HELL'S gates swing open wide, Hell's furious kings forth ride; With the flags of armies marching through the night, Lords and princes mark I, Thou burning angel of the pit, ABADDON! Gigantic thrones and heathen troopers, whom Lo! Night's barbaric khans, Lo! the waste deep's wild clans Gallop across the skies with fiery bridles: In deep-ranked squadrons gird the rushing cars See! glittering arrows pierce the globes and moons; Whirling aloft their sabres to the zenith! See the tall regiments whose spears incline Beyond the circle of that northern sign Which toward the streams of ocean never leaneth; * Kindle afar thy gloomy peaks, Cordillera! Whose yonder dragon-crest? Whose that red-shielded breast? SATANAS, chieftain, comes! Emperor of the furnace! In mail of Hell's bright ores and burnished pearls, All tribes and spectral hosts, All shades and frowning ghosts, All mighty phantoms from the Gulf's deep gorges On! Lords of dark Despair, Bear your broad banners through the constellations: Wave to the skies your swords; Startle with warlike signs the watching nations! MINE host of the Washington, the drowsy little inn of Innisfield, was a sad illustration of the cheer afforded by his larder. The model innkeeper has come to be a pretty well-known character; his general outlines are as familiar to the imagination as the figure of Falstaff. He should be of moderate stature, of a rotund form, with easily bending shoulders, a face rosy and smiling, a mouth suggestive of juicy sirloins and delicate pastry, and an eye sparkling with good-humor, like the wine just released from his cobwebbed bottles, or, tetotally speaking, like the water from a bright mountain spring. But Zebulon Harwood was deficient in nearly all these particulars; so much so, that it is a marvel why an innate sense of propriety had not kept him out of the profession. He was a tall, gaunt man, whose frame seemed wrought of iron and whalebone, with none of the cellular tissue to give symmetry to its outlines, or to cushion its angular projections. His neck was long, and, as he opened and shut his lank jaws, the loose, flabby skin beneath seemed to envelope and glide over a bundle of knotted cords. Upon his prematurely bald head rested a wig of a faded brown, in fine contrast with the gray eyebrows that bristled above his small, restless eyes. The lean and sanctimonious looks of our landlord would certainly seem to indicate to a traveler, that he would be far surer of a long grace and a round bill, than of a luxurious entertainment. But such inferences are not always as conclusive as in the case of the Black Knight and Friar Tuck. The monotony that usually pervaded the inn was enlivened, one fine evening in June, by the arrival of a passenger in the weekly mail, who gave his name as George Greenleaf. He was a young man, neatly dressed, of quiet, simple manners, and with an unusual weight of baggage. The practised eye of the landlord ran over these indications of a well-filled purse, and his heart warmed somewhat towards his guest at once; but he rubbed his bony hands, and moved his thin lips with a quiet, purring satisfaction, when he learned that the new-comer would probably remain a month or two. The best room was forthwith prepared, and the guest comfortably installed therein. By the south window, overlooking the street and the river beyond, the stranger sat for an hour before breakfast next morning, and gazed with rapt attention upon the beautiful prospect. On the left, a row of majestic elms, fit emblems of the grave and sombre generation that planted them, overhung the green avenue to the church; and, above their waving, breezy tops, the spire with its burnished vane rose resplendent with the earliest beams of the sun. To the right, the river rolled rapidly away from the mill-wheel amid a tangled foliage of grape-vines, ivy and alders. Beyond, the vast form of the south-western hill, covered with grazing herds, closed up the view; and, around its base, on the extreme right, the river lay darkening and quiet, as though recovering its energies before rushing upon a new labor in its destined career. The birds have always loved the quiet valley and the beautiful trees of Innisfield; and, knowing nothing of the murderous customs of later times, they daily gladdened the landscape with their vivacious movements, and their joyous, uninterrupted song. The stranger had never beheld a fairer valley, but he did not evince his delight in words; he was content to gaze in silence. The sweet influences of the morning stole into his heart, like the dew into the flower; and the freshness and beauty of Nature seemed to have been mirrored in the soul of her fond worshipper. How long this reverie would have lasted, it is not easy to say; but it was soon interrupted by the entrance of the landlady, who, impatient to see the young stranger, had herself come, as a mark of special attention, to announce breakfast. She was attired in a morning-gown of calico, (then a rare luxury,) and her head was surmounted by an indescribable mass of folded, yellow batiste, which she probably called a turban. Her face had nothing remarkable, except a discoloration of the upper lip; and her voice, never very musical, perhaps, at once suggested a reason for the yellow hue, for its tones were as thin, and as destitute of any natural resonance, as those of a cracked clarionet. It needed but a glance at the host and hostess, as they sat at the breakfast table, to satisfy their guest as to the question of supremacy. Incedo regina was plainly implied in every movement of the stately head, crowned with its vast yellow burden. The soft and affectionate terms of speech she employed, were as thin a covering for their imperious meaning, as was the gauzy batiste for the silvery hairs underneath its ample folds. The table and its appendages were neat, and the breakfast excellent. Mr. Greenleaf conversed with easy politeness upon the common topics of the day; but he parried with a quiet address the attempts of the curious landlady to learn something of his errand into such a secluded village. After breakfast he walked out with a knapsack or travelling port-folio, and remained until dinner. In the evening he again took his solitary ramble. A month passed, and he continued in the same daily custom. Meanwhile the hostess and other villagers were consumed with the desire of penetrating the supposed mystery of the stranger's life; yet such was the manly simplicity of his manners, joined with a hardly perceptible reserve a reserve that inspired respect rather than awakened suspicion that all who came within the charmed circle which surrounded him, though baffled in their curiosity, instinctively yielded their homage, as to a superior being. Under the shadow of the elms on the western border of the common stood a large old house, once painted cream color, but, at the date of this sketch, turned by mould and moss to a dingy brown. In front, the slope was easy to the placid pond above the mill, and in the rear, a tasteful garden extended a short distance up the hill which overhangs the village on the north. Here dwelt the school-master, a grave widower of fifty, and his only daughter. The school-house was at the opposite end of the common, just beyond the church, whose new spire showed so fairly among the dense foliage. This dwelling-house, with a few acres of smooth meadow adjacent to the village, were the sole property of the school-master, and of that he was merely tenant by courtesy,' in the jargon of the lawyers. The labor of the summer sufficed to gather a supply of the ordinary necessaries of life; and, to eke out this frugal income, the scanty pay of a village teacher in early times was his sole depend ence. The villagers knew the good school-master's name to be Augustus Lee; they knew he was a faithful and kind dominie, and that no man ever doated upon a daughter more tenderly than he upon his darling Alice. Some had seen the ponderous books and the mysterious instruments that filled the curious oaken secretaries in the master's library; and there were not wanting some among the rude and uninformed, to whom such black-letter folios and uncanny apparatus, gathered in a sombre apartment, carried an ill-defined and secret awe. Nor were such vague terrors likely to be at all diminished by the appearance of the skull which always rested on an antique cabinet, and, with sternly clenched teeth and hollow eyes, seemed striving to stare the beholder to stone. But none of the people, whether more or less intimate, seemed to recognize the rare intellect, the original genius, which was doomed to the daily drudgery of the village school. Alice, the scholar's bright-eyed daughter, motherless from infancy, had received a father's care only; and how faithfully he had discharged his duty, only the self-denial, the toil, and the almost feminine solicitude of fifteen years could witness. With a vigorous physical system, developed by habitual exercise in the open air; with fine native talents, trained and expanded by constant contact with her father's superior intellect; with a soul of tenderness and sensibility; and with a rare symmetry of features, to which her physical and mental culture gave at once the glow of perfect health, and an air of intelligence and grace; with such advantages of person and education, no wonder that the orphan, Alice Lee, was the favorite of all the good matrons in the village, or that her father was so often seen regarding her with a look of unutterable pride and affection. At the age of sixteen, while most school-girls were toiling over arithmetic, embroidering tiresome 'samplers,' or vainly wrestling with the construction of obdurate sentences, the scholar's daughter, already versed in the principles of mathematics, and familiar to a considerable extent with the ancient languages, was a companion in his daily studies, and shrank not from the abstruse theories of the schoolmen, nor from the conflicting commentaries upon the classics and the Scriptures. But with the maturity of coming womanhood was blended the playful grace of the child; and, when at evening the books were restored to their ancient cases, her buoyant spirits would break forth in the merriest laughs and the fondest endearments. If an angel had looked in at those antique windows, during such a time of recreation, it could not have been without delight. Nay, it seemed, as the flickering light played on the serene face of Plato and the stern features of Demosthenes, that even the silen marble broke into smiles while looking down upon a scholar so blest. But, though the orphan was rich in the treasures of learning, of the knowledge of the world, that tree of good and evil, she knew nothing. Taught only the pure precepts of philosophy, and the perfect law of love, she was child-like in her trustfulness, and ignorant of the evil that so often gnaws at the core of the fairest seeming character. Into her own heart she looked, as into the placid face of the village pond; all was clear and bright, and heaven lay mirrored there in unruffled beauty. The storm had never yet swept over it, to break its tranquillity, and to arouse the unsuspected tides of passion beneath its fair surface. A bold rock projects over the mountain side, from which nearly the whole village of Innisfield is visible. Below, the forest had been partially cleared, so that there was no obstruction to the view. Alice often rambled over the mountain in search of wild flowers, and to gather the twigs of the fragrant birch and the young roots of the aromatic sassafras. One afternoon she took her accustomed stroll, and, descending from the summit a short distance to the overhanging rock, stood gazing at the familiar scene below. The sun was about setting, and the long shadows of the trees were reflected in the pond, as though to adorn a nether landscape. Not a breeze was in motion; the man-like vane rested from its weary evolutions, and glowed with a richer light as the sun drew near the golden gates of the west. The beautiful valley! The sketcher cannot by word-painting depict its dreamy repose; it must be portrayed by a true artist; his practised hand alone, obedient to the sense of beauty in the soul, may reproduce the picturesque scene over which Alice hung. And it was reproduced. Just at her right hand, seated under a clump of shrub oaks, was a painter with an open port-folio, busily touching an exquisite picture of the valley. It was the new-comer at the village inn, George Greenleaf. So light were the footsteps of Alice, and so completely absorbed was the artist with his work, that he had not observed her until she uttered an exclamation of delight, as she chanced to look at the picture. He raised his eyes, and at first would have concealed his work. He had effectually shunned observation for a month, and would have gladly departed unknown as he came. But an impulse, which he did not stop to question or analyze, stayed his hand, and the picture still lay upon the rude, extempore easel. It would seem that we are often the quiet instruments, rather than the arbiters of our fate; that we are the recipients of an occult and overmastering influence, before which pride and resolution vanish, and the soul yields without question. 'I'm glad you are a painter,' said Alice, with unaffected simplicity. 'And why?' asked Greenleaf. 'Because this is a glorious prospect, and I have always wanted to see it fairly drawn.' 'But that is not quite to the point. You say you are glad that I am a painter.' Oh, it is not worth telling, perhaps, but there are people who think that all they don't fully know must be wrong! Some of them have wondered at your stopping so long in this little village; and a few super |