During his lifetime he did not disdain, says Montesquieu, "to sell the eggs from the farm-yards of his domains, and the superfluous vegetables of his gardens; while he distributed among his people the wealth of the Lombards and the immense treasures of the Huns."

"Digo, Señora, respondió Sancho, lo que tengo dicho, que de los azotes abernuncio. Abrenuncio habeis de decir, Sancho, y no como decis, dijo el Duque.”—Don Quixote, Part ii., c. xxxv.

From a monkish hymn of the twelfth century, in Sir Alexander Croke's Essay on the Origin, Progress, and Decline of Rhyming Latin Verse, p. 109.

Page 70. Count of the Calés.

The Gipsies call themselves Calés. See Borrow's valuable and extremely interesting work, The Zincali; or, an Account of the Gipsies in Spain. London, 1841.

NOTES.

Page 72. Asks if his money-bags would rise.

567

"Y volviéndome á un lado, ví á un Avariento, que estaba preguntando á otro, (que por haber sido embalsamado, y estar léxos sus tripas, no hablaba porque no habian llegado si habian de resucitar aquel dia todos los enterrados,) si resucitarian unos bolsones suyos?"-El Sueño de las Calaveras.

Page 73. The river of his thoughts.

This expression is from Dante :

"Si che chiaro

Per essa scenda della mente il fiume."

Byron has likewise used the expression; though I do not recollect in which of his poems. [The Dream.-EDITOR.]

Page 74. Mari Franca.

"Porque casó Mari-Franca
cuatro leguas de Salamanca."

Page 74. Ay, soft, emerald eyes.

The Spaniards, with good reason, consider this colour of the eye as beautiful, and celebrate it in song; as, for example, in the well-known Villancico :

Dante speaks of Beatrice's eyes as emeralds.

Purgatorio, xxxi. 116. Lami says, in his Annotazioni, "Erano i suoi occhi d' un turchino verdiccio, simile a quel del mare."

Page 75. The Avenging Child.

See the ancient ballads of El Infante Vengador, and Cala ynos.

Page 75. All are sleeping.

From the Spanish. Böhl's Floresta, No. 282.

Page 84.

Good Night!

From the Spanish; as are likewise the songs immediately following, and that which commences the first scene of Act III.

"In the Gitano language, casting the evil eye is called Querelar Nasula, which simply means making sick, and which, according to the common superstition, is accomplished by casting an evil look at people, especially children, who, from the tenderness of their constitution, are supposed to be more easily blighted than those of a more mature age. After receiving the evil glance, they fall sick, and die in a few hours.

"The Spaniards have very little to say respecting the evil eye, though the belief in it is very prevalent, especially in Andalusia, amongst the lower orders. A stag's horn is considered a good safeguard, and on that account a small horn, tipped with silver, is frequently attached to the children's necks by means of a cord braided from the hair of a black mare's tail. Should the evil glance be cast, it is imagined that the horn receives it, and instantly snaps asunder. Such horns may be purchased in some of the silversmiths' shops at Seville."-BORROW's Zincali, vol. i. c. ix.

Page 95. On the top of a mountain I stand.

This and the following scraps of song are from Borrow's Zincali: or, an Account of the Gipsies in Spain.

Page 102. If thou art sleeping, maiden.

From the Spanish; as is likewise the song of the Contrabandista below.

Page 144.

Behold, at last,

Each tall and tapering mast

Is swung into its place.

I wish to anticipate a criticism on this passage by stating, that sometimes, though not usually, vessels are launched fully rigged and sparred. I have availed myself of the exception, as better suited to my purposes than the general rule; but the reader will see that it is neither a blunder nor a poetic licence. On this subject a friend in Portland, Maine, writes me thus :

"In this State, and also, I am told, in New York, ships are sometimes rigged upon the stocks, in order to save time, or to make a show. There was a fine, large ship launched last summer at Ellsworth, fully rigged and sparred. Some years ago a ship was launched here, with her rigging, spars, sails, and cargo aboard. She sailed the next da" and-was never heard of again. I hope this will not be the fate of your poem !"

Page 150. Sir Humphrey Gilbert.

"When the wind abated and the vessels were near enough, the Admiral was seen constantly sitting in the stern, with a book in his hand. On the 9th of September he was seen for the last time, and was heard by the people of the Hind to say, 'We are as near heaven by sea as by land.' In the following night the lights of the ship suddenly disappeared. The people in the other vessel kept a good look-out for him during the remainder of the voyage. On the 22nd of September they arrived, through much tempest and peril, at Falmouth. But nothing more was seen or heard of the Admiral."-BELKNAP'S American Biography, i. 203.

Page 151.
Page 161.

Count Arnaldos. See Lockhart's Spanish Ballads.

For these bells have been anointed
And baptized with holy water!

The Consecration and Baptism of Bells is one of the most curious ceremonies of the Church in the Middle Ages. The Council of Cologne ordained as follows:"Let the bells be blessed, as the trumpets of the Church militant, by which the people are assembled to hear the word of God; the clergy to announce his mercy by day, and his truth in their nocturnal vigils: that by their sound the faithful may be invited to prayers, and that the spirit of devotion in them may be increased. The fathers have also maintained that demons affrighted by the sound of bells calling

Christians to prayers, would flee away; and when they fled, the persons of the faithful would be secure that the destruction of lightnings and whirlwinds would be averted, and the spirits of the storm defeated.”—Edinburgh Encyclopædia, Art. Bells. See also Scheible's Kloster, vi. 776.

Page 181. It is the malediction of Eve!

"Nec esses plus quam femina, quæ nunc etiam viros transcendis, et quæ maledictionem Evæ in benedictionem vertisti Mariæ."-Epistola Abalardi Heloissa.

Page 197. To come back to my text.

In giving this sermon of Friar Cuthbert, as a specimen of the Risus Paschales, or street-preaching of the monks at Easter, I have exaggerated nothing. This very anecdote, offensive as it is, comes from a discourse of Father Barletta, a Dominican friar of the fifteenth century, whose fame as a popular preacher was so great, that it gave rise to the proverb

Nescit predicare

Qui nescit Barlettare.

"Among the abuses introduced in this century," says Tiraboschi, 66 was that of exciting from the pulpit the laughter of the hearers; as if that were the same thing as converting them. We have examples of this not only in Italy, but also in France, where the sermons of Menot and Maillard, and of others, who would make a better appearance on the stage than in the pulpit, are still celebrated for such follies."

If the reader is curious to see how far the freedom of speech was carried in these popular sermons, he is referred to Scheible's Kloster, vol. i., where he will find extracts from Abraham à Sancta Clara, Sebastian, Frank, and others; and, in particular, an anonymous discourse called Der Gräuel der Verwüstung-The Abomination of Desolation--preached at Ottakring, a village west of Vienna, November 25, 1782, in which the licence of language is carried to its utmost limit. See also Prédicatoriana, ou Révélations singulières et amusantes sur les Prédicateurs; par G. P. Philomneste. (Menin.) This work contains extracts from the popular sermons of St. Vincent Ferrier, Barletta, Menot, Maillard, Marini, Raulin, Valladier, De Besse, Camus, Père André, Bening, and the most eloquent of all, Jacques Brydaine.

My authority for the spiritual interpretation of bell-ringing, which follows, is Durandus, Ration. Divin. Offic., Lib. i. cap. 4.

Page 200. THE NATIVITY, a Miracle-Play.

The earliest mystery or religious play which has been preserved is the Christos Paschon of Gregory Nazianzen, written in Greek in the fourth century. Next to this come the remarkable Latin plays of Roswitha, the nun of Gandersheim, in the tenth century, which, though crude, and wanting in artistic construction, are marked by a good deal of dramatic power and interest. A handsome edition of these plays, with a French translation, has been lately published, entitled, Théâtre de Rotsvitha, Religieuse Allemande du Xe Siècle. Par Charles Magnin. Pavis, 1845.

The most important collections of English Mysteries and Miracle-Plays are those known as the Townley, the Chester, and the Coventry plays. The first of these collections has been published by the Surtees Society, and the other two by the Shakspeare Society. In his introduction to the Coventry Mysteries, the editor, Mr. Halliwell, quotes the following passage from Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire :

"Before the suppression of the monasteries, this city was very famous for the pageants that were played therein, upon Corpus Christi day; which, occasioning very great confluence of people thither, from far and near, was of no small benefit thereto; which pageants being acted with mighty state and reverence by the friars of this house, had theaters for the severall scenes, very large and high, placed upon wheels, and drawn to all the eminent parts of the city, for the better advantage of the spectators; and contain'd the story of the New Testament, composed into old English Rithme, as appeareth by an ancient MS., intituled Ludus Corporis Christi, or Ludus Conventric. I have been told by some old people, who in their younger years were eye-witnesses of these pageants so acted, that the yearly confluence of people to see that show was extraordinary great, and yielded no small advantage to this city."

The representation of religious plays has not yet been wholly discontinued by the Roman Church. At Ober-Ammergar in the Tyrol, a grand spectacle of this kind is exhibited once in ten years. A very graphic description of that which took place in the year 1850 is given by Miss Anna Mary Howitt, in her "Art-Student in Munich," vol. i. chap. iv. She says:

"We had come expecting to feel our souls revolt at so material a representation of Christ, as any representation of him we naturally imagined must be in a peasant's Miracle-Play. Yet so far, strange to confess, neither horror, disgust, nor contempt was excited in our minds. Such an earnest solemnity and simplicity breathed throughout the whole of the performance, that to me, at least, anything like anger, or a perception of the ludicrous, would have seemed more irreverent on my part than was this simple, childlike rendering of the sublime Christian tragedy. We felt at times as though the figures of Cimabue's, Giotto's, and Perugino's pictures had become animated, and were moving before us; there was the same simple arrangement and brilliant colour of drapery; the same earnest, quiet dignity about the heads, whilst the entire absence of all theatrical effect wonderfully increased the illusion. There were scenes and groups so extraordinarily like the early Italian pictures, that you could have declared they were the works of Giotto and Perugino, and not living men and women, had not the figures moved and spoken, and the breeze stirred their richly-coloured drapery, and the sun cast long, moving shadows behind them on the stage. These effects of sunshine and shadow, and of drapery fluttered by the wind, were very striking and beautiful; one could imagine how the Greeks must have availed themselves of such striking effects in their theatres open to the sky."

Mr. Bayard Taylor, in his "Eldorado," gives a description of a Mystery he saw performed at San Lionel, in Mexico. See vol. ii. chap. xi.

"Against the wing-wall of the Hacienda del Mayo, which occupied one end of the plaza, was raised a platform, on which stood a table covered with scarlet cloth. A rude bower of cane-leaves, on one end of the platform, represented the manger of Bethlehem; while a cord, stretched from its top across the plaza to a hole in the front of the church, bore a large tinsel star suspended by a hole in its centre. There was quite a crowd in the plaza, and very soon a procession appeared, coming up from the lower part of the village. The three kings took the lead; the Virgin, mounted on an ass that gloried in a gilded saddle and rose-besprinkled mane and tail, followed them, led by the angel; and several women, with curious masks of paper, brought up the rear. Two characters of the harlequin sort-one with a dog's head on his shoulders, and the other a bald-headed friar, with a huge hat hanging on his back-played all sorts of antics for the diversion of the crowd. After nating the circuit of the plaza, the Virgin was taken to the platform, and entered the manger. King Herod took his seat at the scarlet table, with an attendant in blue coat and red sash, whom I took to be his Prime Minister. The three kings remained on their horses in front of the church; but between them and the platform, under the