gery, the King ordered him to be hamstrung and to have the nerves of his feet cut, which spoiled poor Velant's pedestrian powers for the rest of his days. He told the King, that if he would restore him to favour, he would manufacture for him every thing he wished. The King agreed, built a forge, and established him in it, where he constructed an infinity of curious and precious objects. About this time Egil, the brother of Velant arrived at court. He was the most skilful archer of his time. The King ordered him to pierce with an arrow an apple placed upon the head of his own child. Egil took two arrows, struck the apple off with one, and said that with the other he would have pierced the king's heart, if he had had the misfortune to kill his child. It happened about this time that the king's daughter broke a very precious ring: she sent to Velant to have it repaired, without her father's knowledge. Velant insisted that she should come herself for it. She accordingly went to the forge, when Velant fastened the doors, and violated her person. She lay in, in due course of time, of a son. Shortly after this the king's two sons went to Velant to have some arrows made: he in like manner fastened the doors upon them, and killed them both, and fashioned their bones into drinking-cups and other articles for the use of the table, which he dextrously adorned with gold and silver, and presented them to the King for his great festivals, who took great pride in exhibiting and using these splendid articles. Having thus nearly accomplished his vengeance, he sent his brother Egil to collect all manner of birds' feathers, with which he constructed a pair of wings for himself, and took flight towards the highest tower of the palace. He had first, however, engaged his brother, in case the King should command him to shoot at him, to take aim at his arm-pit, where he had placed a bladder filled with the blood of the two young princes whom he had killed. From the top of the tower Velant told the King that it was he who had violated the princess and killed the princes, as a punishment for the King having broken his oath and driven him from his presence. His majesty immediately ordered Egil, upon pain of death, to shoot at his brother. Egil obeyed and pierced the bladder, and the King was covered with the blood of his own children. Velant then took wing, and directed his flight towards the lands that his father the giant Vade* had left him in Seland.

Such is in substance the contents of the Saga, or the tradition of Velant, which forms a part of the Icelandic Vilkina Saga. It is impossible not to be struck with the resemblance between this tale and the Greek fable concerning Dædalus. The Velant of the Icelanders, like the Grecian Dædalus, was a skilful mechanic, who succeeded in constructing a pair of wings for himself. It is also very remarkable that the word labyrinth, which in Greek is called Dedalos from the name of the inventor, is, in the Icelandic, rendered by the expression Voelundar hus, or the House of Velant. It would appear then that the fable of Dædalus had found its way, at a very early period, into the North, and was confounded and amalgamated with the adventures

*This giant Vade appears to be the same of whom Chaucer talks in his Troilus, ch. 3, and who is also mentioned in one of the songs of Ritson's Collection, "He songe, he playde, he tolde a tale of Wade." Tom. 3, p. 256.-Vide Grimm in Irmen-Strasse und Irmensæule. Wien. 1815.

of some skilful artist of the country. The following curious fact renders it highly probable that there did exist a considerable time back, in the North of Europe, a smith of the name of Veland. As late as the sixteenth century the possessors of the lordship of Voetland in Scania bore in their coat of arms a hammer and a pair of pincers

But it is by no means an easy task to discover the original source of a tradition. The people of every country, particularly in the early stages of civilization, have acted like children, who eagerly listen to novel or wondrous tales, and then arrange them after their own manner and propagate them in their turn. The antiquary who should wish to arrive at the true source of this tradition of the smith Velant or Wayland, would find the task not an easy one; for in the island of Ceylon in the Indian seas the artists and artisans are called Voelundest. Thus after a long search and a circuitous route, we are brought back at length to the common country of the greater number of most ancient traditions-to India, which may be regarded as the cradle of truths and fables.

DG.

ODE TO MAHOMET,

THE BRIGHTON SHAMPOOER.

Nunc opus est succis: per quos, renovata senectus
In florem redeat, primosque recolligat annos.-Ovid.
O THOU dark sage, whose vapour-bath
Makes muscular as his of Gath,

Limbs erst relax'd and limber :
Whose herbs, like those of Jason's mate,
The wither'd leg of seventy-eight
Convert to stout knee timber:

Sprung, doubtless, from Abdallah's son,
Thy miracles thy sire's outrun,

Thy cures his deaths outnumber :
His coffin soars 'twixt heav'n and earth,
But thou, within that narrow birth,
Immortal, ne'er shalt slumber.
Go, bid that turban'd Musselman
Give up his Mosch, his Ramadan,

And choak his well of Zemzem;
Thy bath, whose magic steam can fling
On Winter's cheek the rose of Spring,
To Lethe's Gulf condemns 'em.
While thus, beneath thy flannel shades,
Fat dowagers and wrinkled maids
Rebloom in adolescence,

I marvel not that friends tell friends,
And Brighton every day extends
Its circuses and crescents.

From either cliff, the East, the West,
The startled sea-gull quits her nest,
The spade her haunts unearthing,
For Speculation plants his hod
On every foot of freehold sod
From Rottingdean to Worthing.

* Bring's Monumenta Scanensia, 1598.

† Asiatic Researches, t. viii.

Wash'd by thy Esculapian stream,
Dark sage, the fair, "propell'd by steam,"
Renew the joys of kissing

In cheeks, or lank or over-ripe,
Where Time has, in relentless type,
Placarded up "Youth Missing."
To woo thee on thy western cliff,
What pilgrims strong, in gig, in skiff,
Fly, donkey-cart, and pillion:
While Turkish dome and minaret
In compliment to Mahomet
O'ertop the King's Pavilion.

Thy fame let worthless wags invade,
Let punsters underrate thy trade,
For me, I'd perish sooner :

Him who, thy opening scene to danın,
Derived shampoo from phoo! and sham!
I dub a base lampooner.

Propell'd by steam to shake from squeak,
Mara, in Lent, shall twice a week
Again in song be glorious,

While Kelly, laughing Time to scorn,
Once more shall chaunt "Oh thou wert born,"
And Incledon "Rude Boreas."

Godwin avaunt! thy tale thrice told,
Of endless youth and countless gold,
Unbought "repóstum manet.”

St. Leon's secret here we view,
Without the toil of wading through
Three heavy tomes to gain it.
Yet oh, while thus thy waves reveal
Past virtues in the dancer's heel,
And brace the singer's weazon:
Tell, sable wizard, tell the cause
Why limp poor I, from yonder vase,
Whence others jump like Æson?
The cause is plain-though slips of yew
With vervain mingle, sage meets rue,
And myrrh with wolfesbane tosses:
Still shrieks, unquell'd, the water-wraith:
That mustard-seed ingredient, faith,
Is wanting to the process.

Dip then within thy bubbling wave,
Sage Mahomet, the votive stave
Thy poet now rehearses:

The steam, whose virtues won't befriend

The sceptic bard, perhaps may mend

The lameness of his verses !

ENGLISH LANDSCAPE.

Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures,
Whilst the landscape round it measures
Russet lawns and fallows gray,

Where the nibbling flocks do stray,
Mountains on whose barren breast
The lab'ring clouds do often rest.
Meadows trim with daisies pied,
Shallow brooks and rivers wide.
Towers and battlements it sees
Bosom'd high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps some beauty lies,

The Cynosure of neighb'ring eyes. L'Allegro.

In these beautiful lines Milton has accurately drawn the outline and character of English Landscape, or at least those striking features of it which may be styled national. He has given a most appropriate finish to the description, by introducing a supposed beauty dwelling in the midst of the embowered scene, thus heightening its interest and attaching the heart to his picture. The whole is the most happy general description of the same nature ever put together. The character of English rural scenery is different from that of other countries, and this forcibly occurs to the mind of the traveller absent from England, when he is contrasting the view before him in a distant land with the "trees and the towers" of his native island. This peculiar character, that Englishmen are accustomed to from infancy, is the standard by which they try all rural objects abroad, and creates a disposition in them to undervalue foreign scenery, when it may be far superior to their own in the eye of taste. Something, nevertheless, must be allowed for that tendency of mind which always leads us to disparage present objects, compared with those which we hold in remembrance. The memory, if it be sometimes deficient in calling up the exact detail of absent images, never deprives them of their colouring, but adds to their brilliancy and effect. The portrait of an absent mistress in the mind of her lover is always more beautiful than she ever appeared to him in the life. A thousand tender associations, too, crowd thickly after one another, and confer upon things out of sight the same kind of superiority, that the pictures of "Auld Lang Syne" always possess over those which are before us at the moment.

But there is a charm in English scenery as much its characteristic as the features, dress, and air of an Englishman are peculiar to himself. There is a snugness, a comfort, an agreeable circumscription in the look of the country dwellings of the gentry, and all but the very lowest class, which has something attractive and endearing in it, like that which is implied in the epithet "little*," when used in kindness. Close high-fenced fields surrounded by trees, houses buried in shrubberies and groves, beautiful cattle feeding among rich pasturages, and all in the smallest space, so that the eye can command them together, take a hold on the affections that an uninclosed country, large forests, and immense buildings, can never attain. We may admire the latter, but we cannot love them. The idea of comfort which they afford is an addi

* Burke. Sublime and Beautiful, p. 126.

tional tie to our regard, while the smiling fertility every where visible, arising from the depth of colour in the verdure, kept fresh and fragrant, even during the height of summer, by frequent showers, and the endless variety of green in the foliage, is nowhere surpassed: masses of tufted trees rising amid an ocean of luxuriant vegetation; vast oaks stretching out their knotty arms in the most picturesque forms; parks and plantations made without an appearance of art; an absence of rocks and precipices and those objects which Nature always intermingles in her most beautiful landscapes, making a marked difference between her own and English landscape of the kind I am describing. For though the latter may have little show of art, yet it possesses a distinct and definite character. To picturesque scenery, strictly speaking, I make no allusion, but confine myself to the social or highly cultivated. The perpetual green of England is the charm of her natural beauty, like a smiling expression upon the face of female loveliness. Englishmen, from missing this grateful hue in the South of Europe under its intense summer sun, are always complaining of the arid appearance of the country, forgetting that spring, under those genial skies, answers to our summer, and that even winter is a season of mildness and beauty of which we have no notion in England.

The sober, snug appearance of English retirements in the country is favourable to the developement of the qualities of the heart; it is congenial to thought and reflection, it tends to concentrate our ideas, and to throw us back upon ourselves. It is painful to see the love of rural life losing ground among the better class of society, for we owed, and yet owe, much of the steadiness and simplicity of the English character to its influence. A secluded house and garden, buried in trees, having a circumscribed field of view, and producing an idea of recluseness, is also the best situation for study. Let the individual who would think deeply place himself on the summit of a high hill, commanding an extensive and varied prospect, a prodigality of luxuriant scenery being extended beneath him, and let him think intently, if he can, particularly in fine weather, even though he be a mathematician. A dissipation of thought must take hold of him in spite of himself, and his ideas will require all his exertion to keep them to their object. But how favourable to meditation are our sequestered plantations and fields. The high green hedges, well lined with timber, and almost peculiar to our island, divide the face of the country in a very unpicturesque manner, but they inclose many natural gardens, many delicious spots isolated each from the other, carpetted with the softest vegetation, and seeming to be made for study and gentle exercise at the same time. From these the eye cannot stray away to diverting objects all round the horizon, but may closely repose upon wild flowers and cool verdure, while the "thoughts are wandering through eternity." Men of the most comprehensive souls and commanding talents, those who have dazzled the world by the splendour of their military achievements, delighted it by immortal song, or instructed it by science, have preferred circumscribed residences and silent retreats. The excursions of the mind have no sympathy with the arbitrary limits which confine the body, for they always expatiate over the largest space while the body is inert; and this is a strong argument against materialism. Men of the most sublime conceptions have preferred small dwellings,