The pilgrim from Ausonian clime, Rich in remains of olden time, Brings marble relics o’er the deep— Memorials of deathless mind, Of hallowed ground where, grandly shrined, Sage, bard and warrior sleep; And precious though such wrecks of yore, I prize thy gift, fair lady, more, Plucked with a reverential hand; For the old chief, above whose tomb Its bud gave out a faint perfume, Was son of my own forest land, And with bright records of her fame Is linked, immortally, his name. * * * * * PEDRO DE PADILH. BY J. M. LEGARE. Spain, and Tercera. } AD. 1583. } It is part of the popular belief, I know, that our ancestors, of three centuries back, lived and talked in quite a different fashion from mankind at the present day; but as I entertain no political designs on that Great Caioled, the people, I may venture to assert an opinion of my own. I cannot persuade myself what is called human nature has undergone much alteration in the exchange of an iron for a broadcloth suit, and it is very certain people ate, drank, and slept in those remote times much as we now do, although your stilted romancers seldom recognise the fact, and make their heroines as unlike tangible women, “not too good for daily food,” as their heroes are exemplars of the mendacious gifts of their biographers. In the matter of speech, through which we mainly receive impressions of fictitious personages, it is extraordinary what fustian is palmed on a credulous posterity, as the veritable domestic talk of nobles, knights and folks of lesser condition. There is no comedy, high or low, in the conceptions of many of these authors; Man having apparently assumed the distinguishing trait of a laughing animal, or at best of an humorous one, at some more recent epoch of modern history. Every body struts about in buskins and speaks tragedy, nothing less; and as to the fooleries enacted by pages, grooms, and servitors of all kinds, there is no end to them, nor any like nowadays, except we find it on the boards of a country theatre. What I say admits of easy illustration. Thus, when the page woke Don Pedro out of his morning nap—which, by the bye, he was taking not as the usual impression is, in greaves and a casque—he, the page, did not “lout low as it behooves trusty varlets” to do, but in a manner as straight-forward as a modern Thomas would employ, gave the drowsy knight to understand that some one had been sounding his horn at the gate for the last half hour. “Very well,” returned the master, turning over to resume his doze where he was interrupted—the gate being the concern of the warder, of course.