NEAR the town of Freitville, on the borders of Tourraine, appeared two monarchs, each with his magnificent retinue, and an exiled Archbishop. The king of France, Louis, with the hope of reconciling the prelate to his sovereign, Henry, King of England, proposed a meeting in the place just mentioned. As soon as the Archbishop (it was Thomas à-Becket) appeared, Henry spurred forward his horse, and uncovered his head. The Archbishop dismounted, and throwing himself at the feet of the king, 'To your decision, Sire,' he exclaimed, 'I commit the cause of our mutual disagreement, saving the honor of God.'

At these words, Henry turned pale. Whatever is displeasing to us both,' he returned, 'should be deemed contrary to the honor of God.'

After some private and familiar conversation, 'Before my reign,' he continued, there have been many kings of England: before your appointment, there have been many Archbishops of Canterbury. Now, my Lord, concede to me what the greatest among your predecessors conceded to the least of mine.'

A voice exclaimed: The King's demand is just, and must be respected.'

'My Lord Archbishop,' said Louis, not descrying the snare that was laid under this captious proposal, do you pretend to be wiser or better than the saints? Peace is offered you are bound to accept it.'

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'My predecessors,' replied the Archbishop, were more holy than I am; but, it is my duty to imitate their virtues, not their foibles.' The two monarchs abruptly mounted their horses, and rode off. The Archbishop followed. Henry threw back his eyes upon Becket with malignant satisfaction. To-day,' he cried, I have had revenge!'

After exhausting every artifice to prejudice the Pope against the prelate; after exposing his kingdom to the evils of an interdict, and his person to excommunication; Henry became at last convinced that the only means to rescue himself from the impending calamities, would be to effect a reconciliation with Becket. He therefore invited him to return to England, where he was received with apparent joy. But the King soon revoked all the concessions made, and evinced again a spirit of animosity, which proved that the prospect of peace had not yet dawned.

His arrival filled his enemies with consternation. One of them was heard to affirm, that 'before he eats a loaf of English bread, he shall lose his life!' At Sandwich, six miles from Canterbury, he was met by Roger, Bishop of York, Gilbert, of London, and Jocelin, of Salisbury, by whom he was conducted in safety to his See, where he was received amid the enthusiastic acclamations of the people.

He was immediately surrounded by the royal ministers, commanding him, on the part of the king, to absolve the bishops who were suspended and excommunicated by the Pope; as the injury done them redounded to the person of the monarch, and tended to the subversion of the customs of England.

It is not in the power of an inferior to remove the sentence of a superior,' was his reply. Nevertheless,' he added, 'for the sake of peace, and the reverence due the king, I will take upon myself to absolve them, provided they will swear to be obedient to the Holy

See.'

Such a step cannot be taken,' responded the Bishop of York, 'without first consulting the will of the king.'

A letter was immediately despatched to Henry, who was still in France, exaggerating the pretended evil, and arousing his passions to such a degree, that he exclaimed, in a fury: All who participated in the coronation of my son are excommunicated, eh! - then by the eyes of heaven! I am of the number!' He accused his friends of ingratitude, and lamented that of all who ate his bread, there was not a man courageous enough to rid him of a turbulent Churchman!'

Among those who heard this passionate expression of the king, were four knights, Hugh de Moresville, William Tracy, Reginald Fitzurse, and Richard Brito. They immediately entered on a conspiracy, and on Christmas night swore to despatch the Archbishop. They sailed forthwith for England, and arrived near Canterbury, for the festival of the Holy Innocents. The next evening they abruptly entered his apartments, and with the hope of intimidating him, commanded him to absolve the excommunicated prelates.

It was with the royal permission,' he replied, I published the letters of the Pontiff. The case of the Archbishop of York was reserved to the Holy See. The others I am willing to absolve, on condition that they make oath to submit to the decision of the Church. I am surprised,' he continued, 'that you should threaten me in my own house.'

We shall do more than threaten!' was their fierce and boding reply.

When they withdrew, he was advised to retire, for greater safety, to the church. The monks were now chanting vespers in the

choir. When he heard the doors close after them, 'Open them!' he said; the church should not be guarded like a camp!'

As he was ascending the steps of the choir, the four knights, followed by twelve companions, all in full armor, were led into the church. Instantly, his attendants, with the exception of Edward Grim, his cross-bearer, fled away.

Where is the traitor?' vociferated Hugh de Horsea, a military deacon.

Here is the Archbishop,' answered Becket, but no traitor. What do you wish, Reginald? If you come to take my life, I command you, in the name of God, not to molest my people.'

Then throwing himself upon recommended himself and the Blessed Virgin, and St. Denis. head. Grim parried it with his stroke felled him to the ground. on the martyr's neck, drew out his them over the pavement.

his knees, and reclining his head, he cause of the Church to God, the An assassin levelled a blow at his arm, which was broken. A second Hugh de Horsea, planting his foot brains with his sword, and scattered

The month of December, Anno 1170, beheld this catastrophe. His body was interred by the monks in the vaults of the Cathedral.

THE BANKS O F MAUMEE.

SINCE the treaty, some of the Indians have said they will never leave this country; if they can find no place to stay, they will spend the rest of their days in walking up and down the Maumee mourning over the wretched state of their people.' VAN TASSEL'S JOURNAL.

I.

I STOOD in a dream on the banks of Maumee;
'T was autumn, and Nature seemed wrapt in decay:
The wind moaning crept through the shivering tree,
The leaf from the bough drifted slowly away;
The gray eagle screamed on the marge of the stream,
The solitude answered the bird of the free:
How lonely and sad was the scene of my dream,
And mournful the hour, on the banks of Maumee !

II.

A form passed before me; a vision of one

Who mourned for his nation, his country, and kin;
He walked on the shores, now deserted and lone,
Where the homes of his tribe, in their glory, had been;
And shade after shade o'er his sad spirit stole,

As wave follows wave o'er the turbulent sea;
And this lamentation he breathed from his soul,
O'er the ruins of home, on the banks of Maumee :

III.

'As the hunter at morn, in the snows of the wild,
Recalls to his mind the sweet visions of night,
When sleep, softly falling, his sorrows beguiled,
And opened his eyes in the land of delight:
So backward I muse on the dream of my youth;
Ye peace-giving hours! O, when did ye flee?
When the Christian neglected his pages of truth,

And the Great Spirit frowned on the banks of Maumee!

IV.

'Oppression has lifted his iron-like rod,

And smitten my people again and again;

The white man has said, 'There is justice with God;
Will he hear the poor Indian before him complain?
Sees he not how his children are worn and oppressed?
How driven in exile? - O can he not see?

And I, in the garments of heaviness dressed,

The last of my tribe on the banks of Maumee!

V.

'Ye trees, on whose branches my cradle was hung,
Must I yield ye a prey to the axe and the fire!
Ye shores, where the chant of the pow-wow was sung,
Have ye witnessed the light of the council expire!
Pale ghosts of my fathers, who battled of yore,

Is the Great Spirit just, in the land where ye be?
While living, dejected I'll wander this shore,

And join you at last from the banks of Maumee !'

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 grand-son, 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 spectre 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 grand-father, 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