I were alone the tenants of a world of vision and felicity. Nay, were not one stone of those walls left on another-were the streams flowed away, and the trees rooted from the hills, this spot would still be populous with forms and sounds would still have tenants for

me."

"And who are they?" asked the bishop.
"The dead,” replied the minstrel.

"The fellow raves!" said Sir Aymer, retreating.

"Sing us some strain of that lovely minstrelsy thou talkest of," said Sir Amirald.

"And look that thou usest virtuous words, thou ungodly fellow," said the abbot of Normoutier, who retained all the spleen then felt by churchmen against mimes and minstrels, with whom they were at deadly feud for their dramatic superiority; "but I forewarn thee, let thy speech be decent; for what saith the text?-Castum pium poetam esse decet ipsum -versiculos nihil necesse est."

"Sing, fellow, as thou art commanded," said the bishop of Toulouse haughtily.

"Not till my master commands me," said the minstrel firmly.

Thy master is absent."

No, my master is here," said the minstrel, bowing to Paladour.

"Does he rave?" said Sir Aymer, while the bishop of Toulouse steadily regarded the speaker.

"No," answered Vidal, (for that was his name;)" if there be truth in words or faith in hearts, the broad lands he treads, the towers that rise to his view, and I and all the vassals beneath their roofs, are his, and his alone."

"What!" said Sir Aymer, "art thou one of those songsters that will be prophets too, and tell mad tales of the fiery arrow that is to pierce yonder towers."

"It is on its flight already," said Vidal emphatically.

"What meanest thou?" cried Paladour with amazement, not unmixed with stronger feelings.

"Mean, sir knight?-Nothing," said Vidal

vacantly; "what meaning have minstrels and madmen?- Nought, save lies and dotage.They say Cassandra's fate was hard, but what was the fate of those who despised her ?" "This is somewhat strange," whispered Sir Aymer to the bishop.

"that an

"Strange!" replied the prelate, half-crazed minstrel should lie, and a romanceful youth should listen?-Hark! he is going to sing again." And Vidal, as he spoke, burst into a different strain.

Ballad.

Round Padua's towers the clouds that rolled,
The parting sun had tinged with gold:
Her spires are reddening with his rays,

Her domes are wrapt in purple blaze. -
And lo! as fades the lingering light,
A thousand joy-fires burst to sight;
And her streets, beneath the kindling ray,
Burn with the busy glow of day. -
In tower and spire the bells are ringing;
In holy domes the mass is singing;
From warder's hold the clarion braying;
In lady's bower sweet music playing:
Minstrel and mime alternate chaunt
Of love and war and wild romauut

Tales of the might of Charlemagne,
Or British Arthur's fairy reign.

The light Morisco twirls his bell,
The jongleur plies his cunning well:
Pardoner and pilgrim, through the crowd,
Vaunted their godly gear aloud;

Or turned to hail with wondering eye,
The masquer's torch-light revelry.
They come, in mystic pageant quaint,
Paynim and prophet, fiend and saint;
And classic legend blent uncouth
With mysteries deep of sacred truth:
While from the latticed casement high,
Roof, battlement, and balcony,
The clustered gazers fling below
Their bending torches' umbered glow,
While, with each shadow's fitful change,
They image forth expression strange.

'Mid the mixed group beneath, -
Now tinge a pilgrim's dark grey cowl, -
Now flash upon a demon's scowl;
Flit from the churchman's tonsure white
To steely form in mailed might;
From laughing beauty's up-cast eye
To tortured saint in agony;
From gibing dwarf, and antic folly,
To tapered shrine and relique holy,
And cross upreared, in awful state,
Rich and red with the precious weight,
Of him who died the death.

Thus did in truth the pageant seem,
Like ininstrel lover's haunted dream.

1

Yet might the bookman's thoughtful mind
Apt food amid the triflers find;

Childhood was there, with wondering cry,
And restless step, and flashing eye;
And manhood grave, intent the while
To taste the joy, but veil the smile;
And hoary eld, with joyless eye,

Marvelling, with retrospective moan,
How younger sights such charms can spy
In what no longer charms their own.

Sir Paladour rode on as the minstrel sung, full of those heavy thoughts that a mysterious word or an unexpected incident never failed to stir up like a host of sleeping enemies within; and Amirald rode with him in sad and wondering silence, till his companion, with the strong habit of solitary suffering, spoke aloud. "And wherefore," said he at length-" wherefore is every step of my earthly progress marked by presages and voices that, though of the living, sound as if they issued from the grave?—The voice, the song of that minstrel, recall to me the images of years in which I seem to have lived; - I could, methinks, repeat every word of his lay, echo every note of his harp; but unless so touched, every