Would you had the gift of speech, my fine fellow! You would plead as sincerely as many a wiser one has done before you, who had been as foolishly caught. You are not the only one who has felt the barbed steel, from being too greedy. The world is filled with 'fishers of men ;' and their hooks are most ingeniously covered. The usurer sits all day with his long pole, and still longer line, filled with bait, and bobs' from morning until night. It is not for me to say how many have had their gills torn. Messieurs Quackery and Humbug are most indefatigable fishers; and the people bite now as well as they did twenty years ago. It would be a rare sight to see all the victims on one string! There would be no distinction of rank or condition. Ignorance and talent, wealth and poverty, would hang side by side. So much for moralizing upon you, my little prisoner!

Hark to the low whistle of the quail over the hill! More wet ! more wet!' There he sits, watching the wheat-field, which runs in waves of gold before him. He ‘fares sumptuously every day,' and appears satisfied and contented. He is a quaker in costume and demeanor; grave in his manner, and always appears in a suit of brown, rounded off in his rear. His is peculiarly the harvest song; soft and melodious ; ringing in the silent noonday over hill and valley, when other birds are silent. He lingers around the husbandmen, in their toil, from morning until evening. He is one of the loveliest features of the season, and the task would move heavily, without his annual presence.

The whole wood is alive with squirrels. Black, and gray, and red, continually dart past me, and clatter up the trees for security. There is one now, perched on a long, projecting limb, chattering nonsense with inconceivable rapidity. He sits up with his tail curled over his back, and addresses all his conversation to me. He challenges me to reach him ; boasts of his safely; calls me all kinds of hard names, and flirts and rattles around, to attract my attention. He knows I cannot shoot him with my fishing-rod, and that he may take advantage of my situation to tantalize me. Oh that I understood the language of the animal creation ! The squirrel talks French, as near as I can make out. His gestures and movements are all French ; and Noah must have introduced this language into the ark, expressly for his convenience.

Above me, on a blasted oak, sits a crow, peering curiously down at my pole, and setting up every moment his most dismal screech. He has been driven into the woods by some farmer's boy, who detected him plundering his corn-field. He is only waiting until the coast is clear,' to make a second descent. He is the most bold, saucy,

and guilt-hardened of all the feathered tribe. Like Rob Roy, he takes his tax from all alike. He has a running acquaintance with men of straw, flying strips of cloth, long lines, and click-clack wind-mills ; but he has such keen perception, he is such a physiognomist and phrenologist, that he can decide their character at a glance. He has a flying knowledge of all mankind, being a regular rover, a bird of the world. It is said that crows scent out gunpowder at once, and act accordingly. They are sextons by office, and have assisted in burying the dead on many a battle-field. There he goes, glossy black, over the green tree-tops, screeching out a farewell,

his voice waxing fainter and fainter in the distance, until“ nothing lives 'twixt that and silence,

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But the dusk draws on, since the sun has dropped low behind the hills. The dews have sucked the fragrance from the withered grass, the sweet-scented clover, and the pea-blossom, and they come down in the valley with mingled odors. The lowing of the cattle, as they gather and move from their pasturage, falls on the ear. There is a deeper and more hollow roar in the glen, as the brook dashes onward in the gathering mist. Afar in the heavens, screaming in his loneliness, amid the thickening shadows of twilight, the speckled nighthawk circles in the sky. And hark! from the distant village comes the echoes of a church bell, dying from very sweetness, among the rocks and cliffs which surround me. And now the plaintive, melancholy song of the whip-poor-will breaks in, and deepens the eloquence of the sweetly-solemn scene. The trees begin to grow indistinct, amid the deepening shadows; they assume strange and fantastic shapes. I will away, and leave my blessing in the place of my company. Farewell!

H. H. R.

SIR: I have already given you a legend or two, drawn from ancient Spanish sources, and may occasionally give you a few more. I love these old Spanish themes, especially when they have a dash of the Morisco in them, and treat of the times when the Moslems maintained a foot-hold in the peninsula. They have a high, spicy, oriental flavor, not to be found in any other themes, that are merely European. In fact, Spain is a country that stands alone in the midst of Europe; severed in habits, manners, and modes of thinking, from all its continental neighbors. It is a romantic country; but its romance has none of the sentimentality of modern European romance; it is chiefly derived from the brilliant regions of the East, and from the high-minded school of Saracenic chivalry.

The Arab invasion and conquest brought a higher civlization, and a nobler style of thinking, into Gothic Spain. The Arabs were a quick-witted, sagacious, proud-spirited, and poetical people, and were imbued with oriental science and literature. Wherever they established a seat of power, it became a rallying place for the learned and ingenious; and they softened and refined the people whom they conquered. By degrees, occupancy seemed to give them a hereditary right to their foot-hold in the land; they ceased to be looked upon as invaders, and were regarded as rival neighbors. The peninsula, broken up into a variety of states, both Christian and Moslem, became, for centuries, a great campaigning ground, where the art of war seemed to be the principal business of man, and was carried to the highest pitch of romantic chivalry. The original ground of hostility, a difference of faith, gradually lost its rancor. Neighboring states, of opposite creeds, were occasionally linked together in alliances, offensive

and defensive; so that the cross and crescent were to be seen side by side, fighting against some common enemy. . In times of peace, too, the noble youth of either faith resorted to the same cities, Christian or Moslem, to school themselves in military science. Even in the temporary truces of sanguinary wars, the warriors who had recently striven together in the deadly conflicts of the field, laid aside their animosity, met at tournaments, jousts, and other military festivities, and exchanged the courtesies of gentle and generous spirits. Thus the opposite races became frequently mingled together in peaceful intercourse, or if any rivalry took place, it was in those high courtesies and nobler acts, which bespeak the accomplished cavalier. Warriors, of opposite creeds, became ambitious of transcending each other in magnanimity as well as valor. Indeed, the chivalric virtues were refined upon to a degree sometimes fastidious and constrained; but at other times, inexpressibly noble and affecting. The annals of the times teem with illustrious instances of high-wrought courtesy, romantic generosity, lofty disinterestedness, and punctilious honor, that warm the very soul to read them. These have furnished themes for national plays and poems, or have been celebrated in those all-pervading ballads, which are as the life-breath of the people, and thus have continued to exercise an influence on the national character, which centuries of vicissitude and decline have not been able to destroy ; so that, with all their faults, and they are many, the Spaniards, even at the present day, are, on many points, the most high-minded and proudspirited people of Europe. * It is true, the romance of feeling derived from the sources I have mentioned, has, like all other romance, its affectations and extremes. It renders the Spaniard at times pompous and grandiloquent; prone to carry the 'pundonor,' or point of honor, beyond the bounds of sober sense and sound morality; disposed, in the midst of poverty, to affect the "grande caballero,' and to look down with sovereign disdain upon arts mechanical,' and all the gainful pursuits of plebeian life ; but this very inflation of spirit, while it fills his brain with vapors, lifts him above a thousand meannesses; and though it often keeps him in indigence, ever protects him from vulgarity.

In the present day, when popular literature is running into the low levelsof life, and luxuriating on the vices and follies of mankind; and when the universal pursuit of gain is trampling down the early growih of poetic feeling, and wearing out the verdure of the soul ; I question whether it would not be of service for the reader occasionally to turn to these records of prouder times and loftier modes of thinking; and to steep bimself to the very lips in old Spanish romance.

For my own part, I have a shelf or two of venerable, parchmentbound tonnes, picked up here and there about the peninsula, and filled with chronicles, plays, and ballads, about Moors and Christians, which I keep by me as mental tonics, in the same way that a provident housewife has her cupboard of cordials. Whenever I find my mind brought below par, by the common-place of every day life, or jarred by the sordid collisions of the world, or put out of tune by the shrewd selfishness of modern utilitarianism, I resort to these venerable tomes, as did the worthy hero of La Mancha to his books of chivalry, and refresh and tone up my spirit, by a deep draught of their contents. They have

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a

some such effect upon me as Falstaff ascribes to a good Sherris sack' warming the blood, and filling the brain with fiery and delectable shapes.

1 here subjoin, Mr. Editor, a small specimen of the cordials I have mentioned, just drawn from my Spanish cupboard, which I recommend to your palate. If you find it to your taste, you may pass it on to your readers. Your correspondent and well-wisher,

GEOFFREY CRAYON.

In the cloisters of the ancient Benedictine convent of San Do. mingo, at Silos, in Castile, are the mouldering yet magnificent monuments of the once powerful and chivalrous family of Hinojosa. Among these, reclines the marble figure of a knight, in complete armor, with the hands pressed together, as if in prayer. On one side of his tomb is sculptured in relief a band of Christian cavaliers, capturing a cavalcade of male and female Moors; on the other side, the same cavaliers are represented kneeling before an altar. The tomb, like most of the neighboring monuments, is almost in ruins, and the sculpture is nearly unintelligible, excepting to the keen eye of the antiquary. The story connected with the sepulchre, however, is still preserved in the old Spanish chronicles, and is to the following purport.

a

In old times, several hundred years ago, there was a noble Castilian cavalier, named Don Munio Sancho de Hinojosa, lord of a border castle, which had stood the brunt of many a Moorish foray. He had seventy horsemen as his household troops, all of the ancient Castilian proof; stark warriors, hard riders, and men of iron; with these he scoured the Moorish lands, and made his name terrible throughout the borders. His castle hall was covered with banners, and scymetars, and Moslem helms, the trophies of his prowess. Don Munio was, moreover, a keen huntsman; and rejoiced in hounds of all kinds, steeds for the chase, and hawks for the towering sport of falconry. When not engaged in warfare, his delight was to beat up the neighboring forests; and scarcely ever did he ride forth, without hound and horn, a boar-spear in his hand, or a hawk upon his fist, and an attendant train of huntsmen.

His wife, Donna Maria Palacin, was of a gentle and timid nature, little fitted to be the spouse of so hardy and adventurous a knight; and many a tear did the poor lady shed, when he sallied forth upon bis daring enterprises, and many a prayer did she offer up for his

As this doughty cavalier was one day hunting, he stationed himself in a thicket, on the borders of a green glade of the forest, and dis

safety.