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sportive, full of strength, full of grace, sublimity, | Then again, in Denmark, there is a May queen,

and child-like simplicity. In some of his pieces like her Majesty of England. We are told that we see how deeply he had informed himself with the characteristics of the two nations are similar, the spirit of Christianity; in others, we perceive a preponderance of the phlegmatic in both temhow completely he had caught the meaning of peraments. The climate, by which the character the Greek myths. Look again at his heroic of a people is, to a great extent, determined, is sculptures, his Alexander, Jason, Mars, Ponia-much alike in both countries; and the scenery is towsky, and contrast them with the Cupids that strikingly similar, though certainly the landcame from his chisel. Cupid is the chief person-scapes of England are more varied, grand, and age in several of his works, and in looking at beautiful. Both Danes and English have a great them, we see in marble the very thing that Ana-love of the sea and a sea-faring life. The enorereon has put on paper. He did not, however, mous expense incurred by the former, to maintain merely repeat the persons of antique fable, but a fleet which they have no use for, shows their he was an original inventor in the region of strong attachment to the pageantry if they have imagination. What can be more exquisite than not the power of the ocean. No wonder they are his " Cupid and Hymen spinning the thread of passionate lovers of the salt waves, for, taking their Life," or his "Course of Human Life?" The islands into account, they have, at least, 1500 poems of the sculptor are short, compact, and miles of coast, and the majority of their large laconic. The painter and the writer may lavish towns are built in sight of the sea. Hence their colours and words, but the sculptor cannot afford eyes become accustomed from infancy with the a prodigal expenditure. In his works, a single sea in all its aspects, and their childish days are movement, an attitude, a situation must express spent almost as much upon its changing bosom a great deal; and what his brother artists can as upon the earth. When living away from their diffusely unfold, he can merely indicate. The own country in the middle of the continent, they works of the statuary are like the Latin sentences are said to languish for a sight of the sea, as the of the lapidary, cut in the rock to last for ever. Swiss for a view of their native Alps. The dark sea When a poet takes night for his theme, he calls in (Sortladne Hav) is celebrated in their songs as to his assistance the stars, the moon, the fields, much as green valleys, or leafy woods, or lofty the still air, the wild beasts of the forest, to give mountains are celebrated in the verses of other us an impression of the hours of darkness. Let nations. Their ancient poems sing of sea heroes, us see what Thorwaldsen does. He shapes a and the battles when they conquered foes upon the female form hovering with closed eyelids in the waves. The national hymn is a pæan to the vast inane; two sleeping children repose on her fame of King Christian, and one of his victories bosom, and her feet are crossed after the manner on the ocean. of slumberers. Of all the emblems or images of night here is but one, an owl; no stars, no fire, no dark shadows, no effects of light, any of which the painter is at liberty to introduce. Yet Thorwaldsen's work is in the highest degree impressive, and not less dear to the lover of night than a canto of Young's poem. Widely scattered as Thorwaldsen's works are, they are attempting to have casts from all of them, made in plaster. Copies of his great works in the museum have been made for sale, and a good collection may be made at a moderate price.

Path of the Dane to fame and might,
Dark rolling wave!
Receive thy friend who, scorning flight,
Goes to meet danger with despite,
Proudly as thou meetest the tempest's might,
Dark rolling wave!

And amid pleasures and alarms,
And war and victory, be thine arms
My grave!

The

The dockyards and arsenals of Denmark are not, of course, to be compared with those of our country for size and importance. For this reason, however, a stranger to such places is less confounded by the magnitude and complication of the works, and he can more easily perambulate the several divisions, and more readily comprehend the operations carried on in them. fleet is a mere article of luxury, which lies unused in the harbour, where it could at any moment be crushed by its powerful neighbours, England and Russia. Before the separation of Norway from Denmark, there might have been some pretence for maintaining a large number of ships, because they formed the bridge from one country to the other. But since that event, there is little to jus

Mr. Kohl suggests, as interesting subjects of research, the similarities in habits and customs of the English and the Danes; and the exact position which Denmark occupies between England and Germany. Danes, who have travelled in this island, declare that in no foreign country did they feel themselves so near home as here. The Jutlanders may find many traces of their tongue and traditions in Northumberland. It is well known that several Danish customs have resemblances in England. Thus Christmas is kept very much in the same way in both countries, but in Denmark the old name for the season (Jule) is re-tify so heavy an expenditure, as that incurred in tained, whilst here it has given way to a modern word, although in Scotland the former term is still preserved. In some parts of Jutland the Yule log is still laid on the fire at Christmastide. Copenhagen, like London, is almost deserted at that season by the fashionable world, who go into the country to keep the festival.

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supporting seven ships of the line, sixteen frigates,
corvettes, and brigs, seven cutters and schooners,
and eighty sloops, with guns and mortars.
than a fourth of Copenhagen is occupied by the
fleet and its requirements. Six little islands are
covered with workshops, magazines, &c., and one
division of the town is occupied by the sailors.

The harbour, where the vessels lie, is one of the finest in the world, formed by a natural arm of the Sound, between the islands of Amak and Zealand. It is remarkable that the three principal articles required in ship-building have to be procured from foreign countries, namely, iron from Sweden, timber from Prussia and Austria, hemp and flax from Russia. There is, to be sure, a good deal of iron in Jutland, but it is of that useless kind called bog ore; and although Denmark is well wooded with beech, yet the oaks are few, and there are no pines at all. In the admiralty house is a model room, much more interesting and instructive, we are told, than the one in the English Admiralty, but still inferior to the collection of naval models at Paris. It contains, amongst other models, one of an old Danish ship of Christian the Fourth's time, a stiff unwieldy creature compared with those of our day. There are Turkish and Venetian

gallies alongside old Danish boats. It is a pity there are no models of the old Danish and Norman vessels, with which, a thousand years ago, the Wikinger scoured every ocean, discovered Greenland and America; alarmed Great Britain, France, Spain, and Italy, and robbed England, Normandy, and Ireland.

In spite of what the Danes have suffered from the English, there is a strong feeling amongst them in our favour. It is much to their credit that they have forgiven us for our destruction of their fine fleet; and when the subject is alluded to, they reply, "Ah well! that happened long since, and now that we have new ships, we readily forgive them. It was the government and not the people that committed the deed, and grass grows on the graves of those who planned it. The English are the finest fellows on the face of the globe-that nation has the lead in Europe, and we are their sworn admirers." With this compliment we shut the book.

THE NAUTICO-MILITARY NUN OF SPAIN. BY THOMAS DE QUINCEY.

(Continued from page 333.)

THIS ship was full of recruits for the Spanish army, and bound to Concepcion. Even in that destiny was an iteration, or repeating memorial of the significance that ran through Catalina's most casual adventures. She had enlisted amongst the soldiers; and, on reaching port, the very first person who came off from shore was a dashing young military officer, whom at once by his name and rank, (though she had never consciously seen him,) she identified as her own brother. He was splendidly situated in the service, being the Governor-General's secretary, besides his rank as a cavalry officer; and, his errand on board being to inspect the recruits, naturally, on reading in the roll one of them described as a Biscayan, the ardent young man came up with high-bred courtesy to Catalina, took the young recruit's hand with kindness, feeling that to be a compatriot at so great a distance was to be a sort of relative, and asked with emotion after old boyish remembrances. There was a scriptural pathos in what followed, as if it were some scene of domestic re-union, opening itself from patriarchal ages. The young officer was the eldest son of the house, and had left Spain when Catalina was only three years old. But, singularly enough, Catalina it was, the little wild cat that he yet remembered seeing at St. Sebastians, upon whom his earliest inquiries settled. "Did the recruit know his family, the De Erausos ?" Oh yes, every body knew them. "Did the recruit know little Catalina ?" Catalina smiled, as she replied that she did; and gave such an animated description of the little fiery wretch, as made the officer's eyes flash with gratified tenderness, and with certainty that the recruit was no counterfeit Biscayan. Indeed, you know, if Kate couldn't give a good description of "Pussy", who could? The issue of the interview was-that the officer

He

insisted on Kate's making a home of his quarters. He did other services for his unknown sister. placed her as a trooper in his own regiment, and favoured her in many a way that is open to one having authority. But the person, after all, that did most to serve our Kate, was Kate. War was then raging with Indians, from both Chili and Peru. Kate had always done her duty in action; but at length, in the decisive battle of Puren, there was an opening for doing something more. Havock had been made of her own squadron; most of the officers were killed, and the standard was carried off. Kate gathered around her a small party-galloped after the Indian column that was carrying away the trophy-charged-saw all her own party killed-but (in spite of wounds on her face and shoulder) succeeded in bearing away the recovered standard. She rode up to the general and his staff; she dismounted; she rendered up her prize; and fainted away, much less from the blinding blood, than from the tears of joy which dimmed her eyes, as the general, waving his sword in admiration over her head, pronounced our Kate on the spot an Alférez,* or standardbearer, with a commission from the King of Spain and the Indies. Bonny Kate! Noble Kate! I would there were not two centuries laid between us, so that I might have the pleasure of kissing thy fair hand.

Kate had the good sense to see the danger of revealing her sex, or her relationship, even to her own brother. The grasp of the Church never relaxed, never "prescribed," unless freely and by choice. The nun, if discovered, would have been taken out of the horse-barracks, or the dragoonsaddle. She had the firmness, therefore, for many years, to resist the sisterly impulses that some

* Alférez. This rank in the Spanish army is, or was, on a level with the modern sous-lieutenant of France.

times suggested such a confidence. For years, and those years the most important of her lifethe years that developed her character-she lived undetected as a brilliant cavalry officer under her brother's patronage. And the bitterest grief in poor Kate's whole life, was the tragical (and, were it not fully attested, one might say the ultrascenical) event that dissolved their long connexion. Let me spend a word of apology on poor Kate's errors. We all commit many; both you and I, reader. No, stop; that's not civil. You, reader, I know, are a saint; I am not, though very near it. I do err at long intervals; and then I think with indulgence of the many circumstances that plead for this poor girl. The Spanish armies of that day inherited, from the days of Cortez and Pizarro, shining remembrances of martial prowess, and the very worst of ethics. To think little of bloodshed, to quarrel, to fight, to gamble, to plunder, belonged to the very atmosphere of a camp, to its indolence, to its ancient traditions. In your own defence, you were obliged to do such things. Besides all these grounds of evil, the Spanish army had just there an extra demoralization from a war with savages-faithless and bloody. Do not think, I beseech you, too much, reader, of killing a man. That word "kill" is sprinkled over every page of Kate's own autobiography. It ought not to be read by the light of these days. Yet, how if a man that she killed were -? Hush! It was sad; but is better hurried over in a few words. Years after this period, a young officer one day dining with Kate, entreated her to become his second in a duel. Such things were every-day affairs. However, Kate had reasons for declining the service, and did so. But the officer, as he was sullenly departing, said-that, if he were killed, (as he thought he should be) his death would lie at Kate's door. I do not take his view of the case, and am not moved by his rhetoric or his logic. Kate was, and relented. The duel was fixed for eleven at night, under the walls of a monastery. Unhappily the night proved unusually dark, so that the two principals had to tie white handkerchiefs round their elbows, in order to descry each other. In the confusion they wounded each other mortally. Upon that, according to a usage not peculiar to Spaniards, but extending (as doubtless the reader knows) for a century longer to our own countrymen, the two seconds were obliged in honour to do something towards avenging their principals. Kate had her usual fatal luck. Her sword passed sheer through the body of her opponent: this unknown opponent falling dead, had just breath left to cry out, " Ah, villain, you have killed me,” in a voice of horrific reproach; and the voice was the voice of her brother! The monks of the monastery, under whose silent shadows this murderous duel had taken place, roused by the clashing of swords and the angry shouts of combatants, issued out with torches to find one only of the four officers surviving. Every convent and altar had a right of asylum for a short period. According to the custom, the monks carried Kate, insensible with anguish of mind, to the sanctuary of their chapel. There

It was

for some days they detained her; but then, hav-
ing furnished her with a horse and some pro-
visions, they turned her adrift.
Which way
should the unhappy fugitive turn? In blindness
of heart, she turned towards the sea.
the sea that had brought her to Peru; it was
the sea that would perhaps carry her away. ́ ́ It
was the sea that had first showed her this land
and its golden hopes; it was the sea that ought
to hide from her its fearful remembrances. The
sea it was that had twice spared her life in ex-
tremities; the sea it was that might now, if it chose,
take back the bauble that it had spared in vain.

KATE'S PASSAGE OVER THE ANDES.

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Three days our poor heroine followed the coast. Her horse was then almost unable to move; and, on his account, she turned inland to a thicket for grass and shelter. As she drew near to it, a voice challenged-" Who goes there?" Kate an swered, “Spain." "What people?" “ A friend.” It was two soldiers, deserters, and almost starving. Kate shared her provisions with these men: and, on hearing their plan, which was to go over the Cordilleras, she agreed to join the party. Their object was the wild one of seeking the river Dorado, whose waters rolled along golden sands, and whose pebbles were emeralds. Hers was to throw herself upon a line the least liable to pursuit, and the readiest for a new chapter of life in which oblivion might be found for the past. After a few days of incessant climbing and fatigue, they found themselves in the regions of perpetual snow. Suminer would come as vainly to this kingdom of frost as to the grave of her brother. No fire, but the fire of human blood in youthful veins, could ever be kept burning ia these aerial solitudes. Fuel was rarely to be found, and kindling a secret hardly known except to Indians. However, our Kate can do everything, and she's the girl, if ever girl did such a thing, or ever girl did not such a thing, that I back at any odds for crossing the Cordilleras. I would bet you something now, reader, if I thought you would deposit your stakes by return of post (as they play at chess through the post office), that Kate does the trick, that she gets down to the other side; that the soldiers do not: and that the horse, if preserved at all, is preserved in a way that will leave him very little to boast of.

The party had gathered wild berries and esculent roots at the foot of the mountains, and the horse was of very great use in carrying them. But this larder was soon emptied. There was nothing then to carry; so that the horse's value, as a beast of burthen, fell cent. per cent. In fact, very soon he could not carry himself, and it be came easy to calculate when he would reach the bottom on the wrong side the Cordilleras. He took three steps back for one upwards. A council of war being held, the small army resolved to slaughter their horse. He, though a member of the expedition, had no vote, and if he had the votes would have stood three to one-majority, two against him. He was cut into quarters; which surprises me; for, unless one quarter was consi

dered his own share, it reminds one too much of this amongst the many facetive of English midshipmen, who ask (on any one of their number looking sulky) "if it is his intention to marry and retire from the service upon a superannuation of £4 4s, 4d, a year, paid quarterly by way of bothering the purser." The purser can't do it with the help of farthings, And, as respects aliquot parts, four shares among three persons, are as incommensurable as a guinea is against any attempt at giving change in half-crowns. However, this was all the preservation that the horse found. No saltpetre or sugar could be had : but the frost was antiseptic. And the horse was preserved in as useful a sense as ever apricots were preserved or strawberries.

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snow; the frozen body rang like a hollow iron cylinder; the face uppermost and blue with mould, mouth open, teeth ghastly and bleaching in the frost, and a frightful grin upon the lips. This dreadful spectacle finished the struggles of the weaker man, who sank and died at once, The other made an effort with so much spirit, that, in Kate's opinion, horror had acted upon him beneficially as a stimulant. But it was not really so. It was a spasm of morbid strength; a collapse succeeded; his blood began to freeze; he sat down in spite of Kate, and he also died without further struggle. Gone are the poor suffering deserters ; stretched and bleaching upon the snow; and insulted discipline is avenged. Great kings have long arms; and sycophants are ever at hand for the errand of the potent. What had frost and snow to do with the quarrel? Yet they made themselves sycophantic servants of the King of Spain; and they dogged his deserters up to the summit of the Cordilleras, more surely than any Spanish bloodhound, or any Spanish tirailleur's bullet.

Now is our Kate standing alone on the summits of the Andes, in solitude that is shocking, for she is alone with her own afflicted conscience. Twice before she had stood in solitude as deep upon the wild-wild waters of the Pacific; but her conscience had been then untroubled. Now, is there nobody left that can help; her horse is dead-the soldiers are dead. There is nobody that she can speak to except God; and very soon you will find that she does speak to him; for already on these vast aerial deserts He has been whisper

of Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner." But possibly, reader, you may be amongst the many careless readers that have never fully understood what that condition was. Suffer me to enlighten you, else you ruin the story of the mariner; and by losing all its pathos, lose half the jewels of its beauty.

On a fire, painfully devised out of broom and withered leaves, a horse-steak was dressed; for drink, snow was allowed a discretion. This ought to have revived the party, and Kate, perhaps, it did. But the poor deserters were thinly clad, and they had not the boiling heart of Catalina. More and more they drooped. Kate did her best to cheer them. But the march was nearly at an end for them, and they were going in one half hour to receive their last billet.. Yet, before this consummation, they have a strange spectacle to see ; such as few places could show, but the upper chambers of the Cordilleras. They had reached a billowy scene of rocky masses, large and small, looking shockingly black on their perpendicular sides as they rose out of the vast snowy expanse. Upon the highest of these, that was accessible, Kate mounted to look around her, and she saw -oh, rapture at such an hour!-a man sit-ing to her. The condition of Kate is exactly that ting on a shelf of rock with a gun by his side. She shouted with joy to her comrades, and ran down to communicate the joyful news. Here was a sportsman, watching, perhaps, for an eagle; and now they would have relief. One man's cheek kindled with the hectic of sudden joy, and he rose eagerly to march. The other was fast sinking under the fatal sleep that frost sends before herself as her merciful minister of death; but hearing in his dream the tidings of relief, and assisted by his friends, he also staggeringly arose. It could not be three minutes' walk, Kate thought, to the station of the sportsman. That thought supported them all. Under Kate's guidance, who had taken a sailor's glance at the bearings, they soon unthreaded the labyrinth of rocks so far as to bring the man within view. He had not left his resting-place; their steps on the soundless snow, naturally, he could not hear; and, as their road brought them upon him from the rear, still less could he see them. Kate hailed him; but so keenly was he absorbed in some speculation, or in the object of his watching, that he took no notice of them, not even moving his head. Kate began to think there would be another man to rouse from sleep. Coming close behind him she touched his shoulder, and said, "My friend, are you sleeping?" Yes, he was sleeping; sleeping the sleep from which there is no awaking; and the slight touch of Kate having disturbed the equilibrium of the corpse, down it rolled on the

There are three readers of the "Ancient Mariner." The first is gross enough to fancy all the imagery of the mariner's visions delivered by the poet for actual facts of experience; which being impossible, the whole pulverises, for that reader, into a baseless fairy-tale. The second reader is wiser than that; he knows that the imagery is not baseless; it is the imagery of febrile delirium; really seen, but not seen as an external reality. The mariner had caught the pestilential fever, which carried off all his mates; he only had survived-the delirium had vanished; but the visions that had haunted the delirium remained. "Yes," says the third reader, "they remained; naturally they did, being scorched by fever into his brain; but how did they happen to remain on his belief as gospel truths? The delirium had vanished: why had not the painted scenery of the delirium vanished, except as visionary memorials of a sorrow that was cancelled? Why was it that craziness settled upon this mariner's brain, driving him, as if he were a Cain, or another Wandering Jew, to pass like night-from land to land;" and, at uncertain intervals, wrenching him until he made

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rehearsal of his errors, even at the hard price of "holding children from their play, and old men from the chimney corner?" That craziness, as the third reader deciphers, rose out of a deeper soil than any bodily affection. It had its root in penitential sorrow. Oh, bitter is the sorrow to a conscientious heart, when, too late, it discovers the depth of a love that has been trampled under foot! This mariner had slain the creature that, on all the earth, loved him best. In the darkness of his cruel superstition he had done it, to save his human brothers from a fancied inconvenience; and yet, by that very act of cruelty, he had himself called destruction upon their heads. The Nemesis that followed punished him through them-him, that wronged, through those that wrongfully he sought to benefit. That spirit who watches over the sanctities of love is a strong angel-is a jealous angel; and this angel it was "That lov'd the bird, that lov'd the man, That shot him with his bow."

ply to have touched-to have kissed-to have played with the little wild thing, that glorified, by her innocence, the gloom of St. Sebastian's cloisters, gave a right to his hospitality; how, through him only, she had found a welcome in camps; how, through him, she had found the avenue to honour and distinction. And yet this brother, so loving and generous, it was that she had dismissed from life. She paused; she turned round, as if looking back for his grave; she saw the dreadful wildernesses of snow which already she had traversed. Silent they were at this season, even as in the panting heats of noon, the Zaarrahs of the torrid zone are oftentimes silent. Dreadful was the silence; it was the nearest thing to the silence of the grave. Graves were at the foot of the Andes, that she knew too well; graves were at the summit of the Andes, that she saw too well. And, as she gazed, a sudden thought flashed upon her, when her eyes settled upon the corpses of the poor deserters,-could she, like

He it was that followed the cruel archer into si- them, have been all this while unconsciously exelent and slumbering seas;

"Nine fathom deep he had follow'd him

Through the realms of mist and snow."

This jealous angel it was that pursued the man into noon-day darkness, and the vision of dying oceans, into delirium, and finally, (when recovered from disease) into an unsettled mind.

us.

Such, also, had been the offence of Kate; such, also, was the punishment that now is dogging her steps. She, like the mariner, had slain the one sole creature that loved her upon the whole wide earth; she, like the mariner, for this offence, had been hunted into frost and snow-very soon will be hunted into delirium; and from that (if she escapes with life) will be hunted into the trouble of a heart that cannot rest. There was the excuse of one darkness for her; there was the excuse of another darkness for the mariner. But, with all the excuses that earth, and the darkness of earth, can furnish, bitter it would be for you or me, reader, through every hour of life, waking or dreaming, to look back upon one fatal moment when we had pierced the heart that would have died for In this only the darkness had been merciful to Kate that it had hidden for ever from her victim the hand that slew him. But now in such utter solitude, her thoughts ran back to their earliest interview. She remembered with anguish, how, on first touching the shores of America, almost the very first word that met her ear had been from him, the brother whom she had killed, about the "Pussy" of times long past; how the gallant young man had hung upon her words, as in her native Basque she described her own mischievous little self, of twelve years back; how his colour went and came, whilst his loving memory of the little sister was revived by her own descriptive traits, giving back, as in a mirror, the fawn-like grace, the squirrel-like restlessness, that once had kindled his own delighted laughter; how he would take no denial, but showed on the spot, that, sim

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cuting judgment upon herself? Running from a wrath that was doubtful, into the very jaws of a wrath that was inexorable? Flying in panicand behold there was no man that pursued? For the first time in her life, Kate trembled. Not for the first time, Kate wept. Far less for the first time was it, that Kate bent her knee-that Kate clasped her hands-that Kate prayed. But it was the first time that she prayed as they pray, for whom no more hope is left but in prayer.

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Here let me pause a moment for the sake of making somebody angry. A Frenchman, who sadly misjudges Kate, looking at her through a Parisian opera-glass, gives it as his opinionthat, because Kate first records her prayer on this occasion, therefore, now first of all she prayed. I think not so. I love this Kate, blood-stained as she is; and I could not love a woman that never bent her knee in thankfulness or in supplication. However, we have all a right to our own little opinion; and it is not you, mon cher," you Frenchman, that I am angry with, but somebody else that stands behind you. You, Frenchman, and your compatriots, I love oftentimes for your festal gaiety of heart; and I quarrel only with your levity and that eternal worldliness that freezes too fiercely-that absolutely blisters with its frost--like the upper air of the Andes. You speak of Kate only as too readily you speak of all women; the instinct of a natural scepticism being to scoff at all hidden depths of truth. are civil enough to Kate; and your "homage" (such as it may happen to be) is always at the service of a woman on the shortest notice. But behind you, I see a worse fellow; a gloomy fanatic; a religious sycophant that seeks to propitiate his circle by bitterness against the offences that are most unlike his own. And against him, I must say one word for Kate to the too hasty reader. This villain, whom I mark for a shot if he does not get out of the way, opens his fire on our Kate under shelter of a lie. For there is a standing lie in the very constitution of civil society, a necessity of error, misleading us as to

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