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warden began to betray symptoms of the melancholy and disorder which had exhibited themselves among others in the castle.

Old Pamphila, his mother, was of course among the first who noticed it; and putting one circumstance to another, in her sagacious brain, she never rested till she had extorted the entire secret of Lambert's compunctuous visitings of nature; in short, his mother so wrought upon his vacillating mind, long agitated by remorse for his negative acquiescence in the unjust death of the cook at Middleham, that he offered, not only to prevent the crime Sir Angelo meditated, but also to bring the arch traitor himself to detection and punishment.

As to our hero's notions, they ran somewhat in this strain.—

Bolton Castle, and Middleham, and Raby, would make a glorious heritage! and why should not his brother in arms make him the heir? but he would not take it with incumbrances-not he! Lady Scroop was to become the vessel of his lust, and then her reputation be dashed down at the feet of her returning lord, broken by his not fully-woven calumnies, into irreparable ruin. And the children, they were to be spirited away, and Lambert Norris had engaged for this. But surely this was somewhat ungrateful to his absent friend? Pish,

a mere rush in his way! But it would break his heart! So much the sooner would Polydore be his heir! he owed him a life too already. Ay, but the beautiful Lady Aveline! had he no compassion for her her whom he had once loved? her! what?

The Scourged Page! oh, no! but we loathe such devilish lucubrations, and willingly shake them off our hands.

The castle clock in the adjoining_bellturret had tolled so often, during Pamphila's long and interlarded tale of dismay, that we must now leave the thunderstricken Aveline to get what sleep she might, after all these liberal designs upon her honour, her happiness, and her estate, had been laid before her ;-and hasten to cut off the web of our story, like a weaver who is either too idle to complete his work or too eager to receive his wages.

About two days after this important conference, missives arrived at Bolton Castle, with tidings that Lord Adrian had landed safely at Whitby, and only tarried to perform certain vows at St. Hilda's shrine, ere he proceeded to embrace his wife and children in his own princely castle.

They found the whole household plunged in consternation.

That very morning, had the_lady baroness been discovered by nurse Pamphila, dead in her bed.

No one bore the exterior tokens of grief and dismay, with more consummate skill, than Sir Angelo Lascelles ;but, as to his actual feelings, it is hard to say, whether satisfaction or disappointment predominated. True;-one main impediment to his designs on the lordly heritage of his brother in arms was thus removed, and nothing seemed to remain between him and his wicked wishes, but the two young children, whom he could put out of the way, as occasion suited, and by such time as he should have completely riveted the baron's affections and confidence, which he had already so greatly beguiled.

But then, though his covetousness was thus advanced,-lust and revenge, its associate devils, tormented him with passions now never to be gratified: for Polydore could be as grand as he was grovelling in villany; and to have humbled her, who, having caused his ignominy, had trampled on his love; to have laid her honour in the dust, and then yelled over it, "I am Polydore! I am the Scourged Page!" had been a transport to his evil imagination, the relinquishment of which, maimed and defeatured all his other prospects.

We would not, if we could, adequately describe the scene that ensued on Lord Scroop's return to his castle,-when Sir Angelo Lascelles having received him in the hall, himself as black in visage and habiliments as the trappings of woe that muffled its lofty walls, conducted the widowed nobleman to the chamber of death.

There, watched only by the inconsolable Pamphila,-stretched upon that nuptial couch which she had preserved so spotless; her beautiful form enfolded in long white drapery; one hand extended by her side, holding a rosary; the other on her breast, grasping a crucifix,-a chaplet of white roses around her marble temples;-cold, pale, and motionless, as if she had been her own effigy, lay poor Aveline Neville.

On one side, stood the bereaved husband; on the other, Polydore.

Profound as the misery of Lord Adrian was, he could not help, for one moment, forgetting the intensity of his own anguish, when, on raising his head from a deep long trance of agony, he observed the extraordinary state of Sir Angelo Lascelles.

He had relinquished the little hands of Cicely and Maximilian, whom he had led to their mother's bedside, and they had retired in terror to the very farthest end of the chamber. He stood bending over the bed,—his hands clasped, his body convulsed,—his limbs quivering,— the veins on his forehead like cords, braided with perspiration, his eyes glaring, his lips writhen, and his whole countenance red, even to blackness, with passion. This was no counterfeit! yet the most elaborate acting would not so effectually have promoted his views with Lord Scroop, as this natural conflict of the most hellish passions in his heart!

The wretched Baron suspended his own holier and more chastened grief, that he might assuage these life-dethroning paroxysms of Sir Angelo Lascelles.

And when, at length, his own deep withering sorrow, eating away his health, devouring his very heart, had bowed the noble Adrian, like some kingly oak of ages, to the earth,—it was the assiduous love of Sir Angelo Lascelles—a love he deemed surpassing the love of woman-that suggested, first of all, a change of scene for the health of his body; and then, by degrees, a pil. grimage to St. Thomas at Canterbury, or to the Holy Sepulchre itself, for the health of his soul.

In all this Sir Angelo prospered. A lingering desire to resume the cross, checked only by reluctance to leave his orphan children, was thus fostered, and at last matured into a resolution to join immediately the remnant that was still warring in Palestine.

Sir Angelo Lascelles, for his part, out of pure love for his heart-broken brother in arms, voluntarily offered to abandon his own further prospects of distinction in that realm of renown, and consented to remain in Yorkshire, as chatelain of Lord Scroope's castles and baronies, and as guardian to the lovely little Cicely and the noble Maximilian.

"Now then!" exclaimed Pamphila Norris to her son, the castle-warden;

66 now, then, the villain's cup is full, and by my Halidome, it shall overflow till its last drop is poured out upon the earth, and exhales like a dunghill vapour in the sun!"

Vying with each other to shew their parting demonstrations of respect and sympathy, the feudal aristocracy of the North Riding flocked to Bolton Castle at an early hour on the morning appointed for the Baron's departure.

It was that hour when the sun has just ascended over the hills, and

"Fires the proud tops of the Eastern pines" with a sparkling tranquillity, a sober brilliance, peculiar to itself. The sky has all the freshness of night, without the dazzle of day. The woods retain their shade without their gloom; the dust lies undisturbed on the dewy highway; no smoke ascends from the chimney; the matin-song of the blackbird, and the sonorous calls of the milky mothers of the herd, resound from afar through the clear, still air; and the river glides dreamily under its forest banks, without one awakening sparkle on its bosom.

A mantling flood of morning sunlight illuminated the eastern front of the castle, darting far into the ribbed vault of its deep gateway. The ample platform, that stretched before it, displayed a congregation of knights and nobles, whose steeds rivalled their riders in stateliness of form and splendour of equipment. And the squires, waving the bannered cognizances of their masters, and the pages, shouting their warcries, and the steeds, jingling their harness, and battering the paved platform with their hoofs, bore as strange a contrast to the melancholy tolling of one great bell in the campanile, as the haughty forms and blazoned apparel of that gorgeous assembly exhibited to that grief-enfeebled form, which, attired in pilgrim's weed, and attended only by Sir Angelo Lascelles, emerged from the shadowy arches of the great gateway.

Pamphila Norris had stationed herself outside the portal, in front of a group of vassals, who had thronged to take their last look of their departing lord.

The solemn greeting between the mourning nobleman and his sympathising friends had now taken place; Lord Scroop had delivered his solemn thanks for their courtesy, and was turning away to mount his sumpter mule, which a page held, ready harnessed, at hand, when, at the same instant, Pamphila quitted the group at the castle portal, moved up to Baron Adrian, laid her withered hand on his arm, and advanced her lips to his ear.

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Just then, Sir Angelo Lascelles, rently overpowered by his feelings, was hurrying to hide himself in the seclusion of the castle; when lo! a voice issued from the quadrangle, sounding like an angel's trumpet through the hollow gateway :

"Back! traitor, poisoner, seducer, back! or these high battlements will crash and crumble above thine execrable head! Back to the death thou hast deserved! never more shall perfidy and dishonour in thy shape pollute this court!"

Sir Angelo, or Polydore, as we shall style him now, recoiled; and well he might; for, sweeping from the inner arch of the great gateway, with hasty but stately step, like some beauteous empress of romance bursting from the dungeons of the enchanter, the Lady Aveline passed forth upon the platform.

But it was no longer the cold, ghastly, grave-clad form, which had so shaken Polydore when he beheld it last.

Arrayed in her gorgeous habit of high ceremony, radiant with the excitement of the moment, leading in each hand the young Maximilian and his sister in their holiday dress, Lady Scroop sped through the portal,- -saw the smiling old Pamphila supporting, rather than leading, towards her the bewildered Baron, and just articulating,

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Forgive, forgive! I durst not trust thee till that arch villain was unmasked!' fell in breathless transports on Lord Adrian's bosom.

And here I would fain, as my brethren of the goosequill say, "drop my pen' but we have not yet quite done with Polydore, and something also ought to be said about that imposture in the corpse scene,-which we hope for the time, proved successful.

Know all men! therefore, by these presents, that Pamphila Norris had employed the same means with lady Aveline, as Friar Lawrence with Juliet.

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unmask himself, the Baroness was withdrawn from his peril.

Lambert, the castlewarden's evidence completely established Polydore's meditated guilt, at Bolton; and, as to the darkly horrible deaths at Middleham, though Norris could only speak to the mysterious appearance, and sudden departure of Polydore, on that direful night, and lament his own criminal suppression of that important fact; yet the conviction that the Scourged Page had been the atrocious poisoner, was universal.

Nay, if there had remained any doubt, it was removed by Polydore himself; who, after his first blank dismay had subsided, relapsing into his old natural fierceness, confessed himself the author of those multiplied murders; glorying in the deed, and only lamenting that he was to die without more eminently signalizing his revenge.

This false knight, nevertheless, obtained what he scarcely deserved, a full and patient trial; and, being convicted of the horrible crimes laid to his charge, was sentenced to a death fearfully characterising the barbarism of the age; and which, together with the punishments for heresy, high treason, and standing mute, so long stigmatized the pages of the English statute book with severities from which Draco would have turned in disgust.

It was adjudged that an immense cauldron should be set, filled with boiling water, on a mound near Middleham, and that the poisoner should be plunged into it,-bound, naked, and alive.

Amidst a prodigious multitude, from the neighbouring villages, and towns,— on the day appointed for Polydore's execution, a gigantic vessel of iron was seen curling up its white vapours into the clear air, while the darting flames that licked the glowing metal, looked sickly in the noontide sun.

At the sudden tolling of the great castle bell, all eyes were turned towards the gateway, from whence a procession was now seen emerging in the direction of the fatal spot.

It was the sheriff of Richmond, and his men at arms, escorting the criminal to his excruciating death.

Polydore walked in the centre, stript to his bare skin, and having only his shirt fastened about his loins: his hands were tied behind his back, the thick curls of his hair cut off, and his beard close shaved in token of ignominy. He looked round him however with effront

ery, and even fierceness; and the spec. tators were compelled to think of his horrid enormities, in order to counteract the compassion he so little deserved.

Arrived at the place of punishment, Polydore was suffered to wait some time, to afford space for observing what impression the appalling preparations produced upon him. But he viewed them with a steady gaze, and appeared quite indifferent to his fate; sometimes glancing haughtily on the spectators, who stood breathless with anticipation of the tortures he so little regarded,—and sometimes, looking carelessly at his own sinewy limbs, and well-proportioned trunk, as if to see that every nerve was in its place, to sustain manfully the agony that awaited him.

At length the sheriff advanced to the prisoner, and announced to him, that, at the merciful intercession of those whom he had most bitterly wronged, the mortal part of his punishment was remitted to him, on the sole condition, however, of his banishing himself forth of the realm, for the remainder of his life.

That officer then ordered the criminal's hands to be unbound, and his apparel to be restored to him.

The wretched Polydore stood for awhile in senseless bewildered gaze,and then burst forth with a vehemence, that proclaimed insanity.—

"Hence to Acheron with your whining cant of mercy! twice have they bared this wretched body of mine for torture. Once have their cruel rods inscribed their red characters on my skin! And now, they have got up this barbarous mummery, they dare not act it,-lest they should send their writhing victim to his repose too soon! But thus I spit at you! thus I defy you! and thus I erase for ever the records of my shame!"

Polydore shook aloft his unfettered arm, threw a glance of triumphant frenzy around; and in the next moment, had plunged himself headlong into the boiling flaming cauldron. April 10th, 1835.

HORACE GUILFORD.

TRUTH.

THE heaviest fetter that ever weighed down the limbs of a captive, is as the web of the gossamer, compared with the pledge of a man of honour. The wall of stone and the bar of iron may be broken, but the plighted word never!

SKETCHES OF TURKEY. No. III.

BY NATHANIEL P. WILLIS.

Sultan Mahmoud at his devotions-comparative splendour of Papal, Austrian, and Turkish equipages-the sultan's barge or caique-description of the sultan-visit to a Turkish Lancasterian school-the dancing dervishes -visit from the sultan's cabinet-the seraskier and the capitan pasha-humble origin of Turkish dignitaries.

I had slept on shore, and it was rather late before I remembered that it was Friday (the moslem Sunday), and that Sultan Mahmoud was to go in state to mosque at twelve. I hurried down the precipitous street of Pera, and, as usual, escaping barely with my life from the christian-hating dogs of Tophana, embarked in a caique, and made all speed up the Bosphorus. There is no word in Turkish for faster, but I was urging on my caikjees by a wave of the hand and the sight of a bishlik (about the value of a quarter of dollar), when suddenly, a broadside was fired from the three decker, Mahmoudier, the largest ship in the world, and to the rigging of every man-of-war in the fleet through which I was passing mounted, simultaneously, hundreds of blood-red flags, filling the air about us like a shower of tulips and roses. Imagine twenty ships of war, with yards manned, and scarce a line in their rigging to be seen for the flaunting of colours! The jar of the guns, thundering in every direction close over us, almost lifted our light boat out of the water, and the smoke rendered our pilotage between the ships and among their extending cables rather doubtful. The white cloud lifted after a few minutes, and with the last gun, down went the flags all together, announcing that the "Brother of the Sun" had left his palace.

He had but crossed to the mosque of the small village on the opposite side of the Bosphorus, and was already at his prayers when I arrived. His bodyguard was drawn up before the door, in their villanous European dress, and as their arms were stacked, I presumed it would be some time before the sultan re-appeared, and improved the interval in examining the handja-bashes, or state caiques, lying at the landing. I have arrived at my present notions of equipage by three degrees. The pope's carriages, at Rome, rather astonished me. emperor of Austria's sleighs diminished the pope in my admiration, and the sultan's caiques, in their turn, "pale the

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fires" of the emperor of Austria. The handja-bash is built something like the ancient galley, very high at the prow and stern, carries some fifty oars, and has a roof over her poop, supported by four columns, and loaded with the most sumptuous ornaments, the whole gilt brilliantly. The prow is curved over, and wreathed into every possible device that would not affect the necessary lines of the model; her crew are dressed in the beautiful costume of the country, rich and flowing; and, with the costly and bright-coloured carpets hanging over her side, and the flashing of the sun on her ornaments of gold, she is really the most splendid object of state equipage (if I may be allowed the misnomer) in the world.

I was still examining the principal barge, when the troops stood to their arms, and preparation was made for the passing out of the sultan. Thirty or forty of his highest military officers formed themselves into two lines, from the door of the mosque to the landing, and behind them were drawn up single files of soldiers. I took advantage of the respect paid to the rank of Commodore Patterson, and obtained an excellent position, with him, at the side the caique, First issued from the door two Georgian slaves, bearing censers, from which they waved the smoke on either side, and the sultan immediately followed, supported by the capitan-pasha, the seraskier, and Haleil Pasha (who is to marry the Sultana Esmeh). He walked slowly down to the landing, smiling and talking gaily with the seraskier, and, bowing to the commodore in passing, stepped into his barge, seated himself on a raised sofa, while his attendants coiled their legs on the carpet below, and turned his prow across the Bosphorus.

I have, perhaps, never set my eyes on a handsomer man than Sultan Mahmoud. His figure is tall, straight, and manly, his air unembarrassed and dignified, and his step indicative of the well-known firmness of his character. A superb beard of jetty blackness, with a curling moustache, conceal all the lower part of his face; the decided and bold lines of his mouth just marking themselves when he speaks. It is said he both paints and dyes his beard, but a manlier brown upon a cheek, or a richer gloss upon a beard, I never saw. His eye is described by writers as having a doomed darkness of expression, and it is certainly one that would well become a chief of banditslarge, steady, and overhung with an eye

brow like a thunder-cloud. He looks the monarch. The child of a seraglio, (where mothers are chosen for beauty alone) can scarce escape being handsome. The blood of Circassian upon Circassian is in his veins, and the wonder is, not that he is the handsomest man in his empire, but that he is not the greatest slave. Our "mother's humour," they say, predominates in our mixtures. Sultan Mahmoud, however, was marked by nature for a throne.

I accompanied Mr. Goodell and Mr. Dwight, American missionaries at Constantinople, to visit a Lancasterian school established with their assistance in the Turkish barracks. The building stands on the ascent of one of the lovely valleys that open into the Bosphorus, some three miles from the city, on the European side. We were received by the colonel of the regiment, a young man of fine appearance with the diamond crescent and star glittering on the breast of his military frock, and after the inevitable compliment of pipes and coffee, the drum was beat and the soldiers called to school.

The sultan has an army of boys. Ninetenths of those I have seen are under twenty. They marched in, in single file, and facing about, held up their hands at the word of command, while a subaltern looked that each had performed the morning ablution. They were healthylooking lads, mostly from the interior provinces, whence they are driven down like cattle to fill the ranks of their sovereign. Duller looking subjects for an idea, it has not been my fortune to see.

The Turkish alphabet hung over the teacher's desk (the colonel is the schoolmaster, and takes the greatest interest in his occupation), and the front seats are faced with a long box covered with sand, in which the beginners write with their fingers. It is fitted with a slide that erases the clumsy imitation when completed, and seemed to me an ingenious economy of ink and paper. (I would suggest to the minds of the benevolent, a school on the same principle for beginners in poetry. It would save the critics much murder, and tend to the suppression of suicide.) The classes having filed into their seats, the school opened with a prayer by the colonel. The higher benches then commenced writing, on slates and paper, sentences dictated from the desk, and I was somewhat surprised at the neatness and beauty of the cha

racters.

We passed afterward into another room, where arithmetic and geography

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