Nor, mid these last bold workings of his plot

Against men's souls, is ZELICA forgot.

Ill-fated ZELICA! had reason been

Awake, through half the horrors thou hast seen,

Thou never couldst have borne it-Death had come

At once, and taken thy wrung spirit home.

But 'twas not so a torpor, a suspense

Of thought, almost of life, came o'er the' intense
And passionate struggles of that fearful night,
When her last hope of peace and heav'n took flight:
And though, at times, a gleam of frenzy broke,—
As through some dull volcano's veil of smoke
Ominous flashings now and then will start,
Which show the fire's still busy at its heart;
Yet was she mostly wrapp'd in solemn gloom,—
Not such as AZIM's, brooding o'er its doom,
And calm without, as is the brow of death,
While busy worms are gnawing underneath,—

But in a blank and pulseless torpor, free
From thought or pain, a seal'd-up apathy,

Which left her oft, with scarce one living thrill,

The cold, pale victim of her torturer's will.

Again, as in MEROU, he had her deck'd
Gorgeously out, the Priestess of the sect;

And led her glittering forth before the eyes
Of his rude train, as to a sacrifice,-

Pallid as she, the young, devoted Bride

Of the fierce NILE, when, deck'd in all the pride
Of nuptial pomp, she sinks into his tide.

And while the wretched maid hung down her head,

And stood, as one just risen from the dead,

Amid that gazing crowd, the fiend would tell
His credulous slaves it was some charm or spell
Possess'd her now, -and from that darken'd trance
Should dawn ere long their Faith's deliverance.
Or if, at times, goaded by guilty shame,

Her soul was rous'd, and words of wildness came,
Instant the bold blasphemer would translate
Her ravings into oracles of fate,

* "A custom still subsisting at this day, seems to me to prove that the Egyptians formerly sacrificed a young virgin to the God of the Nile; for they now make a statue of earth in shape of a girl, to which they give the name of the Betrothed Bride, and throw it into the river."- Savary.

Would hail Heav'n's signals in her flashing eyes,
And call her shrieks the language of the skies!

But vain at length his arts-despair is seen
Gathering around; and famine comes to glean
All that the sword had left unreap'd:-in vain
At morn and eve across the northern plain
He looks impatient for the promis'd spears

Of the wild Hordes and TARTAR mountaineers;

They come not- while his fierce beleaguerers pour
Engines of havoc in, unknown before,

*

*That they knew the secret of the Greek fire among the Mussulmans early in the eleventh century, appears from Dow's Account of Mamood I. "When he arrived at Moultan, finding that the country of the Jits was defended by great rivers, he ordered fifteen hundred boats to be built, each of which he armed with six iron spikes, projecting from their prows and sides, to prevent their being boarded by the enemy, who were very expert in that kind of war. When he had launched this fleet, he ordered twenty archers into each boat, and five others with fire-balls, to burn the craft of the Jits, and naphtha to set the whole river on fire."

The agnee aster, too, in Indian poems the Instrument of Fire, whose flame cannot be extinguished, is supposed to signify the Greek Fire.—See Wilks's South of India, vol. i. p. 471.—And in the curious Javan poem, the Brata Yudha, given by Sir Stamford Raffles in his History of Java, we find, He aimed at the heart of Soéta with the sharp-pointed Weapon of Fire."

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And horrible as new *;-javelins, that fly

Enwreath'd with smoky flames through the dark sky, And red-hot globes, that, opening as they mount, Discharge, as from a kindled Naphtha fount, †

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The mention of gunpowder as in use among the Arabians, long before its supposed discovery in Europe, is introduced by Ebn Fadhl, the Egyptian geographer, who lived in the thirteenth century. Bodies," he says, "in the form of scorpions, bound round and filled with nitrous powder, glide along, making a gentle noise; then, exploding, they lighten, as it were, and burn. But there are others which, cast into the air, stretch along like a cloud, roaring horribly, as thunder roars, and on all sides vomiting out flames, burst, burn, and reduce to cinders whatever comes in their way." The historian Ben Abdalla, in speaking of the sieges of Abulualid in the year of the Hegira 712, says, "A fiery globe, by means of combustible matter, with a mighty noise suddenly emitted, strikes with the force of lightning, and shakes the citadel."-See the extracts from Casiri's Biblioth. Arab. Hispan. in the Appendix to Berington's Literary History of the Middle Ages.

* The Greek fire, which was occasionally lent by the emperors to their allies. "It was," says Gibbon, “ either launched in redhot balls of stone and iron, or darted in arrows and javelins, twisted round with flax and tow, which had deeply imbibed the inflammable oil."

† See Hanway's Account of the Springs of Naphtha at Baku (which is called by Lieutenant Pottinger Joala Mookee, or, the Flaming Mouth,) taking fire and running into the sea. Dr. Cooke, in his Journal, mentions some wells in Circassia, strongly impregnated with this inflammable oil, from which issues boiling water. Though the weather," he adds, was now very cold, the warmth

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Showers of consuming fire o'er all below;

Looking, as through the' illumin'd night they go,

*

Like those wild birds that by the Magians oft,
At festivals of fire, were sent aloft

Into the air, with blazing faggots tied

To their huge wings, scattering combustion wide.
All night the groans of wretches who expire,
In agony, beneath these darts of fire,

Ring through the city-while, descending o'er
Its shrines and domes and streets of sycamore,
Its lone bazaars, with their bright cloths of gold,
Since the last peaceful pageant left unroll❜d,

of these wells of hot water produced near them the verdure and flowers of spring."

Major Scott Waring says, that naphtha is used by the Persians, as we are told it was in hell, for lamps.

many a row

Of starry lamps and blazing cressets, fed

With naphtha and asphaltus, yielding light

As from a sky.

* "At the great festival of fire, called the Sheb Sezê, they used to set fire to large bunches of dry combustibles, fastened round wild beasts and birds, which being then let loose, the air and earth appeared one great illumination; and as these terrified creatures naturally fled to the woods for shelter, it is easy to conceive the conflagrations they produced."-Richardson's Dissertation.