must choose between Faithlessness and Treachery. Then we see a strong, faithful German heart tremble to its inmost core in the agony of doubt, and the noble heart breaks long before it receives the death-thrust. The life of the body he offers up as a victim to good faith towards his master, he offers on the same altar also his soul. His men arm, and he goes, his shield at his feet, to the door of the hall in order, that he may keep one plighted faith, to renounce the other, and to summon the Burgundians to a death-struggle with himself. But the last battle is a dreadful one to the heart of the fidelity-loving, faith-keeping hero. Even the friends by whose hand he must fall, remind him of the plighted troth by which he had led them into the land of ruin. Giselher cherishes a last hope that the father of his betrothed will keep his troth to them, and bring them deliverance. Instead of that, Rudiger must announce that he wishes to be free of his promise, and brings not protection and aid, but bloody battle and bloody death.

But the old faith, the faith of vassals, must take precedence of the new faith, the faith of friendship; the Burgundians knew that well, and therefore with stout heart they discard the faith of friendship to keep royal faith with their vassals; with stout heart also Giselher bids farewell to love, which his royal faith demands him to give up forever. But still a token of the now broken friendship is passed between the combatants who were once in alliance; as a death gift, Rudiger passes over his own shield to Hagen, instead of that which Frau Gotelind had given him—and the battle begins. Hagen, Folker and Giselher give back first in the strife, but Gernot hastens his men to their aid, and attacks Rudiger. Rudiger gives Gernot a mortal wound in the head, and the last stroke which Gernot serves with Rudiger's sword is Rudiger's death stroke. Both heroes sink down in death together.

The palaces and towers re-echo with the lamentations over the fallen and glorious Prince Rudiger; so that Dietrich of Bern, who kept at a distance from the conflict, sent a messenger to inquire after the cause of the melancholy cries. When he brings back intelligence of Rudiger's death, deep horror seizes the Gothic King, and he dispatches the old Hildebrand to ask the Burgundians themselves why they had slain Rudiger. Bound to avenge Rudiger's death, and contrary to Dietrich's order, all his vassals of the Gothic stock arm themselves; and when Hildebrand learns from Hagen that the deed is really done, he demands the body of the noble Margrave for funeral rites and burial. Scorn is the answer from the Burgundians, and especially from Folker. Then

the Amalungs, the giant Gothic heroes, seize their swords, and a frightful carnage commences, in which Folker the joyous minstrel lies slain by Hildebrand's mighty hand; in which Giselher and the Gothic Prince Wolfhart give each the other mortal wounds; and Hagen to avenge Folker's death, plunges on Hildebrand with such mighty blows of Balmung, Sigfried's sword, as compel him wounded to give way, and to return alone, for all the rest have fallen, to Dietrich. In the royal hall stand solitary, above the corpses of their brothers and companions, Gunther and Hagen. Then Dietrich goes alone to the last battle. The two only remaining Burgundians, Gunther and Hagen, stand solitary and sternly outside the hall. Dietrich summons them to surrender to his lash, but proud and death-defiant Hagen hurls back the summons, he doesn't surrender to a whip till his Nibelungen sword is broken. Dietrich fights with Hagen, gives him a deep wound, seizes him with his giant arms, presses the muscular shoulders together with a lion's grip, binds him and leads him to Kriemhild. A similar combat with Gunther issues similarly. Dietrich recommends to the queen to spare the lives of the men, and sadly departs.

But Kriemhild must drain the cup of vengeance to the very bottom. If Hagen will return to her the Nibelungen treasure, she will spare his life. But the hero of Tronei, though mortally wounded and lying in ignominious bonds, yet preserves his defiance and his faith. "So long as one of my masters is alive, I will not tell you where the treasure is." Then the pitiless sister orders the head of Gunther to be struck off, and carries it to Hagen by the hair. And Hagen, he quietly says: "Now is the noble king of the Burgundians dead, and Giselher too, and Gernot. No one now knows of the treasure but God and myself; from you, cruel woman, will it be concealed forever." "Now then," said Kriemhild, "I have the sword of my Sigfried which he wore when I last saw him." She draws it out of the sheath, and Sigfried's sword avenges Sigfried's death by the hand of the bloody queen of the Huns, the once graceful and meek, the once faithful and loving Kriemhild.

Then the old Hildebrand rises in anger, that the mercy which his master had recommended to the queen had been so disregarded, and he avenges Hagen's death on the woman of vengeance. With a piteous cry Kriemhild sinks to the earth near the corpse of her mortal enemy, herself a corpse. In sorrow, so the poem concludes, was ended the king's royal feast, as always joy turns to sorrow at last.

LETTER FROM QUIS.

UP IN THE COUNTRY, MAY, 1858.

MR. EDITOR:-The man who, when expostulated with for allowing his wife to beat him, excused himself by saying that it amused her and did not hurt him at all, manifested a philosophy worthy of a better cause; a philosophy which I am inclined to think Quis is exercising tonight, in writing this epistle. For while I anticipate the dolorous complaints of sundry readers, as they find another missive from the "member from Cranberry Centre," I announce the negative virtue in advance, by stating that while this letter will fill up a space in the Quarterly, it will not hurt any one; and therefore, before going to bed, (we go to bed in the country, not retire,) I will "make a few feeble remarks."

The town clock has just said ten, and my two wax candles are half burned down, and if under these circumstances I can spin a yarn, no small amount of credit is due me.

All the day I have been writing of things which transpired in 1633 and thereabouts, and it is difficult to bridge over the intervening space, and write in the present tense, and if this could be accomplished, it would take me so long to get back again to my work in the morning, that the day would be far spent in useless travel, which I conceive would be a labor which would bring forth but little. Still, if I can pick up the “odds and ends" of ideas and dovetail them together, the result may be worth the trial. I suppose that mental architecture, like material, has its chips and rubbish. In the rounding of corners, and in the reducing of angles, and in the fitting of particular thoughts for particular places, little ideas are knocked off, half formed fancies thrown aside, conceits unduly prominent removed, until the mental chip-basket is filled with refuse lumber, and the original conception is appropriately finished. Whoever works in mental lumber will in course of time accumulate a mass of splintered ideas and shattered fancies, good for nothing but to fill the interstices between great thoughts. So, Mr. Editor, let this letter be the chips and fragments sandwiched between the wise and mighty utterances of your other contributors.

The mental, as well as the physical man, has his dressing gown and slippers, his rocking chair and cheerful room. Throwing off the strait jacket of rigid thought, a comfortable feeling comes over us as we lapse into the robes of easy contemplation, and with feet held out to the warm fires of imagination indulge in reveries of every description. If so be, let thoughts chase each other through the mind, let nonsense play "hide and seek" with reason, let the sounds of sorrow be answered in an echo of pleasure, let the clouds of seriousness cover the sunlight of jollity, or a blaze of glory follow an eclipse of despair; there is pleasure in it all. Mixed thoughts make good mental food, as mixed liquors make good punch. This is true, and therefore if my sermon partakes of the nature of this text, do not be surprised.

Before opening my desk to write, this evening, conversation had been on various literary matters originally suggested by sundry errors in a proof sheet I was correcting. (With this kind of labor, worthy editors, you are, or should be somewhat acquainted.) "Jemima" had been printed "Jeremiah," thereby engendering some confusion in the matrimonial relation, and in another place, a church and society, after strenuous exertion, had become possessed of a horse instead of a house. Many people think that accuracy is possible in printing, but illustrious proof-companions, of even fourth proof, we know better, do we not? This last clause, by the way, is very much like a prayer once made by an old minister in Dover, this State, whose eccentricity was as great as his piety was real. In early life he had given some attention to medicine. One morning in church, he prayed, by request, for a sick man, and in this manner:-" But O Lord, we pray, if it be thy holy will that he may recover, although we who are acquainted in medical matters know that he cannot !" And again, this is similar to a sentence in the prayer of a Professor in a college not far west from Williams, commencing:-" Although it may seem paradoxical unto thee, O Lord, nevertheless, &c." Hood's printers, who turned all his roses into noses, and his happiness into pappiness, could not surpass some of the curious errors which I find day by day as I look over the printed sheet.

As conversation ran on, it hit upon authors, and then your humble servant had the pleasure of telling a new anecdote, and he trusts that he dees no harm by letting it see daylight through the Quarterly. Not long after Charles Sumner's return from Europe, I had the good fortune to be one of a quartette dinner table, of which he was also one. In the course of the very agreeable "table talk," Mr. Sumner related an incident of

Thackeray and the "Virginians" which increased the dissatisfaction I had already experienced in attempting to read that story. As Mr. Sumner was driving through Pell Mell (London) in a hansom, he noticed a horseman ahead of him very much resembling Thackeray. "Thackeray, Thackeray," said Mr. Sumner; "Why Sumner, is that you," said the satirist turning in his saddle, "come and dine with me." "I am already engaged for the day," said Mr. Sumner. Thackeray replied, "come then and breakfast with me;" to which the answer was, "I leave London in the morning. But what are you writing now?" Said Thackeray, "That is the very thing I wish to talk about with you, for I fear I shall break down: I am going to take two Virginians, and placing one on the American and one on the English side, make good fellows of them both; but I am not sufficiently acquainted with your history, and wish to ask you questions." They then parted. This is almost exactly as it came from Mr. Sumner, and I must confess, Mr. Editor, that the view thus given of the "interior life" of the "Virginians," put me out of conceit with the whole thing. If he fears he shall "break down," why may not we fear the same thing? and that he told the truth in confessing ignorance of our history, is plain to all who have read the "Virginians" thus far. Another incident related by Mr. Sumner surprised me still more. While walking with Lord Brougham in his garden, the finest "orator in the English language," as he has been termed, turned to Mr. Sumner and asked. "By the way, Mr. Sumner, when did your Webster die ?" Mr. Sumner answered the inquiry, and thinking it a fine opportunity to learn the opinion entertained by him of our great statesmen, continued the conversation by asking Brougham if he had seen the last American edition of Webster's works, and commented somewhat upon the books. Lord Brougham replied that he had not. "Doubtless you have seen the earlier editions," said Mr. Sumner: "No, I have not," said the Lord: "But you are familiar with some of his speeches." "No," was the answer, "I never read but one, and that was a short speech of five minutes, at a Lord Mayor's dinner." Does this seem possible? and does John Bull hold his Brother Jonathan in such supreme contempt?

Now having given you these fresh anecdotes, I consider that the character of the letter is established, and can write the remainder with a light theart, although my two short candles are looking decidedly too short; but cerncertainty of a suitable state of mind in the morning, or rather the although myof an unsuitable state, induces me to drive my pen a while longer, candles" wax worse and worse;" may they only make light of it!