well as of your kindness of heart, and of the tenderness of your nature. (Here she paused a little, but before I could collect myself to make a suitable answer, she proceeded)-I have heard too of the distinguished favour with which you are honoured by his majesty the King of Kings. I am an unfortunate female, and it is in your power to render me the most important service. May I trust to you, Meerza Ahmed? or will you leave me to my misfortunes-to the misery in which you have found me?"

Her voice faultered as she uttered the last words. She stopped, and turned her fine eyes full upon me with a look of painful doubt, and anxious inquiry. A tear, which had been visibly gathering, rolled over her eyelid, and hung upon her cheek. She had not seemed to me so lovely in all the voluptuous beauty of the day before. She seemed to look to me for consolation-What could I do? I vowed that there was no service, however hazardous, which I would not undertake-no duty, however laborious, which I was not ready to perform.

"You seem," said she," to be sincere, and I will trust you. But that you may fully understand the nature of my misfortunes, I must tell you the story of my life-for young as I am, I have had much to suffer.

THE STORY OF MEIRAM.

"I was born a Christian. My father was priest of a small Armenian village in Karabaugh. My mother died while I was yet so young that I believe I cannot well remember to have seen her; but I have heard my father speak of her so often, that I sometimes think I do remember her. I was her first and only child, therefore my father loved me fondly; but even more, because he thought my face resembled hers whom God had taken from him. He was already an old man, and his only pleasure was in loving me, and carefully performing the duties of a pastor. He taught the village boys to read and write, and he was loved by all his little flock; for he had spent many years among them, and he had naturally a kind heart, which made him the friend of every one. The people of the village gave us corn enough for bread, and many made us presents. Our dwelling was a small

VOL. XV.

"I may have been about twelve years old, when, one Sabbath evening, my father desired our only servant, Meenus, to light the tapers in the church, as the hour of evening prayer

was near. Meenus in a few moments returned all breathless, and told my father that a body of horseinen were coming down the road straight to the village. He had scarcely said so ere I heard a shot, and then another, and then they came so fast I could not count them. We all ran to the window, and saw the people of the village running in crowds past the house, mothers with infants in their arms, screaming and wailing, and children running crying after them, and old men tearing their clothes and hair, and women beating their breasts, and weeping aloud, all mingled in one confused mass. After these came the young men of the village, some armed, and still appearing to resist ; some wounded and bleeding; some I saw fall dead upon the street. After a time the firing ceased, and then there arose a dreadful shout, and I heard the clattering of many horses' feet approaching, and presently a troop of armed horsemen came riding furiously down the street, still shouting Ullah, Ullah. I knew not who they were, but when my father saw them he said, Now God have mercy upon us, for these are the Persians. The feeble resistance which had been made was now no longer making. All who could fly had fled, and some had died. The plunderers dismounted from their horses, forced the doors of the houses, seized all the children they could find, and stripped those whose clothes seemed worth the having, then bound them naked. Oh! it was a terrible sight to see their young limbs bound with cords; even now it makes my blood run cold to think of it. But from looking on the distress of others, we soon were called to feel our own. The ruffians forced our little dwelling; I ran screaming to my father; his face was pale-the tear was in his eye, and as he clasped me in his trembling arms, he only said, My child, my child! I saw them enter, and hid my face in my father's bosom, for I dared not look on men so dark and

2 D

terrible and there I had all my life thought myself safe. But now that sanctuary availed me little, they seized me, and tore me from him; but still he clung to me, and wept aloud, and called on God for help, but all in vain, for they were young and strong, and he was old and feeble; but when he found that he had lost his last hold of me, his frenzy gave him strength, he grappled with the man who held me, and once more got me in his arms. I saw the naked dagger raised over us, it descended like a flash of lightning, and my father fell beneath it. He lay a moment, and I bent over him, scarce knowing what had happened; he caught me in his arms, and tried to speak, but the breath, which perhaps was meant to give me his last blessing, spouted with his life-blood from the wound. The very murderer stood mute, and struck with awe. I gazed awhile on the pale lifeless face of the father whom I loved; my eyes grew dim, my senses failed, I fell, and saw no more.

"How long I may have lain without perception I cannot tell; but when I woke, I found that all my clothes had been stripped off, and instead of them I had been wrapt up in my dead father's priest's robe. For a time I knew not where I was, and the remembrance of what had passed was like the impression of a horrible dream between sleeping and waking; but by degrees the dread reality came full before me. As I moved me round to find out where I was, something clammy, moist, and cold touched me-I looked to see what it might be-I saw the rent, I saw the clotted gore-It was my father's blood that chilled my bosom!I knew it―A cold horror crept through all my frame, and I uttered a loud shriek in agony of soul.-They came to comfort me-but who came? my father's murderers. I tore off the gown, without perceiving that it was my only covering, and stood, without a knowledge of my shame, naked before them. Their noisy, brutal laughter, brought back my senses-I sunk for very shame upon the earth, and wept and sobbed aloud. One of more tender nature than the rest took from his horse a covering cloth, and gave it to I thanked him fervently, for it was a precious gift to me; and as he

me.

turned away there seemed to be some pity in his eye. I would have given the world to have him near me, but he passed away. For a time I sat there weeping, and saw no one that I knew; but by and by others of the villagers, captives like myself, were brought to where I was. We exchanged timid looks, but feared to speak, until, at last, they brought in one whom I had hoped they had not caught. He was pale, faint, and weary. His eye caught mine. I started from my seat to throw myself into his arms, but as he opened them to receive me I saw a hideous gash upon his breastthe sword of some Persian ruffian had been there. At any other time I dared not have approached him as he was; but the events of a few short hours had changed my nature, and I would have rushed into his bosom.-A villain saw us, and with a coward hand struck him a blow, which laid him on the ground. They seized me then, and carried me away, and still it was my father's murderer that bore me with him.

"All night they remained in the village, ransacking the houses, digging for hidden money, and torturing their captives to make them shew the places where money had been hid. Many little sums they found, the hard won savings of poor labourers; and they had much quarrelling and high-words, and sometimes daggers were drawn in their disputes about dividing it. And some found wine, and drank to drunkenness, and rioted, and fought, and made a fearful noise.-So passed the night. In the morning, before day, they began to move, and all the cattle of the village they collected, horses, cows, and buffaloes. Some they drove away, and some they kept to mount their weaker captives on. The poor animals made a mournful lowing for their calves, which were left behind. When they tried to drive the people from the village, they set up such a deep and wailing cry that I doubted not the slaughter was begun, and that we must all be massacred; but by degrees it died away. They mounted me upon a buffaloe, and drove the poor animal before them, goading it on with their spears. That day we went I know not how many fursungs, but I was almost dead with fatigue and pain. The

buffalo's rough hide had almost worn the skin from off my knees and legs, and unaccustomed as I was to riding, my bones all ached, my eyes were nearly blind with crying, and my head was like to burst asunder. In this sad plight I lay shivering and cold all night, and in the morning was to have begun another journey like the first, but the same kind man who pitied me before, said something to him who had me in his charge, and gave him money; and then the good man took me up behind him on his horse, and put a soft felt under me, and tied a band round my body and his own that I might not fall off; and when I cried because the horse went fast and pained my galled limbs, he made it go more slowly. It seemed strange to me that a man so kind at heart should have banded with such ruffians as the rest. We travelled several days with the other captives, and then we took another road, and went in one day more to the kind man's house.

"At first his wives scowled on me, but he said something to them, and then they were very kind, and told me I was going to the King, and flattered me with tales of grandeur, so that their kindness and their tales had almost soothed my sorrow. And they gave me fine clothes and ornaments to wear, and said, when I was a great person that I must remember them and their kindness. Here I remained many days, I know not how many, when one morning a strange man came, and then they told me I must go to the King; but I had never seen a King, and I was much afraid, and begged to be allowed to stay, and cried, but they persuaded me to go. We journeyed many days, and at last arrived here, where his majesty, the King of Kings, was pleased to accept me, and here I have remained not unhappy until three days ago. Now, alas! my sorrows have begun afresh. Where shall they end? God only knows-for I am truly wretched."

Here she stopped, and wept most bitterly. I had not wept since I had been a boy, but now my tears began to flow, I know not why, for it appeared to me, that she had much cause to be happy, after so much misfortune, to find herself in the Haram of the King of Kings. I tried to sooth her, told her she was fair, most fair and beautiful, and that she would

not fail to find favour with the King, and that she might be mother to a prince, perhaps that prince be King hereafter; and on the whole the daughter of a poor Armenian priest, she ought to be most thankful for God's bounty, which had made her what she was. But she still wept the more. At last she bade me go and come tomorrow, and she should tell me all the rest, for she had seen my sorrow for her, and she knew me to be kind. I took my leave with a heavy heart partly because her story shewed heavy misfortunes for so young a female to have endured; partly because I liked to be in her company, and was sorry to part from her; and partly because I thought I had been somewhat rash in my promises of service, and felt much concern for the nature of the business she might wish to put me to. At the same time, I felt that whatever it might be, I should be obliged to do it; so completely had she got possession of my mind. I conjectured a thousand things that she might have to disclose, and rejected them all. At last, having tired myself with guessing and imagining, I began to have an intuitive perception that the hour of dinner was not very dis tant, and accordingly made some inquiries on the subject. As I had not yet summoned resolution enough to face my wife, who was a terrible virago at times, God rest her soul, I sent for my dinner, and was informed that it waited me in the inner apartments. I told my servant to get it, and bring it to me, but when he went for it he got nothing but abuse, and a blow on the mouth with a slipper. He was at the same time desired to tell me, that if I did not choose to come for my dinner, I should want it. This was a serious consideration, and I sat down to deliberate on what was best to be done. At last I resolved to go to the house of my friend Futtah Alee Khan, and thereby gain a triumph over my wife. I accordingly set out, but had not gone far, ere I met the poet himself, walking quicker than he was used to do.

"Where are you going?" said I to him. "I am going," said he, "to dine with you, for my wife has turned me out without my dinner, because I told her she was too old now to paint her eyebrows."

"I wonder,” said I, "that a man of your sense should say such a thing to a

woman, however old she may be. You know that none of them can endure such remarks. By the head of the King, your wife is right to be offended. Who made you judge when a woman is too old to paint her eye-brows? Let us go back to your house, and I will make up the matter."

"I have no objection," said the Khan, "but first tell me where you were going, at this your usual dinner hour ?"

"To tell the truth," said I, "my wife refused to send my dinner to my Khulvut, and as we have had a difference, I refused to go into the Underoon.†

"This is most absurd conduct in you, Meerza Ahmed," said the Khan. "What does it signify where you eat your dinner? and if you do not go into the Underoon, how can you make up

Private room.

matters with your wife? Come, come, Meerza, let us go to your house, and I will engage to settle your differences."

The Khan carried the day. I returned reluctantly to my own house. We discussed the whole matter in dispute, and the Khan decided, that we were both right. He said that I was right, having had no evil intention towards Sheereen, the young slave girl, and that my wife, believing me to have been wickedly inclined, was right in what she had done. The decision satisfied us both, for we were by this time tired of the quarrel. We ate an excellent dinner, and I had a very learned discussion with the Khan, on the merits of a passage in Anweree,+ in which it seemed to me that I had the advantage.

THE worthy Laureate is one of those men of distinguished talents and industry, who have not attained to the praise or the influence of intellectual greatness, only because they have been so unfortunate as to come too late into the world. Had Southey flourished forty or fifty years ago, and written half as well as he has written in our time, he might have ranked nem. con. with the first of modern critics, of modern historians, perhaps even of modern poets. The warmth of his feelings and the flow of his style would have enabled him to throw all the prosers of that day into the shade-His extensive erudition would have won him the veneration of an age in which erudition was venerable-His imaginative power would have lifted him like an eagle over the versifiers who then amused the public with their feeble echoes of the wit, the sense, and the numbers of Pope. He could not have been the Man of the Age; but, taking all his manifold excellencies and qua

lifications into account, he must have been most assuredly Somebody, and a great deal more than somebody.

How different is his actual case! As a poet, as an author of imaginative works in general, how small is the space he covers, how little is he talked or thought of! The Established Church of Poetry will hear of nobody but Scott, Byron, Campbell: and the Lake Methodists themselves will scarcely permit him to be called a burning and a shining light in the same day with their Wordsworth-even their Coleridge. In point of fact, he himself is now the only man who ever alludes to Southey's poems. We can suppose youngish readers starting when they come upon some note of his in the Quarterly, or in these new books of history, referring to "the Madoc," or "the Joan," as to something universally known and familiar. As to criticism and politics of the day, he is but one of the Quarterly reviewers, and scarcely one of the most influential of them. He puts

forth essays half antiquarianism, half prosing, with now and then a dash of a sweet enough sort of literary mysticism in them-and more frequently a display of pompous self-complacent simplicity, enough to call a smile into the most iron physiognomy that ever grinned. But these lucubrations produce no effect upon the spirit of the time. A man would as soon take his opinions from his grandmother as from the Doctor. The whole thing looks as if it were made on purpose to be read to some antediluvian village clubThe fat parson-the solemn leechthe gaping schoolmaster, and three or four simpering Tabbies. There is nothing in common to him and the people of this world. We love himwe respect him-we admire his diligence, his acquisitions, his excellent manner of keeping his note-books-If he were in orders, and one had an advowson to dispose of, one could not but think of him. But good, honest, worthy man, only to hear him telling us his opinion of Napoleon Buonaparte!-and then the quotations from Coleridge, Wordsworth, Lamb, Landor, Withers, old Fuller, and all the rest of his favourites-and the little wise-looking maxims, every one of them as old as the back of Skiddaw and the delicate little gleams of pathos -and the little family-stories and allusions and all the little parentheses of exultation-well, we really wonder after all, that the Laureate is not more popular.

The first time Mr Southey attempted regular historical composition he suc ceeded admirably. His Life of Nelson is truly a masterpiece; a brief animated-glowing-straightforward -manly English work, in two volumes duodecimo. That book will be read three hundred years hence by every boy that is nursed on English ground. All his bulky historical works are, comparatively speaking, failures. His History of Brazil is the most unreadable production of our time. Two or three elephant quartos about a single Portugueze colony! Every little colonel, captain, bishop, friar, discussed at as much length as if they were so many Cromwells or Loyolas -and why?-just for this one simple reason, that Dr Southey is an excellent Portugueze scholar, and has an excellent Portugueze library. The whole affair breathes of one sentiment,

and but one-Behold, O British Public! what a fine thing it is to understand this tongue-fall down and worship me! I am a member of the Lisbon Academy, and yet I was born in Bristol, and am now living at Kes

wick.

This inordinate vanity is an admirable condiment in a small work, and when the subject is really possessed of a strong interest. It makes one read with more earnestness of attention and sympathy. But carried to this height, and exhibited in such a book as this, it is utter nonsense. It is carrying the joke a great deal too far.-People do at last, however good-natured, get weary of seeing a respectable man walking his hobby-horse.

Melancholy to say, the History of the Peninsular War is, in spite of an intensely interesting theme, and copi ous materials of real value, little better than another Caucasus of lumber, after all. If the campaigns of Buonaparte were written in the same style, they would make a book in thirty or forty quarto volumes, of 700 pages each. He is overlaying the thing completely

he is smothering the Duke of Wellington. The underwood has increased, is increasing, and ought without delay to be smashed. Do we want to hear the legendary history of every Catholic saint, who happens to have been buried or worshipped near the scene of some of General Hill's skirmishes? What, in the devil's name, have we to do with all these old twelfth century miracles and visions, in the midst of a history of Arthur Duke of Wellington, and his British army? Does the Doctor mean to write his Grace's Indian campaigns in the same style, and to make them the pin whereon to hang all the wreck and rubbish of his commonplace book for Kehama, as he has here done with the odds and ends that he could not get stuffed into the notes on Roderick and My Cid? Southey should have lived in the days of 2000 page folios, triple columns, and double indexes-He would then have been set to a corpus of something at once, and been happy for life. Never surely was such a mistake as for him to make his appearance in an age of restlessly vigorous thought, disdainful originality of opinion, intolerance for longwindedness, and scorn of mountains in labour-Glaramara and Penmanmaur among the rest.