Edred the Anglo-Saxon (A. D. 946). Eric had been baptized; but his Christianity had been notoriously simulated and the Skalds unanimously awarded, him the honours of Valhalla. saw dope bug banoet "I have had a dream," cried the bard; I found myself at dawn of day in the hall of Valhalla, preparing all things for the reception of those slain in battle. I awakened the heroes from their sleep; I persuaded them to rise, and arrange the benches, and prepare the drinking cups, as for the arrival of a king. 1092 Whence all this turmoil,' exclaims is it that so many are placing the benches ?" Odin replies, It is because Eric is coming; him. Arise, and go to meet active I י? And why does his coming give thee more delight than that of another King Because many are the places in which he has stained his sword with blood, many are the places where his blood-stained sword has been drawn.' "Hail to thee, Eric! Brave warrior, enter: thou art welcome in this abode. Tell me what Kings accompany thee. How with thee from the many combat? Five Kings come,' answers Eric; and I am the sixth. os desit da The Saxon foe too could sing his war-song. It was thus, when Olaf, son of Sitric, with the Danes of the Orkney's and the Gaels of the Hebrides, were defeated by the English at the great battle of Brunenburgh, that the conquerors hymned their triumph.b To has fled, folOlaf," they cried, lowed by few, and has wept upon swept upon the waves. The stranger, when seated at his fireside, surrounded by his family, will not relate this battle; for in it his friends have not returned. The Kings of the North will lament in their councils th their warriors desired to play at the with the sons of Ed kinsmen have fallen, from its game ward. Æthelstan that and his brother Keturn to the land of the Edmund West-s -Saxons. They leave behind them the raven feeding on the carcasses of their foes; the black raven with his pointed beak, and the croaking toad, and the eagle hungering after flesh, and the greedy kite, and the wild wolf of the woods coille and "The eagle hearts of all the north Have left their stormy strand; #moda The warriors of the world are forth To choose another land! ni trükinam Again their long keels sheer the wave, Their broad sheets court the breeze; Again the reckless and the brave Ride lords of weltering seas. No swifter from the well-bent bow The feather'd shaft hath sped, Than o'er the ocean's flood of snowTheir snoring galleys tread. Then lift the can to bearded lip, And smite each sounding shield. Ols Wassaile to every dark-ribbed ship, To every battle-field! bad ody of an So proudly the Skalds raise their voices of triumph, cari berotlodes vd brod As the Northmen ride over the broadbosom'd billow. Jarod and aggeri II. dox bluos od "Aloft Sigurdir's battle-flag 99 godi Streams onward to the land; 8, 99uit Well may the taint of slaughter lagoas On yonder glorious strand ;id 139991 The waters of the mighty deep, lezion The wild birds of the sky, nitroque Hear it like t like vengeance shoreward sweep, Jism to Where moody men must die. The waves wax wroth beneath our our keel, The clouds above us louro 60p They know the battle sign, and feck917 All its resistless power. Den blo nisdt Who now uprears Sigurdir's flag, Nor shuns an early tomb?oluto vert Who shoreward through the swelling eutchisor be m surge Shall bear the scroll of doom? So shouted the Skalds as the long ships were nearing The low-lying shores of a beautiful land, noni sis a n9)10-20590 Torfoei Hist. Rerum Norweg. II. Cap. 4. Sco Thierry's Hist. Norm. Conq. B. II. I plant the scroll of doom; On Scandia's lonest, bleakest waste, The shadowy Three like meteors passed, They sang the war-deeds of his sires, Since then where hath young Harold been, But where Jarl's son should be ? 'Mid war and waves, the combat keen, That raged on land or sea. So sings the fierce Harold, the thirster for glory, As his hand bears aloft the dark deathladen banner. V. "Mine own death's in this clenched hand, I know the noble trust; These limbs must rot on yonder strand, I trample down such idle doubt; Harold's high blood hath sprung From sires whose hands in martial bout, Have ne'er belied their tongue : Nor keener from their castled rock Rush eagles on their prey, Than panting for the battle-shock, Young Harold leads the way. It is thus that tall Harold, in terrible beauty, Pours forth his big soul to the joyaunce of heroes. 1 The sternness of thy mind; I hear thy wailings on the air, The wave that bears me from thy bower But ne'er wed one like me, eut sen ru& Thus mourned young Harold as he thought on Brynhilda, While his eyes filled with tears which glittered but fell not. VIII. "On sweeps Sigurdir's battle-flag, The scourge of far from shore; It dashes through the seething foam, he A Born for a bloody bed, And battling for her, side by side, There Sigurd's flag shall wave. Down shall the tower-like prison fall So sings the Death-seeker, while nearer and nearer The fleet of the Northmen bears down to the shore. IX. "Green lie those thickly-timbered shores, Fair sloping to the sea; They're cumbered with the harvest stores, That wave but for the free. Our sickle is the gleaming sword,ath cond Our garner the broad shield; drovei 4 "The rivers of yon island low Glance redly in the sun; But ruddier still they're doomed to glow, And deeper shall they run: And in that spate of blood how well So shouteth fierce Harold, so echo the As shoreward their ships like mad steeds are careering, XI. Sigurdir's battle-flag is spread Abroad to the blue sky, And spectral visions of the dead Are trooping grimly by; The spirit heralds rush before Harold's destroying brand; They hover o'er yon fated shore, And death-devoted band. Marshal, stout Jarls, your battle fast, And fire each beacon height; Our galleys anchor in the sound, Our banner heaves in sight; And through the surge and arrowy shower That rains on this broad shield, Harold uplifts the sign of power, Which rules the battle-field.' So cries the death-doomed on the red strand of slaughter, While the helmets of heroes like anvils are ringing, XII. "On rolled the Northmen's war above The Raven standard flew ; Nor tide nor tempest ever strove On, on,' the tall Death-seeker cries, These earth-worms soil our heel; Their spear-points crash like crisping ice On ribs of stubborn steel!' Hurra, hurra! their whirlwind sweep, And Harold's fate is sped; Bear on the flag-he goes to sleep With the life-scorning dead. Thus fell the young Harold, as of old fell his sires, And the bright hall of heroes bade hail to his spirit." The fire and vividness of this fine ode will not be denied. Our poet's biographer ventures timidly to prefer it to either of Gray's Scandinavian versions. He need entertain no scruples on the subject. From our high judgment seat we hereby solemnly absolve him of all crime or misdemeanor in the criticism aforesaid; and authorize him to repeat it without let or hindrance on all suitable occasions; all literary coteries, quarterly, monthly, and weekly Reviews, blue-stocking oracles, and other standard authorities, notwithstanding. The But we must close; nor linger upon a theme which might lead us farther than every reader would care to follow. We part with William Motherwell and his wild Northmen. swift barques, hung with glittering shields, and the fierce landing, and the despairing flight, and the burning abbey, and the battle-horn of "thunder," and the magic raven ensign,t and the shout of onslaught, and the shriek of defeat,—all vanish slowly into empty space, die off into their own irrecoverable Past, and leave us to sobererthough it may be safer-truth. Be it so; we must be content with simple reality, the downright prose of tenements unburnt and throats safe, until the spell be cast upon us from some other region of Fancy, when in some unborn Article lying as yet among the dim possibilities of the Future, we shall once more conduct our readers"To fresh fields and pastures new." «Tuba illi erat eburnea, tonitruum nuncupata;" Dudo de S. Quintin. B. † King's Sweyn's, woven with magic incantations by three of his sisters, and borne before the Danes in their terrible invasion of England at the dawn of the eleventh century. See the Heimskringla. OUR PORTRAIT GALLERY-NO. XLV. DANIEL MAOLISE, R. A. ABOUT twenty years ago, or it may be more, there was established in Cork a Society for promoting the Fine Arts, under very favourable auspices. His Holiness the Pope having presented to George the Fourth a number of casts from the Antique, comprising in themselves copies of the most glorious pieces in the Vatican, and in the chief Italian galleries, his Majesty, to whom they were of no use, bestowed them, at the solicitation of Lord Ennismore—a wellknown patron of Art, whose collection of pictures at Convamore, between Fermoy and Mallow, was said to be the finest in Ireland-on a number of gentlemen who formed themselves into an art-committee, founded a society, and in a short time enrolled among their subscribers nearly all the principal gentry of Cork and its neighbourhood. A public room, which had been formerly used as a theatre by the Apollo Society of amateur actors, was fixed upon as the place most suitable for the reception of this valuable collection of casts. It was sitaated in one of the principal streets, and lighted from the top; the stage was screened from sight by a well painted view of the interior of a Greek Temple; the pit, which was spacious and circular, was boarded over to a level with the boxes; the gallery was partitioned off; the boxes remained nearly as they had been when the place was dedicated to dramatic pursuits-pilasters, and curtained pillars, and painted panels of gold, and crimson, and purple embodying many a scene from classic tale and ballad of love, festivity, and war-the Statues and Groupes of a pure and glowing white were arranged around the parterre with equal elegance and taste, on moveable pedestals; and the whole chamber, with its pictorial and statuesque decorations, presented an appearance delightful to the eye, and recreating to the mind, by its airy, brilliant, and poetical effect. Here you might have seen the majestic horrors of the Laocoon, the godlike grandeur of the Apollo, the melancholy loveliness of the Niobe, the luxuriant youth of Antinous, the Venus of antiquity, the more charming Venus of Canova, the giant Torsos of Theseus and Ilyssus, the Mercury redolent of grace and vigour, the ill-fated Meleager, the bright and beaming Adonis, the Diana chaste and fair, with hound and quiver, as bounding in the chase, she looks with eye intent on the receding stag. Busts and masks, bas-reliefs, arches, medals, broken columns, vases and urns, sculptured fruit and flowers, to the amount of many hundreds, were elegantly grouped around; and the first fervour of curi osity to see those far-famed copies of the Antique having gradually subsided, a sweet and eloquent silence, congenial to the venerable spirit of the place, succeeded, and realised all that the most enthusiastic scholar might have wished to behold and feel in this inspiring Hall of Statues. It was soon resorted to by students; and there in silence, and often in solitude, worked many a pale-faced aspiring artist, animated by dreams of glory and immortality, destined, alas! never to be realised, but dissipated only by the stroke which consigned the thoughtful visionary at once to Death and to Oblivion. Among these students there was one, upon whose young imagination this unequalled gallery, for such it must be considered, burst with the splendour of a revelation from heaven. Tall and slender, with long black hair, a full and eloquent brow, and dark eyes of rich and powerful beauty, the morning sun shone in upon him as he sat entranced before the divine glory of the Apollo, and studied with anxious but reverential gaze the outlines and features, the awful and imperial bearing, the grand colossal look of power, and youth, and heavenly birth, so exquisitely blent and intertwined together into one harmonious whole of that wonderful masterpiece of ancient art, which all who see it feel, is still, and must ever be, without a rival in the world of statuary, and which alone, perhaps, of all the ancient marbles, realizes to the brightest as well as greatest imagination, all that it has pictured to itself of the surpassing majesty of the |