Dun forest-arches, bathing with red gold
Their stems, till each is made a marvel to behold,

LXXIV.

Gorgeous, yet full of gloom!-In such an hour,
The vesper-melody of dying bells

Wanders through Spain, from each gray con-
vent's tower

O'er shining rivers poured, and olive-dells,
By every peasant heard, and muleteer,
And hamlet, round my home:-and I am here,
Living again through all my life's farewells,

In these vast woods, where farewell ne'er was
spoken,

I have seen

A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract
Of inland ground, applying to his ear
The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell;
To which, in silence hushed, his very soul
Listened intently, and his countenance soon
Brightened with joy; for murmurings from within
Were heard-sonorous cadences! whereby,
To his belief, the monitor expressed
Mysterious union with its native sea.
-Even such a shell the universe itself
Is to the ear of Faith.-The Excursion.
Note 2, page 2, col. 2.

I see an oak before me, &c.

"I recollect hearing a traveller, of poetical temAnd sole I lift to Heaven a sad heart-yet un- felt on beholding on the banks of the Missouri, an perament expressing the kind of horror which he broken!

LXXV.

In such an hour are told the hermit's beads;
With the white sail the seaman's hymns floats

by:

Peace be with all! whate'er their varying creeds,
With all that send up holy thoughts on high!
Come to me, boy!-by Guadalquivir's vines,
By every stream of Spain, as day declines,
Man's prayers are mingled in the rosy sky.
-We, too, will pray; nor yet unheard, my
child!

Of Him whose voice we hear at eve amidst the
wild.

LXXVI.

oak of prodigious size, which had been in a manner overpowered by an enormous wild grape-vine. The vine had clasped its huge folds round the trunk, and from thence had wound about every branch and twig, until the mighty tree had withered in its embrace. It seemed like Laocoon struggling ineffectually in the hideous coils of the monster Python."-Bracebridge Hall. Chapter on

Forest Trees.

Note 4, page 4, col. 1.
Thou hast perished

More nobly far my Alvar!-making known
The might of truth.

For a most interesting account of the Spanish Protestants, and the heroic devotion with which they met the spirit of persecution in the sixteenth

At eve?-oh!-through all hours!-From dark century, see the Quarterly Review, No. 57, art.

dreams oft

Awakening, I look forth, and learn the might
Of silitude, while thou art breathing soft,
And low, my loved one! on the breast of night:
I look forth on the stars-the shadowy sleep
Of forests-and the lake, whose gloomy deep
Sends up red sparkles to the fire-flies' light.
A lonely world!-even fearful to man's thought,
But for His presence felt, whom here my soul hath
sought.

NOTES.

Note 1, page 1, col. 2.

And sighing through the feathery canes, &c. The canes in some parts of the American forests' form a thick undergrowth for many hundred miles. -See Hodgson's Letters from North America, vol. i. p. 242.

Note 2, page 1, col. 2.

And for their birth-place moan, as moans the ocean-shell. Such a shell as Wordsworth has beautifully described.

Quin's Visit to Spain.

Note 5, page 5, col. 1.

I look'd on two,

Following his footsteps to the same dread place,
For the same guilt-his sisters !—

"A priest, named Gonzalez, had among other proselytes, gained over two young females, his sisters, to the protestant faith. All three were confined in the dungeons of the Inquisition. The torture, repeatedly applied, could not draw from them the least evidence against their religious associates. Every artifice was employed to obtain a recantation from the two sisters, since the constancy and learning of Gonzalez precluded all hopes of a theological victory. Their answer, if not exactly logical, is wonderfully simple and affecting. We will die in the faith of our brother: he is too wise to be wrong, and too good to deceive us.'The three stakes on which they died were near each other. The priest had been gagged till the moment of lighting up the wood. The few minutes that he was allowed to speak, he employed in comforting his sisters, with whom he sung the 109th Psalm, till the flames smothered their voices."-Ibid.

Note 6, page 5, col. 1.

And deem the name

A hundred chiefs had borne, cast down by you to shame.
The names, not only of the immediate victims
of the Inquisition, were devoted to infamy, but
those of all their relations were branded with the

same indelible stain, which was likewise to descend
as an inheritance to their latest posterity.
Note 7, page 7, col. 1.

'Twas not within the city-but in sight
Of the snow-crowned sierras.

The piles erected for these executions were without the towns, and the final scene of an Auto da Fe was sometimes, from the length of the preceding ceremonies, delayed till midnight.

Note 8, page 10, col. 1.

I would have called, adjuring the dark cloud; To the most ancient Heavens I would have said "Speak to me! show me truth!"

For one of the most powerful and impressive pictures perhaps ever drawn, of a young mind struggling against habit and superstition in its first aspirations after truth, see the admirable Letters from Spain by Don Leucadio Doblado.

Note 9, page 10, col. 2.

For thick ye girt me round, ye long-departed!
Dust-imaged form-with cross, and shield, and crest.

New England.-See Hodgson's Letters from
North America, vol. ii. p. 305.

Note 12, page 12, col. 1.

Bring me the sounding of the torrent-water,

With yet a nearer swell-fresh breeze, awake! ded to in an interesting work of Mrs. Grant's. The varying sounds of waterfalls are thus allu"On the opposite side the view was bounded by steep hills, covered with lofty pines, from which a waterfall descended, which not only gave animation to the sylvan scene, but was the best barometer imaginable; foretelling by its varied and intelligible sounds every approaching change, not only of the weather but of the wind."—Memoirs of an American Lady, vol. i. p. 143.

Note 13, page 13, col. 1.

And the full circle of the rainbow seen
There, on the snows.

The circular rainbows, occasionally seen amongst the Andes, are described by Ulloa.

Note 14, page 13, col. 1.

But so my spirit's fevered longings wrought,
Wakening, it might be, to the faint sad sound,
That from the darkness of the walls they brought
A loved scene round me, visibly around.
Many striking instances of the vividness with

"You walk from end to end over a floor of tomb-which the mind, when strongly excited, has been stones, inlaid in brass with the forms of the depart-known to renovate past impressions, and embody ed, mitres, and croziers, and speats, and shields, them into visible imagery, are noticed and accountand helmets, all mingled together-all worn into ed for in Dr. Hibbert's Philosophy of Apparitions. glass-like smoothness by the feet and the knees of The following illustrative passage is quoted in the long-departed worshippers. Around, on every side same work, from the writings of the late Dr. Fereach in their separate chapel, sleep undisturbed riar. "I remember that, about the age of fourfrom age to age the venerable ashes of the holiest teen, it was a source of great amusement to myor the loftiest that of old came thither to worship self, if I had been viewing any interesting object -their images and their dying prayers sculptured in the course of the day, such as a romantic ruin, among the resting-places of their remains."-From a fine seat, or a review of a body of troops, as soon a beautiful description of ancient Spanish Cathe-as evening came on, if I had occasion to go into a drals, in Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk.

Note 10, page 11, col. 2.

With eyes, whose lightning laughter hath beguiled
A thousand pangs.

"Ellampeggiar de l'angelico riso.-Petrarch.
Note 11, page 12, col. 1.

Mighty shades

Weaving their gorgeous tracery o'er thy head,
With the light melting through their high arcades,
As through a pillared cloister's.

dark room, the whole scene was brought before my eyes with a brilliancy equal to what it had possessed in daylight, and remained visible for several minutes. I have no doubt that dismal and frightful images have been thus presented to young persons after scenes of domestic affliction or public horror."

The following passage from the "Alcazar of Seville," a tale, or historical sketch, by the author of Doblado's letters, affords a further illustration of this subject. "When, descending fast into the "Sometimes their discourse was held in the deep vale of years, I strongly fix my mind's eye on those shades of moss-grown forests, whose gloom and narrow, shady, silent streets, where I breathed the interlaced boughs first suggested that Gothic ar-scented air which came rustling through the surchitecture, beneath whose pointed arches, where rounding groves; where the footsteps re-echoed they had studied and prayed, the parti-coloured from the clean watered porches of the houses, and windows shed a tinged light; scenes, which the where every object spoke of quiet and contentment; gleams of sunshine, penetrating the deep foliage, .the objects around me begin and flickering on the variegated turf below, might to fade into a mere delusion, and not only the have recalled to their memory."-Webster's Ora- thoughts, but the external sensations, which I tion on the Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers in then experience, revive with a reality that almost

makes me shudder-it has so much the character | Asturian at sea, mentions the entreaty of the offiof a trance, or vision.”

Note 15, page 15, col. 1.

Nor the faint flower-scents, as they come and go
In the soft air, like music wandering by.

ciating priest, that the body, which had been brought upon deck during the night, might not be

committed to the waves until after sunrise, in order

to pay it the last rites according to the usage of the

"For because the breath of flowers is farre sweet-Romish church.

er in the aire (where it comes and goes like the warbling of music) than in the hand, therefore nothing is more fit for that delight than to know what be the flowers and plants which doe best perfume the aire."-Lord Bacon's Essay on Gardens. Note 16, page 17, col. 2.

I saw thee shine

Once more, in thy serene magnificence,

O Southern Cross!

Note 19, page 19, col. 2.

Oh art thou not where there is no more sea?
"And there was no more sea."-Rev. chap. xxi. v. 1.

Note 20, page 20, col. 1.

And o'er the Andes-torrents borne his form,
Where our frail bridge hath quivered 'midst the storm.
The bridges over many deep chasms amongst
the Andes are pendulous, and formed only of the

tion has afforded a striking image to one of the
stanzas in "Gertrude of Wyoming."

"Anon some wilder portraiture he draws,
Of nature's savage glories he would speak;
The loneliness of earth, that overawes,
Where, resting by the tomb of old Cacique,
The lama-driver, on Peruvia's peak,
Nor voice nor living motion marks around,
But storks that to the boundless forest shriek,
Or wild-cane rich, high flung o'er gulf profound,
Thut fluctuates when the storms of El Dorado sound.

Note 21, page 20, col. 2.

"The pleasure we felt on discovering the South-fibres of equinoctial plants. Their tremulous moern Cross was warmly shared by such of the crew as had lived in the colonies. In the solitude of the seas, we hail a star as a friend from whom we have long been separated. Among the Portuguese and the Spaniards, peculiar motives seem to increase this feeling; a religious sentiment attaches them to a constellation, the form of which recals the sign of the faith planted by their ancestors in the deserts of the New World.... .... It has been observed at what hour of the night, in different seasons, the Cross of the South is erect or inclined. It is a time-piece that advances very regularly near four minutes a day, and no other group of stars exhibits to the naked eye an observation of time so easily made. How often have we heard our guides exclaim in the savannahs of Venezuela, or in the desert extending from Lima to Truxillo, "Midnight is past, the cross begins to bend !" How often these words reminded us of that affecting scene where Paul and Virginia, seated near the source of the river Lataniers, conversed together for the last time, and where the old man, at the sight of the Southern Cross, warns them that it is time to separate!"-De Humboldt's Travels.

Note 17, page 18, col. 1.

Songs of the orange bower, the Moorish hold,
The "Rio Verde."

"Rio verde, rio verde," the popular Spanish Romance, known to the English reader in Percy's translation.

"Gentle river, gentle river,

Lo, thy streams are stained with gore!
Many a brave and noble captain

Floats along thy willowed shore," &c. &c.

Note 18, page 19, col. 1.

Then the broad lonely sunrise!-and the plash
Into the sounding waves!-

And then his play

Through the wide Llanos cheered again our way. Llanos, or savannas, the great plains in South America.

Note 22, page 20, col. 1.

And by the mighty Oronoco stream,

On whose lone margin we have heard at morn From the mysterious rocks, the sunrise-music borne. De Humboldt speaks of these rocks on the shores of the Oronoco. Travellers have heard from time to time subterraneous sounds proceed from them at run-rise, resembling those of an organ. He believes in the existence of this mysterious music, although not fortunate enough to have heard it himself, and thinks that it may be produced by currents of air issuing through the crevices.

Note 23, page 20, col. 2.

Yet those deep southern shades oppressed
My soul with stillness.

The same distinguished traveller frequently alludes to the extreme stillness of the air in the equatorial regions of the new continent, and particularly on the thickly wooded shores of the Oronoco. "In this neighbourhood," he says, "no breath of wind

De Humboldt, in describing the burial of a young ever agitates the foliage."

Lays of Many Lands.

1