But want, even as an armed man, came down upon their

shed,

The father laboured all day long, that his children might

be fed ;

And, one by one, their household things were sold to buy them bread.

That father, with a downcast eye, upon his threshold stood,

Gaunt poverty each pleasant thought had in his heart subdued;

"What is the creature's life to us?" said he, "'t will buy us food!

Ay, though the children weep all day, and with down-drooping head

Each does his small craft mournfully!—the hungry must

be fed ;

And that which has a price to bring, must go, to buy us bread!"

It went-oh! parting has a pang the hardest heart to

wring,

But the tender soul of a little child with fervent love

doth cling,

With love that hath no feignings false, unto each gentle thing!

Therefore most sorrowful it was those children small to see, Most sorrowful to hear them plead for their pet so

"Oh! mother, dear, it loveth us; and what beside have we?

"Let's take him to the broad, green hills," in his impotent despair,

Said one strong boy, "let's take him off, the hills are wide and fair;

I know a little hiding-place, and we will keep him there!"

'T was vain!—they took the little lamb, and straightway tied him down,

With a strong cord they tied him fast, and o'er the common brown, And o'er the hot and flinty roads, they took him to the town.

The little children through that day, and throughout all the morrow,

From every thing about the house a mournful thought did borrow;

The very bread they had to eat was food unto their

sorrow!

Oh! poverty is a weary thing, 't is full of grief and painIt keepeth down the soul of man, as with an iron chain; It maketh even the little child, with heavy sighs complain!

THE FOREST OF SANT' EUFEMIA.

A Calabrian Tale.

BY THE AUTHOR OF

66

CONSTANTINOPLE IN 1828."

ON a beautiful little rising ground between the shores of the gulf of Sant' Eufemia and the forest of the same name, in the eventful years that succeeded the French occupation of the kingdom of Naples, there stood a solitary cottage nestled in the midst of groves of olive and orange trees, which, together with a screen of festooned vines, so much concealed it, that it was only visible from a neighbouring and a loftier hill.

This cottage was inhabited by a young girl of eighteen, an old woman, and an old peasant, and was the occa

sional retreat of one of a band of robbers that harboured in the forest, whose deeds had for years been marked with all the energy of fearless villany, and whose cunning and dexterity had hitherto baffled the pursuit of the French. It had been chosen by the brigand as a secure abode in seasons of idleness, and as a convenient spot in which to conceal his youthful dependant from the eyes

of his ferocious and dissolute companions. The existence of this young creature was scarcely known, excepting to the two old people who lived with her, to a monk from a convent hard by, and to the robber and three or four of his aged and confidential associates. Who she was, was known to still fewer; but they all knew, and she knew herself, that she was not the daughter of the brigand Peppè Tosco. It was a strange caprice of fortune, to bring two beings so different together. Antonietta was guileless, mild, and beautiful: Peppè Tosco was crafty and savage above the rest of his gang, and ugly as the distorting hand of crime could render him; yet Antonietta loved the only protector she had ever known, and Peppè Tosco with her could at times subdue the demon within him, and treat her with a kindness that seemed entirely foreign to his nature.

It was on a fine evening in the autumn of 1809, that Peppè Tosco and Antonietta had wandered a little way from the cottage, and found themselves, towards sunset, pausing by the ruins of a fallen watch-tower, whence the view was wide and beautiful in the extreme. The plain of Sant'Eufemia lay before them, chequered with white villages and farm houses, and traversed by two loitering rivers, the Angitola and the Amato. The gulf of Sant' Eufemia opened beyond the plain, inclosing in its bosom the rocky islets of Ithacesiæ and a few white sails: far over the sea, some specks dotted the dubious horizon; these were the Lipari islands; and another spot to the

right of them, darker and higher, and which emitted a light blue smoke, was the volcanic island of Stromboli. The back-ground of the plain was formed by the dark waving forest, and the wide rushy marshes, which presented an almost impassable fosse to it; as though destined to augment its mysteries, and "make security doubly sure" to the desperate bandits who then haunted its mazes. To all the beauties of linear landscape, to the variety of wood and water, mountain and plain, was added the indescribable charm of the colouring of a southern autumn evening; the sky and the waves, in which the sun was sinking, glowed with a refulgence that only Claude Lorraine, in a few instances, has been able to imitate. Receding from that line of glory, the peaceful level of the sea was like a fairy carpet of orange and purple; the capes of the gulf, and the mountains around, glowed with hues that might suit the unfading roses of an eastern paradise; the broad shades in the plain were of the deepest purple; but where they did not fall, the vegetation, the trees, the rivers, the white churches, and cottages, were brought out with a warmth and transparency which an untravelled inhabitant of the north can never hope to conceive. But it was not the eye merely that had a banquet to feast upon,-the air was charged with an odour so sweet, so luxurious, so penetrating, that it went to the very heart; at the same time that the ear was charmed by those sounds which seem the cherished favourites of solitude. The bell of a monastery on the