and in general found it cccupied by a fresh and well-fed corpse, stretched out like a person in a blooming and profound sleep.

The exploits of the Hungarian Vampyres are, for the most part, performed by male heroes, and are characterised by an extravagant coarseness and brutality, which is wild without being poetical. Many and various are the theories which have been started by the hagiologists to account for and explain so much of the extraordinary facts of vampyrism, the truth of which, it has been supposed, could not be denied. The Benedictine Abbé Dom. Calmet appears to have satisfied himself on every point, except the manner by which the vampyre escapes from his tomb without deranging the soil, and enters through doors and windows without opening or breaking them. This stumbling-block he cannot get over. Either the resuscitation of these bodies, says the Abbé, must be the work of the Deity, of the angels, of the soul of the deceased, or of the evil demon. That the Deity cannot be the instrument is proved by the horrid purposes for which the vampyre appearsand how can the angels, or the soul, or the demon, rarify and subtilize gross corporeal substances, so as to make them penetrate the earth like air or water, pass through keyholes, stone walls, and casements ?even taking it for granted, that their power would extend to make the corpse walk, speak, eat with a good appetite, and preserve its fresh looks. The only instance directly against Dom. Calmet, where the vampyre has been caught in articulo resurgendi, is one stated before one of the many Vampyre special commissions appointed by the Bishop of Olmutz, at the beginning of the last century. The village of Liebava being infested, an Hungarian placed himself on the top of the church tower, and just before midnight (from midday to midnight are the vampyres' ordinary dinner-hours) saw the well-known vampyre issue from a tomb, and, leaving his winding-sheet, proceed on his rounds. The Hungarian descended and took away the linen-which threw the vampyre into great fury on his return, and the Hungarian told him to ascend the tower and recover it. The vampyre mounted the ladder-but the Hungarian gave him a blow on the head which hurled him down to the church-yard, and descended and cut off his head with a hatchet; and although he was neither burnt nor impaled, the vampyre seems to have retired from practice, and was never more heard of. Here is a vampyre caught in the fact of emerging from earth without the assistance either of spade or pickaxe-and the story of the Ghole, in the Arabian Nights, affords a case of one taken in flagranti delicto. It is, in fact, but fair to say, in justice to the vampyres, that the Abbé Calmet is rather a suspicious witness against them. His faith is unbounded and unshrinking, as to all the apparitions of the Romish Church-all the visions of St. Dunstan and St. Antony-he never doubts that St. Stanislaus raised a Polish gentleman from the grave, to prove to the king that the good saint had paid him for an estate which he had purchased without paying-but he has a slight grudge against the vampyres, on account of their near relationship to, and probably their lineal descent from the imputrescent excommunicated bodies of the Greek church. At the same time he goes to the enquiry with an evident inclination for a miracle if it could be made out-whether Greek or Roman, it would be equally a point gained against the encyclopædists and

the philosophers;-but if the vampyres could be made nothing of, why then, in one respect, tant mieux-a new argument would be supplied against the alleged powers of Greek excommunication. The Greek priests, it is well known, from early periods of their schism with Rome, asserted that the divine authority of their bishops was manifested by the fact of the persons who died under their sentence of excommunication resisting the decomposing influences of death; while the Latin church could not prevent its excommunicates from mouldering into dust, which, according to the ancient and modern Greeks, was so essential to the repose and happiness of the spirit, and which made them attach so much importance to burial rights.

Nec ripas datur horrendas, nec rauca fluenta
Transportare prius quam sedibus ossa quierunt.

VIRGIL.

-tali tua membra sepulchro,

Talibus exuram Stygio cum carmine sylvis
Ut nullos cantata magos exaudiat umbra.

LUCAN.

And this, we apprehend, is the real source of the Vampyre superstition. Hence the Vroucolaca of modern Greece, the real progenitor of the Vampyre of Sclavonia-who, it is to be observed, has hitherto con fined his sanguinary proceedings to the countries within the pale of the Greek church and those nearly adjacent to it. Tournefort relates, that in all the Archipelago the people firmly believed that it was only in the Greek church that excommunication preserved the body entire and unputrified. Some ascribed it to the force of the bishop's sentence-others thought that the devil entered into the body of the excommunicate, and reanimated him, so that he became an evil spirit incarnate. Add to this the prevalent superstition that the dead ate and drank in their graves, that they devoured their own flesh and burial-clothes for want of better food, and that all the viands and wines placed on the bier, and in fact consumed by the priests, were really the nourishment of the dead-and a very slight and easy transition would conduct a superstitious race to the full belief in the demoniacal and hungry corpse sallying forth from the tomb, and satisfying at once its malignity and its appetite, by preying on the flesh and blood of the living. Tournefort was present at the exhumation, impalement, and burning of a Vroucolaca in the island of Mycone, who had broken the windows and the bones, and drained the bottles and the veins of half the inhabitants of the island. For many days the people were in continual consternation, and numbers left their abodes and the island-masses were said-holy-water showered about in torrents-the nine days were passed, and still the Vroucolaca was every night at fresh mischief-the tenth day mass was said in the chapel where the unfortunate corpse lay-but to no avail-owing, as the priests afterwards discovered, to the negligence of not extracting the heart before the expulsory mass was said. Had the heart been first extracted and a mass instantly said, before the devil could have returned into possession, the people were convinced his Infernal Majesty's entry would have been barred, and the nuisance put an end to. The corpse was then exhumed, the town butcher took out the heart, and declared that the entrails were still warm. The putrid stench of the corpse obliged them to burn frankincense, which produced an amalgamation of fumes that laid hold of the people's senses, and helped to inflame their ima

ginations. Vroucolaca! Vroucolaca! echoed through the cloisters and aisles. The poor corpse was impaled with swords in all directions, till a learned Albanian appeared and told the people they were all fools for Asing Christian swords, since the cross of the hilt had the effect of pinning the demon more firmly in the body, instead of expelling him, and that the only sword for the purpose was the straight Turkish scymetar. The people would not wait for the experiment, but, with one accord, determined on burning the body entire. This was accordingly done on the point of the island of St. George-and the people then defied the devil to find a niche in which to quarter himself, and made songs in celebration of their triumph.

Ricaut, in his history of the Greek Church, relates, on the authority of a Candiote Caloyer, a history of a young man of the island of Milos, excommunicated for a crime committed in the Morea, and who was interred in a remote and unconsecrated ground. The islanders were terrified every night by the horrid apparitions and disorders attributed to the corpse-which on opening the tomb was found, as usual, fresh and flowing with blood. The priests determined to dismember the corpse, and to boil it in wine-a profanation of the grape which, we suspect, the descendants of the priests of Lyæus would hardly in fact have executed, however they might urge the people to open their cellars for the pious occasion. The young man's relations begged for delay, in order to send to Constantinople for an absolution from the Patriarch. In the interim the corpse was placed in the church, and masses were said night and day for its repose. One day, as the Caloyer Sophronus was reading the service, a sudden crash was heard to issue from the bier-and on opening it, the body was found mouldered and decomposed, exactly like a corpse deceased for seven years. The messenger arrived with the absolution-and on enquiry it was found that the Patriarch's signature had been affixed at the precise moment when the dissolution of the corpse produced the report in the coffin !!!

The Vampyre, then, we take to be originally a creature of the superstition of the Greek church-a monster generated from the persua sion of the wonderful efficacies ascribed by the Greek priests to the excommunication of their bishops, and perhaps inheriting some of his horrid characteristics from some of the traditionary monsters of the ancient Greek mythology. The beautiful and bloody Lamiæ of Libya, of Suidas and Diodorus Siculus, who enticed children to devour them, and whom Horace (de arte Poetica, 340) most properly excludes from the legitimate dramatis personæ of a poet-as he would unquestionably have done the Vampyre, had he lived in his reign-resemble the Gholes and Vampyres in their hominivorous propensities; and the horrid vulture-beaked Strygis, whose wings,

"Strigis infames, ipsis cum carnibus, alas,” Ovid makes Medea cast into her cauldron, not only comes nearer to the blood-suckers of Greece and of Hungary, but became a wellknown demon of the middle ages, whom the Lombards and Germans frequently saw and burnt in the shape of suspected and mysterious males and females, among other sorcerers and magicians. A capitulary of Charlemagne on this subject is very curious; enacting that "if any person, deceived by the Devil, should believe, after the manner of the Pagans, that any man or woman was a Strygis or Stryx, and was

given to eat men, and for this cause should burn such person, or should give such person's flesh to be eaten, or should eat such flesh, such man or woman should be capitally punished"-Capit. Car. Mag. pro part. Saxon. so that it appears from this law (penned with a precision which the members of St. Stephen's might sometimes emulate with advantage) that it was in those days the fashion not only to believe in men-eaters, but occasionally to visit them with the lex talionis, and to eat them in their turn. D.

ON KOSCIUSKO.

A SACRED grief sublime and bright
Descends o'er Kosciusko's bier:
It mourns not that his soul of light,
No more confined in mortal night,
Has sought its native sphere;
The hallowed tear that glistens there,
By purest loftiest feelings given,
Flows more from triumph than despair,
And falls like dew from heaven!

Thus oft around the setting sun

Soft showers attend his parting ray,
And sinking now his journey done,
His matchless course to evening run-
They weep his closing day.

Who hath not watch'd his light decline,
Till sad, yet holy feelings rise?
Although he sets again to shine,

More glorious, in more cloudless skies.

As proudly shone thy evening ray,
As in that contest bright and brief,
When patriots hail'd thy noontide day,
And own'd thee as their chief!
Thou wert the radiant morning-star,
Which bright to hapless Poland rose,
The leader of her patriot war,
The sharer of her woes!

What though no earthly triumphs grace
The spot where thou hast ta'en thy sleep;

Yet Glory points thy resting-place,

And thither Freedom turns to weep.
The pompous arch, the column's boast,
Though rich with all the sculptor's art,
Shall soon in time's dark sweep be lost;
But thou survivest in the heart,
And bright thy dwelling still shall be
Within the page of Liberty.

And o'er the turf where sleeps the brave
Such sweet and holy drops are shed-
Who would not fill a Patriot's grave,

To share them with the dead?
The laurel, and the oaken bough,

Above the meaner great may bloom,
And trophies due to Freedom's brow
May shade Oppression's tomb ;—
But Glory's smile hath shed on thee
The light of immortality!

A.

DINNER COMPANY TO LET. A CARD.

MESSRS. Clack and Caterer respectfully invite the attention of the dinner-giving department of the metropolis, to the following candid statement of facts.

It happens in London, every day, that gentlemen mount to sudden wealth by Spanish bonds, fluctuations of English stock, death of distant relations, and what not. When this event occurs, a carriage is bespoken, the ladies go to the Soho Bazaar, the father takes a house in Baker-street or Connaught-place, and the sons get blackballed at all the new clubs in the environs of the Haymarket. Yet still something is wanting. Like the Greek or Persian king (Messrs. Clack and Caterer will not be precise as to the nation) who pined to death in the midst of plenty, gentlemen thus jumping into high-life, from the abysses of Lower Thames-street and Saint Mary Axe, lament the lack of good dinner company. If they rely upon coffee-house society, their silver spoons are in jeopardy; and if they invite their own relations, they are ruined: nobody will come twice to such society. An uncle with an unpowdered pigtail, who prates of pepper and pimento: an aunt in a brown silk gown, who drinks every body's health; a son from Stockwell, who is silent when he ought to talk, accompanied by a wife, who talks when she ought to be silent, compose a species of society which may do very well at Kensington or Camden-town, but which, Messrs. Clack and Caterer confidently predict, can never take root west of Temple-bar. The consequence is that gentlemen thus circumstanced must "cut" their own relations, or nobody else will "come again." Singers may be hired at so much a-head: every body knows, to an odd sixpence, the price of "Non nobis, Domine," "Hail, Star of Brunswick,' "“Glorious Apollo," and " Scots wha ha." Good set speakers for charity dinners may also be obtained, by inquiry at the bar of the tavern. These latter go through the routine of duty with a vast deal of decorum. They call the attention of the company in a particular manner to the present charity, leaving a blank for its name. They ascribe half of its success to the worthy treasurer, and the other half to the noble chairman, whose health they conclude with proposing, with three times three and the accuracy of their ear enables them to cry hip, hip, hip," nine times, interlarded at the third and sixth close with a hurrah! aided by a sharp yell which Messrs. Clack and Caterer have never been able to distinguish from the yelp of a trodden lapdog. All this is very well in its way, and it is not the wish of the advertisers to disparage such doings. Far from it; "live and let live" is their maxim. Many gentlemen by practice qualify themselves for public speakers; but good private-dinner company is still a desideratum.

66

Impressed with this truth, Messrs. Clack and Caterer, at a considerable expense, have provided, at their manufactory in Leicester-square, a choice assortment of good diners out, of various prices, who, in clean white waistcoats, and at the shortest notice, will attend to enliven any dull gentleman's dull dinner-table. Messrs. Clack and Caterer are possessed of three silver-toned young barristers, who have their way to make in Lincoln's Inn. These gentlemen respectively and anxiously enquire after the health of any married lady's little Charlotte; ask when she last heard from Hastings; think they never saw curtains better hung in the whole course of their lives; tenderly caress the poodle that occupies the