With stern and anxious glance gazed back upon
The bleeding body-but it moved no more.
Sieg. Oh! God of fathers!

Gabor. I beheld his features

As I see yours-but yours they were not, though
Resembling them—behold them in Count Ulric's!
Sieg. This is so-

Gabor. [Interrupting him.] Nay, but hear me to the end!
Now you must do so.
I conceived myself

Betrayed by you and him (for now I saw
There was some tie between you) into this
Pretended den of refuge, to become

The victim of your guilt; and my first thought
Was vengeance: but, though armed with a short poniard
(Having left my sword without), I was no match
For him at any time, as had been proved

That morning—either in address or force.

I turned and fled-i' the dark: chance rather than
Skill made me gain the secret door of the hall,
And thence the chamber where you slept: if I
Had found you waking, heaven alone can tell

What vengeance and suspicion might have prompted;
But ne'er slept guilt as Werner slept that night.

Sieg. And yet I had horrid dreams! and such brief sleep, Then stars had not gone down when I awoke.

Why didst thou spare me?

And now my dream is out!

Gabor. 'Tis not my fault,

I dreamt of my

If I have read it.—Well, I fled and hid me—
Chance led me here after so many moons-
And showed me Werner in Count Siegendorf!
Werner, whom I had sought in huts in vain,
Inhabited the palace of a sovereign!

father

You sought me and have found me-now you know
My secret, and may weigh its worth.

Sieg. [After a pause.] Indeed!

Gabor. Is it revenge or justice which inspires

Your meditation?

Sieg. Neither. I was weighing

The value of your secret.

Gabor. You shall know it

At once ;- -When you were poor, and I, though poor,
Rich enough to relieve such poverty

As might have envied mine, I offered you

My purse-you would not share it :-I'll be franker
With you you are wealthy, noble, trusted by
The imperial powers-you understand me?

Sieg. Yes.

Gabor. Not quite. You think me venal, and scarce true :

'Tis no less true, however, that my fortunes

Have made me both at present. You shall aid me;

I would have aided you-and also have

Been somewhat damaged in my name to save

Yours and your son's. Weigh well what I have said.

BYRON.

323

HUMOROUS PIECES.

ADDRESS TO AN EGYPTIAN MUMMY.

Extracted, by permission of Henry Colburn, Esq., from the late HORACE SMITH'S " Gaieties and Gravities."

AND thou hast walked about (how strange a story!)
In Thebes' street three thousand years ago;
When the Memnonium was in all its glory,
And Time had not begun to overthrow
Those temples, palaces, and piles stupendous,
Of which the very ruins are tremendous.

Speak for thou long enough hast acted dummy,-
Thou hast a tongue, come, let us hear its tune;
Thou'rt standing on thy legs, above ground, Mummy!
Revisiting the glimpses of the moon,

Not like thin ghosts or disembodied creatures,
But with thy bones, and flesh, and limbs, and features.

Tell us, for doubtless thou canst recollect,

To whom should we assign the Sphinx's fame ? Was Cheops or Cephrenes architect,

Of either pyramid that bears his name?

Is Pompey's Pillar really a misnomer?

Had Thebes a hundred gates, as sung by Homer?

Perhaps thou wert a mason, and forbidden

By oath, to tell the mysteries of thy trade; Then say what secret melody was hidden

In Memnon's statue, which at sun-rise played? Perhaps thou wert a priest, and hast been dealing In human blood, and horrors past revealing.

Perchance that very hand, now pinioned flat,
Has hob-a-nobbed with Pharaoh, glass to glass;
Or dropped a halfpenny in Homer's hat,

Or doffed thine own to let Queen Dido pass,
Or held, by Solomon's own invitation,
A torch at the great temple's dedication.

I need not ask thee if that hand, when armed,
Has any Roman soldier mauled or knuckled,
For thou wert dead and buried, and embalmed,
Ere Romulus and Remus had been suckled!
Antiquity appears to have begun,

Long after thy primeval race was run.

Thou couldst develop, if that withered tongue
Might tell us what those sightless orbs have seen,
How the world looked when it was fresh and young,
And the great deluge still had left it green;
Or was it then so old that history's pages
Contained no record of its early ages?

Still silent, incommunicative elf!

Art sworn to secresy? then keep thy vows; But prythee tell us something of thyself,

Reveal the secrets of thy prison-house!

Since in the world of spirits thou hast slumbered,

What thou hast seen, what strange adventures numbered?

Since first thy form was in this box extended,

We have, above-ground, seen some strange mutations; The Roman empire has begun and ended,

New worlds have risen-we have lost old nationsAnd countless kings have into dust been humbled, While not a fragment of thy flesh has crumbled.

Didst thou not hear the pother o'er thy head,
When the great Persian conqueror, Cambyses,
Marched armies o'er thy tomb with thundering tread,
O'erthrew Osiris, Orus, Apis, Isis,

And shook the pyramids with fear and wonder,
When the gigantic Memnon fell asunder?

If the tomb's secrets may not be confessed,
The nature of thy private life unfold:

A heart has throbbed beneath that leathern breast,
And tears adown the dusty cheek have rolled,

Have children climbed those knees, and kissed that face? What was thy name and station, age and race?

Statue of flesh-Immortal of the dead!
Imperishable type of evanescence!

Posthumous man, who quitt'st thy narrow bed,
And standest undecayed within our presence,
Thou wilt hear nothing till the judgment morning,
When the great trump shall thrill thee with its warning!

Why should this worthless tegument endure,

If its undying guest be lost for ever?

O let us keep the soul embalmed and pure

In living virtue; that, when both must sever, Although corruption may our frame consume, The immortal spirit in the skies may

bloom!

HORACE SMITH.

THERE

BULLUM v. BOATUM.

were two farmers; farmer A. and farmer B. Farmer A. was seised or possessed of a bull; farmer B. was seised or possessed of a ferry-boat. Now the owner of the ferry-boat, having made his boat fast to a post on shore, with a piece of hay, twisted rope-fashion, or, as we say, vulgo vocato, a hayband; after he had made his boat fast to a post on shore (as it was very natural for a hungry man to do), he went up town to dinner: farmer A.'s bull (as it was very natural for a hungry bull to do), came down town to look for a dinner; and observing, discovering, seeing, and spying out, some turnips in the bottom of the ferryboat, the bull scrambled into the ferry-boat-he ate up the turnips, and, to make an end of his meal, fell to work upon the hayband. The boat, being eaten from its moorings, floated down the river with the bull in it: it struck against a rock, beat a hole in the bottom of the boat, and tossed