myself, held up his fist in a menacing posture, and cried Whist! The poor fellow, who seemed to have no idea of the mischief he had done, now remained mute and motionless; the clergyman continued the service; the happy couple once more cast their eyes upon the ground; and, after a few short prayers, were made man and wife, by simply joining their hands." In our next we shall turn to this interesting volume again, if our limits permit; in the meantime, we earnestly recommend The Alpenstock to the perusal of our readers, feeling assured that it will communicate much information respecting the romantic and picturesque country to which it relates.

THE PEASANT'S RETREAT.
(For the Olio.)

How blithe and romantic's yon peasant's re

treat,

Thus apart from the mansions of men, His life glides along as serenely and sweet As the rillet that sings in the glen. At eve 'tis his joy from his lattice to hark The Nightingale pipe in the willow; And to listen at morning's return for the lark To whistle him up from his pillow.

When winter disperseth the woodbine and rose,

Which fondly caresses his cot,. And o'er it a silvery diadem throws,

And binds in stern magic the spot; When the rillet, no longer in feathery foam, Leaps over the rock in the glen, And the cuckoo abandons his ethery home Till summer returneth again.

But now to sterner stuff:-I am not, I believe, of a cruel disposition; I would carefully turn out of my path to avoid treading on a caterpillar or a snail. I have frequently, on a frosty morning, placed a silly staggering fly on the steamy

side of my shaving can, and smiled to see it revive and stroke its flaccid wings with a sort of imperfect restoration to enjoy ment; and my blood boils even to read of any act of barbarity to animals,—a *The Alpenstock is an iron-shod pole, used

by the Chamois hunters and travellers, to assist them in climbing the heights.

fortiori, I am kind.y affectioned to my own species: I never saw, nor wished to see, an execution, not even a soldier flogged; but my uncle's library, like others of that sort, abounded in horrible details and bloody pictures of human suffering, and the bloodiest of these was never too bloody for me. From a child I always petitioned to have Fox's Martyrs, (of which the Library contained a vast and splendid copy) or God's Revenges against Murther, (honest old Reynolds !) brought down for my amusement!

How have I pored upon a Latin account in Lotychius' German Commentaries of the exccution of a blasphemer, who, continuing obstinate even on the scaffold, was in the charitable spirit of the seventeenth century stripped slowly, and between the removal of his different articles of clothing, seriously admonished to confess and repent; till, finding him impenetrable, the executioner slowly pulled off his shirt,

"Undumq. eum Populo aliquousq. stilit,"

and in that state fell to work upon him.

But of all these, the most vivid in my recollection is a picture in a huge Dutch folio, Der Marteleerin, where a poor bookseller of Leyden is preparing to be burnt alive for printing the Bible. Every point of this tragic scene is now in my mind's eye. It is a vast square market place, the lofty houses presenting their gable ends in front, interlaced with wood and windows. The most prominent figure is the unfortunate fellow himself, quite naked, except about his loins, and of most genuine Dutch proportions, the calves of his legs like Chinese gongs-his arms the brawns of Hercules, which the executioner is binding with thick cords, that serve also to fasten a huge book (probably his Bible) upon his bosom; beside him, on the stony pavement, are his clothes,-hat, doublet, shirt, breeches, with their full proportion of ruffles and buttons portrayed with Flemish accuracy, to shew that he has just been undressed. Full before him a cowled and swoln monk, with a face and person bloated as the toad's, brandishes a crucifix, from which the unhappy sufferer averts his face with a mingled expression of resignation and grief. Grotesque as the rest of the picture is, his face is admirably delineated, and it perhaps to its irresistibly pathetic cast that I may looking at it, and the power with which attribute the interest I always took in it is impressed on my memory. A black thick stake, with a ponderous ring and chain, and masses of unlighted faggots in the back ground, completed this dismal picture.

"And be themselves the' clear obscure' they drew,"

give me, in preference to all their checked and subdued colours-all their blending and intermixture of lights and twilights, and no lights, which, after all, one can see far better in any shady wood or sunny mead-give me, I say, the gorgeous prominence, the fearless glare, the simple individuality of colouring-(as I live by food, I am scribbling into cant myself!) that flames in barbaric magnificence along the saffron tinged and polished vellum of these monastic pages! I do love to see the honesty with which they depict a brick house in hues as red as brick. If the Santa Casa of Loretto is to have a golden roof, how satisfactorily accomplished is this eud by stamping a little leaf gold thereon,-fair contrast, yet bright unison with the scarlet walls and amethyst windows; and what is the use of having your scene laid in the balmy skies and odorous groves of Syria, if your palm of Idumæa wave not in the most delicate pea green beneath an atmosphere of the most inexorable blue? And then their brave and indignant scorn of perspective, as where that city of Semiramis, Nineveh, is seen riding on the back of the whale which has just disgorged Jonas, who, by the way, displays rather too ostentatiously a violet pair of Hessian boots.-But I have unintentionally been betrayed into jesting on a topic which I approached in earnest, and earnest I will once more become before I bid adieu to it.-In sober sadness, then, can any thing be more beautiful more alluring (never call it meretricious!) than the union of the soft and the superb that glows in the countenances and robes of the virgins, saints, confessors, and martyrs with which these rare volumes are emblazoned? The snowy no, that is too cold a term-but the sunny hue and rich flushing of the skin-the dazzling delicacy of the bright vermilion, solemn purple, sanguine crimson, and almost radiant gold of the raiment and embroidery acquire additional refulgence from the glossy substance on which they are enamelled.

Chivalry, too, the chivalry of ancient Romance, suspended in that lettered recess his eagle plumage, his silver shield, and

his falchion and lance, gilded with the blood of the Paynim Necromancer, or the purer streams of a Christian and a knightly combatant.

There was the rare and unique edition of Valentine and Orson with wood-cuts! Oh, thrice and four times venerable effusion of Caxton or De Worde (for I forget which, if either,) where in this degenerate age, where is that unlaboured simplex munditiis, which chastely embellished your mottled sheets, when men started to behold there, graven images of themselves impictured,-not bodiless, to be sure,-not like those facetious dots and lines, that leap, waltz, and skait along the magazines of modern days, but with one bold and fearless outline drawn, as if the designer or engraver disdained to alter a single stroke his adventurous hand had once given existence to.

Behold you sightless Orson! (for, though the story does not represent him as requiring the aid of an Alexander or a Phipps, the painter has thought fit to gift him with such eyes as two round o's guiltless of pupils may emblemize),—behold him, I say, rolling his odd white balls (like Fuseli's Ghost in Hamlet) on the Bear at his side, who, for her part, rolls two similar o's, two unpupiled dittos, on him again!-Away, captious critic! what though Man and Bear be both so equi-distant from nature, that, like long extremes, they threaten to meet, and you doubt

1

Or shape it might be deem'd that shape had 'If man it might be call'd that monster seem'd,

none,

Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb;
For each seemed either,'

is not the great end of painting to arrest, to absorb, to agitate the beholder ?-and shew me the dullest idiot that ever made the moon his deity, who, on contemplating any single picture of the human form divine, graven on these pages, would not, with staring eyes and trembling hands, involuntarily feel the shape, dimensions, and attitudes of his own limbs, to discover if it were possible that his arms could grow from under his cheeks, his breasts bud in his neck, or his nose be useful in the double capacity of a spoon or a weathercock!

And yet the cuts are the least part of the exquisite rarities which alternately soothed and excited my taste for antiquity in this Temple of Faustus-I always loved-for at one time I believed the Legends they adorned. The Knight who has plunged in a vast lake of boiling pitch, through which an infinite number of snakes, serpents, and alligators, with many other kinds of fierce and terrible

creatures, are continually winding and writhing along, finds himself in the midst of a delightful plain, by which the Ely sian fields are far excelled: all of a sudden appears a strong castle or magnificent palace, the walls of massy gold, the battlements of diamond, the gates of hyacinth, and, finally, the workmanship so admirable as to surpass the materials, which are no less than adamant carbuncles, rubies, pearls, and emeralds: then a bevy of fair damosels, coming out of the castle gate, lead him into a rich saloon, strip him as bare as he was born, bathe him in tepid milk, anoint his whole body with aromatic essences, put on him a shirt of the finest lawn, and throw over his shoulders a gorgeous mantle, the price of a whole city or more. There, while seated in an ivory throne, quaffing the richest wines, and indulging in the most luxurious viands, he is astonished by the entrance of another young lady, får more beautiful than the former, who, sitting down by him, informs him whose castle it is how she is enchanted in itand how the Giant Negromoro, with whom she is not enchanted, whips her with hazel twigs every morning before breakfast, only allowing her, by way of indulgence, to let down her auburn tresses during her punishment, by way of breaking the cruel blows. Of course, the Paladin unseams the sorcerer from the nave to the chops, and takes the lady under more gentle tuition.

Nor were there wanting other vivid tales of olden time, which, alas! professing to be piteously true, scarcely compensated the absence of glittering and innocent, though doubtful, fiction, by the stern and terrific scenes of sin and suffering which they developed. The guilty gallantries and dreadful deaths of Alcimus and Vannoza are still fearfully alive in my memory; and if the prolix, but never tedious, detail of the horrible ignominy and torments under which the young lover died by the hands of the injured husband and his servants, made every nerve in my frame quiver with horror, it certainly answered the end which the writer intended, by completely quenching the enormity of his crimes in the pity excited by his agonizing execution, and the courage, generosity, and resignation with which he underwent his sufferings.

Another very diminutive volume, and still more rare, was the History of Aurelio and Isabella, written in English, French, Spanish, and Italian-one column of each on every page,-a most precious morceau! The story itself might be written in a nutshell, nor is it sufficiently interesting even to be alluded to, but in consequence of

our Affranio, and Hortensia, and sundry others, thinking proper to argue in speeches, each equal to a long chapter of Sir Walter's, and which in fact occupy at most the whole book: the hero throws himself on a burning pile prepared for the heroine, the heroine stabs herself directly, and said Affranio is entrapped by said Hortensia to her chamber, where the queen and a number of her ladies rush in upon him, bind him, and by a refinement of cruelty order in a rump and dozen, at which they indulge between the actstormenting him to death-not with taunts and derision (though they spare not them) but with bona fide burning tongs and pincers: a fate which in my opinion he richly deserved, for the long-winded tirades against the fair sex, which from chapter to chapter he had vomited forth.

I must not, however, omit to mention, that my uncle's great glory was his collection of emblems, and though this was a department of the library which I was seldom disposed to disturb, yet, even in my judgment, they were very fine specimens of quaintness of invention and splendour of engraving. Alciatus-(I may well remember thy name, for often have I psha'd it when, searching for other food, my eye encountered it at every corner)Alciatus led the van in various shades and tirelings, whole troops of Dutch subalterns followed, and Nebulo Nebulonum brought up the rear.

But really I have suffered myself to be carried so far by my subject, that I cannot tell how to get back, especially as at this moment many old tomes of many sizes, aroused by the neck and heels' manner in which I have lugged their brethren to my pages, step before my mental Court of Records, and demand each in turn an audience!-But I must and will make an end-Avaunt, then, ye folios!-begone fat quartos !-ye dapper duodecimos take your faces hence!Frown not upon me, gigantic Harris! I shall never more voyage with thee through thy twofold bulk of closely printed wanderings!-Hackluyt, Black Prince of Travellers-most vivacous MandevilleMendez, thou artless marvel-monger-I will none of you!-Nay, Lithgow point not to thy Moslem-dress and tortured limbs! in truth thou shalt hold me excused-and you, too, more diffident and retiring, fair "Touchstone of Complexions," gentle "Breviary of Health ;"' and thou precious prototype of curtain lectures, Art asleepe, Husband?"Farewell" Round about our sea-coal fire!"-Farewell, good Master Fox, to those volumes of thine that singe the very fingers that touch them!-Farewell, ye

the obloquy which is deservedly heaped upon thy heartless brutality, thou still findest those who are willing to offer up in sacrifice at thy shrine every congenial sentiment that links man to his fellow? Never did the fructifying influence of humanity and compassion shed their heavenly dew upon the arid soil which thou hast chosen for thy empire-the genial rays of the sun of generosity never beamed upon its barren surface. Hide, then, thy frightful lineaments from the walks of civilized life; instead of making man a brute, seek some distant country where nature has not been lavish of her bounties-fly to the uncultivated regions where sands parched by the scorching rays of a burning sun, refuse a spring of water to the thirsty traveller. Such a scene will be more in unison with thy uncongenial temperament. But come not near the haunts of society, teaching the human kind to hate their fellow creatures. Man is bad enough without thee-under thy guidance he is a perfect monster.

"Yet say, thou sordid offspring of penurious thriftiness, dost thou not carry with thee thy own sufficient antidote, torturing the mind with anxious cares, destroying the health, and furrowing the cheek with many a wrinkle. The frighted imagination of the miser, ever restless, drives slumber from his couch, and if perchance wearied nature should sometimes find repose, thou art ever ready to whisper in his ear of robberies and assassinations, till he wakes from his unrefreshing sleep, and franticly ejaculates, My gold! my gold!' Distracted maniac!-hoard up thy sordid pelf, since such is thy perverse inclination -glut thine eyes with the sight of it, till thou canst no longer gaze upon the vile treasure, which is a curse to thee, knawing with vulture-like ferocity the very essence of thy existence. Heap millions upon millions, till thy riches shall exceed the wealth of Croesus, and then say what hast thou got by thy infatuated lust; will thy gold save thee from the common lot of mortals? Will it obstruct the ravages of disease-revigorate exhausted natureor purchase thee a passport to greater blessings in some future state?

Luid non mortalia pictora Cogis, Auri sacra fumes!

"I was, however, diverted from these gloomy reflections by an occurrence which interested me, considerably, and thus served to soften the rigours of my confinement. I have before stated that the merchant was remarkably avaricious, and consequently at all times very loath to admit the company of strangers, lest his means should be reduced, and he himself, as he frequently observed to his family,

brought to penury and want. There was a young man resident in his house, an assistant in his business, whom he had managed to get hold of upon very easy terms. He was to board and lodge with him, and have £10 per annum, to provide for his clothing, washing, and petty ex penses. I cannot say how much I pitied hím: compelled by poverty to herd with such a monster. I need not tell, (for it would be too tedious to narrate) how often my nerves were affected by the fumes of fat bacon, which, six days of seven, was the only dish upon the table, and how often I have heard his wife complain of the scantiness of their meal. poverty, more than his will, obliged the young man to retain his situation, and perhaps one other motive, which I shall briefly explain.

His

"The merchant had an only child, a lovely girl, between 17 and 18 years old. Educated by her good mother with the aid of a small annuity which her parents had settled upon the wife at her marriage, the young lady had made herself acquainted with much general information, and was further recommended by a peculiar sweetness of temper. Thrown together, it is not to be wondered at that two young persons should become attached to each other. The assistant in the countinghouse soon conceived a strong affection for the lovely girl, which she ardently repaid. They pitied each other situations, and

"Pity is akin to love."

"At the expiration of two years and a half, the young man made proposals to the father for his daughter's hand. His overtures were accepted, and the inhu man monster rolling in wealth, thinking he should get rid of a serious incumbrance, in the shape of his child, with many commendations on his own liberality, agreed to give them £500, as a marriage portion, on condition that he never more should be troubled with their company. Glad to escape from so mortifying a restraint, they eagerly accepted the offer. A few months after, the iron chest was unlocked, and I was taken out, with four other companions, with whom I had, after a time, scraped acquaintance, and consigned to the pockets of the bridegroom elect.

"Dearest Liberty !-but I will not apostrophize thee. Sterne has done it before me--and I should only discolour the pic

ture.

"The nuptials were soon consummated, and I was disposed of in the purchase of some little furniture and fittings up requisite for a small house which they took in Watling Street, where they opened a