insult, and conveyed, with the bodies of many of his nobles, to the Abbey of Konegsfelden, where their warlike effigies still frown along the walls. The brave avoyer, and his gallant townsmen, who had fallen at his side, sleep in the chapel raised over them in their native Lucerne, where are still to be seen, together with the coat of mail that Leopold wore, the iron collar intended by the invader for the neck of the avoyer, and the banner of the town, stained with the pure blood of that heroic citizen.

Such was the battle of Sempach, so glorious to Helvetia, so disastrous to her invader; in which were extinguished many of the noblest houses of Austria-in which were crushed forever her hopes of conquest, and that secured for four hundred years the independence of Switzerland.

Is it asked, where in the fray fought Arnold of Winkelried? Is he not already recognized in the immortal martyr of his country's freedom? And where was the husband of Bertha, the gay and gallant Eyloff? Alas! his place was with the Austrian warriors, in the front of the fight, and at the moment when he would have perished for the father of his bride, his lance pierced that father's heart. Nor did the horror of the scene close here; the son of Arnold was the first to follow his brave father, and the husband of Bertha fell by her brother's hand.

The abbey of Eghelberg hid forever from the world, the sorrows of the heart-stricken widow and daughter of the knight of Underwalden; but, in the male line, his noble strain was long manifested; and, in the sixteenth century, at the field of Marignano, called by distinction, even at that day, the Battle of the Giants, it was an Arnold of Winkelried who led the small Swiss advance, against the fifty thousand French, under the young hero Francis I.

The Swiss of the Waldstetten are not an enthusiastic people; nor, as simple and stern republicans, have they felt willing to make gods of their heroic citizens; and when, in the fervour of revolutionary feeling, a distinguished foreigner recently asked permission to erect a monument to William Tell, the magistrates of Uri answered, "No; we need not monuments to remind us of our ancestors." Yet Tell has his chapel in Uri, as Arnold in Underwalden. Every spot, associated with their actions, is hallowed in the remembrance of the Helvetians. Their virtues and heroism are their theme and their example. They live in the hearts of their grateful countrymen, and, without statues or gorgeous monuments, are still venerated and distinguished by a nation of heroes-by a people of whom it has been said, that, for five hundred years, there has not been known among them an individual instance of cowardice or treason.

[Atlantic Souvenir, 1826.]

SONG.

TO MAY.

[LORD THURLOW.]

MAY, Queen of Blossoms,
And fulfilling flowers,
With what pretty music

Shall we charm the hours?
Wilt thou have pipe and reed,
Blown in the open mead?
Or to the lute give heed,
In the green bowers?

Thou hast no need of us,
Or pipe or wire,
That hast the golden bee
Ripen'd with fire;
And many thousand more
Songsters, that thee adore,
Filling earth's grassy floor
With new desire.

Thou hast thy mighty herds,
Tame, and free livers;
Doubt not, thy music too

In the deep rivers;

And the whole plumy flight,
Warbling the day and night-
Up at the gates of light,

See, the lark quivers !

When with the jacinth

Coy fountains are tress'd; And, for the mournful bird, Green woods are dress'd, That did for Tereus pine; Then shall our songs be thine, To whom our hearts incline ;May, be thou bless'd!

THE DEATH OF THE FIRST-BORN.

[ALARIC A. WATTS.]

Fare thee well, thou first and fairest!

BURNS.

My sweet one, my sweet one, the tears were in my eyes
When first I clasp'd thee to my heart, and heard thy feeble cries
For I thought of all that I had borne, as I bent me down to kiss
Thy cherry lip and sunny brow, my first-born bud of bliss!

;

I turn'd to many a wither'd hope-to years of grief and painAnd the cruel wrongs of a bitter world flash'd o'er my boding

brain;

I thought of friends, grown worse than cold—of persecuting foesAnd I ask'd of Heaven, if ills like these must mar thy youth's repose!

I gazed upon thy quiet face, half blinded by my tears,

Till gleams of bliss, unfelt before, came brightening on my fears; Sweet rays of hope, that fairer shone 'mid the clouds of gloom that bound them,

As stars dart down their loveliest light when midnight skies are 'round them.

My sweet one, my sweet one, thy life's brief hour is o'er,
And a father's anxious fears for thee can fever me no more;

And for the hopes-the sun-bright hopes-that blossom'd at thy birth,

They too have fled, to prove how frail are cherish'd things of earth!

'Tis true that thou wert young, my child; but, though brief thy span below,

To me it was a little age of agony and woe;

For, from thy first faint dawn of life thy cheek began to fade, And my heart had scarce thy welcome breathed, ere my hopes were wrapt in shade.

O the child in its hours of health and bloom, that is dear as thou

wert then,

Grows far more prized-more fondly loved-in sickness and in

pain;

And thus 'twas thine to prove, dear babe, when every hope was lost, Ten times more precious to my soul, for all that thou hadst cost!

Cradled in thy fair mother's arms, we watch'd thee day by day,
Pale, like the second bow of heaven, as gently waste away;
And, sick with dark foreboding fears, we dared not breathe aloud,
Sat, hand in hand, in speechless grief, to wait death's coming cloud.

It came at length; -o'er thy bright blue eye the film was gath'ring fast,

And an awful shade pass'd o'er thy brow, the deepest and the

last;

In thicker gushes strove thy breath,- -we raised thy drooping head; A moment more—the final pang-and thou wert of the dead!.

Thy gentle mother turn'd away to hide her face from me,

And murmur'd low of Heaven's behests, and bliss attain'd by thee;

She would have chid me that I mourn'd a doom so blest as thine, Had not her own deep grief burst forth in tears as wild as mine!

We laid thee down in sinless rest, and from thine infant brow
Cull'd one soft lock of radiant hair, - our only solace now;
Then placed around thy beauteous corse, flowers-not more fair

and sweet,

Twin rose-buds in thy little hands, and jasmine at thy feet.

Though other offspring still be ours, as fair perchance as thou,
With all the beauty of thy cheek—the sunshine of thy brow,
They never can replace the bud our early fondness nursed;
They may be lovely and beloved, but not-like thee-the first!

The first! - How many a memory bright that one sweet word can bring,

Of hopes that blossom'd, droop'd, and died, in life's delightful spring!
Of fervid feelings pass'd away-those early seeds of bliss,
That germinate in hearts unsear'd by such a world as this!

My sweet one, my sweet one, my fairest and my first!

When I think of what thou might'st have been, my heart is like to

burst;

But gleams of gladness through my gloom their soothing radiance

dart,

And my sighs are hush'd, my tears are dried, when I turn to what

thou art!

Pure as the snow-flake ere it falls and takes the stain of earth,
With not a taint of mortal life, except thy mortal birth,—
God bade thee early taste the spring for which so many thirst,
And bliss-eternal bliss- is thine, my fairest and my first!

THE HAUNTED HEAD.

Ir was yet early in May morning, in the year 1540, when two travellers alighted at the little cabaret, known by the sign of " Les quatre fils d'Aymon," at the entrance of the forest of Fontainbleau. They rode two very sorry horses, and each of them carried a package behind his saddle. These were, the famous Benvenuto Cellini, as mad a man of genius as the sun of Italy, which has long been used to mad geniuses, ever looked on, and his handsome pupil Ascanio, who were carrying some works of art to the King of France at Fontainbleau. For particular reasons, Cellini set out by himself, leaving Ascanio; and he, getting tired towards evening, proposed to walk in the forest; but, before setting out, was specially warned to take care, in the first place, that the Gardes de Chasse did not shoot him instead of a buck; and in the next, that he did not stray too near a large house, which he would see at about a quarter of an hour's walk distant to the right of the path. This house, the host told him, belonged to the Chancellor Poyet, who said he did not choose to be disturbed in the meditations to which he devoted himself for the good of the state, by idle stragglers. his orders, too, he had an ugly raw-boned Swiss for a porter, who threatened to cudgel every one who walked too near his garden wall. There was also a hint of a poor young lady being shut up in this guarded mansion. A long garden, enclosed by a high well, and thickly planted on both sides with trees, which entirely concealed its interior from view, was at the back; and it was this which Ascanio first approached.

To enforce

He heard a low voice, which he thought was that of a woman in distress, and, listening more intently, and approaching nearer, he was satisfied that his first impression was correct. He distinctly heard sobs, and such expressions of sorrow, as convinced him that the person from whom they proceeded was indulging her grief alone. A large birch tree grew against the garden wall near the place where he stood; he paused for a moment to deliberate whether he could justify the curiosity he felt, when the hint of the hostess that a lady was imprisoned there, came across his mind, and, without farther hesitation, he ascended the tree. Ascanio looked from the height he had gained, and saw a young female sitting on a low garden seat immediately below the bough on which he stood. She was weeping. At length, raising her head, she dried her eyes, and taking up a guitar which lay beside her, she struck some of the chords, and played the symphony to a plaintive air which was then well known. Ascanio gazed in breathless anxiety, and wondered that one so fair should have cause for so deep a sorrow as she was evidently suffering under. In a colloquy which ensued, she exhorted him to fly; told him she was an orphan whom Poyet wanted to force into marriage; and, finally, agreed to elope with her young lover.

Ascanio clasped the maiden in his arms, and once kissed her fair forehead, by way of binding the compact. He looked up to the