This for Leander gentle Hero felt;

But, while she downward looked, his greedy eyes
Fed on her neck. With words that dew-like melt,
While blossom on her cheek the moist red dies

Of modesty, she says: "Such power there lies
In thy sweet eloquence, that it might move
The flinty rock; who taught thee harmonies
Of such enticing words? What impulse drove
Thee hither? Who thy guide? Oh was it, was it Love?
"Perchance thou mockest me; but how canst thou,

A stranger and unknown, my love enjoy?

I never can be thine by open vow;
My parents shut me up. Can we employ
Art for our secret, love? Oh, men destroy
Who trust them! ever babbling in the street
Of what they do in secret. Wilt decoy
A trusting heart to ruin? yet, as meet,

Speak truth; thy fatherland, and name to me repeat.
"My name is Hero; my abode is lonely,
A tower that lifts its echoes to the sky,

For so my parents will; one handmaid only

Dwells with me there; no choirs e'er court mine eye,
Nor friends of equal years. The shores close by
Rebellow; night and day the roaring tide

Rings in mine ears, and eke the clanging cry

Of the sea-winds." She spake, and sought to hide, Shamefaced, her rosy cheek, as tho' her words to chide.

Leander then did with himself advise,

How in love's contest he might best contend;
For wily Love, though wont to tyrannise,
Heals whom he wounds, and ever loves to lend
His subjects wit, their counsellor and friend.

He helped Leander, then, who deeply sighed,
And said: "Dear virgin! for our wished-for end

I dauntless on the rugged surge will ride,

Tho' in it ships be whelmed, and o'er it lightnings glide.
"Seeking thy bed, I tremble not, nor cower

At ocean's angry roar and frightful front:
A dripping bed-mate, nightly to thy tower
Will I swim o'er the rapid Hellespont;
Abydos is not far from Hero's haunt.
But promise me to shew a lamp, to be'
My nightly star; and it shall be my wont,
E'en like a ship, to swim across the sea,

Thy lamp the blessed star that guides my course to thee.

"And, watching it, I ne'er will turn mine eye on
Setting Boötes, nor th' unwetted Wain,

Nor on the sworded, storm-engirt Orion,
But, guided by the lamp, I soon shall gain
Safe anchorage and sweet. Strict guard maintain
Against the blasts, for fear my safety-light
They rudely quench, and in the howling main
I perish so. Leander am I hight,

And Hero's happy spouse." Thus they their love-vows plight.

She from her tower to shew a lamp agrees,

And he the swelling waves at night to cleave:
Then to her tower the anxious maiden flees,
While he must in a pinnace Sestos leave,

And in Abydos wait till he receive

The promised signal, his appointed guide,
When he must swim, not sail. Till they achieve
Love's celebration, rest is them denied.

Haste, Night! and canopy the bridegroom and the bride.
In veil of darkness Night ran up the sky,
Bringing on sleep, but not for Hero's lover;
He, where the swelling waves roared mightily,
For by the shore, stood waiting to discover
The lamentable lamp that lured him over-
To death at last. But Hero, seaward turning,
Perceived the gloom, and for her ocean-rover
Kindled the signal; but on his discerning

Its promised flame, he burned with love, as that was burning.
At first be trembled at the ringing roar

Of the mad surge, but with the soothing spell

Of hopeful words took courage; "What is more

Cruel than love, or more implacable

Than ocean? in moist ruin this doth swell';

That in the heart, a blazing furnace, raves.

Fear not, my soul! why shouldst thou fear the hell

Of waters? Aphrodite from the waves

Sprung, and rules over them, sways our love-pains and saves.”
He then put off his vest with playful glee,

And twined it round his head; and from the shore
Plunged fearlessly into the surf o' the sea;
And where the signal shone, he hastened o'er,
Ship, sail, and oars himself. But yet before
He reached his port, how oft the Sestian flower
Kept off the breezes with the robe she wore
From the trimmed lamp! It is her nuptial hour-
Leander comes at last, and now ascends her tower.
With a mute clasp she welcomed to her home
The panting youth, and to her chamber led,
While from his hair fast dropt the salt sea-foam:
She rubbed his limbs with rose-oil, and then led
Her lover to her virgin couch, and said,
Embracing him the while, and softly willing,
"Enough of brine and odours which it bred:
No bridegroom but thyself was ever willing

To run such risk, such toil none else but thou fulfilling.

"No longer lies our joy and us between

That envious sea-now lay thee down to rest."
Silence was there, and Night drew round her screen;
Their nuptial troth was by no minstrel blest;

The bridal pair were in no hymn addrest;

No choir danced round them; and no torches lightened
About the genial bed; no marriage guest

Led the gay dance; nor hymeneal heightened

The joy, approving it; no parent's smile there brightened.
Silence arranged the couch, and Darkness drew
The curtains; paranymph and bridemaid none
Had they beside. Aurora ne'er did view
Leander lying, when the night was done,
In Hero's arms. He was already gone,—
Already wishing for the night again.
The wife at night, by day a virgin shone,

As thought her parents wise; while she was fain,
Of night, to welcome him who made their wisdom vain.

Thus they enjoyed awhile their furtive pleasure,
He to his bed-mate nightly swimming o'er;

But soon their life's bloom fell, and scant their measure
Of bridal hours. When came the winter frore,

And brought the cold blast and the whirlwind's roar,
Sharp gusts the bottom of the deep confounding,

And lashing up the main from shore to shore,
Whirling and rushing, roaring and rebounding,

The watery paths above and shaken depths astounding—
What time a desperate pilot, who no more
Amid the waters wild his course could hold,
Had run his ship upon a fork o' the shore;
Not then the tempest checked Leander bold,
For Hero's signal-light her summons told.
Oh! cruel, faithless light of love! to scout him
On such a night! to plunge him in the cold

And hissing waves, that rudely toss and flout him!
Why could not Hero sleep, while winter raged, without him?
But love and fate compelled her; light of love,
Drawn by desire, she shewed not, but the black
Torch-gloom of fate. The winds collected drove
Volumes of gusty darts upon the track

Of the sea-broken shore; but on the back
Of raving ocean lost Leander went.

The water stood in heaps; with fearful crack
The winds ran counter, and were madly blent,
Rushing from every side, in wildest minglement.
Wave upon wave! ocean with ether mixt!
Mighty the crash! How could Leander ride on
The monstrous whirl? Sore tost, he one while fixt
In prayer on Cypris, then on King Poseidon,
And e'en the fierce and frantic Boreas cried on,
Who then forgot his Atthis. Lover lorn!

None helped him, none! Love, whom he most relied on,
Averted not his fate; tost, tumbled, torn,

By every counter wave he was at random borne.

He can no longer ply his hands or feet;

Drench'd with the brine, his strength is failing fast;
On him the cruel waves remorseless beat;
The lamp is now extinguished by the blast,
And with it his young life and love at last;
But while the waves his lifeless body drove,
How many a glance poor Hero seaward cast!
In vain into the gloom her glances rove;

Her anxious thoughts a pool of spectred troubles move.
The morning came, nor yet Leander came !
Upon the sea's broad back her glance was thrown,
If haply, missing that unfaithful flame,

He wandered there; but soon she spied him strown
A mangled corse below. She tore her gown,
And shrieked, and for Leander madly cried,
And from the tower fell whizzing headlong down.
Thus, on her husband dead sweet Hero died,

And who were joined in life, then death did not divide.

THE ADMIRABLE CRICHTON.

"Signor Giacomo caro, non vi accorgete che sete un giovane senza pare? Nobile, bello, dotto, e robusto, ed alto quasi egualmente, or lingua or mano ad oprando, a dire e fare ogni bene?"

So, in or about the year of Grace 1582, wrote Sperone Speroni the Paduan, to James Crichton the Scotchman:

"Dear James, do you not know that you have no equal? Noble, handsome, learned, and robust,-equally apt to use the tongue or the hand, to say or to do what is excellent ?"

There cannot be the smallest doubt that James knew all this himself; and now, since the appearance of Mr. Ainsworth's romance, all the world knows it. Wherefore, as the Admirable has suddenly become an object of admiration, we are moved to say a few words about him.

A number of learned people, remarkable chiefly for the dullness of their learning, have on various occasions undertaken to prove the egregious quackery and pretension of the famous Scot. Such-like people are, naturally enough, given to such researches; for they cannot endure in any shape the rebuke of an obvious superiority. "How now, thou particular fellow?" said Jack Cade to the man who sought to recommend himself on the score of being able to write and read; and "How now, thou particular fellow ?" is the exclamation of plodding pedants to the illustrious Crichton, when, instead of approaching them covered with the dust of folios, he bounds into their presence beaming with grace and beauty, the idol of the gay and the young, the observed of all observers, crowned with the favours of women, and followed by the applauding shouts of men!

We are not pedants, and therefore we have faith in Crichton. How otherwise? In philosophy and learning was he not a Bayle's Dictionary? In the universality of his literary accomplishments, a perfect Bentley's Miscellany? Who shall impugn the opinions of the most classic time of Scotland, or set up his dogmas against the generous acknowledgments of Italy in her golden day? And was not Crichton so beautiful in body only because he was in mind so beautiful; -for, where true beauty exists, who would separate body from mind? Shade of the Admirable, forgive your poor detractors, for the sake of the true worship your memory has inspired! It was natural that to

the sight of many men, before whom in life you strode on so far, you should have dwindled in the distance; but now, after many years, you reappear again, graceful as ever in form, and wonderful in accomplishments. We hail you as we should some missing star that once more "swims into our ken!"

And what sort of fame is that, the reader possibly asks, which may seek from the hands of some novelist or romancer its privilege of continuance in the mouths of men? Let that reader first ask himself

how many brilliant actions there are which pass away and are forgotten, while a thousandth part of the effort that produced them, embodied in a few words, might have lived for ever. It was the remark of an old writer, that words harden into substances, while bodies moulder away into air. Even Cæsar and Alexander weigh

little in comparison with Virgil and Homer. Now Crichton might have been a Cæsar or an Alexander, if he had had legions at his back; or, without the legions, if his youth had been allowed to ripen into age. The great principle of his being was a stirring and irrepressible activity. His learning was as prodigious as his accomplishments; but how, in the short six or seven years of his public life, could he have exhibited them to the admiration of Europe, if he had set to work in the fashion of the schoolmen? With a probable forecast of his early doom, he bethought himself of a different way. He made up for the brevity of his life, by its brightness. He kindled all its fires at once. Resolved to abate no single particle of his brilliancy among the great men of his time, he rose at once to the topmost height of his possible achievements, careless whether he should fall among posterity, dark as a spent rocket, and recognizable by a few fragments of faded paper only. But what of that? What he designed to do, he did. He struck the blow he had desired to strike. And which of the Great Men has done more? How many have done lamentably less! We see the beauty and the learning of Crichton reflected back from the most intellectual minds of the greatest day that ever shone upon Scotland or Italy. What nobler mirror?

Justly Mr. Ainsworth remarks-"It is from the effect produced upon his contemporaries, and such contemporaries, that we can form a just estimate of the extent of Crichton's powers. By them he was esteemed a miracle of learning-divinum planè juvenem: and we have an instance in our own times of a great poet and philosopher, whose published works scarcely bear out the high reputation he enjoyed for colloquial ability. The idolized friend of Aldus Manutius, of Lorenzo Massa, Giovanni Donati, and Sperone Speroni, amongst the most accomplished scholars of their age,-the antagonist of the redoubted Arcangelus Mercenarius and Giacomo Mazzoni, men who had sounded all the depths of philosophy,―could not have been other than an extraordinary person." The allusion to Coleridge here is not altogether out of place. Coleridge, like Crichton, though in a humbler sphere, preferred prompt payment to the tardy waiting for posterity. With both it was in some sort necessary that the effort and the applause should go together. To Coleridge, for instance, so strong had this habit of excessive talking become, even the certainty of seeing what he wrote in print the next day was too remote a stimulus for his imagination; and it was a constant practice of his to lay aside his pen in the middle of an article, if a friend happened to drop in upon him, and to finish the subject more effectually aloud, so that the approbation of his hearer and the sound of his own voice might be co-instantaneous. But what would Coleridge have done, if, besides having to write an article for the Courier, in which he was to unravel some transcendentalism about humanity and universal brotherhood into a slavish support of the Allies-(a difficult task we admit),―if, besides this, the ball-room, the ladies' chamber, the hunting-fields, the ridinghouse, the lists at the Louvre, and some profoundly learned controversies with the doctors of Navarre or Padua, had all, nearly at the same instant, awaited him? Poor Coleridge would have died at twenty, untouched by opium, and unknown, except by the admiring testimonies of his less accomplished contemporaries.

Mr. Ainsworth has omitted, by-the-by, a very characteristic, and,