and hung her up in a chamber in the castle. There were seven hundred of these cages hanging in the castle, and all with beautiful birds in them. Now there was once a maiden whose name was Jorinda: she was prettier than all the pretty girls that ever were seen; and a shepherd, whose name was Jorindel, was very fond of her, and they were soon to be married. One day they went to walk in the wood, that they might be alone: and Jorindel said, "We must take care that we don't go too near the castle." It was a beautiful evening; the last rays of the setting sun shone bright through the long stems of the trees upon the green underwood beneath, and the turtledoves sang plaintively from the tall birches. Jorinda sat down to gaze upon the sun; Jorindel sat by her side; and both felt sad, they knew not why; but it seemed as if they were to be parted from one another for ever. They had wandered a long way; and when they looked to see which way they should go home, they found themselves at a loss to know what path to take, The sun was setting fast, and already half of his circle had disappeared behind the hill; Jorindel on a sudden looked behind him, and as he saw through the bushes that they had, without knowing it, sat down close under the old walls of the castle, he shrank for fear, turned pale, and trembled. Jorinda was singing, "The ring-dove sang from the willow spray, Well-a-day! well-a-day! He mourn'd for the fate Well-a-day!" The song ceased suddenly. Jorindel turned to see the reason, and beheld his Jorinda changed into a nightingale; so that her song ended with a mournful jug, jug. An owl with fiery eyes flew three times round them, and three times screamed, Tu whu! Tu whu! Tu whu! Jorindel could not move he stood fixed as a stone, and could neither weep, nor speak, nor stir hand or foot. And now the sun went quite down; the gloomy night came; the owl flew into a bush; and a moment after the old fairy came forth pale and meagre, with staring eyes, and a nose and chin that almost met one another. She mumbled something to herself, seized the nightingale, and went away with it in her hand. Poor Jorindel saw the nightingale was gone,-but what could he do? He could not move from the spot where he stood. At last the fairy came back, and sung with a hoarse voice, "Till the prisoner's fast, There stay! Oh, stay! On a sudden Jorindel found himself free. Then fell on his knees before the fairy, and prayed her to give him back his dear Jorinda: but she said he should never see her again, and went her way. He prayed, he wept, he sorrowed, but all in vain. "Alas!" he said, what will become of me?" He could not return to his own home, so he went to a strange village, and employed himself in keeping sheep. Many a time did he walk round and round as near to the hated castle as he dared go. At last he dreamed one night that he found a beautiful purple flower, and in the middle of it lay a costly pearl; and he dreamt that he plucked the flower, and went with it in his hand into the castle, and that every thing he touched with it was disenchanted, and that there he found his dear Jorinda again. In the morning when he awoke, he began to search over hill and dale for this pretty flower; and eight long days. he sought for it in vain: but on the ninth day early in the morning he found the beautiful purple flower; and in the middle of it was a large dew drop as big as a costly pearl. Then he plucked the flower, and set out and travelled day and night till he came again to the castle. He walked nearer than a hundred paces to it, and yet he did not become fixed as before, but found that he could go close up to the door. Jorindel was very glad to see this: he touched the door with the flower, and it sprang open, so that he went in through the court, and listened when he heard so many birds singing. At last he came to the chamber where the fairy sat, with the seven hundred birds singing in the seven hundred cages. And when she saw Jorindel she was very angry, and screamed with rage; but she could not come within two yards of him; for the flower he held in his hand protected him. He looked around at the birds, but alas! there were many nightingales, and how then should he find his Jorinda? While he was thinking what to do, he observed that the fairy had taken down one of the cages, and was making her escape through the door. He ran or flew to her, touched the cage with the flower, -and his Jorinda stood before him. She threw her arms round his neck and looked as beautiful as ever, as beautiful as when they walked together in the wood. Then he touched all the other birds with the flower, so that they resumed their old forms; and took his dear Jorinda home, where they lived happily together many years. [We only wish we had room for more, but already we have gossipped, like old nurses, late into the night. We must to our more serious avocations! But in closing the book, we cannot help complimenting the publishers on the prettiness of their volume. Cruikshank has given a dozen little sketches, which have more of the spirit of Fairy Tales in them than any others we ever looked at. The book too is published at a reasonable price :-the etchings are worth the money.] (Lond. Mag.) THE MISCELLANY. [We propose to establish a place of refuge for small ingenious productions. A short poem, an original thought, a good jest, an interesting fact, a new discovery (in science or art), anecdotes whether in philosophy, biography, natural history, or otherwise), shall all be welcome. We only stipulate that they shall be good. In a word, we mean to provide for the younger children of the Wits and the Muses, and others, who have been immemorially disabled from sheltering their own offspring. The character of our Miscellany will be brevity,-which is the soul of wit, as every body knows. Independently of this, it will of course be very meritorious. We refrain from saying too much in our own behalf, lest our readers should suppose that we intend to do nothing. Having premised thus much in a general way, we will proceed to our first article.] FRIAR BACON. THIS gentleman (as Mrs. Malaprop would have called him) was remarkable for something more than his Brazen Head :-not that his own head was made of brass, "quite the reverse." He had a hard head, to be sure, and a deep one, and one that contained a great deal of learning. So much indeed of this valuable commodity had he, that he was taken (by the vulgar) for a conjuror. The silly monks of his own order would scarcely admit his works into their libraries. The Pope "liked not his learning," it is said: but kept him many years in prison on a charge of heresy and magic. He lived, however, to the age of 78, and was buried in the Franciscan church at Oxford.-Bacon was a person of great mind and extensive erudition. He wrote on many subjects,— criticism, chemistry, music, astronomy, metaphysics, astrology, logic, moral philosophy, &c.; and he wrote also (though he did not believe in what is called the elixir vitæ) on the "cure of old age, and the preservation of youth." The reader, who is not acquainted with the jealous and ignorant folly of those times, will scarcely credit to what straits Bacon was reduced in communicating his discoveries. We will make a short quotation from his book, adding, in italics, the explanation of certain parts, from the key or notes at the end of the essay. "For my own part being hindered ity. His studies, his writings, his sufferings in the cause of truth, are nothing,-mere 'leather and prunella.' He lives in our admiration, enshrined, as the author of the Brazen Head alone. partly by the charge, partly by impatience, and partly by the rumours of the vulgar, I was not willing to make experiment of all things, which may easily be tried by others; but have resolved to express those things in obscure and difficult terms, which I judge requisite to the conservation of health, lest they should fall into the hands of the unfaithful. The fifth is likened to the medicine which comes out the mine of the noble animal (Supposed to mean human blood.) How ill do people calculate on the deeds by which they are to survive the grave! Petrarch lives in his sonnets, but his more elaborate works are unknown. A pearl added to Cleopatra's fame, and an asp secured it. Canute, the king, is he who gave his courtiers a lesson on the sea-shore. The learning, and the fine qualities of Henry the Second, are little known: he is the paramour of fair Rosamond; nothing more. The pebbles of Demosthenes, the housewife's cake which our great Alfred burned, are conspicuous facts The sixth comes out of the long-lived animal. in their several histories. Sometimes, (Bone of a stag's heart.) The seventh is that whose mine is the plant of India. (Lignum aloes.") This is even more mysterious and quite as unsatisfactory as the semi-animated phrase (neither a living language nor a dead one), which obscures the merit of our modern prescriptions. But "Vive la Mystére !"-what would men's heads or hearts look like, if they were stripped as naked as truth? When Bacon surveyed his various productions, he must have felt a fine and honourable pride. If he read Horace, he might have quoted, apparently with safety, the Exegi monumentum ære perennius; but he would have been mistaken after all. The Head's the thing by which he has caught the admiration of poster indeed, the works of men are so huge and overwhelming as to crush the name or reputation of their founders,—witness the art of printing, and the invention of gunpowder; to say nothing of our friend Cheops and the pyramids of Egypt. Who hewed out the temple in the caverns of Elephanta? Who built the great wall of China? Who carved the great eagle in the Corinthian palace at Balbec? Who lifted the masses at Stonehenge? What poet first wrote nonsense verses? Who was the inventor of toasted cheese ?-We pause for a reply. When these queries are are satisfactorily answered,-we can produce more. In the mean time it is sufficient to say that we are satisfied with our own positions; particularly as our friend, Friar Bacon, is not in the predicament to which we have alluded. Days of absence, sad and dreary, All I love is far away. Hours of bliss, too quickly vanished, When this bosom cease to mourn? ABSENCE. Not till that loved voice can greet me, Days of absence then will vanish, Joy will all my pangs repay; J.M. GRAY'S CHURCH-YARD AT STOKE, NEAR WINDSOR. MR. GRAY wrote his beautiful "Elegv in a Country Church-yard," and others of his classical poems, while he resided at Stoke, and he was buried on the spot which his genins had immortalized. Elderly people lately living in that village, remembered his retired and secluded character, and they shewed a tree, in which he was accustomed to indulge in reading and meditation. The church and church-yard possess more interest than commonly belongs to such places, from the above associations, and their retired and picturesque situation. Nearly adjoining is Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid the park of Mr. Penn, from which the above view of Stoke Church has been taken; and on the same site that distinguished scholar and amateur has erected a splendid monument in honour of the Poet, with the following inscription :-" This Monument, in honour of Thomas Gray, was erected A. D. 1799, among the scenery celebrated by that great lyric and elegiac poet. He died in 1771, and lies unnoticed in the adjoining church-yard, under the tomb stone on which he pathetically and piously recorded the interment of his aunt and lamented mother." SCRAPS OF CRITICISM. less he were literally a harper by profession? Hands that "might have held the plough," would have had some sense, for that work is strictly manual; the others only emblematically or pictorially so. Kings now-a-days sway no rods, alias sceptres, except on their coronation day; and poets do not necessarily strum upon the harp or fiddle, as poets. When we think upon dead cold fingers, we may remember the honest squeeze of friendship which they returned heretofore; we cannot but with violence connect their living may per unfitted for a courtier, he is therefore determined to prove, in our sense of the word, a wicked man. The word in Shakspeare's time had not passed entirely into the modern sense; it was in its passage certainly, and indifferently used as such; the beat of a world of words in that age was in their being less definite than they are now, fixed, and petrified. Villain is here undoubtedly used for a churl, or clown, opposed to a courtier; and the incipient deterioration of the meaning gave the use of it in this place great spirit and beauty. A wicked man does not necessarily hate courtly pleasures; a clown is naturally opposed to them. The mistake of this meaning has, I think, led the players into that hard literal conception, with which they deliver this passage, quite foreign in my understanding, to the bold gay faced irony of the soliloquy. Richard upon the stage, looks round, as if he were literally apprehensive of some dog snapping at him; and announces his determination of procuring a looking-glass, and employing a tailor, as if he were prepared to put both in practice before he should get home-I apprehend “a world of figures here." MONTGOMERY'S "SONGS OF ZION." WE will now make an extract from a book, which is lying by our side, called the "Songs of Zion." It is written by Mr. Montgomery who is perhaps the best poet, after Cowper, that religious classes of society one of themselves. They have be proud of him. He is an strenuous, and sincere adof the cau which he believes to be good. And among the many sneers and objections which we have heard cast upon religious poets, we have never heard a sneer against Mr. Montgomery. This is one of the triumphs of sincerity. He is as free from cant as a pupil of Voltaire can be; and we think that he is at least as well entitled to his own self-respect. We shall extract one of the "Songs of Zion," the 104th; partly because it is one of the most sublime and difficult to be ren 4 ATHENEUM VOL. 13. dered in rhyme,-and partly because it is one of those in which Mr. Montgomery may be said to have eminently succeeded. He has failed certainly in one or two instances. This goodly globe his wisdom plann'd, is no equivalent for "Who laid the foundations of the earth that they should not be removed for ever;" and the simplicity of "Thou covered'st it with the deep as with a garment," is far beyond the paraphrase of the third stanza. But these are small objections. There is great breadth and spirit in the vision. It reminds us "not to speak it profanely," of Campbell's "Battle of the Baltic" (the best thing he has done.) It is a rich and vigorous strain of song. It would become a vast cathedral, and a hundred instruments, harps and dulcimers and choral voices; for it tells finely a tale of earth and the heavens, and of things that shall endure for ever. |