"Ha!" exclaimed Auriol.

"When was it done?"

"Some nights ago, I should fancy," replied the dwarf; "for I've been a terrible long time under water. I have only just managed to shake off the stone."

At this speech, there was a titter of incredulity among by-standers.

the

"You may laugh, but it's true!" cried the dwarf, angrily. "We must speak of this anon," said Auriol. "Will you convey him to the nearest tavern?" he added, placing money in the hands of the man who held the dwarf in his arms.

"Willingly, sir," replied the man, "I'll take him to the Life Guardsman, near the barracks, that's the nearest public."

“I'll join him there in an hour,” replied Auriol, moving

away.

And as he disappeared, the man took up his little burthen, and bent his steps towards the barracks.

Utterly disregarding the dripping state of his habiliments, Auriol, proceeded quickly to the place of rendezvous. Arrived there, he looked around, and not seeing any one, flung himself upon a bench at the foot of the gentle eminence on which the gigantic statue of Achilles is placed.

It was becoming rapidly dark, and heavy clouds portending speedy rain, increased the gloom. Auriol's thoughts were sombre as the weather and the hour, and he fell into a deep fit of abstraction, from which he was roused by a hand laid on his shoulder.

Recoiling at the touch, he raised his eyes, and beheld the stranger leaning over him, and gazing at him with a look of diabolical exultation. The cloak was thrown partly aside, so as to display the tall, gaunt figure of its wearer; while the large collar of sable fur with which it was decorated stood out like the wings of a demon. The stranger's hat was off, and his high broad forehead, white as marble, was fully revealed.

"Our meeting must be brief," he said. to fulfil the compact ?"

"What do you require ?" replied Auriol.

"Are you prepared

"Possession of the girl I saw three days ago," said the other, "the iron-merchant's daughter, Ebba. She must be mine." "Never!" cried Auriol, firmly-" never!"

"Beware how you tempt me to exert my power," said the stranger; "she must be mine-or

"I defy you!" rejoined Auriol; "I will never consent." "Fool!" cried the other, seizing him by the arm, and fixing a withering glance upon him. "Bring her to me ere the week be out, or dread my vengeance!"

And, enveloping himself in his cloak, he retreated behind the statue, and was lost to view.

As he disappeared, a moaning wind arose, and heavy rain descended. Still Auriol did not quit the bench.

A JAR OF HONEY FROM MOUNT HYBLA.

BY LEIGH HUNT.

NO. XII. AND LAST.

DANTE'S EVENING.-AVE-MARIA OF BYRON. THE SICILIAN VESPERS. NOTHING "INFERNAL" IN NATURE.-SICILIAN MARINER'S HYMN.-INVOCATION FROM COLERIDGE.-PAGAN AND ROMAN-CATHOLIC WORSHIP.-LATIN AND ITALIAN COUPLET.-WINTER'S RATTO DI PROSERPINA.—A HINT ON ITALIAN AIRS.BELLINI.-COVENTRY PATMORE AND OTHER NEW POETS.-MELI, THE MODERN

THEOCRITUS.

IN closing our Blue Jar, a rosy light seems to come over it, at once beautiful and melancholy; for terminations are farewells, and farewells remind us of evenings, and of the divine lines of the poet:

"Era già l'ora, che volge 'l desio

A' naviganti, e intenerisce 'l cuore

Lo dì ch'an detto a' dolci amici A Dio:

E che lo nuovo peregrin d'amore

Punge, se ode squilla di lontano,

Che paia 'l giorno pianger che si muore."

'Twas now the hour, when thoughts of home renew
The sighs of voyagers, and oft portray

The moment when they bade sweet friends adieu;
And the new pilgrim now, on his lone way,
Thrills as he hears the distant village bell,

That seems to mourn for the expiring day.

Divine, indeed, are those lines of Dante. Why didn't he write all such, instead of employing two volumes of his poem out of three, to shew us how much less he cared to be divine than infernal? Was it absolutely necessary for him to have so much black ground for his diamonds?

And another poet who took to the black, or rather the burlesque, side of things, how could he write so beautifully on the same theme, and resist giving us whole poems as tender and confiding, to assist in making the world happy? The stanza respecting the Ave Maria is surely the best in "Don Juan:"

"Ave Maria! blessed be the hour!

The time, the clime, the spot where I so oft
Have felt the moment in its fullest power

Sink o'er the earth, so beautiful and soft,

While swung the deep bell in the distant tower,
Or the faint dying day-hymn stole aloft,

And not a breath crept through the rosy air,

And yet the forest leaves seem'd stirr’d with prayer.”

Not, we beg leave to say, that we are Roman-catholic, either in our creed or our form of worship, though we should be not a little inclined to become such, did the creed contain nothing harsher or less just than the adoration of maternity. We have been taught to be too catholic in the true sense of the word (Universal), to wish for any ultimate form of Christianity, except that which shall drop all the perplexing thorns through which it has grown, and let the odour of its flower be recognised in its spotless force without one infernal embitterment.

But it will be said that there are infernal embitterments even in the sweetest forms of things, whether we will have them or no-massacres

in bee-hives, Dantes among the greatest poets, Sicilian Vespers. Think of those, it will be said. Think of the horrible massacre known by the name of the "Sicilian Vespers." Think of the day in your honeyed, Hyblæan island, when this same hour which

Sinks on the earth, so beautiful and soft,

with not a breath in its rosy air, and with the leaves of its trees moving as if they were lips of adoring silence, was the signal for an indiscriminate slaughter of men, women, and children; ay, babes at the breast, and mothers innocent as the object of vesper worship. Was there nothing infernal in that? Is there nothing hellish, and of everlasting embitterment in the recollection?

No. And again, a loud and happy No, of everlasting sweetness.

The infernal and the everlastingly bitter are the same things. There is nothing infernal that has a limit; therefore there is nothing infernal in nature. Look round, and shew it if you can. Nature will have no unlimited pain. The sufferer swoons, or dies, or endures; but the limit comes. Death itself is but the dissolution of compounds that have either been disordered or worn out, and therefore cannot continue pleasantly to co-exist. Horrible was this Sicilian massacre; horrible and mad; one of the wildest reactions against wickedness in human history. The French masters of the island had grown mad with power and debauchery, and the islanders grew mad with revenge. It was the story in little of the French Revolution-not the Revolution of Three Days, truly deserving the title of Glorious for its Christian forbearance, but the old, untaught, delirious, Robespierre Revolution. Dreadful is it to think of the vesper bell ringing to that soft worship of the mother of charity itself, and then of thousands of daggers, at the signal, leaping out of the infuriated bosoms of the expected worshippers, and plunging into every foreign heart next them, man, woman, and child. But there came an end; soon, to the body; sooner or later, to the mind. The dead were buried; the French dynasty in the island was destroyed, and a better brought in. The evil perished, and good came out of it; and myriads of vespers have taken place since then, but not one like that. Yes, myriads of vespers-a vesper every day, ever since from the year 1282 to this present 1844,-all gentle, all secure from the like misery, all more or less worthy of the beautiful description of the poet. If the massacre called the Sicilian Vespers had been infernal, it would have been going on now! and nature has not made such hellish enormities possible. The only durability to which she tends is a happy one. Her shortest lives (accidents apart) are her least healthy; her greatest longevities are those of healthy serenity. Supposing the earth to be animated (as some have thought it), we cannot conceive it to be unhappy, rolling, as it has done for ages, round the sun with a swiftness like the blood in the veins of childhood. Eternity of existence is inconceivable on any ground of analogy, except as identical with healthy prevalence; and healthy prevalence, with sensation, is inconceivable apart from sensations of pleasure. Pain alone is fugitive.

Gone long ago are the bad Sicilian Vespers; but the good Sicilian Vespers, the beautiful Sicilian music, the beautiful Sicilian poetry. these remain; and, as if in sweet scorn of the catastrophe, they are particularly famous for their gentleness. To be told that a Sicilian air is about to be sung, is to be prepared to hear something especially