Imatges de pàgina
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of which my messmates had contrived to procure three sheep skins; before the second of which was emptied however, one evening, we received notice to prepare for the assault on the following morning. My brother subaltern, happened to be on duty; and the Captain after having written two or three letters, composed himself to sleep as if nothing extraordinary was about to occur. I tried in vain to follow his example, for my mind filled with thick coming fancies of the morrow's danger, effectually banished repose; and after a couple of hours, wasted in vain efforts to woo the god of sleep, I threw my cloak on my shoulders, and strolled through the bivouac.

It was a heavenly night, and the moon nearly at the full, poured from a cloud like molten silver, a radiance more pleasing, and scarcely less brilliant, than the noon-tide sun. The deep breathing from several of the huts, announced that their inmates, were enjoying that repose which I had so fruitlessly sought; whilst several little groups of talkers, proved that I was not singular in my inquietude.

Here was a sun burned veteran, disclosing to a comrade the contents of his knapsack, the gleanings of many a fray; and entrusting to his care (in case of accident,) a letter to be forwarded with them, to her who---the next day's sun, might see a widow. There, a group of the warm hearted natives of the Emerald Isle, were exchanging promises, to convey the remembrances of those who might fall, to the mistresses they had left behind; and further on, a knot of North Britons, were counting the number of non-commissioned officers, their regiment would have in the field, and calculating the chances of their casualties, and consequent promotion for the survivors.

At three the réveille beat, we fell in, and moved in silence towards the town. It was not yet light, and we remained under arms for some time, in awful suspense; at last, the signal was given for the advance. The fire flashed red through the darkness of the morning; the shells with their burning fusees, formed arches in the air; and the rockets with their meteor tails, and brilliant though momentary corruscations, illumined the field. The breach was found to be impracticable, and the attacking column was ordered to lay down: whilst the artillery with unexampled precision, fired over our heads, until the aperture was considered to be sufficiently enlarged, and we again advanced under cover of a tremendous fire of mortars, howitzers, and heavy artillery; to which, the musketry of the enemy which opened as

we approached the narrow breach, served as an accompaniment; when many a brave fellow "lost the number of his mess" as the soldiers say; or shorn of a limb, returned to his native land to "shoulder his crutch, and, shewed how fields were won."

The scene was appalling, the column deployed in the face of a volcano of shot and shell, and forming Indian files to mount the breach, passed over the bodies of their dead and wounded countrymen, and marched instep deep, in as brave blood as ever flowed from British veins. Whilst passing the breach; the enemy sprang a mine, which destroyed about a hundred and seventy men; when, a volunteer who had been knocked down by the explosion, but not injured, on seeing two officers of his corps, lie dead, cried, “hurrah for a commission!" and an Irish serjeant, with more humour than grace, exclaimed, "for what we have received, the lord make us truly thankful."

The scene presented by the breach, was sufficient to appall a recruit! but the horrors of the night that followed the assault, require a more practised pen than mine to describe.

The enemy had taken refuge in the castle, and the town having been carried by storm; was, according to the usage of war even amongst the most civilized nations; abandoned to sack and pillage. The officers lost all control over their men, who exasperated by the resistance they had met with, and heated by the wine and spirits which were plentiful in the town; gave a loose to the worst passions of our nature, and murder, rapine, and violation, reigned triumphant through the night: the most costly furniture was wontonly destroyed; splendid mirrors, shivered to atoms; and the wine suffered to run waste about the cellars. If the unfortunate proprietor, attempted to remonstrate; the bayonet or the ball, were his only reply. Amongst the females; age, or youth, were no protection, and deeds were perpetrated over which humanity shudders, and delicacy drops the veil. Accident or design, produced fires in several places, and many an intoxicated wretch, found a fiery tomb amongst the ruins of the mansion he had devastated. Thrice happy Britain, where such scenes are known only by description! long mayst thou enjoy thy blissfull ignorance of the horrors of war, and 'neath the paternal sway of thy patriot monarch; mayest thou long flourish the envy of the world.

E. S---y.

Stanzas.

I stood before thee, while the god was steeping

In soft forgetfulness thy slumbering eye,

Oh! didst thou think, that while thy soul was sleeping,
Thus bending o'er thy couch myself was nigh?

I leaned above thee, and thy gentle bosom
Heav'd with the bliss of love's enchanted dream;
It was not that my hopes should ever blossom
Beneath the sun-breath of thy dark eyes' beam.

I saw thee smile; but well I knew that never
My love drew that approving smile from thee:
I heard thee sigh-those lips might sigh for ever;
It was enough, they did not sigh for me!

A smile of glory melted on thy slumber,

As of sweet memories that came brightly o'er thee, But, ah! my image glanced not 'mid the number Of those, who lov'd and liv'd but to adore thee. Farewell, farewell, that passing scene is over;

I would not, would not waste a tear for thee; Thy heart from love and mine has turn'd a rover, Then take thy chains and set another free!

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THERE has always been to my mind a something hallowed and mysterious---a strange shadowy hue which seems not of this world, cast over that period of the history of Europe, generally designated "the dark ages." The minds of the nations seemed then to have sunk beneath the terrible and undermining convulsions which they had undergone, (ere the barbarian banners were triumphantly unfurled, and waved over the conquests of the Hun, the Vandal, and the Goth); into a long, dark, dismal night of heavy and restless slumber. Their greatest efforts, inconsiderable though always daring, resembled the misdirected starts of a troubled rest. Their intelligence seems to have been as a dream to themselves, and is ever so now to us. Yet then there was the soul of bold enterprise and watchful prowess; the mailed knight and lady fair---the castle, the warden, and the armed retainers---the sternest encounters relieved by the brightness of soft eyes, and the stoniest hearts refined and purified beneath the tender influence of woman's love.

Then

too there was the name of Petrarch and his Laura, the wild and flashing light of Ariosto's muse, and the shadowy, unearthly inspiration of the patriot

poet Dante. All, and much more than all this, s circled in our eyes within a halo which shades to softer loveliness, while it does not obscure those days of old romance; elating the mind to a fond enthusiasm for its brighter, while it sleeps it into a willing forgetfulness of its darker and more repugnant shapes.

I remember hearing some years ago, in the neighbourhood of Pisa, a legend of those dark yet fondly recollected times. I tell it, because it is of them, and this must be its only merit.

Every one knows, or at least ought to know, the wretched condition to which the city of Pisa was reduced about the end of the fifteenth century. Then it was that this little state almost fell a victim to the ambition, or causeless vengeance of the Florentines; and but for a spark of high independence, the only and best inheritance of this great republic, which still lingered among the petty communities of Italy, together with a fixed and rooted hatred towards the invaders of her liberty, she would have been swept from her existence as a nation and a people.

Just on the eve of the breaking out of that concealed and bitter enmity which had long rankled in the bosoms of the two states, Florence and Pisa, before the wild invasion of Charles the Eighth of France, upon the liberties of Naples, had roused their animosity to its full and reckless strength, their inhabitants lived in a sort of society together, restrained and suspicious it is true, yet not without the traces of apparent friendship at least. Many Florentines were to be seen in the streets of Pisa, and some Pisans in the streets of Florence. Still the contact, when they happened to come into collision, was far from friendly. Each scowled on the other, as if he would have given way at once to open enmity; but both were equally afraid to begin the attack. The heart's wish of the one was to have spit in the face of the other, and cried villain; but somehow or other there existed for several years a sort of courtesy and restraint on both sides, which prevented this generally taking place, though sometimes it did occur.

As always happens in cases of this kind, the fair sex were sure to catch up and perpetuate the spirit of their lords. Withered matrons and spinster ladies had their national "likes and dislikes," and along with these, heir feuds and bitter hostilities. In spite of all this, however, there were often little love affairs between the youth of the two cities, genial and fond, though at times burning into madness, the

same as love has always appeared and now appears under the sun of Italy;

"Where fiercest passion riots unconfined,

And in its madness fires the softest mind."

About this time there lived in Pisa a rich Florentine merchant, by name Jacopo. He had retired many years from trade, living quietly and contentedly on his gains. Pisa had become his place of residence, not so much from choice, as from the strong associations with which it was connected in his mind--reminiscences of early love, which his business life and business habits had all been unable to efface. Pisa had been the birth-place of his wife, and the first scene of the first and fondest affection he had ever known. There too the curtain had dropped, and left him widowed in heart and life. It was to him, therefore, as the enchanter's palace of light and darkness, which he would gladly have avoided, but which he found it impossible to tear himself from. He clung to it as the spirit of an injured maid is said, in the old legends,, to linger round the scene of her ruin. Those who have had the links of earliest, and consequently most powerful love, snapt asunder, e'er well united, alone know the feelings which still through life attach themselves to the scene of its first raptures, even though its original brightness may afterwards have been dimmed, by becoming the scene of its bitterest desolation.

His wife died little more than a year after they had been united, leaving Jacopo a daughter. On this solitary pledge of his wedded love, all his attention had been lavished, and no expense spared; so that when Maddelena attained the age of womanhood, there was scarcely a more accomplished, and not a more beautiful and gentle maiden to be found in the whole of Pisa. She was the image of her mother in figure, mind, and temper; and this had bound, if possible, more closely the ties of paternal affection. Jacopo, in the warmth of his love, had never allowed her to leave his sight, or at least to be far from him. She was seldom to be met with in the public places, to which, in those days, the youth of her age so generally resorted. The lists, the dance, and the marriage-feast, were seldom graced by her presence; and even when she did make her appearance there, it was more as a spectator than a partaker in their gaities; for Jacopo, though he lived in that dissolute age, knew and dreaded the dangers to which youth and beauty are exposed in their communion with the world.

Under the protection and guidance of this fatherly

of se

solicitude, Maddelena had arrived at the age venteen, and her heart was still her own. Many of the richest nobles of Pisa had made proposals for her hand, which Jacopo had deemed it prudent to refuse. Nay, scarce was there a finger in all Pisa that could touch the lute, which was not, some night or other of the year, sweeping its chords beneath her latticed window. She used to smile, as she heard the serenades to her own beauty, at times admiring the musician's skill, and sometimes blushing, as she heard herself, in the same stanza, compared to the rose, the lily, and the morning star.

One night in December---it was a cold and silent night, and the moon was up, which steeped, as it were, the pure white marble of Pisa in her own still purer and whiter light---Maddelena sat alone in her pannelled chamber, in anxious expectation of the return of her father, who had been absent for some hours. The moon-light streaming through the casement at which she sat, fell full and bright on the picture of an old crusader, giving a shadowy and unusual look to the countenance. This, together with the wild imagery of one of the provençal ballads she had been reading, deeply embued her mind with a melancholy and tender feeling. She threw down the ballad---she gazed on the bold and rugged outlines of the warrior's face---she attempted again to read---she desisted---and her eyes were rivetted on the dark contour of the warrior's countenance, made more striking by the moon-light which rested upon it. Her mind could not settle. The hour, and the scene altogether, had wrought her up into that feverish feeling of romance which all young hearts have known, and they the most which have held least intercourse with the world.

While she continued in this state, half in pleasure, half in pain, the tones of a lute, in a slow and solemn Italian air, softly arose from below the casement at which she sat. At first the musician's fingers seemed scarcely to touch the chords. A single note was only now and then heard, like the distant murmur of a stream in the desert; then it gradually rose and rose, and swelled into deeper softness, till the music at length burst into all the voluptuousness of perfect melody. Love could not have fixed upon a better hour to insinuate himself into the most impsnetrable heart. A maid alone, and in moon-light, with her senses floating on the lovely sounds of music, and her heart steeped in romantic feeling, rather woos than shuns his approaches; and we need scarcely inform our readers of either sex, that so it was with Maddelena.

(To be continued.)

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Fashions for July 1831.

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