THE LADY'S OR, WEEKLY MISCEI LANY; THE VISITOR. FOR THE USE AND A OSEMENT OF BOTH SEXES. VOL. XV ] Saturday, August 15.1812. ORLANDO FURIOSO. Or the deliverance of OLYMPIA by ORLANDO and OBERTO. The wind is not propitious to his views: it seems even to sport with his impatience. Breathe it in some direction favourable to his progress? it is so gently, that the vessel seems scarcely to plow the sur face of the water. Much oftener it witholds its breath, and leaves the ship in an absolute calm. And if sometimes it becomes impetuous, it is only to compel the pilot to hold a contrary course. which according to its high will, controùls all the designs of men, would not suffer Orlando to approach the Island of Tears, till the King of Ireland had there made a descent that the great events might be forwarded which I am now going to relate. Heaven, The count of Angers, tired of struggling with the wind, ordered the pilot to anchor towards the north of the Island. 'I will go,' said he, in the boat, and land alone. I shall want only the largest cable and the largest anchor of the ship; and you will soon see, if I meet with the orc, what advantages [No 17. I shall derive from them.'-He then enters into the boat, and whatever he judged necessary to fivour is c: terprise; and, without any other arnis than his swod, takes the two oars, and rows alone towards Ebuda. Now had aurora spread her golden tresses to the sun, yet half seen and half concealed, not without scorn of jealous Tithon; when Orlando, who was not above a stones throw distant from the barren rock, heard, o scarcely seemed to hear, a tender plaintive voice. At these mournful accents he turned his head, and present y perceives a beau'eous naked dame, bound to the trunk of a tree, while the waves gently bathed her feet The distance at which he still was, with tre-downcast attitude of the Lady, would not permit im to recollect her features. Plying for a neater view his eager cars. on a sudden the seas, the woods, and hollow caves resound. The billows swell and behold the hideous foe appears, which beneath his vast belly almost conceals the sea. As fioin the hamid vale the blackt clouds as. cend, which bear in their pregnant womb the gathering storm, and, like a dark night, conceal from morials the use of the day; so ro e he monster from the depths below. Ocean groans beneath his enormous weight. But the Paladin, whose heart is inaccessible to fear, benoids him with unchanging countenance Determined to defend the weeping fair, he hastens between her and the orc. His sword is yet suspended by his side and holding in his hand the anchor and cable only, he waits for the monster with unshaken resolution. The monster,pursuing his death. ful way to the shore, no sooner saw the valorous Knight, than eager to swallow up both him and his boa, he opened wide a mouth, vast enough to contain a man on ho seback. Orlando soon leaped into this horrible gulph with his anchor, his cable, and, if I mistake not with his boat. With one of the anchor's flooks he pierced the tongue of the orc, and with the othe fixed upright, prevented his voracious jaws from closing. The skilful miner thus, with necessary monster in every part. What fortress can oppose the least resistance to the enemy, when once they have made a lodgment within the walls? And thus was the orc incapable of revenging the direful strokes, which the paladin dealt around within his tremendous mouth: Mad with the pain, now he rises over the waves, and shews his scaly back and sides: now plunging to the bottom, he throws the troubled sands above. The Knight of France, who felt the rushing water, betook himself to swimming, and leaving the anchor fixed, held tight the cable to which the ponderous mass was bung. He soon reached the shore, and when he had gained a firm footing he drew the anchor, whose two points were fast fixed in the mon sters enormous mouth. As the wild bull, when he suddenly finds his horns encompassed round with cords, bounds furiously from side to side, with unavailing effort to get loose: So the orc, caution, supports by prop ́s his sub-dragged from his native element, terraneous arches, to prevent their falling in, and crushing him with sudden ruin. Orlando, having thus fixed his anchor, of which the two flooks were so distant from each other, that he could scarcely reach the uper one; and finding that in this position it was impossible for the o'c to close his mouth; instantly dren his sword, and exploring the darksome den, pierced and cut the by more than mortal strength, flouncing and plunging in the waves, is compelled to follow the cable, in spite of a thousand successive but ineffectual jerks. The blood issued from his mouth in such abundance, that the sea to this day, may be called red. With such violence did helash the waves and now, mounting aloft they bathe the clouds, and obscure the ies. plendant light of day. At the wild uproar the woods, the mountains, and distant shores resound. Roused by the tumult, old Proteus from his grotto rears his hea above the waves; and perceivin Orlando enter the mouth of the orc, and then leaving it, drag such a monster to the shore, he instantly Bies through the deep ocean, un mindful of his scattered herds.— To such a height did the uproa increase that Neptune that very day harnessed the dolphins to his car, and fied to Etiopia. Ino, weeping with her son elicerta in her arms: the Nereids, Glaucus, and Triton, and all the sea deities, struck with a pantic, fled different ways for safety. Cu Orlando had now drawn the orc to shore, ere he reached which, exhausted by fatigue and pain. his shape ess bulk lay dead. riosity had soon collected a great number of the natives to behold such an uncommon sight. Prepossessed by the superstitious notions of an erroneous religion, they all regarded this glorious exploit as a sacreligious action. The death of the orc, they said, would rekindle the dire wrath of Proteus, who, to wreak the more signal vengeance upon them, would again send his marine herds to ravage their Island. They all agreed, therefore. that the only way to appease the wrath of Proteus, would be to throw the presumptuous warrior into the sea, who had thus affronted the God. And as one torch kindles a nother and another, in quick succession till the whole country was in a blaze, so from breast to breast spread this religious fury among the maddening islanders. They seized the first weapons they could find They surroun ed the Paladin; and while some assailed him at a distance with the bow or sling others rushed upon him close with the sword or spear. Orlando, who expec'ed the greatest a knowledgments ofthe natives for having delivered them from such a cruel monster, was astonished to meet, on the contrary, with the blackest ingratitude. But as a bear, bred in Russian or Lithuanian wilds, as he is led to a public fair, heeds not the contempible yelping of a cur, with like disdain Orlando regarded the dastard crew, whom, with a single effort, he might have instantly dispersed. They did not imagine that a warrior, whom they thus beheld without shield, or cuirass, or other defensive armour could oppose the least resistance; ignorant that his skin being harder than adamant, he was invulnerable from head to foot. But the Count soon convinced them, that without having the least to apprehend from their impotent efforts, he could make them severely repent their rashness. By ten strokes of his redoubtable sword he streatched thirty of them lifeless on the strand, which was soon cleared of the furious assailants. The Paladin now turned toward the lady in order to release her from confinement; when on a sudden the shore resounds with shouts and cries from another part of the island. The Irish army had landed without opposition on this side, while Orlando had so fatally diverted the intention of the inhabitants on the other. They then ranged through the country putting every one they could find to the sword, without distinction of either age or sex. The islanders, whose force was inconsiderable, being thus suddenly su prised, made little or no resist ance; and whether they were actuated by a sense of justice, or by the suggestions of cruelty, the Irish burnt the houses. levelled the walls, and spread slaughter and desolation all around. Orlando, quite regardless of the wild uproar and destruction that e circled him, advanced to the La ed, she hung down her head, and so far from speaking, could not even lift up her eyes to her deliver er. Orlando entreated her to inform him by what strange adventure he had found her in this dreadful island after having left her with her con sort, in the full possession of every joy-Alas!' said she, 'I know not whether I owe you any thanks for this deliverance from death; or whether I ought not rather to complain that you have prevented this day from putting a period to allmy woes. My thanks indeed are due for having saved me from a death of such a dreadful kind; for the idea of being entombed within the belly of that monster was inexpressibly dreadful. But still I do not rejoice to live, since death alone can release me from my mis dy, who, fastened naked to the ery; and the only service for rock, was to have been devoured by the voracious orc. His astonishment increases as he approaches: he ima ines her to be the young and beautifu! Olympia. Nor is he deceived: it is indeed Olympia herself, whose unparalleled fideli ity had met with such an iniquit ous reward. Nor had fortune, treated her with less cruelty than love. On the very day that the hapless beau y had left her cruel lord on a desert Island, fortune sent thither the savage Ebudians, who carried her off to be the victim of a devour ing monster. Olympia knew the Knigh, ag tin as he approached the rock; but conscious of being nak which I can thank you, is to give me that relief which death only can afford.' She then related, with a voice interrupted with sobs and tears, how her cruel lord had be trayed her, and left her on a dreary island, from which she was carried off by rapacious pirates, to the fa tal island of Ebuda. While she thus told her sad story, she turned her reclining head in sweet confusion, and, blushing, appeared like the painted or sculptured form of Diana, when surprised in the fountain by the audacious Ac teon. (To be Continued.) The human nature is composed of materials that require a perpetual revolution. weak and fragil, that are ever decaying and demand a constant renovation : a very short almost a momentary stagna. tion of the purple fluid that rolls within us, immediately breaks the form, though even then it stands not motionless, but is in its immediate progression to new life and being. Animal and vegetative life, are likewise in perpetual mo tion, and if we enquire into inanimate substances, we shall find that they too, throughout all nature, are in a continual flow, though not immediately discernable by the naked eye, and change their form3 in a longer period of time than the rest of the creation. When we behold the Silk Worm in the first change from the ogg to a small muscular existence, fat. tening every moment on the unctuous sweets of its beloved and only food, and when matured by his enclosing itself, as in its tomb, in a silken webb of its own spinning, all composed by, and fom its f where it lies for a little time without any vis be sins of sense or motion; after which we will behold it at once breaking out in a new and gorgeous form, clad gloriously and full of life and spi it, it appears a most beautful fly, but in a few hours having laid its eg:9; and performed the order of its creation. it disappears again: Wo can behold this without astonish ment, without admiring the surprising works of the Omnipotent, and confessing the decree of ete nal motion in matter. If we go higher up, Astrono. mers will inform us, and give probable proofs, that there are infinite numbers of created beings far beyond our horizon, and many of them open to the naked eye: they have calculated their dimensions, their depths and distances from our orb, their unerring paths and periodical revolutions, and their several interpositions which they call eclipses; they hesitate not to cull them worlds, and they say, as an |