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even to a proverb. When I went into their great mosque, I admired the large door thereof, which was a folding door, and all solid brass, or bellmetal, with curious workmanship upon it. This gate, they say, was found by the sea side, and brought by a Marabout (or saint) upon his shoulders, which is about twenty miles, which Marabout lies intombed just before the said great door." His description of Algiers has nothing peculiar. The upper part of the town, he says, " looks from the sea, just like the top-sail of a ship. It is a very strong place, and well fortified with castles (seven of them without the walls) and guns. On the mole there are three tier of guns, many of them of an extraordinary length, and carrying forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, yea eighty pound shot. It hath five gates, some of which have two and three other gates within them, plated all over with thick iron. The wall is surrounded with a great trench, so that it is made strong and convenient for being what it is a nest of pirates."

In his remarks upon the character and customs of the people, Pitts describes their superstitions, their religious ceremonies, their manner of eating, their marriages, funeral rites, mode of warfare, produce of the soil, &c.; but his observations contribute little to what others have recorded at greater length. At table, he says, "all sit down cross-legged, as tailors do when they are at work on their shop-board; and every one says his grace, (more than thousands of Christians do!) and that is Bismillah-in the name of God; the same expression they use in every thing they set about, to the shame of those who pretend to more, and yet have not God in all their thoughts. I could here enlarge (he adds) upon the several sorts of their victuals, and their manner of cooking, which I am well acquaint with; but this would eat up too great a part of my little book." The women are not permitted to eat at table with their husbands, but must take whatever is given them. Their fare is generally bread and milk, and cusckasoo, "which is made of meal and water in a broad wooden platter, and then stirred about with the palm of the hand till it becomes like small seeds or gunpowder. Which being

done, they boil it over the fire on the mouth of a pot, with victuals, till it becomes altogether of a lump, when they turn it out into a platter, and beat it abroad, and so mix it with butter." Notwithstanding this "mean fare and worse usage, wives manifested a great deal of sorrow for their deceased husbands. "Some, if they can get their garments dyed black, they will; but at least they will be sure to take a little oil or grease and soot, and therewith smut their faces almost all over, and make most hideous cryes and lamentations. And the neighbouring women do use to come and condole, it may be twenty or thirty of them together; who all place themselves round the woman who hath lost her relation, making so prodigious a noise as may be heard near half a mile off; all the while scratching down their faces with their nails, till they make the blood run down their cheeks. This they continue to do half an hour or more every day for a considerable space, and afterwards once a week, or as the fit shall take the widow; and thus in and out, it may be for a whole year. How sincere this their sorrow is it would be hard to tell; but if it be no more than that of some of our English widows is, it is wittily and truly described in Sir Roger L'Estrange's fable."

The manner of teaching their children is this:" Every one hath a thin board of oak, scorred white, to write on; their ink is commonly a little burnt wood mixt with water; their pen is made of a cane, for they hold it to be unlawful to write with a quill as Christians do. The scholar being thus furnished, after some few directions, the master speaks the boy's lesson, which is some of the Alcoran, and the boy writes it; which done, he is not only bound to read it, but to learn it without book. And this he is to do every day, till he hath retained a considerable part of the Alcoran in his memory. The boy having learned his day's lesson, rubs it out, and then whitens his table again to write down the next day's lesson." The correction or punishment for scholars, and for children at work, was beating them on the bare feet. Their veneration for the Koran is excessive. They call it Calam Allah-the Word of God; and, says Pitts, "on the ferrel of it

there is written, (commonly in golden letters), touch not without being clean or washed. They will not suffer it to touch the ground, if they can help it; and if it chance at any time to fall, they check themselves for it, and with haste and concern recover it again, and kiss it, and put it to their forehead in token of profound respect. When they hold it in their hands, they'll never hold it below their middle, accounting it too worthy to be touched by any of the lower parts. If they are going a journey, and carry it with them, they will be sure to secure it well in a sear-cloth or cloth bag, hanging it under their arm-pits. Nay, I have known many that could not read one tittle of it, to carry some part of it always about with them, esteeming it as a charm to preserve them from hurt and danger."

The Moors are described as a people much given to sloth, "so very lazy that they make their wives saddle their horses. After sowing time, they have nothing to do, nor betake themselves to anything, but only wait for the harvest. When their corn is cut, and brought all together, they immediately

tread it out, and winnow it, and then put it into great pits in the open field, with straw at the bottom and sides, and dug all round, of some depth. They never dress or dung their grounds as we do, and yet they have great plenty ; for it is a common thing to see ten, fifteen, nay twenty stalks, shoot up together. Nay, I have been told of sixty or more, which is very wonderful. This plenty is of wheat and barley, for rye and oats they have none." In the interior, the sight of a Christian was new and strange to the natives. "I remember," says Pitts, "when I was journeying with my patroon from Bona, which is some hundreds of miles eastward of Algier, we did every night quarter in the Moors' tents; and the Moors, both men, women, and children, would flock to see me; and I was much admired by them for having flaxen hair, and being of a ruddy complexion. I heard some of them say,

Behold! what a pretty maid it is l' Others said, I never saw a Nazarene before; I thought they had been like unto swine, but I see now they are children of men.”

[The remainder of Pitts' history, his pilgrimage to Mecca, his account of what afterwards befel him, and how he contrived to effect his escape, are curious and entertaining; but they must form the subject of another paper, as our limits for the present are already exhausted.]

TO A MOTHER SMILING ON HER SLEEPING INFANT.

Enthusiast fond, whom hope beguiles,
What visions dost thou see?
Thou gazest on the babe with smiles,
Thinking what he will be.

Gaze on and smile-in after years
When time has changed the scene,

Thou'lt gaze upon the man with tears,
Thinking what he has been.

M. B.

ITALIAN POETS.-NO. VI.

ARIOSTO-PART III.

In our analysis of the ORLANDO FURIoso, we have omitted all mention of the subordinate adventures of Ariosto's numberless heroes and heroines, satisfied that the study of the poem will be most aided by endeavouring to fix the reader's attention on the three main streams of narrative which we have indicated, and with one or other of which every more minute incident will be found connected. Of these we have already detailed the loves of Rogero and Bradamante; and we have pursued the adventures of Orlando to his restoration from the overwhelming calamity which gives its name to the work, and the description of which is the most appalling proof of poetic power which perhaps exists in any poem of any age or country. The third and main subject of the poem is Charlemagne's repulsion of the Saracenic invaders from France; and this is a part of the work to which we think that justice has scarcely been done. Ariosto is the first poet who has dealt with Charlemagne as a man; and, accordingly, in his poem alone does he appear to any advantage. Wonders upon wonders are so accumulated by the rhymers and prosers who had first delineated this really great man, that, to exhibit him in his true dimensions, showed some boldness; and Ariosto's success has justified his deviations into the language of possible truth from the marvellous legends which he found, and which, on a less important occasion, he would have delighted to imitate, and perhaps exaggerate. Turpin had described Charles with dark hair, ruddy countenance, with a stern aspect but his form graceful and elegant. It is well that the worthy archbishop has filled up these outlines, as we might have pictured to ourselves something very different from his notion of grace and elegance. His hero's legs were thick-he was eight feet high-and his belly would have done honour to any alderman. It seemed impossible to the old romancers that

an empire so extensive as Charlemagne's should not have (required a giant for its ruler. Turpin, too, makes him consume food enough at each meal to have satisfied the wants of even a larger animal frame than he has given him; but the great emperor has more serious causes of complaint against those who have undertaken to give us his picture-for they had formed their notions of living by dignity and kingly intellect from Lewis the Fat, and Lewis the Foolish, and Lewis the Pious, and Lewis the Stammerer-and united in the person of Charles, the faults and the follies of all. Ariosto has used him better; for though there is little reason to doubt that the character of Charlemagne in his and Boyardo's poem, and the leading incidents, are made up by uniting into one his grandfather

Charles Martel and his brother Carloman; yet this identification was not beyond the rightful privileges of the poet, and at all events associates him with more respectable company. The identification of Charlemagne with his brother, in all probability, originally arose from mistake, although we think nothing could be more natural than to ascribe intentionally to the greatest man of a tribe or race all the qualities that exhibited themselves in any branch of the same stock.

"It is," says Michelet, "a mistake to suppose that Charlemagne is the translation of CAROLUS MAGNUS. Charlemagne is a corruption of CarlomanKARL-MANN-the strong man. In the chronicles of St. Denys we find Challes and Challemaines for Charles and Carloman- (maine being the French corruption of mann, as lana makes laine, &c.) A still more decisive proof occurs in the chronicles of Theophanes, who calls Carloman Καρουλλομαγνος; both brothers then bore the same name."

So says Michelet; and it is not easy to imagine a more pregnant element of confusion. The probability of the adventures of Charles Martel being

transferred to him was increased by the very indefinite use of the word "Saracen," which, at one time, meant the Mahometan misbeliever; at another, was used, by an easy transition, for Christians supposed to be unsound in the faith; and ultimately for any persons with whom there were any causes of enmity, or even dislike; and Charles Martel's exploits were thus transferred to his descendants. Charles Martel was the son of a Pepin, and the father of that Pepin, whose name is the first of the Carolingian kings of France; and the four sons of the first Pepin were the heroes who were for ever fought with the four sons of Aymon, the era of whose adventures was transferred to a later date, either by the inherent privilege of the minstrel—as in a late poem we read of the marriage of Helen of Troy with a German conjuror of the middle agesor, perhaps, by mistake, under circumstances not unlikely to perplex an accurate investigator of the few and obscure authorities then accessible to any person feeling an interest in such inquiries. Dr. Leyden suggests an additional element of error:-" In the Armorican language, meur signifies great mayne; and marra, a mattock, martel; so that, instead of CharJemagne and Charles Martel, we have Charlemeur and Charlemarra-names which, from the similarity of sound, might be easily confounded." Whether through mistake or design, there can be little doubt of the identification in romance and popular fiction of Charles Martel and Charlemagne. Among the reasons why the exploits of the former have been ascribed to the latter, one must have been the unlimited advantages to the cause of Christianity and civilization of Martel's decisive victory over the African invaders. The church, in its gratitude, was unwilling to ascribe such a triumph to Martel, whose very right to the name of Christian was doubtful, and whose name of "the Hammer" (Marteau) is understood by many of the French historians to imply a dedication to THOR, whose appropriate emblem-the sign, we are told, of pagan compact and property, as well as of

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barbaric conquestf-was the Hammer. In spite of his services, Martel was the horror and execration of the church, for the very excellent reason, that his best means of paying his soldiery was with the spoils of monasteries and bishoprics. It must be said that the plunder of bishoprics was borne with more patience, and is recorded with less indignation by the chroniclers of these days, than the ruin of monasteries and the secularization of church lands. Where a bishopric was plundered, the unfortunate bishop was soon got rid of summarily he was most often slain-another took his bishopric, and little inquiry was likely to be made as to the rights which had been disregarded, or the property swept away. It became another thing when strangers and aliens were given the broad lands, and when the only tonsure that made clerks of the soldiers, to whom the best livings were given in perpetuity, was the stroke of the Saracen sabre or Saxon sword. "This Charles Martel" -thus one of the old chroniclers writes -"the offspring of a slave, a concubine

-more audacious than all the kings his predecessors, gave not only the bishopric of Reims, but many others in the kingdom of France, to laymen and counts, so as to deprive the bishops of all power over the goods and affairs of the church. But all the harm he had wrought on this, and on the other churches of Christ, the Lord, by a just judgment, caused to revert on his own head. For we read in the writings of the fathers, that St. Pulcherius, formerly Bishop of Orleans, whose body rests in St. Trudo's monastery, being one day at prayer, absorbed in the meditation of heavenly things, was swept into the other world, and there, through revelation of the Lord, saw Charles tormented in the lowest hell. When he inquired the cause from the angel who conducted him, the latter replied that, by the sentence of the holy men who on the last day would hold the balance together with the Lord, he was condemned to everlasting punishment for having laid hands on their possessions. St. Pulcherius, on his return to this world, hastened to relate what he had

* Preliminary Dissertation to the Complaint of Scotland. + Michelet's History of France, Book II.

seen to St. Boniface and to Fulrad, Abbot of St. Denis, and King Pepin's principal chaplain, telling them, in proof of the truth of what he related of Charles Martel, that, on searching his tomb, they would not find his body; and, in fact, when they went to his place of interment and opened his tomb, a serpent issued out of it, and the tomb was found empty and blackened as if scorched by fire." This was calculated to remove all doubt of the fact from the minds of the most incredulous in the days of St. Boniface and St. Pulcherius, and in ours to establish pretty plainly the temper in which churchmen were likely to think of Martel, and the probability of their transferring to every body or any body whatever good he did by design, or whatever might have been the fortuitous or the providential consequence of his acts. The Charlemagne of romance was of somewhat greater bulk than Turpin's hero, though scarce a giant, as giants were at the time. He was, says the author of "Roland and Ferragus," who quotes his authority, twenty feet in height, strong in proportion, with black hair and red face. At the festivals of Easter, Whitsuntide, St. James's Day, and at Christmas, he wore "the holy crown of thorn." He dined on those solemn days in public, surrounded by his knights, and having a drawn sword carried before him. At night his bed was guarded by a hundred knights, each bearing in one hand a lighted torch, in the other a naked falchion. The height of Charles is a proof that

the late Doctor Southey was under some strange mistake, when he said that the giants of romance were not much taller than the great men exhibited at every fair, as the latest importations from Ireland; and his shrewd observation, that the minstrels who tell of the man's height and size do not say one word of that of his horse, from which he concludes that the horse was of the ordinary dimensions, is met by the fact, that minute as are the descriptions of beds, and chairs, and tables, the poet never feels it necessary to say one word of their size being proportioned to that of the personage who is to use them. That Charles was no great things in the way of height was, however, proved on one occasion at Pampeluna, when the soldan of Babylon sent Ferragus to challenge and fight him. As to Ferragus

"He had twenty men's strength;
And forty feet of length

This paynim had;

And four feet in the face,
Ymetent in the place;

And fifteen in brede.‡
His nose was a foot and more;
His brow as bristles wore

(He that saw it said);
He looked loathlche, §
And was swarthy as pitch-
Him might men dread."

The enemies whom the Charlemagne of Ariosto has to deal with are more like human beings than his challenger at Pampeluna-and his danger is not the less serious. The Saracen invaders are at the walls of Paris

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