either from habit, or associations, or intrinsic excellence, are always pleasing. Its popularity is so recognized that it is now often called the "National Anthem."- Knight's Half Hours with the Best Authors. Page 359.-PIBROCH OF DONUIL DHU.-This is a very ancient pibroch belonging to Clan MacDonald, and supposed to refer to the expedition of Donald Balloch, who, in 1431, launched from the Isles with a considerable force, invaded Lochaber, and at Inverlochy defeated and put to flight the Earls of Mar and Caithness, though at the head of an army superior to his own.-Scott's Poems, Abbotsford ed. Page 367.-SIR PATRICK SPENS.-The name of Sir Patrick Spens is not mentioned in history, but I am able to state that tradition has preserved it. In the little island of Papa Stronsay, one of the Orcadian group, lying over against Norway, there is a large grave, or tumulus, which has been known to the inhabitants, from time immemorial, as "the grave of Sir Patrick Spens." . . . The people know nothing beyond the traditional appellation of the spot, and they have no legend to tell. Spens is a Scottish, not a Scandinavian name. Is it, then, a forced conjecture that the shipwreck took place off the iron-bound coast of the northern islands, which did not then belong to the crown of Scotland?-Aytoun (Noted Names of Fiction). Page 374.-THE WANDERING JEW.-The story of the "Wandering Jew' is of considerable antiquity. It had obtained full credit in this part of the world before the year 1228, as we learn from Matthew Paris; for in that year, it seems, there came an Armenian archbishop into England to visit the shrines and reliques preserved in our churches; who, being entertained at the monastery of St. Albans, was asked several questions relating to his country, etc. Among the rest, a monk who sat near him inquired "if he had ever seen or heard of the famous person named Joseph, that was so much talked of, who was present at our Lord's crucifixion and conversed with him, and who was still alive, in confirmation of the Christian faith." The archbishop answered that the fact was true; and afterward one of his train, who was well known to a servant of the abbot's, interpreting his master's words, told them in French "that his lord knew the person they spoke of very well; that he had dined at his table but a little while before he left the East; that he had been Pontius Pilate's porter, by name Cartaphilus, who, when they were dragging Jesus out of the door of the judgmenthall, struck him with his fist on the back, saying, 'Go faster, Jesus, go faster! why dost thou linger?' Upon which Jesus looked at him with a frown and said, 'I indeed am going, but thou shalt tarry till I come.' Soon after he was converted, and baptized by the name of Joseph. He lives for ever, but at the end of every hundred years falls into an incurable illness, and at length into a fit or ecstasy, out of which, when he recovers, he returns to the same state of youth he was in when Jesus suffered, being then about thirty years of age. He remembers all the circumstances of the death and resurrection of Christ, the saints that arose with him, the composing of the apostles' creed, their preaching and dispersion, and is himself a very grave and holy person." This is the substance of Matthew Paris's account, who was himself a monk of St. Albans, and was living at the time when the Armenian archbishop made the above relation. Since his time several impostors have appeared at intervals under the name and character of the "Wandering Jew," whose several histories may be seen in Calmet's Dictionary of the Bible. See also The Turkish Spy, vol. ii., book 3, let. 1. The story that is copied in the following ballad is of one who appeared at Hamburg in 1547, and pretended he had been a Jewish shoemaker at the time of Christ's crucifixion. The ballad, however, seems to be of a later date.Percy's Reliques. Page 375.-THE DREAM OF EUGENE ARAM.— Eugene Aram, the son of a poor gardener, but who by the most indefatigable industry and unswerving perseverance in the face of the greatest difficulties had won for himself the reputation of extensive scholarship, was a schoolmaster in Knaresborough. In 1745 he was implicated in a robbery committed by Daniel Clark, a shoemaker of that place, but was acquitted for want of evidence. Nevertheless, he left Knaresborough and went to London, while at the same time Clark mysteriously disappeared. Nothing was known of the matter until February, 1759, nearly fourteen years afterward, when a skeleton was dug up near Knaresborough which was suspected to be that of the shoemaker. At the time of this discovery Aram was an usher at an academy in Lynn, pursuing his favorite studies of heraldry, botany, the Chaldee, Arabic, Welsh, and Irish languages, and was just engaged in compiling a comparative lexicon of the English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Celtic languages, when he was suddenly arrested on the charge of murder. At the trial he conducted his own defence with wonderful ability and ingenuity, but the evidence of his crime was overwhelming, and he was found guilty. After his condemnation he confessed his guilt and attempted to commit suicide, but was discovered before he had bled to death, and expiated his crime on the gallows. Page 878. Inchcape Rock.- An old writer mentions a curious tradition which may be worth quoting. "By east the Isle of May," says he, "twelve miles from all land, in the German seas, lyes a great hidden rock, called Inchcape, very dangerous for navigators, because it is overflowed everie tide. It is reported, in old times upon the saide rock there was a bell, fixed upon a tree or timber, which rang continually, being moved by the sea, giving notice to the saylers of the danger. This bell or clocke was put there and maintained by the abbot of Aberbrothok, and being taken down by a sea-pirate, a yeare thereafter he perished upon the same rocke, with ship and goodes, in the righteous judgment of God." -Stoddart's Remarks on Scotland. so thoroughly mortified at the light in which this affair was regarded on the Continent that he wrote to Cecil: "The bruits be so brim, and so maliciously reported here, touching the marriage of the Lord Robert and the death of his wife, that I know not where to turn me nor what countenance to bear.”—Strickland's Queens of England. Page 381.-THE DOWIE DEWS OF YARROW.— This ballad was first published in the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border; but other versions of it were previously in circulation, and it is stated by Sir Walter Scott to have been "a very great favorite among the inhabitants of Ettrick Forest," where it is universally believed to be founded on fact. Sir Walter, indeed, "found it easy to collect a variety of copies ;" and from them he collated the present edition-avowedly for the purpose of suit times." A copy is contained in Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Ancient and Modern; another in Buchan's Ballads and Songs of the North of Sentland; it no doubt originated the popular composition beginning- "Busk ye, busk ye, my bonny, bonny bride," by Hamilton of Bangour, first published in Ramsay's Tea-Table Miscellany, and suggested the ballad "The Braes of Yarrow," by the Rev. John Logan. In Herd's Collection, in Ritson' Scottish Songs, and in the Tea-Table Miscellang are to be found fragments of another ballad, entitled "Willie's drowned in Yarrow," of which this is the concluding stanza: "She sought him east, she sought him west, She sought him braid and narrow; Syne in the cleaving of a craig, Page 879. CUMNOR HALL. The death of Lord Dudley's deserted wife at this critical june-ing the tastes of these more light and giddy-paced ture, under peculiarly suspicious circumstances, gave rise to dark rumors that she had been put out of the way to enable him to accept the willing hand of a royal bride. Several days before the tragedy was perpetrated at Cumnor Hall, it had been reported in the court that she was very ill and not expected to recover, although at that time in perfect health. The Spanish ambassador, De Quadra, writes to the Duchess of Parma: "The queen, on her return from hunting, told me that Lord Robert's wife was dead, or nearly so, and begged me to say nothing about it. Assuredly it is a matter full of shame and infamy. Since this was written," His Excellency adds, "the death of Lord Robert's wife has been given out publicly." The queen said in Italian, "She had broken her neck; she was found dead at the foot of a staircase at Cumnor Hall." There was certainly a great lack of feminine feeling in the brief, hard terms in which Elizabeth announced the tragic fate of the unfortunate lady, from whom she bad alienated a husband's love. Lever, one of the popular preachers of the day, wrote to Cecil, "that the country was full of dangerous suspicion and muttering of the death of her that was Lord Robert Dudley's wife, and entreated that there might be an earnest investigation, with punishment if any were found guilty; for if the matter were hushed up or passed over, the displeasure of God, the dishonor of the queen, and the danger of the whole realm were to be feared." Lord Robert caused a coroner's inquest to sit on the body of his deceased wife, but we detect him in correspondence with the foreman of the jury; and, although a verdict of accidental death was returned, Lord Robert continued to be burdened with the suspicion of having contrived the murder, or, to use Cecil's more expressive words. "was infamed by the death of his wife." Throckmorton, the English ambassador at Paris, was She found him drowned in Yarrow." Indeed, "Yarrow stream" has been a fertile source of poetry, and seems to have inspired the poets; the very sound is seductive: and, as Mr. Buchan remarks, "All who have attempted to sing its praise or celebrate the actions of those who have been its visitors have almost universally succeeded in their attempts." That the several versions of the story seattered among the people and preserved by them in some form or other had one common origin there can be little doubt. "Tradition," according to Sir Walter Scott, "places the event recorded in the song very early, and it is probable the ballad was composed soon afterward, although the language has been modernized in the course of its transmission to us through the inaccurate channel of oral tradition." "The hero of the ballad,” he adds, "was a knight of great bravery, called Scott;" and he believes it refers to a duel fought at Deucharswyre, of which Annan's Treat is a part, betwixt John Scott of Tushielaw and his brother-in-law Walter Scott, third son of Robert of Thirlstane, in which the latter was slain. Annan's Treat is a low muir on the banks of the Yarrow, lying to the west of Yarrow kirk. Two tall unhewn masses of stone are erected about eighty yards distant from each other, and the least child, that can herd a cow, will tell the passenger that there lie "the two lords who were slain in single combat." Sir Walter also informs us that, according to tradition, the murderer was the brother of either the wife or the betrothed bride of the murdered, and that the alleged cause of quarrel was the lady's father having proposed to endow her with half of his property upon her marriage with a warrior of such renown. The name of the murderer is said to have been Annan, hence the place of combat is still called Annan's Treat.-Percy's Reliques. Page 387.-HARTLEAP WELL.-Hartleap Well is a small spring of water about five miles from Richmond in Yorkshire, and near the side of the road that leads from Richmond to Askrigg. Its name is derived from a remarkable chase, the memory of which is preserved by the monuments spoken of in the second part of the following poem, which monuments do now exist as I have there described them.- Wordsworth, 8vo ed. Page 393.-KATHARINE JANFARIE. Of this ballad-first published in the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border-the editor informs us that it is "given from several recited copies." It has obviously undergone some alteration, yet much of the rugged character of the original has been retained. The scenery of the ballad is said by tradition to lie upon the banks of the Caddenwater, "a small rill which joins the Tweed (from the north) betwixt Inverleithen and Clovenford." It is also traditionally stated that Katharine Janfarie "lived high up in the glen"-a beautiful and sequestered vale connected with Traquair, and situated about three miles above Traquair House. The recited copies, from which it is probable Sir Walter Scott collected the verses he has here brought together, exist in Buchan's Ancient Ballads and Songs, and in Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Ancient and Modern. It derives interest and im portance, however, less from its intrinsic merit than from the circumstance of its having given to Scott the hint upon which he founded one of the most brilliant and spirit-stirring of his compositions the famous and favorite ballad of "Young Lochinvar."-Percy's Reliques. Page 395.-O'CONNOR'S CHILD.-The poem of "O'Connor's Child" is an exquisitely finished and pathetic tale. The rugged and ferocious features of ancient feudal manners and family pride are there displayed in connection with female suffer Page 398.-PRISONER OF CHILLON. - François de Bonnivard was born in Seyssel, in the department of Ain, in 1496. Having adopted republican opinions, he took sides with the Genevese against Duke Charles III. of Savoy; but he had the misfortune in 1530 to fall into the power of the latter, who confined him six years in the castle of Chillon. The Château de Chillon is situated between Clarens and Villeneuve, which last is at one extremity of the Lake of Geneva. On its left are the entrances of the Rhone, and opposite are the heights of Meillerie and the range of the Alps above Boveret and St. Gingo. Near it, on a hill behind, is a torrent; below it, washing its walls, the lake has been fathomed to the depth of eight hundred feet (French measure); within it are a range of dungeons, in which the early Reformers, and subsequently prisoners of state, were confined. Across one of the vaults is a beam black with age, on which we were informed that the condemned were formerly executed. In the cells are seven pillars, or rather eight, one being half merged in the wall; in some of these are rings for the fetters and fettered; in the pavement the steps of Bonnivard have left their traces. Page 402.-FAIR HELEN.-The story upon which this ballad is founded is thus related in the first edition of the Statistics of Scotland: “In the burialground of Kirkconnell are still to be seen the tombstones of Fair Helen and her favorite lover, Adam Fleeming. She was a daughter of the family of Kirkconnell, and fell a victim to the jealousy of a lover. Being courted by two young gentlemen at the same time, the one of whom, thinking himself slighted, vowed to sacrifice the other to his resentment when he again discovered him in her company. An opportunity soon presented itself when the faithful pair, walking along the romantic banks of the Kirtle, were discovered from the opposite banks by the assassin. Helen, perceiving him lurking among the bushes, and dreading the fatal resolution, rushed to her lover's bosom to rescue him from the danger, and thus receiving the wound intended for another, sank and expired in her favorite's arms. He immediately avenged her death and slew her murderer. The inconsolable Adam Fleeming, now sinking under the pressure of grief, went abroad and served under the banners of Spain against the infidels. The impression, however, was too strong to be obliterated. The image of woe attended him thither, and the pleasing remembrance of the ten der scenes that were past, with the melancholy reflection that they could never return, harassed his soul and deprived his mind of repose. He soon returned, and stretching himself on her grave, expired, and was buried by her side. Upon the tombstone are engraven a sword and cross, with Hic jacet Adamus Fleeming.'"-Burns's Works, Blackie and Son's edition. Page 408.-BULL-FIGHT OF GAZUL.-Gazul is the name of one of the Moorish heroes who figure in the Historia de las Guerras Civiles de Granada. The following ballad is one of the very many in which the dexterity of the Moorish cavaliers in the bull-fight is described. The reader will observe that the shape, activity, and resolution of the unhappy animal destined to furnish the amusement of the spectators are enlarged upon, just as the qualities of a modern race-horse might be among ourselves; nor is the bull without his name. day of the Baptist is a festival among the Mussulmans as well as among Christians.-Lockhart's Spanish Ballads. The Page 409.-GOD'S JUDGMENT ON A WICKED BISHOP.-It hapned in the year 914, that there was an exceeding great famine in Germany, at what time Otho, surnamed the Great was Emperor, and one Hatto, once Abbot of Fulda, was Archbishop of Mentz, of the Bishops after Crescens and Crescentius the two and thirtieth, of the Archbishops after St. Bonifacius the thirteenth. This Hatto in the time of this great famine afore-mentioned, when he saw the poor people of the country exceedingly oppressed with famine, assembled a great company of them together into a Barne, and, like a most accursed and mercilesse caitiffe, burnt up those poor innocent souls, that were so far from doubting any such matter, that they rather hoped to receive some comfort and relief at his hands. The reason that moved the prelat to commit that execrable impiety was, because he thought the famine would the sooner cease, if those unprofitable beggars, that consumed more bread than they were worthy to eat, were dispatched out of the world. For he said that those poor folks were like to Mice, that were good for nothing but to devour corne. But God Almighty, the just avenger of the poor folks quarrel, did not long suffer this hainous tyranny, this most detestable fact, unpunished. For he mustered up an army of Mice against the Archbishop, and sent them to persecute him as his furious Alastors, so that they afflicted him both day and night, and would not suffer him to take his rest in any place. Whereupon the Prelate, thinking he should be secure from the injury of Mice if he were in a certain tower, that standeth in the Rhine near to the towne, betook himself unto the said tower as to a safe refuge and sanctuary from his enemies, and locked himself in. But the innumerable troupes of Mice chased him continually very eagerly, and swumme unto him upon the top of the water to execute the just judgment of God, and so at last he was most miserably devoured by those sillie creatures; who pursued him with such bitter hostility, that it is recorded they scraped and knawed out his very name from the walls and tapistry wherein it was written, after they had so cruelly devoured his body. Wherefore the tower wherein he was eaten up by the Mice is shewn to this day, for a perpetual monument to all succeeding ages of the barbarous and inhuman tyranny of this impious Prelate, being situate in a little green Island in the midst of the Rhine near to the towne of Bingen, and is commonly called in the German Tongue the Mowse-turn.-Coryat's Crudities. Page 412.—THE BENDED Bow.-It is supposed that war was anciently proclaimed in Britain by sending messengers in different directions through the land, each bearing a bended bow; and that peace was in like manner announced by a bow unstrung, and therefore straight.-See the Cam brian Antiquities.-Note to Mrs. Hemans's Poems. Page 417.-BARBARA ALLEN'S CRUELTY.-There are several versions of this popular ballad, and we have chosen the one adopted by Mr. Allingham in his Ballad Book. Allingham says: "No doubt, however, those who have been bred up, as it were, in a particular form of a ballad will be apt, at least at first, to mislike any other form. One who has had impressed upon his youthful mind 'It was in or about the Martinmas time, When the green leaves were a-fallin', That Sir John Graeme in the west countrie Fell in love with Barbara Allen,'may very likely be ill-content to find name of person and season of year altered, as they are in this equally authentic version. But let him not, therefore, fall foul of the editor, who was bound to choose without prejudice between Autumn and Spring, Jemmy Grove and Sir John." Page 417.-LAMENT OF THE BORDER WIDOW,— This fragment, obtained from recitation in the Forest of Ettrick, is said to relate to the execution of Cockburne of Henderland, a Border freebooter hanged over the gate of his own tower by James V. in the course of that memorable expedition in 1529 which was fatal to Johnie Armstrong, Adam Scott of Tushielaw, and many other marauders. -Sir Walter Scott. Page 421-A SONG OF THE NORTH.-In May, 1845, Sir John Franklin sailed from England with the two ships Erebus and Terror, to discover a north-west passage through the Arctic seas. Not returning, several expeditions were sent out in search, among which was the celebrated one headed by the late Dr. E. K. Kane, Lady Franklin, especially, being indefatigable in her endeavors to ascertain his fate, but without any success until 1854, when Dr. Rae found some relics, and in 1859, Captain McClintock discovered on the shore of King William's Land a record deposited in a cairn by the survivors of Franklin's company. This document was dated April 25, 1848, and stated that Sir John died June 11, 1847-that the Erebus and Terror were abandoned April 22, 1848, when the survivors, 105 in number, started for the Great Fish River. Many relics were also found of this party, who perished on their journey, probably soon after leaving the vessels. It appears also that Sir John really did discover the long-sought-for north-west passage, but the knowledge of its whereabouts perished with him, although subsequent expeditions have been sent out to find it. Page 458.-THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS.— The verse beginning "And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died," is an allusion to the memory of the poet's sister, who died of consumption in 1824.—Duyckinck's Cyclopædia of American Literature. Page 504.-LINES ON THE MERMAID TAVERN.The Mermaid Tavern was the resort of Ben Jonson and his literary friends, members of a club established by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1603, and numbering among them Shakespeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, Donne, Selden, and the noblest names in English authorship. Truly might Beaumont, in his poetical epistle to Jonson, exclaim"What things have seen Done at the Mermaid; heard words that have been So nimble, and so full of subtle flame, As if that every one from whom they came Page 513.-ALNWICK CASTLE.-Alnwick Castle is one of the finest in England. It is built of freestone, in the Gothic style, and covers five acres of ground, and was restored in 1830 at an outlay of $1,000,000. It belongs to the Duke of Northumberland, a descendant of the Percys so famed in ancient ballads, and especially for their feuds with their neighbors on the other side of the border, the noble Douglases. One of the Percys was an emperor of Constantinople, another was a major in the British army, and "fought for King George at Lexington" and at the battle of the Brandywine. amiable disposition, perished by losing his way on the mountain Hellvellyn. His remains were not discovered till three months afterward, when they were found guarded by a faithful terrier bitch, his constant attendant during frequent solitary rambles through the wilds of Cumberland and Westmoreland.-Scott's Poems. Page 517.-THE MEETING OF THE WATERS."The Meeting of the Waters" forms a part of that beautiful scenery which lies between Rathdrum and Arklow, in the county of Wicklow, and these lines were suggested by a visit to this Moore's Works, 8vo. romantic spot in the summer of the year 1807. Page 521.-THE LAKE OF THE DISMAL SWAMP.Moore's "Lake of the Dismal Swamp," written at Norfolk, in Virginia, is founded on the following legend: "A young man who lost his mind upon the death of a girl he loved, and who, suddenly disappearing from his friends, was never afterward heard of. As he had frequently said in his ravings that the girl was not dead, but gone to the Dismal Swamp, it is supposed he had wandered into that dreary wilderness, and had died of hunger or had been lost in some of its dreadful morasses."-Frederick Saunders's Festival of Song. Page 525.-ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST'S NATIVITY. This magnificent ode, called by Hallam "perhaps the finest in the English language," was composed, as we learn from Milton's own heading of it in the edition of 1645, in the year 1629. Milton was then twenty-one years of age, in the sixth academic year at Cambridge, and a B. A. of a year's standing. There is an interesting allusion to the ode by Milton himself, when he was in the act of composing it, in the sixth of his Latin elegies. In that elegy, addressed to his friend Charles Diodati, residing in the country, in answer to a friendly epistle which Diodati had sent to him on the 13th of December, 1629, there is a distinct description of the "Ode on the Nativity" as then finished, or nearly so, and ready to be shown to Diodati, together with the express information that it was begun on Christmas Day, 1629.-Milton, Masson's ed. Page 549.-EMIGRANTS IN THE BERMUDAS.Representative government was introduced into the Bermudas in 1620, and in 1621 the Bermuda Company of London issued a sort of charter to the colony, including rights and liberties-among them liberty of worship-that attracted many of those English emigrants whose feeling Marvell has here fashioned into song.-Morley's Shorter Poems of the English Language. Page 550.-REBECCA'S HYMN.-It was in the twilight of the day when her trial-if it could be called such-had taken place, that a low knock |