He adds in a note, "The account of the MIDNIGHT SONG OF THE SWAN is from Olafsen, who says it 'das allerangenehmste zu hören ist,' is very delightful to hear." Henderson says of the river Nordura in Iceland, near its confluence with the Hrita: "The bleakness of the surrounding rocks was greatly enlivened by the number of SWANS that were swimming and SINGING MELODIOUSLY in the river."--_Iceland_, 2nd ed. p. 277. In the Edda we find Njörd, god of the winds and waves, when he came back to the mountains to please his wife, thus singing: "How do I hate the abode of the mountains! There one hears nothing but the howling of wolves, instead of the SWEET SINGING OF THE SWANS who dwell on the sea-shores." Waterton gives an account of the last moments of a favourite swan which he watched, in hopes of catching "some plaintive sound or other, some soft inflection of the voice," but was "disappointed." GERONIMO. QUEEN BRUNEHILDA. (Vol. v., p. 40.) [8] I am glad that C. B. has questioned the propriety of the epithet "female monster," which some of your correspondents have applied to Queen Brunehilda. Knowing how the passion and prejudice that characterise party spirit have under our own observation been able to distort facts and blacken characters, we should receive with the greater caution the statements of those who, if they were free, which is hardly possible, from a strong bias, lived in an age when exact information was hardly possible to obtain, and when the most odious calumnies could defy refutation. From the success with which Brunehilda maintained the sovereignty of her husband's kingdom through a long life, I should conclude that she was a woman of great abilities as well as energy; and the terms in which Gregory the Great addresses her, tend to confirm this opinion. And in reference to this it seems somewhat surprising that it should not have struck those who first raised this question, that the evidence of the "wise and virtuous pontiff" was at least as good as that of the historian who might be neither wise nor virtuous. Gregory is surely as powerful to raise Brunehilda, as Brunehilda to pull down Gregory. But the plain fact is, that there is a tendency to be hyperbolical in our estimation of crowned heads; in all probability, if one was no monster the other was no saint.