"Elphin and Teithrin stood some time on the floor of the hall before they attracted the attention of Seithenyn, who, during the chorus, was tossing and flourishing his golden goblet. The chorus had scarcely ended when he noticed them, and immediately roared aloud, "You are welcome all four.'-Elphin answered, 'We thank you: we are but two.'-Two or four,' said Seithenyn, 'all is one. You are welcome all. When a stranger enters, the custom is, in other places, to begin by washing his feet. My custom is, to begin by washing his throat. Seithenyn ap Seithyn bids you welcome.'

Seithenyn does not partake of the alarm felt by his master; he admits that some parts of the embankment are rotten, but declares that the whole works well. A storm, however, arises, and threatens the most serious mischief.—“A portion of the castle wall fell into the mining waves, and, by the dim and thickly clouded moonlight, and the red blaze of the beacon fire, they beheld a torrent pouring in from the sea upon the plain, and rushing immediately beneath the walls, which, as well as the points of the embankment that formed the sides of the breach, continued to crumble away into the waters.Who has done this?' vociferated Seithenyn; show me the enemy.' -There is no enemy but the sea,' said Elphin, to which you, in your drunken madness, have abandoned the land. Think, if you can think, of what is passing in the plain. The storm drowns the cries of your victims: but the curses of the perishing are upon you.'- Show me the enemy,' exclaimed Seithenyn, flourishing his sword more furiously. The fair Angharad looked deprecatingly at Elphin, who abstained from farther reply. There is no enemy but the sea,' said Teithrin, against which your sword avails not.'-Who dares to say so?' said Seithenyn. Who dares to say that there is an enemy on earth against whom the sword of Seithenyn is unavailing? Thus, thus I prove the falsehood.' -And, springing suddenly forward, he leaped into the torrent, Hourishing his sword as he descended.-'Oh, my unhappy father! sobbed Angharad, veiling her face with her arm on the shoulder of one of her female attendants, whom Elphin dexterously put aside, and substituted himself as the supporter of the desolate beauty. —'We must quit the

castle,' said Teithrin, or we shall be buried in its ruins. We have but one path of safety, along the summit of the embankment, if there be not another breach between us and the high land, and if we can keep our footing in this hurricane. But there is no alternative. The walls are melting away like snow.'

"The bard, beginning to be perfectly alive to his own personal safety, conscious at the same time that the first duty of his privileged order was to animate the less-gifted multitude by examples of right conduct in trying emergencies, was the first to profit by Teithrin's admonition, and to make the best of his way through the door that opened to the embankment, on which he had no sooner set his foot than he was blown down by the wind, his harp-strings ringing as he fell. He was indebted to the impediment of his harp for not being rolled down the mound into the waters which were rising within. Teithrin picked him up, and admonished him to abandon his harp to its fate, and fortify his steps with a spear. The bard murmured objections; and even the reflection that he could more easily get another harp than another life, did not reconcile him to parting with his beloved companion. He got over the difficulty by slinging his harp, cumbrous as it was, to his left side, and taking a spear in his right hand.

The

Angharad, recovering from the first shock of Seithenyn's catastrophe, became awake to the imminent danger. spirit of the Cymric female, vigilant and energetic in peril, disposed her and her attendant maidens to use their best exertions for their own preservation. Following the advice and example of Elphin and Teithrin, they armed themselves with spears, which they took down from the walls. Teithrin led the way, striking the point of his spear firmly into the earth, and leaning from it on the wind: Angharad retreated in the same manner: Elphin followed Angharad, looking as earnestly to her safety as was compatible with a moderate care of his own; and the bard, whom the result of his first experiment had rendered unambitious of the van, followed the female attendants. The next were the cup-bearers, whom the accident of sobriety had qualified to march; and behind them reeled and roared those of the bacchanal rout who were able and willing to move; those more especially who had wives or

daughters to support their tottering steps. Some were incapable of locomotion, and others, in the heroic madness of liquor, sat down to await their destiny, as they finished the half-drained vessels. The bard, who had somewhat of a picturesque eye, could not help sparing a little leisure from the care of his body, to observe the effects before him ;-the volumed blackness of the storm, the white bursting of the breakers in the faint moonlight, the rushing and rising of the waters within the mound, the long floating hair and waving drapery of the young women, the red light of the beacon fire falling on them from behind, the surf rolling up and breaking almost at their feet, and the spray flying above their heads.

"Thus they began their march. They had not proceeded far, when the tide began to recede, the wind to abate somewhat of its violence, and the moon to look on them at intervals through the rifted clouds, disclosing the desolation of the inundated plain, silvering the tumult uous surf, gleaming on the distant mountains, and revealing a lengthened prospect of their solitary path, that lay in its irregular line like a riband on the deep."

This alarm, after all, has not a ruinous effect. The remaining energy of the country withstands the force of the tempest; and that, we trust, will be the case with the British empire.

CLEONE, OR THE PICTURE,

a romantic Story.*

NICON, king of Lycia, was celebrated for his skill and valor as a military commander, and his wisdom and justice as a ruler; and the waters of the Mediterranean, in which his palace was reflected, were daily traversed by vessels from distant lands bringingmerchants, suppliants, sages, and ambassadors, to the throne of the king. He had passed the middle period of life when his queen died. The corpse was laid on a bier in the hall of the palace, and the subjects of the king assembled to honor the funeral. Flowers were thickly strewn; and loud cries of lamentation burst from the multitude, mingled with the groans of Nicon, and the sobs of his daughter Cleone and his son Phincus. At the same time, in the

From the Athenæum,

pauses of the shrieks and wailings, a low and constant song was heard to be murmured, which sounded like a mixture of threats and prophecies; but no one could catch the import of the words, or knew the language to which they belonged. All were silent, and turned their eyes to the spot from which the song seemed to proceed. Its tones became wilder and more vehement; the crowd shrank from a part of the vast room, and trembling fingers were pointed to a dim recess in the wall. In this the outline of a female figure was faintly visible. It began to move; and the singer came forward with slow steps, which gradually were quickened as her song grew swollen and hurried. Her face was almost covered by a thick veil which shaded her brow, and by a mantle which was raised high above her bosom. But her eyes were seen to glance fiercely at the king and his children, and sometimes glared with a look of triumph at the unmoving and covered body. Still the phrensied chant went on; and, when she approached any of the spectators, they started from her as if she had been a panther from the wilderness, or a gliding serpent. She had nearly gone round the room when she approached the bier. She took from under her veil a chaplet of dark leaves, and was about to fling it among the garlands heaped upon the pall, when Nicon rushed to her, and seised her arm. She fixed her eyes on him for an instant, and shook off his grasp; and, while he sank upon a seat, she threw down the gloomy wreath, and sang at the fiercest pitch of her deep voice. Her long dark hair fell almost to her feet; and she whirled around in a frightful ecstasy, which seemed impelled by a stronger and more terrible spirit than that of our earthly nature. She thus rushed through the throng, which dispersed itself like leaves before the north-wind, and in another instant she was gone. Before she disappeared, every garland but her own had withered; and, when they raised the pall, the beautiful corpse below had shrunk and faded into a sallow mummy.

Months passed away, and, on the bridal day of Cleone, a tall and darkeyed woman approached the palace, sitting in a sculptured and gilded car, drawn by sable steeds, nobler than any in Lycia. She presented magnificent gifts to the bride; and the king received, as a

princess, the visitor who brought with her so many evidences of her power and rank. It was observed, however, that he sometimes trembled under her look; and his attendants whispered, that the proud and fearless Nicon had never before been seen to quail in any human presence but that of this mysterious stranger. That evening, in the midst of the rejoicing, Cleone died. The kingdom was filled with lamentation. But, ere many weeks passed, it was called on to make merry at the marriage of its sovereign with Mycalé. She was of a stately beauty, which few men loved to look upon; and she was conspicuous for the haughtiness of her air, and the boldness with which she guided her black coursers among the mountains, and along the margin of the sea. Many rumors were uttered; and it was said, that, in a night of tempest, she had been seen on the highest tower of the palace, her dark hair streaming round her, and the lightening innocently flashing on her brow. Her song, it was reported, had been heard in the pauses of the gale, and dark or fiery shapes had echoed it from the clouds. She collected around her a troop of bold men, and their captain, a barbarian from the mountains, who through her influence had been pardoned by Nicon, when accused of robbery, was now said to be her paramour.

At a great religious festival, the king suddenly flung off his diadem, overthrew the altar, and, by his gestures and speech, was evidently a maniac. Phineus was still a boy, and Mycalé obtained the supreme power. She confined her step-son in a small apartment, looking out on an enclosed garden, and never let him be seen by those whom he might be called upon to govern. But the phrensy of Nicon was ostentatiously displayed, and horror was frequently excited by the exhibition of his strange insanity.

Phineus lived a melancholy prisoner. His mind was filled with reflections on his dead mother and his maniac father. But, above all, he thought of his lovely and beloved sister, who had perished so suddenly. As he sat in his solitary chamber, or cultivated the flowers of his garden, his constant attendant was the image of Cleone. He brooded over her memory until at last it became so vivid that he resolved to give it an outward expression. He endeavoured to paint the portrait of his sister; and many days

were employed in laboring, effacing, and again delineating, while the lines and colors maddened him by their feebleness and insufficiency; and many nights he lay awake cherishing his recollection of the beautiful maiden, and comparing it in thought with the faint ineffectual form which alone he had been able to create. The longing to accomplish his purpose became the master-passion of his mind. In the shapes of trees and clouds his eye traced out only the lines which bore some relation to those he wished to express in his picture. The colors of the world, the rays of light, had scarcely any interest for him but that which they derived from their resemblance to the hues of his pencil. But still every effort was baffled; and the imperfect shapes which he successively evoked seemed all alike to exist for no other end than to mock and torment him; the disgust at the imperfection of each attempt added eagerness to the labor with which he destroyed it, and sought to substitute another. In the course of the many months which were occupied in this pursuit, he was frequently tempted to give up the project in despair. But the haunting image of Cleone returned to him amid his relaxations and his dreams with so bright an aspect of reality, that he started from his idle mood, or rushed from his couch at midnight, and again drew, with tremulous and burning fingers, an outline which his heart, at the moment, told him would prove as inadequate as all its predecessors. He tried to represent the maiden in her bridal dress, with jewels sparkling on her neck, and a garland of white violets around her hair; but the eyes, so full of love and gentleness, the flushed cheek, the form bending with emotion, like a lily bowed by the weight of its own beauty, he could not with all his skill properly exhibit.

He commonly labored in a room of which the door was left open, so as to show the corridor without, and beyond it the tranquil and flowery garden. When his exhausted heart and failing hand no longer would sustain the labor he imposed upon them, and his eyes were weary of that chaos of color from which he had been toiling to educe what for him was an universe, he looked from the tablet and the walls to the clear deep air of heaven, and the little realm of silent life, which was filled with his bushes and blossoms, and peopled only

by the wren and the butterfly. To this prospect his eyes were turned, after an attempt at painting so unsuccessful that the youth at last burst into tears. The evening had sailed along the sky, and steeped the earth in silvery twilight, and the stars were glittering brightly above the cypresses, poplars, and holm-oaks, which hid the garden wall. Amid these constellations, it appeared to him that a patch of air became suddenly darker and more definite. It moulded itself into shape and color; and Phineus beheld his sister. The form was that of Cleone, growing like a fair plant out of the heavens, and surrounded by the radiance of the quiet stars. She seemed to be imbued with their thin splendor; the last light of sunset was on her cheek, and her aerial locks were still surrounded by the wreath of pearly violets. Her eyes were fixed on him; and gradually she seemed to detach herself from the empyrean, and approach more nearly to the earth. She floated in the middle air; and he thought that her garments were faintly stirred by the breeze which he heard cooing among the trees beneath her. When he would have called to her, she seemed to shrink back toward the sky, and to diminish from his view; but, when he surveyed her with serene and motionless delight, she grew forth again into definite, though stili visionary, beauty, until he almost believed that her feet, white and filmy as wandering gossamer, touched the topmost foliage of the dark trees in his garden. He gazed for many minutes, and persuaded himself that the eyes of Cleone glanced from his face to the tablet from which he had just effaced her portrait. He seised his pencil, and renewed his labor with all the earnestness of the enchanter in framing the talisman which is to give him immortal youth, wealth without end, and power without limits. Every mo ment he lifted his eyes to heaven, and still Cleone was before him. His work brightened beneath his hand, and the lamp which burned beside him seemed to emit a clearer and more genial light than it had ever supplied before. He had wrought for a considerable time, when the moon rose, and, as its light pervaded the atmosphere, the figure dissolved into air. That night, the first for many months, Phineus slept calmly and happily, and in the morning he awoke refreshed. His painting appeared to

him more faithful, brilliant, and expressive, than he had ever dreamed of making it. He refrained from using his pencil, fearing that a touch might injure the magic woof he had already woven. All day he passed in his garden; his flowers had never appeared to him so exquisite, nor the sound of the waves so pregnant with music. He looked long at the region of the sky in which his sister had appeared to him; but nothing was visible except the bright blue depths, filled with sunshine, traversed by silken fragments of thin cloud, or skimmed by glancing birds. He placed his painting in the corridor; and many times, while he lay upon the grass, and imbibed the transparent noontide, he turned his eyes upon the tablet which bore so precious and potent a record of the event of the previous evening. As the day declined, his thoughts became more and more anxious; and when, at last, the sun had set, no racer at the games ever stood prepared to start with a look of keener expectation, or with the blood coursing more wildly through his limbs, and eddying more hotly at his heart. Again, at the same spot of heaven, and encircled by the same constellations, Cleone was visible. The moon rose later than before: and until its disk appeared, Phineus toiled delightedly at the picture. The third night, she appeared again; and, when the dimness of the air began to brighten in the moonshine, he thought that her face grew sad, and that, by a slight gesture of the hand and head, she indicated that she would appear no more. With a sigh he dropped his pencil, as she melted into the heavens: and, for some moments, he forgot that the picture was now completed, and that it displayed his sister even more perfectly and intensely beautiful than he had ever seen her when on earth.

The celestial figure had not long vanished, when a storm arose, and the moon was hidden in darkness. He turned from the agony of the elements without, and gazed upon that adored image which had power to withdraw his heart from every thing but the contemplation of its own loveliness, and the innumerable happy remembrances connected with it; but his attention to the outward world was soon excited, for it seemed to him that, in a brief pause of the tempest, he heard the well-remembered voice of Mycalè chanting her wild incantations.