The Paynim felt his prisoner's worth, For he knew his wealth, and he knew his birth,

And mightier ransom for him was set Than e'er had been fix'd for Christian

yet.

The Knight to young Lord Henry sent;
Told him of all his dreariment,
And swore, by all a brother's love,
And by the blessed Saints above,
Prisoner if he would be in his stead,
Home he would hie as soon as freed,
Gather his gold, and quickly bring
For him the ransom'd offering.
Large was the love young Henry bore
To him who thus so deeply swore,
So he enter'd him the Paynim's thrall,
The fettering steel on his limbs let fall,
And the elder brother was free as the
light.

Tell me, Lord Walter, knew you the
Knight ?"

Answer none Lord Walter made,

But his cheek grew flush'd-his visage fell;

And Chief to Chieftain whispering said, That he had known the Knight too well.

"For many a weary night and day
Young Henry in his durance lay,
Striving to cheer, as best he might,
His self-devoted prison'd plight:
"Twere false to say that hope him cheer'd,
He hop'd not-for he never fear'd;
As firm his faith on Walter's love
As was his trust in Heaven above,➡
As fearless as the infant press'd
And fondled on its mother's breast.
And when the sun had left his eye,
While ruddy radiance flush'd the sky,
He thought of his western home, where
yet

The God of Day had hardly set.
And nightly, when the evening star
Shone through his grate, he thought how
far

His brother's bark was on the sea,
That came to save and set him free!
He sung, and sorrow dash'd aside,
Partly from a warrior's pride,

But more, lest, when he should return,
His brother's heart too much should

mourn,

If thraldom's woe should leave a trace
Too deeply furrow'd on his face!
His faith was false, his cares were vain,
That brother never came again!
Yet safe and soon his home he won,
For pitying Heaven impell'd him on,
Fair breeze gave to his bark, and speed
More then seem'd mortal to his steed.

"In vain, in vain; he heeded not His plighted troth, his brother's lot,

Even though that lot himself had known,
And left through Henry's love alone;
His cold and avaricious heart
Durst not with the ransom part;
Yea, dearer than a brother's life,
That brother who in mortal strife,
His shield before him oft had thrown,
And made the coming wound his own;-
He who for him was even content
From light and freedom to be pent,
Held he, this cruel, man-sworn lord,
His fertile fields, his golden hoard."

""Tis false! 'tis false !" Lord Walter cried;

"My latest field I'd gladly sold Ere he by foemen's hands had died!

I wrong'd him, true, but not for gold; His lovelier looks, his smoother tongue,

His graceful form and gentler heart, Wrought love in one to whom mine clung, With passion that might not depart. I trembled lest he should return To rob me of my other life, Yet only meant that he should mourn Prison'd till she were sure my wife. How have I sped? she pined, she died; And when the fatal moment came, Hell! the last sound that ere she sigh'd, Her dying word was Henry's name."

"Long Henry nothing fear'd, I said;
But faith at length began to fade,
The trysted time was come and gone,
Yet ransom, rescue there was none;
And in his keeper's scowling eye
Revenge and hate he 'gan to spy;
Yet still like him who o'er a deep
Hanging, sees snakes that writhe and

creep,

Waiting his fall-and, struggling, clings,
Mad with the dread of their cursed stings;
So wildly still to hope he clung,
When doubt the demon on him sprung;
But when again had roll'd away
Another year, and still he lay
Forgotten in his dungeon lair,
Hope sunk and settled in despair!
And when he eyed the setting sun
"Twas with the bitter thoughts of one
Who, lingering, parts upon the shore
With the friend whom he fears he shall
meet no more!

Yet still he sung, though every tone
Of glee, that cheer'd him once, was gone;
'Twas now a sad heart-breaking strain
Of blasted hopes, of bosom pain,
And deepest still of all a moan
For the land he ne'er should see again."

Lord Walter shuddering, hid his eyes,

While lovely damsels round him wept;" But frowns on the Chieftains' brows arise, And their hands to their weapons

crept.

blended with character, deduced from conduct, and illustrated by incident. I have therefore, in an attempt to discriminate them, adopted the form of a mythological allegory-a form which has been rendered legitimate by the practice of our ablest essay ists, and to which the reader will not object, if it serve its intended purpose, by leaving a general impression of the distinction I wish to draw, and by gradually separating, in the course of a fabulous narrative, two ideas, whose shades so insensibly mingle, as to render it difficult to divide them by a sharp and indisputable boundary. S. O.

PRIDE AND VANITY, AN ALLEGORY.

IN the infancy of Nature, according to poetic tradition, all was gentleness and gaiety. The harsher passions were not yet unfolded, and the evils which they create were unknown. Innocence and Cheerfulness gambolled in the sunshine of a perpetual spring. Happiness and Hope fed each other with the fruits of the forest, or reclined, in mutual embraces, upon the flowers of the meadow.

Among the delegated Genii, who were then employed in the superintendance of human souls, there was one whose agency appeared to be universal. He was named the Genius of Self-estimation, and his office was to implant and foster the pleasurable consciousness of being entitled to regard and consideration in society. He had a sister whose name was Merit: and in that golden age, the fraternal alliance was so close and endearing, that they perpetually associated together. But when the world advanced in years, the sweetness and serenity of its childhood fled. Characters became refractory and diversified. With tumultuous eagerness, they resisted the training hand of their seraphic guides, and sometimes reversed the bent they had formerly received. Inequality and Ambition were introduced, and the Gorgon countenance of Vice was seen behind them.

This was a scene where the feminine delicacy of Merit could no longer dwell. She ceased to accompany her brother, and retired to a sequestered

hermitage, where she lived with Contentment, her handmaid. Her brother, more vigorous by his sex, would not thus be driven from his functions. He still preserved his influence in every bosom; but, deprived of the delightful society of Merit, was seduced into irregular excesses, in the course of which, Disdain and Folly, two of the occasional companions of Vice, became objects of his gallantry. Disdain bore him a son, in whom the graces of the sire were almost wholly obscured by the coarse and forbidding features of the mother; he was named Pride. Folly had a daughter, a feeblyimproved, but striking image of herself.

Her name was Vanity. She was nursed by Adulation, on the banks of a polar lake, which reflected a cold and glaring light. As she grew up, and removed to milder regions, her darling amusements were to view her image in the water, when tricked out with wreathes of Narcissus, or to tend the breeding of butterflies, and hatching of mock-birds, which, without any notes of their own, can mimic those of others. Even when a child, and before the maturity of her passions, she shewed that insatiable thirst for admiration of which she had caught the signs from her more adult companions. Here eyes were blank and unmeaning; but, by an acquired and awkward languishment, like one who parrots phrases from a foreign language, she tried to imitate the expression of sensibility. Her sallow cheeks she daubed, unskilfully, with vermilion, and bolstered out, by mechanical contrivances, her adust and emaciated form. Without a single charm of mind or person, she made it her business to observe and mimic the qualities which attract and captivate, in those who are graced with them by nature. She was playful without vivacity, talkative without ideas, tender without passion, and sentimental without feeling. Art was her tutoress, and had the entire formation of her character.

Her brother was educated by Misanthropy, in a dark and desart cave, on the highest and most rugged of the Alps, where he delighted to stand and enjoy his solitary elevation. He walked in the mist, to appear a giant ;

and exulted, at sunset, to see half the adjoining mountain eclipsed by his shadow. In this seclusion, his features, which were naturally hard and disagreeable, were never relaxed by a smile; and as his wish was to be viewed with dread, rather than delight, he studied to stiffen them into harshness. His hair and eye-brows grew bristly and savage; and he amused himself with terrifying the Chamois kid by the fierceness of his frown, or in chacing and killing the Marmot, and other little animals, to cherish a consciousness of superiority and power. He never mingled with the sprightly villagers, unless to damp their pastime by the constraint of his presence; and if their mirth proceeded, notwithstanding this interruption, discontent and mortification made him inwardly curse them, and retire. As he could not stoop to that openness and familiarity which companionship requires, he passed his youth without a friend, but solaced himself by interpreting the disgust with which his society was shunned into the silent acknowledgment of his superiority, and the natural homage paid by a lower to a higher order of beings.

The Genius of Self-estimation, blinded by a parent's fondness, commissioned his children to assist him in his duties. Pride, therefore, in the form of a gnome, took one path; and Vanity, in that of a sylph, the opposite, for they detested each other. Wherever Vanity went, she made her approach be notified by the sound of bells, or the flourish of trumpets. Her toilette was regulated by a handmaid named Fashion, who, every day, changed the colour or form of her dress, to excite a new attention. Her appearance was tawdry and glaring. She substituted ornament for neatness, and studied what was conspicuous, not what was comfortable. In every circumstance, she coveted the appearance, without the enjoyment, of pleasure. She sought not to be the object of love. Her aim was to be noticed. Her emblem might be found in one of her own artificial flowers, which, with the exterior appearance of fragrance and bloom, when grasped by the beholders, is discovered to be a handful of rags.

Pride advanced on his way, in a

VOL. XV.

sullen silence, perfectly secure, that, without any effort on his part, the fame of so important a personage would precede him. The common expressions of regard or welcome offended him; for he deemed it an insult to be offered what so many others might equally receive. The customary modes in dress, manners, and opinions, he affected to despise. Ornament and splendour he rejected. If he added ought in his attire to what was barely necessary, it was to give himself an air of austerity and gloom. He adopted the forgotten fashions of a former age, from no other motive than to show his contempt for the present. By a formal gravity he sought the praise of wisdom, and by depressing others, imagined he was raising himself. He was temperate in pleasures-not from principle, but from a dread of descending, in their pursuit, to a familiarity with those around him. He rarely smiled, unless when something ridiculous or perplexing happened to another, and especially to the disciples of his sister, whom he regarded with the most unmitigated scorn. Then a grim smile of cruel enjoyment gleamed across his features. An emblem of him might be traced in those poisonous vegetables which draw nutrition to their own offensive qualities, by withering and mildewing every herb around them.

Vanity, who courted social intercourse, was like the green hill, that, by screening itself among others, had gained a gloss to its surface which the shallow soil was too barren to bestow ;-Pride, like the solitary cliff, which, bare as it is, grows barer by standing unsheltered and alone.

Though each was entrusted with a portion of their sire's authority, yet, as they were permitted to employ it at their own discretion on the human mind, their efforts terminated in the formation of characters extremely dissimilar. The proud were generally convinced that the advantages on which they plumed themselves were perceived and appreciated as distinctly by others as by themselves, and therefore they betrayed no anxiety to display them. But the vain seemed ever to doubt the value or validity of their own pretensions; and, from a desire to

H

prevent this doubt in others, an incessant eagerness to bring their merits obtrusively into view, ran through all their actions. The proud man seemed indifferent about pleas ing any, while secretly feeding on the certainty that he was the object of universal envy. The vain man seemed studious of pleasing all, while he only sought to please himself, by the general admiration. When wealth was the ground of mutual pretension, the former was often betrayed into avarice, with a view to greater, though procrastinated, enjoyment; and the latter into prodigality, for that immediate gratification of which the absence was in supportable. When the competition was in learning, Pride, more afraid of failure than solicitous of success, assumed a pompous and mystical reserve, and Vanity a headlong and blundering loquacity. When they rested their pretensions on the beauty of their female votaries, it was found that the proud often ended in the solitude and sourness of hoary virginity; while the vain fell an easy prey to the seducer, or fortune-hun

ter.

When place and precedency were the subjects of dispute, the vain were forward in arrogating even more than their right; and the proud, with an affected humility which made their design more manifest, took the lowest place, that their title to the highest might draw a marked attention, and a strong, though tacit, acknowledgment from the spectators. Pride, upon the whole, was admitted to have shewn superior power, in rendering characters disgusting; and Vanity, in rendering them contemptible.

The struggles of the rival demons terminated, at last, in a challenge, to meet and try their strength on the same ground. They accordingly repaired, by agreement, to Athens, and each took possession of one of the popular philosophers of the age. He whom Vanity directed was persuaded by her to fashion his doctrines to the taste of the young, the dissolute, and the gay. He taught, that pleasure is the chief good, and the most important business of life; that there is no Providence,-no future exist ence, no responsibility for conduct, -and therefore no check on the pur

suit of pleasure, however gross or unnatural. Tenets so flattering to self-love procured a multitude of votaries; and, to attract them more, the scene of instruction was a garden, embellished with all the decorations of art, and furnished with every thing that could minister to the most unbounded wants of voluptuousness.

Pride, on the contrary, instructed his disciple to seek celebrity from moroseness, contradiction, and rigour. He inculcated a conduct too severe for human nature to adopt. He interdicted all pleasures, as beneath the dignity of man; and, instead of exciting and providing for the indulgence of numerous wants, he made a parade of shewing that he had none, by using rags for clothing, and a tub for a house. He affected a superiority even to the most powerful princes, and told them, that, if ́ they left him the free use of the natural elements, he looked with contempt on all they could bestow. From this snarling and malignant deportment, he got the surname of Dog, on which he valued himself with equal ostentation as on his rags,

through which," said a brother philosopher, "I clearly see your pride." He, too, had numerous followers, among those who thought the adoption of incomprehensible tenets a proof of wisdom, and every departure from common sense an approach to something better,—who mistook singularity for superiority, sullenness for dignity, and sordidness for independence.

The rival demons next removed to Carthage, where wealth was the grand object of pursuit. Vanity immediately took possession of a young merchant, who, by diligence and lucky chances, was rising to opulence; and as he had no other claim to consideration, was hastening to shew to others what had hitherto been known only to himself. Life, he thought, was short; and that letting a day pass without an exhibition of his wealth, was defrauding himself of a day of felicity. He shewed it, therefore, in his dress, his house, his equipage, but, above all, he was careful to set it distinctly before the eyes of the public on his table. Thither he tried to attract, by expensive luxuries, the fashion