The extent of Mafra is prodigious; it contains a palace, convent, and most superb church. The six organs are the most beautiful I ever beheld in point of decoration; we did not hear them, but were told that their tones were correspondent to their splendour. Mafra is termed the Escurial of Portugal.

As I found the Portuguese, so I have characterised them. That they are since improved, at least in courage, is evident.

Note 7. Stanza xxxv.

When Cava's traitor-sire first call'd the band

That dyed thy mountain streams with Gothic gore!

Count Julian's daughter, the Helen of Spain. Pelagius preserved his indepenlence in the fastnesses of the Asturias, and the descendants of his followers, after some centuries, completed their struggle by the conquest of Grenada.

"Viva el Rey Fernando!"-Long live King Ferdinand! is the chorus of most of the Spanish patriotic songs; they are chiefly in dispraise of the old King Charles, the Queen, and the Prince of Peace. 1 have heard many of them; some of the airs are beautiful. Godoy, the Principe de la Paz, was born at Badajoz, on the frontiers of Portugal, and was originally in the ranks of the Spanish Guards, till his person attracted the Queen's eyes, and raised him to the dukedom of Alcudia, &c. &c. It is to this man that the Spaniards universally impute the ruin of their country.

Bears in his cap the badge of crimson hue,

Which tells you whom to shun and whom to greet

The red cockade, with "Fernando Septimo" in the centre.

Note 10. Stanza li.

The ball-piled pyramid, the ever-blazing match,

All who have seen a battery will recollect the pyramidal form in which shot and shells are piled. The Sierra Morena was fortified in every defile through which I passed in my way to Seville.

Note 11. Stanza Ivi.

Foil'd by woman's hand, before a batter'd wall.

Such were the exploits of the Maid of Saragoza. When the author was at Seville she walked daily on the Prado, decorated with medals and orders, by command of the Junta.

Note 12. Stanza Iviii.

The seal love's dimpling finger hath impress'd
Denotes how soft that chin that bears his touch.

"Sigilla in mento impressa amoris digituio
Vestigio demonstrant mollitudinem."-Aul. Gel.

Note 13. Stanza Ix.

Oh, thou Parnassus!

These stanzas were written in Castri (Delphos), at the foot of Parnassus, now called Διακυρα-Liakura.

Fair is proud Seville; let her country boast

Her strength, her wealth, her site of ancient days.

Seville was the Hispalis of the Romans.

This was written at Thebes, and consequently in the best situation for asking

and answering such a question; not as the birth-place of Pindar, but as the capital of Boeotia, where the first riddle was propounded and solved.

Note 16. Stanza lxxxi.
Some bitter o'er the flowers its bubbling venom flings.

“Medio de fonte leporum
Surgit amari aliquid quod in ipsis floribus angat."-Luc.

Note 17. Stanza lxxxv.

A traitor only fell beneath the feud.
Alluding to the conduct and death of Solano, the Governor of Cadiz.

Note 18. Stanza lxxxyi.

“War even to the knife !" “ War to the knife;" Palafox's answer to the French general at the siege of Saragoza.

Note 19. Stanza xci.

And thou, my friend ! etc. The honorable l*. W**. of the Guards, who died of a fever at Coimbra. I had known him ten years, the better half of his life, and the happiest part of mine.

In the short space of one month I have lost her who gave me being, and most of those who had made that being tolerable. To me the lines of Young are no fiction :

“ Insatiate archer! could not one suffice!
Thy shaft flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain,

And thrice ere thrice yon moon had fill'd her horn." I should have ventured a verse to the memory of the late Charles Skinner Matthews, Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge, were he not too much above all praise of mine. His powers of mind, shown in the attainment of greater honours, against the ablest candidates, than those of any graduate on record at Cambridge, have sufficiently established his fame on the spot where it was acquired, while his softer qualities live in the recollection of friends who loved him too well to

envy his superiority.

In Mr. Moore's Life of Byron, he says: “Originally the Page and Yeoman of the Childe were introduced to the reader's notice in the following tame stanzas ; by expanding the substance of which into their present light, lyric shape, it is almost needless to remark how much the poet has gained in variety and dramatic effect :

And of his train there was a henchman page,
A peasant boy who served his master well;
And often would his pranksome prate engage
Childe Harold's ear, when his proud heart did swell
With sullen thoughts that he disdain'd to tell :
Then he would smile on him, and Harold smiled,
When aught that from his young lips archly fell
The gloomy film from Harold's eye beguiled.

*

*

1

Come, blue-eyed maid of heaven !-but thou, alas !
Didst never yet one mortal song inspire-
Goddess of wisdom! here thy temple was,
And is, despite of war and wasting fire,
And

years, that bade thy worship to expire; But worse than steel, and flame, and ages slow, Is the dread sceptre and dominion dire

Of men who never felt the sacred glow That thoughts of thee and thine on polish'd breasts bestow.”

II.

Ancient of days ! august Athena! where,
Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul ?
Gone, glimmering thro’ the dream of things that were ;
First in the race that led to glory's goal,
They won, and pass’d away—is this the whole ?
A schoolboy's tale, the wonder of an hour ?
The warrior's weapon and the sophist's stole

Are sought in vain, and o'er each mouldering tower, Dim with the mist of years, grey flits the shade of power.

III.

Son of the morning, rise! approach you here!
Come—but molest not yon defenceless urn:
Look on this spot-a nation's sepulchre !
Abode of gods, whose shrines no longer burn.
Even gods must yield—religions take their turn :
'T was Jove's 't is Mahomet's—and other creeds
Will rise with other years, till man shall learn

Vainly his incense soars, his victim bleeds ;
Poor child of doubt and death, whose hope is built on reeds,

IV.

Bound to the earth, he lifts his eye to heaven
Is 't not enough, unhappy thing! to know
Thou art? Is this a boon so kindly given,
That being, thou wouldst be again, and go,
Thou know'st not, reck'st not to what region, so
On earth no more, but mingled with the skies?
Still wilt thou dream on future joy and woe?

Regard and weigh yon dust before it flies :
That little urn saith more than thousand homilies.

V.

Or burst the vanish'd hero's lofty mound;
Far on the solitary shore he sleeps : 3
He fell, and falling nations mourn’d around ;
But now not one of saddening thousands weeps,
Nor warlike worshipper his vigil keeps
Where demi-gods appear’d, as records tell.
Remove

yon

skull from out the scatter'd heaps : Is that a temple where a god may dwell ? Why even the worm at last disdains her shatter'd cell !

VI.

Look on its broken arch, its ruin'd wall,
Its chambers desolate, and portals foul :
Yes, this was once ambition's airy hall,
The dome of thought, the palace of the soul:
Behold through each lack-lustre, eyeless hole,
The

gay recess of wisdom and of wit,
And passion's host, that never brook'd control:

Can all, saint, sage, or sophist ever writ, People this lonely tower, this tenement reft!

VII.

Well didst thou speak, Athena's wisest son!
“ All that we know is, nothing can be known.”
Why should we shrink from what we cannot shun?
Each has his pang, but feeble sufferers groan
With brain-born dreams of evil all their own.
Pursue what chance or fate proclaimeth best;
Peace waits us on the shores of Acheron :

There no forced banquet claims the sated guest,
But silence spreads the couch of ever-welcome resi.

VIII.

Yet if, as holiest men have deem'd, there be
A land of souls beyond that sable shore,
To shame the doctrine of the Sadducee
And sophists, madly vain of dubious lore;
How sweet it were in concert to adore
With those who made our mortal labours light !
To hear each voice we fear'd to hear no more!

Behold each mighty shade reveal'd to sight,
The Bactrian, Samian sage, and all who taught the right!

IX.

There, thou!—whose love and life together fled,
Have left me here to love and live in vain-
Twined with my heart, and can I deem thee dead,
When busy memory flashes on my

brain?
Well—I will dream that we may meet again,
And woo the vision to my vacant breast :
If aught of young remembrance then remain,

Be as it may futurity's behest,
For me 't were bliss enough to know thy spirit blest!

X.

Here let me sit

upon

this

massy stone,
The marble column’s yet unshaken base ;
Here, son of Saturn! was thy fav’rite throne : 4
Mightiest of many such! Hence let me trace
The latent grandeur of thy dwelling-place.
It may not be: nor even can fancy's eye
Restore what time hath labour'd to deface.

Yet these proud pillars claim no passing sigh-
Unmoved the Moslem sits, the light Greek carols by,

XI.

But who,, of all the plunderers of yon

fane
On high, where Pallas linger’d, loth to flee
The latest relic of her ancient reign;
The last, the worst, dull spoiler, who was he?
Blush Caledonia ! such thy son could be !
England! Ijoy no child he was of thine :
Thy free-born men should spare

what once was free ; Yet they could violate each saddening shrine, And bear these altars o'er the long-reluctant brine.5