Accordingly, that she might find means of dealing back to him the blow which he had inflicted on her first husband, she prevailed on Etzel to invite her brothers, with their attendants, and especially Hagan, to come from the far Rhine, and partake the hospitality of the Huns in the East. This request, from motives partly of kindness, partly of curiosity, was at once responded to by all only, as usual, the dark Hagan stands alone, and prophesies harm. He knew be had done a deed that could not be pardoned; and he foresaw clearly that, in going to Vienna, he was marching into a lion's den, whence, for him, certainly there was no return. But, with a hardihood that never deserts him, if for no other reason than that no one may dare to call him a coward, he goes along with the doomed band, the only conscious among so many unconscious, who were destined to turn the walls of Hunnish merriment into mourning, and to change the wine of the banqueters into blood. So far, however, his dark anticipations prevailed with his unsuspecting comrades, that they marched in great force and well armed; so that when, after encountering some bloody omens on the long road, they did at length encounter the false fair welcome of the injured queen, they were prepared to sell their lives dearly, and to die standing. No sooner arrived than they were well advertised by the redoubted Dietrich of Bern, (Verona,) then attached to Etzel's court, of the temper of their hostess, and of the deathful dangers that awaited them behind the fair show of regal hospitality. This information only steeled the high heart of Hagan the more to meet danger in the only way that suited his temper, by an open and disdainful defiance. He and his friend Volker, the "valiant gleeman," who plays a distinguished part in the catastrophe of the poem, doggedly seated themselves

before the palace gate, and refused to do homage to the Queen of the Huns in her own kingdom; and, as if to sharpen the point of her revenge, displayed across his knees his good broadsword, that very invincible Balmung, which had once owned no hand but that of Siegfried. This display of defiance was a fitting prelude to the terrible combat that followed. Though the knight of Trony was the only object of Lady Kriemhild's hatred, connected as he was with the rest of the Burgundians, it was impossible that the sword should reach his heart, without having first mowed down hundreds and thousands of the less important subordinates. Accordingly the sanguinary catastrophe of the tragedy consists in this, that in order to expiate the single sin of Hagan-proceeding, as that did originally out of the false dealing of Siegfried, and the wounded pride of Brunhild-the whole royal family of the Burgundians or Niebelungers are prostrated in heaps of promiscuous slaughter with their heathen foemen, the Huns. The slaughter of the suitors, in the twenty-second book of the Odyssey, is ferocious enough to our modern feelings; but the gigantic butchery with which the Niebelungen Lay concludes outpurples that as far as the red hue of Sylla's murders did the pale castigation of common politicians. Eight books are occupied in describing the details of this red ruin, which a woman's revenge worked; and the different scenes painted out with a terrific grandeur, that resembles more the impression produced by some horrid opium dream than a human reality. Victim after victim falls before the Titanic vastness of the Burgundian heroes— Gunther, and Gernot, and Gieselher, the valiant gleeman Volker, who flourishes his broadsword with humorous ferocity, as if it were his fiddlestick, and, above all, the dark Hagan himself:

are

a

the thirteenth century. Its author is not known.

Secondly, The lay of the Niebelungen is extremely interesting, as disproving, so far as analogy may avail to do so, the Wolfian theory above alluded to, of the composition of the Iliad out of a number of separate ballads. Lachmann has tried the same process of disintegration with the unknown Homer of his own country; but a sound-minded Englishman needs but to read the poem as it has been given us, for the first time, complete by Mr. Lettsom,* in order to stand aghast at the extreme trouble which learned men in Germany often give themselves, in order to prove nonsense. "Nihil est tam absurdum quod non scripseret aliquis Germanorum."

Thirdly, As a poetical composition, the Lay of the Niebelungen will not bear comparison for a moment with the two great Greek works of the same class; it is even, in our opinion, inferior to its nearest modern counterpart, the Cid. The author of the Iliad possessed a soul as sunny and as fiery as those lovely islandfringed coasts that gave him birth; and in describing battles he rushes on himself to the charge, like some old

French-eating Marshal Blucher, the incarnation of the whirlwind of battle which he guides. Our German minstrel takes matters more easily, and, while his pen revels in blood, sits all the while in his easy chair, rocking himself delectably, and, like a true German, smoking his pipe. His quiet serene breadth is very apt to degenerate into Westphalian flats and sheer prosiness. When, again, he would be sublime and stirring, as in the bloody catastrophe, he is apt to overshoot the mark, and becomes horrible. His heroes are too gigantic, and do things with a touch of their finger which no Homeric hero would have dreamt of without the help of a god. The fancy, also, of the old German is very barren and monotonous, as compared with the wealthy Greek. His similes are few; he has no richness of analogy. Nevertheless, the Niebelungen Lay remains for all Europe a very notable poem-for all lovers of popular poetry an indispensable study. Whatever else it wants, it has nature and health, simplicity and character about it; and these things are always pleasurable-sometimes, where a taint of vicious taste has crept in, your only curatives.

You are, I suppose, perfectly aware of what took place before Juggling Johnny was appointed steward of Squire Bull's household. The story is not a pretty one; and, for the sake of those who are dead and gone, I shall not enter into particulars. Suffice it that Johnny was installed in the superintendence of the under-servants' room through the influence of Dick Devilsdust, Old Hum, the superannuated Quack, Bendigo the fighting Quaker, and a lot more of the same set, who lived in the villages upon the Squire's property, and bore any thing but goodwill to the steady and peaceable tenants. Dick Devilsdust, in particular, was a walking pestilence to himself. For some reason or other, which I could never fathom, he had imbibed a most intense hatred to the military, and never could set his eyes upon a Redcoat without being thrown into a horrible convulsion, and bellowing like a bull at the sight of a Kilmarnock nightcap. As he grew up, he took to writing tracts between the intervals of weaving; and one of his first productions was an elaborate defence of Esquire North, who was then accused of having used harsh measures towards one of his tenantry. It is reported that Dick sent a copy of this pamphlet to the Esquire, with his humble compliments and so forth; but whether that be true or no, certain it is that he never received any thanks, or so much as a stiver's acknowledgment for having taken up cudgels against poles-an omission which, to the present day, he remembers with peculiar bitterness. So Dick thought it his best policy, as it really was, to turn his attention to the state of matters at home in Bullockshatch. Dick, you must know, dealt in a kind of cloth so utterly bad that no tenant on the estate would allow it to approach his skin. It was stamped all over with great flaring patterns of flamingos, parroquets, and popinjays, such as no Christian could

abide the sight of; and if you took one of his handkerchiefs to blow your nose with, the odds are that its texture was so flimsy that both your fingers came through. He was therefore obliged to sell it to people living beyond the estate-Jews, Turks, heretics, or infidels, he did not care whom, so that he could turn a penny; and some of those benighted creatures, having no other way of covering their nakedness, were content to take his rags, and to pay him handsomely for them. For all that, Dick was a discontented man. Did he meet a respectable tenant of Squire Bull going soberly with his family to church, when he, Dick, was pretending to jog to the meeting-house with his associates, (though Obadiah refused to certify that he was by any means a regular attender,) he would make mouths at the worthy man, and accost him thus:

"So, sir! going to the tithe-eating parson's, I see-much good may it do ye.

And if ye don't happen to have any particular sins this fine morning to repent of, I may as well remind ye that the quartern loaf is a farthing dearer than it ought to be just at the present time. Do you know what a locust is, you clod? You're a cankerworm, you base chawbacon!" And so on he would go reviling the honest man, who had all the mind in the world to lay him on the broad of his back in the mud-and would have done it too, had it been a working week-day. Another while, Dick would send the bellman round the village, and having called a special meeting of weavers like himself, he would harangue them in some fashion like the following:

"Look'ye, my lads, I'm an independent man and a weaver, and I don't care a brass for Squire Bull. I've got a seat in the under-servants' room, and if I am not entitled to make a row at meal-times I don't know who is. I'll tell you a bit of my mind-you're the worst-used set