Their chains so slight, 't was not worth while to break

The world beheld them with indulgent air;

The pious only wish'd "the devil take them!"

He took them not; he very often waits,

And leaves old sinners to be young ones' bai's.

LX.

LXI.

LXII.

LXIII.

To turn, and to return;-the devil take it!
This story slips for ever through my fingers,
Because, just as the stanza likes to make it,

It needs must be-and so it rather lingers;
This form of verse began, I can't well break it,

But must keep time and tune like public singers;
But if I once get through my present measure,
I'll take another when I'm next at leisure.
LXIV.

They went to the Ridotto, ('t is a place
To which I mean to go myself to-morrow,
Just to divert my thoughts a little space,
Because I'm rather hippish, and
Some spirits, guessing at what kind of face

may

borrow

May lurk beneath each mask, and as my sorrow Slackens its pace sometimes, I'll make, or find, Something shall leave it half an hour behind.)

LXXXVII.

The Count and Laura found their boat at last,
And homeward floated o'er the silent tide,
Discussing all the dances gone and past;

The dancers and their dresses, too, beside;
Some little scandals eke: but all aghast

(As to their palace stairs the rowers glide) Sate Laura by the side of her Adorer, When lo! the Mussulman was there before her. LXXXVIII.

'Sir," said the Count, with brow exceeding grave, "Your unexpected presence here will make

It necessary for myself to crave

Its import? But perhaps 't is a mistake;

I hope it is so; and at once to wave

All compliment, I hope so for your sake; You understand my meaning, or you shall." Sir," (quoth the Turk,) "'t is no mistake at all.

XCII.

And are you really, truly, now a Turk? With any other women did you wive? Is 't true they use their fingers for a fork?

Well, that's the prettiest shawl-as I'm alive! You'll give it me? They say you eat no pork. And how so many years did you contrive To-Bless me! did I ever? No, I never Saw a man grown so yellow! How's your liver?

"Beppo! that beard of your's becomes you not; It shall be shaved before you're a day older: Why do you wear it? Oh! I had forgot

Pray don't you think the weather here is colder? How do I look? You sha'n't stir from this spot

In that queer dress, for fear that some beholder Should find you out, and make the story known. How short your hair is! Lord! how gray it's grown!"

XCIV.

What answer Beppo made to these demands
Is more than I know. He was cast away
About where Troy stood once, and nothing stands
Became a slave of course, and for his pay
Had bread and bastina does, till some bands

Of pirates landing in a neighbouring bay,
He join'd the rogues and prosper'd, and became
A renegado of indifferent fame.

XCV.

But he grew rich, and with his riches grew so
Keen the desire to see his home again,
He thought himself in duty bound to do so,
And not be always thieving on the main;
Lonely he felt, at times, as Robin Crusoe,

And so he hired a vessel come from Spain,
Bound for Corfu: she was a fine polacca,
Mann'd with twelve hands, and laden with tobacco.

They reach'd the island, he transferr'd his lading,
And self and live-stock, to another bottom,
And pass'd for a true Turkey merchant, trading
With goods of various names, but I've forgot 'em.
However, he got off by this evading,

Or else the people would perhaps nave shot him :
And thus at Venice landed to reclaim
His wife, religion, house, and Christian name.

XCVIII.

His wife received, the patriarch rebaptized him,
(He made the church a present by the way;)
He then threw off the garments which disguised hin,
And borrow'd the Count's small-clothes for a day:
His friends the more for his long absence prized him,
Finding he'd wherewithal to make them gay,
With dinners, where he oft became the laugh of them.
For stories-but I don't believe the half of them.

XCIX.

Whate'er his youth had suffer'd, his old age

With wealth and talking made him some amends, Though Laura sometimes put him in a rage, I've heard the Count and he were always friends. My pen is at the bottom of a page,

Which being finish'd, here the story ends; "T is to be wish'd it had been sooner done, But stories somehow lengthen when begun.

Note 1, page 150, line 80. Lake the lost Pleiad seen no more below. Que septem dici ser tamen esse solent." OVID. Note 2, page 151, line 40.

His name Giuseppe, called more briefly, Beppo. Beppo is the Joe of the Italian Joseph.

Note 3, page 152, line 3.

The Spaniards call the person a "Cortejo."

rate, according to the Arabesque guttural. It means what there is as yet no precise name for in England, though the practice is as common as in any tramontane country whatever.

Note 4, page 152, line 75.

Raphael, who died in thy embrace.

For the received accounts of the cause of Raphael's

ADVERTISEMENT.

"CELUI qui remplissait alors cette place était un gentilhomme Polonais, nommé Mazeppa, né dans le palatinat de Padolie; i avait été élevé page de Jean Casimir, et avait pris à sa cour quelque teinture des belles-lettres. Une intrigue qu'il eut dans sa jeunesse avec la femme d'un gentilhomme Polonais, ayant été découverte, le mari le fit lier tout nu sur un cheval farouche, et le laissa aller en cet état. Le cheval, qui était du pays de l'Ukraine, y retourna, et y porta Mazeppa, demi-mort de fatigue et de faim. Quelques paysans le secoururent: il resta longtems parmi eux, et se signala dans plusieurs courses contre les Tartares. La supériorité de ses lumières lui donna une grande considération parmi les Cosaques: sa réputation s'augmentant de jour en jour, obligea le Czar à le faire Prince de l'Ukraine."-VOLTAIRE, Hist. de Charles XII.

p.

196.

"Le roi fuyant et poursuivi eut son cheval tué sous lui; le Colonel Gieta, blessé, et perdant tout son sang, lui donna le sien. Ainsi on remit deux fois à cheval, dans la fuite, ce conquérant qui n'avait pu y monter pendant la bataille."-VOLTAIRE, Hist. de Charles XII. p. 216.

"Le roi alla par un autre chemin avec quelques cavaliers. Le carrosse, où il était, rompit dans la marche; on le remit à cheval. Pour comble de disgrace, il s'égara pendant la nuit dans un bois; la, son courage ne pouvant plus suppléer à ses forces épuisées, les douleurs de sa blessure devenues plus insupportables par la fatigue, son cheval étant tombé de lassitude, il se coucha quelques heures au pied d'un arbre, en danger d'être surpris à tout moment par les vainqueurs qui le cherchaient de tous côtés.”—VOLTAIRE, Histoire de Charles XII. p. 218.

1.

"T WAS after dread Pultowa's day, When fortune left the royal Swede, Around a slaughter'd army lay,

No more to combat and to bleed. The power and glory of the war,

Faithless as their vain votaries, men, Had pass'd to the triumphant Czar,

And Moscow's walls were safe again, Until a day more dark and drear, And a more memorable year, Should give to slaughter and to shame A mightier host and haughtier name;

A greater wreck, a deeper fall,
A shock to one-a thunderbolt to all.

II.

Such was the hazard of the die;

The wounded Charles was taught to fly
By day and night through field and flood,
Stain'd with his own and subjects' blood;
For thousands fell that flight to aid:
And not a voice was heard t' upbraid
Ambition in his humbled hour,
When truth had naught to dread from power
His horse was slain, and Gieta gave
His own-and died the Russians' slave.
This too sinks after many a league
Of well sustained, but vain fatigue;
And in the depth of forests, darkling
The watch-fires in the distance sparkling-
The beacons of surrounding foes-
A king must lay his limbs at length.

Are these the laurels and repose
For which the nations strain their strength?
They laid him by a savage tree,

In outworn nature's agony;

His wounds were stiff-his limbs were stark-.
The heavy hour was chill and dark;
The fever in his blood forbade
A transient slumber's fitful aid,
And thus it was; but yet through all,
Kinglike the monarch bore his fall,
And made, in this extreme of ill,
His pangs the vassals of his will:
All silent and subdued were they,
As once the nations round him lay.

A band of chiefs!-alas! how few,
Since but the fleeting of a day
Had thinn'd it; but this wreck was true
And chivalrous: upon the clay
Each sate him down, all sad and mute,
Beside his monarch and his steed.
For danger levels man and brute,

And all are fellows in their need.
Among the rest, Mazeppa made
His pillow in an old oak's shade-
Himself as rough, and scarce less old,
The Ukraine's hetman, calm and bold;
But first, outspent with this long course,
The Cossack prince rubb'd down his horse,