hours, had elapsed in these cogitations, during which he had mechanically pursued his toil; and the sun was now hastening to the west, amidst clouds of glory that, to the eye of the Christian preparing for death, suggested the idea of angel-homes awaiting his coming. All earth harmonised with the rosy effulgence that spanned it: the flowers waved their heads in the caressing breeze; the spice-trees breathed their sweetest odours; the fountains threw upward their cooling, rainbow showers; and the throngs of glittering insects sported their brief hour upon the descending sunshine, as if they were the immortal tenants of so beautiful an Eden. But to the Christian doomed to die these objects of earthly loveliness were but steps by which his soul travelled upward. They reminded him but the more of that blessed home, and those imperishable enjoyments, which he hoped so soon to enter.

He had thus resigned himself to his fate, and was even longing for departure, when all at once a sweet, low voice, called him back to the world with a start! He turned, and beheld Zuleika. She was standing near him, concealed by the shrubbery; and she trembled like some doe that lingers near her young, although she knows that the hunters are at hand. Becket cast a hurried look around him, and, seeing that his taskmasters were at a distance, he approached, and found her in tears.

"Gilbert!" she mournfully said, was it thy looks or my own heart that deceived me; for I thought that thou assuredly didst love me?"

"I love thee !" he exclaimed in a burst of tenderness. "May the God for whose cause I give myself to die be witness how fondly I love thee! The only bitterness of death is the thought of parting with thee."

"And yet," she said, "thou hast rejected me?"

Christian creed. As a crusader, and an unlettered Saxon, it could scarcely be expected that Becket should be deeply skilled in theology, or that his system of Christianity could be of the purest and most spiritual form. But! he was now standing at the threshold of heaven, and before him was his beautiful and beloved, whom he fondly longed to lead thither; and this combination of feelings, so pure, and so intense, not only purified and enlightened his perceptions of religion, but gave unwonted eloquence to his tongue, so that while the Syrian maiden listened, she wondered and wept by turns. Hitherto she, a Moslem woman, had been taught little of her national creed, and therefore its hold upon her affections was but feeble; and as for Christianity, she had only known it as the badge of those who warred against her country. But now, a new world seemed to have burst upon her view, through the sudden acquisition of a new spiritual vision; and she looked like him who saw the chariots of fire and horses of fire surrounding the mountain on which the prophet stood. She saw how beautiful and how heavenly the Christian faith essentially was, notwithstanding the monastic errors with which the education of her lover had partially obscured it. "And wouldst thou die," she eagerly asked," rather than renounce this faith, and the future rewards it promises?" And Gilbert answered, "Most willingly would I die rather than renounce it, even though the whole world were offered in exchange. Oh Zuleika," he tremblingly and fondly added, "if thou couldst but know how fervently I have loved thee in loneliness and silence, and amidst bondage and tears, thou wouldst then understand my devotedness to my faith! This-this only could have parted between me and thee!"

"Had I, then, been some humble maiden of thine own faith and people," she said, "wouldst thou have been willing to take me for thy wife?"

"Yes," he replied; "hadst thou been among the lowliest of my own land; hadst thou even been a daughter of the hated Norman, yet agreeing with me in the same blessed belief, I would have welcomed thee as the dearest boon that heaven could have bestowed."

“laar me real" she resumed;

Ismael-one of that people against whom thy nation warreth-were she to abjure the creed of her fathers, and have no God but thine?"

The eye of Gilbert flashed with a sudden strange hope, as he replied, "Were she but as thou art in heart and soul, and would abjure the errors of her fathers, then, though she were the meanest maiden that ever pitched a tent, or watered a camel, I would be hers in life and death."

66

"Then have I not been scorned and rejected," she exclaimed, with a look of triumph; and may Allah bless thee for the word!" Her countenance fell, and she mournfully added, “yet what, alas! can it now avail? Hear me, Gilbert! we must now part, and for ever. My sire has decreed thy death, and on the morrow the deed is to be done. But I have cared for thy safety, and before the hour arrives thou shalt be beyond his power. Flee to thine own land, poor wanderer! for there only thou canst be at rest. Friends will welcome thee, and joys surround thee; but even when thou art happiest, forget not her who will think of thee, and weep. And when thou weddest at thine own altars the chosen of thy heart, and should she repine in the hour of thy sorrows and adversities, tell her then the tale of the Saracen maiden, and teach her to love thee even as I have loved thee." Zuleika uttered the last words with a painful effort, and burst into tears; but she resumed at last her composure, and thus continued:-"At midnight, thou and thy companions shalt be called; fear not to trust the messenger,-for he shall lead thee forth to safety. And now, farewell! May my God-thy Godwhosoever he be that taught us thus to love, though all has ended in bitterness-may he protect thy head, and guide thy steps" At these words she disappeared as lightly as a dream; and Gilbert was only roused to attention by the advancing footsteps of his keepers. Their leader secured him with several additional chains, and then pointed with a malignant grin to a tall, ironpointed beam, which the slaves were erecting in front of the garden terrace.

Dog of an unbeliever !" said the truculent wretch, "seest thou yonder pinnacle? upon that thou shalt welcome to morrow's sunrise, and be nigher heaven than thou shalt ever find thyself afterwards." The slaves laughed in chorus, and re- echoed the bustisk ge

as they threw their prisoner, encumbered with his fresh chains, into the dungeon, to find solace among his companions.

It was evident, at his entrance, that his fellow-captives were in a state of unwonted excitement, and that they were aware of the intended execution. "Here's a coil!" growled one of them. "They tell us that the rascally heathen thane will hang you on the morrow, because you will not turn worshipper of Mahound and Termagant.

"And the devil to boot!" shouted

another, impatiently. "I'll tell you

what, Becket,--just die stoutly for the honour of holy mother-church, and the credit of good Old England, and the devil will get old greybeard all the sooner, you may depend on it."

"I wish my turn were to-morrow, instead of Becket's," grumbled a third; "for since the surly old heathen came back, we have had nothing but our old allowance of horse-beans; and I have grown so lanky on such fare, that I am more like a thievish Saracen than a true, honest Englishman."

"And then, to think," cried a fourth, "that he would make Gilbert shave his head, and wear an ugly turban, that looks for all the world like a pumpkin! By St. Dunstan ! if the head were mine, I would sooner let him shave it from my shoulders."

"Ah! if that pretty lady who always looks so kindly upon us at our work, and sends us such comfortable messes, had but the ordering of affairs!" rejoined the first speaker with a groan. "But these vile heathens have not the grace to let women rule, as is the case in all civilised, well-managed, Christian countries."

These, and other remarks of the same nature, fell upon the ear of Becket like an unmeaning sound. He had lately been standing upon the edge of death, and now deliverance was at hand. And yet he thought less of this, than of her by whom the deliverance was to be wrought, and the surpassing tenderness she had shewn at their parting interview. "Wouldst thou marry a daughter of Ismael, were she to abjure the faith of her fathers?" Again and again this touching question seemed to murmur in his ears; while his heart as constantly replied, "Would, Zuleika, that thou wert she!" But now he must fly from her presence for ever; and at this thought his heart sickened,

lost their charm. He might again return to England, but his heart would be left behind; and kind friends and happy faces might surround him, but Zuleika would not be there!

The noise of his companions again burst on his ear, and roused him from every thought of self; and he felt that, while absorbed among his own meditations, he was unkind in withholding comfort from these brave fellow-sufferers, and therefore he cautiously announced the probability that relief might arrive to them that night. He was fearful of raising their hopes too high, and therefore he mentioned their rescue as a deed that would perhaps be attempted; and he besought them to hold themselves in readiness, to aid the endeavour. He could scarcely smother their clamorous huzza of triumph, that would have pealed through the castle, and roused suspicion. He knew not in what manner the attempt would be made, so that he carefully listened for every passing sound; and when the darkness of the evening had settled, there was a slight stir among the keepers without, which was followed by this strange speech from their captain, who seemed to have newly arrived among them.

"Let fools shed their blood, or that of the enemy, and call it glory: this is the antagonist whose veins I love to empty; and when I have drained it, I laugh at conquerors and kings! Behold, my comrades, this weighty goat-skin; it contains the paradise of Franguestan. But wherefore should the uncircumcised enjoy it on earth, while the children of the Prophet must wait the coming of Azreel? I open it: do you not feel the odours of Yemen? I pour out its juice: do ye not behold a fountain of light in the cup, while the bubbles shine like stars on the brim? Let fools, in their pilgrimage, wander to the well of Zemzem; my fountain of bliss is here!

This absurd rhapsody, a compound of prose and verse, which he partly recited and partly chanted, seemed to excite a movement among the others. "By the hump of the holy camel," screamed a sharp voice, "it is wine! It is the abhorrence of the true believer! Art thou mad, Hassan ?"

"How delightful is its fragrance!" sighed another, in an affectionate tone. "Give me the cup, Hassan, that I may

After this there was a brief pause, and Becket could now comprehend the plan of escape. The guards were to be drugged into oblivion, and their captain was the author of the stratagem. But would the abstinent Mussulmans so hardily set their Prophet at defiance? He listened again, and he heard a formal, drawling, self-sufficient voice, garnished with a nasal twang, address them in the following speech

"Verily, my children, I have pondered this weighty case, and thus I resolve your scruples. It is written, 'Sin is born of evil desire;' but as for this bright fluid, we sought it not. Again, it is written, ' The members sin not; it is the soul that sinneth.' Let these our bodies, then, be the only actors. As we raise the cup to our lips, let our souls be wandering around the tomb of the Prophet, or amidst the joys of Paradise; and thus, while the bright draught moistens our lips, it will be as if innocent water had been poured upon senseless clay. Away then, my spirit! mount to thy kindred home, and behold nothing but the rivers of immortality, and the glowing looks of the houris!" His soul seemed reluctant to come back to the world, if one might judge from the long draught that followed. The huge cup was at last set down upon the ground with a hollow clank. The sophist panted with his exertions; and the nimbleness of tongue which he now exhibited, as he recited sentences of the Koran, and scraps of Eastern drinking-songs, attested the strength and character of his inspiration.

After this decisive example, all followed the plunge without further hesitation; and the beakers were filled and emptied with a rapidity that astonished even the listening Englishmen. And still no signs or sounds of jollity escaped from this most culpable of Mahometan trespasses. The revellers knew their crime, and were fearful of detection; and therefore they hurriedly swallowed flagon after flagon, like thieves concealing their booty. Such a swinish debauch could not be lasting; and long before midnight the keepers slept as soundly as if nothing but the trumpet of Israfil could have roused thein. All slept but the captain; and Gilbert now heard him saying, in a cool, collected tone, "Thanks my captivity among the Greeks

quished, when the wine is drunk, my head remains as cool as the flask I have emptied. Ah, happy Constantinople! by St. Sophia, it makes me almost a Christian to think of thee." He opened the door of the prison, and raised his torch, and Gilbert came to meet him. "Thou knowest my purpose and employer," said the Arab, shewing a wellknown ornament of Zuleika.

"I take thee for my guide," replied the Saxon; "be speedy with thy work."

The chains of the party were soon loosed; and the gaoler, after extinguishing the light, said, " Follow me carefully, and in silence: if we are heard, we die."

The Englishmen followed their guide; and after stumbling occasionally in the dark upon the prostrate bodies of the insensible wine-bibbers, they threaded several galleries, until they arrived at an iron gate, which led into the court, and beside it slept a porter, who seemed to have been also a partaker in the contents of Hassan's wine-skin. A key from the girdle of the sleeper was cautiously applied to the lock; and the Englishmen soon stood, for the first time, unfettered and in the open

air.

Caution was now more necessary than ever, as guards were stationed on the towers, while others patrolled the grounds; and the moon, at intervals, lighted the whole plain with an unwelcome brightness, that made the smallest objects visible. But the cautious leader was one accustomed to the wars of the desert, and the plunder of caravans ; and he availed himself most skilfully

of every local advantage, to shelter his party from detection. Sometimes, therefore, they defiled under the shelter of a wall; at others, they crept among the long grass, on hands and feet; and when the moon was brightest, they lurked beneath the shadow of a wall or tree, until the light was obscured by a passing cloud. In this manner they stole silently and cautiously forward, until they had cleared the immediate neighbourhood of the castle; and then Gilbert turned, for a moment, to take a parting look at the dwelling that contained his beloved. He knew well that at this moment she slept not-that trembling and praying for his safety; ; nay, he even thought that, at times, he saw her light form upon a watch-tower, waving her arms towards

she was

the place where he stood. "Forward!" whispered the impatient leader; "seest thou not yonder impaling-iron that hungers to receive thee?" and Becket immediately followed, although his step had none of the lightness of one flying from death. When the sounds of their feet could no longer be heard, their slow march was exchanged for a rapid flight, which they continued hour after hour, like men who knew that the avenger of blood is on their track.

In the meantime, the morning's light shone upon the castle, and awoke the inmates, who rose with alacrity for the promised spectacle. The instrument of death was ready, the guards surrounded it with their weapons, and the household slaves mustered in expectation. The gaolers also rose from their deathlike sleep, and were pondering in drunken perplexity, when a command arrived from the emir to bring forth the condemned Becket. The debauched wardens immediately clamoured for their captain, but in vain; and they searched for the keys, but these had been carried off. A distracting suspicion sobered them in an instant, and they broke open the prison-door; but there they found nothing but the prisoners' chains. Who would tell their lord of this mischance, or how it had happened? Their heated brains reeled with perplexity, as message after message came from the impatient emir. At length, the sophist of the previous evening, confident in the powers of his oratory, resolved to endure the first brunt of his lord's indignation, by revealing the tidings; but scarcely had he finished his tale, when his head flew from his shoulders by a sweep of the chief's cimeter. "To horse! to horse !" he roared in a voice of thunder, and every guard was mounted in the saddle. The whole party rushed from the castle, with the frantic emir at their head, and swept hill, and dale, and wilderness, in their search, like a hot simoom, while a hundred different deaths were denounced against the runaways. But after a whole day spent in fruitless galloping, and just as they had gained the summit of a sand-hill that overlooked the distant outposts of the Christian portion of Syria, the emir saw his fugitives entering the lines, while a strong body of Frankish horse and foot were in the act of receiving them in triumph.

Our

THERE is, perhaps, no field of research that more richly repays for the toil and trouble that accompany survey of it, than that of sacred poetry. Its parentage and growth are alike interesting. It is one of the striking facts that arrest our notice at the very threshold of our inquiries, that the Reformation was the mother of the noblest poetry that has twined undying and amaranthine garlands around the brow of Europe. Notwithstanding the decorations which are studiously courted by the Roman Catholic communion, and the apparent scope she presents for the developement of poetic genius, it is yet true that the noblest poets prior to the Reformation put forth their most glorious inspirations, not when they tried to beautify, but when they ventured to expose, the "chambers of imagery" of that dark and desperate apostasy. Petrarch's most compressed and vigorous sonnets are those in which he rakes up and blasts, with withering words, the corruptions of Babylon. Dante never treads the burning plains of the Inferno with so majestic a step as when he puts the pope among its most meritorious inmates. The papal superstition does not foster poetic genius; it represses and destroys it. At the present day, the bright and the beautiful in modern poetry are not within the jurisdiction of the Vatican. The chains which the Roman superstition binds around the intellect of mankind; the suspiciousness with which it impregnates social intercourse; the pollutions which its confessionals at once originate, kindle, and canonise; the deference that must be given to the weakest, and often the worst of men; and the interdict fastened on free thought and mental expansion, -are all obvious reasons for the fact, that, within the precincts of popery, genius fades, and its offspring dwindles like flowers on the bleak heights of the Alps, or in the pestilential valley of Java.

Far otherwise has it been in Protestant lands. The Reformation unsealed those fountains more glorious than Helicon, the fountains of truth.

*

It brought man back to a sense of his dignity and privileges; it taught Burns at the plough that it was his calling, if he would, to be the companion of God. It spread a holy and an ennobling atmosphere around the cottage and the palace. Immediately after the Reformation, and especially during the reign of Edward the Sixth, Poetry burst forth from the cells in which it had too long been pent up, and circulated round the countries wherein it appeared in its primeval freshness; and though, as was to be expected, it languished during the papal and persecuting reign of Mary, yet, at her demise, the mantle of its most illustrious ones fell on Spenser, and originated, by its inspiration, The Faery Queene.

Soon after Spenser (on whom our remarks are, at this time of the world, supererogatory), BARNABE BARNES, the son of a bishop of Durham, made his exit on Parnassus. He wrote a number of sonnets, terse and compressed, but shaped on the Procrustes' bed of Petrarch's prescriptions. The following is a very pleasing and not inappropriate specimen :—