The sun is high, the day wears late; What change since morn hath o'er me pass'd! Ah! what shall be my future fate? Blest, if my lot with his be cast. Why have I risk'd, poor foolish maid! What shall his waking beauty be! The little Italian ballad-" Sul margine d' un rio"- that lay so long on the pianos of the musical world an established favourite, seems to have been taken from the above (changing the sleeper, however, from a shepherd to a nymph). The refrain of the ballad ("Ahi! se quanto a me piace La rara sua belta; Io perdero la pace Quando si svegliara,") is nearly identical with the lines above "If thus he charms in slumber laid. What shall his waking beauty be ?" We give a Villancico (i.e., a Spanish popular song), in which Sá de Miranda has described with nature, simplicity, and feeling, the sorrow of a Spanish girl deserted by her Gallician lover. The Gallicians are the water-carriers, porters, bullock-drivers, and general fags of the peninsula; a laborious but erratic tribe : VILLANCICO. FROM THE SPANISH. Gallician! fickle rover! Ah! wherefore art thou flown? Thou'st left me, faithless lover, Forlorn and all alone. I go, I know not whither; 'Tis but the rocks reply. 'Tis cruel sport to thee. Rude wastes I wander over- Could better fate be mine? We proceed to close the brief memoir of Sá de Miranda. He enjoyed, in his literary retirement, many years of true happiness; though he achieved no brilliant success in the paths of wealth or ambition, in which alone so many conceive felicity to exist. But he possessed what he preferred-independence, a rural home, and domestic love. Yet what man shall go to his rest without tasting the cup of sorrow? that cup which, if received with a right feeling, is, though bitter, medicinal to the spirit. The time at length came, when it should be drank in the pleasant retreat of Tapada. Since the expulsion of the Moors from Portugal, the Portuguese had carried the war against that people into Africa, and fought them on their own ground, in frequently-recurring contests, partly inspired by their religious zeal against Mahometanism, and partly by their political interest; fully alive to the importance of possessing ports and territories along the southern shores of the Mediterranean. The Portuguese troops. then brave and well-trained soldiers - contended nobly with the disadvantages under which they necessarily laboured in the country of a powerful, determined, and valiant enemy; but their brilliant successes were checquered by reverses. In a great battle before Ceuta, in April, 1553, a vast slaughter was made of the Portuguese forces; and one of their most gallant leaders, Don Antonio de Noronha, son of the Count de Linhares, lost his life, in the flower of his age. His death is the subject of an eclogue by Camoens, entitled, "Umbrano and Frondelio," in which he is lamented, with patriotic grief, under the name of Tionio. But to Sá de Miranda the battle of Ceuta brought a heavier affliction than merely that of a patriot. Among the slain was his eldest son, Gonzalo Mendes de Sá, who fell in the bloom of his youth, to His the deep sorrow of his parents. father, however, imbued with the enthusiasm of the times, found consolation in considering his son a Christian martyr, as he had died fighting against infidels; and he gave vent to his feelings in an elegy on the memory of his soldier-son; an extract from which we translate, but using the common English elegiac measure, as more conge. nial to the English ear than the tercets The in which the original is written. terza rima is universally admitted to be difficult of management in our language; and the attempts hitherto made to naturalise it have not been very successful. EXTRACT FROM THE PORTUGUESE ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF GONZALO DE SA. Lamb, that before the Lamb's high throne hast sped, "Let parents lay up for their children."* So Spake Paul, in whom Faith's beacon we behold: 'Tis nature's course, as rivers seaward flow; Mondego, Tagus, with his sands of gold, And Douro sink not here, but wend their way "I came, saw, conquered." Truly mayest thou chide The cruel foe,† and ope or close at will Thy hand; for now in safety dost thou dwell. No more of tears, unless for us whom still Thou leav'st behind, dark as in prison cell. Go, go, in peace!-thou hast no more to fear, To those who seek like thee yon better sphere, The wounded heart of the affectionate mother was not to be solaced by song for the untimely death of her son. Donna Briolanja drooped in a gradual decline, and died in 1555, having survived her child but two years, and with her died all the energies of her devotedly-attached husband. On the death of his gentle, loving, and intellectual companion, he lost all pleasure in every thing that had pleased before. He gave up his rural occupations and exercises, never left his house but to attend public worship, suffered his beard to grow, neglected his dress and person, secluded himself from his friends, and abandoned all his former pursuits, even his favourite poetry. One sonnet he consecrated to his wife's memory. It was his last effusion: he wrote no more. After three years of profound and listless melancholy, during which he merely existed rather than lived, the poet expired, on the 15th March, 1558, and was buried in a chapel dedicated to St. Margaret, within the Church of St. Martin of Canazedo, in the archdiocese of Braga; where a handsome tomb was erected over him by order of Martin Gonzales, Minister of the Council to King Sebastiang (son of Prince John, who had predeceased his father, John III.) On the tomb was engraved a Latin epitaph, the sense of which we give in the following paraphrase : EPITAPH. Miranda's muse, that now amid the woods With skill divine could blend the gay, the grave, The simple song, the high religious strain. The fame his gallant sires achieved of yore; Of pastoral pipes. He heeded not the pride Many poets of the Peninsula have celebrated Sa de Miranda in verse, commemorating not only his poetic ta lents, but also his amiable disposition, his spirit of independence, and his love of rural life. And Lope de Vega, the * See 2 Cor. xii. 14. The allusion is obscure, but the poet means that in the course of of nature parents expect their children to survive them. † Obscure; but he means that his son need no longer keep his hand closed on a weapon of war. We have not been able to procure more than the first four lines of this sonnet. poet of a rival nation, honoured him as a Spanish bard (on account of his Spanish eclogues), in his "Laurel of Apollo," wherein the Castilian votaries of the muses are represented as candidates for a laurel wreath, to be bestowed by the God of Song. This "Laurel of Apollo" is, however, but an indifferent production, heavy and prolix; and if on it alone its author's fame depended, it would never have advanced his claim to the laureate crown. Considering that the talents of Sá de Miranda were neither sublime nor brilliantly original, he seems to have received proportionably more honours than many men of higher genius: but he was regarded as an improver and a reformer at a time when Portuguese and Spanish poetry were but emerging from their infancy, and when there were none to rank before or even beside him. Besides, the worthiness of his character as a man greatly enhanced the esteem in which he was held as a poet. Sá de Miranda's second son, Jeronymo de Sa de Azevedo, married Donna Maria de Menezes, of a noble family, and carried on the line of De Sá. M. E. M. THE COW HUNT. A TALE OF FORMER TIMES IN IRELAND. "Though wintry waves and stormy sea SUCH were the concluding lines of a short poem which I wrote in an album, where I have reason to believe it is still regarded with some admiration, which it shares in common with fourteen "Forget thee! No first shall this heart;" and five bearing reference to India's burning shore, all written by young officers under the same circumstances as myself. I chose the above, not that I was going to make a long voyage, but because I thought it poetical and novel. I was ordered to join my regiment in Ireland. I know that she for whom I wrote the lines thought me a martyr; and I packed my portmanteau with the feelings of Quintus Curtius, feeling at the same time that, unlike him, my departure would leave blank a chasm in more than one circle. I was prepared for the worst, but like a philosopher, made the best arrangements in my power - viz., four boxes of full-flavored Havannah cigars; six volumes of Bulwer's novels; two of Byron; a small wiry-haired terrier dog. With these, an army-list, and a good deal of sleep, I calculated on being able to pass the time. A friend who had been reading Cooke's Voyages, recommended me to bring some glass beads and cheap cutlery to pacify the natives in the more remote districts, but I rejected this, as it seemed pusillanimous. To one fond of snipe-shooting, few places offer a more eligible retreat than the village of Kilmaskulla, to which I was ordered with a captain and a company of soldiers. For miles round, the country presented a wide expanse of rich bog, diversified with cottiers' huts; and from our back-windows we might easily have bagged a brace or two, without leaving the house. Our front ones looked upon a more animated scene. Before each of the houses was a small pond, stocked with duck, heaps of potato-skins, amid which the children played with the pigs and cur-dogs, while the old grandmothers chatted at the doors, smoking short black pipes; occasionally the stillness was broken by a pig hunt, or a dog with a kettle tied to his tail. Azevedo was the surname of his mother, Donna Briolanja. once pep very safe companion, as he pered me with small shot. As far as we could learn from him, his great object was to do as little as possible, and to run up a heavy bill at the end of the month for travelling expenses. He informed us that as it was near the end of the month, he had taken a tour of all the posts under his charge, to swell his bill, which he lamented was very small, remarking with some indignation, that it was quite impossible to charge for a journey he did not take, as they kept a strict watch upon him. His friend Mr. Finny, who also honoured us with his society, was distinguished by a seeming invulnerability; he had been attacked four times, and fired at three, and had come off unhurt. He was particularly useful in the present state of the country. Almost every evening our friends dropped in after dinner, to tell us some bit of news, chiefly professional. There was no want of moderate excitement at least in our village, for the people were always firing at a payclerk, or shooting a steward, or burning down a haggard, on all of which they expatiated with a good deal of humour. Their visits were chiefly remarkable for the extreme quantity of whisky-punch consumed; but agreeable as their society was, we were not sorry when a Mr. Ormsby, who owned a place near, called on us, and invited us to dine and spend the day with him. Mr. Cuppage and Finny were also invited, and kindly offered us seats on their car, which we accepted, but in their multitudinous duties they must have forgotten to pay for it, as the bill was brought in to us some months after. "Poor Dick," said Mr. Cuppage, alluding to the eldest brother of Mr. Ormsby-"poor Dick, he was a pleasant fellow; he never went to bed without his thirteen tumblers - hot, strong, and sweet, was his motto-and every drop of water you put in after the whisky spoils it! The present man is not a bad fellow," he continued in an apologetic tone, "but he never gets beyond his third." "Nice girls though," said Mr. Finny; only see Emily cross a country, she is a regular Die Vernon." "Ay, but only taste a tumbler of punch made by Miss Strong," interrupt ed Cuppage in a tone of rapture, “and you'll say you never tasted punch before." He swallowed his own at a gulp, as if the recollection was too much for him, and immediately proceeded to brew a fresh one. "So the present man is not equal to the late one?" said my brotherofficer, Captain Moore. "He's not a bad fellow," said Mr. Cuppage, contemptuously; "he means well; but poor Dick! there were not many like him. He was president of a club he established, who called themselves the Good Samaritans,' who sat up drinking all night, and slept all day; but they are all dead now; and I think you would find it difficult to establish one like it." He said this in a tone of extreme disgust at the degeneracy of the hu man race. "Did you ever hear of him at the subscription ball at Limerick?" said he, turning to Finny. Mr. Finny replied, that he should never forget it, but begged that it might be related for our benefit. "Poor Dick was seldom in the habit of attending balls; it was one of his sayings, that he could never understand why people went out at night, if they could have a snug tumbler of punch at home. But he was induced to go to this one, by hearing that the landlord gave an unlimited supply of sherry negus. The first thing he did, when he came to the ball-room, was to go to the refreshments, to satisfy himself that the report about the negus was correct; but as the room was very full, and Dick was always modest among ladies, he did little in that way, and merely finished all the glasses within his reach, and then went to look at the dancing. He used to tell afterwards, that when first he saw the people waltzing, he remarked to a friend next him, that he thought they must have poor heads indeed, to go on in such a way, on such weak negus. After remaining a short time, and exclaiming that from what he could see, balls were the stupidest things in the world, he went to the refreshmentroom, which was now empty, and prepared to set to work seriously. The waiter had just left a large tray containing eight-and-twenty long glasses of sherry-negus, and had left the room. Dick, who was always a methodical fellow, commenced taking them by platoons, beginning on the right hand, and finishing the first row, and then going from left to right along the second, putting each glass in its place, as he finished it. He had just finished the twenty-fifth glass, when the waiter came into the room, to lay them along the table. Waiter,' said Dick, tell the landlord with my compliments, to put more nutmeg and sherry, and less water into his negus, or the devil another ball of his will I patronise.' With that, he finished the remaining three glasses, and left the room; and the waiter was discovered about half-anhour afterwards, speechless with hor ror." : "I remember a story they used to tell of him in Dublin," said Finny. "He belonged to the Friendly Brothers' Club in Sackville-street, and had his lodgings near for convenience; and every night at three he left the club, guiding himself, hand over hand, along the railings, until he reached his lodgings but one night by mistake he crossed the road, and caught the railings which were then round Nelson's Pillar. On he went, round after round, thinking that he was going straight to his lodgings, and never letting go the railings. Deuce take these railings will I never reach home?' said Dick, at the tenth round; I believe it is near the Green I am.' With that he turned back, and went on, round after round, searching for the hall-door every now and then, until he was discovered by the watchman at half-past six, still holding fast by the railings." With such pleasant stories they beguiled the evening, and it was not until the low state of the bottle betokened the lateness of the hour that they retired. The next morning we set out for Loughlinstown, on an outside car, carrying our guns loaded in our hands, as the peasantry were just then seizing arms, in the anticipation of a rebellion, or some other piece of excitement, as Mr. Finny, who was a thorough Irishman, told me. "The fact of the matter is, it is not generally from any desire to harm you that a fellow takes a shot at you, but merely from a love of excitement;" in corroboration of which he informed me, that a friend of his, who was quite a stranger in the country, had been riding at a tremendous pace to catch a mail-car, when he was fired at. There VOL. XLII.-NO. CCLII. happened to be police near, and the perpetrator was taken in the act, which he did not deny. Upon being expostu lated with by the gentleman for having fired at him, when he had never seen him, or known anything about him, Pat replied, scratching his head "Begorra, yer honour, it was not my fault; but when I see ye going so fast, I couldn't for the bare life help having a slap at ye." Indeed, as Finny himself remarked, "take them for all in all, they were a harmless set of fellows." A few days before, he informed me, that about forty of the labourers on the public works had, with pickaxes and shovels, attacked two gentlemen returning from shooting, and taken their guns; but as we were four, with each a double-barrelled gun, we proceeded in high spirits. Our way now led through a dangerous defile, tall banks of mud rearing themselves up at either side, and a little further on we passed a body of the workmen employed to cut down a small hill. They had a gipsy appearance, most of them being employed in cooking their breakfasts; others were lying stretched at full length near the fires; while small parties were smoking their pipes and playing with greasy packs of cards, on the tops of empty beer-barrels. passed them numerous times afterwards, and always found them cooking and playing cards, so much so that it quite astonished me to know how they found time to commit the numerous attacks on the pay-clerks. I They seemed to have an innate knowledge that our guns were loaded, as they only gave us a lazy stare, and resumed their occupations. Just as we came in sight of Loughlinstown we had to turn down a by-road, as the highway here became impassable, and after two miles round again reached the gate. It was at that time more ornamental than useful, as the hill had been cut away below it, and the piers were left standing about ten feet above the road. Mr. Cuppage said, that it was one comfort for Mr. Ormsby that he was not worse off than Mr. O'Farrell, whose gate stood in a hollow which had been filled up to a level with the two phoenixes which ornamented the top of it. We were received most hospitably by Mr. Ormsby, or "Jack," as Cuppage used to call him, but not to his face, and intro 3 A |