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"Which is _”

"To call in the Austrians." "Per Bacco! it is exactly what they have advised. How did you come to know it? Who is the traitor at the council board?”

"I wish I could tell you the name of one who was not such. Why, your Highness, these fellows are not your ministers, except in so far as they are paid by you. They are Metternich's people; they receive their appointments from Vienna, and are only accountable to the cabinet held at Schoenbrunn. If wise and moderate counsels prevailed here, if our financial measures prospered, if the people were happy and contented, how long, think you, would Lombardy submit to be ruled by the rod and the bayonet? Do you imagine that you will be suffered to give an example to the peninsula of a good administration?"

"But so it is," broke in the Prince; "I defy any man to assert the opposite. The country is prosperous, the people are contented, the laws justly administered, and, I hesitate not to say, myself as popular as any sovereign of Europe.'

"And I tell your Highness, just as distinctly, that the country is ground down with taxation, even to export duties on the few things we have to export that the people are poor to the very verge of starvation--that if they do not take to the highways as brigands, it is because their traditions as honest men yet survive amongst them-that the laws only exist as an agent of tyranny, arrest and imprisonment being at the mere caprice of the authorities. Nor is there a means by which an innocent man can demand his trial, and insist on being confronted with his accuser. Your jails are full, crowded to a state of pestilence with supposed political offenders, men that, in a free country, would be at large, toiling industriously for their families, and whose opinions could never be dangerous, if not festering in the foul air of a dungeon. And as to your own popularity, all I say is, don't walk in the Piazza at Carrara after dusk. No, nor even at noon-day."

"And you dare to speak thus to me, Stubber!" said the Prince, his face covered with a deadly pallor as he spoke, and his white lips trembling, but less in passion than in fear.

"And why not, sir? Of what value could such a man as I am be to your service, if I were not to tell you what you'll never hear from others-the plain, simple truth? Is it not clear enough that if I only thought of my own benefit, I'd say whatever you'd like best to hear-I'd tell you, like Landetti, that the taxes were well paid, or say, as Cerreccio did, t'other day, that your army would do credit to any state in Europe; when he well knew at the time, that the artillery was in mutiny from arrears of pay, and the cavalry horses dying from short rations !"

"I am well weary of all this," said the duke, with a sigh. "If the half of what I hear of my kingdom, every day, be but true, my lot in life is worse than a galley-slave's. One assures me that I am bankrupt; another calls me a vassal of Austria; a third makes me out a Papal spy; and you aver that if I venture into the streets of my own town-in the midst of my own people, I am almost sure to be assassinated !”

“Takeno man's word, sir, for what, while you can see for yourself, it is your own duty to ascertain," said Stubber resolutely. "If you really only desire a life of ease and indolence, forgetting what you owe to yourself and those you rule over, send for the Austrians. Ask for a brigade and a general. You'll have them for the asking. They'd come at a word, and try your people at the drum head, and flog and shoot them with as little disturbance to you as need be! You may pension off the judges; for a court martial is a far speedier tribunal, and a corporal's guard is quite an economy in criminal justice. Trade will not perhaps prosper with martial law, nor is a state of siege thought favourable to commerce. No matter. You'll sleep safe so long as you keep within doors, and the band under your window will rouse the spirit of nationality in your heart, as it plays, 'God preserve the Emperor !"

"You forget yourself, sir, and you forget me!" said the Duke sternly, as he drew himself up, and threw a look of insolent pride at the speaker.

"Mayhap I do, your Highness," was the ready answer, "and out of that very forgetfulness let your Highness take a warning. I say, once more, I distrust the people about you, and as

to this conspiracy at Carrara, I'll wager a round sum on it, that it was hatched on t'other side of the Alps, and paid for in good florins of the Holy Roman Empire. At all events, give me time to investigate the matter. Let me have 'till the end of the week to examine into it, and if I find

nothing to confirm my views, I'll say not one word against all the measures of precaution that your council are bent on importing from Austria."

"Take your own way; I promise nothing," said the Duke haughtily, and with a motion of his hand dismissed his adviser.

OUR COAST.

BY FRANCIS DAVIS.

1.

God bless the towers and temples,
And those cloud-dividing piles,
The heathery-mantled mountains
Of our green old queen of isles !
Yea, may God the Blesser bless them
When His choicest love outpours,
Though they be not these, the peerless,
That the minstrel more adores.
For no work of mighty Nature
For our wonder or our weal,

Nor a stone there ever tinkled

'Neath the craftsman's peaceful steel,
Could the marvel--the emotion
Looking love so like devotion--
From the secret springs of feeling
In my spirit-depths command,
That can these, the mountain-pillara
Of our Dalriadan land,
These iron-crested sentinels

That guard our northern strand,-

That like a host of battle-fiends,
Or wall of wintry clouds,--

Save where some wizard vale or bay
Divides the craggy crowds,-
Run writhed in savage glory

From the Causeway's pillared shore
To that kingly cape of columns,
The sublimely dark Benmore-
That mock the wintry surges
In their hurricane career-
That mar the howling spirit

Of the lightning shaft and spear----
That flaunt their cloudy helmets
In the flashing of the moon,
Nor always deign to doff them
To the golden pomp of June.
'Tis the teaching of the Maker
Through your cold eternal stone,
Giant forms of that idea,

LET US BOW TO MIND ALONE-
'Tis the teaching of the Highest,
That his sacred will is marred,
When the creature, for its glory,
Winneth worship or reward,

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Oh! ye high and heaven-crowned ones,---
Not a world of kingly gems
Could my soul so God-enkindle
As your craggy diadems.
Mighty fruits of Mind gigantic,
Grizzled, gloomy, and sublime,
Like to priestly watchers waiting
For the dying shrieks of time,
Watchers of the world's supernal,
Peerless, priceless priests are ye,

Tempest-shorn and dew-anointed,
Foamy-robed and God-appointed,
Sandaled with the blue, eternal,
Dazzling, desert of the sea!

Ah they're more than priestly lessons,
Preached in more than pulpit tones,
Where your mountain-limbs are rooted-
Where the baffled billow groans---
Where the coast-born peasant ponders,
Backward as the waters roll,
Till your iron self-dependence
Sheathes his roughly-noble soul;
For as e'en the bard inspired
Through the sunlight of his song
Poureth but the tints of visions
That his soul hath walked among-
But the grossness or the glory,
Amid which his spirit swimmeth,
Ever growing black or beauteous

As the dark or light he hymneth,-
So the mass of mind is modelled
By the forms on which it rests,
And a tone and colour taketh

From its oftener-coming guests.
Yea, as river-roads are fashioned
By the water's rush and whirl,
While their tinge and taste are taken
By its sweeping crest and curl,
As it onward, ever, ever,
Maketh, taketh foul or fair,
Until neither bed nor river

May its first or fount declare,

So is formed the mental channel
By the might of sight and sound,
So is tinged the moral current

By what eye and ear have found,--
Until, from its race of ages,

Rolling basely or sublime,

It revealeth less our Adam

Than the accidents of time.

IV.

Then, how few might be Earth's shadows
On the moral current here,

Where young Beauty chaseth Beauty
Through and through the ringing year!
Happy, happy, peer or peasant,

Whose it were to ever be

By the creamy, creeping border
Of this fair, mysterious sea---
Where these shoreward-stealing waters
Many-tinted fringes weave:

As their foamy flowers are scattered
By the wanton breeze of eve-
All his spirit gleaming sweetness
Through a wild and dewy eye,
From the broad and burning roses
On the golden isles of sky.

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On the sea, and on the sward;
And I stood beneath these pillars--
"Twas a Sabbath morn in May,
And I felt-ah! who can tell it?
Never, never lips of clay!
'Twas that heaving heart-devotion
That hath neither sigh nor pray'r,
But a swelling and a rushing

In the inmost spirit, where
Ten thousand springs were gushing

It had ne'er been dreamt were there ;-
And the on and upward springing

Of a faint and dreamy ringing,

As if of the passions singing
Through each fibre of the brain,-

The battle-ground of many thoughts
That reeled and wheeled again;
Then seethed in rushing roll,
Like fire-drops through the soul,
With a wildly-winning pain;
Then a gazing up to heaven
Seeming less in life than death,
'Mid a quickening of the pulses,
And a shortening of the breath;
Then a bending towards the sod--
Sighing, "light enough is given-

Let us bow before our God!"
Oh! beneath the proudest altar
Consecrated to his name,-
Though I might have felt his presence,
could ne'er have felt the same
As between those warring waters
Where our northern land is lost,
And that pillared pile, the glory
Of old Dalriada's coast.

VIII.

There is grandeur in your city,
Where the sculptured columns soar,

And the sea of human beauty

Heaveth, heaveth evermore.

There is grandeur in yon mountain,
When beneath the burning West
Ten thousand tiny torches
At as many pearly porches

O'er that mountain's heathery breast
Flash and twinkle-flash and twinkle,
As the dying day-beams sprinkle

Their red life-drops o'er its crest--
O'er that showery, flowery crest;
While the rosy vapour, rising
Round the tomb of Light supernal,
Floats and tinges-floats and tinges
Feathery clouds with snowy fringes,
Till they meet the musing eye,

Like the locks of the Eternal

On that silvery waste of sky.

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