sages done justice to these our melancholy visitors, and shown us what grand personages they are. To mention only a few of the most striking. When Thetis, in the Iliad (Lib. i., v. 359), rises out of the sea to console Achilles, she issues forth in a mist; like the Genius in the Arabian Nights. The reader is to suppose that the mist, after ascending, comes gliding over the water; and condensing itself into a human shape, lands the white-footed goddess on the shore.

When Achilles, after his long and vindictive absence from the Greek armies, re-appears in consequence of the death of his friend Patroclus, and stands before the appalled Trojan armies, who are thrown into confusion at the very sight, Minerva, to render his aspect the more astonishing and awful, puts about his head a halo of golden mist, streaming upwards with fire (Lib. xviii., v. 205). He shouts aloud under this preternatural diadem; Minerva throws into his shout her own immortal voice with a strange unnatural cry; at which the horses of the Trojan warriors run round with their chariots, and twelve of their noblest captains perish in the crush.

A mist was the usual clothing of the gods, when they descended to earth; especially of Apollo, whose brightness had double need of mitigation. Homer, to heighten the dignity of Ulysses, has finely given him the same covering, when he passes through the court of Antincus, and suddenly appears before the throne. This has been turned to happy account by Virgil, and to a new and noble one by Milton. Virgil makes Æneas issue suddenly from a mist, at the moment when his friends think him lost, and the beautiful queen of Carthage is wishing his presence. Milton-but we will give one or two of his minor uses of mists, by way of making a climax of the one alluded to. If Satan, for instance, goes lurking about Paradise, it is "like a black mist low creeping." If the angels on guard glide about it, upon their gentler errand, it is like fairer vapors :

On the ground

Gliding meteorous, as evening mist

Risen from a river o'er the marish glides,

And gathers ground fast at the laborer's heel

Homeward returning.—(Par. Lost, B. xii., v. 628.)

Now behold one of his greatest imaginations. The fallen demi-gods are assembled in Pandæmonium, waiting the return of their "great adventurer" from his "search of worlds:"

He through the midst unmarked,

In show plebeian angel militant

Of lowest order, passed; and from the door
Of that Plutonian hall, invisible,
Ascended his high throne; which, under state
Of richest texture spread, at the upper end
Was placed in regal lustre. Down awhile
He sat, and round about him saw unseen.
At last-as from a cloud, his fulgent head
And shape star-bright appeared, or brighter; clad
With what permissive glory since his fall
Was left him, or false glitter. All amazed

At that so sudden blaze, the Stygian throng

Bent their aspect; and whom they wished, beheld,
Their mighty chief returned.

There is a piece of imagination in Apollonius Rhodius worthy of Milton or Homer. The Argonauts, in broad day-light, are suddenly benighted at sea with a black fog. They pray to Apollo; and he descends from heaven, and lighting on a rock, holds up his illustrious bow, which shoots a guiding light for them to an island.

Spenser, in a most romantic chapter of the Faery Queene (Book ii.), seems to have taken the idea of a benighting from Apollonius, as well as to have had an eye to some passages of the Odyssey; but, like all great poets, what he borrows only brings worthy companionship to some fine invention of his own. It is a scene thickly beset with horror. Sir Guyon, in the course of his voyage through the perilous sea, wishes to stop and hear the Syrens; but the palmer, his companion, dissuades him:

When suddeinly a grosse fog overspred
With his dull vapor all that desert has,
And heaven's chearefull face enveloped,

That all things one, and one as nothing was,

And this great universe seemed one confused mass.

Thereat they greatly were dismayd, ne wist
How to direct theyr way in darkness wide,

But feared to wander in that wastefull mist
For tombling into mischiefe unespyde:
Worse is the daunger hidden then descride.
Suddeinly an innumerable flight

Of harmfull fowles about them fluttering cride,
And with theyr wicked wings them oft did smight,
And sore annoyed, groping in that griesly night.

Even all the nation of unfortunate

And fatall birds about them flocked were,

Such as by nature men abhorre and hate,
The ill-faced owle, deaths dreadful messengere.
The hoarse night-raven, trump of dolefull drere :
The lether-winged batt, dayes enimy:

The ruefull stritch, still waiting on the bere:
The whistler shrill, that whoso heares doth dy:
The hellish harpies, prophets of sad destiny;

All these, and all that else does horror breed.
About them flew, and fild their sayles with fear;
Yet stayd they not, but forward did proceed,

Whiles th' one did row, and th' other stifly steare.

Ovid has turned a mist to his usual account. It is where Jupiter, to conceal his amour with Io, throws a cloud over the vale of Tempe. There is a picture of Jupiter and Io, by Correggio, in which that great artist has finely availed himself of the circumstance; the head of the father of gods and men coming placidly out of the cloud, upon the young lips of Io, like the very benignity of creation.

The poet who is the most conversant with mists is Ossian, who was a native of the north of Scotland or Ireland. The following are as many specimens of his uses of mist as we have room for. The first is very grand; the second as happy in its analogy; the third is ghastly, but of more doubtful merit:

Two Chiefs parted by their King.—They sunk from the king on either side, like two columns of morning mist, when the sun rises between them on his glittering rocks. Dark is their rolling on either side, each towards its reedy pool.

A great Enemy.—I love a foe like Cathmor: his soul is great; his arm is strong; his battles are full of fame. But the little soul is like a vapor,

that hovers round the marshy lake. It never rises on the green hill, lest the winds meet it there.

A terrible Omen.—A mist rose slowly from the lake. It came, in the figure of an aged man, along the silent plain. Its large limbs did not move in steps; for a ghost supported it in mid air. It came towards Selma's hall, and dissolved in a shower of blood.

We must mention another instance of the poetical use of a mist, if it is only to indulge ourselves in one of those masterly passages of Dante, in which he contrives to unite minuteness of detail with the most grand and sovereign effect. It is in a lofty comparison of the planet Mars looking through morning vapors; the reader will see with what (Purgatorio, c. ii., v. 10). Dante and his guide Virgil have just left the infernal regions, and are lingering on a solitary sea-shore in purgatory; which reminds us of that still and far-thoughted verse—

Lone sitting by the shores of old romance.

But to our English-like Italian.

Noi eravam lungh' esso 'l mare ancora, &c.

That solitary shore we still kept on,

Like men, who musing on their journey, stay
At rest in body, yet in heart are gone;

When lo! as at the early dawn of day,

Red Mars looks deepening through the foggy heat,
Down in the west, far o'er the watery way;
So did mine eyes behold (so may they yet)
A light, which came so swiftly o'er the sea,
That never wing with such a fervor beat.
I did but turn to ask what it might be

Of my sage leader, when its orb had got
More large meanwhile, and came more gloriously
And by degrees, I saw I knew not what

Of white about it; and beneath the white
Another. My great master uttered not
One word, till those first issuing candours bright
Fanned into wings; but soon as he had found
Who was the mighty voyager now in sight,
He cried aloud, "Down, down, upon the ground,
It is God's Angel."

CHAPTER XVI.

The Shoemaker of Veyros, a Portuguese Tradition.

In the time of the old kings of Portugal, Don John, a natural son of the reigning prince, was governor of the town of Veyros, in the province of Alentejo. The town was situate (perhaps is there still) upon a mountain, at the foot of which runs a river; and at a little distance there was a ford over it, under another eminence. The bed of the river thereabouts was so high as to form a shallow sandy place; and in that clear spot of water, the maidens of Veyros, both of high rank and humble, used to wash their clothes.

It happened one day, that Don John, riding out with a company, came to the spot at the time the young women were so employed and being, says our author, "a young and lusty gallant," he fell to jesting with his followers upon the bare legs of the busy girls, who had tucked up their clothes, as usual, to their work. He passed along the river; and all his company had not gone by, when a lass in a red petticoat, while tucking it up, showed her legs somewhat high; and clapping her hand on her right calf, said loud enough to be heard by the riders, "Here's a white leg, girls, for the Master of Avis."*

These words, spoken probably out of a little lively bravado, upon the strength of the governor's having gone by, were repeated to him when he got home, together with the action that accompanied them upon which the young lord felt the eloquence of the speech so deeply, that he contrived to have the fair speaker brought to him in private; and the consequence was, that our lively natural son, and his sprightly challenger, had another natural son.

* An order of knighthood, of which Don John was Master.