• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 16297 0

tried to climb the rock; he seized a shrub which had grown out of a crevice, but it was torn up by the roots, and he rolled down to the feet of Garcia, who was pursuing him. As he fell he stammered, “Noli me tangere Satanas. Vade retro.” In the meantime, the cries of Garcia had brought his comrades to his assistance. They found Uriarte lying on the ground, fear having deprived him of all consciousness. They carried him to the alcalde, mayor of Balaguer. They searched him. He wore a hair-cloth, a rosary, had a prayer-book and some hair of St. Dominick; but they also found a ponaird, four bullets wrapped in bits of linen, and a few charges of English powder in a box. His carbine was still blackened by the smoke of the powder. Uriarte, conquered by these evidences, was forced to confess his crimes.

“But how dare you,” said the magistate, “put the sign of our redemption in the hands of the victims of your wickedness? It is a little thing to kill the body, but to kill the soul is a heinous crime.”

“I carried flowers to their graves. I read prayers over them, to spare them the pains of purgatory. Immediately after death I put crosses which had been blessed in their hands, so that if they were not in a state of grace they could repel demons. But I have seen him! There he is! There he is!” said Uriarte, perceiving Garcia, who, to show the magistrate how he had escaped death, came in with his two heads. “There he is! there he is!” said Uriate; and, seized with nervous spasms, he struggled a few moments and then fell into a state of insensibility.

Uriarte, for good reasons, took exceptions to the inferiour judges, and was, at the request of the procurator-fiscal, carried before the criminal courts, where the depositions of the witnesses proved the facts which have just been related. He was, consequently, condemned to be hung, and his goods were confiscated.

E. P.

OLD ENGLISH POETRY

It should not be doubted that at least one-third of the affection with which we regard the elder poets of Great Britain should be-attributed to what is, in itself, a thing apart from poetry-we mean to the simple love of the antique-and that, again, a third of even the proper poetic sentiment inspired by their writings should be ascribed to a fact which, while it has strict connection with poetry in the abstract, and with the old British poems themselves, should not be looked upon as a merit appertaining to the authors of the poems. Almost every devout admirer of the old bards, if demanded his opinion of their productions, would mention vaguely, yet with perfect sincerity, a sense of dreamy, wild, indefinite, and he would perhaps say, indefinable delight; on being required to point out the source of this so shadowy pleasure, he would be apt to speak of the quaint in phraseology and in general handling. This quaintness is, in fact, a very powerful adjunct to ideality, but in the case in question it arises independently of the author's will, and is altogether apart from his intention. Words and their rhythm have varied. Verses which affect us to-day with a vivid delight, and which delight, in many instances, may be traced to the one source, quaintness, must have worn in the days of their construction, a very commonplace air. This is, of course, no argument against the poems now-we mean it only as against the poets thew. There is a growing desire to overrate them. The old English muse was frank, guileless, sincere, and although very learned, still learned without art. No general error evinces a more thorough confusion of ideas than the error of supposing Donne and Cowley metaphysical in the sense wherein Wordsworth and Coleridge are so. With the two former ethics were the end-with the two latter the means. The poet of the "Creation" wished, by highly artificial verse, to inculcate what he supposed to be moral truth-the poet of the "Ancient Mariner" to infuse the Poetic Sentiment through channels suggested by analysis. The one finished by complete failure what he commenced in the grossest misconception; the other, by a path which could not possibly