Apollo. Not at all! The strangest and most miraculous things in the world come about, as you ought to know by this time, in a very natural way. The avalanche, which overwhelms a whole village, was at first a little snow-ball; and a stream which bears large vessels is a gurgling rock-fountain in its origin. Why may not the successors of a Galilean fisherman, in a few centuries, become masters of Rome, and, by means of a new religion, whose chief priests they have constituted themselves, and with the aid of an entirely new morality and system of politics which they know how to rear upon that religion, become at last, masters for a time of half the world? Did you not yourself tend the herds of the King of Alba, who was a very small potentate, before you placed yourself at the head of all the banditti in Latium, and patched together the little robbers-nest, which, in process of time, became the capital and queen of the world? St. Peter, it is true, made no great figure in his life-time, but he will see the time when emperors shall hold the stirrups for his successors, and queens with all humility kiss their feet. Quirinus. What things one lives to see, when one is immortal! ance after all. It remains forever the same comedy though with different masks and names. The foolish people there below have practised superstition with us long enough, and if there are some among you who thought themselves benefited by it, I must tell them that they were mistaken. One would not grudge that mankind should grow wiser at last, if they can. By heaven! it were none too soon. But that is not to be thought of, at present. True, they always flatter themselves that the last folly of which they have become conscious, is the last they shall commit. The hope of better times is their everlasting chimera, by which they are forever deluded, in order to be forever deluded again; because they will never come to understand that not the time, but their own inborn, incurable folly, is the cause why their condition never improves. For it is, once for all, their lot not to be able to enjoy anything good with a pure enjoyment, and to exchange one folly, of which they have grown weary at last, like children of a worn-out doll, for a new one, with which, for the most part, they fare worse than before. This time, it actually looked as if they would gain by the exchange, but I knew them too well not to foresee that they were not to be helped in this way. For though Wisdom herself should descend to them, in person, and dwell visibly among them, they would not cease to hang ribbons and feathers and rags and bells about her, until they had made a fool of her. Believe me, Gods, the song of triumph, which they are raising, at this moment, on account of the glorious victory they have obtained over our defenceless statues, is a raven-cry prophetic of wo to posterity. They think to Jupiter. My dear sons, uncles, nephews, improve, and will fall from the frying-pan and cousins, all and severally! I see that into the fire. They are weary of us, they you treat this little revolution, which I have wish to have nothing more to do with us. very quietly seen approaching this long So much the worse for them! We need while, more tragically than the thing is them not. If their priests pronounce us worth. May I ask you to sit down again in unclean and evil spirits and assure the foolyour places, and let us discuss these matters ish people that an ever-burning gulf of calmly and candidly over a glass of nectar. brimstone is our dwelling, why need that Everything in nature has its time, every- trouble us? Of what importance is it to thing is liable to change, and so too are us, what conceptions half-reasoning creahuman opinions. They ever change with tures of earth may form of us? or in what circumstances, and if we consider what a relation they place themselves to us, and difference only fifty years makes between whether they smoke us with a sickening the grandsire and the grandson, it really compound of the stink of sacrifices and will not seem strange that the world should incense, or with hellish brimstone? Neither appear to take an entirely new shape in the the one nor the other reaches to us. You course of one thousand or two thousand say, they do not know us, when they wish to years. For at bottom it is only in appear-withdraw themselves from our government. Apollo. To be sure, it requires a good deal of time and no little art to make that progress in man-fishing. But the fishes must be stupid enough, who will let them selves be caught by them. Quirinus. Meanwhile, we are and remain all of us deposed, eh? Mercury. It seems likely to stop at that, for the present. Several gods. Better not be immortal, than experience such things. Did they know us better while they served | think or speak otherwise, as enemies of God us? What the poor people call their reli- and man. It was a thing scarce heard of gion is their concern-not ours. It is they for a thousand years, that the priests of the alone who gain or lose by ordering their gods came into collision with the civil aulife rationally or irrationally. And their thority, until encroached upon by these descendants, when hereafter they shall raving iconoclasts. The new priesthood on feel the consequences of the unwise decrees the contrary, since their party has been in of their Valentinians, their Gratiani, and power, have not ceased to confound the their Theodosii, will find cause enough to world. As yet, their pontiffs work under regret the unwise provisions which will ac- ground, but soon they will grasp at the cumulate on their giddy heads a flood of sceptres of kings and assume to be vicenew and insupportable evils, of which the gerents of their God, and under this title world had no conception as long as it ad- arrogate to themselves an hitherto unheard hered to the old faith or the old superstition. of dominion over heaven and earth. Our It would be a very different affair, if they priests indeed, as was proper, were not very really improved their condition under the zealous promoters-or at least they were not new arrangement! Who of us would or avowed enemies of philosophy, from which could blame them for that? But it is just they had nothing to fear under the protecthe opposite! They resemble a man, who, tion of the laws. Least of all, did they for the sake of driving away some trifling dream of subjecting the thoughts and opin evil with which he might live to the age of ions of men to their jurisdiction, and of hinTithonus, suffers ten others, which are ten dering their free circulation in society. times worse, to be fastened upon him. Theirs, on the other hand, who, as long as Thus, for example, they raise a great outcry they were the weaker party, made so much against our priests, because they entertained boast of having Reason on their side and the people, who are everywhere superstitious always placed her in the van, whenever and will always remain so, with delusions, attacked by ours,-now that she would only which however benefited the State as well be an hindrance to them, in their farther as themselves. Will their priests do better? operations, will dismiss her from their serAt this moment they are laying the founda- vice and will not rest until they have made tion of a superstition, which will benefit no all dark around them, until they have withone but themselves, and which, instead of drawn from the people all means of enstrengthening the political constitution, will lightenment, and stamped the free use of the confound and undermine all human and natural judgment as the greatest of all civil relations, a superstition which will lie crimes. Formerly, while they lived on alms like lead on their brains, exclude every themselves, the wealth and decent living of sound conception of things, natural and our priests was an abomination to them; moral, and, under pretence of a chimerical now that they are driving with full sails, the perfection, will poison humanity in every moderate revenues of our temples are much man in the very germ. When the worst too small to satisfy the necessities of their has been said that can be said with truth of pride and vanity. Already their pontiffs at the superstition which has hitherto fooled Rome, through the liberality of superstithe world, men will be forced, hereafter, to tious and wealthy matrons, whose enthusiconfess, that it was far more human, more astic sentimentality they know how to avail innocent, and more beneficial, than the new themselves of in so masterly a manner, by one which is substituted in its place. Our the most shameless legacy-hunting, and a priests were infinitely more harmless than thousand other arts of the same sort, have those to whom they must now yield. They placed themselves in a condition to surpass enjoyed their authority and their income in the first persons in the State, in splendor, peace, were in harmony with every one and luxury, and expense. But all these founassailed no man's faith. These are greedy tains, although grown to rivers by ever new of dominion and intolerant, they persecute accessions, will not satisfy these insatiable one another with the uttermost rage on men. They will invent a thousand unheard account of the most insignificant verbal of means to tax the simplicity of rude and subtleties, decide by a majority of voices deluded men; even the sins of the world what must be thought concerning unthink- they will convert to golden fountains by able things and what must be said concern- their magic art, and, to render these founing unspeakable things, and treat all, who tains more productive, they will invent a 223 monstrous number of new sins, of which | ration and the actual afflatus of divine Apollo. Most surely it will come, Jupiter, that time! I see it as if it stood already before me, in the full glory of the present. They will again erect our images, will gaze upon them with a feeling of awe and adoring wonder, will use them as models for their idols, which had become frights in barbarous hands; and-O! what a triumph! their pontiffs themselves will take pride in erecting the most magnificent temple to us, under a different name! voice of philosophy from the midst of the forests of Germany, more clear and free than formerly from the halls of Athens and Alexandria. Minerva. (slightly shaking her head) I am glad, Father Jupiter, to see you of such good cheer in view of the present aspects; but you will pardon me if I believe as little in a new Athens as in a new Olympus. But why do I speak of all this? What is it to us what these people do or leave undone, or how well or ill they avail themselves of their new dominion over the sickly souls of men who are enervated and cripThey who pled by lust and bondage? deceive the rest are themselves deluded. They too know not what they do. But it becomes us to treat them with indulgence as diseased and insane, and, without regard to Jupiter. (with a large goblet of nectar in their gratitude or ingratitude, in future also, still to confer upon them as much good as his hand) Here's to the Future! (to Mitheir own folly may yet leave us the opportu- nerva.) My daughter, we 'll drink to the nity of doing. The unhappy! Whom but time when you shall see all Europe conthemselves do they injure, when of their own verted into a new Athens, filled with academaccord they deprive themselves of the benefi-ical lyceums, and perhaps shall hear the cent influence by which Athens became the school of wisdom and of art, and Rome the lawgiver and mistress of the earth, by which both attained a degree of culture to which even the better descendants of the barbarians, who are now about to divide among themselves the lands and wealth of these degenerate Greeks and Romans, will never be able to rise. For what is to become of men from whom the Muses and the Graces, Philosophy and all the beautifying arts of life and the finer enjoyment of life have withdrawn themselves, together with the gods, their invenI foresee with one tors and protectors? glance all the evil that will thrust itself in, in the place of the good, all the unformed, the perverted, the monstrous and misshapen that these fanatical destroyers of the beautiful will rear on the ashes and the ruins of works of genius, of wisdom and art, and I am disgusted with the loathsome spectacle. Away with it! For, so truly as I am Jupiter Olympius, it shall not always remain so, although centuries will elapse before Humanity reaches the lowest abyss of its fall, and centuries more before, with our aid, it works its way once more above the slime. The time will come when they will seek us again, invoke our aid once more, and confess that they are powerless without us. The time will come when with unwearying diligence they will drag forth from the dust once more, or excavate from rubbish and corruption every ruined or defaced relic of those works which, by our influence, once sprung from the mind and hands of our favourites, and exhaust themselves in vain, with affected enthusiasm, to imitate those miracles of genuine inspi Quirinus. (to Mercury) I can't get that Peter with the double key, who is to be my successor, out of my head, Mercury! How is it with that key? Is it an actual or emblematic, a natural or a magic key? Where did he get it, and what will he unlock with it? Mercury. All that I can tell you about it, Quirinus, is, that with this key he can unlock Heaven or Tartarus to whom he pleases. Quirinus. He may unlock Tartarus to whom he will, for all me; but as to Heaven! that is a very different matter. enormous Mercury. Indeed, they are preparing to people Heaven with such an quantity of new gods of their sort, that there will hardly be any room left for us old ones. Jupiter. Leave that to me, Hermes! They could easily deprive us of our temples and territories on the earth; but, in Olympus, we have been established too long to be crowded out. For the rest, as a proof of our perfect impartiality, we will concede to the new Romans the right of apotheosis, notwithstanding their insolence, under the same conditions as to the old. As I understand, most of their candidates who lay claim to this promotion are not persons of the best society. Therefore, before we to the great vexation of Sir Henry and the admit any one, with St. Peter's permission other English. The Earl, as he bore away we will examine him a little. If it shall his prize, saidappear that, in virtue of his other qualities and merits, he can maintain his place among us, no objection shall be made on account of the golden circle round his head; and Momus himself shall not twit him with the miracles which are wrought with his bones or his wardrobe. Juno. You may do as you please with regard to the men, Jupiter; but I protest against the introduction of the ladies. Venus. There are said to be some very pretty ones among the number. Jupiter. We will talk about that when the case occurs. And now-not a word more de odiosis / A fresh cup, Antinous! -C. M. WIELAND. SIR HENRY PERCY'S PENNON. [JEAN FROISSART, the most graphic of the old Chroniclers, was born at Valenciennes, about 1337, and early in life was dedicated to the church. He was scarcely twenty years old when he began to write a history of the English wars in France, chiefly compiled from another chronicler. This history he brings down to the battle of Poitiers in 1356; after which period his Chronicle has all the value of contemporary observation. His opportunities as an observer were very great; he was in the confidence of many of the sovereigns and nobles of his time, and was especially attached to the court of Ed ward III., being secretary to Queen Philippa. He closed a life, compounded of travel and ease, of labor and luxury, of native honesty and courtly arts, about the beginning of the fifteenth century. We quote his chronicle of one of the Border quarrels written during his sojourn in England]. All the knights and squires of the country collected at Newcastle; thither came the Seneschal of York, Sir Ralph Langley, Sir Matthew Redman, Sir Robert Ogle, Sir John Felton, Sir William Walsingham, and so many others, that the town could not lodge them all. These three Scottish lords, having completed the object of their first expedition in Durham, lay three days before Newcastle, where there was an almost continual skirmish. The sons of the Earl of Northumberland, from their great courage, were always first at the barriers. The Earl of Douglas had a long conflict with Sir Henry Percy, and in it, by gallantry of arms, won his pennon, "I will carry this token of your prowess with me to Scotland, and place it on the tower of my castle at Dalkeith, that it may be seen from afar." "By Heaven," replied Sir Henry, "you shall not even bear it out of Northumberland; be assured you shall never have this pennon to brag of." "You must come this night and seek it, then," answered Earl Douglas; "I will fix your pennon before my tent, and shall see if you will venture to take it away." As it was now late, the skirmish ended, and each party retired to their quarters. They had plenty of everything, particularly fresh meat. The Scots kept up a very strict watch, concluding from the words of Sir Henry Percy that their quarters would be beaten up in the night time; however, they were disappointed, for Sir Henry was advised to defer his attack. On the morrow the Scots dislodged from Newcastle, and taking the road to their own country came to a town and castle called Pontland, of which Sir Raymond de Laval was lord; here they halted about four o'clock in the morning, and made preparations for an assalt, which was carried on with such courage that the place was easily won, and Sir Raymond made prisoner. They then marched away for Otterbourne, which is eight English leagues from Newcastle, and there encamped. This day they made no attack, but very early on the morrow the trumpet sounded, when all advanced toward the castle, which was tolerably strong, and situated among marshes. After a long and unsuccessful attack they were forced to retire, and the chiefs held a council how they should act. The greater part were for decamping on the morrow, joining their countrymen in the neighbourhood of Carlisle. This, however, the Earl of Douglas overruled by saying "In despite of Sir Henry Percy, who the day before yesterday declared he would take from me his pennon, I will not depart hence for two or three days. We will renew our attack upon the castle, for it is to be taken, and we shall see if he will come for his pennon." Every one agreed to what Earl Douglas said. They made huts of trees and branches, and fortified themselves as well as they could, placing their baggage and ser SIR HENRY PERCY'S PENNON. vants at the entrance of the marsh on the road to Newcastle, and driving the cattle into the marsh lands. I will now return to Sir Henry and Sir Ralph Percy, who were both greatly mortified that this Earl of Douglas should have conquered their pennon, and who felt the disgrace the more because Sir Henry had not kept his word. The English imagined the army under the Earl of Douglas to be only the van of the Scots, and that the main body was behind, for which reason those knights who had the most experience in arms strongly opposed the proposal of They Sir Henry Percy to pursue them. said "Many losses happen in war; if the Earl of Douglas has won your pennon he has bought it dear enough, and another time you will gain from him as much, if not more. The whole power of Scotland We are not strong have taken the field. enough to offer them battle; perhaps this skirmish may have been only a trick to draw us out of the town. It is much better to lose a pennon than two or three hundred knights or squires, and leave our country in a defenceless state." 225 umberland were preparing to offer them battle. The bishop had collected a number of men, and was hastening to their assistance; but Sir Henry Percy would not wait, for he had with him 600 spears of knights and squires, and upwards of 8000 infantry, which he said would be more than enough to fight the Scots, who were but 300 lances, and 2000 others. When all were assembled, they left Newcastle after dinner, and took the field in good array, following the road the Scots had taken towards Otterbourne, which was only eight short leagues distant. The Scots were supping, and some indeed asleep, when the English arrived, and mistook at the entrance, the huts of the servants for those of their masters; they forced their way into the camp, which was tolerably strong, shouting out, "Percy, Percy!" In such cases, you may suppose, an alarm is soon given, and it was fortunate for the Scots the English had made the first attack upon the servants' quarters, which checked them some little. The Scots, expecting the English, had prepared accordingly; for while the lords were arming themselves, they orAs their dered a body of infantry to join their servants and keep up the skirmish. men were armed, they formed themselves under the pennon of the three principal barons, who each had his particular ap This speech checked the eagerness of the two Percies, when other news was brought them by some knights and squires, who had followed and observed the Scots, their num-pointment. ber and disposition. 46 "Sir Henry and Ralph Percy," they said, we are come to tell you that we have followed the Scottish army, and observed all the country where they now are. They halted first at Pontland, and took Sir Raymond de Laval in his castle; thence they went to Otterbourne, and took up their quarters for the night. We are ignorant of what they did on the morrow; but they seemed to have We know taken measures for a long stay. for certain that the army does not consist of more than three thousand men, including all sorts." Sir Henry Percy, on hearing this, was greatly rejoiced, and cried out "To horse, to horse! For by the faith I owe to Heaven, and to my lord and father, I will seek to recover my pennon, and beat up the Scot's quarters this night." In the meantime the night advanced; but it was sufficiently light for them to see what they were doing, for the moon shone, and it When the Scots was the month of August, when the weather in camp is temperate and serene. were properly arrayed, they left the silence, but did not march to meet the EngDuring the preceding day they had lish. well examined the country, and settled their plans beforehand, which indeed was the saving of them. The English had soon overpowered the servants; but as they advanced into the camp they found fresh bodies of men ready to oppose them and continue the fight. The Scots, in the meantime, marched along the mountain-side, and fell on the enemy's flank quite unexpectedly, shouting their war-cries. This was a great surprise to the English, who, however, formed themselves in better order, and reinforced that part of the army. Such knights and squires in Newcastle as VOL. V. The cries of "Percy" and "Douglas !" arose on each side. The battle now raged. Great was the pushing of lances, and at the first onset very many of each party were The English, being more 111 |