"Thou art no mortal," cried the empress ; | royal gift, which I would part with to no other, "who can advise like thee? who can foresee I willingly give to thee." everything like thee? who can bend each one to thy will like thee? Thou art some tutelar saint, and no mortal; tell us thy name, that we may do thee homage."

"And what shall the empress receive in cross!" exchange?" said the Earl of Chester.

And true indeed seemed that warning of ill. for there indeed was her only refuge. At The attempts to release Earl Robert of Glou-length the shock came that shook the castle cester were all unavailing; her nobles, weary to its very foundations, and the crash that of the unequal contest, were about to renounce followed proved that its ironbound door had their allegiance to her, and with scanty pro given way, visions, a turbulent garrison, and an ill-fortified city, Empress Maude was forced to sue for the exchange of Earl Robert for Stephen, and to send the baron, whom she most trusted, the Earl of Chester, to negotiate the exchange.

At length, on All Soul's day, Stephen was released from his captivity, and Earl Robert of Gloucester again welcomed his sister. But vain and hopeless was now the contest; and, as a last resource, Earl Robert, placing the empress in the castle of Oxford, with a garrison of tried and faithful followers, passed over to Anjou to endeavor to prevail on her long-neglected husband to send relief. And pent up in that dreary stronghold, Empress Maude passed her melancholy Christmas, and when the feast of Candlemas had come and gone, and yet there were no tidings from Anjou, bitterly did she lament her contempt of the counsel of her mysterious guardian, and earnestly, though in vain, did she pray once more to behold him.

"All is lost," said the empress," and I receive the reward of my pride!"

Nay, fly! empress, fly!" urged the aged seneschal; "fly! ere Stephen enter."

The empress cast a despairing look at the darkening sky, at the snow-wrapt fields, at the court-yard crowded with her foemen, and bitterly said, "How can I fly ?"

"Follow me," said a low voice.

The empress sprang forward, and fell at the stranger's feet, for well did she know him. "No time is to be lost," said he; "lay aside that princely dress, and follow me."

Whither should she follow him?-how could she pass unrecognisd through the very midst of her foemen ?-how? But these thoughts entered not her mind: thrice had that mysterious guardian borne her safely from danger, and should she distrust him now? At his bidding the jewelled circlet was removed from the brow, the gorgeous jewelled collar with its precious reliquary which the old man had so strangely refused, the massive bracelets, the broidered girdle were all hastily stripped off; and then the ermined mantle, the wimple of Cyprus lawn, the rich

At length the long-dreaded crisis of her #fate arrived. Stephen, at the head of a chosen band, had appeared before the city, (at this time entirely surrounded by water,) and sum-silken robe, even the delicate gold-wrought. moned the garrison to surrender. To this slipper; and in the slight under-dress, scarcely summons, loud and bitter scoffs were the only covered by a coarse woollen cloak, with head reply; and trusting to the deep and swollen of russet and sandals of undress leather, such waters that bathed the outer wall of the as were worn by the very meanest of the castle, the men-at-arms scornfully pointing to people, the widow of the Kaisar, the crownthe heavy chain mail that enveloped him and ed Queen of England, prepared to follow her his war-steed, bade Stephen advance at his aged guardian she knew not whither. Yet peril. But the star of the liberated monarch ere she went, a touch of gentle feeling was was now in the ascendant; he suddenly re- awakened in the breast so long steeled against collected that in one part the river was ford-truth and pity. But these," said she, pointable, and reckless of his ponderous coat of ing to the aged seneschal and her two attendmail, he dashed in, and cheering on his galants, "wherefore should I escape and leave lant company to follow, crossed safely, and them to their fate?"

made answer to their defiance by breaking "Let them give that to Stephen," said the open the ill-guarded gate by the blows of his old man, pointing to the precious reliquary, huge battle-axe. In the confusion that fol-" and it will be a right royal ransom." lowed, Stephen at the head of that gallant The old man pressed his foot against a company, entered the city, and while the in- marble stone just beneath the loophole winhabitants of the castle, wild with terror, knew dow; it gave way, and discovered a narrow not what to do, the thundering sounds of and almost perpendicular flight of stone stairs. mangonel and battering-ram too plainly told " This was Beauclerc's last invention," said how swiftly, and how completely, Stephen he; " but how little did he foresee that it had determined to follow up his victory. I would afford his daughter, at her greatest "All is now lost," cried the aged seneschal, peril, her only means of escape!" rushing to the presence of the empress; "Stephen is at the door!"

And well was that secret way constructed: the narrow stair led to a winding passage, that communicated with the inner wall, and then turning sharply round continued, until it was closed by a wicket-gate, wholly concealed among bushes, in a neighboring meadow.

Empress Maude advanced to the narrow loophole that commanded the view of the inner court-yard; she heard with appalling distinctness the shrill whistle of the shafts, and the shouts as each well-directed arrow brought down some man-at-arms from the The night wind blew keenly, as that low battlements, and she saw the huge battering-wicket gate opened, and the bushes, laden ram, with his iron-bound head, slowly raised with snow, were pushed aside; but onward by the efforts of two score men, and swung the haughty and tenderly-nurtured empress back, in readiness, at the word of command, must go, unattended save by one stranger, to to beat in the massive door, and she clasped whose care the old man committed herher hands, and looked up in agony to heaven, lunattired, save in that coarse and scanty

dress; nor, until many a snowy waste had been passed, and her strength well nigh gone, did the welcome sight of distant towers, faintly visible in the grey dawn, urge her weary footsteps to reach that place of refuge. Those distant towers were soon gained. At the summons of her unknown conductor, the gates were soon flung open, and Empress Maude, a third time rescued from captivity, perhaps death, fell on her knees, and returning thanks to Heaven, that had once more heard her prayer, vowed that a fair abby, dedicated to "Notre Dame du Vou" *should commemorate her gratitude and her deliverance.

Scarcely casting a look around her, she was led into a chamber, and while the bath was preparing to refresh her toil worn frame, and the attendant damsels removed the coarse cloak, wet with half-melted snow, and the rude sandals from her bleeding feet, she lifted her eyes, half unconsciously, they fell upon a mirror, and she started back.-"How name you this place ?" said she.

"The Castle of Wallingford."

"And now thou art dying, holy man! O what shall I do, bereft of my wisest, though, alas ! too often uuheeded adviser!"

"Look up to Heaven, and ask wisdom there."

"But who art thou, holy man, for thou art no mere monk ?"

"I am nought but a sinner."

66

Nay, holy man, a saint rather; tell me who thou really art-O tell me, that by thy real name, when thou art departed, we may pray to thee."

Pray to God alone." The old man paused,
and gazed on the anxious countenance of the
kneeling empress, and he bade the attendants,
all except Earl Reineld of Chester, to with.
draw. "Empress Maude," said he, "would
ye learn who I am, think of him who, if
living, could best read a lesson on ambition
to ye-of him who, once chief subject in the
land, aimed at a higher prize, and lest all.
He, whom ye now see with the weight of an
hundred and fifteen years on his head, was
once chief in this land; but he met the just
punishment of his ambition, and while all
believed him dead, and some mourned over
his memory, he lived on, a nameless, friend-
less, unknown wanderer, bent on one object
alone, vowed to one only expiation of his
crime-the welfare of this poor land.
Em
press Maude, well canst thou tell his name.
"Holy man, I cannot: Harold fell at Hast-

Yes! that which so many years ago had been
foretold had come to pass. Joyfully as the
deer pursued by the hunter, or the bird by
the falcon, had she indeed sought the refuge
of the Castle of Wallingford, and there she
stood, in that very room where she had
laughed to scorn the revelation of the charm-
ed mirror, crownless, robeless,-stripped of
every ornament befitting her high station,-ings, my grandsire William rests at Caen.
wet and mire-besmeared, a pale, weary,
half-fainting Tugitive. "Never shall the
peace of this hapless land again be broken
by me," said the repentant empress; and
firmly kept was that vow.

*

*

*

*

*

Thou once chief in this land? Who canst
thou be?"

"Harold. Yes! believed dead alike by friend and foe, I was conveyed, just living, from that fatal battle-field; and when, after years of slow recovery, I once more went Three days passed away, but although forth, I sought the field of Hastings, and there diligent search had been made no tidings had solemnly pledged myself to aid the peace of been learnt of that mysterious old man. On that poor land, whose ruin I had wrought. the fourth day, a lay-brother from the Priory Surely it was for this that my life hath been of the Holy Trinity, at Wallingford, sought thus wondrously lengthened out, and surely the Castle, with a message from a dying now, when her peace is accomplished, I shall monk, one brother Leonard, earnestly en- be permitted to depart. Marvel not, theretreating the empress to come and see him. fore, empress, that he who once was lord of Right willingly did the daughter of Beauclerc the Castle of Winchester should have known obey the summons, for she feared that it was its strongholds, nor that he who wore that to the death-bed of her unknown deliverer. very reliquary at the battle of Hastings should It was so. And when she knelt by his rude have shuddered at its sight. Wealth, untold couch, and gazed upon his changed features, wealth, buried before that fatal battle, and her long-repressed tears burst forth, for she known only to me, gave me power to purknew indeed that he was mortal. 66 Holy chase whatever aid I needed, and thus enman," cried she," who canst thou be, to whomabled me to do what seemed impossible to a everything is known? Can thy life have mere dweller of the cloister. My work is been passed in this mean priory?!" done; and now, I pray ye, disclose not my "Only my later years," replied the dying secret to those around me, who believe that monk. seventy years since I was laid in Waltham Abbey, but bury me as brother Leonard."

"And wherefore did ye seek the cloister?and wherefore, O most holy man! that watch- Thus saying, the weary spirit of the old ful, unceasing care over my father snd my-man departed; and, faithful to his last wish, self?"

"Thy father, Empress Maude, supported the rights of the saxon, and therefore was he dear to me; I vowed to him to watch over thine interest, and hence my care of thee."

*This was built the following year near Cherbourg.

the empress caused his obsequies simply but
reverently to be performed in the church of
the Holy Trinity at Wallingford.

And while, for centuries after, thousands
flocked to the noble Abbey of Waltham, to
gaze on the silver inlaid tomb, inscribed "Hic
jacet Haroldus," few visited the lowly church
of the Holy Trinity at Wallingford, and little

did pilgrim ever dream, as his eye perchance | such an education as the parish school could carelessly fell on a simple stone, marked only by the cross, that the veritable Harold, the last monarch of the Saxon dynasty, unrecorded, unhonored, slumbered below.

THE YOUNG WILKIE.

be

afford. Half a century since there was a large class of Scottish benefices-(their extreme poverty was first exhibited to the public eye by Sir John Sinclair's statistical account, and remedied so far as could be done by a grant from the exchequer, raising them to one hundred and fifty pounds)-the total value of the emoluments of which fell greatly under one hundred pounds, and often did not exceed from fifty pounds to sixty pounds a year. Of one of the poorest of these Cutts was an exDURING an acquaintance of some duration ample, so that while the Rev. Mr. Wilkie had with the midland parts of Fifeshire, I hap- always maintain in their parishes, and to to keep up the rank which Scottish ministers pened occasionally to be thrown in the neigh-attend to those demands from the necessitous borhood of the birth-place of Sir David Wil- which they, who preach charity to others, kie, and to come in contact with some of the cannot overlook, and at the same time to edufriends of his father, and several of the cate and bring up a considerable family, his schoolfellows of the illustrious painter himmeans were not equal to the wages of an orself. I had also the pleasure of seeing the dinary mechanic of these times. Under these first picture in oil known to have been painted circumstances the manse of Cutts could not by him, together with several others which must have left his hands so early in life, that ance of servants, or magnificence of furniture. be supposed to exhibit either a princely abundhe himself probably may now be as ignorant The luxury of carpets-less universal then of their existence, as of the time or circum- than now-was accordingly unknown; while stances under which they were painted. Of the numerous particulars and anecdotes which to the hands of Mrs. Wilkie frequently fell a I heard related in regard to the youthful share of those labors which, in better endowed establishments, would have been considered painter, and his earlier works, there are one as belonging exclusively to those of the houseor two, illustrative of the development of his maid or the nursery-maid. The residence of genius, the authenticity of which, from the the very excellent family of Leven and Melsources whence they were derived, may ville, distinguished for generations for their depended on; and which, though strictly exemplary attention to the ordinances and private, in so far as they refer to him person- ministers of religion, happens to be at no ally, and have not before appeared in a pub-great distance from Cutts; and one day, when lished form, are not so in any sense tending Lord and Lady Balgonie were on a visit to to injure or improperly expose individual the manse, Mrs. Wilkie, who had been feelings; and which, from the position which keeping wee Davie," then not two years the subject of them now occupies, as, in a certain style, the most distinguished artist in old, having ushered in her noble visitors, had to set aside her young charge to look out for Europe, may not be uninteresting to your amusement for himself during their stay. It may be premised that the district and Amusement accordingly he found; prophetic, (has those round him been interpreters profession to which the father of Sir David of prophecy,) of his future career. The floor Wilkie belonged, has been fruitful beyond was carpetless, and Wilkie having obtained example-where no extreme circumstances a piece of burnt stick frorm the fire-place, concould account for the fact-in eminent men, tinued scratching, beneath the table, infiniteall nearly of the same age, in the present day ly to his own delight, apparently, till his and generation. There are just twenty cler-mother was at leisure to attend to him. He gymen in the presbytery of Cupar, and neither are the riches of the benefices, nor the the ecstacies of enjoyment, as pointing to his was now clapping his hands and screaming in means of attaining them, such as to confine performance, he continued to cry-"Ma, their occupancy to the elite of the church; Gonies nose! ma, see 'Gonies nose!" And yet from manses "within the bounds," at nearly the same time, sprang Sir John and there, to be sure, on the floor, was a very fair Sir George Campbell, Sir David Wilkie, and attempt at a profile of Lord Balgonie, the conspicuousness of "the fundamental feaSerjeant Spankie; while Dr. Chalmers, Dr. tures" of whose face-a peculiarity still chaFleming, and Dr. Gillespie, now professors of mineralogy, natural philosophy, and hu- racteristic of the family of the Leslies-had manity, respectively in the Universities of attracted the attention, and evoked the delineative powers of the future Sir David. This, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, and St. Andrew's, have, as it may well seem to be, is his first known within these twenty years, been clergymen effort in picture making; and certainly, if the in this otherwise obscure district of Scot-line could be parodied as applied to the worThe father of Sir David Wilkie was a cler- shippers of the dumb "sister of poetry," it gyman in the small and retired rural parish might be said of Wilkie as of Pope,

readers.

land.

66

of Cutts, above four miles south-west of Cupar," He lisped in numbers for the numbers came." the county town of Fife. Here the future

painter of the "Chelsea Pensioners" first

Geologists would, I suppose, call this "the

saw the light, and received the rudiments of carboniferous era" of Wilkie's existence, in

In five minutes, or less, the door was hurri

season. Though no rain fell, nor did there "Sterne is the author! His erratic muse can appear any immediate probability of a show- always entangle and fix the wandering ima er, every thing exposed to the air was beaded gination." in pendant drops with damp, and, even within, the condensed fog ran in rivulets stream-edly opened. ing down the windows, as if the morning was already in tears through anticipation of general disappointment.

"What can be the reason," thought I to myself, "that this day of all days in the year is sure to be wet? There seems to be a spell about it. Yet, what's that to me?-I'm comfortable enough by this good fire;" and incontinently I seized the poker, and went to work, hardly conscious what I did, till the fender was full of burning cinders, and my eyes full of ashes. "I'm very snug here," continued I, poking away at the grate with the fidgetty vehemence of a man who wishes to persuade himself he is what he knows he is not. "I shall not stir out till the hubbub's over. I will write, and employ myself profitably till dinner, and then read the account of it in all the evening papers, and just as well-why not? They write their criticisms on new plays and fresh performers some days or hours before they ever appear. Sad dogs! and yet they dictate to the town! Why shouldn't they if we pay them for it?" With my eyes fixed on the grate, I went on musing till the black flakes, waving on the bars, and which the superstitious in the north assure you portend strangers' vists, became of various colors, and at length assumed the armorial bearings of the different corporations of London. The fire blazing now brighter, a mass of fairy figures appeared, and a procession in miniature made its way through the cinders with all its glittering symbols-knights in steel and brazen armor: nor did Iawake from the agreeable reverie, till I saw the Lord Mayor of Lilliput descend from his tiny gingerbread coach, and step into Childe's banking-house at Temple bar. This was too gross. "Oh, ho," said I; "Queen Mab, I see, hath been with you;" so I wheeled round my chair to the breakfast table. A round of toast disappeared, an egg followed, and washing all down with a large cup of coffee, I jumped up, congratulating myself on my comfortable determination to remain at home, walked about the room, but could not for the life of me prevent myself from humming by snatches odd lines of "God save the queen.” "This is the devil," said I, and began an air from "Fra Diavolo," which, however, soon died away into the tiresome old crotchets of the national anthem." This is all very silly," said I to myself; "but it's not wonderful either, for there's the Savoyard boy, with an organ, under the window, and the Darmstadt brass band up the street, all grinding away at the same tune." Took a turn to the windowthe cold fog was slowly yielding to the influence of the westerly wind, as I would fain imagine it might be the sun's influence for what I cared-"It would certainly rain, and spoil all their sport," and then I took Sterne down from the book-case. "Ay," said I,

"What! Lord Mayor's day, and keep within doors, when so many hundreds have travelled hundreds of miles to see the sight! No, no!-come. The day's as fine as can be expected for the season-on with your boots," said lively Ned, ny country-cousin, "and let us see what's to be seen, as well as others.” "What's to be seen!" said I, listlessly turning over another leaf of Tristram Shandy; "have I not seeu Lord Mayor's days every year since I came to town? Don't I know the old Lord Mayor and the new ?quiet, plain people enough, when out of their official feathers-it's only the trappings that make an alderman a donkey: then he brays himself into a senator, "optat Ephippia bos," till he is detected by his bungling in a job, and the patriot is kicked out of the house with the contempt of both Whigs and Tories."

"Hang the jobs and the patriots! It's the queen-she's the inducement upon this occi. sion. Leave off sermonising-I know you're loyal, and must be gratified to witness the spectacle of the key of the good old city deli vered into her hands in her progress to visit the lord mayor to-day. She wears her crown and honors gracefully, I hear, and the little star of Brunswick already augurs a bright future for merry England.'

"Bravely prophesied my rural coz,” said I, "and not to baulk thy enthusiasm, I'll e'en make one with thee, and swell the triumphant note of greeting.

Upon such an occasion attention to the toilette would be superfluous. I am one of those who, when they enter upon anything, set out spiritoso, so I pulled an old hat off the rack, and investing my outward man in a rough pilot coat adapted to rough weather, or rough usage, took my cousin by the arm, and got under way exactly as the clock struck twelve.

"The street I live in, debouches, as the French cocksparrow used to say in his despatches, into the Strand on the north upon the river on the south. The sound of artillery reached our ears from the water-side.

"What's that?" inquired the young country gent.

"Oh," said I, determined on a hoax, "it's her majesty coming by barge from the Tower."

"Bah!" said Ned; "catch her within the Tower-she knows better. It's a prison for tip-top radicals and rebels, like Despard, Burdett, and Thistlewood, that are ambitious of being hanged for the benefit of society."

I laughed at this expression of homely loyalty, affected surprise at his being ig norant that it was the ancient palace of our monarchs, and asked him whether the line of Hanover might not descend to reside where so many of the warlike races