reason assures me is right? and, still more, shall lose you for a false whim, a-but I cannot, will not allow it". and he resumed his walk with increased agitation.

"Nay, Luther," added the gentle, insinuating Melancthon, who sat by him, "his highness, Frederic, means it for your welfare. Would you trust to the Diet before him? they have every reason to wish your ruin, he every reason to preserve you."

"My honour is in question," sharply replied Luther.

"So said John Huss, and Jerome of Prague, when called before the council of Constance they too had a safe-conduct from an emperor, yet did not that prevent the chain from girding them to the stake, or their ashes from being scattered to the winds," said Melanothon.

Luther rose and cast his eyes around, then uttered the energetic saying recorded in his life, "I am cited before the Diet-and I will attend it, were there as many devils in Worms as there are tiles on the house-tops !"

His friends, with reluctance and sorrowful forebodings, submitted to his unalterable determination.

It was a bright summer's morning, and thousands had assembled at the small city of Worms, to behold the man who, by the innate power of mind, had effected a revolution that threw into the shade the unsubstantial triumphs of conquerors, and the petty intrigues of statesmen. In a few years, the lowly student who bent, in the unconscious simplicity of his heart, at the shrine of superstition, had grown a giant in intellect, and was himself the centre to which were paid admiration and devotedness of heart exceeding what the proudest pontiff had ever received at the zenith of his power.

The contrast was the greater, when we consider that military renown was, at that time, the only avenue to distinction, except ecclesiastical preferment, and that Luther had, by the course of life prescribed to himself, not only been debarred from all eminence in that quarter, but had been forced to encounter the virulent opposition of the church, which had, until then, crushed with overwhelming weight every one who had the presumption to resist it. Till then the influence of brute force was indirectly felt in all matters of judgment in religion and politics. Compulsion followed so close upon instruction, that the alternative left no room for reasoning, and

the infallibility of the church was a dietum which many admitted with a tacit mental reservation, rather than submit to the flames. But with Luther and the early reformers began the reign of that moral influence, which, with its gentle yet controlling power, is destined to consolidate the world in harmony- that potent charm, which is daily and hourly softening the asperities of human nature, and levelling the arbitrary and artificial barriers of nationality and prejudice, till "the sword shall be changed into the pruning hook, and the nations learn war no more."

No wonder that the wise and noble, the soldier and the scholar crowded around, to behold him who had given this mighty impulse to the world, and, from the humblest condition, raised himself above the privileged of the earth. And their wonder might well increase at the sight of him, since the effects were all they could appreciate, while the causes of the mighty change lay deep, and hid from their superficial observation.

He entered Worms in the midst of a crowd so numerous that his onward motion was hardly perceptible—the roofs of the houses, the windows, and even the steeples were black with spectators, anxious to get a glimpse of the Apostle of Reformation. When he alighted at his inn, he found in attendance the most distinguished men, both military and learned, awaiting his arrival, to obtain the honour of his acquaintance; and Luther received more courteous attentions from the wise and noble than the Emperor Charles V. himself. the inherent politeness and modesty which seems ever to attend true greatness, he was not abashed by the unaccustomed sight of a court paying him homage, neither insolently puffed up by his sudden elevation, but demeaned himself with all humility and dignity.

With

He

The following day he attended the Diet-the most august body at that time ever convened in Germany, in which history recounts the names of seven electors, twenty-four dukes, eight margraves, thirty-five bishops and prelates, and five royal ambassadors, besides many other personages of distinction. entered the assembly with dignity and composure, and took his place near his patron, the Elector of Saxony. Cardinal Cajetan, the pope's legate, then rose and read a long list of charges against him, in which the most opprobrious personalities were mixed with sophistical

assumptions of papal authority, and concluded with demanding an unconditional recantation.

After the cardinal had finished, the eyes of the Diet were turned on Luther. He rose and advanced to the table in the hall then taking in his hands a copy of the scriptures, he replied in the memorable saying prefixed to this hasty sketch, and which is usually found beneath his portrait, "Here I stand-I cannot alter -so help me God-Amen."

His opponents were struck dumb with astonishment-he hastily left the Diet.

CHAPTER VII.

THE eyes of the world were now fixed upon Luther; he had not shrunk from the ordeal which his enemies fondly hoped would annihilate his influence, but came out from the trial unscathed and confirmed in resolution. His success only served to increase the malevolence of his opponents, and the emperor was beset with ecclesiastics, endeavouring to procure an annulment of the safe conduct, which alone shielded him from the arm of secular violence. Charles resisted their dishonourable requests, and they determined by private means to accomplish what they could not effect by open solicitation. In accordance with this design, they stationed a body of soldiers in ambuscade, near the road which Luther was to take on his return from Worms, with orders to grant no quarter to him or his escort. They trusted, in the event of the success of the stratagem, to make it appear that he had fallen by the hands of a band of robbers, many of whom, at that time, infested Western Germany. But providence overruled their nefarious design. A retainer of the elector of Saxony overhearing them while exulting in the prospect of its certain accomplishment, informed his master, and Frederic, disguising himself and a chosen number of friends in masks, followed after Luther and his company, who had departed a few hours before. They came up with them a short distance from the place of the enemies' ambush, and rushing from a wood that skirted the road, took the whole party prisoners. After many rude interrogatories, and studied insults and injuries, in order to deceive his companions, they dismissed the remainder of his attendants, and taking with them Luther and one friend, conducted them to the castle of Wartburg, a secluded fortress of the Elector.

There the mask was removed, and the

true reason of the procedure made known to Luther.

In this quiet retreat he remained undiscovered, while Germany resounded with his fame, and his doctrines were taking fast root in the affections of the people. There he employed his time in composing homilies, and in the great work of translating the Bible into German, which herculean task he accomplished alone; and, by so doing, gave a fatal blow to the papal supremacy, which suffered none but the Latin vulgate, and thus kept the mass of the people in abject ignorance of the Scriptures.

A SKETCH OF PARIS.

To those of our readers who have not visited Paris, the following fragment may be interesting.

The Paris houses are four, five, six, seven stories high. Then there are elegantly furnished rooms "plus haut!" up stairs.

The entresol is a division between the stories; a low, dark, horrid place. So a regular Paris hotel may be said to be fourteen or sixteen stories high. The steps and halls are either of polished bricks or of marble, tesselated by squares of black and white. You must commence the ascent slowly.

The concierge, or porter, is a person who, with his family, lives in a box of a room at the entrance, by the front door (a huge, double gate, like that of a walled town) to answer strangers, receive cards, etc. There he is, all day and night, watching through a hole in the wall, like the aperture through which the ticket vender sells tickets at the theatre. You enter the hotel from the street by an immense gate, which also admits carriages into the court, and generally there is a gutter pouring out through the entry. Inquiring for a friend, the concierge directs you to his division of the house, and up you mount, with aching knees and panting breast, wandering about and bewildered in a wilderness of halls, and apartments, soon losing the account of each stage or entresol, and sometimes when you fancy yourself in the fifth, amazed to find yourself only au second. It is an odd piece of extravagance, a Paris hotel.

The Rue Rivoli, Place Vendôme and Boulevards, are the inhabitable parts of Paris, all the rest is frightful; or, at the least, can be reached only through almost impenetrable avenues of mud. Some of the streets are so narrow as to

be in fact but alleys. Then the immense height of the walls on each side of the eternally overshadowed streets, which by some mysterious influence are perpetually inundated with a black, thick, sloppy, slimy substance, between mud, water, and offals. The pavement slopes down each side to the centre, along which a gutter, broad and noisome, for ever stagnates, except when the wheels or hoofs of the ever-flowing tide of vehicles and beasts, carriages, cabs, diligences, asses, horses, etc. etc., disturb and distribute upon unwary passengers and upon the sides of the dwellings, their offensive waters. You enter the Palais Royal through such a place. On all sides it is flanked by scenes of repulsive misery, damps, filth and gloom, which cause the amazed stranger to recoil. In many of these dens of beggary and disease, people are born, live and die, almost without beholding the sunshine and the sky, or feeling the balmy blessing of the fresh air. Here also are thousands of shops, some of only sufficient dimensions to admit the single person of the keeper, others ample and elegant. The mighty mass of human beings are ever swarming and clustering like bees-countless throngs of women without hat or mantle, neatly, and some beautifully attired, with caps of snowy white, and the snowy stocking unsoiled amid the filth. Here, too, are seen forms of another sort, gaunt, ragged wretches; crippled, starved, and every way blasted with time and chance; half clad, and horrid creatures, whom water has not visited, nor the sweet breeze of heaven touched for years. Among them now lightly rolls the superb equipage of a noble, the lovely mistress reclining upon velvet, with a well-fed lap-dog by her side. Now the ponderous diligence or omnibus thunders and splashes among the shrinking crowd; and again a military horseman, on some message of haste, dashes through, his burnished arms glancing in the shadows. On the side walks (which when there are any at all, are scarcely wide enough for two persons) ever and anon paces a stern sentinel, the bayonet glittering at his shoulder, the silent representative of the present powers till Louis Philippe is swept away, with Marie Antoinette, Robespierre, and Napoleon, among the rubbish of the past.

At length we reached the grande poste, and entered the court amid a world of diligences, passing in and out, and a crowd of heavily-booted postilions, with whip in hand, ready to start with new mails, or resting after a night's ride.

The good gentlemen who ́attend in the little office of the Poste Restante, are fair specimens of the French people in any authority, whom I had met with from Marseilles or Geneva to Nantes. All the diligence - office keepers, the maîtres d'hôtel, the conducteurs, etc. etc. etc., being peculiarly cross, rude and disobliging. After a longer subsequent residence in Paris, I was absolutely obliged to have my letters directed to my banker. The worthy official was snappy, and snarling at a pretty girl with a journal in his hand-angry at being interrupted in a paragraph. He assured me very rudely that there was nothing for me, but upon my insisting on an examination, he looked grumblingly and found one! The French politeness as a national characteristic, like the horizon, has always receded from my approach. But there is a vast deal of manner. A shopkeeper will overwhelm you with bows and smiles, but their solicitations are often intrusive, and sometimes impertinent. T. S. F.

NOTES OF A READER.

We have received a few sheets of a work shortly to be published, entitled "Ship and Shore, or Journal of a cruise to the Levant;" from which we take the following extract, descriptive of a lady of Malaga:

"Before leaving this ancient town of Spain, I must pause a moment at the Alemeda, the most attractive spot in Malaga. This green promenade, shaded with orange and oleander trees, occupies a spacious place, in the most elegant portion of the city. It is ornamented with a superb fountain, overshowering its refreshing waters among groups of marble statues, which have all the frolic and garmentless glee of the bath! This fountain was a present, from the republic of Genoa, to the emperor Charles the fifth; and after having passed through the vicissitudes of being captured by an Algerine corsair, and of fortunately being retaken, was brought to this port, and finally placed where it now stands. But the Alemeda, at the purpling twilight, has a still lovelier sight than this. It is not beauty in the changeless representations of marble, but in the full pulse and play of real life. At this mellowing hour, the fair Malaguena may be seen, gliding away with the family group, from the restricted corridor, to this more ample and animating promenade. Her mantilla falls in light flowing folds over the glossy clusters of her raven locks,

and seems so attracted by the charms which it half conceals, that it scarcely needs even the delicate confinement of the jewelled hand, that now and then adjusts its condition. Her basquinia, with its deep tasseled festoons, falls from the cincture of the slight waist, in spreading adaptation to the fuller developments of her form, down to an ancle, over which it scarcely consents to extend the obscuring veil of its drapery. Her small, round foot, which seems at every moment in the act of leaping from its little slipper, leaves the earth, and lights upon it again, with most exquisite grace and precision. Her countenance, ever partaking more of thoughtfulness than mirth, has the carnation melting through the transparent cheek-the slumber of a smile around the lip; and the tender light of a full, black, overpowering eye.

"As she floats along, she casts upon you, if an intimate, a look of the most glad and sparkling recognition; if a stranger, a look that lingers on your heart long after the beautiful being herself may have passed away. It is precisely such a look as one would wear, who is pleased that there is just such a being as yourself in the world, and is happy in passing you this once, though she may never meet you again. It may, perhaps, be owing to my unfamiliarity with the world; but I did not suppose it possible for a person to find, in a land of strangers, that which could so allure him to the spot, and strike to his inmost sensibilities-as what one must experience who puts his foot within the sweet environs of Malaga.

"But there are other engaging objects at sunset in this Alemeda. Groups of sweetly-clad children frolic hand in hand, up and down its floating area: while the little miss of ten, under a less reserve than her senior sister, smiles up to you, with a countenance full of light and gladness. You feel half disposed to recognize this infantine pleasure, in the liberties of a kiss, but not venturing so far, you pass on, only to encounter again the same captivating scene. You meet also, at every turn, a cleanly clad individual, ready to help you to a glass of fresh water, a rich ice cream, or one ready with his little flambeau, to light your cigar. Under the shade of the orange and oleander, you pass social groups, on their circling chairs, holding their free tertulia, where every topic takes its light and transient turn. From everything that you see, your impression is, that the little embarrassments imposed by adventitious superiority are here laid aside

that artificial restraints are forgottenthat heart meets heart, and that many, without being the less wise, are rendered the more happy by such pastimes.

"We had taken leave of these gay groups, and turned to depart to our boats, which were waiting at the beach, when another scene, and one that strangely contrasted with those around, arrested our steps. It would seem as if it had come only to remind us of the fleeting nature of the objects that we had been admiring, to tell us that all this brightness and beauty, which our feelings had almost exempted from tears and decay, must pass down under the cloud of the grave. It came nearer, and now with a step mournful and slow entered the Alemeda; this place, but a moment since so full of life, voices and mirth, was now hushed, while every ear was turned to the low anthem of the dead. The youth and drapery of those who numerously followed the bier, told that it was to a sister's worth, that they were paying these last sad rites. It seemed as if I had known that young being-as if I had of ten encountered her youthful face, heard her voice, and seen her die! "But yesterday and thou wert bright,

As rays that fringe the early cloud; Now lost to life, to love and light,

Wrapt in the winding-sheet and shroud; And darkly o'er thee, broods the pall, While faint and low thy dirge is sung; And warm and fast around thee fall,

Tears of the beautiful and young. "No more, sweet one! on thee, no more Will break the day-dawn fresh and fair; No more the purple twilight pour

Its softness round thy raven hair; No more beneath thy magic hand,

Will wake the lyre's responsive lay; Or round its rings the wreath expand, To crown a sister's natal day. "Yet as the sweet surviving vine

Around the bough that buds no more, Will still its tender leaves entwine,

And bloom as freshly as before; So fond affection still will shed

The light on thee it used to wear, And plant its roses round thy bed,

To breathe in fragrant beauty there."

TIME.-Time is the cradle of hope, and the grave of existence. It deprives beauty of its charms, while it transfers them to her picture.

THE Italians were the first of the moderns to attempt canals. The grand canal at Milan was made navigable in 1271.

A FORTNIGHT

IN THE BASQUE COUNTRY.

TRANSLATED FROM PROSPER DE LAGARDE.

(Continued from page 267.)

CHAPTER II.

The Basques-Antiquity of their civilizationLanguage and manners-Character.

Ir is singular that amongst the numerous travellers who have written about the Pyrenees, and the mineral springs abounding in these mountains, with their scenery and natural beauties, so few are to be found who have been tempted to visit that remote corner of the Lower Pyrenees, called the Basque Country; or at least, who have given a description of it in their books. And yet the Basques, to the number of about seven or eight hundred thousand (including the Spanish Basques) are a distinct little race, well deserving some attention.

Not that their manners and customs are now absolutely local, at least as regards the French part, or that the Basques decidedly differ in any thing from the Bearnese, and the neighbouring Gascons, unless it be in their passion for the game of tennis. But their language, the formation of which is unknown, and the antiquity beyond calculation, and that, a fact almost incredible, has preserved its purity from all mixture with that of their neighbours; this kind of isolation of language in the midst of a civilization pressing round them on every side; the vivacity peculiar to them; even the style of their physiognomy, that has kept its originality almost as uncontaminated as their idiom; their ancient bravery; the part they formerly filled when they occupied a large territory, all that relates to them, is calculated to excite interest and curiosity.

The origin of the Basques is lost in the shadows of time. Historians have formed a thousand conjectures in regard to them. All that is known positively about it is, that the Basques of to-day are descended from the ancient inhabitants of the Peninsular of Hispaniola. They are the posterity of those wild Cantabrians, who before they became the allies of the Romans, had long fought against them, and so valiantly, that the latter were unable completely to subjugate them, even when the whole of Europe was under their yoke. In after times, pursued and on every side surrounded by the innumerable tribes of Goths and Saracens who had invaded

Spain, defending themselves foot by foot without ever consenting to be conquered, they were reduced to retreat to their possessions in the mountains which they still inhabit. There they entrenched themselves, as behind impregnable ramparts.

It was about this period that they left the name of Cantabrians for that of Escualdurac, their true Basque name, and whence their language has taken the denomination of Escuara.

But whence came these ancient Cantabrians themselves, who were evidently the ancestors of the present Basques? It is here that the question becomes more obscure. The Romans knew them such as we now see their descendants; without precise ideas of their origin, without monuments, history, or traditions, and having nothing in common with their neighbours. They found them as in our days, forming a race unique and separate, speaking a language unknown to the rest of the world; a language reduced to the slender vocabulary required by their simple and modest life, yet preserving in its mechanism incontestable, though weakened traces of a highly advanced anterior civilization.

M. de Humboldt considers the Basque language as of the highest antiquity. He relates on this subject, that in conversations with Indians sheltering in the Cordilleras, as to whether they considered themselves the ancient inhabitants of that country, he was answered no, that they had been preceded by another race name Astegui; now this is a Basque name signifying the first.

The learned have discovered in the Hebrew, Basque radicals, particularly in the names of the countries and mountains of Asia, and have hence supposed the origin of this nation to be mingled with that of the Hebrews. There are indeed, on this subject singular analogies. Thus Mount Ararat, where the ark rested after the flood, is a Basque word signifying, there it is, let us go there. Armenia is another Basque word signifying, within reach. The eldest son of Noah was called Shem: in the Basque, Shem means son, issue of.

Amona, a town of the tribe of Reuben, is composed of two Basque words, meaning good mother, am mother, and ona good.

It would be easy to multiply citations, did I not fear to make of this chapter a fragment of a dictionary; the above are sufficient to explain to a certain point, the assertion of the erudite, that the formation of the Basque language goes