I play'd a soft and doleful air,

I sang an old and moving storyAn old rude song, that suited well That ruin wild and hoary.

She listen'd with a flitting blush,

With downcast eyes and modest grace; For well she knew, I could not choose But gaze upon her face.

I told her of the knight that wore
Upon his shield a burning brand;
And that for ten long years he woo'd
The Lady of the Land.

I told her how he pin'd; and ah!

The deep, the low, the pleading tone With which I sang another's love, Interpreted my own.

She listen'd with a flitting blush,

With downcast eyes and modest grace; And she forgave me, that I gazed

Too fondly on her face!

But when I told the cruel scorn

That crazed that bold and lovely knight, And that he cross'd the mountain-woods, Nor rested day nor night:

That sometimes from the savage den,

And sometimes from the darksome shade, And sometimes starting up at once

In green and sunny glade,

There came and look'd him in the face
An angel, beautiful and bright;
And that he knew it was a Fiend, o
This miserable knight!

And that, unknowing what he did,
He leap'd amid a murderous band,

And sav'd from outrage worse than death
The Lady of the Land!

And how she wept and claspt his knees; And how she tended him in vain

And ever strove to expiate

The scorn that crazed his brain;

And that she nurs'd him in a cave;
And how his madness went away,
When on the yellow forest-leaves
A dying man he lay.

His dying words-but when I reach'd
That tenderest strain of all the ditty,
My faltering voice and pausing harp
Disturb'd her soul with pity

All impulses of soul and sense

Had thrill'd my guileless Genevieve; The music and the doleful tale,

The rich and balmy eve;

And hopes, and fears that kindle hope,
An undistinguishable throng,
And gentle wishes long subdued,
Subdued and cherished long.

She wept with pity and delight,

She blush'd with love and virgin-shame;

And like the murmur of a dream,
I heard her breathe my name.

Her bosom heav'd-she stept aside,
As conscious of my look she stept,-
Then suddenly, with timorous eye,
She fled to me and wept.

She half enclos'd me in her arms,

She press'd me with a meek embrace; And bending back her head, look'd up, And gazed upon my face.

'Twas partly love, and partly fear,
And partly 'twas a bashful art,

That I might rather feel, than see,
The swelling of her heart.

I calm'd her fears, and she was calm,
And told her love with virgin-pride.
And so I won my Genevieve,
My own, my beauteous bride.

THE PALIMPSEST.

BY THOMAS DE QUINCEY.

BOU know perhaps, masculine reader, better than

you

I can tell you, what is a Palimpsest. Possibly, you have one in your own library. But yet, for the sake of others who may not know, or may have forgotten, suffer me to explain it here, lest any female reader, who honours these papers with her notice, should tax me with explaining it once too seldom ; which would be worse to bear than a simultaneous complaint from twelve proud men, that I had explained it three times too often. You therefore, fair reader, understand, that for your accommodation exclusively, I explain the meaning of this word. It is Greek; and our sex enjoys the office and privilege of standing counsel to yours, in all questions of Greek. We are, under favor, perpetual and hereditary dragomans to you. So that if, by accident, you know the meaning of a Greek word, yet by courtesy to us, your counsel

learned in that matter, you will always seem not to know it.

A palimpsest, then, is a membrane or roll cleansed of its manuscript by reiterated successions.

What was the reason that the Greeks and the Romans had not the advantage of printed books? The answer will be from ninety-nine persons in a hundred, Because the mystery of printing was not then discovered. But this is altogether a mistake. The secret of printing must have been discovered many thousands of times before it was used, or could be used. The inventive powers of man are divine; and also his stupidity is divine, as Cowper so playfully illustrates in the slow development of the sofa through successive generations of immortal dulness. It took centuries of blockheads to raise a joint-stool into a chair; and it required something like a miracle of genius, in the estimate of elder generations, to reveal the possi bility of lengthening a chair into a chaise-longue, or a sofa. Yes, these were inventions that cost mighty throes of intellectual power. But still, as respects printing, and admirable as is the stupidity of man, it was really not quite equal to the task of evading an object which stared him in the face with so broad a gaze. It did not require an Athenian intellect to read the main secret of printing in many scores of processes which the ordinary uses of life were daily repeating. To say nothing of analogous artifices amongst various mechanic artisans, all that is essential in printing