Saturday

yonder bully," says Davus, when he feels that his fine, utterly scout the faintest suspicion of Lotosfriends hold him cheap, “but I have my bread and eating. Nor is it extraordinary that the Lotos cheese to earn." The phrase is elastic enough, and should be held of small account at a period when in Davus's case may mean a pleasant house and mere manual toil — personified in the irrepressible garden at Kensington, a box at the opera, an au- Working Man - is considered worthy to take pretumnal month at Baden-Baden, and several spare cedence of all other labor, of brain, or heart, or hundreds at his bankers' when all is said and done. soul. So long as the artisan is admitted to hold In fact, bread and cheese may be made to mean the more vital claims on public consideration than the particular consideration for which a man will bar- artist, so long will Lotos-eating remain at a discount. ter artistic conscientiousness, commercial integrity, Yet it has its advantages, - advantages which inmoral pride, or mental delicacy, as the case may sist sometimes on recognition. Even the hard-fact be. And the bread-and-cheese men are specially men, and the bread-and-cheese men, and the risen opposed to Lotos-eating, and specially scornful of it. men, and the whole tribe of windy bores, admit the It is a diet wbich they cannot understand, produc- fact occasionally. We have periodical seasons when ing a frame of mind in the Lotos-eater utterly alien we try to retiro for a few weeks and eat our Lotos. to the ideas which govern the hunter of bread and The desire generally recurs at autumn-time, 'when cheese. For Lotos-eating breeds refinement. The we are wont to fly from the centre and set about poets are habitual Lotos-eaters; so are the phi- the Lotos-search. And we often do this crudely losophers; so, despite a certain element of hard and roughly, and insufficiently. To climb great work which enters into their lives, are artists and steeps and slip into crevasses, to trail through miles divines. But, then, hard work is not wholly in- of moorland and wade through miles of rock-strewn compatible with Lotos-eating. It is often prepar-streams, bent on the destruction of animal life, or to atory to it. It imparts to it its chief charm, by troop off with hundreds of our neighbors to stuffy force of contrast. The harder you labor for your watering-places, is not the true way of enjoying our Lotos, the more delicious is the feast. Nay, in Lotos. Nor, on the other hand, need we prop oursome cases the Lotos is no wild product, but an selves “on beds of amaranth and moly" in order exotic to be cultivated with strenuous toil, anxiety, to do so. We are not absolutely bound, and exertion. And poet and philosopher and

“ Eating the Lotos day by day, preacher and painter, who are the best types of the

To watch the crisping ripples on the beach, modern Lotos-eater, have cultivated their Lotos in

And tender curving-lines of creamy spray,

To lend our hearts and spirits wholly this degree, and simply present us with the first

To the influence of mild-minded melancholy." fruits of their labor. Of course, it will be said by the bread-and-cheese- |

There are other and simpler ways of enjoying it. men, and all practical spirits of that order, that the

A pipe and a tumbler of whiskey-toddy may replove of Lotos is eminently unpractical. It advances

resent the Lotos, and bring all the “mild-minded nothing to that pile of hard facts on which our nine

melancholy” in their train; or a lying in bed on teenth century superstructures are built. Admitted

some lazy holiday morning, looking over the sparly so. But on the contra side of the ledger it can be

row-haunted, cat-capped roofs of London. In fact, shown that the sworn abstainers from Lotos are a

the Lotos, like Milton's mind, " is its own place”; very unlovable crew. There is no more unpleasant

and can be cultivated near the domestic vine and creature than the man of stubborn facts. There is

id fig-tree. Who has not tasted it on some quiet auno more intolerable nuisance than the traditional

tumn evening, walking home from church after a man who commenced life on half a crown, which

good (unhappily. rare) sermon, and pondering, has multiplied itself at a supernatural rate of com

amid the sad sweetness and pathos which an aupound interest during some forty or fifty sinuous

tumn evening so often brings, over the mysteries of years. Josiah Bounderby, of Coketown, has many

life and death? Or the taste may be produced by

the jingle of an old tune, or the whiff of a chance compeers. We feel his spirit working in many an arrogant proletarian whom some convulsion of the

scent, recalling the fragrance of a hedgerow or garsocial universe - a railway earthquake, or an oil

den-alley we knew years ago, and had half forgotdiscovery, or a cotton famine - has heaved up to

ten. And some of us have eaten our Lotos in com

pany with a young person of the opposite sex in the surface. Arrived there, he sets himself forth as the pattern prosperous man, erects a shining light

that Arcadia of noodles which existed before matof his own industry and persererance, and constructs

rimony's pudding usurped the place of the nectar little theories for his fellow-men, the moral of which

of nos vingt ans. But that form of Lotos-eating is that they ought to go and do likewise. If he be

would seem to be getting scarcer. The hard-fact married, and have a family, his autonomy in that

men have to a great extent converted the mind of unfortunate circle amounts to a perpetual nuisance.

ingenuous youth. The nymph of 1867 likes ber He is especially down upon all little shoots and

Lotos well dressed, and served up with a shining growths of taste in his children. Taste is a superflu

sauce. Romance is all very well, but ity; he did not rise in the world through any regard

Will the flame that you 're so rich in for taste. He despises in others, not in himself)

Make a fire in the kitchen,

Or the little God of Love turn the spit, spit, spit ?" all luxuries — from poetry to pocket-handkerchiefs. “In my young days, egad, young men were glad to The old style, in fact, flourished best with Chloe and dine on a picked herring-bone and a turnip-top, with Doris, in that pleasant age of patch and powder a dessert of orange peel and pump-water; now, by when we assumed a virtue if we had it not, when George, sir, they cry out for City Dinner Compa- we endeavored with artifice to rival nature, and nies, Limited. When I was an apprentice, I slept succeeded in reducing nature to the level of artifice. under my master's counter among the blackbeetles ; 1 The teacup time of hoop and hood” was favorable but my daughters, sir, are so dainty, they require to the growth and consumption of Lotos, and it went clean pillow-cases when they go to sleep!” Natu- out, in a great measure, with Chloe and Doris, and rally enough, the class represented by this kind of in company with many other pretty flimsy fancies. man, whom no success can soften, no prosperity re-! In fine, the precise use and enjoyment of Lotos

dana, who withal offers to go along with him in Clutched his sword-hilt, but restrained him, though the scoffing

words had pained him, this difficult adventure ; but the valorous enraged! As he cried, " My Lord Don Roldan, 't is no coward standeth knight will not let him, and says he is able to de

here, liver his wife himself, without his help, though they

| “ Now I know thou ne'er didst love me, yet upon the spot I'd prove kept her down in the very centre of the earth.”

me leans an accurate

Worthy of the one red current that empurples both our veins; densation of the old ballad, which we resume:

If the thought that thou avowest, if another said as thou hast,

I would then avenge the insult that my honour now disdaips: When Gay feros saw and heard him, sorrow, anger inly stirred him," Since an uncle's breast is charméd” - Here between them came But he rose and left the table, left the table silentlie,

the arméd Left it passion-unbetrayed with, through respect for him he played Knights and squires who in the courtyard were preparing for with,

the chase : Even the noble Count Guarinos, Lord High Admiral of the Sea. “Good my nephew Don Gayferos," cried Orlando, “ Heaven doth

hear us, Through the palace swiftly flying, through the halls whose walls | Scant as yet hath been thy glory, brief as yet hath been thy replying,

race, Echoed loud his clamorous crying, crying loud thus angrilie : “ Tell me, tell me," cried Gayferos, - tell me, noble knights and "But I know the blood that warms thee, know the lineal law that heroes,

charms thee, Where is now my noble uncle, Don Orlando, where is he?"

Apt as to a natural function, apt in every knightly deed ;

Hadst thou thought upon the lesson, Whom Heaven loveth it doth In the courtyard soon he found him, foot in stirrup, and around chasten, him

Then the words that I have spoken could not madden or misStood the bravest and the boldest of the Twelve renowned Peers :

lead. Many a knight was of the party, here the gallant Durandarte, There the white thorn of Rinaldo, here the shield was Olivier's. " Wert thou like that craven picture, brief indeed had been my

stricture ; When the Peer, Gayferos reaching, thus began the knight beseech- But I knew thee brave and gallant, worthy knight and kinsing,

man both; " For the love of God I ask thee, ask of thee, my uncle dear, Knew my steed unto thy riding, knew my arms to thee confiding, In my direst need befriend me, oh ! my unele, deign to lend me I could proudily both entrust them, trust them both, nor break Even the noble steed thou 'rt riding, and the arms that thou dost

my oath. wear.

“ Horse and armour both I'll lend thee, – nay, I will myself at« For with bitter words deriding, spoke to me the Emperor chiding,

tend thee, Saying, 'I might be the quickest learner of some lazy game, Shouldst thou wish for a companion through the Moorish realm But in martial lore the slowest: oh! my uncle, well thou know

unknown." est

** Thanks," Gayferos cried, “I proffer thanks, my uncle, for thine If my wife I leave unsuccoured, I indeed am not to blame.

offer,

But upon this sacred journey I must go, and go alone," “ Three long years in mournful sallies, through the mountains, through the valleys,

Then Orlando bade his pages bring the bright steel equipages, Faint and all forlorn I wandered, seeking where her prison stood, From the armoury the armour, and the housings from the stall; With my bleeding feet all naked, where the founts at which I slaked He himself the breastplate braceth, he the linked harness laceth, (Ah ! how rare !) my thirst, were dappled o'er with slimy Then Gayferos from his charger bids a sad farewell to all. streaks of biood.

Notwithstanding the loquacity of the showman's 6 Now I know that she is sighing, in her palace prison lying,

assistant, which even his own master had to check, Where the strong towers of Sansueña cast their shadows o'er the plain ;

-"Plainness, boy!" criod Master Peter ; - none Ah! without a steed to fly there, her to rescue or to die there ;

of your flights, I beseech you, for affectation is the Ah! without a sword for vengeance, all my knowing now is

| devil,” -- it will be seen that the young gentleman vain.

abridged the story considerably, and left out altogeth* Since my cousin Montesinos, through the love that lies between

er the lively altercation between the two Caballeros, Bor ows oft my steed and armour, borrows them fraternallie. which we have translated. Another circumstance is Now with them he makes a journey even to reach the royal tournay to be noted. Cervantes gives the name of Orlando's Where the knights of France are tilting with the lords of Hun

sword, Durindana, which we do not find in the garie.

original, or in any of the romances connected with “There my swift steed tried and trusty, there my sharp spear never

ty, there my sharp spear never Don Gayferos. The sword itself is mentioned and rusty, • First of steeds and best of lances, trophies win that are not mine ; Ah ! of mine, alas ! too heedless, here I linger spearless, steedless, Without hope to free my lady, if thou dost not lend me thine,"

however, worth relating, and we are indebted for Don Orlando chafed but listened, while his eye with moekery glis- most of the following particulars to the valuable tened,

commentary of Clemencin in his edition of Don Listenert dill Gayferos ended, when he made him this reply: * Ceast, my nephew, cease, I pray thee, it were painful to gainsay | Quixote. Archbishop Turpin, in his apocryphal thee,

History of Charlemagne and Orlando, calls this faAnd the truth compels me utter what even thou canst not deny,

mous sword Durenda ; in other MSS. it is called “ Seven long years thy wife has counted in her cell, whilst thou hast Durindarda ; but the general name given to it, mounted

both by Boiardo and Ariosto, is Durindana; a Many aud many a steed as mettled as the one thou now dost mourn,

name that has been adopted by the anonymous Many a day in arms I're scen thee, yet the long leagues lay be writers of the early Spanish ballads. According to

tveel thee And the pale imprisoned princess, she thy widowed wife forlorn.

the tradition of the Italian poets, Durindana was

the sword of Hector, at whose death before Troy it “ Yow that arms and steed are wanting, of thy tardy valour vaunt

passed, not unnaturally, into the bands of Pentheiug, Horse and harness thou art asking, asking of another man,

seleia, Queen of the Amazons, who perished in a Hear the yow I ne'er have broken, hear the vow that once was battle with the Greeks after the death of that hero, spoken,

as recorded by some of the scholiasts on Iloiner. As I knelt before the altar of Saint John of Later in

Durindana, with the rest of Hector's arms, eventual«Never shall my steed be ridden, never shall its back be stridden |ly descended to Æneas. From him the sword passed By the loose limbs of a coward, be he who or what he may,

into the bands of a witch or enchantress, who it Never shall my breast plate cover heart of laggard knight or lover, Never were they thus dishonoured, and they shall not be to-da appears rescued Eneas from some difficulty. We

next find it in the possession of the pagan Almonte, " It wore pits to unsettle such a steed's accustomed mettle":-

whom the young Orlando slew in Aspramonte, and Thus he ceasd, when Don Gayseros hoarse with anger faced the Peer,

"who thus became the owner of Durindana. When

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Saturday

Here are captives in this city, and there's one, ah'! more the pity, To their posts the sentries hastened, and the city's gates were Who excels them all in beauty, from fair France that great countrie.

fastened,

· And the knight rode seven times round it, but no exit could be « Since the hour Almanzor brought her to this city as his daughter,

found. As his dearest child he treats her, treats and retes her every day; And full many a Moorish lover, whose dark brow a crown doth cover, From the mosque where he was praying came the king without Oft has come his crown and kingdom at her feet in vain to lay,

delaying,

Came Almanzor at the braying of the trumpet and the drum; “Thou canst see that noble lady, if adown yon cool and shady And the Moorish knights are arming, and the Moorish hosts are Stately street, Sir Knight, thou ridest, for but now I heard her sing ;

swarming, Heard her sing, and saw her smiling through her tears, the time And 't is wonderful to listen to the tumult and the hum.

beguiling At an open window sitting in the palace of the King."

Melisendra, who beholds him in the danger that enfolds him,

To his heart brings strength and comfort by her voice so sweet and Through the street he rode, which ended in a great square, gay and suave; splendid,

“Be not daunted, Don Gayferos ; show thy blood is that of heroes, All along whose sides extended towers and domes of giant size ; Who by nature and by knighthood from necessity are brave.. Up he looked with eyes of wonder, saw the domes and galleries under;

"Show thy blood is that of heroes; and if hence thou 'scap'st, GaySaw, but soon a sweeter vision shone upon his gladdened eyes.

feros,

Thou wilt have a feat to tell of that no other hero can; Ah. those eyes at length have found her ! there, with captive | But oh! would to God in Heaven, and His Mother, it were given maidens round her;

That thou now hadst for thy charger the good steed of Don Roldán. There, in yonder stately window, sits the long-loved, long-lost bride;

| “Many a time I've heard it stated, many a time it was related Sits his bride, who, downward gazing, sees, the knight his looks . In the Emperor's house, how scathless oft it bore him from the upraising,

Moors." Sees and knows him not, yet something wakes the tears she can Silently Gayferos tightens now the girth, the breastplate lightens, not hide.

And the spur's sharp lesson teaches the hot flank that scarce

endures. For his armour's snowy whiteness, for his white shield's silvery • brightness

Lightly now the charger prances, hither, thither he advances, Bring to mind the martial vesture of the Twelve illustrious Peers,

Which Gay feros, seeing, springeth from his saddle to his feet, Such as when she saw them gather, in the palace of her father, Tighter still the girth lie tightens, lighter still the breastplate To the tilting of the lancês and the splintering of the spears.

lighteos, When for her the shields were cloven, when for her the wreaths

Then, without the aid of stirrup, leaps once more into his seat. were woven,

In his seat once more we find him, Melisendra sits behind him, She the lady of the tournay, she for whom the champions bled;

Sits behind him on the crupper, with her arm around him twined, Ah! those sweet but sad reflections woke such bitter recollections,

Neither trembleth she, nor stirreth, while he mercilessly spurreth, That with mournful voice she called him, and with trembling

Then away the swift steed flieth, fieth fleet as any wind. accents said, "Ah! Sir Knight, and may God bless thee, in His great name I

Oh! 't was wonderful the viewing of the Moorish host pursuing, address thee,

Their shrill shouting and hallooing only make the swift steed Whether thou 'rt a Christian soldier or a Moorish cavalier,

bound; Thou wilt not refuse to hear me, thou wilt courteously come near me,

But although he bounds and leapeth, even the wind beside him And this whispered message carry to my distant husband dear:

creepeth,

As with loosened rein he sweepeth like a meteor o'er the ground. * If, Sir Knight, to France thou goest, if to Paris, which thou knowest

Is the queen of cities, quickly to my lord Gayferos speed ;
Say his wife has sent thee greeting, here her weary days repeating ;

The catastrophe. of the puppet-show may ilSay that to her simple seeming it were time that she were freed.

quoth the boy, “ observe what a vast company of “If it is not fear detains him, cowarl craven fear that chains him,

That he comes not here to combat for my freedom with the Moor, I must think some new engagement lies behind this long estrange

ment, For the absent are forgotten when the present can allure.

sound of trumpets, and clarions, and drums, and

kettle-drums there is in the air. I fear they will “Say, Sir Knight, by way of token, how that rumour here hath overtake them, and then will, the poor wretches be

spoken Of his tiltings and his tournays, of his feasting and his cheer;

dragged along most barbarously at the tails of their If he doth receive thee coldly, then my message proffer boldly, horses, which would be sad indeed.” “ Don QuixEven unto Don Orlando, or the Knight Sir Olivicre :

ote, seeing such a number of Moors and hearing “ Or, still better, give it rather to the Emperor my father ;

such an alarm, thought it high time to assist the Tell him that a trembling captive in Sansueña here I mourn,

flying lovers, and starting up, — It shall never be In Sansueña, this great city ; and that if he take not pity, And restore me soon, his daughter must a Moorish pervert turn.

en said while I live,' cried he aloud, that I suffered

such a wrong to be done to so famous a knight and * With a Moorish king who dwelleth where the Libyan water swelleth

so daring a lover as Don Gayferos. Forbear then They will wed me, they will crown me queen of seven proud Moorish kinys;

your unjust pursuit, ye base-born rascals! Stop, or Faith and hope and peace must perish, ah! in vain, for I shall

prepare to meet my furious resentment.' Then cherish Still the memory of Gayferos, unto whom my fond heart clings."

drawing out his sword to make good his threats, at

one spring he gets to the show, and with a violent Feen the knight heard this, with gladdened heart and eyes that

fury lays at the Moorish puppets, cutting and slashlate were saddened, Thus made answer: "My Señora, do not weep, but laugh and

ing in a most terrible manner. Some he overlive;

throws, and beheads others; maims this, and Thou no need hast for this weeping, or this mournful vigil keeping,

cleaves that in pieces. Among the rest of his For this message and this greeting to himself thou now canst give.

merciless strokes, he thundered one down with such " In fair France of which thou speakest, in that land whence help a mighty force, that had not Master Peter luck

thou seekest, I was known as Prince of Paris, I'mong Peer3 was deemed a

ily ducked and squatted down, it had certainly Peer;

chopped off his head as easily as one might cut an Don Orlando, Oliveros, nephew, cousin call Gayseros,

apple.” But to resume, And 't is love for Melisendra, love alone that brings me here." By his voice the lady knew him, at a bound her heart flew to him, With fresh steeds that seem to swallow up the wind seven squadrons From the window swift she hastens, down the marble stair she

follow; trips,

Hark! their tramp sounds dull and hollow; Don Gayferos looks On the courtyard rushed she blindly, where her lord received her that way; kindly,

When 't is plain to all appearing that the Moorish host was nearing, With a clasp of fond embracing and a kiss upon the lips.

Don Gayferos, without fearing, to his lady thus doth say:

But a Moorish dog, inhuman, placed to watch the Christian women,

Gave a cry that with its echoes all the air was filled around,

"Be not troubled, best and brightest, but 't is needful thou alightest,

And within this shady thicket shouldst awhile thy form conceal,