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bore him to his favourite churchyard, and buried him within the site of the old church, below his loved bell, which had ever been to him as the cuckoo-note of a coming spring. Thus he at length obeyed its summons, and went home.

Elsie lingered till the first summer days lay warm on the land. Several kind hearts in the village, hearing of her illness, visited her and ministered to her. Wondering at her sweetness and patience, they regretted they had not known her before. How much consolation might not their kindness have imparted, and how much might not their sympathy have strengthened her on her painful road! But they could not long have delayed her going home. Nor, mentally constituted as she was, would this have been at all to be desired. Indeed it was chiefly the expectation of departure that quieted and soothed her tremulous nature. It is true that a deep spring of hope and faith kept singing on in her heart, but this alone, without the anticipation of speedy release, could only have kept her mind at peace. It could not have reached, at least for a long time, the border land between body and mind, in which her disease lay.

One still night of summer, the nurse who watched by her bedside heard her murmur through her sleep, "I hear it: come hamecome hame. I'm comin', I'm comin'-I'm gaein' hame to the wow, nae to come back." She awoke at the sound of her own words, and begged the nurse to convey to her brother her last request, that she might be buried by the side of the fool, within the old church of Ruthven.

Then she turned her face to the wall, and in the morning was found quiet and cold. She must have died within a few minutes after her last words. She was buried according to her request; and thus she too went home.

Side by side rest the aged fool and the young maiden; for the bell called them, and they obeyed; and surely they found the fire burning bright, and heard friendly voices, and felt sweet lips on theirs, in the home to which they went. Surely both intellect and love were waiting them there.

Still the old bell hangs in the old gable; and whenever another is borne to the old churchyard, it keeps calling to those who are left behind, with the same sad, but friendly and unchanging voice-“Come hame! come hame! come hame!"

"Thy sun shall no more go down; neither shall thy moon withdraw itself: for the LORD shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended."-Isaiah lx. 20.

THE LAST DAY.

BY ROBERT POLLOK.

In customed glory bright, that morn the sun
Rose, visiting the earth with light, and heat,
And joy; and seemed as full of youth, and strong
To mount the steep of heaven, as when the Stars
Of morning sung to his first dawn, and night
Fled from his face; the spacious sky received
Him blushing as a bride, when on her looked
The bridegroom; and spread out beneath his eye
Earth smiled. Up to his warm embrace the dews,
That all night long had wept his absence, flew:
The herbs and flowers their fragrant stores unlocked,
And gave the wanton breeze, that, newly woke,
Revelled in sweets, and from its wings shook health,
A thousand grateful smells: the joyous woods
Dried in his beams their locks, wet with the drops
Of night; and all the sons of music sung
Their matin song; from arboured bower, the thrush
Concerting with the lark that hymned on high;
On the green hill the flocks, and in the vale
The herds rejoiced; and, light of heart, the hind
Eyed amorously the milk-maid as she passed,
Not heedless, though she looked another way.

No sign was there of change; all nature moved In wonted harmony; men as they met, In morning salutation, praised the day, And talked of common things: the husbandman Prepared the soil, and silver-tongued hope Promised another harvest; in the streets, Each wishing to make profit of his neighbour, Merchants assembling, spoke of trying times, Of bankruptcies and markets glutted full: Or, crowding to the beach, where, to their ear, The oath of foreign accent, and the noise Uncouth of trade's rough sons, made music sweet, Elate with certain gain, beheld the bark, Expected long, enriched with other climes, Into the harbour safely steer; or saw, Parting with many a weeping farewell sad, And blessing uttered rude, and sacred pledge, The rich laden carack, bound to distant shore; And hopefully talked of her coming back With richer fraught;—or sitting at the desk, In calculation deep and intricate, Of loss and profit balancing, relieved At intervals the irksome task with thought Of future ease, retired in villa snug.

With subtile look, amid his parchments sate The lawyer, weaving his sophistries for court To meet at mid-day. On his weary couch Fat luxury, sick of the night's debauch, Lay groaning, fretful at the obtrusive beam That through his lattice peeped derisively. The restless miser had begun again To count his heaps; before her toilet stood

The fair, and, as with guileful skill she decked
Her loveliness, thought of the coming ball,
New lovers, or the sweeter nuptial night.
And evil men of desperate lawless life,

By oath of deep damnation leagued to all
Remorselessly, fled from the face of day,
Against the innocent their counsel held,
Plotting unpardonable deeds of blood,
And villanies of fearful magnitude;
Despots, secured behind a thousand bolts,

The workmanship of fear, forged chains for man;
Senates were meeting; statesmen loudly talked
Of national resources, war and peace;
And sagely balanced empires soon to end;
And faction's jaded minions, by the page
Paid for abuse, and oft-repeated lies,
In daily prints, the thoroughfare of news,
For party schemes made interest, under cloak
Of liberty, and right, and public weal.
In holy conclave, bishops spoke of tithes,
And of the awful wickedness of men;
Intoxicate with sceptres, diadems,
And universal rule, and panting hard
For fame, heroes were leading on the brave
To battle; men, in science deeply read,
And academic theory, foretold

Improvements vast;-and learned sceptics proved
That earth should with eternity endure;
Concluding madly that there was no God.

No sign of change appeared; to every man
That day seemed as the past. From noontide path
The sun looked gloriously on earth, and all
Her scenes of giddy folly smiled secure.
When suddenly, alas, fair Earth! the sun
Was wrapt in darkness, and his beams returned
Up to the throne of God; and over all

The earth came night, moonless and starless night.
Nature stood still;-the seas and rivers stood,
And all the winds: and every living thing.
The cataract, that like a giant wroth,
Rushed down impetuously, as seized, at once,
By sudden frost with all his hoary locks,
Stood still; and beasts of every kind stood still.
A deep and dreadful silence reigned alone!
Hope died in every breast; and on all men
Came fear and trembling;-none to his neighbour
spoke;

Husband thought not of wife; nor of her child
The mother; nor friend of friend; nor foe of foe.
In horrible suspense all mortals stood;

And, as they stood and listened, chariots were heard
Rolling in heaven;-revealed in flaming fire,
The angel of God appeared, in stature vast,
Blazing; and, lifting up his hand on high,
By Him that lives for ever, swore that Time
Should be no more. Throughout Creation heard,
And sighed-all rivers, lakes, and seas, and woods;
Desponding waste, and cultivated vale-
Wild cave, and ancient hill, and every rock,
Sighed; earth arrested in her wonted path,

As ox struck by the lifted axe, when nought Was feared, in all her entrails deeply groaned. A universal crash was heard, as if

The ribs of nature broke, and all her dark
Foundations failed;-and deadly paleness sate
On every face of man, and every heart
Grew chill, and every knee his fellow smote.
None spoke, none stirred, none wept; for horror held
All motionless, and fettered every tongue.
Again o'er all the nations silence fell:

And in the heavens, robed in excessive light,
That drove the thick of darkness far aside,
And walked with penetration keen through all
The abodes of men, another angel stood,

And blew the trump of God.-Awake, ye dead!
Be changed, ye living! and put on the garb

Of immortality! Awake! arise!

The God of judgment comes.-This said the voice;And silence, from eternity that slept

Beyond the sphere of the creating word,

And all the noise of Time, awakening, heard.

Heaven heard, and earth, and farthest hell through all

Her regions of despair;-the ear of Death
Heard, and the sleep that for so long a night
Pressed on his leaden eyelids, fled; and all
The dead awoke, and all the living changed.

Old men, that on their staff, bending had leaned, Crazy and frail; or sat, benumbed with age, In weary listlessness, ripe for the grave, Felt through their sluggish veins and withered limbs New vigour flow; the wrinkled face grew smooth; Upon the head that time had razored bare, Rose bushy locks; and as his son in prime Of strength and youth, the aged father stood. Changing herself, the mother saw her son Grow up, and suddenly put on the form Of manhood;--and the wretch that begging sat Limbless, deformed, at corner of the way, Unmindful of his crutch, in joint and limb Arose complete;-and he that on the bed Of mortal sickness, worn with sore distress, Lay breathing forth his soul to death, felt now The tide of life and vigour rushing back; And looking up, beheld his weeping wife, And daughter fond, that o'er him bending stooped To close his eyes;-the frantic madman too, In whose confused brain reason had lost Her way, long driven at random to and fro, Grew sober, and his manacles fell off. The newly-sheeted corpse arose, and stared On those who dressed it;-and the coffined dead, That men were bearing to the tomb, awoke, And mingled with their friends;-and armies, which The trump surprised, met in the furious shock Of battle, saw the bleeding ranks, new fallen, Rise up at once, and to their ghastly cheeks Return the stream of life in healthy flow. And as the anatomist, with all his band Of rude disciples, o'er the subject hung, And impolitely hewed his way through bones

And musoles of the sacred human form,
Exposing barbarously to wanton gaze
The mysteries of nature-joint embraced
His kindred joint, the wounded flesh grew up,
And suddenly the injured man awoke,
Among their hands, and stood arrayed complete
In immortality-forgiving scarce

The insult offered to his clay in death.

That was the hour, long wished for by the good, Of universal Jubilee to all

The sons of bondage; from the oppressor's hand The scourge of violence fell; and from his back, Heal of its stripes, the burden of the slave.

-From The Course of Time.

ARNOLD OF UNDERWALDEN.

A LEGEND OF THE SWISS CANTONS. From about the commencement of the fourteenth century, that portion of Switzerland anciently distinguished as the Waldstetten had been free from foreign domination. The brilliant and decisive victory achieved at Morgarten a few years after the revolution effected by Tell and his compatriots, had at length taught the house of Austria to respect the independence of the unconquerable freemen of Uri, Schwytz, and Underwald, and for the better part of a century the Austrian invaders had not presumed to disturb them in the enjoyment of their mountains, and valleys, and lakes. Meanwhile, the accession of several of the surrounding districts had given increased power and consequence to the Helvetic League. Lucerne had hastened to become a confederate; Zurich had followed, and Glarus, and Zug, and lastly the powerful canton of Berne. In the lapse of eight years the virtuous and hardy herdsman, and the honest and industrious burgher, still retained their simplicity of character, and had lost nothing of their invincible love of liberty: they were contented, unambitious, and happy; but regularly trained to the use of arms, and prepared at a moment's warning to meet the foe. Some petty fiefs of Austria still existed in several of the districts; and the archduke was ever ready to support his feudatories in their exactions and oppressions. Leopold, a prince in the prime of life, and of a bold and ambitious temper, was surrounded by a nobility warlike, ardent, and rapacious, and, as the vigilant and jealous republicans believed, waited but for a suitable occasion of making the effort to attach Switzerland as an appanage to his house.

Such was the situation of the eight cantons, when, on the afternoon of a fine day in July,

in the year 1385, the inhabitants of the small hamlets scattered over the sides of Mont Pilate, in the district of Lucerne, were assembling at the mansion of old Eberard Oberhulde, situated on the green Alpe of Brundlen. There was a marriage to be solemnized; and among the ancient families of the mountain, affined as they had been in peace and in war, for many ages, no one could think of being absent at such a time from his neighbour's hall. It was, besides, the eve of the festival of one of their saints, an occasion on which the Catholic herdsman, in his piety, never failed to believe that an abstinence from his customary toil was a religious obligation not to be dispensed with lightly. From the pasturages, therefore, above and below the Brundlen Alpe, in every direction, were to be seen the gay and laughing groups, in their holiday dresses, hastening by various romantic pathways to the house of the bride's father.

Old Eberard stood, in the fulness of his glee, under the shade of a venerable and wide-spreading elm before the door, welcoming the several comers, male and female, as became an ancient herdsman, with a hearty shake of the hand or a smack of the lips, that made the rocks around him ring again. At a little distance, protected from the sun by a cluster of walnuttrees, were the happy couple; the bride, who, in the dialect of the country, might be called a tolle jumpfer, or pretty girl, was surrounded by her half-demure, half-tittering maids; her hair flowing in two plaited tresses, decorated with ribands down to her feet; her dark stays neatly laced, forming a fine contrast to the snow-white hue of the sleeves of her under garment, which were turned up and fastened at the shoulders. The female guests wore each the glistening yellow birch hat, without crown, set smartly on one side, adorned with flowers, and tied under the chin with ribands. The fashion of their garments was that of the bride's, with this special exception, that their stays, skirts, ribands, laces, and sashes were of various colours-blue, brown, black, red, green, and yellow; so that, when they stood up in double or triple row, with their full blooming faces, they looked like a beautiful bed of tulips. Florent, the happy hoch-ryter, or bridegroom, stood at a short distance from the bride in his martial equipment, it being indispensable in those days, that, before a youth took upon himself the charge of a family, he should manifest on the wedding-day that he was provided with arms to protect it. He stood erect, therefore, in cap and corselet; his sturdy sword buckled to his thigh, a pike in his hand, and a cross-bow, a battle-axe, and knotted club

leaning against the tree behind him. The friends of the bridegroom, generally of stately and athletic frame, were, in dress, almost as multiform as the opposite sex, their doublets and hose puffed and striped with every tint of the rainbow, and in some instances the arms, and even the legs, of the same individual of no kindred colour.

But scarcely had the person advanced near enough for the group to discover that he was a man of some sixty years of age, and of a frank and easy, and perhaps martial, deportment, when a new and striking object claimed their attention. "The lammer-geyer!" exclaimed several voices at once; "The lammer-geyer!" was echoed by almost every one present, in tones of alarm and apprehension; and that dreadful monster of the air, the lammer-geyer, or lamb-vulture, was seen high over the Peak, descending in his gigantic and fearful strength.

hastened to their rescue.

There was one, however, among the weddingguests whose appearance showed him to be of a superior stamp. Clad in the plainest habiliments, the character of his commanding exterior could not be for a moment mistaken. A bouquetin, or mountain-goat, had been He seemed of middle age, and his countenance, browsing upon the herbage of the lower region usually grave, at times approached in its ex- of the Peak, having left her young in a cavity pression even to severity. But virtue and above. With the instinct of a mother she perhigh resolve sat on his brow, and his unblench-ceived the danger that threatened them, and ing eye, full of meaning, spoke the language With inconceivable of a soul exclusively engrossed by grand and speed she leaped from crag to crag; where two lofty thoughts. He was of Underwalden, one parallel walls of rock arose close to each other, of those leading spirits to whom, in the hour bounding from side to side in an upward course; of need, the everyday people of the world turn or, incredible as it may seem, with successive for succour and support, and, that hour passed, leaps surmounting the naked perpendicular whom they not unfrequently cast off to "beg- cliff. In a few moments she was with her garly divorcement." Devotion to his country young, her head, armed with its tremendous was his master passion, and while the political horns, guarding the entrance of the cave. The storm yet hung in the distance, he employed vulture stooped to his intended quarry, but himself in occasional visits to the several dis- failing to reach the young, fixed his iron talons tricts of the union, wherever there were gather-round the horns of the dam, and, after a short ings of the people, for the purpose of inciting his countrymen, if that should be necessary, to preparation against its coming fury.

The greetings had been made, and the pleasantries passed, the priest was in attendance, and the ceremony was about to proceed, when a stranger was descried approaching across the plain from the base of the rock in front.

"What guest comes from the Peak?" exclaimed Martin of Hergottwald.

"If I mistake not," said Eberard, "it is one of the strangers who stopped at my door to-day on their way to the Peak; and see," he added, "where his young companion appears high up the rock!"

"Strangers! who are they? whence come they?" inquired the guest from Underwalden.

"Of that I know but little," replied Eberard; "they are courteous and curious, but not equally communicative."

"But do you not remember, father," observed the bride, blushing at the sound of her own voice, "that the younger stranger told us they resided at the castle of Gerisau?"

"At Gerisau!" exclaimed the man of Underwalden, "they are Austrians then! Austrians!" he repeated in a lower voice, as he retired to the shelter of a tree and fixed his eyes earnestly on the approaching stranger.

struggle, dragged her half out of her recess. The bouquetin, an animal of immense strength, setting her short fore-feet against the protruding rocks, for a time kept up the desperate contest, till the fragment of a rock, hurled by the young stranger from above, struck the vulture, who, enraged, quitted his hold. The new assailant was now in evident danger, but the glitter of his short couteau-de-chasse, as the vulture approached, seemed to appal him. Infuriated, he darted off, and as he clove the air in rapid circles towards the plain, with his bearded neck bent downward, he seemed gazing upon the earth, as if desperately intent upon wreaking his vengeance on anything assailable.

In the rear of the chalet, and but a short distance off, a girl had been playing among the shrubbery with a young child of about two years of age; but, yielding to her girlish curiosity, she had suffered herself to be attracted toward the crowd, and the child was for the instant forgotten. The scene we have described had occupied but a few moments, nor was the situation of the child remembered till the dreadful vulture was observed to pause in his flight, immediately over the garden. A shriek from the wretched nurse of the child was the first warning of the danger that impended;

but it was too late. Poised for a few seconds on his pinions, the lammer-geyer hung in the air almost motionless, then with a slow and contracted circular movement began his descent, and with a rush of wings like a tempest swooped upon his prey: the next instant he was seen soaring towards the Peak, bearing the infant in his talons. Cross-bows, lances, were seized in haste; but what could human effort avail? Cries, shrieks, spoke the anguish of the parents and the sympathy of their friends. The vulture alighted on a ledge of the rock, some distance below the scene of his former conflict, and, as he bent down his terrible beak, it was thought that he was devouring the child. A mute horror pervaded the company, broken only by the deep, suppressed groans and convulsive sobs of the agonized parents. On a sudden, the animal was seen to toss his head high in the air, his huge wings were expanded, as if in the effort to fly, but dropped again lifeless to his sides, his monstrous frame quivered as in the spasms of death, and the lammer-geyer rolled like a dark lavange down the precipice. At the same moment the figure of the young stranger was discovered standing on the cliff, the child sat on one arm, erect in the form of life, while the other was distinctly perceived to wave a scarf in sign of victory and safety. At the sight, a shout so loud, so wild, went forth from the crowd, that in its reverberation from the mountain, it seemed to shake the solid rock, where the stranger stood on his perilous footing.

While some of the mountaineers ran to drag the feathered monster from his rocky grave, the rest of the company proceeded in frantic joy to meet the gallant victor. The situation of the stranger had indeed been one of extreme hazard. After his first rencounter with the vulture, hastening to descend the Peak, he was about to turn round an angle of the rock to the narrow ledge, along which the path led, when he beheld the vulture approaching with his prey, and he couched down behind the crag as the bird alighted at his side. Instinctively he threw himself between the beak of the ravenous monster and his intended victim, and instantly felt himself in his iron grasp. To turn, to stir on the fearful ridge, was almost sure destruction, and the slightest effort of the animal would hurl him down the rock. With the least motion possible, he directed his weapon over his head to the neck of the bird; and, guided by his left hand, just as he felt the beak close around his own neck, thrust the knife, with sure and firm hand, deep into the animal's throat; then clinging with desperate

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energy to the rough surface of the rocky path, sustained himself in his perilous situation till the vulture's struggles were over, when his grasp relaxed and his huge carcass slid over the prostrate body of the stranger into the abyss.

The young hero was conducted to the chalet in triumph, with the lammer-geyer borne in state before him; the men envying and the women admiring him. The youth bore his honours with a modest, yet frank and well-bred air; spoke of the achievement as of a lucky accident; and insisted that his slight wounds should not delay the ceremony for a single moment.

Accordingly the priest pronounced the blessing, and Florent and his Marianne were for the time the very happiest couple in the world. Dancing among those primitive people was, at this period, known only on the occasion of a marriage or the confirmation of a nun; when, therefore, the music struck, it may be imagined with what alacrity the young people stood up, at least the girls; for the Swiss peasant, even in the dance, retains a portion of his characteristic gravity, while the females are all spirit and playful vivacity. The bride was led out by the young Austrian, who, in his neat hunter dress, exhibited a form and a grace that were long remembered and talked of by the mountain maidens.

In the repast that followed, it was plainly to be seen that it was honest Eberard's intention things should be done handsomely. The good father had even excelled himself on this occasion; and among the dainties, the ladies were surprised and delighted with the toasts sopped in wine, and nicely powdered with sugar and cinnamon. We have not mentioned milk and cheese, as being things of course; and yet the latter, at least, deserves particular notice, not only because it was excellent in itself, but the rather that it had been made and designed for this special occasion full twenty years before, and, agreeably to the country custom, had the names of the intended man and wife, while they were yet children, carved legibly upon its ample surface. The appearance of the cheese was a coup-d'éclat, for, with a laudable policy, the intended bride and bridegroom had been kept in ignorance of the arrangement, and suffered to fall in love in their own way; and Florent had gone through all the gradations of courtship as regulated by Swiss usage; had duly come a-wooing through storm and sun, over hulde and hubel, through tobel and tangel-holtz, until one eventful Saturday night, when every maiden, dressed for company, has

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