MODERN MEDIÆVALISM.

CHAPTER I.

It was on a nocturnal night in autumnal October; the wet rain fell in liquid quantities, and the thunder rolled in an awful and Ossianly manner. The lowly but peaceful inhabitants of a small but decent cottage were just sitting down to their homely but wholesome supper, when a loud knocking at the door alarmed them. Bertram armed himself with a ladle. “Lack-a-daisy!” cried old Margueritone, and little Billy seized the favourable moment to fill his mouth with meat. Innocent fraud! happy childhood!

Bertram then opened the door, when, lo! pale, breathless, dripping, and with a look that would have shocked the Royal Humane Society, a beautiful female tottered into the room. “Lack-a-daisy! ma’am,” said Margueritone, “are you wet?” “Wet?” exclaimed the fair unknown, wringing a rivulet of rain from the corner of her robe; “O ye gods, wet!” Margueritone felt the justice, the gentleness of the reproof, and turned the subject, by recommending a glass of spirits.

The stranger sipped, shook her head, and fainted. Her hair was long and dark, and the bed was ready; so since she seems in distress, we will leave her there awhile, lest we should betray an ignorance of the world in appearing not to know the proper time for deserting people.

On the rocky summit of a beetling precipice, whose base was lashed by the angry Atlantic, stood a moated and turreted structure called Il Castello di Grimgothico. As the northern tower had remained uninhabited since the death of its late lord, Henriques de Violenci, lights and figures were, par consequence, observed in it at midnight. Besides, the black eyebrows of the present baron had a habit of meeting for several years, and quelque fois, he paced the picture-gallery with a hurried step. These circumstances combined, there could be no doubt of his having committed murder....

CHAPTER II.

One evening, the Baroness de Violenci, having sprained her left leg in the composition of an ecstatic ode, resolved not to go to Lady Penthesilea Rouge’s rout. While she was sitting alone at a plate of prawns, the footman entered with a basket, which had just been left for her. “Lay it down, John,” said she, touching his forehead with her fork. The gay-hearted young fellow did as he was desired and capered out of the room. Judge of her astonishment when she found, on opening it, a little cherub of a baby sleeping within. An oaken cross, with “Hysterica” inscribed in chalk, was appended at its neck, and a mark, like a bruised gooseberry, added interest to its elbow. As she and her lord had never had children, she determined, sur le champ, on adopting the pretty Hysterica. Fifteen years did this worthy woman dedicate to the progress of her little charge; and in that time taught her every mortal accomplishment. Her sigh, particularly, was esteemed the softest in Europe.

But the stroke of death is inevitable; come it must at last, and neither virtue nor wisdom can avoid it. In a word, the good old Baroness died, and our heroine fell senseless on her body.

But it is now time to describe our heroine. As Milton tells us that Eve was “more lovely than Pandora” (an imaginary lady who never existed but in the brains of poets), so do we declare, and are ready to stake our lives, that our heroine excelled in her form the Timinitilidi, whom no man ever saw; and in her voice, the music of the spheres, which no man ever heard. Perhaps her face was not perfect; but it was more—it was interesting—it was oval. Her eyes were of the real, original old blue; and her lashes of the best silk. You forgot the thickness of her lips in the casket of pearls which they enshrined; and the roses of York and Lancaster were united in her cheek. A nose of the Grecian order surmounted the whole. Such was Hysterica.

But, alas! misfortunes are often gregarious, like sheep. For one night, when our heroine had repaired to the chapel, intending to drop her customary tear on the tomb of her sainted benefactress, she heard on a sudden,

the distant organ peal a solemn voluntary. While she was preparing, in much terror and astonishment, to accompany it with her voice, four men in masks rushed from among some tombs and bore her to a carriage, which instantly drove off with the whole party. In vain she sought to soften them by swoons, tears, and a simple little ballad; they sat counting murders and not minding her. As the blinds of the carriage were closed the whole way, we waive a description of the country which they traversed. Besides, the prospect within the carriage will occupy the reader enough; for in one of the villains Hysterica discovered—Count Stilletto! She fainted. On the second day the carriage stopped at an old castle, and she was conveyed into a tapestried apartment—in which rusty daggers, mouldering bones, and ragged palls lay scattered in all the profusion of feudal plenty—where the delicate creature fell ill of an inverted eyelash, caused by continual weeping....

CHAPTER III.

The morning of the happy day destined to unite our lovers was ushered into the world with a blue sky, and the ringing of bells. Maidens, united in bonds of amity and artificial roses, come dancing to the pipe and tabor; while groups of children and chickens add hilarity to the union of congenial minds. On the left of the village are some plantations of tufted turnips; on the right a dilapidated dog-kennel

while everywhere the delighted eye catches monstrous mountains and minute daisies. In a word,

The procession now set forward to the church. The bride was habited in white drapery. Ten signs of the Zodiac, worked in spangles, sparkled round its edge, but Virgo was omitted at her desire, and the bridegroom proposed to dispense with Capricorn. Sweet delicacy! She held a pot of myrtle in her hand, and wore on her head a small lighted torch, emblematical of Hymen.... The marriage ceremony passed off with great spirit, and the fond bridegroom, as he pressed her to his heart, felt how pure, how delicious are the joys of virtue.

Eaton Stannard Barrett.