of tradition,
+and clothed with the associations of foregone ages.
+
+Would you seek these elements in the country, Mr. Editor, avoid all
+turnpikes, rail-roads, and steamboats, those abominable inventions by
+which the usurping Yankees are strengthening themselves in the land, and
+subduing every thing to utility and common-place. Avoid all towns and
+cities of white clapboard palaces and Grecian temples, studded with
+"Academics," "Seminaries," and "Institutes," which glisten along our
+bays and rivers; these are the strong-holds of Yankee usurpation; but if
+haply you light upon some rough, rambling road, winding between stone
+fences, gray with moss, and overgrown with elder, poke-berry, mullein,
+and sweet-briar, with here and there a low, red-roofed, whitewashed
+farm-house, cowering among apple and cherry trees; an old stone church,
+with elms, willows, and button-woods, as old-looking as itself, and
+tombstones almost buried in their own graves; and, peradventure, a small
+log school-house at a cross-road, where the English is still taught with
+a thickness of the tongue, instead of a twang of the nose; should you,
+I say, light upon such a neighborhood, Mr. Editor, you may thank your
+stars that you have found one of the lingering haunts of poetry and
+romance.
+
+Your correspondent, Sir, has touched upon that sublime and affecting
+feature in the history of Communipaw, the retreat of the patriotic band
+of Nederlanders, led by Van Horne, whom he justly terms the Pelayo of
+the New-Netherlands. He has given you a picture of the manner in which
+they ensconced themselves in the House of the Four Chimneys, and awaited
+with heroic patience and perseverance the day that should see the flag
+of the Hogen Mogens once more floating on the fort of New-Amsterdam.
+
+Your correspondent, Sir, has but given you a glimpse over the threshold;
+I will now let you into the heart of the mystery of this most mysterious
+and eventful village.
+
+  Yes, sir, I will now--"unclasp a secret book;
+  And to your quick conceiving discontents,
+  I'll read you matter deep and dangerous,
+  As full of peril and adventurous spirit,
+  As to o'er walk a current, roaring loud,
+  On the unsteadfast footing of a spear."
+
+Sir, it is one of the most beautiful and interesting facts connected
+with the history of Communipaw, that the early feeling of resistance to
+foreign rule, alluded to by your correspondent, is still kept up. Yes,
+sir, a settled, secret, and determined conspiracy has been going on
+for generations among this indomitable people, the descendants of the
+refugees from New-Amsterdam; the object of which is to redeem their
+ancient seat of empire, and to drive the losel Yankees out of the land.
+
+Communipaw, it is true, has the glory of originating this conspiracy;
+and it was hatched and reared in the House of the Four Chimneys; but it
+has spread far and wide over ancient Pavonia, surmounted the heights of
+Bergen, Hoboken, and Weehawk, crept up along the banks of the Passaic
+and the Hackensack, until it pervades the whole chivalry of the country
+from Tappan Slote in the north to Piscataway in the south, including the
+pugnacious village of Rahway, more heroically denominated Spank-town.
+
+Throughout all these regions a great "in-and-in confederacy" prevails,
+that is to say, a confederacy among the Dutch families, by dint of
+diligent and exclusive intermarriage, to keep the race pure and to
+multiply. If ever, Mr. Editor, in the course of your travels between
+Spank-town and Tappan Slote, you should see a cosey, low-eaved
+farm-house, teeming with sturdy, broad-built little urchins, you may set
+it down as one of the breeding places of this grand secret confederacy,
+stocked with the embryo deliverers of New-Amsterdam.
+
+Another step in the progress of this patriotic conspiracy, is the
+establishment, in various places within the ancient boundaries of the
+Nieuw-Nederlands, of secret, or rather mysterious associations, composed
+of the genuine sons of the Nederlanders, with the ostensible object of
+keeping up the memory of old times and customs, but with the real object
+of promoting the views of this dark and mighty plot, and extending its
+ramifications throughout the land.
+
+Sir, I am descended from a long line of genuine Nederlanders, who,
+though they remained in the city of New-Amsterdam after the conquest,
+and throughout the usurpation, have never in their hearts been able to
+tolerate the yoke imposed upon them. My worthy father, who was one of
+the last of the cocked hats, had a little knot of cronies, of his own
+stamp, who used to meet in our wainscoted parlor, round a nut-wood fire,
+talk over old times, when the city was ruled by its native burgomasters,
+and groan over the monopoly of all places of power and profit by the
+Yankees. I well recollect the effect upon this worthy little conclave,
+when the Yankees first instituted then New-England Society, held their
+"national festival," toasted their "father land," and sang their foreign
+songs of triumph within the very precincts of our ancient metropolis.
+Sir, from that day, my father held the smell of codfish and potatoes,
+and the sight of pumpkin pie, in utter abomination; and whenever the
+annual dinner of the New-England Society came round, it was a sore
+anniversary for his children. He got up in an ill humor, grumbled and
+growled throughout the day, and not one of us went to bed that night,
+without having had his jacket well trounced, to the tune of "The Pilgrim
+Fathers."
+
+You may judge, then, Mr. Editor, of the exaltation of all true patriots
+of this stamp, when the Society of Saint Nicholas was set up among us,
+and intrepidly established, cheek by jole, alongside of the society of
+the invaders. Never shall I forget the effect upon my father and his
+little knot of brother groaners, when tidings were brought them that the
+ancient banner of the Manhattoes was actually floating from the window
+of the City Hotel. Sir, they nearly jumped out of their silver-buckled
+shoes for joy. They took down their cocked hats from the pegs on which
+they had hanged them, as the Israelites of yore hung their harps upon
+the willows, in token of bondage, clapped them resolutely once more upon
+their heads, and cocked them in the face of every Yankee they met on the
+way to the banqueting-room.
+
+The institution of this society was hailed with transport throughout the
+whole extent of the New-Netherlands; being considered a secret foothold
+gained in New-Amsterdam, and a flattering presage of future triumph.
+Whenever that society holds its annual feast, a sympathetic hilarity
+prevails throughout the land; ancient Pavonia sends over its
+contributions of cabbages and oysters; the House of the Four Chimneys is
+splendidly illuminated, and the traditional song of St. Nicholas, the
+mystic bond of union and conspiracy, is chaunted with closed doors, in
+every genuine Dutch family.
+
+I have thus, I trust, Mr. Editor, opened your eyes to some of the grand
+moral, poetical, and political phenomena with which you are surrounded.
+You will now be able to read the "signs of the times." You will
+now understand what is meant by those "Knickerbocker Halls," and
+"Knickerbocker Hotels," and "Knickerbocker Lunches," that are daily
+springing up in our city and what all these "Knickerbocker Omnibuses"
+are driving at. You will see in them so many clouds before a storm; so
+many mysterious but sublime intimations of the gathering vengeance of a
+great though oppressed people. Above all, you will now contemplate
+our bay and its portentous borders, with proper feelings of awe and
+admiration. Talk of the Bay of Naples, and its volcanic mountains! Why,
+Sir, little Communipaw, sleeping among its cabbage gardens, "quiet as
+gunpowder," yet with this tremendous conspiracy brewing in its bosom is
+an object ten times as sublime (in a moral point of view, mark me) as
+Vesuvius in repose, though charged with lava and brimstone, and ready
+for an eruption.
+
+Let me advert to a circumstance connected with this theme, which
+cannot but be appreciated by every heart of sensibility. You must have
+remarked, Mr. Editor, on summer evenings, and on Sunday afternoons,
+certain grave, primitive-looking personages, walking the Battery, in
+close confabulation, with their canes behind their backs, and ever and
+anon turning a wistful gaze toward the Jersey shore. These, Sir, are the
+sons of Saint Nicholas, the genuine Nederlanders; who regard Communipaw
+with pious reverence, not merely as the progenitor, but the destined
+regenerator, of this great metropolis. Yes, Sir; they are looking with
+longing eyes to the green marshes of ancient Pavonia, as did the poor
+conquered Spaniards of yore toward the stern mountains of Asturias,
+wondering whether the day of deliverance is at hand. Many is the time,
+when, in my boyhood, I have walked with my father and his confidential
+compeers on the Battery, and listened to their calculations and
+conjectures, and observed the points of their sharp cocked hats evermore
+turned toward Pavonia. Nay, Sir, I am convinced that at this moment, if
+I were to take down the cocked hat of my lamented father from the peg on
+which it has hung for years, and were to carry it to the Battery, its
+centre point, true as the needle to the pole, would turn to Communipaw.
+
+Mr. Editor, the great historic drama of New-Amsterdam, is but half
+acted. The reigns of Walter the Doubter, William the Testy, and Peter
+the Headstrong, with the rise, progress, and decline of the Dutch
+dynasty, are but so many parts of the main action, the triumphant
+catastrophe of which is yet to come. Yes, Sir! the deliverance of
+the New-Nederlands from Yankee domination will eclipse the far-famed
+redemption of Spain from the Moors, and the oft-sung conquest of Granada
+will fade before the chivalrous triumph of New-Amsterdam. Would that
+Peter Stuyvesant could rise from his grave to witness that day!
+
+Your humble servant,
+
+ROLOFF VAN RIPPER.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+P. S. Just as I had concluded the foregoing epistle, I received a piece
+of intelligence, which makes me tremble for the fate of Communipaw.
+I fear, Mr. Editor, the grand conspiracy is in danger of being
+countermined and counteracted, by those all-pervading and
+indefatigable Yankees. Would you think it, Sir! one of them has actually
+effected an entry in the place by covered way; or in other words, under
+cover of the petticoats. Finding every other mode ineffectual, he
+secretly laid siege to a Dutch heiress, who owns a great cabbage-garden
+in her own right. Being a smooth-tongued varlet, he easily prevailed on
+her to elope with him, and they were privately married at Spank-town!
+The first notice the good people of Communipaw had of this awful event,
+was a lithographed map of the cabbage garden laid out in town lots, and
+advertised for sale! On the night of the wedding, the main weather-cock
+of the House of the Four Chimneys was carried away in a whirlwind! The
+greatest consternation reigns throughout the village!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A LEGEND OF COMMUNIPAW.
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER MAGAZINE.
+
+Sir: I observed in your last month's periodical, a communication from
+a Mr. VANDERDONK, giving some information concerning Communipaw. I
+herewith send you, Mr. Editor, a legend connected with that place; and
+am much surprised it should have escaped the researches of your very
+authentic correspondent, as it relates to an edifice scarcely less fated
+than the House of the Four Chimneys. I give you the legend in its crude
+and simple state, as I heard it related; it is capable, however, of
+being dilated, inflated, and dressed up into very imposing shape and
+dimensions. Should any of your ingenious contributors in this line feel
+inclined to take it in hand, they will find ample materials, collateral
+and illustrative, among the papers of the late Reinier Skaats, many
+years since crier of the court, and keeper of the City Hall, in the
+city of the Manhattoes; or in the library of that important and utterly
+renowned functionary, Mr. Jacob Hays, long time high constable, who,
+in the course of his extensive researches, has amassed an amount of
+valuable facts, to be rivalled only by that great historical collection,
+"The Newgate Calendar."
+
+Your humble servant,
+
+BARENT VAN SCHAICK.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_GUESTS FROM GIBBET-ISLAND_.
+
+A LEGEND OF COMMUNIPAW.
+
+Whoever has visited the ancient and renowned village of Communipaw,
+may have noticed an old stone building, of most ruinous and sinister
+appearance. The doors and window-shutters are ready to drop from their
+hinges; old clothes are stuffed in the broken panes of glass, while
+legions of half-starved dogs prowl about the premises, and rush out and
+bark at every passer-by; for your beggarly house in a village is most
+apt to swarm with profligate and ill-conditioned dogs. What adds to the
+sinister appearance of this mansion, is a tall frame in front, not
+a little resembling a gallows, and which looks as if waiting to
+accommodate some of the inhabitants with a well-merited airing. It is
+not a gallows, however, but an ancient sign-post; for this dwelling, in
+the golden days of Communipaw, was one of the most orderly and peaceful
+of village taverns, where all the public affairs of Communipaw were
+talked and smoked over. In fact, it was in this very building that
+Oloffe the Dreamer, and his companions, concerted that great voyage of
+discovery and colonization, in which they explored Buttermilk Channel,
+were nearly shipwrecked in the strait of Hell-gate, and finally landed
+on the Island of Manhattan, and founded the great city of New-Amsterdam.
+
+Even after the province had been cruelly wrested from the sway of their
+High Mightinesses, by the combined forces of the British and Yankees,
+this tavern continued its ancient loyalty. It is true, the head of the
+Prince of Orange disappeared from the sign; a strange bird being painted
+over it, with the explanatory legend of "DIE WILDE GANS," or The Wild
+Goose; but this all the world knew to be a sly riddle of the landlord,
+the worthy Teunis Van Gieson, a knowing man in a small way, who laid
+his finger beside his nose and winked, when any one studied the
+signification of his sign, and observed that his goose was hatching, but
+would join the flock whenever they flew over the water; an enigma which
+was the perpetual recreation and delight of the loyal but fat-headed
+burghers of Communipaw.
+
+Under the sway of this patriotic, though discreet and quiet publican,
+the tavern continued to flourish in primeval tranquillity, and was
+the resort of all true-hearted Nederlanders, from all parts of Pavonia;
+who met here quietly and secretly, to smoke and drink the downfall of
+Briton and Yankee, and success to Admiral Van Tromp.
+
+The only drawback on the comfort of the establishment, was a nephew of
+mine host, a sister's son, Yan Yost Vanderscamp by name, and a real
+scamp by nature. This unlucky whipster showed an early propensity to
+mischief, which he gratified in a small way, by playing tricks upon the
+frequenters of the Wild Goose; putting gunpowder in their pipes, or
+squibs in their pockets, and astonishing them with an explosion, while
+they sat nodding round the fire-place in the bar-room; and if perchance
+a worthy burgher from some distant part of Pavonia had lingered until
+dark over his potation, it was odds but that young Vanderscamp would
+slip a briar under his horse's tail, as he mounted, and send him
+clattering along the road, in neck-or-nothing style, to his infinite
+astonishment and discomfiture.
+
+It may be wondered at, that mine host of the Wild Goose did not turn
+such a graceless varlet out of doors; but Teunis Van Gieson was an
+easy-tempered man, and, having no child of his own, looked upon his
+nephew with almost parental indulgence. His patience and good-nature
+were doomed to be tried by another inmate of his mansion. This was a
+cross-grained curmudgeon of a negro, named Pluto, who was a kind of
+enigma in Communipaw. Where he came from, nobody knew. He was found one
+morning, after a storm, cast like a sea-monster on the strand, in front
+of the Wild Goose, and lay there, more dead than alive. The neighbors
+gathered round, and speculated on this production of the deep; whether
+it were fish or flesh, or a compound of both, commonly yclept a merman.
+The kind-hearted Teunis Van Gieson, seeing that he wore the human form,
+took him into his house, and warmed him into life. By degrees, he showed
+signs of intelligence, and even uttered sounds very much like language,
+but which no one in Communipaw could understand. Some thought him a
+negro just from Guinea, who had either fallen overboard, or escaped from
+a slave-ship. Nothing, however, could ever draw from him any account
+of his origin. When questioned on the subject, he merely pointed to
+Gibbet-Island, a small rocky islet, which lies in the open bay, just
+opposite to Communipaw, as if that were his native place, though every
+body knew it had never been inhabited.
+
+In the process of time, he acquired something of the Dutch language,
+that is to say, he learnt all its vocabulary of oaths and maledictions,
+with just words sufficient to string them together. "Donder en
+blicksen!" (thunder and lightning,) was the gentlest of his
+ejaculations. For years he kept about the Wild Goose, more like one of
+those familiar spirits, or household goblins, that we read of, than
+like a human being. He acknowledged allegiance to no one, but performed
+various domestic offices, when it suited his humor; waiting occasionally
+on the guests; grooming the horses, cutting wood, drawing water; and all
+this without being ordered. Lay any command on him, and the stubborn
+sea-urchin was sure to rebel. He was never so much at home, however,
+as when on the water, plying about in skiff or canoe, entirely alone,
+fishing, crabbing, or grabbing for oysters, and would bring home
+quantities for the larder of the Wild Goose, which he would throw down
+at the kitchen door, with a growl. No wind nor weather deterred him from
+launching forth on his favorite element: indeed, the wilder the weather,
+the more he seemed to enjoy it. If a storm was brewing, he was sure to
+put off from shore; and would be seen far out in the bay, his light
+skiff dancing like a feather on the waves, when sea and sky were all
+in a turmoil, and the stoutest ships were fain to lower their sails.
+Sometimes, on such occasions, he would be absent for days together. How
+he weathered the tempest, and how and where he subsisted, no one
+could divine, nor did any one venture to ask, for all had an almost
+superstitious awe of him. Some of the Communipaw oystermen declared that
+they had more than once seen him suddenly disappear, canoe and all, as
+if they plunged beneath the waves, and after a while come up again, in
+quite a different part of the bay; whence they concluded that he could
+live under water like that notable species of wild duck, commonly called
+the Hell-diver. All began to consider him in the light of a foul-weather
+bird, like the Mother Carey's Chicken, or Stormy Petrel; and whenever
+they saw him putting far out in his skiff, in cloudy weather, made up
+their minds for a storm.
+
+The only being for whom he seemed to have any liking, was Yan Yost
+Vanderscamp, and him he liked for his very wickedness. He in a manner
+took the boy under his tutelage, prompted him to all kinds of mischief,
+aided him in every wild, harum-scarum freak, until the lad became the
+complete scapegrace of the village; a pest to his uncle, and to every
+one else. Nor were his pranks confined to the land; he soon learned to
+accompany old Pluto on the water. Together these worthies would cruise
+about the broad bay, and all the neighboring straits and rivers; poking
+around in skiffs and canoes; robbing the set-nets of the fishermen;
+landing on remote coasts, and laying waste orchards and water-melon
+patches; in short, carrying on a complete system of piracy, on a small
+scale, Piloted by Pluto, the youthful Vanderscamp soon became acquainted
+with all the bays, rivers, creeks, and inlets of the watery world around
+him; could navigate from the Hook to Spiting-devil on the darkest night,
+and learned to set even the terrors of Hell-gate at defiance.
+
+At length, negro and boy suddenly disappeared, and days and weeks
+elapsed, but without tidings of them. Some said they must have run away
+and gone to sea; others jocosely hinted, that old Pluto, being no other
+than his namesake in disguise, had spirited away the boy to the nether
+regions. All, however, agreed in one thing, that the village was well
+rid of them.
+
+In the process of time, the good Teunis Van Gieson slept with his
+fathers, and the tavern remained shut up, waiting for a claimant, for
+the next heir was Yan Yost Vanderscamp, and he had not been heard of for
+years. At length, one day, a boat was seen pulling for the shore, from a
+long, black, rakish-looking schooner, that lay at anchor in the bay. The
+boat's crew seemed worthy of the craft from which they debarked. Never
+had such a set of noisy, roistering, swaggering varlets landed in
+peaceful Communipaw. They were outlandish in garb and demeanor, and were
+headed by a rough, burly, bully ruffian, with fiery whiskers, a copper
+nose, a scar across his face, and a great Flaunderish beaver slouched on
+one side of his head, in whom, to their dismay, the quiet inhabitants
+were made to recognize their early pest, Yan Yost Vanderscamp. The rear
+of this hopeful gang was brought up by old Pluto, who had lost an
+eye, grown grizzly-headed, and looked more like a devil than ever.
+Vanderscamp renewed his acquaintance with the old burghers, much against
+their will, and in a manner not at all to their taste. He slapped them
+familiarly on the back, gave them an iron grip of the hand, and was hail
+fellow well met. According to his own account, he had been all the world
+over; had made money by bags full; had ships in every sea, and now meant
+to turn the Wild Goose into a country seat, where he and his comrades,
+all rich merchants from foreign parts, might enjoy themselves in the
+interval of their voyages. Sure enough, in a little while there was a
+complete metamorphose of the Wild Goose. From being a quiet, peaceful
+Dutch public house, it became a most riotous, uproarious private
+dwelling; a complete rendezvous for boisterous men of the seas, who came
+here to have what they called a "blow out" on dry land, and might be
+seen at all hours, lounging about the door, or lolling out of the
+windows; swearing among themselves, and cracking rough jokes on every
+passer-by. The house was fitted up, too, in so strange a manner:
+hammocks slung to the walls, instead of bedsteads; odd kinds of
+furniture, of foreign fashion; bamboo couches, Spanish chairs; pistols,
+cutlasses, and blunderbusses, suspended on every peg; silver crucifixes
+on the mantel-pieces, silver candle-sticks and porringers on the
+tables, contrasting oddly with the pewter and Delf ware of the original
+establishment. And then the strange amusements of these sea-monsters!
+Pitching Spanish dollars, instead of quoits; firing blunderbusses out of
+the window; shooting at a mark, or at any unhappy dog, or cat, or pig,
+or barn-door fowl, that might happen to come within reach.
+
+The only being who seemed to relish their rough waggery, was old Pluto;
+and yet he led but a dog's life of it; for they practised all kinds of
+manual jokes upon him; kicked him about like a foot-ball; shook him by
+his grizzly mop of wool, and never spoke to him without coupling a curse
+by way of adjective to his name, and consigning him to the infernal
+regions. The old fellow, however, seemed to like them the better, the
+more they cursed him, though his utmost expression of pleasure never
+amounted to more than the growl of a petted bear, when his ears are
+rubbed.
+
+Old Pluto was the ministering spirit at the orgies of the Wild Goose;
+and such orgies as took place there! Such drinking, singing, whooping,
+swearing; with an occasional interlude of quarrelling and fighting. The
+noisier grew the revel, the more old Pluto plied the potations, until
+the guests would become frantic in their merriment, smashing every thing
+to pieces, and throwing the house out of the windows. Sometimes, after a
+drinking bout, they sallied forth and scoured the village, to the dismay
+of the worthy burghers, who gathered their women within doors, and would
+have shut up the house. Vanderscamp, however, was not to be rebuffed.
+He insisted on renewing acquaintance with his old neighbors, and on
+introducing his friends, the merchants, to their families; swore he was
+on the look-out for a wife, and meant, before he stopped, to find
+husbands for all their daughters. So, will-ye, nil-ye, sociable he was;
+swaggered about their best parlors, with his hat on one side of his
+head; sat on the good wife's nicely-waxed mahogany table, kicking his
+heels against the carved and polished legs; kissed and tousled the young
+vrouws; and, if they frowned and pouted, gave them a gold rosary, or a
+sparkling cross, to put them in good humor again.
+
+Sometimes nothing would satisfy him, but he must have some of his old
+neighbors to dinner at the Wild Goose. There was no refusing him, for
+he had got the complete upper-hand of the community, and the peaceful
+burghers all stood in awe of him. But what a time would the quiet,
+worthy men have, among these rake-hells, who would delight to astound
+them with the most extravagant gunpowder tales, embroidered with all
+kinds of foreign oaths; clink the can with them; pledge them in deep
+potations; bawl drinking songs in their ears; and occasionally fire
+pistols over their heads, or under the table, and then laugh in their
+faces, and ask them how they liked the smell of gunpowder.
+
+Thus was the little village of Communipaw for a time like the
+unfortunate wight possessed with devils; until Vanderscamp and his
+brother merchants would sail on another trading voyage, when the Wild
+Goose would be shut up, and every thing relapse into quiet, only to be
+disturbed by his next visitation.
+
+The mystery of all these proceedings gradually dawned upon the tardy
+intellects of Communipaw. These were the times of the notorious
+Captain Kidd, when the American harbors were the resorts of piratical
+adventurers of all kinds, who, under pretext of mercantile voyages,
+scoured the West Indies, made plundering descents upon the Spanish Main,
+visited even the remote Indian Seas, and then came to dispose of their
+booty, have their revels, and fit out new expeditions, in the English
+colonies.
+
+Vanderscamp had served in this hopeful school, and having risen to
+importance among the bucaniers, had pitched upon his native village and
+early home, as a quiet, out-of-the-way, unsuspected place, where he and
+his comrades, while anchored at New York, might have their feasts, and
+concert their plans, without molestation.
+
+At length the attention of the British government was called to these
+piratical enterprises, that were becoming so frequent and outrageous.
+Vigorous measures were taken to check and punish them. Several of
+the most noted freebooters were caught and executed, and three of
+Vanderscamp's chosen comrades, the most riotous swash-bucklers of the
+Wild Goose, were hanged in chains on Gibbet-Island, in full sight of
+their favorite resort. As to Vanderscamp himself, he and his man Pluto
+again disappeared, and it was hoped by the people of Communipaw that he
+had fallen in some foreign brawl, or been swung on some foreign gallows.
+
+For a time, therefore, the tranquillity of the village was restored;
+the worthy Dutchmen once more smoked their pipes in peace, eying, with
+peculiar complacency, their old pests and terrors, the pirates, dangling
+and drying in the sun, on Gibbet-Island.
+
+This perfect calm was doomed at length to be ruffled. The fiery
+persecution of the pirates gradually subsided. Justice was satisfied
+with the examples that had been made, and there was no more talk of
+Kidd, and the other heroes of like kidney. On a calm summer evening, a
+boat, somewhat heavily laden, was seen pulling into Communipaw. What
+was the surprise and disquiet of the inhabitants, to see Yan Yost
+Vanderscamp seated at the helm, and his man Pluto tugging at the oars!
+Vanderscamp, however, was apparently an altered man. He brought home
+with him a wife, who seemed to be a shrew, and to have the upper-hand of
+him. He no longer was the swaggering, bully ruffian, but affected the
+regular merchant, and talked of retiring from business, and settling
+down quietly, to pass the rest of his days in his native place.
+
+The Wild Goose mansion was again opened, but with diminished splendor,
+and no riot. It is true, Vanderscamp had frequent nautical visitors, and
+the sound of revelry was occasionally overheard in his house; but every
+thing seemed to be done under the rose; and old Pluto was the only
+servant that officiated at these orgies. The visitors, indeed, were
+by no means of the turbulent stamp of their predecessors; but quiet,
+mysterious traders, full of nods, and winks, and hieroglyphic signs,
+with whom, to use their cant phrase, "every thing was smug." Their ships
+came to anchor at night in the lower bay; and, on a private signal,
+Vanderscamp would launch his boat, and accompanied solely by his man
+Pluto, would make them mysterious visits. Sometimes boats pulled in at
+night, in front of the Wild Goose, and various articles of merchandise
+were landed in the dark, and spirited away, nobody knew whither. One of
+the more curious of the inhabitants kept watch, and caught a glimpse of
+the features of some of these night visitors, by the casual glance of
+a lantern, and declared that he recognized more than one of the
+freebooting frequenters of the Wild Goose, in former times; from whence
+he concluded that Vanderscamp was at his old game, and that this
+mysterious merchandise was nothing more nor less than piratical plunder.
+The more charitable opinion, however, was, that Vanderscamp and his
+comrades, having been driven from their old line of business, by the
+"oppressions of government," had resorted to smuggling to make both ends
+meet.
+
+Be that as it may: I come now to the extraordinary fact, which is the
+butt-end of this story. It happened late one night, that Yan Yost
+Vanderscamp was returning across the broad bay, in his light skiff,
+rowed by his man Pluto. He had been carousing on board of a vessel,
+newly arrived, and was somewhat obfuscated in intellect, by the liquor
+he had imbibed. It was a still, sultry night; a heavy mass of lurid
+clouds was rising in the west, with the low muttering of distant
+thunder. Vanderscamp called on Pluto to pull lustily, that they might
+get home before the gathering storm. The old negro made no reply, but
+shaped his course so as to skirt the rocky shores of Gibbet-Island. A
+faint creaking overhead caused Vanderscamp to cast up his eyes, when,
+to his horror, he beheld the bodies of his three pot companions and
+brothers in iniquity dangling in the moonlight, their rags fluttering,
+and their chains creaking, as they were slowly swung backward and
+forward by the rising breeze.
+
+"What do you mean, you blockhead!" cried Vanderscamp, "by pulling so
+close to the island?"
+
+"I thought you'd be glad to see your old friends once more," growled the
+negro; "you were never afraid of a living man, what do you fear from the
+dead?"
+
+"Who's afraid?" hiccupped Vanderscamp, partly heated by liquor, partly
+nettled by the jeer of the negro; "who's afraid! Hang me, but I would be
+glad to see them once more, alive or dead, at the Wild Goose. Come, my
+lads in the wind!" continued he, taking a draught, and flourishing the
+bottle above his head, "here's fair weather to you in the other world;
+and if you should be walking the rounds to-night, odds fish! but I'll be
+happy if you will drop in to supper."
+
+A dismal creaking was the only reply. The wind blew loud and shrill, and
+as it whistled round the gallows, and among the bones, sounded as if
+there were laughing and gibbering in the air. Old Pluto chuckled to
+himself, and now pulled for home. The storm burst over the voyagers,
+while they were yet far from shore. The rain fell in torrents, the
+thunder crashed and pealed, and the lightning kept up an incessant
+blaze. It was stark midnight, before they landed at Communipaw.
+
+Dripping and shivering, Vanderscamp crawled homeward. He was completely
+sobered by the storm; the water soaked from without, having diluted and
+cooled the liquor within. Arrived at the Wild Goose, he knocked timidly
+and dubiously at the door, for he dreaded the reception he was to
+experience from his wife. He had reason to do so. She met him at the
+threshold, in a precious ill humor.
+
+"Is this a time," said she, "to keep people out of their beds, and to
+bring home company, to turn the house upside down?"
+
+"Company?" said Vanderscamp, meekly; "I have brought no company with me,
+wife."
+
+"No, indeed! they have got here before you, but by your invitation; and
+blessed-looking company they are, truly!"
+
+Vanderscamp's knees smote together. "For the love of heaven, where are
+they, wife?"
+
+"Where?--why, in the blue-room, up-stairs, making themselves as much at
+home as if the house were their own."
+
+Vanderscamp made a desperate effort, scrambled up to the room, and threw
+open the door. Sure enough, there at a table, on which burned a light as
+blue as brimstone, sat the three guests from Gibbet-Island, with halters
+round their necks, and bobbing their cups together, as if they were
+hob-or-nobbing, and trolling the old Dutch freebooter's glee, since
+translated into English:
+
+ "For three merry lads be we,
+  And three merry lads be we;
+  I on the land, and thou on the sand,
+  And Jack on the gallows-tree."
+
+Vanderscamp saw and heard no more. Starting back with horror, he missed
+his footing on the landing-place, and fell from the top of the stairs to
+the bottom. He was taken up speechless, and, either from the fall or the
+fright, was buried in the yard of the little Dutch church at Bergen, on
+the following Sunday.
+
+From that day forward, the fate of the Wild Goose was sealed. It was
+pronounced a _haunted house_, and avoided accordingly. No one inhabited
+it but Vanderscamp's shrew of a widow, and old Pluto, and they were
+considered but little better than its hobgoblin visitors. Pluto grew
+more and more haggard and morose, and looked more like an imp of
+darkness than a human being. He spoke to no one, but went about
+muttering to himself; or, as some hinted, talking with the devil, who,
+though unseen, was ever at his elbow. Now and then he was seen pulling
+about the bay alone, in his skiff, in dark weather, or at the approach
+of night-fall; nobody could tell why, unless on an errand to invite more
+guests from the gallows. Indeed it was affirmed that the Wild Goose
+still continued to be a house of entertainment for such guests, and that
+on stormy nights, the blue chamber was occasionally illuminated, and
+sounds of diabolical merriment were overheard, mingling with the howling
+of the tempest. Some treated these as idle stories, until on one such
+night, it was about the time of the equinox, there was a horrible uproar
+in the Wild Goose, that could not be mistaken. It was not so much
+the sound of revelry, however, as strife, with two or three piercing
+shrieks, that pervaded every part of the village. Nevertheless, no one
+thought of hastening to the spot. On the contrary, the honest burghers
+of Communipaw drew their night-caps over their ears, and buried their
+heads under the bed-clothes, at the thoughts of Vanderscamp and his
+gallows companions.
+
+The next morning, some of the bolder and more curious undertook to
+reconnoitre. All was quiet and lifeless at the Wild Goose. The door
+yawned wide open, and had evidently been open all night, for the storm
+had beaten into the house. Gathering more courage from the silence and
+apparent desertion, they gradually ventured over the threshold. The
+house had indeed the air of having been possessed by devils. Every thing
+was topsy-turvy; trunks had been broken open, and chests of drawers and
+corner cupboards turned inside out, as in a time of general sack and
+pillage; but the most woful sight was the widow of Yan Yost Vanderscamp,
+extended a corpse on the floor of the blue-chamber, with the marks of a
+deadly gripe on the wind-pipe.
+
+All now was conjecture and dismay at Communipaw; and the disappearance
+of old Pluto, who was no where to be found, gave rise to all kinds of
+wild surmises. Some suggested that the negro had betrayed the house to
+some of Vanderscamp's bucaniering associates, and that they had decamped
+together with the booty; others surmised that the negro was nothing more
+nor less than a devil incarnate, who had now accomplished his ends, and
+made off with his dues. Events, however, vindicated the negro from this
+last imputation. His skiff was picked up, drifting about the bay, bottom
+upward, as if wrecked in a tempest; and his body was found, shortly
+afterward, by some Communipaw fishermen, stranded among the rocks of
+Gibbet-Island, near the foot of the pirates' gallows. The fishermen
+shook their heads, and observed that old Pluto had ventured once too
+often to invite Guests from Gibbet-Island.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE BERMUDAS.
+
+A SHAKSPERIAN RESEARCH: BY THE AUTHOR OF THE SKETCHBOOK.
+
+"Who did not think, till within these foure yeares, but that these
+islands had been rather a habitation for Divells, than fit for men to
+dwell in? Who did not hate the name, when hee was on land, and shun the
+place when he was on the seas? But behold the misprision and conceits of
+the world! For true and large experience hath now told us, it is one of
+the sweetest paradises that be upon earth."--"A PLAINE DESCRIPT. OF THE
+BARMUDAS:" 1613.
+
+In the course of a voyage home from England, our ship had been
+struggling, for two or three weeks, with perverse headwinds, and a
+stormy sea. It was in the month of May, yet the weather had at times
+a wintry sharpness, and it was apprehended that we were in the
+neighborhood of floating islands of ice, which at that season of the
+year drift out of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, and sometimes occasion the
+wreck of noble ships.
+
+Wearied out by the continued opposition of the elements, our captain at
+length bore away to the south, in hopes of catching the expiring breath
+of the trade-winds, and making what is called the southern passage. A
+few days wrought, as it were, a magical "sea change" in every thing
+around us. We seemed to emerge into a different world. The late dark and
+angry sea, lashed up into roaring and swashing surges, became calm and
+sunny; the rude winds died away; and gradually a light breeze sprang up
+directly aft, filling out every sail, and wafting us smoothly along on
+an even keel. The air softened into a bland and delightful temperature.
+Dolphins began to play about us; the nautilus came floating by, like a
+fairy ship, with its mimic sail and rainbow tints; and flying-fish, from
+time to time, made their short excursive flights, and occasionally fell
+upon the deck. The cloaks and overcoats in which we had hitherto wrapped
+ourselves, and moped about the vessel, were thrown aside; for a summer
+warmth had succeeded to the late wintry chills. Sails were stretched as
+awnings over the quarter-deck, to protect us from the mid-day sun. Under
+these we lounged away the day, in luxurious indolence, musing, with
+half-shut eyes, upon the quiet ocean. The night was scarcely less
+beautiful than the day. The rising moon sent a quivering column of
+silver along the undulating surface of the deep, and, gradually climbing
+the heaven, lit up our towering top-sails and swelling main-sails, and
+spread a pale, mysterious light around. As our ship made her whispering
+way through this dreamy world of waters, every boisterous sound on board
+was charmed to silence; and the low whistle, or drowsy song of a sailor
+from the forecastle, or the tinkling of a guitar, and the soft warbling
+of a female voice from the quarter-deck, seemed to derive a witching
+melody from the scene and hour. I was reminded of Oberon's exquisite
+description of music and moonlight on the ocean:
+
+ --"Thou rememberest
+  Since once I sat upon a promontory,
+  And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back,
+  Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
+  That the rude sea grew civil at her song?
+  And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
+  To hear the sea-maid's music."
+
+Indeed, I was in the very mood to conjure up all the imaginary beings
+with which poetry has peopled old ocean, and almost ready to fancy
+I heard the distant song of the mermaid, or the mellow shell of the
+triton, and to picture to myself Neptune and Amphitrite with all their
+pageant sweeping along the dim horizon.
+
+A day or two of such fanciful voyaging brought us in sight of the
+Bermudas, which first looked like mere summer clouds, peering above the
+quiet ocean. All day we glided along in sight of them, with just wind
+enough to fill our sails; and never did land appear more lovely. They
+were clad in emerald verdure, beneath the serenest of skies: not an
+angry wave broke upon their quiet shores, and small fishing craft,
+riding on the crystal waves, seemed as if hung in air. It was such a
+scene that Fletcher pictured to himself, when he extolled the halcyon
+lot of the fisherman:
+
+  Ah! would thou knewest how much it better were
+  To bide among the simple fisher-swains:
+  No shrieking owl, no night-crow lodgeth here,
+  Nor is our simple pleasure mixed with pains.
+  Our sports begin with the beginning year;
+  In calms, to pull the leaping fish to land,
+  In roughs, to sing and dance along the yellow sand.
+
+In contemplating these beautiful islands, and the peaceful sea
+around them, I could hardly realize that these were the "still vexed
+Bermoothes" of Shakspeare, once the dread of mariners, and infamous in
+the narratives of the early discoverers, for the dangers and disasters
+which beset them. Such, however, was the case; and the islands derived
+additional interest in my eyes, from fancying that I could trace in
+their early history, and in the superstitious notions connected with
+them, some of the elements of Shakspeare's wild and beautiful drama of
+the Tempest. I shall take the liberty of citing a few historical facts,
+in support of this idea, which may claim some additional attention from
+the American reader, as being connected with the first settlement of
+Virginia.
+
+At the time when Shakspeare was in the fulness of his talent, and
+seizing upon everything that could furnish aliment to his imagination,
+the colonization of Virginia was a favorite object of enterprise among
+people of condition in England, and several of the courtiers of the
+court of Queen Elizabeth were personally engaged in it. In the year
+1609 a noble armament of nine ships and five hundred men sailed for the
+relief of the colony. It was commanded by Sir George Somers, as admiral,
+a gallant and generous gentleman, above sixty years of age, and
+possessed of an ample fortune, yet still bent upon hardy enterprise, and
+ambitious of signalizing himself in the service of his country.
+
+On board of his flag-ship, the Sea-Vulture, sailed also Sir Thomas
+Gates, lieutenant-general of the colony. The voyage was long and
+boisterous. On the twenty-fifth of July, the admiral's ship was
+separated from the rest, in a hurricane. For several days she was driven
+about at the mercy of the elements, and so strained and racked, that her
+seams yawned open, and her hold was half filled with water. The storm
+subsided, but left her a mere foundering wreck. The crew stood in the
+hold to their waists in water, vainly endeavoring to bail her with
+kettles, buckets, and other vessels. The leaks rapidly gained on them,
+while their strength was as rapidly declining. They lost all hope of
+keeping the ship afloat, until they should reach the American coast; and
+wearied with fruitless toil, determined, in their despair, to give up
+all farther attempt, shut down the hatches, and abandon themselves to
+Providence. Some, who had spirituous liquors, or "comfortable waters,"
+as the old record quaintly terms them, brought them forth, and shared
+them with their comrades, and they all drank a sad farewell to one
+another, as men who were soon to part company in this world.
+
+In this moment of extremity, the worthy admiral, who kept sleepless
+watch from the high stern of the vessel, gave the thrilling cry of
+"land!" All rushed on deck, in a frenzy of joy, and nothing now was to
+be seen or heard on board, but the transports of men who felt as if
+rescued from the grave. It is true the land in sight would not, in
+ordinary circumstances, have inspired much self-gratulation. It could be
+nothing else but the group of islands called after their discoverer, one
+Juan Bermudas, a Spaniard, but stigmatized among the mariners of those
+days as "the islands of devils!" "For the islands of the Bermudas," says
+the old narrative of this voyage, "as every man knoweth that hath heard
+or read of them, were never inhabited by any Christian or heathen
+people, but were ever esteemed and reputed a most prodigious and
+inchanted place, affording nothing but gusts, stormes, and foul weather,
+which made every navigator and mariner to avoide them, as Scylla and
+Charybdis, or as they would shun the Divell himself." [Footnote: "A
+Plaine Description of the Barmudas."]
+
+Sir George Somers and his tempest-tossed comrades, however, hailed them
+with rapture, as if they had been a terrestrial paradise. Every sail was
+spread, and every exertion made to urge the foundering ship to land.
+Before long, she struck upon a rock. Fortunately, the late stormy winds
+had subsided, and there was no surf. A swelling wave lifted her from off
+the rock, and bore her to another; and thus she was borne on from rock
+to rock, until she remained wedged between two, as firmly as if set upon
+the stocks. The boats were immediately lowered, and, though the shore
+was above a mile distant, the whole crew were landed in safety.
+
+Every one had now his task assigned him. Some made all haste to unload
+the ship, before she should go to pieces; some constructed wigwams of
+palmetto leaves, and others ranged the island in quest of wood and
+water. To their surprise and joy, they found it far different from the
+desolate and frightful place they had been taught, by seamen's stories,
+to expect. It was well-wooded and fertile; there were birds of various
+kinds, and herds of swine roaming about, the progeny of a number that
+had swam ashore, in former years, from a Spanish wreck. The island
+abounded with turtle, and great quantities of their eggs were to be
+found among the rocks. The bays and inlets were full of fish; so tame,
+that if any one stepped into the water, they would throng around him.
+Sir George Somers, in a little while, caught enough with hook and line
+to furnish a meal to his whole ship's company. Some of them were so
+large, that two were as much as a man could carry. Crawfish, also,
+were taken in abundance. The air was soft and salubrious, and the sky
+beautifully serene. Waller, in his "Summer Islands," has given us a
+faithful picture of the climate:
+
+  "For the kind spring, (which but salutes us here,)
+  Inhabits these, and courts them all the year:
+  Ripe fruits and blossoms on the same trees live;
+  At once they promise, and at once they give:
+  So sweet the air, so moderate the clime,
+  None sickly lives, or dies before his time.
+  Heaven sure has kept this spot of earth uncursed
+  To shew how all things were created first."
+
+We may imagine the feelings of the shipwrecked marines on finding
+themselves cast by stormy seas upon so happy a coast; where abundance
+was to be had without labor; where what in other climes constituted the
+costly luxuries of the rich, were within every man's reach; and where
+life promised to be a mere holiday. Many of the common sailors,
+especially, declared they desired no better lot than to pass the rest of
+their lives on this favored island.
+
+The commanders, however, were not so ready to console themselves
+with mere physical comforts, for the severance from the enjoyment of
+cultivated life, and all the objects of honorable ambition. Despairing
+of the arrival of any chance ship on these shunned and dreaded islands,
+they fitted out the long-boat, making a deck of the ship's hatches,
+and having manned her with eight picked men, despatched her, under
+the command of an able and hardy mariner, named Raven, to proceed to
+Virginia, and procure shipping to be sent to their relief.
+
+While waiting in anxious idleness for the arrival of the looked-for
+aid, dissensions arose between Sir George Somers and Sir Thomas Gates,
+originating, very probably, in jealousy of the lead which the nautical
+experience and professional station of the admiral gave him in the
+present emergency. Each commander, of course, had his adherents:
+these dissensions ripened into a complete schism; and this handful
+of shipwrecked men, thus thrown together, on an uninhabited island,
+separated into two parties, and lived asunder in bitter feud, as men
+rendered fickle by prosperity instead of being brought into brotherhood
+by a common calamity.
+
+Weeks and months elapsed, without bringing the looked-for aid from
+Virginia, though that colony was within but a few days' sail. Fears were
+now entertained that the long-boat had been either swallowed up in
+the sea, or wrecked on some savage coast; one or other of which most
+probably was the case, as nothing was ever heard of Raven and his
+comrades.
+
+Each party now set to work to build a vessel for itself out of the cedar
+with which the island abounded. The wreck of the Sea-Vulture furnished
+rigging, and various other articles; but they had no iron for bolts, and
+other fastenings; and for want of pitch and tar, they payed the seams of
+their vessels with lime and turtle's oil, which soon dried, and became
+as hard as stone.
+
+On the tenth of May, 1610, they set sail, having been about nine months
+on the island. They reached Virginia without farther accident, but found
+the colony in great distress for provisions. The account they gave of
+the abundance that reigned in the Bermudas, and especially of the herds
+of swine that roamed the island, determined Lord Delaware, the governor
+of Virginia, to send thither for supplies. Sir George Somers, with his
+wonted promptness and generosity, offered to undertake what was still
+considered a dangerous voyage. Accordingly, on the nineteenth of June,
+he set sail, in his own cedar vessel of thirty tons, accompanied by
+another small vessel, commanded by Captain Argall.
+
+The gallant Somers was doomed again to be tempest-tossed. His companion
+vessel was soon driven back to port, but he kept the sea; and, as usual,
+remained at his post on deck, in all weathers. His voyage was long and
+boisterous, and the fatigues and exposures which he underwent, were too
+much for a frame impaired by age, and by previous hardships. He arrived
+at Bermudas completely exhausted and broken down.
+
+His nephew, Captain Mathew Somers, attended him in his illness with
+affectionate assiduity. Finding his end approaching, the veteran called
+his men together, and exhorted them to be true to the interests of
+Virginia; to procure provisions with all possible despatch, and hasten
+back to the relief of the colony.
+
+With this dying charge, he gave up the ghost, leaving us nephew and crew
+overwhelmed with grief and consternation. Their first thought was to
+pay honor to his remains. Opening the body, they took out the heart and
+entrails, and buried them, erecting a cross over the grave. They then
+embalmed the body, and set sail with it for England; thus, while paying
+empty honors to their deceased commander, neglecting his earnest wish
+and dying injunction, that they should return with relief to Virginia.
+
+The little bark arrived safely at Whitechurch, in Dorsetshire, with its
+melancholy freight. The body of the worthy Somers was interred with the
+military honors due to a brave soldier, and many volleys were fired
+over his grave. The Bermudas have since received the name of the Somer
+Islands, as a tribute to his memory.
+
+The accounts given by Captain Mathew Somers and his crew of the
+delightful climate, and the great beauty, fertility, and abundance of
+these islands, excited the zeal of enthusiasts, and the cupidity of
+speculators, and a plan was set on foot to colonize them. The Virginia
+company sold their right to the islands to one hundred and twenty of
+their own members, who erected themselves into a distinct corporation,
+under the name of the "Somer Island Society;" and Mr. Richard More was
+sent out, in 1612, as governor, with sixty men, to found a colony: and
+this leads me to the second branch of this research.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_THE THREE KINGS OF BERMUDA_.
+
+AND THEIR TREASURE OF AMBERGRIS.
+
+At the time that Sir George Somers was preparing to launch his
+cedar-built bark, and sail for Virginia, there were three culprits among
+his men, who had been guilty of capital offences. One of them was shot;
+the others, named Christopher Carter and Edward Waters, escaped. Waters,
+indeed, made a very narrow escape, for he had actually been tied to a
+tree to be executed, but cut the rope with a knife, which he had
+concealed about his person, and fled to the woods, where he was joined by
+Carter. These two worthies kept themselves concealed in the secret parts
+of the island, until the departure of the two vessels. When Sir George
+Somers revisited the island, in quest of supplies for the Virginia
+colony, these culprits hovered about the landing-place, and succeeded in
+persuading another seaman, named Edward Chard, to join them, giving him
+the most seductive pictures of the ease and abundance in which they
+revelled.
+
+When the bark that bore Sir George's body to England had faded from the
+watery horizon, these three vagabonds walked forth in their majesty and
+might, the lords and sole inhabitants of these islands. For a time their
+little commonwealth went on prosperously and happily. They built a
+house, sowed corn, and the seeds of various fruits; and having plenty
+of hogs, wild fowl, and fish of all kinds, with turtle in abundance,
+carried on their tripartite sovereignty with great harmony and much
+feasting. All kingdoms, however, are doomed to revolution, convulsion,
+or decay; and so it fared with the empire of the three kings of Bermuda,
+albeit they were monarchs without subjects. In an evil hour, in their
+search after turtle, among the fissures of the rocks, they came upon a
+great treasure of ambergris, which had been cast on shore by the ocean.
+Beside a number of pieces of smaller dimensions, there was one great
+mass, the largest that had ever been known, weighing eighty pounds, and
+which of itself, according to the market value of ambergris in those
+days, was worth about nine or ten thousand pounds!
+
+From that moment, the happiness and harmony of the three kings of
+Bermuda were gone for ever. While poor devils, with nothing to share
+but the common blessings of the island, which administered to present
+enjoyment, but had nothing of convertible value, they were loving and
+united: but here was actual wealth, which would make them rich men,
+whenever they could transport it to a market.
+
+Adieu the delights of the island! They now became flat and insipid. Each
+pictured to himself the consequence he might now aspire to, in civilized
+life, could he once get there with this mass of ambergris. No longer a
+poor Jack Tar, frolicking in the low taveriis of Wapping, he might roll
+through London in his coach, and perchance arrive, like Whittington, at
+the dignity of Lord Mayor.
+
+With riches came envy and covetousness. Each was now for assuming the
+supreme power, and getting the monopoly of the ambergris. A civil war at
+length broke out: Chard and Waters defied each other to mortal combat,
+and the kingdom of the Bermudas was on the point of being deluged with
+royal blood. Fortunately, Carter took no part in the bloody feud.
+Ambition might have made him view it with secret exultation; for if
+either or both of his brother potentates were slain in the conflict,
+he would be a gainer in purse and ambergris. But he dreaded to be left
+alone in this uninhabited island, and to find himself the monarch of
+a solitude: so he secretly purloined and hid the weapons of the
+belligerent rivals, who, having no means of carrying on the war,
+gradually cooled down into a sullen armistice.
+
+The arrival of Governor More, with an overpowering force of sixty men,
+put an end to the empire. He took possession of the kingdom, in the
+name of the Somer Island Company, and forthwith proceeded to make a
+settlement. The three kings tacitly relinquished their sway, but stood
+up stoutly for their treasure. It was determined, however, that they
+had been fitted out at the expense, and employed in the service, of the
+Virginia Company; that they had found the ambergis while in the service
+of that company, and on that company's land; that the ambergis,
+therefore, belonged to that company, or rather to the Somer Island
+Company, in consequence of their recent purchase of the island, and all
+their appurtenances. Having thus legally established their right, and
+being moreover able to back it by might, the company laid the lion's paw
+upon the spoil; and nothing more remains on historic record of the Three
+Kings of Bermuda, and their treasure of ambergris.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The reader will now determine whether I am more extravagant than most
+of the commentators on Shakspeare, in my surmise that the story of Sir
+George Somers' shipwreck, and the subsequent occurrences that took place
+on the uninhabited island, may have furnished the bard with some of the
+elements of his drama of the Tempest. The tidings of the shipwreck, and
+of the incidents connected with it, reached England not long before the
+production of this drama, and made a great sensation there. A narrative
+of the whole matter, from which most of the foregoing particulars are
+extracted, was published at the time in London, in a pamphlet form, and
+could not fail to be eagerly perused by Shakspeare, and to make a vivid
+impression on his fancy. His expression, in the Tempest, of "the still
+vext Bermoothes," accords exactly with the storm-beaten character of
+those islands. The enchantments, too, with which he has clothed the
+island of Prospero, may they not be traced to the wild and superstitious
+notions entertained about the Bermudas? I have already cited two
+passages from a pamphlet published at the time, showing that they
+were esteemed "a most _prodigious_ and _inchanted_ place," and the
+"habitation of divells;" and another pamphlet, published shortly
+afterward, observes: "And whereas it is reported that this land of the
+Barmudas, with the islands about, (which are many, at least a hundred,)
+are inchanted and kept with evil and wicked spirits, it is a most idle
+and false report." [Footnote: "Newes from the Barmudas;" 1612.]
+
+The description, too, given in the same pamphlets, of the real beauty
+and fertility of the Bermudas, and of their serene and happy climate, so
+opposite to the dangerous and inhospitable character with which they had
+been stigmatized, accords with the eulogium of Sebastian on the island
+of Prospero:
+
+"Though this island seem to be desert, uninhabitable, and almost
+inaccessible, it must needs be of subtle, tender, and delicate
+temperance. The air breathes upon us here most sweetly. Here is every
+thing advantageous to life. How lush and lusty the grass looks! how
+green!"
+
+I think too, in the exulting consciousness of ease, security, and
+abundance felt by the late tempest-tossed mariners, while revelling in
+the plenteousness of the island, and their inclination to remain there,
+released from the labors, the cares, and the artificial restraints of
+civilized life, I can see something of the golden commonwealth of honest
+Gonzalo:
+
+  "Had I plantation of this isle, my lord,
+  And were the king of it, what would I do?
+  I' the commonwealth I would by contraries
+  Execute all things: for no kind of traffic
+  Would I admit; no name of magistrate;
+  Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,
+  And use of service, none; contract, succession,
+  Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none:
+  No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil:
+  No occupation; all men idle, all.
+
+  All things in common, nature should produce,
+  Without sweat or endeavor: Treason, felony,
+  Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine,
+  Would I not have; but nature should bring forth,
+  Of its own kind, all foizon, all abundance,
+  To feed my innocent people."
+
+But above all, in the three fugitive vagabonds who remained in
+possession of the island of Bermuda, on the departure of their comrades,
+and in their squabbles about supremacy, on the finding of their
+treasure, I see typified Sebastian, Trinculo, and their worthy companion
+Caliban:
+
+  "Trinculo, the king and all our company being drowned,
+we will inherit here."
+
+  "Monster, I will kill this man; his daughter and I will be king and
+queen, (save our graces!) and Trinculo and thyself shall be viceroys."
+
+I do not mean to hold up the incidents and characters in the narrative
+and in the play as parallel, or as being strikingly similar: neither
+would I insinuate that the narrative suggested the play; I would only
+suppose that Shakspeare, being occupied about that time on the drama of
+the Tempest, the main story of which, I believe, is of Italian origin,
+had many of the fanciful ideas of it suggested to his mind by the
+shipwreck of Sir George Somers on the "still vext Bermothes," and by the
+popular superstitions connected with these islands, and suddenly put in
+circulation by that event.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PELAYO AND THE MERCHANT'S DAUGHTER.
+
+BY THE AUTHOR OF THE SKETCH-BOOK.
+
+It is the common lamentation of Spanish historiographers, that, for an
+obscure and melancholy space of time immediately succeeding the conquest
+of their country by the Moslems, its history is a mere wilderness of
+dubious facts, groundless fables, and rash exaggerations. Learned men,
+in cells and cloisters, have worn out their lives in vainly endeavoring
+to connect incongruous events, and to account for startling
+improbabilities, recorded of this period. The worthy Jesuit, Padre
+Abarca, declares that, for more than forty years during which he had
+been employed in theological controversies, he had never found any so
+obscure and inexplicable as those which rise out of this portion of
+Spanish history, and that the only fruit of an indefatigable, prolix,
+and even prodigious study of the subject, was a melancholy and
+mortifying state of indecision. [Footnote: PADRE PEDRO ABARCA. Anales
+de Aragon, Anti Regno, F2.] During this apocryphal period, flourished
+PELAYO, the deliverer of Spain, whose name, like that of William
+Wallace, will ever be linked with the glory of his country, but linked,
+in like manner, by a bond in which fact and fiction are inextricably
+interwoven.
+
+The quaint old chronicle of the Moor Rasis, which, though wild and
+fanciful in the extreme, is frequently drawn upon for early facts by
+Spanish historians, professes to give the birth, parentage, and whole
+course of fortune of Pelayo, without the least doubt or hesitation. It
+makes him a son of the Duke of Cantabria, and descended, both by father
+and mother's side, from the Gothic kings of Spain. I shall pass over the
+romantic story of his childhood, and shall content myself with a scene
+of his youth, which was spent in a castle among the Pyrenees, under
+the eye of his widowed and noble-minded mother, who caused him to be
+instructed in everything befitting a cavalier of gentle birth. While the
+sons of the nobility were revelling amid the pleasures of a licentious
+court, and sunk in that vicious and effeminate indulgence which led
+to the perdition of unhappy Spain, the youthful Pelayo, in his rugged
+mountain school, was steeled to all kinds of hardy exercise. A great
+part of his time was spent in hunting the bears, the wild boars, and the
+wolves, with which the Pyrenees abounded; and so purely and chastely was
+he brought up, by his good lady mother, that, if the ancient chronicle
+from which I draw my facts may be relied on, he had attained his
+one-and-twentieth year, without having once sighed for woman!
+
+Nor were his hardy contests confined to the wild beasts of the forest.
+Occasionally he had to contend with adversaries of a more formidable
+character. The skirts and defiles of these border mountains were often
+infested by marauders from the Gallic plains of Gascony. The Gascons,
+says an old chronicler, were a people who used smooth words when
+expedient, but force when they had power, and were ready to lay their
+hands on every thing they met. Though poor, they were proud; for there
+was not one who did not pride himself on being a hijo-dalgo, or the son
+of somebody.
+
+At the head of a band of these needy hijodalgos of Gascony, was one
+Arnaud, a broken-down cavalier. He and four of his followers were well
+armed and mounted; the rest were a set of scamper-grounds on foot,
+furnished with darts and javelins. They were the terror of the border;
+here to-day and gone to-morrow; sometimes in one pass, sometimes in
+another. They would make sudden inroads into Spain, scour the roads,
+plunder the country, and were over the mountains and far away before a
+force could be collected to pursue them.
+
+Now it happened one day, that a wealthy burgher of Bordeaux, who was a
+merchant, trading with Biscay, set out on a journey for that province.
+As he intended to sojourn there for a season, he took with him his
+wife, who was a goodly dame, and his daughter, a gentle damsel, of
+marriageable age, and exceeding fair to look upon. He was attended by a
+trusty clerk from his comptoir, and a man servant; while another servant
+led a hackney, laden with bags of money, with which he intended to
+purchase merchandise.
+
+When the Gascons heard of this wealthy merchant and his convoy passing
+through the mountains, they thanked their stars, for they considered
+all peaceful men of traffic as lawful spoil, sent by providence for the
+benefit of hidalgos like themselves, of valor and gentle blood, who
+lived by the sword. Placing themselves in ambush, in a lonely defile, by
+which the travellers had to pass, they silently awaited their coming. In
+a little while they beheld them approaching. The merchant was a fair,
+portly man, in a buff surcoat and velvet cap. His looks bespoke the good
+cheer of his native city, and he was mounted on a stately, well-fed
+steed, while his wife and daughter paced gently on palfreys by his side.
+
+The travellers had advanced some distance in the defile, when the
+Bandoleros rushed forth and assailed them. The merchant, though but
+little used to the exercise of arms, and unwieldy in his form, yet made
+valiant defence, having his wife and daughter and money-bags at hazard.
+He was wounded in two places, and overpowered; one of his servants was
+slain, the other took to flight.
+
+The freebooters then began to ransack for spoil, but were disappointed
+at not finding the wealth they had expected. Putting their swords to the
+breast of the trembling merchant, they demanded where he had concealed
+his treasure, and learned from him of the hackney that was following,
+laden with, money. Overjoyed at this intelligence, they bound their
+captives to trees, and awaited the arrival of the golden spoil.
+
+On this same day, Pelayo was out with his huntsmen among the mountains,
+and had taken his stand on a rock, at a narrow pass, to await the
+sallying forth of a wild boar. Close by him was a page, conducting a
+horse, and at the saddle-bow hung his armor, for he was always prepared
+for fight among these border mountains. While thus posted, the servant
+of the merchant came flying from the robbers. On beholding Pelayo, he
+fell on his knees, and implored his life, for he supposed him to be
+one of the band. It was some time before he could be relieved from his
+terror, and made to tell his story. When Pelayo heard of the robbers,
+he concluded they were the crew of Gascon hidalgos, upon the scamper.
+Taking his armor from the page, he put on his helmet, slung his buckler
+round his neck, took lance in hand, and mounting his steed, compelled
+the trembling servant to guide him to the scene of action. At the same
+time he ordered the page to seek his huntsmen, and summon them to his
+assistance.
+
+When the robbers saw Pelayo advancing through the forest, with a single
+attendant on foot, and beheld his rich armor sparkling in the sun, they
+thought a new prize had fallen into their hands, and Arnaud and two of
+his companions, mounting their horses, advanced to meet him. As they
+approached, Pelayo stationed himself in a narrow pass between two rocks,
+where he could only be assailed in front, and bracing his buckler, and
+lowering his lance, awaited their coming.
+
+"Who and what are ye," cried he, "and what seek ye in this land?"
+
+"We are huntsmen," replied Arnaud, "and lo! our game runs into our
+toils!"
+
+"By my faith," replied Pelayo, "thou wilt find the game more readily
+roused than taken: have at thee for a villain!"
+
+So saying, he put spurs to his horse, and ran full speed upon him. The
+Gascon, not expecting so sudden an attack from a single horseman, was
+taken by surprise. He hastily couched his lance, but it merely glanced
+on the shield of Pelayo, who sent his own through the middle of his
+breast, and threw him out of his saddle to the earth. One of the other
+robbers made at Pelayo, and wounded him slightly in the side, but
+received a blow from the sword of the latter, which cleft his skull-cap,
+and sank into his brain. His companion, seeing him fall, put spurs to
+his steed, and galloped off through the forest.
+
+Beholding several other robbers on foot coming up, Pelayo returned to
+his station between the rocks, where he was assailed by them all at
+once. He received two of their darts on his buckler, a javelin razed his
+cuirass, and glancing down, wounded his horse. Pelayo then rushed forth,
+and struck one of the robbers dead: the others, beholding several
+huntsmen advancing, took to flight, but were pursued, and several of
+them taken.
+
+The good merchant of Bordeaux and his family beheld this scene with
+trembling and amazement, for never had they looked upon such feats of
+arms. They considered Don Pelayo as a leader of some rival band of
+robbers; and when the bonds were loosed by which they were tied to
+the trees, they fell at his feet and implored mercy. The females were
+soonest undeceived, especially the daughter; for the damsel was struck
+with the noble countenance and gentle demeanor of Pelayo, and said to
+herself: "Surely nothing evil can dwell in so goodly and gracious a
+form."
+
+Pelayo now sounded his horn, which echoed from rock to rock, and was
+answered by shouts and horns from various parts of the mountains. The
+merchant's heart misgave him at these signals, and especially when he
+beheld more than forty men gathering from glen and thicket. They were
+clad in hunters' dresses, and armed with boar-spears, darts, and
+hunting-swords, and many of them led hounds in long leashes. All this
+was a new and wild scene to the astonished merchant; nor were his fears
+abated, when he saw his servant approaching with the hackney, laden with
+money-bags; "for of a certainty," said he to himself, "this will be too
+tempting a spoil for these wild hunters of the mountains."
+
+Pelayo, however, took no more notice of the gold than if it had been
+so much dross; at which the honest burgher marvelled exceedingly. He
+ordered that the wounds of the merchant should be dressed, and his own
+examined. On taking off his cuirass, his wound was found to be but
+slight; but his men were so exasperated at seeing his blood, that
+they would have put the captive robbers to instant death, had he not
+forbidden them to do them any harm.
+
+The huntsmen now made a great fire at the foot of a tree, and bringing
+a boar which they had killed, cut off portions and roasted them, or
+broiled them on the coals. Then drawing forth loaves of bread from their
+wallets, they devoured their food half raw, with the hungry relish of
+huntsmen and mountaineers. The merchant, his wife, and daughter, looked
+at all this, and wondered, for they had never beheld so savage a repast.
+
+Pelayo then inquired of them if they did not desire to eat; they were
+too much in awe of him to decline, though they felt a loathing at the
+thought of partaking of this hunter's fare; but he ordered a linen cloth
+to be spread under the shade of a great oak, on the grassy margin of a
+clear running stream; and to their astonishment, they were served, not
+with the flesh of the boar, but with dainty cheer, such as the merchant
+had scarcely hoped to find out of the walls of his native city of
+Bordeaux.
+
+The good burgher was of a community renowned for gastronomic prowess:
+his fears having subsided, his appetite was now awakened, and he
+addressed himself manfully to the viands that were set before him. His
+daughter, however, could not eat: her eyes were ever and anon stealing
+to gaze on Pelayo, whom she regarded with gratitude for his protection,
+and admiration for his valor; and now that he had laid aside his helmet,
+and she beheld his lofty countenance, glowing with manly beauty,
+she thought him something more than mortal. The heart of the gentle
+donzella, says the ancient chronicler, was kind and yielding; and had
+Pelayo thought fit to ask the greatest boon that love and beauty could
+bestow--doubtless meaning her fair hand--she could not have had the
+cruelty to say him nay. Pelayo, however, had no such thoughts: the love
+of woman had never yet entered his heart; and though he regarded the
+damsel as the fairest maiden he had ever beheld, her beauty caused no
+perturbation in his breast.
+
+When the repast was over, Pelayo offered to conduct the merchant and
+his family through the defiles of the mountains, lest they should be
+molested by any of the scattered band of robbers. The bodies of the
+slain marauders were buried, and the corpse of the servant was laid upon
+one of the horses captured in the battle. Having formed their cavalcade,
+they pursued their way slowly up one of the steep and winding passes of
+the Pyrenees.
+
+Toward sunset, they arrived at the dwelling of a holy hermit. It was
+hewn out of the living rock; there was a cross over the door, and before
+it was a great spreading oak, with a sweet spring of water at its foot.
+The body of the faithful servant who had fallen in the defence of his
+lord, was buried close by the wall of this sacred retreat, and the
+hermit promised to perform masses for the repose of his soul. Then
+Pelayo obtained from the holy father consent that the merchant's wife
+and daughter should pass the night within his cell; and the hermit made
+beds of moss for them, and gave them his benediction; but the damsel
+found little rest, so much were her thoughts occupied by the youthful
+champion who had rescued her from death or dishonor.
+
+Pelayo, however, was visited by no such wandering of the mind; but,
+wrapping himself in his mantle, slept soundly by the fountain under the
+tree. At midnight, when every thing was buried in deep repose, he was
+awakened from his sleep and beheld the hermit before him, with the beams
+of the moon shining upon his silver hair and beard.
+
+"This is no time," said the latter, "to be sleeping; arise and listen to
+my words, and hear of the great work for which thou art chosen!"
+
+Then Pelayo arose and seated himself on a rock, and the hermit continued
+his discourse.
+
+"Behold," said he, "the ruin of Spain is at hand! It will be delivered
+into the hands of strangers, and will become a prey to the spoiler. Its
+children will be slain or carried into captivity; or such as may escape
+these evils, will harbor with the beasts of the forest or the eagles of
+the mountain. The thorn and bramble will spring up where now are seen
+the cornfield, the vine, and the olive; and hungry wolves will roam in
+place of peaceful flocks and herds. But thou, my son! tarry not thou
+to see these things, for thou canst not prevent them. Depart on a
+pilgrimage to the sepulchre of our blessed Lord in Palestine; purify
+thyself by prayer; enroll thyself in the order of chivalry, and prepare
+for the great work of the redemption of thy country; for to thee it will
+be given to raise it from the depth of its affliction."
+
+Pelayo would have inquired farther into the evils thus foretold, but the
+hermit rebuked his curiosity.
+
+"Seek not to know more," said he, "than heaven is pleased to reveal.
+Clouds and darkness cover its designs, and prophecy is never permitted
+to lift up but in part the veil that rests upon the future."
+
+The hermit ceased to speak, and Pelayo laid himself down again to take
+repose, but sleep was a stranger to his eyes.
+
+When the first rays of the rising sun shone upon the tops of the
+mountains, the travellers assembled round the fountain beneath the tree
+and made their morning's repast. Then, having received the benediction
+of the hermit, they departed in the freshness of the day, and descended
+along the hollow defiles leading into the interior of Spain. The good
+merchant was refreshed by sleep and by his morning's meal; and when he
+beheld his wife and daughter thus secure by his side, and the hackney
+laden with his treasure close behind him, his heart was light in his
+bosom, and he carolled a chanson as he went, and the woodlands echoed to
+his song. But Pelayo rode in silence, for he revolved in his mind the
+portentous words of the hermit; and the daughter of the merchant ever
+and anon stole looks at him full of tenderness and admiration, and deep
+sighs betrayed the agitation of her bosom.
+
+At length they came to the foot of the mountains, where the forests and
+the rocks terminated, and an open and secure country lay before the
+travellers. Here they halted, for their roads were widely different.
+When they came to part, the merchant and his wife were loud in thanks
+and benedictions, and the good burgher would fain have given Pelayo the
+largest of his sacks of gold; but the young man put it aside with a
+smile. "Silver and gold," said he, "need I not, but if I have deserved
+aught at thy hands, give me thy prayers, for the prayers of a good man
+are above all price."
+
+In the mean time the daughter had spoken never a word. At length she
+raised her eyes, which were filled with tears, and looked timidly at
+Pelayo, and her bosom throbbed; and after a violent struggle between
+strong affection and virgin modesty, her heart relieved itself by words.
+
+"Senor," said she, "I know that I am unworthy of the notice of so noble
+a cavalier; but suffer me to place this ring upon a finger of that hand
+which has so bravely rescued us from death; and when you regard it, you
+may consider it as a memorial of your own valor, and not of one who is
+too humble to be remembered by you."
+
+With these words, she drew a ring from her finger and put it upon the
+finger of Pelayo; and having done this, she blushed and trembled at her
+own boldness, and stood as one abashed, with her eyes cast down upon the
+earth.
+
+Pelayo was moved at the words of the simple maiden, and at the touch of
+her fair hand, and at her beauty, as she stood thus trembling and in
+tears before him; but as yet he knew nothing of woman, and his heart was
+free from the snares of love. "Amiga," (friend,) said he, "I accept thy
+present, and will wear it in remembrance of thy goodness;" so saying, he
+kissed her on the cheek.
+
+The damsel was cheered by these words, and hoped that she had awakened
+some tenderness in his bosom; but it was no such thing, says the grave
+old chronicler, for his heart was devoted to higher and more sacred
+matters; yet certain it is, that he always guarded well that ring.
+
+When they parted, Pelayo remained with his huntsmen on a cliff, watching
+that no evil befell them, until they were far beyond the skirts of the
+mountain; and the damsel often turned to look at him, until she could no
+longer discern him, for the distance and the tears that dimmed her eyes.
+
+And for that he had accepted her ring, says the ancient chronicler, she
+considered herself wedded to him in her heart, and would never marry;
+nor could she be brought to look with eyes of affection upon any other
+man; but for the true love which she bore Pelayo, she lived and died a
+virgin. And she composed a book which treated of love and chivalry,
+and the temptations of this mortal life; and one part discoursed of
+celestial matters, and it was called "The Contemplations of Love;"
+because at the time she wrote it, she thought of Pelayo, and of his
+having accepted her jewel and called her by the gentle appellation of
+"Amiga." And often thinking of him in tender sadness, and of her never
+having beheld him more, she would take the book and would read it as
+if in his stead; and while she repeated the words of love which it
+contained, she would endeavor to fancy them uttered by Pelayo, and that
+he stood before her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE KNIGHT OF MALTA.
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER
+
+
+SIR: In the course of a tour which I made in Sicily, in the days of my
+juvenility, I passed some little time at the ancient city of Catania,
+at the foot of Mount Ætna. Here I became acquainted with the Chevalier
+L----, an old Knight of Malta. It was not many years after the time that
+Napoleon had dislodged the knights from their island, and he still wore
+the insignia of his order. He was not, however, one of those reliques of
+that once chivalrous body, who had been described was "a few worn-out
+old men, creeping about certain parts of Europe, with the Maltese cross
+on their breasts;" on the contrary, though advanced in life, his form
+was still light and vigorous; he had a pale, thin, intellectual visage,
+with a high forehead, and a bright, visionary eye. He seemed to take a
+fancy to me, as I certainly did to him, and we soon became intimate,
+I visited him occasionally, at his apartments, in the wing of an old
+palace, looking toward Mount Ætna. He was an antiquary, a virtuoso, and
+a connoisseur. His rooms were decorated with mutilated statues, dug up
+from Grecian and Roman ruins; old vases, lachrymals, and sepulchral
+lamps. He had astronomical and chemical instruments, and black-letter
+books, in various languages. I found that he had dipped a little in
+chimerical studies and had a hankering after astrology and alchymy. He
+affected to believe in dreams and visions, and delighted in the fanciful
+Rosicrucian doctrines. I cannot persuade myself, however, that he really
+believed in all these: I rather think he loved to let his imagination
+carry him away into the boundless fairy land which they unfolded.
+
+In company with the chevalier, I took several excursions on horseback
+about the environs of Catania, and the picturesque skirts of Mount Etna.
+One of these led through a village, which had sprung up on the very
+tract of an ancient eruption, the houses being built of lava. At one
+time we passed, for some distance, along a narrow lane, between two high
+dead convent walls. It was a cut-throat-looking place, in a country
+where assassinations are frequent; and just about midway through it,
+we observed blood upon the pavement and the walls, as if a murder had
+actually been committed there.
+
+The chevalier spurred on his horse, until he had extricated himself
+completely from this suspicious neighborhood. He then observed, that it
+reminded him of a similar blind alley in Malta, infamous on account of
+the many assassinations that had taken place there; concerning one
+of which, he related a long and tragical story, that lasted until
+we reached Catania. It involved various circumstances of a wild and
+supernatural character, but which he assured me were handed down in
+tradition, and generally credited by the old inhabitants of Malta.
+
+As I like to pick up strange stories, and as I was particularly struck
+with several parts of this, I made a minute of it, on my return to my
+lodgings. The memorandum was lost, with several others of my travelling
+papers, and the story had faded from my mind, when recently, in perusing
+a French memoir, I came suddenly upon it, dressed up, it is true, in a
+very different manner, but agreeing in the leading facts, and given upon
+the word of that famous adventurer, the Count Cagliostro.
+
+I have amused myself, during a snowy day in the country, by rendering it
+roughly into English, for the entertainment of a youthful circle round
+the Christmas fire. It was well received by my auditors, who, however,
+are rather easily pleased. One proof of its merits is that it sent
+some of the youngest of them quaking to their beds, and gave them very
+fearful dreams. Hoping that it may have the same effect upon your
+ghost-hunting readers, I offer it, Mr. Editor, for insertion in your
+Magazine. I would observe, that wherever I have modified the French
+version of the Story, it has been in conformity to some recollection of
+the narrative of my friend, the Knight of Malta.
+
+Your obt. servt.,
+
+GEOFFREY CRAYON.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_THE GRAND PRIOR OF MINORCA,_
+
+A VERITABLE GHOST STORY.
+
+  "Keep my wits, heaven! They say spirits appear
+  To melancholy minds, and the graves open!"--FLETCHER.
+
+About the middle of the last century, while the Knights of Saint John of
+Jerusalem still maintained something of their ancient state and sway in
+the Island of Malta, a tragical event took place there, which is the
+groundwork of the following narrative.
+
+It may be as well to premise, that at the time we are treating of,
+the order of Saint John of Jerusalem, grown excessively wealthy, had
+degenerated from its originally devout and warlike character. Instead
+of being a hardy body of "monk-knights," sworn soldiers of the cross,
+fighting the Paynim in the Holy Land, or scouring the Mediterranean, and
+scourging the Barbary coasts with their galleys, or feeding the poor,
+and attending upon the sick at their hospitals, they led a life of
+luxury and libertinism, and were to be found in the most voluptuous
+courts of Europe. The order, in fact, had become a mode of providing
+for the needy branches of the Catholic aristocracy of Europe. "A
+commandery," we are told, was a splendid provision for a younger
+brother; and men of rank, however dissolute, provided they belonged
+to the highest aristocracy, became Knights of Malta, just as they did
+bishops, or colonels of regiments, or court chamberlains. After a brief
+Residence at Malta, the knights passed the rest of their time in their
+own countries, or only made a visit now and then to the island. While
+there, having but little military duty to perform, they beguiled their
+idleness by paying attentions to the fair.
+
+There was one circle of society, however, into which they could not
+obtain currency. This was composed of a few families of the old Maltese
+nobility, natives of the island. These families, not being permitted
+to enroll any of their members in the order, affected to hold no
+intercourse with its chevaliers; admitting none into their exclusive
+coteries but the Grand Master, whom they acknowledged as their
+sovereign, and the members of the chapter which composed his council.
+
+To indemnify themselves for this exclusion, the chevaliers carried their
+gallantries into the next class of society, composed of those who held
+civil, administrative, and judicial situations. The ladies of this class
+were called _honorate_, or honorables, to distinguish them from the
+inferior orders; and among them were many of superior grace, beauty, and
+fascination.
+
+Even in this more hospitable class, the chevaliers were not all equally
+favored. Those of Germany had the decided preference, owing to their
+fair and fresh complexions, and the kindliness of their manners: next
+to these came the Spanish cavaliers, on account of their profound and
+courteous devotion, and most discreet secrecy. Singular as it may seem,
+the chevaliers of France fared the worst. The Maltese ladies dreaded
+their volatility, and their proneness to boast of their amours, and
+shunned all entanglement with them. They were forced, therefore, to
+content themselves with conquests among females of the lower orders.
+They revenged themselves, after the gay French manner, by making the
+"honorate" the objects of all kinds of jests and mystifications; by
+prying into their tender affairs with the more favored chevaliers, and
+making them the theme of song and epigram.
+
+About this time, a French vessel arrived at Malta, bringing out a
+distinguished personage of the order of Saint John of Jerusalem,
+the Commander de Foulquerre, who came to solicit the post of
+commander-in-chief of the galleys. He was descended from an old and
+warrior line of French nobility, his ancestors having long been
+seneschals of Poitou, and claiming descent from the first counts of
+Angouleme.
+
+The arrival of the commander caused a little uneasiness among the
+peaceably inclined, for he bore the character, in the island, of being
+fiery, arrogant, and quarrelsome. He had already been three times at
+Malta, and on each visit had signalized himself by some rash and deadly
+affray.
+
+As he was now thirty-five years of age, however, it was hoped that time
+might have taken off the fiery edge of his spirit, and that he might
+prove more quiet and sedate than formerly. The commander set up an
+establishment befitting his rank and pretensions; for he arrogated to
+himself an importance greater even than that of the Grand Master. His
+house immediately became the rallying place of all the young French
+chevaliers. They informed him of all the slights they had experienced or
+imagined, and indulged their petulant and satirical vein at the expense
+of the honorate and their admirers. The chevaliers of other nations soon
+found the topics and tone of conversation at the commander's irksome and
+offensive, and gradually ceased to visit there. The commander remained
+the head of a national _clique_, who looked up to him as their model.
+If he was not as boisterous and quarrelsome as formerly, he had become
+haughty and overbearing. He was fond of talking over his past affairs of
+punctilio and bloody duel. When walking the streets, he was generally
+attended by a ruffling train of young French cavaliers, who caught his
+own air of assumption and bravado. These he would conduct to the scenes
+of his deadly encounters, point out the very spot where each fatal lunge
+had been given, and dwell vaingloriously on every particular.
+
+Under his tuition, the young French chevaliers began to add bluster and
+arrogance to their former petulance and levity; they fired up on the
+most trivial occasions, particularly with those who had been most
+successful with the fair; and would put on the most intolerable
+drawcansir airs. The other chevaliers conducted themselves with all
+possible forbearance and reserve; but they saw it would be impossible to
+keep on long, in this manner, without coming to an open rupture.
+
+Among the Spanish cavaliers was one named Don Luis de Lima Vasconcellos.
+He was distantly related to the Grand Master; and had been enrolled at
+an early age among his pages, but had been rapidly promoted by him,
+until, at the age of twenty-six, he had been given the richest Spanish
+commandery in the order. He had, moreover, been fortunate with the fair,
+with one of whom, the most beautiful honorata of Malta, he had long
+maintained the most tender correspondence.
+
+The character, rank, and connexions of Don Luis put him on a par with
+the imperious Commander de Foulquerre, and pointed him out as a leader
+and champion to his countrymen. The Spanish chevaliers repaired to him,
+therefore, in a body; represented all the grievances they had sustained,
+and the evils they apprehended, and urged him to use his influence with
+the commander and his adherents to put a stop to the growing abuses.
+
+Don Luis was gratified by this mark of confidence and esteem on the part
+of his countrymen, and promised to have an interview with the Commander
+de Foulquerre on the subject. He resolved to conduct himself with
+the utmost caution and delicacy on the occasion; to represent to
+the commander the evil consequences which might result from the
+inconsiderate conduct of the young French chevaliers, and to entreat him
+to exert the great influence he so deservedly possessed over them, to
+restrain their excesses. Don Luis was aware, however, of the peril that
+attended any interview of the kind with this imperious and fractious
+man, and apprehended, however it might commence, that it would terminate
+in a duel. Still, it was an affair of honor, in which Castilian dignity
+was concerned; beside, he had a lurking disgust at the overbearing
+manners of De Foulquerre, and perhaps had been somewhat offended by
+certain intrusive attentions which he had presumed to pay to the
+beautiful honorata.
+
+It was now Holy Week; a time too sacred for worldly feuds and passions,
+especially in a community under the dominion of a religious order; it
+was agreed, therefore, that the dangerous interview in question should
+not take place until after the Easter holidays. It is probable, from
+subsequent circumstances, that the Commander de Foulquerre had some
+information of this arrangement among the Spanish chevaliers, and was
+determined to be beforehand, and to mortify the pride of their champion,
+who was thus preparing to read him a lecture. He chose Good Friday for
+his purpose. On this sacred day, it is customary in Catholic countries
+to make a tour of all the churches, offering up prayers in each. In
+every Catholic church, as is well known, there is a vessel of holy water
+near the door. In this, every one, on entering, dips his fingers, and
+makes therewith the sign of the cross on his forehead and breast. An
+office of gallantry, among the young Spaniards, is to stand near the
+door, dip their hands in the holy vessel, and extend them courteously
+and respectfully to any lady of their acquaintance who may enter; who
+thus receives the sacred water at second hand, on the tips of her
+fingers, and proceeds to cross herself, with all due decorum. The
+Spaniards, who are the most jealous of lovers, are impatient when this
+piece of devotional gallantry is proffered to the object of their
+affections by any other hand: on Good Friday, therefore, when a lady
+makes a tour of the churches, it is the usage among them for the
+inamorato to follow her from church to church, so as to present her the
+holy water at the door of each; thus testifying his own devotion, and at
+the same time preventing the officious services of a rival.
+
+On the day in question, Don Luis followed the beautiful honorata, to
+whom, as has already been observed, he had long been devoted. At the
+very first church she visited, the Commander de Foulquerre was stationed
+at the portal, with several of the young French chevaliers about him.
+Before Don Luis could offer her the holy water, he was anticipated by
+the commander, who thrust himself between them, and, while he performed
+the gallant office to the lady, rudely turned his back upon her admirer,
+and trod upon his feet. The insult was enjoyed by the young Frenchmen
+who were present: it was too deep and grave to be forgiven by Spanish
+pride; and at once put an end to all Don Luis' plans of caution and
+forbearance. He repressed his passion for the moment, however, and
+waited until all the parties left the church; then, accosting the
+commander with an air of coolness and unconcern, he inquired after his
+health, and asked to what church he proposed making his second visit.
+"To the Magisterial Church of Saint John." Don Luis offered to conduct
+him thither, by the shortest route. His offer was accepted, apparently
+without suspicion, and they proceeded together. After walking some
+distance, they entered a long, narrow lane, without door or window
+opening upon it, called the "Strada Stretta," or narrow street. It was a
+street in which duels were tacitly permitted, or connived at, in Malta,
+and were suffered to pass as accidental encounters. Every where else
+they were prohibited. This restriction had been instituted to diminish
+the number of duels, formerly so frequent in Malta. As a farther
+precaution to render these encounters less fatal, it was an offence,
+punishable with death, for any one to enter this street armed with
+either poniard or pistol. It was a lonely, dismal street, just wide
+enough for two men to stand upon their guard, and cross their swords;
+few persons ever traversed it, unless with some sinister design; and on
+any preconcerted duello, the seconds posted themselves at each end, to
+stop all passengers, and prevent interruption.
+
+In the present instance, the parties had scarce entered the street,
+when Don Luis drew his sword, and called upon the commander to defend
+himself.
+
+De Foulquerre was evidently taken by surprise: he drew back, and
+attempted to expostulate; but Don Luis persisted in defying him to the
+combat.
+
+After a second or two, he likewise drew his sword, but immediately
+lowered the point.
+
+"Good Friday!" ejaculated he, shaking his head: "one word with you; it
+is full six years since I have been in a confessional: I am shocked at
+the state of my conscience; but within three days--that is to say, on
+Monday next--"
+
+Don Luis would listen to nothing. Though naturally of a peaceable
+disposition, he had been stung to fury, and people of that character,
+when once incensed, are deaf to reason. He compelled the commander to
+put himself on his guard. The latter, though a man accustomed to brawl
+in battle, was singularly dismayed. Terror was visible in all his
+features. He placed himself with his back to the wall, and the weapons
+were crossed. The contest was brief and fatal. At the very first thrust,
+the sword of Don Luis passed through the body of his antagonist. The
+commander staggered to the wall, and leaned against it.
+
+"On Good Friday!" ejaculated he again, with a failing voice, and
+despairing accents. "Heaven pardon you!" added he; "take my sword to
+Têtefoulques, and have a hundred masses performed in the chapel of the
+castle, for the repose of my soul!" With these words he expired.
+
+The fury of Don Luis was at an end. He stood aghast, gazing at the
+bleeding body of the commander. He called to mind the prayer of the
+deceased for three days' respite, to make his peace with heaven; he had
+refused it; had sent him to the grave, with all his sins upon his head!
+His conscience smote him to the core; he gathered up the sword of the
+commander, which he had been enjoined to take to Têtefoulques, and
+hurried from the fatal Strada Stretta.
+
+The duel of course made a great noise in Malta, but had no injurious
+effect upon the worldly fortunes of Don Luis. He made a full declaration
+of the whole matter, before the proper authorities; the Chapter of
+the Order considered it one of those casual encounters of the Strada
+Stretta, which were mourned over, but tolerated; the public, by whom
+the late commander had been generally detested, declared that he had
+deserved his fate. It was but three days after the event, that Don
+Luis was advanced to one of the highest dignities of the Order, being
+invested by the Grand Master with the priorship of the kingdom of
+Minorca.
+
+From that time forward, however, the whole character and conduct of Don
+Luis underwent a change. He became a prey to a dark melancholy, which
+nothing could assuage. The most austere piety, the severest penances,
+had no effect in allaying the horror which preyed upon his mind. He was
+absent for a long time from Malta; having gone, it was said, on remote
+pilgrimages: when he returned, he was more haggard than ever. There
+seemed something mysterious and inexplicable in this disorder of his
+mind. The following is the revelation made by himself, of the horrible
+visions, or chimeras, by which he was haunted:
+
+"When I had made my declaration before the Chapter," said he, "and my
+provocations were publicly known, I had made my peace with man; but it
+was not so with God, nor with my confessor, nor with my own conscience.
+My act was doubly criminal, from the day on which it was committed,
+and from my refusal to a delay of three days, for the victim of my
+resentment to receive the sacraments. His despairing ejaculation, 'Good
+Friday! Good Friday!' continually rang in my ears. 'Why did I not grant
+the respite!' cried I to myself; 'was it not enough to kill the body,
+but must I seek to kill the soul!'
+
+"On the night of the following Friday, I started suddenly from my sleep.
+An unaccountable horror was upon me. I looked wildly around. It seemed
+as if I were not in my apartment, nor in my bed, but in the fatal Strada
+Stretta, lying on the pavement. I again saw the commander leaning
+against the wall; I again heard his dying words: 'Take my sword to
+Têtefoulques, and have a hundred masses performed in the chapel of the
+castle, for the repose of my soul!'
+
+"On the following night, I caused one of my servants to sleep in the
+same room with me. I saw and heard nothing, either on that night, or any
+of the nights following, until the next Friday; when I had again the
+same vision, with this difference, that my valet seemed to be lying at
+some distance from me on the pavement of the Strada Stretta. The vision
+continued to be repeated on every Friday night, the commander always
+appearing in the same manner, and uttering the same words: 'Take my
+sword to Têtefoulques, and have a hundred masses performed in the chapel
+of the castle for the repose of my soul!' On questioning my servant on
+the subject, he stated, that on these occasions he dreamed that he was
+lying in a very narrow street, but he neither saw nor heard any thing of
+the commander.
+
+"I knew nothing of this Têtefoulques, whither the defunct was so urgent
+I should carry his sword. I made inquiries, therefore, concerning it
+among the French chevaliers. They informed me that it was an old castle,
+situated about four leagues from Poitiers, in the midst of a forest.
+It had been built in old times, several centuries since, by Foulques
+Taillefer, (or Fulke Hackiron,) a redoubtable, hard-fighting Count of
+Angouleme, who gave it to an illegitimate son, afterward created Grand
+Seneschal of Poitou, which son became the pro genitor of the Foulquerres
+of Têtefoulques, hereditary Seneschals of Poitou. They farther
+informed me, that strange stories were told of this old castle, in the
+surrounding country, and that it contained many curious reliques. Among
+these, were the arms of Foulques Taillefer, together with all those of
+the warriors he had slain; and that it was an immemorial usage with the
+Foulquerres to have the weapons deposited there which they had wielded
+either in war or in single combat. This, then, was the reason of the
+dying injunction of the commander respecting his sword. I carried this
+weapon with me, wherever I went, but still I neglected to comply with
+his request.
+
+"The visions still continued to harass me with undiminished horror.
+I repaired to Rome, where I confessed myself to the Grand Cardinal
+penitentiary, and informed him of the terrors with which I was haunted.
+He promised me absolution, after I should have performed certain acts of
+penance, the principal of which was, to execute the dying request of the
+commander, by carrying the sword to Têtefoulques, and having the hundred
+masses performed in the chapel of the castle for the repose of his soul.
+
+"I set out for France as speedily as possible, and made no delay in my
+journey. On arriving at Poitiers, I found that the tidings of the death
+of the commander had reached there, but had caused no more affliction
+than among the people of Malta. Leaving my equipage in the town, I
+put on the garb of a pilgrim, and taking a guide, set out on foot
+for Têtefoulques, Indeed the roads in this part of the country were
+impracticable for carriages.
+
+"I found the castle of Têtefoulques a grand but gloomy and dilapidated
+pile. All the gates were closed, and there reigned over the whole place
+an air of almost savage loneliness and desertion. I had understood that
+its only inhabitant were the concierge, or warder, and a kind of hermit
+who had charge of the chapel. After ringing for some time at the gate,
+I at length succeeded in bringing forth the warder, who bowed with
+reverence to my pilgrim's garb. I begged him to conduct me to the
+chapel, that being the end of my pilgrimage. We found the hermit there,
+chanting the funeral service; a dismal sound to one who came to perform
+a penance for the death of a member of the family. When he had ceased
+to chant, I informed him that I came to accomplish an obligation of
+conscience, and that I wished him to perform a hundred masses for the
+repose of the soul of the commander. He replied that, not being in
+orders, he was not authorized to perform mass, but that he would
+willingly undertake to see that my debt of conscience was discharged. I
+laid my offering on the altar, and would have placed the sword of the
+commander there, likewise. 'Hold!' said the hermit, with a melancholy
+shake of the head,'this is no place for so deadly a weapon, that has so
+often been bathed in Christian blood. Take it to the armory; you will
+find there trophies enough of like character. It is a place into which I
+never enter.'
+
+"The warder here took up the theme abandoned by the peaceful man of
+God. He assured me that I would see in the armory the swords of all the
+warrior race of Foulquerres, together with those of the enemies over
+whom they had triumphed. This, he observed, had been a usage kept
+up since the time of Mellusine, and of her husband, Geoffrey a la
+Grand-dent, or Geoffrey with the Great-tooth.
+
+"I followed the gossiping warder to the armory. It was a great dusty
+hall, hung round with Gothic-looking portraits, of a stark line of
+warriors, each with his weapon, and the weapons of those he had slain in
+battle, hung beside his picture. The most conspicuous portrait was that
+of Foulques Taillefer, (Fulke Hackiron,) Count of Angouleme, and founder
+of the castle. He was represented at full-length, armed cap-a-pie, and
+grasping a huge buckler, on which were emblazoned three lions passant.
+The figure was so striking, that it seemed ready to start from the
+canvas: and I observed beneath this picture, a trophy composed of many
+weapons, proofs of the numerous triumphs of this hard-fighting old
+cavalier. Beside the weapons connected with the portraits, there were
+swords of all shapes, sizes, and centuries, hung round the hall; with
+piles of armor, placed as it were in effigy.
+
+"On each side of an immense chimney, were suspended the portraits of the
+first seneschal of Poitou (the illegitimate son of Foulques Taillefer)
+and his wife Isabella de Lusignan; the progenitors of the grim race of
+Foulquerres that frowned around. They had the look of being perfect
+likenesses; and as I gazed on them, I fancied I could trace in their
+antiquated features some family resemblance to their unfortunate
+descendant, whom I had slain! This was a dismal neighborhood, yet the
+armory was the only part of the castle that had a habitable air; so I
+asked the warder whether he could not make a fire, and give me something
+for supper there, and prepare me a bed in one corner.
+
+"'A fire and a supper you shall have, and that cheerfully, most worthy
+pilgrim,' said he; 'but as to a bed, I advise you to come and sleep in
+my chamber.'
+
+"'Why so?' inquired I; 'why shall I not sleep in this hall?'
+
+"'I have my reasons; I will make a bed for you close to mine.'
+
+"I made no objections, for I recollected that it was Friday, and I
+dreaded the return of my vision. He brought in billets of wood, kindled
+a fire in the great overhanging chimney, and then went forth to prepare
+my supper. I drew a heavy chair before the fire, and seating myself in
+it, gazed muzingly round upon the portraits of the Foulquerres, and the
+antiquated armor and weapons, the mementos of many a bloody deed. As
+the day declined, the smoky draperies of the hall gradually became
+confounded with the dark ground of the paintings, and the lurid gleams
+from the chimney only enabled me to see visages staring at me from the
+gathering darkness. All this was dismal in the extreme, and somewhat
+appalling; perhaps it was the state of my conscience that rendered me
+peculiarly sensitive, and prone to fearful imaginings.
+
+"At length the warder brought in my supper. It consisted of a dish of
+trout, and some crawfish taken in the fosse of the castle. He procured
+also a bottle of wine, which he informed me was wine of Poitou. I
+requested him to invite the hermit to join me in my repast; but the holy
+man sent back word that he allowed himself nothing but roots and herbs,
+cooked with water. I took my meal, therefore, alone, but prolonged it as
+much as possible, and sought to cheer my drooping spirits by the wine of
+Poitou, which I found very tolerable.
+
+"When supper was over, I prepared for my evening devotions. I have
+always been very punctual in reciting my breviary; it is the prescribed
+and bounden duty of all chevaliers of the religious orders; and I can
+answer for it, is faithfully performed by those of Spain. I accordingly
+drew forth from my pocket a small missal and a rosary, and told the
+warder he need only designate to me the way to his chamber, where I
+could come and rejoin him, when I had finished my prayers.
+
+"He accordingly pointed out a winding stair-case, opening from the hall.
+'You will descend this stair-case,' said he, 'until you come to the
+fourth landing-place, where you enter a vaulted passage, terminated by
+an arcade, with a statue of the blessed Jeanne of France; you cannot
+help finding my room, the door of which I will leave open; it is the
+sixth door from the landing-place. I advise you not to remain in this
+hall after midnight. Before that hour, you will hear the hermit ring the
+bell, in going the rounds of the corridors. Do not linger here after
+that signal.'
+
+"The warder retired, and I commenced my devotions. I continued at them
+earnestly; pausing from time to time to put wood upon the fire. I did
+not dare to look much around me, for I felt myself becoming a prey to
+fearful fancies. The pictures appeared to become animated. If I regarded
+one attentively, for any length of time, it seemed to move the eyes and
+lips. Above all, the portraits of the Grand Seneschal and his lady,
+which hung on each side of the great chimney, the progenitors of the
+Foulquerres of Têtefoulque, regarded me, I thought, with angry and
+baleful eyes: I even fancied they exchanged significant glances with
+each other. Just then a terrible blast of wind shook all the casements,
+and, rushing through the hall, made a fearful rattling and clashing
+among the armor. To my startled fancy, it seemed something supernatural.
+
+"At length I heard the bell of the hermit, and hastened to quit the
+hall. Taking a solitary light, which stood on the supper-table, I
+descended the winding stair-case; but before I had reached the vaulted
+passage leading to the statue of the blessed Jeanne of France, a blast
+of wind extinguished my taper. I hastily remounted the stairs, to light
+it again at the chimney; but judge of my feelings, when, on arriving at
+the entrance to the armory, I beheld the Seneschal and his lady, who had
+descended from their frames, and seated themselves on each side of the
+fire-place! "'Madam, my love,' said the Seneschal, with great formality,
+and in antiquated phrase, 'what think you of the presumption of this
+Castilian, who comes to harbor himself and make wassail in this our
+castle, after having slain our descendant, the commander, and that
+without granting him time for confession?'
+
+"'Truly, my lord,' answered the female spectre, with no less stateliness
+of manner, and with great asperity of tone; 'truly, my lord, I opine
+that this Castilian did a grievous wrong in this encounter; and he
+should never be suffered to depart hence, without your throwing him the
+gauntlet.' I paused to hear no more, but rushed again down-stairs, to
+seek the chamber of the warder. It was impossible to find it in the
+darkness, and in the perturbation of my mind. After an hour and a half
+of fruitless search, and mortal horror and anxieties, I endeavored
+to persuade myself that the day was about to break, and listened
+impatiently for the crowing of the cock; for I thought if I could hear
+his cheerful note, I should be reassured; catching, in the disordered
+state of my nerves, at the popular notion that ghosts never appear after
+the first crowing of the cock.
+
+"At length I rallied myself, and endeavored to shake off the vague
+terrors which haunted me. I tried to persuade myself that the two
+figures which I had seemed to see and hear, had existed only in my
+troubled imagination. I still had the end of the candle in my hand, and
+determined to make another effort to re-light it, and find my way to
+bed; for I was ready to sink with fatigue. I accordingly sprang up the
+stair-case, three steps at a time, stopped at the door of the armory,
+and peeped cautiously in. The two Gothic figures were no longer in the
+chimney corners, but I neglected to notice whether they had reascended
+to their frames. I entered, and made desperately for the fire-place, but
+scarce had I advanced three strides, when Messire Foolques Taillefer
+stood before me, in the centre of the hall, armed cap-à-pie, and
+standing in guard, with the point of his sword silently presented to
+me. I would have retreated to the stair-case, but the door of it was
+occupied by the phantom figure of an esquire, who rudely flung a
+gauntlet in my face. Driven to fury, I snatched down a sword from the
+wall: by chance, it was that of the commander which I had placed there.
+I rushed upon my fantastic adversary, and seemed to pierce him through
+and through; but at the same time I felt as if something pierced my
+heart, burning like a red-hot iron. My blood inundated the hall, and I
+fell senseless.
+
+"When I recovered consciousness, it was broad day, and I found myself in
+a small chamber, attended by the warder and the hermit. The former told
+me that on the previous night, he had awakened long after the midnight
+hour, and perceiving that I had not come to his chamber, he had
+furnished himself with a vase of holy water, and set out to seek me. He
+found me stretched senseless on the pavement of the armory, and bore me
+to this room. I spoke of my wound, and of the quantity of blood that I
+had lost. He shook his head, and knew nothing about it; and to my
+surprise, on examination, I found myself perfectly sound and unharmed.
+The wound and blood, therefore, had been all delusion. Neither the
+warder nor the hermit put any questions to me, but advised me to leave
+the castle as soon as possible. I lost no time in complying with their
+counsel, and felt my heart relieved from an oppressive weight, as I left
+the gloomy and fate-bound battlements of Têtefoulques behind me.
+
+"I arrived at Bayonne, on my way to Spain, on the following Friday. At
+midnight I was startled from my sleep, as I had formerly been; but it
+was no longer by the vision of the dying commander. It was old Foulques
+Taillefer who stood before me, armed cap-à-pie, and presenting the point
+of his sword. I made the sign of the cross, and the spectre vanished,
+but I received the same red-hot thrust in the heart which I had felt in
+the armory, and I seemed to be bathed in blood. I would have called out,
+or have arisen from my bed and gone in quest of succor, but I could
+neither speak nor stir. This agony endured until the crowing of the
+cock, when I fell asleep again; but the next day I was ill, and in a
+most pitiable state. I have continued to be harassed by the same vision
+every Friday night; no acts of penitence and devotion have been able to
+relieve me from it; and it is only a lingering hope in divine mercy,
+that sustains me, and enables me to support so lamentable a visitation."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Grand Prior of Minorca wasted gradually away under this constant
+remorse of conscience, and this horrible incubus. He died some time
+after having revealed the preceding particulars of his case, evidently
+the victim of a diseased imagination.
+
+The above relation has been rendered, in many parts literally, from the
+French memoir, in which it is given as a true story: if so, it is one of
+those instances in which truth is more romantic than fiction.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LEGEND OF
+THE ENGULPHED CONVENT.
+
+BY GEOFFREY CRAYON, GENT.
+
+At the dark and melancholy period when Don Roderick the Goth and his
+chivalry were overthrown on the banks of the Guadalete, and all Spain
+was overrun by the Moors, great was the devastation of churches and
+convents throughout that pious kingdom. The miraculous fate of one of
+those holy piles is thus recorded in one of the authentic legends of
+those days.
+
+On the summit of a hill, not very distant from the capital city of
+Toledo, stood an ancient convent and chapel, dedicated to the invocation
+of Saint Benedict, and inhabited by a sisterhood of Benedictine nuns.
+This holy asylum was confined to females of noble lineage. The younger
+sisters of the highest families were here given in religious marriage to
+their Saviour, in order that the portions of their elder sisters might
+be increased, and they enabled to make suitable matches on earth, or
+that the family wealth might go undivided to elder brothers, and the
+dignity of their ancient houses be protected from decay. The convent was
+renowned, therefore, for enshrining within its walls a sisterhood of the
+purest blood, the most immaculate virtue, and most resplendent beauty,
+of all Gothic Spain.
+
+When the Moors overran the kingdom, there was nothing that more
+excited their hostility than these virgin asylums. The very sight of a
+convent-spire was sufficient to set their Moslem blood in a foment, and
+they sacked it with as fierce a zeal as though the sacking of a nunnery
+were a sure passport to Elysium.
+
+Tidings of such outrages committed in various parts of the kingdom
+reached this noble sanctuary and filled it with dismay. The danger
+came nearer and nearer; the infidel hosts were spreading all over the
+country; Toledo itself was captured; there was no flying from the
+convent, and no security within its walls.
+
+In the midst of this agitation, the alarm was given one day that a great
+band of Saracens were spurring across the plain. In an instant the whole
+convent was a scene of confusion. Some of the nuns wrung their fair
+hands at the windows; others waved their veils and uttered shrieks from
+the tops of the towers, vainly hoping to draw relief from a country
+over-run by the foe. The sight of these innocent doves thus fluttering
+about their dove-cote, but increased the zealot fury of the whiskered
+Moors. They thundered at the portal, and at every blow the ponderous
+gates trembled on their hinges.
+
+The nuns now crowded round the abbess. They had been accustomed to look
+up to her as all-powerful, and they now implored her protection. The
+mother abbess looked with a rueful eye upon the treasures of beauty
+and vestal virtue exposed to such imminent peril. Alas! how was she to
+protect them from the spoiler! She had, it is true, experienced many
+signal inter-positions of providence in her individual favor. Her early
+days had been passed amid the temptations of a court, where her virtue
+had been purified by repeated trials, from none of which had she escaped
+but by a miracle. But were miracles never to cease? Could she hope that
+the marvelous protection shown to herself would be extended to a
+whole sisterhood? There was no other resource. The Moors were at the
+threshold; a few moments more and the convent would be at their mercy.
+Summoning her nuns to follow her, she hurried into the chapel; and
+throwing herself on her knees before the image of the blessed Mary, "Oh,
+holy Lady!" exclaimed she, "oh, most pure and immaculate of virgins!
+thou seest our extremity. The ravager is at the gate, and there is none
+on earth to help us! Look down with pity, and grant that the earth may
+gape and swallow us rather than that our cloister vows should suffer
+violation!"
+
+The Moors redoubled their assault upon the portal; the gates gave way,
+with a tremendous crash; a savage yell of exultation arose; when of a
+sudden the earth yawned; down sank the convent, with its cloisters, its
+dormitories, and all its nuns. The chapel tower was the last that sank,
+the bell ringing forth a peal of triumph in the very teeth of the
+infidels.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Forty years had passed and gone, since the period of this miracle. The
+subjugation of Spain was complete. The Moors lorded it over city and
+country; and such of the Christian population as remained, and were
+permitted to exercise their religion, did it in humble resignation to
+the Moslem sway.
+
+At this time, a Christian cavalier, of Cordova, hearing that a patriotic
+band of his countrymen had raised the standard of the cross in the
+mountains of the Asturias, resolved to join them, and unite in breaking
+the yoke of bondage. Secretly arming himself, and caparisoning his
+steed, he set forth from Cordova, and pursued his course by unfrequented
+mule-paths, and along the dry channels made by winter torrents. His
+spirit burned with indignation, whenever, on commanding a view over a
+long sweeping plain, he beheld the mosque swelling in the distance, and
+the Arab horsemen careering about, as if the rightful lords of the soil.
+Many a deep-drawn sigh, and heavy groan, also, did the good cavalier
+utter, on passing the ruins of churches and convents desolated by the
+conquerors.
+
+It was on a sultry midsummer evening, that this wandering cavalier, in
+skirting a hill thickly covered with forest, heard the faint tones of a
+vesper bell sounding melodiously in the air, and seeming to come from
+the summit of the hill. The cavalier crossed himself with wonder, at
+this unwonted and Christian sound. He supposed it to proceed from one
+of those humble chapels and hermitages permitted to exist through the
+indulgence of the Moslem conquerors. Turning his steed up a narrow
+path of the forest, he sought this sanctuary, in hopes of finding a
+hospitable shelter for the night. As he advanced, the trees threw a deep
+gloom around him, and the bat flitted across his path. The bell ceased
+to toll, and all was silence.
+
+Presently a choir of female voices came stealing sweetly through the
+forest, chanting the evening service, to the solemn accompaniment of
+an organ. The heart of the good cavalier melted at the sound, for it
+recalled the happier days of his country. Urging forward his weary
+steed, he at length arrived at a broad grassy area, on the summit of the
+hill, surrounded by the forest. Here the melodious voices rose in full
+chorus, like the swelling of the breeze; but whence they came, he could
+not tell. Sometimes they were before, sometimes behind him; sometimes in
+the air, sometimes as if from within the bosom of the earth. At length
+they died away, and a holy stillness settled on the place.
+
+The cavalier gazed around with bewildered eye. There was neither chapel
+nor convent, nor humble hermitage, to be seen; nothing but a moss-grown
+stone pinnacle, rising out of the centre of the area, surmounted by a
+cross. The greensward around appeared to have been sacred from the tread
+of man or beast, and the surrounding trees bent toward the cross, as if
+in adoration.
+
+The cavalier felt a sensation of holy awe. He alighted and tethered
+his steed on the skirts of the forest, where he might crop the tender
+herbage; then approaching the cross, he knelt and poured forth his
+evening prayers before this relique of the Christian days of Spain.
+His orisons being concluded, he laid himself down at the foot of the
+pinnacle, and reclining his head against one of its stones, fell into a
+deep sleep.
+
+About midnight, he was awakened by the tolling of a bell, and found
+himself lying before the gate of an ancient convent. A train of nuns
+passed by, each bearing a taper. The cavalier rose and followed them
+into the chapel; in the centre of which was a bier, on which lay the
+corpse of an aged nun. The organ performed a solemn requiem: the nuns
+joining in chorus. When the funeral service was finished, a melodious
+voice chanted, "_Requiescat in pace!_"--"May she rest in peace!" The
+lights immediately vanished; the whole passed away as a dream; and the
+cavalier found himself at the foot of the cross, and beheld, by the
+faint rays of the rising moon, his steed quietly grazing near him.
+
+When the day dawned, the cavalier descended the hill, and following the
+course of a small brook, came to a cave, at the entrance of which was
+seated an ancient man, clad in hermit's garb, with rosary and cross,
+and a beard that descended to his girdle. He was one of those holy
+anchorites permitted by the Moors to live unmolested in dens and caves,
+and humble hermitages, and even to practise the rites of their religion.
+The cavalier checked his horse, and dismounting, knelt and craved a
+benediction. He then related all that had befallen him in the night, and
+besought the hermit to explain the mystery.
+
+"What thou hast heard and seen, my son," replied the other, "is but type
+and shadow of the woes of Spain."
+
+He then related the foregoing story of the miraculous deliverance of the
+convent.
+
+"Forty years," added the holy man, "have elapsed since this event, yet
+the bells of that sacred edifice are still heard, from time to time,
+sounding from under ground, together with the pealing of the organ, and
+the chanting of the choir. The Moors avoid this neighborhood, as haunted
+ground, and the whole place, as thou mayest perceive, has become covered
+with a thick and lonely forest."
+
+The cavalier listened with wonder to the story of this engulphed
+convent, as related by the holy man. For three days and nights did they
+keep vigils beside the cross; but nothing more was to be seen of nun or
+convent. It is supposed that, forty years having elapsed, the natural
+lives of all the nuns were finished, and that the cavalier had beheld
+the obsequies of the last of the sisterhood. Certain it is, that from
+that time, bell, and organ, and choral chant have never more been heard.
+
+The mouldering pinnacle, surmounted by the cross, still remains an
+object of pious pilgrimage. Some say that it anciently stood in front
+of the convent, but others assert that it was the spire of the sacred
+edifice, and that, when the main body of the building sank, this
+remained above ground, like the top-mast of some tall ship that
+has foundered. These pious believers maintain, that the convent is
+miraculously preserved entire in the centre of the mountain, where, if
+proper excavations were made, it would be found, with all its treasures,
+and monuments, and shrines, and reliques, and the tombs of its virgin
+nuns.
+
+Should any one doubt the truth of this marvelous interposition of the
+Virgin, to protect the vestal purity of her votaries, let him read the
+excellent work entitled "España Triumphante," written by Padre Fray
+Antonio de Sancta Maria, a bare-foot friar of the Carmelite order, and
+he will doubt no longer.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE COUNT VAN HORN.
+
+
+During the minority of Louis XV., while the Duke of Orleans was Regent
+of France, a young Flemish nobleman, the Count Antoine Joseph Van Horn,
+made his sudden appearance in Paris, and by his character, conduct, and
+the subsequent disasters in which he became involved, created a great
+sensation in the high circles of the proud aristocracy. He was about
+twenty-two years of age, tall, finely formed, with a pale, romantic
+countenance, and eyes of remarkable brilliancy and wildness.
+
+He was of one of the most ancient and highly-esteemed families of
+European nobility, being of the line of the Princes of Horn and
+Overique, sovereign Counts of Hautekerke, and hereditary Grand Veneurs
+of the empire.
+
+The family took its name from the little town and seigneurie of Horn, in
+Brabant; and was known as early as the eleventh century among the little
+dynasties of the Netherlands, and since that time by a long line of
+illustrious generations. At the peace of Utrecht, when the Netherlands
+passed under subjection to Austria, the house of Van Horn came under the
+domination of the emperor. At the time we treat of, two of the branches
+of this ancient house were extinct; the third and only surviving branch
+was represented by the reigning prince, Maximilian Emanuel Van Horn,
+twenty-four years of age, who resided in honorable and courtly style
+on his hereditary domains at Baussigny, in the Netherlands, and his
+brother, the Count Antoine Joseph, who is the subject of this memoir.
+
+The ancient house of Van Horn, by the intermarriage of its various
+branches with the noble families of the continent, had become widely
+connected and interwoven with the high aristocracy of Europe. The Count
+Antoine, therefore, could claim relationship to many of the proudest
+names in Paris. In fact, he was grandson, by the mother's side, of the
+Prince de Ligne, and even might boast of affinity to the Regent (the
+Duke of Orleans) himself. There were circumstances, however, connected
+with his sudden appearance in Paris, and his previous story, that placed
+him in what is termed "a false position;" a word of baleful significance
+in the fashionable vocabulary of France.
+
+The young count had been a captain in the service of Austria, but had
+been cashiered for irregular conduct, and for disrespect to Prince Louis
+of Baden, commander-in-chief. To check him in his wild career, and
+bring him to sober reflection, his brother the prince caused him to be
+arrested and sent to the old castle of Van Wert, in the domains of Horn.
+This was the same castle in which, in former times, John Van Horn,
+Stadtholder of Gueldres, had imprisoned his father; a circumstance which
+has furnished Rembrandt with the subject of an admirable painting. The
+governor of the castle was one Van Wert, grandson of the famous John Van
+Wert, the hero of many a popular song and legend. It was the intention
+of the prince that his brother should be held in honorable durance, for
+his object was to sober and improve, not to punish and afflict him. Van
+Wert, however, was a stern, harsh man of violent passions. He treated
+the youth in a manner that prisoners and offenders were treated in the
+strong-holds of the robber counts of Germany in old times; confined him
+in a dungeon and inflicted on him such hardships and indignities that
+the irritable temperament of the young count was roused to continual
+fury, which ended in insanity. For six months was the unfortunate youth
+kept in this horrible state, without his brother the prince being
+informed of his melancholy condition or of the cruel treatment to which
+he was subjected. At length, one day, in a paroxysm of frenzy, the count
+knocked down two of his gaolers with a beetle, escaped from the castle
+of Van Wert, and eluded all pursuit; and after roving about in a state
+of distraction, made his way to Baussigny and appeared like a sceptre
+before his brother.
+
+The prince was shocked at his wretched, emaciated appearance and his
+lamentable state of mental alienation. He received him with the most
+compassionate tenderness; lodged him in his own room, appointed three
+servants to attend and watch over him day and night, and endeavored by
+the most soothing and affectionate assiduity to atone for the past act
+of rigor with which he reproached himself. When he learned, however, the
+manner in which his unfortunate brother had been treated in confinement,
+and the course of brutalities that had led to his mental malady, he was
+roused to indignation. His first step was to cashier Van Wert from his
+command. That violent man set the prince at defiance, and attempted to
+maintain himself in his government and his castle by instigating the
+peasants, for several leagues round, to revolt. His insurrection might
+have been formidable against the power of a petty prince; but he was put
+under the ban of the empire and seized as a state prisoner. The memory
+of his grandfather, the oft-sung John Van Wert, alone saved him from a
+gibbet; but he was imprisoned in the strong tower of Horn-op-Zee. There
+he remained until he was eighty-two years of age, savage, violent, and
+unconquered to the last; for we are told that he never ceased fighting
+and thumping as long as he could close a fist or wield a cudgel.
+
+In the mean time a course of kind and gentle treatment and wholesome
+regimen, and, above all, the tender and affectionate assiduity of his
+brother, the prince, produced the most salutary effects upon Count
+Antoine. He gradually recovered his reason; but a degree of violence
+seemed always lurking at the bottom of his character, and he required
+to be treated with the greatest caution and mildness, for the least
+contradiction exasperated him.
+
+In this state of mental convalescence, he began to find the supervision
+and restraints of brotherly affection insupportable; so he left the
+Netherlands furtively, and repaired to Paris, whither, in fact, it
+is said he was called by motives of interest, to make arrangements
+concerning a valuable estate which he inherited from his relative, the
+Princess d'Epinay.
+
+On his arrival in Paris, he called upon the Marquis of Créqui, and other
+of the high nobility with whom he was connected. He was received with
+great courtesy; but, as he brought no letters from his elder brother,
+the prince, and as various circumstances of his previous history had
+transpired, they did not receive him into their families, nor introduce
+him to their ladies. Still they fêted him in bachelor style, gave him
+gay and elegant suppers at their separate apartments, and took him to
+their boxes at the theatres. He was often noticed, too, at the doors of
+the most fashionable churches, taking his stand among the young men
+of fashion; and at such times, his tall, elegant figure, his pale but
+handsome countenance, and his flashing eyes, distinguished him from
+among the crowd; and the ladies declared that it was almost impossible
+to support his ardent gaze.
+
+The Count did not afflict himself much at his limited circulation in the
+fastidious circles of the high aristocracy. He relished society of a
+wilder and less ceremonious cast; and meeting with loose companions to
+his taste, soon ran into all the excesses of the capital, in that most
+licentious period. It is said that, in the course of his wild career, he
+had an intrigue with a lady of quality, a favorite of the Regent; that
+he was surprised by that prince in one of his interviews; that sharp
+words passed between them; and that the jealousy and vengeance thus
+awakened, ended only with his life.
+
+About this time, the famous Mississippi scheme of Law was at its height,
+or rather it began to threaten that disastrous catastrophe which
+convulsed the whole financial world. Every effort was making to keep the
+bubble inflated. The vagrant population of France was swept off from the
+streets at night, and conveyed to Havre de Grace, to be shipped to the
+projected colonies; even laboring people and mechanics were thus crimped
+and spirited away. As Count Antoine was in the habit of sallying forth
+at night, in disguise, in pursuit of his pleasures, he came near being
+carried off by a gang of crimps; it seemed, in fact, as if they had been
+lying in wait for him, as he had experienced very rough treatment at
+their hands. Complaint was made of his case by his relation, the Marquis
+de Créqui, who took much interest in the youth; but the Marquis received
+mysterious intimations not to interfere in the matter, but to advise the
+Count to quit Paris immediately; "If he lingers, he is lost!" This has
+been cited as a proof that vengeance was dogging at the heels of the
+unfortunate youth, and only watching for an opportunity to destroy him.
+
+Such opportunity occurred but too soon. Among the loose companions with
+whom the Count had become intimate, were two who lodged in the same
+hotel with him. One was a youth only twenty years of age, who passed
+himself off as the Chevalier d'Etampes, but whose real name was Lestang,
+the prodigal son of a Flemish banker. The other, named Laurent de Mille,
+a Piedmontese, was a cashiered captain, and at the time an esquire
+in the service of the dissolute Princess de Carignan, who kept
+gambling-tables in her palace. It is probable that gambling propensities
+had driven these young men together, and that their losses had brought
+them to desperate measures: certain it is, that all Paris was suddenly
+astounded by a murder which they were said to have committed. What made
+the crime more startling, was, that it seemed connected with the great
+Mississippi scheme, at that time the fruitful source of all kinds of
+panics and agitations. A Jew, a stock-broker, who dealt largely in
+shares of the bank of Law, founded on the Mississippi scheme, was the
+victim. The story of his death is variously related. The darkest account
+states, that the Jew was decoyed by these young men into an obscure
+tavern, under pretext of negotiating with him for bank shares to the
+amount of one hundred thousand crowns, which he had with him in his
+pocket-book. Lestang kept watch upon the stairs. The Count and De Mille
+entered with the Jew into a chamber. In a little while there were heard
+cries and struggles from within. A waiter passing by the room, looked
+in, and seeing the Jew weltering in his blood, shut the door again,
+double-locked it, and alarmed the house. Lestang rushed downstairs, made
+his way to the hotel, secured his most portable effects, and fled the
+country. The Count and De Mille endeavored to escape by the window, but
+were both taken, and conducted to prison.
+
+A circumstance which occurs in this part of the Count's story, seems to
+point him out as a fated man. His mother, and his brother, the Prince
+Van Horn, had received intelligence some time before at Baussigny, of
+the dissolute life the Count was leading at Paris, and of his losses at
+play. They despatched a gentleman of the prince's household to Paris, to
+pay the debts of the Count, and persuade him to return to Flanders; or,
+if he should refuse, to obtain an order from the Regent for him to quit
+the capital. Unfortunately the gentleman did not arrive at Paris until
+the day after the murder.
+
+The news of the Count's arrest and imprisonment on a charge of murder,
+caused a violent sensation among the high aristocracy. All those
+connected with him, who had treated him hitherto with indifference,
+found their dignity deeply involved in the question of his guilt or
+innocence. A general convocation was held at the hotel of the Marquis de
+Créqui, of all the relatives and allies of the house of Horn. It was
+an assemblage of the most proud and aristocratic personages of Paris.
+Inquiries were made into the circumstances of the affair. It was
+ascertained, beyond a doubt, that the Jew was dead, and that he had been
+killed by several stabs of a poniard. In escaping by the window, it was
+said that the Count had fallen, and been immediately taken; but that De
+Mille had fled through the streets, pursued by the populace, and had
+been arrested at some distance from the scene of the murder; that the
+Count had declared himself innocent of the death of the Jew, and that
+he had risked his own life in endeavoring to protect him; but that De
+Mille, on being brought back to the tavern, confessed to a plot to
+murder the broker, and rob him of his pocket-book, and inculpated the
+Count in the crime.
+
+Another version of the story was, that the Count Van Horn had deposited
+with the broker, bank shares to the amount of eighty-eight thousand
+livres; that he had sought him in this tavern, which was one of his
+resorts, and had demanded the shares; that the Jew had denied the
+deposit; that a quarrel had ensued, in the course of which the Jew
+struck the Count in the face; that the latter, transported with rage,
+had snatched up a knife from a table, and wounded the Jew in the
+shoulder; and that thereupon De Mille, who was present, and who had
+likewise been defrauded by the broker, fell on him, and despatched him
+with blows of a poniard, and seized upon his pocket-book; that he had
+offered to divide the contents of the latter with the Count, _pro rata_,
+of what the usurer had defrauded them; that the latter had refused the
+proposition with disdain, and that, at a noise of persons approaching,
+both had attempted to escape from the premises, but had been taken.
+
+Regard the story in any way they might, appearances were terribly
+against the Count, and the noble assemblage was in great consternation.
+What was to be done to ward off so foul a disgrace and to save their
+illustrious escutcheons from this murderous stain of blood? Their
+first attempt was to prevent the affair from going to trial, and their
+relative from being dragged before a criminal tribunal, on so horrible
+and degrading a charge. They applied, therefore, to the Regent, to
+intervene his power; to treat the Count as having acted under an access
+of his mental malady; and to shut him up in a madhouse. The Regent was
+deaf to their solicitations. He replied, coldly, that if the Count was a
+madman, one could not get rid too quickly of madmen who were furious in
+their insanity. The crime was too public and atrocious to be hushed up
+or slurred over; justice must take its course.
+
+Seeing there was no avoiding the humiliating scene of a public trial,
+the noble relatives of the Count endeavored to predispose the minds of
+the magistrates before whom he was to be arraigned. They accordingly
+made urgent and eloquent representations of the high descent, and noble
+and powerful connexions of the Count; set forth the circumstances of his
+early history; his mental malady; the nervous irritability to which he
+was subject, and his extreme sensitiveness to insult or contradiction.
+By these means they sought to prepare the judges to interpret every
+thing in favor of the Count, and, even if it should prove that he had
+inflicted the mortal blow on the usurer, to attribute it to access of
+insanity, provoked by insult.
+
+To give full effect to these representations, the noble conclave
+determined to bring upon the judges the dazzling rays of the whole
+assembled aristocracy. Accordingly, on the day that the trial took
+place, the relations of the Count, to the number of fifty-seven persons,
+of both sexes, and of the highest rank, repaired in a body to the Palace
+of Justice, and took their stations in a long corridor which led to the
+court-room. Here, as the judges entered, they had to pass in review this
+array of lofty and noble personages, who saluted them mournfully and
+significantly, as they passed. Any one conversant with the stately pride
+and jealous dignity of the French noblesse of that day, may imagine the
+extreme state of sensitiveness that produced this self-abasement. It was
+confidently presumed, however, by the noble suppliants, that having once
+brought themselves to this measure, their influence over the tribunal
+would be irresistible. There was one lady present, however, Madame de
+Beauffremont, who was affected with the Scottish gift of second sight,
+and related such dismal and sinister apparitions as passing before
+her eyes, that many of her female companions were filled with doleful
+presentiments.
+
+Unfortunately for the Count, there was another interest at work, more
+powerful even than the high aristocracy. The all-potent Abbé Dubois, the
+grand favorite and bosom counsellor of the Regent, was deeply interested
+in the scheme of Law, and the prosperity of his bank, and of course in
+the security of the stock-brokers. Indeed, the Regent himself is said to
+have dipped deep in the Mississippi scheme. Dubois and Law, therefore,
+exerted their influence to the utmost to have the tragic affair pushed
+to the extremity of the law, and the murder of the broker punished in
+the most signal and appalling manner. Certain it is, the trial was
+neither long nor intricate. The Count and his fellow prisoner were
+equally inculpated in the crime; and both were condemned to a death the
+most horrible and ignominious--to be broken alive on the wheel!
+
+As soon as the sentence of the court was made public, all the nobility,
+in any degree related to the house of Van Horn, went into mourning.
+Another grand aristocratical assemblage was held, and a petition to the
+Regent, on behalf of the Count, was drawn out and left with the Marquis
+de Créqui for signature. This petition set forth the previous insanity
+of the Count, and showed that it was a hereditary malady of his family.
+It stated various circumstances in mitigation of his offence, and
+implored that his sentence might be commuted to perpetual imprisonment.
+
+Upward of fifty names of the highest nobility, beginning with the Prince
+de Ligne, and including cardinals, archbishops, dukes, marquises, etc.,
+together with ladies of equal rank, were signed to this petition. By
+one of the caprices of human pride and vanity, it became an object of
+ambition to get enrolled among the illustrious suppliants; a kind of
+testimonial of noble blood, to prove relationship to a murderer! The
+Marquis de Créqui was absolutely besieged by applicants to sign, and had
+to refer their claims to this singular honor, to the Prince de Ligne,
+the grandfather of the Count. Many who were excluded, were highly
+incensed, and numerous feuds took place. Nay, the affronts thus given to
+the morbid pride of some aristocratical families, passed from generation
+to generation; for, fifty years afterward, the Duchess of Mazarin
+complained of a slight which her father had received from the Marquis
+de Créqui; which proved to be something connected with the signature of
+this petition. This important document being completed, the illustrious
+body of petitioners, male and female, on Saturday evening, the eve of
+Palm Sunday, repaired to the Palais Royal, the residence of the Regent,
+and were ushered, with great ceremony but profound silence, into his
+hall of council. They had appointed four of their number as deputies, to
+present the petition, viz.: the Cardinal de Rohan, the Duke de Havré,
+the Prince de Ligne, and the Marquis de Créqui. After a little while,
+the deputies were summoned to the cabinet of the Regent. They entered,
+leaving the assembled petitioners in a state of the greatest anxiety.
+As time slowly wore away, and the evening advanced, the gloom of the
+company increased. Several of the ladies prayed devoutly; the good
+Princess of Armagnac told her beads.
+
+The petition was received by the Regent with a most unpropitious aspect.
+"In asking the pardon of the criminal," said he, "you display more zeal
+for the house of Van Horn, than for the service of the king." The noble
+deputies enforced the petition by every argument in their power. They
+supplicated the Regent to consider that the infamous punishment in
+question would reach not merely the person of the condemned, not
+merely the house of Van Horn, but also the genealogies of princely
+and illustrious families, in whose armorial bearings might be found
+quarterings of this dishonored name.
+
+"Gentlemen," replied the Regent, "it appears to me the disgrace consists
+in the crime, rather than in the punishment."
+
+The Prince de Ligne spoke with warmth: "I have in my genealogical
+standard," said he, "four escutcheons of Van Horn, and of course have
+four ancestors of that house. I must have them erased and effaced, and
+there would be so many blank spaces, like holes, in my heraldic ensigns.
+There is not a sovereign family which would not suffer, through the
+rigor of your Royal Highness; nay, all the world knows, that in the
+thirty-two quarterings of Madame, your mother, there is an escutcheon of
+Van Horn."
+
+"Very well," replied the Regent, "I will share the disgrace with you,
+gentlemen."
+
+Seeing that a pardon could not be obtained, the Cardinal de Rohan and
+the Marquis de Créqui left the cabinet; but the Prince de Ligne and the
+Duke de Havré remained behind. The honor of their houses, more than the
+life of the unhappy Count, was the great object of their solicitude.
+They now endeavored to obtain a minor grace. They represented that in
+the Netherlands, and in Germany, there was an important difference in
+the public mind as to the mode of inflicting the punishment of death
+upon persons of quality. That decapitation had no influence on the
+fortunes of the family of the executed, but that the punishment of the
+wheel was such an infamy, that the uncles, aunts, brothers, and sisters
+of the criminal, and his whole family, for three succeeding generations,
+were excluded from all noble chapters, princely abbeys, sovereign
+bishoprics, and even Teutonic commanderies of the Order of Malta. They
+showed how this would operate immediately upon the fortunes of a sister
+of the Count, who was on the point of being received as a canoness into
+one of the noble chapters.
+
+While this scene was going on in the cabinet of the Regent, the
+illustrious assemblage of petitioners remained in the hall of council,
+in the most gloomy state of suspense. The re-entrance from the cabinet
+of the Cardinal de Rohan and the Marquis de Créqui, with pale, downcast
+countenances, had struck a chill into every heart. Still they lingered
+until near midnight, to learn the result of the after application. At
+length the cabinet conference was at an end. The Regent came forth, and
+saluted the high personages of the assemblage in a courtly manner. One
+old lady of quality, Madame de Guyon, whom he had known in his infancy,
+he kissed on the cheek, calling her his "good aunt." He made a most
+ceremonious salutation to the stately Marchioness de Créqui, telling
+her he was charmed to see her at the Palais Royal; "a compliment very
+ill-timed," said the Marchioness, "considering the circumstance which
+brought me there." He then conducted the ladies to the door of the
+second saloon, and there dismissed them, with the most ceremonious
+politeness.
+
+The application of the Prince de Ligne and the Duke de Havré, for a
+change of the mode of punishment, had, after much difficulty, been
+successful. The Regent had promised solemnly to send a letter of
+commutation to the attorney-general on Holy Monday, the 25th of March,
+at five o'clock in the morning. According to the same promise, a
+scaffold would be arranged in the cloister of the Conciergerie,
+or prison, where the Count would be beheaded on the same morning,
+immediately after having received absolution. This mitigation of the
+form of punishment gave but little consolation to the great body of
+petitioners, who had been anxious for the pardon of the youth: it was
+looked upon as all-important, however, by the Prince de Ligne, who, as
+has been before observed,--was exquisitely alive to the dignity of his
+family.
+
+The Bishop of Bayeux and the Marquis de Créqui visited the unfortunate
+youth in prison. He had just received the communion in the chapel of the
+Conciergerie, and was kneeling before the altar, listening to a mass for
+the dead, which was performed at his request. He protested his innocence
+of any intention to murder the Jew, but did not deign to allude to the
+accusation of robbery. He made the bishop and the Marquis promise to see
+his brother the prince, and inform him of this his dying asseveration.
+
+Two other of his relations, the Prince Rebecq-Montmorency and the
+Marshal Van Isenghien, visited him secretly, and offered him poison, as
+a means of evading the disgrace of a public execution. On his refusing
+to take it, they left him with high indignation. "Miserable man!" said
+they, "you are fit only to perish by the hand of the executioner!"
+
+The Marquis de Créqui sought the executioner of Paris, to bespeak an
+easy and decent death--for the unfortunate youth. "Do not make him
+suffer," said he; "uncover no part of him but the neck; and have his
+body placed in a coffin, before you deliver it to his family." The
+executioner promised all that was requested, but declined a rouleau of a
+hundred louis-d'ors which the Marquis would have put into his hand. "I
+am paid by the king for fulfilling my office," said he; and added that
+he had already refused a like sum, offered by another relation of the
+Marquis.
+
+The Marquis de Créqui returned home in a state of deep affliction. There
+he found a letter from the Duke de St. Simon, the familiar friend of the
+Regent, repeating the promise of that prince, that the punishment of the
+wheel should be commuted to decapitation.
+
+"Imagine," says the Marchioness de Créqui, who in her memoirs gives a
+detailed account of this affair, "imagine what we experienced, and what
+was our astonishment, our grief, and indignation, when, on Tuesday, the
+26th of March, an hour after midday, word was brought us that the Count
+Van Horn had been exposed on the wheel, in the Place de Gréve, since
+half-past six in the morning, on the same scaffold with the Piedmontese
+de Mille, and that he had been tortured previous to execution!"
+
+One more scene of aristocratic pride closed this tragic story. The
+Marquis de Créqui, on receiving this astounding news, immediately
+arrayed himself in the uniform of a general officer, with his cordon
+of nobility on the coat. He ordered six valets to attend him in grand
+livery, and two of his carriages, each with six horses, to be brought
+forth. In this sumptuous state, he set off for the Place de Gréve, where
+he had been preceded by the Princes de Ligne, de Rohan, de Croüy, and
+the Duke de Havré.
+
+The Count Van Horn was already dead, and it was believed that the
+executioner had had the charity to give him the coup de grace, or
+"death-blow," at eight o'clock in the morning. At five o'clock in the
+evening, when the Judge Commissary left his post at the Hotel de Ville,
+these noblemen, with their own hands, aided to detach the mutilated
+remains of their relation; the Marquis de Crequi placed them in one of
+his carriages, and bore them off to his hotel, to receive the last sad
+obsequies.
+
+The conduct of the Regent in this affair excited general indignation.
+His needless severity was attributed by some to vindictive jealousy; by
+others to the persevering machinations of Law. The house of Van Horn,
+and the high nobility of Flanders and Germany, considered themselves
+flagrantly outraged: many schemes of vengeance were talked of, and a
+hatred engendered against the Regent, that followed him through life,
+and was wreaked with bitterness upon his memory after his death.
+
+The following letter is said to have been written to the Regent by the
+Prince Van Horn, to whom the former had adjudged the confiscated effects
+of the Count:
+
+"I do not complain, Sir, of the death of my brother, but I complain
+that your Royal Highness has violated in his person the rights of the
+kingdom, the nobility, and the nation. I thank you for the confiscation
+of his effects; but I should think myself as much disgraced as he,
+should I accept any favor at your hands. _I hope that God and the
+King may render to you as strict justice as you have rendered to my
+unfortunate brother._"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies
+by Washington Irving
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOLFERT'S ROOST AND MISCELLANIES ***
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