LAMENT OF KHITONI, THE SERVIAN CHIEF.

The last struggles of the Servians against the Turks were marked by many of the feats of heroism that distinguish the warfare of barbarian nations. But the force aud multitude of the enemy prevailed; and the principal Servians were driven into exile, and forced to fly to the protec tion of Russia, which they hated, or of Austria, which they despised. One of those gallant exiles is said to have sung the following lament to his country, from the bridge on which he crossed the Danube into the territories of the house of Hapsburg.

FAREWELL to all I loved-farewell for ever;

On Servian ground I never more shall grieve: Farewell, tree, mountain, valley, mighty river,

No more the tear shall drop, the heart shall heave : Thy soldier's luckless step shall tread no more Hill, vale, delicious plain, or sandy shore.

Oh that this hour my heart could sink to sleep,
Nor feel the feverish pulse that throbs for thee!
Tears are not made for eyes that scorn to weep;

Grief is not made for hearts that will be free.
No more this soul shall hear thy trumpet swell;
Land of my faith and hope, farewell! farewell!

I see a cloud: O! false and treacherous eye!

The cloud sends down the shower; but yonder cloud

Bears on it's sullen woof a bloody dye,

Bears in its breath the vapour of the shroud,

Bears in its crimson fold the bloody brand ·

Sign of the tiger's heart and tyrant's hand.

I tread thy plains: the Moslem has been there,

I find pollution in their heavy breeze; I find the human panther in his lair;

I see thee drain heaven's vial to the leesThe vial that on guilty lands is poured,

Sorrow and shame, the chain, and torch, and sword.

Come from thy grave, my father Lazarus!

With thine old bow, and keen-edged brand and spear: Come, as upon the Tartar and the Russ

Thy trumpet rang, like thunder on their ear: Come, as in days when Moslem flight and yell Told where the whirlwind of thy sabre fell.

Come, lift above thy sons the crimson vane,

Dipped in the torrent of the Moslem's gore, When death rode glorious o'er the dark Ukraine; And, strewed like broken barks upon the shore, Pasha and Janizar lay side by side,

War's wildest wreck upon war's bloodiest tide.

Come! Yet to whom?- a faint, and woe-worn band,
Once bright, now faint as stars before the dawn.
Come! Yet to whom?-the pilgrims of the land.
Come! is 't to see thy children crouch and fawn?
To see thy soldier-son an Austrian slave?
Heaven keep thee, mighty father, in thy grave!

Σοτηρ.

OLD MAIDS.

I LOVE an old maid ;· but of the species,

I do not speak of an individual I use the singular number, as speaking of a singularity in humanity. An old maid is not merely an antiquarian, she is an antiquity; not merely a record of the past, but the very past itself, she has escaped a great change, and sympathizes not in the ordinary mutations of mortality. She inhabits a little eternity of her own. She is Miss from the beginning of the chapter to the end. I do not like to hear her called Mistress, as is sometimes the practice, for that looks and sounds like the resignation of despair, a voluntary extinction of hope. I do not know whether marriages are made in Heaven, some people say that they are, but I am almost sure that old maids are. There is a something about them which is not of the earth earthy. They are Spectators of the world, not Adventurers nor Ramblers; perhaps Guardians; we say nothing of Tatlers. They are evidently predestinated to be what they are. They owe not the singularity of their condition to any lack of beauty, wisdom, wit, or good temper; there is no accounting for it but on the principle of fatality. I have known many old maids, and of them all not one that has not pos

sessed as many good and amiable qualities as ninety and nine out of a hundred of my married acquaintance. Why then are they single?—It is their fate!

On the left hand of the road between London and Liverpool, there is a village, which, for particular reasons, I shall call Littleton; and I will not so far gratify the curiosity of idle inquirers as to say whether it is nearer to London or to Liverpool; but it is a very pretty village, and let the reader keep a sharp look out for it next time he travels that road. It is situated in a valley, through which runs a tiny rivulet as bright as silver, but hardly wide enough for a trout to turn round in. Over the little stream there is a bridge, which seems to have been built merely out of compliment to the liquid thread, to save it the mortification of being hopped over by every urchin and clodpole in the parish. The church is covered with ivy, even half way up the steeple, but the sexton has removed the green intrusion from the face of the clock, which, with its white surface and black figures, looks at a little distance like an owl in an ivy bush. A little to the left of the church is the parsonage house, almost smothered with honeysuckles: in front of the house is a grass plot, and up to the door there is what is called a carriage drive; but I never saw a carriage drive up there, for it is so steep that it would require six horses to pull the carriage up, and there is not room enough for more than one. Somewhat farther up the hill which bounds the little valley where the village stands, there is a cottage; the inhabitants of Littleton call it the white cottage. It is merely a small white

washed house, but as it is occupied by genteelish sort of people, who cannot afford a large house, it is generally called a cottage. All these beautiful and picturesque objects, and a great many more which I have not described, have lost with me their interest. It would make me melancholy to go into that church. The interest which I had in the parsonage house was transferred to the white cottage, and the interest which I had in the white cottage is now removed to the churchyard, and that interest is in four graves that lie parallel to each other, with head-stones of nearly one date. In these four graves lie the remains of four old maids. Poor things! Their remains! Alack, alack, there was not much that remained of them. There was but little left of them to bury. The bearers had but light work. I wondered why they should have four separate graves, and four distinct tombstones. The sexton told me that it was their particular desire, in order to make the churchyard look respectable; and they left behind them just sufficient money to pay the undertaker's bills and to erect four gravestones. I saw these ladies twice, and that at an interval of thirty years. I made one more attempt to see them, and I was more grieved than I could have anticipated, when the neighbours shewed me their newly closed graves. But no one long pities the dead, and I was, after a while, glad that they had not been long separated. I saw these ladies twice; -and the first time that I saw them, the only doubt was, which of the four would be first married. I should have fallen in love with one of them myself, I do not