But

tion he had held under the late King, and his well-known eminence." this is all pure conjecture. The Emperor, to be sure, was at Brussels-Pole was there at his court and thither the commission went to fetch him-and time enough, no doubt, there might be to talk of the affairs of Europe; but this is not evidence. In his journal he says, “vi. Nov. 1554, cæpi iter cum Dom. Paget et Mag. Hastings versus Cæsarem pro reducendo Cardinale;" but surely it was perfectly natural to say he was going to the Emperor's (this we suppose is all that was meant-very little can be said at any time for Cecil's Latin) without its involving a political implication. Nor did Cecil's connexion with the Cardinal cease with the embassy; he was remarked on his return to have had more of the Cardinal's favour than any other Englishman, and he again accompanied him when he went back to the Continent to negotiate the peace. At Court he was so much in favour, that when summoned before the Council on a somewhat suspicious occasion, he was dismissed with the utmost courtesy on his own simple explanation; and though not conspicuously employed-there might perhaps have been no present opportunityhe was among those who presented and received new-year's gifts, no slight distinction in those days.

-But all this his friends in their confiding good-nature, and certainly, by a natural bias, his able and amiable biographer, are willing to understand as a wise compliance with the times, for the sake of watching over the latent interests of Protestantism, and protecting, and counselling, and advising the Princess Elizabeth. It is pretty evident that he did keep up a correspondence with her, and did advise her on all important occasions; and if all this intercourse did not escape the notice of the Court, as we can scarcely imagine it could, then the fair inference is, that he was playing a double and a triple game, and we must admire the good luck with which he finally fell on his legs. But if we cannot concur entirely and absolutely with the biographer in his admiration, and even veneration for his very distinguished subject, we can well appreciate his own merits-they are of the very highest order. His work exhibits great research, great honesty, powerful statement, good feeling, liberal interpretations, and no little ingenuity; and no man, be he king, priest, or minister, need wish for a gentler chronicler.

THE CORONATION OF INEZ DE CASTRO.

"Tableau, où l'Amour fait alliance avec la Tombe; union redoutable de la mort et de la vie."-Madame de Stael.

* Don Pedro of Portugal, after his accession to the kingdom, had the body of the murdered Inez taken from the grave, solemnly enthroned and crowned.

Full glow'd the strong red radiance
In the centre of the nave,
Where the folds of a purple canopy
Swept down in many a wave;
Loading the marble pavement old
With a weight of gorgeous gloom;
For something lay 'midst their fretted gold,
Like a shadow of the tomb.

And within that rich pavilion
High on a glittering throne,
A woman's form sat silently,

Midst the glare of light alone.
Her jewell'd robes fell strangely still—
The drapery on her breast

Seem'd with no pulse beneath to thrill,
So stone-like was its rest.

But a peal of lordly music
Shook e'en the dust below,
When the burning gold of the diadem
Was set on her pallid brow!

Then died away that haughty sound,
And from th' encircling band,

Stept Prince and Chief, midst the hush profound,
With homage to her hand.

Why pass'd a faint cold shuddering
Over each martial frame,

As one by one, to touch that hand,
Noble and leader came?
Was not the settled aspect fair?
Did not a queenly grace,
Under the parted ebon hair,
Sit on the pale still face?

Death, Death! canst thou be lovely
Unto the eye of Life?

Is not each pulse of the quick high breast
With thy cold mien at strife?

-It was a strange and fearful sight,

The crown upon that head,

The glorious robes and the blaze of light,

All gather'd round the Dead!

And beside her stood in silence
One with a brow as pale,
And white lips rigidly compress'd,
Lest the strong heart should fail:

King Pedro with a jealous eye
Watching the homage done
By the land's flower and chivalry
To her, his martyr'd one.

But on the face he look'd not

Which once his star had been ;

To every form his glance was turn'd,

Save of the breathless Queen :

Though something, won from the grave's embrace,

Of her beauty still was there,

Its hues were all of that shadowy place,

'Twas not for him to bear.

Alas! the crown, the sceptre,

The treasures of the earth,

And the priceless love that pour'd those gifts,
Alike of wasted worth!

The rites are closed-bear back the Dead
Unto the chamber deep,

Lay down again the royal head,
Dust with the dust to sleep.

There is music on the midnight—
A requiem sad and slow,

As the mourners through the sounding aisle
In dark procession go,

And the ring of state, and the starry crown,
And all the rich array,

Are borne to the house of silence down,

With her, that Queen of clay.

And tearlessly and firmly,

King Pedro led the train

But his face was wrapt in his folding robe,

When they lower'd the dust again.

-'Tis hush'd at last, the tomb above,

Hymns die, and steps depart:

Who call'd thee strong as Death, O Love?
Mightier thou wert and art!

F. H.

SKETCHES OF THE IRISH PRIESTHOOD.

NO. II.

PASSING almost a century, and with it many holy characters well worthy of notice, we meet the old Irish priest, second in renown to St. Patrick, namely, St. Columba, or St. Colme, called Colmekil in Ireland, to distinguish him from other saints of the name; the adjunct having been suggested by the number of cils, or kils, which he founded; as many, indeed, as a hundred, in Ireland and Scotland.

While his predecessor, St. Patrick, is peculiarly honoured for his general conversion of our island sister, and for his celebrated miracle, Colmekil's fame chiefly rests in Ireland upon his prophetic powers. Until a few years ago, it was firmly believed there, that he had foretold every thing remarkable, and many things unimportant, which, since his death, happened in the three kingdoms; for example, the battle of Aughram, and mail-coaches; "the hard summer," and the coming-in of rats. And certain quaint couplets, or sometimes triplets, ascribed to him, were also believed to span much of the future. These awful scraps of the sibyl leaf related, indifferently, as his accomplished prophecies had done, to vast events, and to very humble local accidents. One promised, for instance, that Spain, which, five thousand years ago, sent Milesius to lerne, would, some day, spirit over a great army to make his descendants the first and happiest people of the earth: another, that a little lough was to spring up in a field of a few acres; or, that myriads of huge, hairy eels, which led an unhallowed life in a certain haunted pond, would make an incursion into the adjacent meadows, seeking whom they might devour.

But two of his most considerable predictions totally failed within my own memory; and it is to be feared, in consequence, that the doctrine

of his infallibility is on the decrease in Paddy's land. One which I had heard from my childhood, and which my grandmother had heard from hers, boldly asserted that

"While the clouds hold hail and rain,

[Th The Fourth George would never reign;"

and my astonishment only equals my merriment when I recollect how many respectable people-to say nothing of millions of their inferiorsbelieved this; nay, how many educated people could scarce bring themselves not to build on it. For many years, events absolutely seemed to promise fair for the " untoward" prophecy. Our late good monarch grew old, and it was a question if he would not outlive the heir apparent. Then he grew indisposed; but still he was every inch a king;" and the illustrious object of Colme's denunciation could only be called Regent. He recovered, and re-assumed his regal state, and so did Colme. He relapsed! the pulses of Colme's believers beat high in anxiety:-he finally withdrew from public life—but still, and still, "the Fourth George did not reign." Matters stood thus for many years. The Regent's health broke-all was tranquil certainty. Meantime, the royal recluse of Old Windsor seldom appeared to his subjects' eyes, and many rural politicians of Ireland began to found specious theories on the fact. I heard a spruce gentleman-farmer say, half in earnest, though he tried to laugh it off, that in his opinion "the poor old King had been dead and gone many a day;" and that he was only kept stuffed, like some great foreign bird, and now and then exhibited in order to baffle people; the measure being the result of subtle cabinet policy, which deemed it inexpedient, at the time, to proclaim a new successor; and, "the blinded cratures, that was all they could see in it, when a man, with half an eye, might perceive that it was all permitted by Providence, just to make sure of the prophecy." I was in a large city in Ireland upon the evening when the English packet announced to us the actual removal to a better world of good George the Third; and I shall never forget the impression made by the tidings upon many of the middling ranks of the city, who crowded our public news-room. At first, they would not believe the papers. What! give up Colmekil? And when, in silent mortification, they were at last compelled to give him up, the dolorous glances they interchanged might be taken, by an imaginative eye, as a giving up of the ghost along with their "time-honoured" prophet. In truth, one felt for them. Nothing was now certain in life at least, nothing of the future. Henceforward, they were to rest satisfied with whatever knowledge they could themselves acquire, and that solely a knowledge of the present or the past. This sudden loss of the power of believing was like the loss of a sense, of hearing or seeing; or like getting a paralytic stroke

"Wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.”

And then, Colmckil proved a false prophet! - Tremendous. Not the chagrin of a friend deceived by his friend; of a lover, when he gets his letters and miniature returned; of a husband, when, coming back from a jovial dinner-party, or a jovial fox-chase, he finds his wife has eloped with a guardsman, or a masquerading clergyman, and that, as the latter would say, "the laugh is against him :" in a word, no chagrin could be compared to that. Nor let the innocent reader imagine

that any disloyalty mingled with the feelings of these honest citizens, or any demur to the throne being filled by the individual prince who succeeded to it. Not a jot of such extraneous matter was in the case. Colmekil had been confounded, that was all. And even his present gracious Majesty is, doubtless, prepared to vouchsafe an admission to the same effect, in generous recollection of the Irish cead mille-phalteagh, which millions of these very believers in Colme gave him, a few years after, upon their shores.

Colmekil's second failure was about the late Duke of York. It was an expectation," as auld as the hills," that his Royal Highness would go once to Ireland at the head of a great army, to fight a battle against the people; and that a certain mysterious boy with two thumbs was to hold the bridle of his war-horse, and those of six of his generals, during the engagement. The only difference in the universal credulity arose from the natives of various districts, all over Ireland, assigning a certain place in their own neighbourhood as the site of the battle-field. It is here unnecessary to mention in what manner some of the public conduct of the Royal Duke seemed to give awful promise of the fulfilment of this prophecy also. The boast of a political faction in Ireland that he had accepted the title of their Grand-master, particularly strengthened the fears of the bulk of the people, and at the same time their reverence of Colmekil. And let spiteful individuals say what they will, his Royal Highness's death was deeply lamented amongst our neighbours; if for no other reason, at least because it happened before he could do what the prophecy commanded him to do. The boy with the two thumbs had actually been born, and was then in good health, and turned of nine years of age.

But of the sin of false oracles, in these instances, our saint may be held innocent. Authority, that Mr. Charles Butler calls highly respectable, invests him, indeed, with " an extraordinary gift of prophecy;" but it is doubtful if any of his learned biographers or eulogists ever attributed to him the popular predictions laid at his door in Ireland. In towns and cities in that country, there are "pounds" in which the mayor's bailiff, an amateur representative of the regular beadle of England, imprisons all the little pigs he finds marauding through the streets; in like manner, all the stray puns of the green Isle used to be driven into Joe Miller's pound, as well as all those of this witty nation (we now drive them into Lord Norbury's in the one country, and into Mr. Hook's in the other); and in like manner, again, it is pretty certain that the lax ravings of many a hedge-schoolmaster of Connaught or Munster have been fixed upon the much-wronged Colmekil.

Turning to something that can more certainly, as well as more creditably be ascribed to him, we find that amongst the religious establishments made by him in Ireland, were a celebrated abbey of Augustinians, in the now ultra-orange city of Derry, and the monastery DairNagh, in the King's county, now called Durrough. Ware mentions an ornamented manuscript copy of the Gospels, still extant, which was preserved in this monastery, and which was prefaced by an inscription, testifying that it had been written in twelve days by the industrious saint. "King Dermot, or Dermeticus," says Mr. Alban Butler, being offended at the zeal of St.Columba in reproving public vices, he passed into North Britain, now called Scotland, taking with him twelve disci