XLI.-A WORD OR TWO MORE ON

STICKS.

A CORRESPONDENT, writing to us on this subject, says :-"In my day I have indulged an extravagant fancy for canes and sticks; but, like the children of the fashionable world, I have, in running the round, grown tired of all my favourites, except one of a plain and useful sort. Conceive my mortification in finding this my last prop not included in your catalogue of sticks most in use; especially since it has become, among us men of sticks, the description most approved. The present day, which is one of mimicry, boasts scarcely any protection except in the very stick I allude to; and yet, because it is so unpresuming in its appearance, and so cheap, the gentlemen' of a day' will not condescend to use it. We, Sir, who make a stick our constant companion (notwithstanding our motives may be misunderstood), value the tough, the useful, the highly picturesque Ash Plant. Its still and gentlemanly colour; its peculiar property of bending round the shoulders of a man, without breaking (in the event of our using it that way); the economy of the thing, as economy is the order of the day (at least in minor concerns); its being the best substitute for the old-fashioned horsewhip in a morning-ride, and now so generally used in lieu of the long hunting-whip in the sports of the chase; answering every purpose for gates, &c., without offering any temptation to do the work of a whipper-in ;-all this, and much more, might be said of the neglected Ground Ash."

[PART II.]

We must cry mercy on the estimable stick here referred to, and indeed on several other sorts of wood, unjustly omitted in our former article. We also neglected to notice those ingenious and pregnant walking-sticks, which contain swords, inkstands, garden-seats, &c. and sometimes surprise us with playing a tune. As the ancient poets wrote stories of gods visiting people in human shapes, in order to teach a considerate behaviour to strangers; so an abstract regard ought to be shown to all sticks, inasmuch as the irreverent spectator may not know what sort of staff he is encountering. If he does not take care, a man may beat him and "write him down an ass" with the same accomplished implement; or sit down upon it before his face, where there is no chair to be had; or follow up his chastisement with a victorious tune on the flute. As to the ash, to which we would do especial honour, for the sake of our injured, yet at the same time polite and forgiving, Correspondent, we have the satisfaction of stating that it hath been reputed the very next wood, in point of utility, to the oak; and hath been famous, time immemorial, for its staffian qualities. Infinite are the spears with which it has supplied the warlike, the sticks it has put into the hands of a less sanguinary courage, the poles it has furnished for hops, vines, &c. and the arbours which it has run up for lovers. The Greek name for it was Melia, or the Honied; from a juice or manna which it drops, and which has been much used in medicine and dyeing. There are, or were, about forty years back, when

B

Count Ginnani wrote his History of the Ravenna Pine Forest, large ash woods in Tuscany, which used to be tapped for those purposes. Virgil calls it the handsomest tree in the forest; Chaucer, "the hardie ashe;" and Spenser," the ash for nothing ill." The ground-ash flourishes the better, the more it is cut and slashed ;-a sort of improvement, which it sometimes bestows in return upon humankind.

XLII. THE DAUGHTER OF HIPPO-
CRATES.

IN the time of the Norman reign in Sicily, a vessel bound from that island for Smyrna was driven by a westerly wind upon the island of Cos. The crew did not know where they were, | though they had often visited the island; for the trading towns lay in other quarters, and they saw nothing before them but woods and solitudes. They found however a comfortable harbour; and the wind having fallen in the night, they went on shore next morning for water. The country proved as solitary as they thought it; which was the more extraordinary, inasmuch as it was very luxuriant, full of wildfigs and grapes, with a rich uneven ground, and stocked with goats and other animals, who fled whenever they appeared. The bees were remarkably numerous; so that the wild honey, fruits, and delicious water, especially one spring which fell into a beautiful marble basin, made them more and more wonder, at every step, that they could see no human inhabitants.

Thus idling about and wondering, stretching themselves now and then among the wild thyme and grass, and now getting up to look at some specially fertile place which another called them to see, and which they thought might be turned to fine trading purpose, they came upon a mound covered with trees, which looked into a flat wide lawn of rank grass, with a house at the end of it. They crept nearer towards the house along the mound, still continuing among the trees, for fear they were trespassing at last upon somebody's property. It had a large garden wall at the back, as much covered with ivy as if it had been built of it. Fruit-trees looked over the wall with an unpruned thickness; and neither at the back nor front of the house were there any signs of humanity. It was an ancient marble building, where glass was not to be expected in the windows; but it was much dilapidated, and the grass grew up over the steps. They listened again and again; but nothing was to be heard like a sound of men; nor scarcely of anything else. There was an intense noonday silence. Only the hares made a rustling noise as they ran about the long hiding grass. The house looked like the tomb of human nature, amidst the vitality of earth.

"Did you see?" said one of the crew, turning pale, and hastening to go. "See what?" said the others. "What looked out of window." They all turned their faces towards the house, but saw nothing. Upon this they laughed at their companion, who persisted however with great earnestness, and with great reluctance at stopping, to say that he saw a strange hideous kind of face look out of window. "Let us go, Sir," said he, to the Captain ;— "for I tell ye what I know this place now: and you, Signor Gualtier," continued he, turning to a young man, "may now follow that adventure I have often heard you wish to be engaged in." The crew turned pale, and Gualtier among them. Yes," added the man, we are fallen upon the enchanted part of the island of Cos, where the daughter of Hush! Look there!" They turned their faces again, and beheld the head of a large serpent looking out of window. Its eyes were direct upon them; and stretching out of window, it lifted back its head with little sharp jerks like a fowl; and so stood keenly gazing.

The terrified sailors would have begun to depart quicklier than they did, had not fear itself made them move slowly. Their legs seemed melting from under them. Gualtier tried to rally his voice. "They say," said he, "it is a gentle creature. The hares that feed right in front of the house are a proof of it :let us all stay." The others shook their heads, and spoke in whispers, still continuing to descend the mound as well as they could. "There is something unnatural in that very thing," said the Captain: "but we will wait for you in the vessel, if you stay. We will, by St. Ermo." The Captain had not supposed that Gualtier would stay an instant; but seeing him linger. more than the rest, he added the oath in question, and in the mean time was hastening with the others to get away. The truth is, Gualtier was, in one respect, more frightened than any of them. His legs were more rooted to the spot. But the same force of imagination that helped to detain him, enabled him to muster up courage beyond those who found their will more powerful: and in the midst of his terror he could not help thinking what a fine adventure this would be to tell in Salerno, even if he did but conceal himself a little, and stay a few minutes longer than the rest. The thought, however, had hardly come upon him, when it was succeeded by a fear still more lively; and he was preparing to follow the others with all the expedition he could contrive, when a fierce rustling took place in the trees behind him, and in an instant the serpent's head was at his feet. Gualtier's brain as well as heart seemed to sicken, as he thought the monstrous object scented him like a bear; but despair coming in aid of a courage naturally fanciful and chivalrous, he bent his eyes more steadily, and found the huge jaws and fangs not only

abstaining from hurting him, but crouching and fawning at his feet like a spaniel. At the same time, he called to mind the old legend respecting the creature, and, corroborated as he now saw it, he ejaculated with good firmness, "In the name of God and his saints, what art thou?"

"Hast thou not heard of me?" answered the serpent in a voice whose singular human slenderness made it seem the more horrible. "I guess who thou art," answered Gualtier ;"the fearful thing in the island of Cos."

"I am that loathly thing," replied the serpent; once not so." And Gualtier thought that its voice trembled sorrowfully.

The monster told Gualtier that what was said of her was true; that she had been a serpent hundreds of years, feeling old age and renewing her youth at the end of each century; that it was a curse of Diana's which had changed her; and that she was never to resume a human form, till somebody was found kind and bold enough to kiss her on the mouth. As she spoke this word, she raised her crest, and sparkled so with her fiery green eyes, dilating at the same time the corners of her jaws, that the young man thrilled through his very scalp. He stept back, with a look of the utmost horror and loathing. The creature gave a sharp groan inwardly, and after rolling her neck franticly on the ground, withdrew a little back likewise, and seemed to be looking another way. Gualtier heard two or three little sounds as of a person weeping piteously, yet trying to subdue its voice; and looking with breathless curiosity, he saw the side of the loathly creature's face bathed in tears.

"Why speakest thou, lady," said he, "if lady thou art, of the curse of the false goddess Diana, who never was, or only a devil. I cannot kiss thee," and he shuddered with a horrible shudder, as he spoke, "but I will bless thee in the name of the true God, and even mark thee with his cross."

The serpent shook her head mournfully, still keeping it turned round. She then faced him again, hanging her head in a dreary and desponding manner. "Thou knowest not," said she, "what I know. Diana both was and never was; and there are many other things on earth, which are and yet are not. Thou canst not comprehend it, even though thou art kind. But the heavens alter not, neither the sun nor the strength of nature; and if thou wert kinder, I should be as I once was, happy and human. Suffice it, that nothing can change me but what I said."

"Why wert thou changed, thou fearful and mysterious thing?" said Gualtier.

"Because I denied Diana, as thou dost," answered the serpent; "and it was pronounced an awful crime in me, though it is none in thee; and I was to be made a thing loathsome in men's eyes. Let me not catch thine eye, I

beseech thee; but go thy way and be safe; for I feel a cruel thought coming on me, which will shake my innermost soul, though it shall not harm thee. But I could make thee suffer for the pleasure of seeing thine anguish ; even as some tyrants do: and is not that dreadful?" And the monster openly shed tears, and sobbed.

There was something in this mixture of avowed cruelty and weeping contradiction to it, which made Gualtier remain in spite of himself. But fear was still uppermost in his mind, when he looked upon the mouth that was to be kissed; and he held fast round a tree with one hand, and his sword as fast in the other, watching the movements of her neck as he conversed. "How did thy father, the sage Hippocrates," asked he, "suffer thee to come to this?" My father," replied she, sage and good as he was, was but a Greek mortal; and the great Virgin was a worshipped Goddess. I pray thee, go." She uttered the last word in a tone of loud anguish; but the very horror of it made Gualtier hesitate, and he said, "How can I know that it is not thy destiny to deceive the merciful into this horrible kiss, that then and then only thou mayst devour them?"

But the serpent rose higher at this, and looking around loftily, said in a mild and majestic tone of voice, "O ye green and happy woods, breathing like sleep! O safe and quiet population of these leafy places, dying brief deaths! O sea! O earth! O heavens, never uttering syllable to man! Is there no way to make better known the meaning of your gentle silence, of your long basking pleasures and brief pains? And must the want of what is beautiful and kind from others, ever remain different from what is beautiful and kind in itself? And must form obscure essence; and human confidence in good from within, never be bolder than suspicion of evil from without? O ye large-looking and graud benignities of creation, is it that we are atoms in a dream; or that your largeness and benignity are in those only who see them, and that it is for us to hang over ye till we wake you into a voice with our kisses? I yearn to be made beautiful by one kind action, and beauty itself will not believe me !"

Gualtier, though not a foolish youth, understood little or nothing of this mystic apostrophe; but something made him bear in mind, and really incline to believe, that it was a transformed woman speaking to him; and he was making a violent internal effort to conquer his repugnance to the kiss, when some hares, starting from him as they passed, ran and cowered behind the folds of the monster: and she stooped her head, and licked them. Christ," exclaimed he, "whom the wormy grave gathered into its arms to save us from our corruptions, I will do this thing; so may he have mercy on my soul, whether I live or

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