LXXVI.

At eve?-oh!-through all hours!-from dark dreams oft
Awakening, I look forth, and learn the might
Of solitude, while thou art breathing soft,

And low, my loved one! on the breast of night :
I look forth on the stars-the shadowy sleep
Of forests-and the lake, whose gloomy deep
Sends up red sparkles to the fire-flies' light.
A lonely world!-ev'n fearful to man's thought,
But for His presence felt, whom here my soul hath sought.

NOTES

TO

THE FOREST SANCTUARY.

Note 1, page 181, line 23.

And sighing through the feathery canes, &c. The canes in some parts of the American forests form a thick undergrowth for many hundred miles.-See Hodgson's Letters from North America, vol. i. p. 242.

Note 2, page 182, line 5.

And for their birth-place moan, as moans the ocean-shell.
Such a shell as Wordsworth has beautifully described.
"I bave seen

A curious child who dwelt upon a tract
Of inland ground, applying to his ear
The convolutions of a smooth-lipp'd shell;
To which, in silence hush'd, his very soul
Listen'd intently, and his countenance soon
Brighten'd with joy; for murmurings from within
Were heard-sonorous cadences! whereby,
To his belief, the monitor express'd
Mysterious union with its native sea.
-Even such a shell the universe itself
Is to the ear of Faith."-The Excursion.

Note 3, page 183, line 22.

I see an oak before me, &c.

"I recollect hearing a traveller, of poetical temperament, expressing the kind of horror which he felt on beholding on the banks of the Missouri, an oak of prodigious size, which had been in a manner overpowered by an enormous wild

22 NOTES TO THE FOREST SANCTUARY.

grape-vine. The vine had clapsed its huge folds round the trunk, and from thence had wound about every branch and twig, until the mighty tree had withered in its embrace. It seemed like Laocoon struggling_ineffectually in the hideous coils of the monster Python."-Bracebridge Hall. Chapter on Forest Trees.

Note 4, page 187, lines 1, 2, 3.

Thou hast perish'd
More nobly far my Alvar !—making known
The might of truth.

For a more interesting account of the Spanish Protestants, and the heroic devotion with which they met the spirit of persecution in the sixteenth century, see the Quarterly Review, No. 57, art. Quin's Visit to Spain.

Note 5, page 188, lines 19, 20, 21.

1 look'd on two,

Following his footsteps to the same dread place,
For the same guilt-his sisters!—

"A priest, named Gonzalez, had, among other proselytes, gained over two young females, his sisters, to the protestant faith. All three were confined in the dungeons of the Inquisition The torture, repeatedly applied, could not draw from them the least evidence against their religious associates. Every artifice was employed to obtain a recantation from the two sisters, since the constancy and learning of Gonzalez precluded all hopes of a theological victory. Their answer, if not exactly logical, is wonderfully simple and affecting. We will die in the faith of our brother: he is too wise to be wrong, and too good to deceive us.'-The three stakes on which they died were near each other. The priest had been gagged till the moment of lighting up the wood. The few minutes that he was allowed to speak he employed in comforting his sisters, with whom he sung the 109th Psalm, till the flames smothered their voices."-Ibid.

Note 6, page 188, lines 35 and 36.

And deem the name

A hundred chiefs had borne, cast down by you to shame. The names, not only of the immediate victims of the Inquisition, were devoted to infamy, but those of all their relations were branded with the same indelible stain, which was likewise to descend as an inheritance to their latest posterity.

Note 7, page 193, lines 19 and 20.

'Twas not within the city-but in sight

Of the snow-crown'd sierras.

The piles erected for these executions were without the towns, and the final scene of an Auto da Fe was sometimes, from the length of the preceding ceremonies, delayed till midnight.

Note 8, page 199, lines 28, 29, 30.

I would have call'd, adjuring the dark cloud;
To the most ancient Heavens I would have said
"-Speak to me! show me truth!"

For one of the most powerful and impressive pictures perhaps ever drawn of a young mind struggling against habit and superstition in its first aspirations after truth, see the admirable Letters from Spain by Don Leucadio Doblado.

Note 9, page 200, lines 19 and 20.

For thick ye girt me round, ye long-departed! Dust-image form-with cross, and shield, and crest. "You walk from end to end over a floor of tombstones, inlaid in brass with the forms of the departed, mitres, and croziers, and spears, and shields, and helmets, all mingled together-all worn into glass-like smoothness by the feet and the knees of long-departed worshippers. Around, on every side each in their separate chapel, sleep undisturbed from age to age the venerable ashes of the holiest or the loftiest that of old came thither to worship-their images and their dying prayers sculptured among the resting-places of their remains." From a beautiful description of ancient Spanish Cathedrals, in Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk.

Note 10, page 203, lines 21 and 22.

With eyes, whose lightning laughter hath beguiled
A thousand pangs.

"E 'l lampeggiar de l' angelico riso.-Petrarch.

Note 11, page 204, lines 1, 2, 3, 4.
Mighty shades

Weaving their gorgeous tracery o'er thy head,
With the light melting through their high arcades,
As through a pillar'd cloister's.

"Sometimes their discourse was held in the deep shades of moss-grown forests, whose gloom and interlaced boughs first