Now behold one of his greatest imaginations. The fallen demi-gods are assembled in Pandæmonium, waiting the return of their "great adventurer" from his "search of worlds :"

He sat, and round about him saw unseen.

At last-as from a cloud, his fulgent head

And shape star-bright appeared, or brighter; clad
With what permissive glory since his fall
Was left him, or false glitter. All amazed

At that so sudden blaze, the Stygian throng

Bent their aspect; and whom they wished, beheld,
Their mighty chief returned.

There is a piece of imagination in Apollonius Rhodius worthy of Milton or Homer. The Argonauts, in broad day-light, are suddenly benighted at sea with a black fog. They pray to Apollo; and he descends from heaven, and lighting on a rock, holds up his illustrious bow, which shoots a guiding light for them to an island.

Spenser, in a most romantic chapter of the Faery Queene (Book ii.), seems to have taken the idea of a benighting from Apollonius, as well as to have had an eye to some passages of the Odyssey; but, like all great poets, what he borrows only brings worthy companionship to some fine invention of his own. It is a scene thickly beset with horror. Sir Guyon, in the course of his voyage through the perilous sea, wishes to stop and hear the Syrens; but the palmer, his companion, dissuades him:

When suddeinly a grosse fog overspred
With his dull vapor all that desert has,
And heaven's chearefull face enveloped,

That all things one, and one as nothing was,

And this great universe seemed one confused L ass.

Thereat they greatly were dismayd, ne wist
How to direct theyr way in darkness wide,

But feared to wander in that wastefull mist
For tombling into mischiefe unespyde:
Worse is the daunger hidden then descride.
Suddeinly an innumerable flight

Of harmfull fowles about them fluttering cride,
And with theyr wicked wings them oft did smight,
And sore annoyed, groping in that griesly night.

Even all the nation of unfortunate

And fatall birds about them flocked were,
Such as by nature men abhorre and hate,
The ill-faced owle, deaths dreadful messengere.
The hoarse night-raven, trump of dolefull drere:
The lether-winged batt, dayes enimy:

The ruefull stritch, still waiting on the bere :
The whistler shrill, that whoso heares doth dy:
The hellish harpies, prophets of sad destiny;

All these, and all that else does horror breed.
About them flew, and fild their sayles with fear;
Yet stayd they not, but forward did proceed,

Whiles th' one did row, and th' other stifly steare.

Ovid has turned a mist to his usual account. It is where Jupiter, to conceal his amour with Io, throws a cloud over the vale of Tempe. There is a picture of Jupiter and Io, by Correggio, in which that great artist has finely availed himself of the circumstance; the head of the father of gods and men coming placidly out of the cloud, upon the young lips of Io, like the very benignity of creation.

The poet who is the most conversant with mists is Ossian, who was a native of the north of Scotland or Ireland. The following are as many specimens of his uses of mist as we have room for. The first is very grand; the second as happy in its analogy; the third is ghastly, but of more doubtful merit:

Two Chiefs parted by their King.-They sunk from the king on either side, like two columns of morning mist, when the sun rises between them on his glittering rocks Dark is their rolling on either side, each towards

its reedy pool.

A great Enemy -I love a foe like Cathmor: his soul is great; his arm is strong; his battles are full of fame. But the little soul is like a vapor

that hovers round the marshy lake. It never rises on the green hill, lest the winds meet it there.

A terrible Omen.-A mist rose slowly from the lake. It came, in the figure of an aged man, along the silent plain. Its large limbs did not move in steps; for a ghost supported it in mid air. It came towards Selma's hall, and dissolved in a shower of blood.

We must mention another instance of the poetical use of a mist, if it is only to indulge ourselves in one of those masterly passages of Dante, in which he contrives to unite minuteness of detail with the most grand and sovereign effect. It is in a lofty comparison of the planet Mars looking through morning vapors; the reader will see with what (Purgatorio, c. ii., v. 10). Dante and his guide Virgil have just left the infernal regions, and are lingering on a solitary sea-shore in purgatory; which reminds us of that still and far-thoughted verse—

Lone sitting by the shores of old romance.

But to our English-like Italian.

Noi eravam lungh' esso 'l mare ancora, &c.

That solitary shore we still kept on,

Like men, who musing on their journey, stay
At rest in body, yet in heart are gone;

When lo! as at the early dawn of day,

Red Mars looks deepening through the foggy heat,
Down in the west, far o'er the watery way;

So did mine eyes behold (so may they yet)
A light, which came so swiftly o'er the sea,
That never wing with such a fervor beat.
I did but turn to ask what it might be

Of my sage leader, when its orb had got
More large meanwhile, and came more gloriously
And by degrees, I saw I knew not what

Of white about it; and beneath the white
Another. My great master uttered not

One word, till those first issuing candours bright
Fanned into wings; but soon as he had found
Who was the mighty voyager now in sight,
He cried aloud, "Down, down, upon the ground,
It is God's Angel."

CHAPTER XVI.

The Shoemaker of Veyros, a Portuguese Tradition.

In the time of the old kings of Portugal, Don John, a natural son of the reigning prince, was governor of the town of Veyros, in the province of Alentejo. The town was situate (perhaps is there still) upon a mountain, at the foot of which runs a river; and at a little distance there was a ford over it, under another eminence. The bed of the river thereabouts was so high as to form a shallow sandy place; and in that clear spot of water, the maidens of Veyros, both of high rank and humble, used to wash their clothes.

It happened one day, that Don John, riding out with a company, came to the spot at the time the young women were so employed and being, says our author, "a young and lusty gallant," he fell to jesting with his followers upon the bare legs of the busy girls, who had tucked up their clothes, as usual, to their work. He passed along the river; and all his company had not gone by, when a lass in a red petticoat, while tucking it up, showed her legs somewhat high; and clapping her hand on her right calf, said loud enough to be heard by the riders, "Here's a white leg, girls, for the Master of Avis."*

These words, spoken probably out of a little lively bravado, upon the strength of the governor's having gone by, were repeated to him when he got home, together with the action that accompanied them upon which the young lord felt the eloquence of the speech so deeply, that he contrived to have the fair speaker brought to him in private; and the consequence was, that our lively natural son, and his sprightly challenger, had another natural son.

* An order of knighthood, of which Don John was Master.

Ines (for that was the girl's name) was the daughter of a shoe maker in Veyros; a man of very good account, and wealthy Hearing how his daughter had been sent for to the young gov ernor's house, and that it was her own light behavior that subjected her to what he was assured she willingly consented to, he took it so to heart, that at her return home, she was driven by him from the house, with every species of contumely and spurning. After this he never saw her more. And to prove to the world and to himself, that his severity was a matter of principle, and not a mere indulgence of his own passions, he never afterwards lay in a bed, nor ate at a table, nor changed his linen, nor cut his hair, nails, or beard; which latter grew to such a length, reaching below his knees, that the people used to call him Barbadon, or Old Beardy.

In the meantime, his grandson, called Don Alphonso, not only grew to be a man, but was created Duke of Braganza, his father Don John having been elected to the crown of Portugal; which he wore after such noble fashion, to the great good of his country, as to be surnamed the Memorable. Now the town of Veyros stood in the middle of seven or eight others, all belonging to the young Duke, from whose palace at Villa Viciosa it was but four leagues distant. He therefore had good intelligence of the shoemaker his grandfather; and being of a humane and truly generous spirit, the accounts he received of the old man's way of life made him extremely desirous of paying him a visit. He accordingly went with a retinue to Veyros; and meeting Barbadon in the streets, he alighted from his horse, bareheaded, and in the presence of that stately company and the people, asked the old man his blessing. The shoemaker, astonished at this sudden spectacle, and at the strange contrast which it furnished to his humble rank, stared in a bewildered manner upon the unknown personage, who thus knelt to him in the public way; and said, "Sir, do you mock me?" "No," answered the Duke; "may God so help me, as I do not: but in earnest I crave I may kiss your hand and receive your blessing, for I am your grandson, and son to Ines your daughter, conceived by the king, my lord and father." No sooner had the shoemaker heard these words, than he clapped his hands before his eyes, and said, "God