honest man. If you have a son, call him in remembrance of me, Simon James, and if a daughter, call her Emily.

"As to the things I shall leave behind, I was told they would become the property of the government. Although I well know that the government does not need a few pieces of rags, yet it may be they

will not be sent to you as a remembrance of me. I leave them entirely to chance. I will not ask for permission to send them to you. An importunity of this kind will displease the authorities, and the more since so many of my requests are refused.

"Mother! dear mother! have courage, have a heart to bear the blow that awaits thee. Remember that Stanislaus still lives, and that you should spare your life for the sake of his children. What would he do in this world if you should yield yourself up to despair and doubly bereave him? I have done with this world, and will not be unhappy; but poor Stanislaus, left alone, would lead a sad existence. I, though alone on my way to the other world, can bear a separation, for I have been for a long time accustomed to it. May you be happy, may you be free. May you enjoy at least half as much of happiness as I have suffered misery. Farewell! and do not mourn for me. We ought to mourn not for those who are gone, but for those who are left behind. Love each other, live virtuously, and you will be happy inwardly, and your death will be as light to you as mine is to me. Stanislaus! do not court luxuries; do not wish for more than you have, and God will bless your house.

"I do not know how soon I shall be executed, but it is all the same to me whether it be a day, a week, or a month hence. Good night! my dear relatives! By the side of my aunt's grave in Rumbowicze, put up a plain stone, without any inscription, in memory of me, for my life has been plain. There I hope to be present with my aunt, either to rejoice or to sorrow with you. I trust God will allow me this; and when you two have joined us, we will all resort thither to smile over the pains we have endured in this life.

"To-day, as the priest tells me, I am to be shot. Farewell, my friends, and put your trust in God as I do.

"SIMON KONARSKI."

He finished this letter before daylight. The turnkey informed him, by order of Prince Dolhoruki, that he might write down his wishes referring solely to himself. He wrote three of them: 1st. that he might take leave of his fellow prisoners; 2d. that Emily

should be set free; and 3rd. that the things he left behind him should be sent to his family. The first two requests were granted; the last, as he foresaw, was not.

Agreeably to his request, on the 27th of February, at day-break, Rodziewitz was admitted into his cell. At sight of the old man, the cause of so many misfortunes, a painful expression passed over Konarski's countenance, but he subdued the bitterness of his feelings, and said to him, mildly: "I willingly forgive you all you have sinned against me. May our country and our fellow martyrs likewise forgive you. You have sinned only through weakness; you have sinned through your old age." of others, and by many a lofty truth he strengthened their weaker hearts. When Orzeszko was brought in, he struggled with himself for some time, but finally conquered himself and forgave him.

Afterwards he took his last farewell

After these painful adieus, he called to him Sokolow, known for his cruel treatment of prisoners, and requested him to buy for him a pair of broadcloth pantaloons with the money his mother had left him. "It is so cold now," said he, "it may cause me to tremble, and the people may think that I tremble through fear." Sokolow answered, "that he had no permission to do so, and besides, the distance was not great."

Shortly after, a friar of St. Bernard came to hear him confess. Konarski kindly took him by the hand, and said: "Father! I am sure God will forgive me the sins I have committed, for I have suffered much. I have endured much for my country and mankind. Though I am a Calvinist, your blessing is as needful to me as that of my own pastor. Bless me, then, as your son, as a follower of the cross, and I shall die in peace." The monk shed tears, blessed him, and said not a word of a

reconciliation with the Church of Rome, so much was he moved by the grandeur of the martyrdom. A Protestant clergyman, named Lipiuski, was afterwards sent for. Before he was found the clock struck ten. When he arrived, he found Konarski taking tea, of which he partook with him. They conversed together of the salvation of the soul, and of the nothingness of worldly possessions, and read the penitential psalms.

At eleven o'clock, Konarski made

known that he was ready, and smoothing down his light hair, which fell on his shoulders, put on a blue worsted cap made by Emily's hands, and over his summer dress, in which he had been arrested, he threw a grey cloak, and descended to the yard surrounded by gens-d'armes. On his departure, he desired Sokolow to distribute his remaining six roubles among the soldiers that were to fire at him.

In the meantime, the inhabitants of Wilna, before eight o'clock, received notice, printed in the Russian language, to this effect: "To-day, at eight o'clock, A. M., an emissary conspirator, Simon Konarski, will be punished with death for treason against the State. The place of the execution will be Execution Square, beyond the gate of Trock. Whoever wishes to witness the just punishment of the criminal may go there." Notwithstanding the severe cold, from eight o'clock to twelve the whole population of Wilna poured forth into the street leading to Execution Square, and there awaited the arrival of the martyr, who was then to shed his blood for his country.

To detract from the grandeur of this awfully impressive scene, the prisoner was led away from the convent through a back gate leading into the Police Alley. There he was put into a one-horse sleigh, with Lipinski on his right, and numerous gens-d'armes surrounded him. While this group was passing the market squares beyond the gate of Trock, Konarski requested the soldiers to make way that the people might behold and take leave of him. The gensd'armes could not refuse so innocent a request. As the route turned to the street of Trock, and wound up the hill on which a great multitude of women were collected, waving their handkerchiefs bedewed with tears, and with prolonged sobs bidding him farewell, Konarski, deeply moved, raised his arm, encircled by a heavy chain, and exclaimed: "Do not weep for me, for in a moment I shall be free. Weep rather for yourselves!" As he approached the gate of Trock, he gazed, with a certain natural degree of pride, upon the immense mass of his countrymen bidding him their lamenting farewell, and turning to Lipinski, said with a smile, "Many a king would envy me a funeral train so numerous and so gorgeous." From the gate they turned to VOL. XIII.NO. LXV.

the left of the road leading to Trock, in the direction of the highlands, opposite the place of public amusements, called Pohulanka, till they reached the square. That spot, as if to excite a longing for this world, presents a beautiful view. From there is seen Wilna, covering the dale with its white houses, the Ponarskie Mountains rising towards the south, and the Wilia meandering along its way amongst hills and valleys. On alighting here, Konarski's eye, which till now had been lifted up to higher worlds, was irresistibly fixed upon the beautiful wintry landscape, as though he said in his heart, "Oh, Nature! thou art always bountiful and beautiful. Thou art the image of thy Creator, but the creatures that live on thy bosom disgrace their high origin!" Or perhaps he had a livelier thought, for he gazed as if he wished to imprint for ever on his memory the situation of his grave, and carry this picture, as in a mirror, to a happier land.

All this lasted but a minute. They hurried him along, for the decree condemning him had to be read in public. The commanding officer of the city, General Kwietnicki, and many of the higher officers were present. After the reading of the decree, Konarski took the paper and, with great coolness, looked at it and said, "He (the Czar) has signed it with pale ink, but his sentence will be signed with blood." Lipinski, standing by his side, strengthened his spirit with pious words. Konarski, affectionately pressing his hand, thanked him for his Christian service; then turning to the Russian officers, he bowed to them, but they simultaneously embraced him; and, spite of the presence of the commandant, dared to take leave of the state criminal as of a brother and a martyr. And this was just and natural, for was he not, in the spirit of the gospel of nations, their brother and a martyr for their sake?

This conduct of the officers displeased the general so much, that when Konarski approached him and said, in a voice of calm courage, "General! grant me one favor. Let not my eyes be blinded," Kwietnicki turned his back upon him, and his countenance spoke this language-"Thou art unworthy, villain! that I, a faithful servant of the Czar, should speak to thee!"

Konarski was then brought near the

grave, surrounded on three sides by ranks of soldiers, and on the fourth by the civil, military and police officers. Beyond these were an immense multitude of the people. Music, consisting of fifes and drums, struck up a wild march as if to give courage for the perpetration of the murder. With such a march Suwarrow must have led his hordes to the butchery at Prague. Three grey watchmen surrounded the prisoner. One carried a death robe, another a white sash, and the third a handkerchief, with which to blind his eyes. As they were putting on the robe, his blue cap fell from his head. He picked it up and drew it tightly on again. His arms were then tied behind with the long sleeves of his shirt, he was girded with his sash, his eyes were blindfolded, and he was placed beside a post. At a silent order, twelve soldiers stepped forward, commanded by a sergeant. The officer that was to command was taken ill, and no other one would take his place. A gloomy silence reigned over the vast multitude. Each one could hear only the beating of his own heart. The order was at length given, the locks snapped, the twelve muskets echoed, and when the smoke cleared away, there lay the body of the martyr, pierced with balls. With the noise of the muskets mingled the prolonged groans of the people, filling the air even to the heart of Wilna.

The watchmen were the first to throw themselves upon the corpse. They took from it the blue cap, and commenced lowering the body into the grave. But the multitude at this time broke through the ranks of soldiers and crowded in from all sides. Some carried away pieces of the martyr's garment as relics, others dipped their handkerchiefs in his blood; and though the police endeavored by blows to keep

off the intruders, one of the students seized the cap from a watchman, and another carried away the cloak. The police endeavored to arrest the patriotic thieves, but the protecting multitude closed before them in a solid wall. From noon till late at night the inhabitants of Wilna flocked to the grave of their martyr. A patriotic lady suggested to a few others of her sex, that the grave should be ornamented with flowers, which was instantly done; each of them brought secreted under her cloak a flower-pot to deposit on the snowy hillock, which grew rapidly into a blooming garden. While some on their knees poured forth prayers mingled with fervent tears, for the soul of the departed, others planted crosses and flowers about the grave. The commandant at last sent his aids to request them to desist, stating that the spot was not a church, nor a fit place for prayers, and that the government would be displeased with their proceedings.

In this manner, though the individuals had to give their names at the gates, was Konarski's grave visited for three days. The post by the side of which he suffered death was cut up with pen-knives for relics. It is even said that some of the patriots had his body taken out and buried in the cemetery, while the chains which were taken off were made into finger-rings, which were even worn by many of the officers belonging to the corps of General Geismar. Many of them were persecuted for having thus honored the memory of the martyr, and some were sent into Siberia.

Such was the end of the life of Simon Konarski. His spirit, like that of another God, hovers over our country, and even now fills with fear the oppressors of our native land.

AFTER the works of fiction with which the cheap presses had fed their readers so abundantly as to have surfeited them with light unsubstantial food, we are served at last, with good, plain, strong, and yet not unsavory nutriment-no less a book than the celebrated Chronicles of Froissart; and, if we may judge of the eagerness with which the mass of readers have purchased these, from the fact of having observed several cabmen intently occupied in perusing them at their stands, we should infer that the enterprising publisher has been well repaid for having better appreciated than his rivals the soundness of the public taste.

Not that we censure the diffusion of the imaginings of Cervantes, Le Sage, Cooper, Scott, Chateaubriand, Edgworth, Sedgwick, Gore, Bulwer, St. Pierre, Bremer; but we believe that the only class of readers to whom the lascivious and grotesque productions of Paul de Kock,and his wretched imitators, are likely to give delight, are Americans who have lived just long enough in Europe to vitiate their native taste, and to pick up as much French as will enable them to understand what they fully believe to be French wit, and correct delineations of Parisian society.

An enlightened critic has said that, to form a just opinion of any intellectual work, we ought to stand halfway between an excessive distance from, and too near a proximity to the epoch of its composition. If this be a sound canon of criticism, applicable to events as well as to books recording them, this generation, placed at equal distances from two social orders, stands on ground from which can be viewed, and rightly appreciated, both the social order of which Froissart has been the inimitable annalist, and the new system brought about by altered circumstances, changed habits, younger and healthier opinions. We are not so far removed from the former, as to find it difficult,

either to procure the records of the past, or to discover in them, as well as in our own opinions and prejudices, even the minutest springs of events, and the motives of actors. On the other hand, though surrounded by the ruins of that system, which the revolutions of the last seventy years have strewn over the two continents, like the armor of the vanquished scattered over an immense field of battle, we are, nevertheless, no longer under the sway of the revolutionary passions that first impressed their own life and power upon the new social order.

It was with thoughts like these, that we commenced the perusal of Froissart, in the translation. We had read the original in early youth, charmed then much more with the gorgeous coloring, the romantic interest of the events, and the heroic character of the epoch, than with the admirable art with which the author preserves the unity of the great drama, without confusion or intricacy, through incessant changes of scene and two generations of actors. If, like Ariosto, sporting with our curiosity, the chronicler often interrupts his narration at the very moment when we are following it most eagerly in the expectation that it will lead us out of the mazes of our uncertainty, like the Tuscan poet too, he never loses sight of it, and seizing again the golden thread, with a master's hand weaves it into the woof of the complex texture, of which it is only one of the countless filaments. As we proceeded, a new light seemed to have descended upon the weird pages. The entire fabric of feudality rose before our eyes; not such, however, as it has been portrayed by authors who sought only to elucidate that form of government in relation to such portions of it as, still preserving their vitality, continue to pervade our legislation, but, the actual everyday workings of that system, in the society it had created, and which for

ages it had ruled; controlling, together with the inferior classes which it had been purposely framed to curb, the whole hierarchy of nobles,-nay, the clergy themselves, at that epoch the lawgivers of the world.

No man that lived during the fourteenth century, ever had such opportunities, as the accident of his birth, his varied pursuits and motley fortunes, threw in the way of Froissart, not to study that system,-(abstract meditations were neither his habit, nor congenial to the cast of his mind)-but to view and depict his contemporaries in all the various relations of political, civil, and private life. Born of humble parents-(as we infer since he began the study of heraldry, intending it as a profession) he was no stranger, however, to the interests, opinions, and manners of those whom we would now term the middle classes. He has sketched, with inimitable art, the characteristic traits of the Flemish burghers, a race whose posterity in the Hanseatic cities, and in the Netherlands, present to this day family features proving the early talent of Flemish artists for perfect imitation of their models. A priest afterwards, more through love of ease and elegant idleness, than from any real vocation for the arduous and stern duties of that holy station, his long intimacy with high dignitaries of the church, gave him, as subjects to paint from life, in unfading colors, those voluptuous abbots, wealthy bishops, and lordly prelates, always censured by the church, who vying with the sturdiest knights in brute strength and martial prowess, with the most unprincipled statesmen in crafty policy, with the most dissolute of the laity in licentiousness, united the rudeness of the soldier with the sloth of the monk; while lacking both the generous frankness of the one, and the ready devotion of faith of the other.

Having held honorable stations at the Court of England under Edward and Richard, at that of France under John, and Charles the Wise, he had associated there, in familiar intercourse, with those renowned feudal chieftains, the heroes of his Chronicles-an order of men having no parallel in antiquity

with habits, manners, and opinions, moulded by the institutions of the middle ages. He has shown us those warriors, sometimes in their fortified castles, built like eagles' nests on high peaks, the tyrants of their vassals, the dread of the peaceful trader; sometimes rushing to perilless battles encased in impenetrable armour. Loved and protected by Guy de Chatillon, Count of Blois,attached to the person of Winceslaus, Duke of Brabant, as his secretary,―a welcome and honored guest at the Court of Gaston, Count of Foix and Bearn,— Froissart, in the characteristic traits he has recorded of the absolute authority exercised by these princes over their nearest relatives, as well as their dependants, has given us the only contemporary memorial we possess of the singular domestic life of those proud vassals, ever ready to defy the monarch to whom they yielded an unwilling obedience, and ever prepared to betray him to whosoever offered the highest bribe.

The following passage, which, as by wizard art, rebuilds the ruined palace of Gaston de Foix, the Trouvère Prince; and, after four hundred and fifty years, reassembles within its gothic halls the motley crowd of visitors drawn there by the fame, the kingly hospitalities of the noble Chatelain, we transcribe as a fair example of Froissart's last and best manner and style. It is taken from a manuscript lately discovered, and is therefore not contained in the common editions of the Chronicles; it is a precious mediæval relic, a talisman by which we are brought into familiar communion with those illustrious dead, who furnished to Froissart, either themes for other chronicles, or information to render more perfect and authentic his earlier annals:

"Avant que je vinsse en sa cour je avois été en moult cours de Rois, de Ducs, de Princes, de Comtes, et de Hautes qui mieux me plût, ni qui fut plus sur le Dames; mais je n'en fut oncques en nulle fait d'armes plus réjouie comme celle du Comte de Foix. On veoit en la Salle et es chambres et en la Cour, chevalier et Ecuyer d'honneur aller et marcher, et d'armes et d'amour les oyoit-on parler. Tout honneur étoit lá dedans trouvée.