"My prayer is heard! Helen! Life's cord is cut by God's own hand! May He preserve my country, and -O! trust from my youth!" He stopped he fell; and with the shock, the hastily erected scaffold shook to its foundation. The pause was dreadful. The executioner approached the prostrate chief. Helen was still locked close in his arms. The man stooped to raise his victim, but the attempt was beyond his strength. In vain he called on him to Helen- to separate, and cease from delaying the execution of the law; no voice replied, no motion answered his loud remonstrance. Gloucester, with an agitation which hardly allowed him power to speak or move, remembered the words of Wallace, "That the rope of Edward would never sully his animate body!" and, bending to his friend, he spoke ; but all was silent there. He raised the chieftain's head, and, looking on his face, found indeed the indisputable stamp of death. "There," cried he, in a burst of grief, and letting it fall again upon the insensible bosom of Helen-"there broke the noblest heart that ever beat in the breast of man!" The priests, the executioners, crowded round him at this declaration. But, while giving a command in a low tone to the warden, he took the motionless Helen in his arms, and leaving the astonished group round the noble dead, carried her from the scaffold back into the Tower. WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED. PRAED, WINTHROP MACKWORTH, an English poet; born at London, July 26, 1802; died there, July 15, 1839. He was educated at Eton and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he won many prizes for Greek odes and epigrams, and for clever verses in English, and was chief contributor to the "Etonian," a monthly paper. He was called to the bar in 1829, and in 1830 was returned to Parliament. His poetical works were written rather for amusement than as serious efforts. A complete edition of them was issued in 1864, edited by his sister, Lady Young, with a Memoir by Derwent Coleridge. Praed wrote many charades which are among the cleverest in our language. THE RED FISHERMAN. THE abbot arose, and closed his book, A starlight sky was o'er his head, A quiet breeze around; And the flowers a thrilling fragrance shed, It was not an hour, nor a scene, for aught Yet the holy man had a cloud of thought He gazed on the river that gurgled by, He clasped his gilded rosary, But he did not tell the beads; If he looked to the heaven, 't was not to invoke The Spirit that dwelleth there; If he opened his lips, the words they spoke A pious priest might the abbot seem, He had swayed the crosier well; But what was the theme of the abbot's dream, Companionless, for a mile or more, And rocks, whose very crags seemed bowers, But the abbot was thinking of scenery, As a lover thinks of constancy, Or an advocate of truth. He did not mark how the skies in wrath He did not mark how the mossy path And nearer he came, and still more near, The water had slept for many a year, The space of a half a rood; The surface had the hue of clay And the scent of human blood; The trees and the herbs that round it grew Were venomous and foul; And the birds that through the bushes flew Were the vulture and the owl; The water was as dark and rank As ever a Company pumped; And the perch, that was netted and laid on the bank, Grew rotten while it jumped: And bold was he who thither came At midnight, man or boy; For the place was cursed with an evil name, And that name was "The Devil's Decoy!" The abbot was weary as abbot could be, And he sat down to rest on the stump of a tree, Was it a song, or was it a moan? "Oh, oh! Oh, oh! Above, below! Lightly and brightly they glide and go; And the life-blood colder run: You would have sworn, as you looked on them, There was turning of keys, and creaking of locks, It seemed not such to the abbot's eye; |