To the portal, dank and low,

Fast his steed the wanderer bound; Down a ruined staircase, slow,

Next his darkling way he wound.

Long drear vaults before him lie! Glimmering lights are seen to glide !"Blessed Mary, hear my cry!

Deign a sinner's steps to guide !"—

Often lost their quivering beam,
Still the lights move slow before,
Till they rest their ghastly gleam
Right against an iron door.

Thundering voices from within,

Mixed with peals of laughter, rose ;

As they fell, a solemn strain

Lent its wild and wondrous close!

Midst the din, he seemed to hear

Voice of friends, by death removed;

Well he knew that solemn air,

'Twas the lay that Alice loved.

Hark! for now a solemn knell

Four times on the still night broke; Four times, at its deadened swell,

Echoes from the ruins spoke.

As the lengthened clangours die,
Slowly opes the iron door!
Straight a banquet met his eye,
But a funeral's form it wore !

Coffins for the seats extend;

All with black the board was spread; Girt by parent, brother, friend,

Long since numbered with the dead!

Alice, in her grave-clothes bound,
Ghastly smiling, points a seat;
All arose, with thundering sound;
All the expected stranger greet.

High their meagre arms they wave, Wild their notes of welcome swell; "Welcome, traitor, to the grave! Perjured, bid the light farewell!"—

THE

WILD HUNTSMEN.

THIS is a translation, or rather an imitation, of the Wilde Jäger of the German poet Bürger. The tradition upon which it is founded bears, that formerly a Wildgrave, or keeper of a royal forest, named Falkenburg, was so much addicted to the pleasures of the chace, and otherwise so extremely profligate and cruel, that he not only followed this unhallowed amusement on the Sabbath, and other days consecrated to religious duty, but accompanied it with the most unheard-of oppression upon the poor peasants, who were under his vassalage. When this second Nimrod died, the people adopted a superstition, founded probably on the many various uncouth sounds, heard in the depth of a German forest during the silence of the night. They conceived they still heard the cry of the Wildgrave's hounds; and the well-known cheer of

the deceased hunter, the sounds of his horse's feet, and the rustling of the branches before the game, the pack, and the sportsmen, are also distinctly discriminated; but the phantoms are rarely, if ever, visible. Once, as a benighted Chasseur heard this infernal chace pass by him, at the sound of the halloo, with which the Spectre Huntsman cheered his hounds, he could not refrain from crying, "Gluck zu, Falkenburg!" (Good sport to ye, Falkenburg!) "Dost thou wish me good sport?" answered a hoarse voice," thou shalt share the game;" and there was thrown at him what seemed to be a huge piece of foul carrion. The daring Chasseur lost two of his best horses soon after, and never perfectly recovered the personal effects of this ghostly greeting. This tale, though told with some variations, is universally believed all over Germany.

The French had a similar tradition concerning an aerial hunter, who infested the forest of Fontainebleau. He was sometimes visible; when he appeared as a huntsman, surrounded with dogs, a tall grisly figure. Some account of him may be found in " Sully's Memoirs,” who says he was called, Le Grand Veneur. At one time he chose to hunt so near the palace, that the attendants, and, if I mistake not, Sully himself, came out into the court, supposing it was the sound of the king returning from the chace. This phantom is elsewhere called Saint Hubert.

The superstition seems to have been very general, as appears r om the following fine poetical description

of this phantom chace, as it was heard in the wilds of Ross-shire:

"Ere since, of old, the haughty thanes of Ross,

So to the simple swain tradition tells,—

Were wont with clans, and ready vassals thronged,

To wake the bounding stag, or guilty wolf,
There oft is heard, at midnight, or at noon,
Beginning faint, but rising still more loud,
And nearer, voice of hunters, and of hounds,
And horns, hoarse-winded, blowing far and keen :-
Forthwith, the hubbub multiplies; the gale
Labours with wilder shrieks, and rifer din
Of hot pursuit; the broken cry of deer
Mangled by throttling dogs; the shouts of men,
And hoofs, thick beating on the hollow hill.
Sudden the grazing heifer in the vale
Starts at the noise, and both the herdsman's ears
Tingle with inward dread. Aghast, he eyes
The mountain's height, and all the ridges round,
Yet not one trace of living wight discerns;

Nor knows, o'erawed, and trembling as he stands,
To what, or whom, he owes his idle fear,
To ghost, to witch, to fairy, or to fiend;
But wonders, and no end of wondering finds.”

Scottish Descriptive Poems, pp. 167, 168. A posthumous miracle of Father Lesly, a Scottish capuchin, related to his being buried on a hill haunted by these unearthly cries of hounds and huntsmen. After his sainted reliques had been deposited there, the noise. was never heard more. The reader will find this, and other miracles, recorded in the life of Father Bonaven tura, which is written in the choicest Italian.