5. Yet Mafra shall one moment claim delay. Stanza xxix. line 1. The extent of Mafra is prodigious; it contains a palace, convent, and most superb church. The six organs are the most beautiful I ever beheld, in point of decoration; we did not hear them, but were told that their tones were correspondent to their splendour. Mafra is termed the Escurial of Portugal. 6. Well doth the Spanish hind the difference know 'Twixt him and Lusian slave, the lowest of the low. Stanza xxxiii. lines 8 and 9. As I found the Portuguese, so I have characterized them. That they are since improved, at least in courage, is evident. 7. When Cava's traitor-sire first call'd the band That dyed thy mountain streams with Gothic gore. Count Julian's daughter, the Helen of Spain. Pelagius preserved his independence in the fastnesses of the Asturias, and the descendants of his followers, after some centuries, completed their struggle by the conquest of Grenada. 8. No! as he speeds, he chants, "Viva el Rey!" Stanza xlviii. line 5. "Viva el Rey Fernando!" Long live King Ferdinand! is the chorus of most of the Spanish patriotic songs: they are chiefly in dispraise of the old king Charles, the Queen, and the Prince of Peace. I have heard many of them; some of the airs are beautiful. Godoy, the Principe de la Paz, was born at Badajoz, on the frontiers of Portugal, and was originally in the ranks of the Spanish Guards, till his person attracted the queen's eyes, and raised him to the dukedom of Alcudia, &c. &c. It is to this man that the Spaniards universally impute the ruin of their country. 9. Bears in his cap the badge of crimson hue, Which tells you whom to shun and whom to greet, The red cockade, with "Fernando Septimo" in the centre. 10. The ball-piled pyramid, the ever-blazing match. Stanza li. line last. All who have seen a battery will recollect the pyramidal form in which shot and shells are piled. The Sierra Morena was fortified in every defile through which I passed in my way to Seville. 11. Foil'd by a woman's hand, before a batter'd wall. Stanza lvi. line last. Such were the exploits of the Maid of Saragoza. When the author was at Seville she walked daily on the Prado, decorated with medals and orders, by command of the Junta, 12. The seal Love's dimpling finger hath impress'd Denotes how soft that chin which bears his touch. Stanza lviii. lines 1 and 2. AUL. GEL. Sigilla in mento impressa Amoris digitulo 13. Oh, thou Parnassus! Stanza Ix. line 1. These stanzas were written in Castri (Delphos), at the foot of Parnassus, now called Axvga-Liakura. 14. Fair is proud Seville; let her country boast Her strength, her wealth, her site of ancient days. Seville was the Hispalis of the Romans. 15. Ask ye, Baotian shades! the reason why? Stanza lxx, line 5. This was written at Thebes, and consequently in the best situation for asking and answering such a question; not as the birth-place of Pindar, but as the capital of Boeotia, where the first riddle was propounded and solved. 16. Some bitter o'er the flowers its bubbling venom flings. "Medio de fonte leporum Surgit amari aliquid quod in ipsis floribus angat." 17. A traitor only fell beneath the feud. Luc. Stanza lxxxv. line 7. Alluding to the conduct and death of Solano, the Governor of Cadiz. 18. "War even to the knife !" Stanza lxxxvi. line last. "War to the knife." Palafox's answer to the French General at the siege of Saragoza. 19. And thou, my friend! &c. Stanza xci. line 1. The Honourable I*. W**. of the Guards, who died of a fever at Coimbra. I had known him ten years, the better half of his life, and the happiest part of mine. In the short space of one month I have lost her who gave me being, and most of those who had made that being tolerable. To me the lines of Young are no fiction: "Insatiate archer! could not one suffice? Thy shaft flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain, I should have ventured a verse to the memory of the late Charles Skinner Matthews, Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge, were he not too much above all praise of mine. His powers. of mind, shown in the attainment of greater honours, against the ablest candidates, than those of any graduate on record at Cambridge, have sufficiently established his fame on the spot where it was acquired: while his softer qualities live in the recollection of friends who loved him too well to envy his superiority. NOTES TO CANTO II. 1. despite of war and wasting fire Stanza i. line 4. PART of the Acropolis was destroyed by the explosion of a magazine during the Venetian siege. 2. But worse than steel and flame, and ages slow, Is the dread sceptre and dominion dire Of men who never felt the sacred glow That thoughts of thee and thine on polish'd breasts bestow. Stanza i. line 6. We can all feel, or imagine, the regret with which the ruins of cities, once the capitals of empires, are beheld; the reflections suggested by such objects are too trite to require recapitulation. But never did the littleness of man, and the vanity of his very best virtues of patriotism to exalt, and of valour to defend his country, appear more conspicuous than in the record of what Athens was, and the certainty of what she now is. This theatre of contention between mighty factions, of the struggles of orators, the exaltation and deposition of tyrants, the triumph and punishment of generals, is now become a scene of petty intrigue and perpetual disturbance, between the bickering agents of certain British nobility and gentry. "The wild foxes, the owls and serpents in the ruins of Babylon," were surely less degrading than such inhabitants. The Turks have the plea of conquest for their tyranny, and the Greeks |