read; and within a few days the Eight Cantons numbered among the auxiliaries of their foe more than two hundred states, princes, and bishops. The four ancient cantons of the lake took the field without delay, under the avoyer or mayor of Lucerne, the supreme military authority in Switzerland being always exercised by the chief officer of the state; and while the inferior nobles of the Lion League kept in check the powerful barons along the course of the Rhine, assailed, and carried, and destroyed the feudal strongholds of their most immediate and dangerous enemies.

It was at this eventful point of time, when Leopold might hourly be expected on his march from Kybourg, and the matrons and maidens of the land sat solitary in their deserted dwellings. The night was far spent, yet Bertha and her mother still remained gazing anxiously out upon the darkness, when suddenly a small dark object moved swiftly towards them, across the silent lake. It was a boat! Can it be Arnold returned from Zurich? That is impossible; for the army is there; and there also must be Arnold. The bosom of Bertha swelled almost to bursting: she spoke not; she scarcely breathed. This was the anniversary of her first meeting with Eyloff, and a thousand undefined hopes and wishes rushed to her heart. And now the figure of a man throws itself from the boat almost before it touches the shore-he flies up the pathway, and in an instant, Eyloff is at the feet of Bertha.

For a time they were mute and motionless: at length Bertha spoke as she disengaged her self from his arms, and sank pale and exhausted into her chair

"Eyloff,” she said, "come you not till you bring war and desolation with you? Alas! Eyloff, the flowers of spring are all withered, even like the hopes of our love."

Beloved Bertha," Eyloff answered, "it is true my efforts to avert the calamity have had no other effect than to draw upon myself my sovereign's displeasure. But even his commands alone could not have kept me from you; and until he summoned his knights to the field, I was deprived of my personal liberty; he is now in march through Zurich; and, behold, I am here."

"O, Eyloff!" exclaimed Bertha, at once awakening to the perils that environed both the person of her lover and his reputation as a knight, "why, why are you here? Know you not the dangers that encompass you?"

"I know them, Bertha; but to be restored to the confidence of my affianced bride, what would I not encounter!"

"Alas!" said the maiden, "call me not by that title, Eyloff, since the condition of our union can never be fulfilled."

"Never shall woman but you, Bertha, hear that title from the lips of Eyloff: and may we not yet cherish hope, dear Bertha? Should your worst fears be confirmed, and Leopold's arms prove successful, may not your Eyloff still have the glory of shielding the house of Winkelried?"

"And think you that Arnold of Winkelried will survive his country's death? And think you that his daughter-the daughter of a martyred patriot-could ever-0 Heaven!" she cried, and paused in convulsive agony at the picture her imagination drew.

"My wife, my beloved Bertha," cried the youth, on his knees before her, clasping her cold hands in his, "hear me and believe me: on the honour of a knight I swear, that if Eyloff goes into the fight it shall be but to protect, to save your father."

"I have a son, too, in arms," observed the matron, who had not before spoken, as her fixed and noble countenance became slightly convulsed.

"Is the brave boy too there?" asked Eyloff. "Madam," he added, ardently seizing her hand, "mother of my Bertha, thy son shall be my brother."

At this moment a light appeared upon the most distant mountain towards the north; rapidly it increased in size, and soon blazed a bright and portentous beacon. "They have fired the beacon at the hohe wacht," said the wife of Arnold; "the foe approaches," she added, with the firmness of a Roman matron.

In a few moments, in whatever direction the eye was turned, the signal fires were seen to blaze from the summits of the mountains that inclosed the lakes; the horn sounded loud and shrill from every hill and valley, and the quick beat of the alarm-bell, from town and village, came fearfully on the gale.

"The Landsthurm is summoned; the country will be up in mass," said the matron; "each pass and defile will be guarded; and your return will become impossible."

The terrified Bertha joined her mother in urging the knight's departure; but it was in vain, until, interrupting him in his torrent of prayers and protestations, the tender maiden blessed him with a full assurance of her unbroken love and confidence: it was then Eyloff wrapped his Swiss disguise more closely around his body and disappeared.

The morning dawned on the most eventful day that Switzerland had known for nearly a

century. Leopold had passed the walls of Zurich, where the confederates had hastened to meet him; and, directing his march on Lucerne, halted before the town of Sempach, which lay in his route, intending first to chastise the rebels of that place. The young knights, among whom a descendant of the tyrant Gesler was conspicuous, as they pranced gaily around the walls, taunted the honest burghers in the levity of their hearts, exhibiting, with bitter jests, the fetters meant for their magistrates. And as the serfs and followers of the army were laying waste the fields of grain about the town, the youthful De Reinach called to the avoyer to send the reapers their breakfast.

"The confederates are preparing it," replied the calm avoyer.

In was in effect as the avoyer said. The Swiss force, penetrating the Austrian's design, and leaving Zurich to be defended by its own citizens against the troops detached by Leopold, had by a different route and a rapid march, and joined by additional numbers, already gained the spot, and now occupied a station in a forest near the Lake of Sempach.

Leopold, in the pride of power and youth, appeared at the head of a gendarmerie of full four thousand knights of approved valour, each attended by his esquire, and clad in complete steel, gorgeous and glittering in the panoply of war, and mounted on chargers of blood and fire; the host of burghers, of vassals, and of mercenaries followed on foot their respective avoyers, or barons, or chieftains, to the field.

Opposed to this formidable array were but little more than a thousand Helvetians, from Uri and Underwalden, Schwytz and Lucerne, with trifling contingents from Glarus and Zug. Their weapons were chiefly the short sword, and halbert, and massy club studded with iron. Some wielded the espadron or heavy two-handed sword, others the battle-axe or ancient cross-bow. Not a few of the weapons had been used at the field of Morgarten, and the descendants of the heroes of that fight, who now bore them, felt themselves invincible. The shield of the Helvetians was simply a board fastened to the left arm, but some had corselet and cap, and even cuisse, the spoils and trophies of former victories. Each canton followed its peculiar leader and banneret, the avoyer of Lucerne commanding in chief. But the banner of Berne was not at Sempach. Her troops were stationed, as a corps of observation, two leagues from the field, towards Lucerne. When, in justification of her neutrality, Berne pleaded her truce with Austria, she could not

have recollected that, in her utmost need, the Waldstetten had formerly sent their soldiers to her rescue, and enabled the immortal Rodolph d'Erlach to achieve the victory of Laupen. But has not retributive justice visited Berne? More than four hundred years after this event, when Laupen was again the post of danger, and Berne was in peril, and a descendant of the same Rodolph again defended her, those same Waldstetters held themselves aloof, as a corps of observation. Berne fell before the ferocious Gaul, and the gallant but unfortunate D'Erlach may have sighed as he remembered that the banner of Berne was not at Sempach.

It was now near the hour of noon of a hot and sultry day in July; the young nobles, sweltering in their armour, became impatient for the onset, and the counsel of old John de Hasenberg, to wait till the corps came up from Zurich, was treated with scorn and scurrile jests.

"We have waited too long, old heart-ofhare," said they. "Give but the word," they added, to the duke, "and you shall see your knights alone exterminate yon ragged host of rebels."

"Be it as you say," replied the duke; "dismount, form, and prepare for the charge.”

In a moment the steel of the knights rang as they vaulted to the ground; their esquires led their chargers to the rear; and a phalanx of knights was formed, armed with pikes, whose length enabled them, even from the fourth rank, to prove effective. Such was the order of their front. A few archers formed on each wing; and the rest of the troops, with their heavy arquebuses and battering engines, intended for sieges, took post in the rear.

And now the confederates, debouching from the forest, saw, from the hill they occupied, that they no longer had to apprehend the dangerous charge of cavalry, and resolved to take immediate advantage of the ill-advised movement of their enemy. But first proclamation was made at the head of each detachment, bidding every soldier who felt himself unable to cope with four adversaries, to depart without censure. None leaving the ranks, the troops next fell upon their knees, in conformity to ancient usage, and uttered a short but fervent prayer to Heaven; while Leopold was dubbing knights upon the field, and the nobles cut off the long, turned-up points of their cavalry boots, and locked their helms, and fixed down their visors.

Firm and compact, with no part of their bodies assailable, the Austrians now moved on, to the music of their own clashing armour,

an irresistible iron mass, bristling with spears. The confederates, formed in the shape of a wedge, with small corps of bowmen thrown out in advance of their flanks, and directing their attack with intent to pierce the enemy's centre, came down the hill with loud shouts.

Amidst a flight of arrows from the several wings, the two armies met midway on the rise of the hill with a tremendous shock. The gallant Gundelinguen, the avoyer of Lucerne, who with the banneret led the advance, in vain endeavoured to break the Austrian front; in vain were many of the lances of the knights shivered by the Helvetians' massy clubs, they were instantly supplied from the ranks in the rear, and the battalia remained unshaken. After the most obstinate and deadly conflict, the Swiss began to give ground, while the Austrian gendarmerie, with their iron heels trampling over the bodies of the brave avoyer and more than a hundred of his companions, who had fallen at their posts, moved on steadily and unbroken. The banner of Lucerne was in their hands; they had forced the confederates back to the plain, and now fought on equal ground the foremost Swiss were everywhere falling, pierced by their lances, without the possibility of reaching their assailants, while each moment the Austrian reserve from Zurich might be expected in their rear. All seemed lost; the fate of Switzerland hung on the issue of a few short moments. At this instant a voice was heard in the republican ranks: "Open," it cried, "open, confederates, and give me way."

A leader of the contingent of Underwalden rushed to the front; no weapon was in his hands, nor shield upon his arm; he had torn the corselet from his breast, and the fire of the devoted patriot flamed in his eye.

"Comrades," he cried, "I go to open your way to the enemy-protect my wife and children."

Alone he rushed towards the presented lances, extending wide his arms, then, with herculean strength, closing them again around as many as he could grasp, he directed their united points into his body. With a shout like thunder the confederates poured through the temporary breaches he had effected and over the prostrate body of their compatriot. The tide of battle was instantly turned. The Austrian knights, cased in heavy steel, were unable to turn, and fell before the fury of the athletic and unencumbered mountaineers, who, with their axes and maces, clove and battered their crowned crests, on right and left, till they had hewn their way into the centre of the unwieldy

phalanx. Havoc raged in every quarter. Many of the nobles met an ignoble fate, and died without a blow, overthrown and trampled to death in the mêlée, or suffocated in their armour. With others, the severed casque, the wide-gaping cuirass or habergeon, and the crushed helmet, bespoke the deadly force with which the Swiss weapons were wielded. The flower of the Austrian nobility lay extended on the field; the mercenaries and vassals in the rear had mounted and fled; yet still the gallant few sustained the fight. Twice had the ducal banner of Austria stooped, as its devoted bearers fell. Leopold, disdaining to survive the ruin of the day, seized the standard of his house, and, as he received his death wound, waved it over his head and sunk in death, enshrouded in its folds. The conflict was at an end. The pious confederates knelt on the bloody field, in devout thanksgiving to Him who gave the victory, and returned to their respective cantons laden with spoil, and fifteen captured banners of their enemy. The remains of the ill-fated Leopold were taken from beneath the pile of devoted knights who had perished in defending his corse from insult, and conveyed with the bodies of many of his nobles to the abbey of Koenegsfelden, where their warlike effigies still frown along the walls. The brave avoyer and his gallant townsmen, who had fallen at his side, sleep in the chapel raised over them in their native Lucerne, where are still to be seen, together with the coat of mail that Leopold wore, the iron collar intended by the invader for the neck of the avoyer, and the banner of the town, stained with the pure blood of that heroic citizen.

Such was the battle of Sempach, so glorious to Helvetia, so disastrous to her invader; in which were extinguished many of the noblest houses of Austria-in which were crushed for ever her hopes of conquest, and that secured for four hundred years the independence of Switzerland.

Is it asked, where in the fray fought Arnold of Winkelried? Is he not already recognized in the immortal martyr of his country's freedom? And where was the husband of Bertha, the gay and gallant Eyloff! Alas! his place was with the Austrian warriors, in the front of the fight, and at the moment when he would have perished for the father of his bride, his lance pierced that father's heart. Nor did the horror of the scene close here; the son of Arnold was the first to follow his brave father, and the husband of Bertha fell by her brother's hand.

The abbey of Eghelberg hid for ever from

the world the sorrows of the heart-stricken widow and daughter of the knight of Underwalden; but, in the male line, his noble strain was long manifested; and, in the sixteenth century, at the field of Marignano, called by distinction, even at that day, the Battle of the Giants, it was an Arnold of Winkelried who led the small Swiss advance against the fifty thousand French, under the young hero Francis I.

The Swiss of the Waldstetten are not an enthusiastic people; nor, as simple and stern republicans, have they felt willing to make gods of their heroic citizens; and when, in the fervour of revolutionary feeling, a distinguished foreigner asked permission to erect a monument to William Tell, the magistrates of Uri answered, "No; we need not monuments to remind us of our ancestors." Yet Tell has his chapel in Uri, as Arnold in Underwalden. Every spot associated with their actions is hallowed in the remembrance of the Helvetians. Their virtues and heroism are their theme and their example. They live in the hearts of their grateful countrymen, and, without statues or gorgeous monuments, are still venerated and distinguished by a nation of heroes-by a people of whom it has been said, that, for five hundred years there has not been known among them an individual instance of cowardice or treason.

MY MOTHER'S GRAVE.

BY THOMAS AIRD.

O rise and sit in soft attire!
Wait but to know my soul's desire!
I'd call thee back to earthly days,
To cheer thee in a thousand ways!
Ask but this heart for monument,
And mine shall be a large content.

A crown of brightest stars to thee!
How did thy spirit wait for me,
And nurse thy waning light, in faith

That I would stand 'twixt thee and death!

Then tarry on thy bowing shore,

Till I have ask'd thy sorrows o'er.

I came not, and I cry to save
Thy life from the forgetful grave
One day, that I may well declare
How I have thought of all thy care,
And love thee more than I have done;
And make thy day with gladness run.
I'd tell thee where my youth has been,
Of perils past-of glories seen:

I'd tell thee all my youth has doneAnd ask of things to choose and shun; And smile at all thy needless fears, But bow before thy solemn tears.

Come, walk with me, and see fair earth,
And men's glad ways, and join their mirth!
Ah me! is this a bitter jest?

What right have I to break thy rest?
Well hast thou done thy worldly task,
Nothing hast thou of me to ask!

Men wonder till I pass away,
They think not but of useless clay:
Alas! for Age, that this should be!
But I have other thoughts of thee;
And I would wade thy dusty grave,
To kiss the head I cannot save.

O for life's power! that I might see
Thy visage swelling to be free!
Come near, O burst that earthly cloud,
And meet me, meet me, lowly bow'd.
Alas!-in corded stiffness pent,
Darkly I guess thy lineament.

I might have lived, and thou on earth,
And been to thee like stranger's birth,
Mother; but now that thou art gone,
I feel as in the world alone:

The wind which lifts the streaming tree-
The skies seem cold and strange to me.

I feel a hand untwist the chain
Of all thy love, with shivering pain,
From round my heart: This bosom's bare
And less than wonted life is there.-
Ay, well indeed it may be so!
And well for thee my tears may flow!

Because that I of thee was part,
Made of the blood-drops of thy heart:
My birth I from thy body drew,
And I upon thy bosom grew:
Thy life was set my life upon;
And I was thine, and not my own.

Because I know there is not one

To think of me, as thou hast done
From morn, till star-light, year by year:-
For me thy smile repaid thy tear:
And fears for me,-and no reproof,
When once I dared to stand aloof.

My punishment-that I was far
When God unloosed thy weary star:
My name was in thy faintest breath,
And I was in thy dream of death:
And well I know what raised thy head,
When came the mourner's muffled tread

Alas! I cannot tell thee now,
I could not come to hold thy brow:
And wealth is late, nor ought I've won,
Were worth to hear thee call thy son,
In that dark hour when bands remove,
And none are named but names of love.

Alas, for me! I missed that hour;

My hands, for this, shall miss their power!
For thee, the sun, and dew, and rain,
Shall ne'er unbind thy grave again,
Nor let thee up the light to see,
Nor let thee up to be with me!

Yet, sweet thy rest from care and strife, And many pains that hurt thy life!Turn to thy God-and blame thy sonTo give thee more than I have done. Thou God, with joy beyond all years, Fill up the channels of her tears.—

Thou carest not now for soft attire,
Yet wilt thou hear my soul's desire;
To earth I dare not call thee more,
But speak from off thy awful shore:
O ask this heart for monument,
And mine shall be a large content!

A DUTIFUL NEPHEW.

BY ASCANIO MORI DA CENO.

There once dwelt in our good city of Mantua a certain Messer Maffeo Strada, an elderly gentleman of very unobjectionable manners, and well to do in the world. But, though extremely active and vigilant in his affairs, he was not forgetful of his social duties, inasmuch as having lost his own wife and family, he took into his charge an orphan nephew, for the purpose of supplying the place of his parents, and educating him in a manner befitting his birth. When he found that the boy discovered little turn for letters, his kind uncle very properly took him away from school, with the intention of devoting him to mercantile affairs until he should be able to enter upon his own concerns. And such was the young man's prudence and discretion that he quickly imbibed the habits of business practised by his patron, insomuch as to excite the admiration and surprise of all his friends and acquaintance. On this account he daily gained ground in the good graces of his uncle, who began to regard him with as much pride and

On

pleasure as if he had been his own son. the other hand the young man always showed his uncle the respect due to a father; and so great was his mercantile proficiency, that when the old gentleman was seized with a series of tertian ague-fits, he was absolutely competent to take upon himself the charge of the office.

Still his uncle's fits were a source of great disquietude to him, and he spared no pains and expense to restore him to his usual excellent state of health. The care of young Federigo, therefore, for by this name he had been christened, soon placed old Messer Matteo on his legs again, which were directly employed to bring him down as fast as possible to his counting-house, where his nephew received him at the head of all the clerks with three commercial cheers, evincing the greatest satisfaction in the world, while the news diffused a placid joy over the countenances of all the jobbers in the city. He was still, however, advised by his doctors to adhere for a period to his gentle soporific and perspiring draughts, in order, as they assured him, to carry off the dregs of his disease, under which discipline he remained somewhat weak and querulous.

His careful nephew, unacquainted with this last prescription, one morning went into his room to consult him on some affairs, and was surprised to find him buried under an enormous load of bed-clothes, just as he was beginning to promote the medicinal warmth. He had closed his eyes, and lay perfectly quiet, invoking the moisture to appear, with all a patient's anxiety and fervency of feeling, which cannot endure the least interference with the grand object he has in view. The careful nephew approached on tip-toe, fearful of rousing his good uncle too suddenly, and was concerned to behold him lying apparently in so piteous a plight. Anxious lest he had met with a relapse, he began to accuse himself of not having been sufficiently careful in preventing him from resuming business too soon. The old gentleman at first laughed a little on hearing his over-scrupulous observations; then he became rather uneasy at his repeated inquiries and lamentations over him; and lastly, he was afraid that this untimely interruption might check the course of the fluids, without in the least benefiting the solids, respecting both of which he had lately become very particular. In fact he began to fear that the necessary perspiration would be stopped, which, next to the stopping of the firm, was the thing he most dreaded in the world. When his careful nephew, therefore, again began to hint his precautions that he should not enter too soon