before night-fall." After watching the French troops, as corps after corps they entered the city below, at length he came in front of the doorway of the hermitage, and, dropping on his knees before the crucifix within, performed his brief devotions, but, though brief, they seemed of intense fervour: he beat his bosom, and ever as he prayed, he passed nervously over his fingers the rosary of a female. As he rose from his knees, and replaced the Montero cap upon his dark grizzled head, and turned round, he uttered the same curse that Miranda had first heard

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from his lips. "Mother of mercy!" said he, feeling instinctively for the handle of his knife, there are two of these children of the devil even now coming up the path; they are stragglers from that baggage guard." So saying, he took his mule by her halter, and passed higher up the rock, at the back of the hermitage where Miranda lay. She was in hopes she might escape the observation of both parties, and keep herself still. The path did not lie near the door, and she heard the Frenchmen, as she thought, pass by. They did so; but, from caprice or fatigue, turned back, and entered the hut. A prize!" cried the first that entered, who immediately saw Miranda. Her distress, by a piercing shriek, she would have made known, but her shriek died upon the air. The soldier, who caught hold of her, bade her, with a curse, be silent, lest he shot her, and proceeded quietly to take off his knapsack; his comrade did the same. They lit their pipes, and began abusing her for a noisy gypsey. She was darkly revolving a desperate effort to free herself or perish, when the same Spaniard we have just described presented himself at the door of the hermitage. He almost laughed, as he said quietly, "Your senhorias are early plucking* the hen turkey this morning; early at your mass, too, by the pleasant bells!"

* Palar la pava―gallivanting or flirting.

The soldiers, though they were young men and active, turned white as their belts at that swarthy smile. "You are not loaded," said the La Manchan, as he beat down a presented fire-lock; and rushing in on them, as they stood close together, brained one against the grey marble altar-stone, by a blow like the stroke of a hammer; and seizing the other with his left hand by the collar, he tripped him up, and threw him down on the granite step at the foot of the altar. Here, kneeling upon his breast, he drew out his knife, and thus addressed the miserable victim, who implored mercy in a tone so frantic, and with a gaze of such wild and vacant terror, that Miranda (ah! little thought she what it was to witness the avenging of blood) herself pleaded for him, but in vain :"Howl not like a drowning puppy, but die like one who deals out deathshots, and is familiar with the grisly king. Hear why you die. A year ago I was the son of a father—and the husband of a wife-and the parent of a family. I have now no father-no wife-no children. I found my homestead in ashes-my innocents in their cold gore-my wife had slain herself: not a hand ever polluted her, she slew herself. But my grey father, my grey father-look up, Frenchman, look at that holy crucifix-the bold and blasphemous barbarians crucified him ;crucified the old man. Shall not the mocked Lord visit for these things? Wretch! thy miserable life's blood is but as a drop to the staying of my thirst for vengeance. Could I at this stroke let flow the blood of all thy monster comrades, it were a poor revenge to me. I have a fever and a thirst, which will never quit me while a Frenchman lives. Don't struggle with thy coward hands; for all my looks, I was accounted as kind a master, and as kind a man, as ever sat on hearthstone in La Mancha; and so I was, and I am still, in my revenge, a man. I never torture, not even a Frenchman; I only kill."

With that

he drew his knife swift across his victim's throat; it gushed out the young strong life in fast flowing blood, and the steps of the altar were stained, and the floor of the peaceful hermitage was cumbered with two corpses in their gore.

Miranda did not faint, but she was sick as death; and, escaping into the open air, sunk down upon the greensward, unable to stand or speak. "What dost thou tremble at? said he, as, coming out with the red knife in his hand, he observed the consternation of Miranda. "They would have robbed thee of all, perhaps, thou hadst to lose; I must go see how they cut up." With that he went in, and returned, bringing with him their knapsacks, and their coats and caps, and ripping the collar of one of the coats, from thence fell several gold doubloons. From the skirt-lappets of the other he cut a like prize; and after thrusting his knife through the leathern top of the schakos, to see whether they were furnished with false crowns and hidden booty, he opened and turned out the contents of the knapsacks. In one, wrapped in a bit of heavy-flowered silk that had been a priest's cope, he found a gilt sacramental cup, beaten flat with a hammer, and in the same wrapper was a pack of dirty playingcards, and some wooden dice. He then turned again to Miranda, and throwing her a gold piece, said, “I counsel thee fly, gipsy; for if the French find thee here, and there will soon be some of them marauding on this hill, thy life will answer for my deed." "I do not want gold," said Miranda, in a timid tone, "I only want a safe path, and that heaven alone can grant."

Not want gold? Thou art the first of thy colour* whose palm was not a loadstone to this metal. But now I look again, methinks that shoe tells tales. It was never made for the foot

* Miranda had stained her skin, more completely to disguise herself.

of a tramper, but it seems to fit thine well enough."

Miranda looked down, and seeing the neat shoes of Cadiz on her feet, felt confused and detected. "As you are a true Spaniard," she cried, "do not harm me. I am of gentle blood, the betrothed of a brave man, who is fighting his country's battles, or who has fallen perhaps in the last sad battle. I go to seek and die with him, or to sit upon his grave."

"Bartolomè Perez harm thee! Ah, lady, no. I have been a husband and a father. I have had a wife that smiled, and children that prattled on my knee. I will not harm thee." As he spoke, his stern aspect relaxed into the expression of one whose memory looks back with a tender mournfulness on the perished objects of his love. "No, lady, I will not harm thee; I am not all I seem. Nature cast me in a rough mould, but she gave me a heart that once was gentle, and that, to the unhappy, is gentle still. I will serve thee, lady, and give thee safe conduct on thy way."

Miranda had now seen fulfilled a wish which she had often expressed; she had seen the blood of Frenchmen spilt at her feet, and the shedder of that blood, a man who seemed to live for no other object,—was now her companion, her protector, her guide. Her spirit sunk as she looked upon this Bartholo, and as she thought upon the two youthful soldiers lying in their gore at the very altar's foot. Her notion of bloodshed had ever been associated with a brave and contest open on a battle-plain, or upon an open breach: to have stood by the side of her Monteiro in some last and terrible assault, and to have given such bright example of fortitude and constancy amid the scene of carnage as might have proved her worthy to be the bride of a patriot and a hero ;-this had been her day-dream and her wish; but this which she had witnessed, this disheartened and alarmed her, Miranda discolouring life for ever.

felt as certain as though a spirit had whispered it, that she should laugh no more; and how they had laughed she and Leonora-when they were a little younger, and knew no war but that which with sugar-plumbs they waged at that season of flowers and folly, the merry carnival.

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It was the fourth evening of her journey, that, as they were proceeding at a slow tired pace across the plain which lies near to the town of Ocaña, her mule started, and when Miranda looked round to see the cause, she observed, with a shudder, a gorged vulture standing by the half-consumed body of a man, which lay, half-sunken in a ditch of mud by the road-side. 'Tis a Frenchman," said Bartholo, taking up a stained fragment of cloth with a button still attached, having the impress of an eagle. Here, lady, do you see the mumbled bones all about, right and left? It was here they fought; and here lie the best and the bravest of the army of Areizaga." It is very horrid," said Miranda, very horrid to look upon; do not let us stop." But at the same instant, her attention was arrested by seeing the swollen carcase of a horse which she knew was Monteiro's, from which she too hastily concluded that he had also fallen, and was among the corpses that lay around her. "My journey is ended," said Miranda, with a despairing calmness; "leave me here, friend; leave me among these bones and corpses it may be, Heaven will guide me to find his, and when I have put them under ground, there will be nothing on the face of this blank earth that I should live for. Here shall be my resting place-here soon my grave.

:

Frenchman now, while you are breaking your heart with the thoughts of his death. If he lives, this is no place to gain tidings of him. Be ruled by me: let us make for the hospitals in Toledo; they are full of such wounded Spaniards as were spared. There we shall learn if he survives, or was among the killed. If he be dead, live to avenge him—live upon blood: thou canst not shed it; but thou mayst see it shed, and listen to groans, and feed upon them, as I do.”

There is a sound of hope about those hospitals; I will go to them. But do not, my friend, talk about revenge; what will it do for me? Will it give me back the dead? will it soothe my sorrow? staunch the inward bleeding of my heart? Will it fill up the void world for me again? What has it done for you? has it brought you back from the other world one smile of grateful love? Does the shade of your wife, think you, as you pass her rosary over your bloody fingers-does it rejoice or shudder? Is it by a sacrifice of the blood and groans of beings, sinful and miserable as ourselves, that we cause to be released from the flames of purgatory the souls of those we love? Do you sleep better at night, and wake happier in the morning, for your twenty notches? do you pray the lighter for them? Can you ever know the blessing of those tears which good men drop upon the crucifix when they kiss it? No; if Monteiro be dead, I will live for Heaven, and through our blessed Lady, we shall meet again.'

During this speech, the fierce Bartholo stood astonished. The deeds, for which alone he seemed to endure life, the deeds, which were his sacred pride, thus questioned, and cast so low! and this too by an appeal, to each query of which he was forced to hang his bold head in mournful confession that her inference was right. All this produced so sudden a revolution of sentiment, and did so subdue him, that he fell down upon his knees,

there, where he had been standing by the Frenchman's corpse, and told his beads, and stretched himself on the earth, calling with piercing and melancholy cries upon the memory of his wife and little ones.-Tales of the Wars of our Times. By the Author of the Recollections of the Peninsula. Vol. I. p. 194-217.

Remarks on the Province of Penn

sylvania in the year 1766.

THE wise conduct of Mr. Penn at the first establishment of this province, had so good an effect upon the Indians, that they had him always in the highest veneration; and they still retain the same to his memory, of which the reader will find an exemplary proof in the following speech made to Sir William Keith, governor of this country in 1722; only it may not be amiss to observe, that Onas signifies in the Indian language a pen, and therefore this is the name the Indians have given to the proprietor and all his successors, or representatives.

"Brother Onas, you told us how. William Penn, that good man, did, on the first settlement of the province of Pennsylvania, make leagues of friendship with the Indians; and treated them like brethren; and that, like the same good man, he left it in charge to all his governors who should succeed him, and to all the people in Pennsylvania, that they should always keep the covenant and treaties he had made with the five nations, and treat them with love and kindness. We acknowledge, that his governors and people have always kept the same honestly and truly to this day. So we, on our part, always have kept, and for ever shall keep, peace and friendship with a good heart, to all the people of Pennsylvania. We thankfully receive and approve of all the articles in your proposition to us, and acknowledge them to be good and full of love; we receive and approve of the same with

our whole hearts, because they are not only made one people by the covenant chain, but are also people united in one head, one body, and one heart, by the strongest ties of love and friendship. Brother Onas, you desire there may be a perpetual friendship between you and the five nations, and between your children and our children; and that the same may be kept as long as the mountains and rivers endure. All which we like well, and on our parts desire that the covenant and union made with a true and clean heart between you and us, may last as long as the sun and moon shall continue to give light. And we will deliver this in charge to our children, that it may be kept in remembrance with their children and children's children, to the last ages; and we desire that the peace and tranquillity that is now established between us, may be as clear as the sun shining in its lustre, without any cloud or darkness, and that the same may continue for ever.

"Brother Onas, we have well considered all you have spoken, and like it well, because it is only the renewing former leagues and treaties, made between the government of Pennsylvania, and us of the five` nations, which we always believed we were obliged to keep. And, as to the accident of one of our friends being killed by some of your people, which has happened by misfortune and against our will, we say, that as we are all in peace, we think it hard that the person who killed our friend and brother should suffer; and we do in the name of all the five nations forgive it; and that the man who did it may be released from prison, and set at liberty to go whither he pleases; and we shall esteem that as a mark of regard and friendship for the five nations, and as a farther confirmation of this treaty."

Upon these principles, Postlewaite observes, the friendship of the Indians may be preserved as long as they remain a people; which shews how possible it might have been to have

maintained a like correspondence with them in other places, which would have saved a great deal of bloodshed, and have contributed to the quiet growth of the colonies settled in the countries inhabited by such Indians.

It is very remarkable that this province, ever since its first establishment, never had any war with their neighbours, Christians or Indians, but have always lived in peace and amity with them all.

Among many good things, in relation to the constitution and good government of this province, Mr. Penn established courts of justice in every county, with proper officers; and to prevent law-suits and contentions among his passive people, there were three PEACE-MAKERS, chosen by every county court, in the nature of common arbitrators, to hear and determine differences between man and man.Postlethwaite's Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce. Article Pennsylvania. London, anno 1766.

The Devastations committed in Ger

many during the Seven Years' War, from 1756 to 1763.

THE Contemporary and native historian of this war, who was himself a witness of the miseries he describes, gives the following account of the state of his country :

"The sufferings of a great part of Germany, during this war, had been immense. Whole provinces had been laid waste; and, even in those that were not, internal commerce and industry were almost at an end; and this, too, in spite of the vast sums which France, England, Russia, and Sweden had scattered over them, either through their armies, or by means of subsidies. These sums, it has been calculated, amounted to 500,000,000 crowns of the empire. A great part of Pomerania and Brandenburgh was changed into a desert. There were provinces where hardly

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any men were to be found, and where the women were, therefore, obliged to guide the plough. In others, women were as much wanting as men. every step appeared large tracts of uncultivated country; and the most fertile plains of Germany, on the banks of the Oder and the Wesel, presented only the arid and sterile appearance of the deserts of the Ohio and Oronooko. An officer has stated, that he had passed through seven villages in the territory of Hesse, and had only met a single person, a curate." "*

Such were some of the bitter fruits of a war, which, caused by feelings of ambition and vengeance, was begun, by the sovereigns who waged it, with a recklessness of consequences, and an indifference respecting the lives and property of their subjects, worthy of the most cruel ages of barbarism. The struggle was protracted as long as the means of warfare remained to the belligerents; and when total exhaustion obliged them to conclude it, it was found that no sovereign had gained or lost by it, save the enormous loss in blood and treasure, which had equally fallen on all.—Life of Frederick the Second, King of Prussia, by Lord Dover, Vol. II. pp. 278, 279. Longman and Co. 1832.

The Wars of Mankind are a dreadful exhibition of their Wickedness. [Extracted from Dr. Dwight's Sermons.]

HERE, as if the momentary life of man was too long, and his sufferings too few and too small, men have professedly embarked in the design of cutting off life, and enhancing the number and degree of sufferings. War has prevailed in every age, and through every country; and in all, has waded through human blood, trampled on human corpses, and laid waste the fields and the dwellings, the happiness

* Archenholz, Historie de la Guerre de Sept. Ans.

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