to the window, which commanded the road, every five minutes, as if watching for the arrival of the expected but unwelcome visitors.

Giles Jenkins was in advance of his myrmidons a quarter of an hour's march, and, taking the farmer apart, said to him, "Master Hodson, I did not threaten you without the power to execute. The officers will be here in a few minutes, which you will do well to use in reconsidering my proposal. Give me your daughter, and not only shall every thing about you remain as it is, but the possession of it shall be secured to you for many years." The farmer, losing his patience at the repetition of the insulting proposal, shook off the tempter (who in his earnestness had taken him by the arm), and said, "Villain, do your worst, for not for all you are going to take away from me-no, not for all your master's money, twice told, will I sell my lamb to the wolf." "Dotard," rejoined the steward, "you have pronounced your doom, and I go to fulfil it ;" and, quitting the farmer, he conferred with his followers, who by this time had joined him, and they proceeded in their duty by taking an inventory of the farming stock, before they began upon the household furniture.

Robert Hawkhurst arrived shortly afterwards, and assisted the stranger in his endeavours to console the afflicted family. One of the domestics at length informed them that the officers were coming into the house to finish their task, when the stranger betrayed some little agitation, and retired to that part of the room in which he was least likely to attract observation. He had scarcely time to effect this, before the steward and his retainers, entered, and proceeded in their ungracious office without the slightest respect to the feelings of the sufferers. Giles Jenkins, in particular, appeared to exult in the exercise of his authority, and to take a pleasure in witnessing the distress which his cruelty had occasioned. The silver vase, before alluded to, was standing on a kind of sideboard in the apartment. The steward, who was about to remove it, had no sooner laid his fingers on it, than the voice of the stranger was heard exclaiming, "Mr Jenkins, I'll thank you to let that cup alone, for I like it very well where it is."

The steward withdrew his hand from the vessel, as if it had been of heated iron. He turned as pale as death, his red nose, like a live ember on a heap of ashes, adding to the ghastliness of his countenance. In the language of the poet,

"Steteruntque comæ, et vox faucibus hæsit;"

and he looked about in all directions, as if he thought the person, from whom the voice proceeded, was as likely to drop from the clouds, or start out of the earth, as to make his appearance from any

other quarter. The stranger at last arose from his seat, and with a dignity which none of the family had before observed him to assume, he advanced into the middle of the room, and confronted the steward; who, somewhat recovering from his surprise, and glancing at the other's bandaged leg, said, with an affectation of great concern, "My lord, I grieve to see your lordship so lame." "You mistake, you abominable old hypocrite and measureless liar," said the earl; "a fortnight's residence in this house has cured me of my lameness, and my blindness too, and, having recovered the use of my own eyes, I shall have no further occasion for yours." "My lord!" stammered the steward. "Your lord no longer," said the earl, interrupting him: "how dared you, sir, for the gratification of your diabolical passions, abuse the powers with which I intrusted you, and oppress this worthy man, in direct contravention of my injunction that you should, on no account, distrain upon a tenant, unless he were a fraudulent one. Now, be pleased to relieve me of your presence, taking with you these two worthy associates; and, do you hear me, sir, let your accounts be made up with all despatch, for I shall shortly reckon with you." Then, addressing himself to the farmer, he continued: "Mr Hodson, I am very sorry for the trouble which this unfortunate affair has occasioned you. It was necessary, however, that I should have such evidence of that man's baseness. For yourself, I can only say, that your arrear is remitted, your present lease shall be cancelled, and substituted by another, at such a rent, that it shall not be my fault if you do not thrive again. I owe you thus much for the lesson you have taught me of resignation under unmerited calamity, as well as for the instance you have given me of uncompromising integrity, under circumstances of temptation that very few would have withstood. I pray you to forgive me for the experiment I made on your honour in the matter of the plate. It is refreshing to me, in my old age, to meet with such examples in a world which, I fear, I have hitherto regarded on the darker side. Your kindness, Mrs Hodson, and yours, Amy, to a petulant old man, I shall not forget; nor your honourable adherence to your mistress and her family in their adversity, Mr Robert. Of you, Frank, I have a favour to beg; you must give me that terrier of yours, to which I am primarily indebted for my introduction to this house, and for the advantages which have resulted to me from it."

The earl, after taking a kind leave of the circle he had thus made happy, mounted his horse and departed to his mansion, from which he had been so long absent, and to which he was returning when he met with the accident already related. The occurrences which followed so unauspicious an event, produced a most beneficial effect

upon his mind: be became a better, and, consequently, a happier man. His lordship took up his permanent residence on the estate, to the great joy of the tenantry, and to the discomfiture of Mr Jenkins, who, it is almost needless to add, was dismissed in disgrace.

I know it will be considered a somewhat trite termination, if I finish my story with a marriage; and yet, should any of my readers be curious upon the subject, I cannot deny that such an event took place, and that Amy forgot all her past sorrows in the nepenthe of her Robert's affections.

RETROSPECTION.

YE have vanish'd and fled, ye happy hours,
That over my childhood flew!

Ye are wither'd and dead, ye cherish'd flowers,
In life's young path that grew!

Ye are clouded in darkness, ye sunny skies,
That gilded my early home,-

When I looked around me with youth's g'ad eyes,
Nor thought that the storm would come!

Friends of my heart! ye too have gone
From the land of living things;

And nought but the echo of voices flown
On the ear of Memory rings.

O when shall I join you, ye dead, ye dead!
In the pilgrim's home of rest,-
Where the dews of summer nightly shed
Their tears on the green turf's breast.

For here I act but a borrow'd part

When I mix with the gay world's glare,
And turn away with a sadden'd heart
From joys which I cannot share.

Or if for a moment the spirit gleams
With aught of its former light,

Alas! it only sheds its beams
To set in a darker night.

KINLOCH,

THE WALDSTETTEN..

A SWISS TALE.

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

From The Atlantic Souvenir,' 1826.

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 walnut trees, 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; while the dark skirt, formed on the scant model of the country, if it did not add to the symmetry of her person, at least, by the exhibition of a remarkably well turned ankle, left the judgment or the imagination a fair field for its conclusions as to general proportions. 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 corslet; 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.

There was one, however, among the wedding guests 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. He seemed of middle age, and his countenance, usually grave, at times approached in its expression even to severity. But virtue and high resolve sat on his noble