POETRY.-Up Above, 578. Wreck of the "Orpheus," 578. The Great Jaw of Moulin-Quignon, 616. Source of the Nile Discovered, 616. SHORT ARTICLES.-Literary Intelligence, 588, 593. Alpine Club, 593. Electric Light, 608. Insecurity of British Property in Peru, 608. The Luther Memorial, 608. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY LITTELL, SON & CO., BOSTON. For Six Dollars a year, in advance, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded free of postage. Complete sets of the First Series, in thirty-six volumes, and of the Second Series, in twenty volumes, handsomely bound, packed in neat boxes, and delivered in all the principal cities, free of expense of freight, are for sale at two dollars a volume. ANY VOLUME may be had separately, at two dollars, bound, or a dollar and a half in numbers. ANY NUMBER may be had for 13 cents; and it is well worth while for subscribers or purchasers to complete any broken volumes they may have, and thus greatly enhance their value. ORPHEUS.' Down below, the wild November whistling Dust and ashes on the chestnut's head. Down below, a pall of airy purple, Darkly hanging from the mountain-side, Up above, the tree with leaf unfading Down below, the white wings of the sea-bird Down below, imaginations quivering Through our human spirits like the wind, Thoughts that toss, like leaves about the woodland, Hope, like sea-birds, flashed across the mind. Up above, the host no man can number, In the spacious tracts of that great land. Up above, the thoughts that know not anguish, Tender care, sweet love for us below, Noble pity, free from anxious terror, Larger love, without a touch of woe. Down below, a sad, mysterious music, Wailing through the woods and on the shore, Burdened with a grand majestic secret That keeps sweeping from us evermore. Up above, a music that entwineth With eternal threads of golden sound The great poem of this strange existence, All whose wondrous meaning hath been found. Down below, the church, to whose poor window Up above, the burst of hallelujah, Down below, cold sunlight on the tombstones, Now beneath the ivy dripped with showers. And the new-made grave within the churchyard, And the white cap on that young face pale, And the watcher, ever as it dusketh, Racking to and fro with that long wail. Up above, a crowned and happy spirit Who shall grow in love and light forever, Oh, the sobbing of the winds of autumn! Oh, the pale and plashed and sodden roses! Oh, the rest forever and the rapture! Oh, the hand that wipes the tears away! Oh, the golden homes beyond the sunset, And the hope that watches o'er the clay ! -Dublin University Magazine. THE WRECK OF THE "ORPHEUS." ALL day, amid the masts and shrouds, The sky o'erhead was dark with clouds, And when some slack'ning hands gave way Captain and men ne'er thought to swerve; With cheery face and tranquil nerve, Each saw his brother go, and knew, As night came swiftly on, That less and less his own chance grew- The saved stood on the steamer's deck, And still they gazed into the dark, There came from that swift-sinking bark Again, and yet again it rose; Then silence round them fell Silence of death, and each man knows It was a last farewell. No cry of anguish, no wild shriek No dropping down of watchers weak, But death met with three British cheers- For us the choking, blinding tears— O England, while thy sailor-host Be thy broad lands or won or lost, -Chambers's Journal. From The Christian Remembrancer. Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature. Second Series. Vol. VII. Part I. THERE was once a time when the battlecry, "S. George for merrie England!" roused up the soldier's courage, in somewhat a like manner that Nelson's famous signal stimulated the British sailor to fight for the honor and glory of his country. Though that war-cry is no longer heard, still there waves over England's army the blood-red cross of S. George, and still her noblest sons deem it the highest honor to be enrolled among the knights of S. George; still does the garter, with its quaint legend, "Honi soit qui mal y pense," surround the royal arms of our monarch; and still does S. George's Chapel, at Windsor, recall the mighty memories of past glory, and proclaim that yet, amid the change of opinion, the revolutions of government, the march of intellect, S. George remains our patron saint, and holds his honored place in the mightiest empire of the world. Still is the Chapter of that noble order held on S. George's Day (Ap. 23) in S. George's Chapel, with all its ancient ceremonies; still is the Bishop of Winchester Prelate of the order, the Bishop of Oxford Chancellor, and the Dean of Windsor Dean, and the Heir of England has just been married in S. George's Chapel, habited in the robes of a Knight of the Garter. Still have we 162 of the old parish churches dedicated to his memory, and many also in later times-two to SS. Mary and George, one to SS. George and Laurence, one to SS. George and Edmund. No doubt much of this is owing to that strong conservative spirit, which so characterizes our countrymen, which induces them to keep up ancient customs and ancient traditions, not always because they are good and useful, but because they are old and belong to their forefathers—a disposition which often makes them cling to abuses, and unreasoningly oppose real improvement. abuse-that S. George's claim to be the patron saint of England should pass unchal lenged. The first that attempted to cast a slur on the memory of S. George was that learned, but highly prejudiced, pope of the Reformed community of Geneva, John Calvin. He says, "Nil eos Christo reliquum facere qui pro nihilo ducunt ejus intercessionem, nisi accedant Georgius aut Hippolitus, aut similes larvæ.”* Calvin was followed by Dr. Reynolds, in his work, " De Idolatria Ecclesiæ Romance," in which-unable to get over the fact that S. George is spoken of by so many ancient writers as a real person, yet unwilling to lose the opportunity of a blow at the Roman Church-he contents himself by asserting that the S. George honored by the Medieval Church, made the patron saint of England, was that Arian Bishop set up by the heretical faction at Alexandria to supplant S. Athanasius-an assertion equally dishonorable both to the memory of S. George, and to the English empire, with the more sweeping statement of Calvin, that he was a nonentity. These slanders, cast upon our patron saint, roused up the learned Dr. Heylyn to investigate the true history of S. George; which he did with his usual diligence and accuracy: his "Historie of that most famous Saint and Soldier of Christ Jesus, S. George of Cappadocia; asserted from the Fictions of the Middle Ages of the Church, and opposition of the present, passed through two editions; the second, published in 1633, was dedicated to King Charles I., and contains an appendix on the "Order of S. George, called the Garter." This work amply fulfils its promise, and ought to have *Cal. Instit. lib. iii. cap. xx. § 27. The word "larva" has given rise to some dispute: in the translation by Norton (1585) it is rendered "visors." Heylyn gives "counterfeits." The word seems to be derived from the old Etruscan word "Lar," or "Lars," king or chief; from whence came "Lares," the presiding genii of a household or family. These were, apparently, the ghosts of the founders of the family, or some renowned ancestor whom the family deified. Thus "Lavati" were men possessed by demons. Festus describes them as "furioso, et mente moti, quasi larvis exterriti." Plautus, (Captiv. act iii. sc. iv. v. 65.) "Jam deliramenta loquitur; larvæ simulant virum." Amphit. act ii. sc. ii. v. 144, "Larvarum pleni." From this it appears that a "larva" is the ghost of some one departed, and supposed to possess some one living: a belief existing to this day among certain *The Bishop of Salisbury was ex officio Chancel-magicians (Aissoua) in North Africa, who, after lor but in the recent redistribution of dioceses, certain incantations, imagine themselves to be posBerkshire was transferred from Salisbury to Oxford. sessed by the spirit of a deceased marabout. It is not to be expected that, amid the changes and revolutions that took place in the sixteenth century—when almost everything that was old and venerable was called in question, and what was not in the Bible was denounced as superstitious, and men confounded the lawful use of a thing with its set the question at rest forever; but errors, romance which once delighted our forefathers; in which consistency, probability, nay, possibility, were utterly ignored; chronology, geography, completely set at defiance. Shakspeare has been laughed at for describing a shipwreck on the deserts of Bohemia; but this is a mere lapsus to the utter contempt of all history and topography displayed in this famous legend. Thus, while we have a black king of Morocco, whose dominions bordered on Egypt, we have a Jewish king at Jerusalem, a Mohammedan soldan of Persia a Christian emperor at Constantinople, and a Pagan king of Thracia! Of course, the ut like weeds, grow again after being plucked up; for we find Dr. John Pettingal, in a work "On the Original of the Equestrian Figure of S. George, and of the Garter," published in 1753, and dedicated to George II., saying, “Whether our S. George was an Arian, or whether he was a real person or not, is a matter not settled among the learned." He, in turn, was answered by Dr. Samuel Pegge, in 1777, who read a paper before the Society of Antiquarians, proving that S. George was not a fictitious character: in it he also points out the entire hollowness of the ingenious conjecture of Mr. Byrom, most liberty is given to giants, dragons, wizthat "George" is a mistake for " Gregory"ards, and necromancers: the whole apparathe Great, whose claim to be the patron saint of England he supports; while, incidentally, he repeats the old assertion that George the Arian is our S. George the Martyr.* It is, however, owing to a passage in Gibbon that the mistake of the identity of S. George is most widely spread and most firmly rooted. That writer, after giving a short account of George the Arian, his infamous life, and bloody end, could not refrain from giving a back-handed stroke to the Church-though he had Heylyn's work and that of the Bollandists' before his eyes, for he refers to them in a note: he says, "The odious stranger, disguising every circumstance of time and place, assumed the mask of a martyr, a saint, and a Christian hero; and the infamous George of Cappadocia has been transformed into the renowned S. George of England, the patron of arms, of chivalry, and of the garter." This is not the only instance in which oft-repeated slander has borne down an oftrepeated truth. 66 It is not to be doubted that the legendary history of S. George, his famous combat with the dragon, and all the quaint stories of the Champion of England," have had something to do with the disrepute into which the saint has fallen; nor can we wonder that any one acquainted only with it should suspect that he was a mere myth, a larva. It will, for many reasons, be most convenient to take the legendary history first, and show how it arose, and then investigate the true. In the Seven Champions of Christendom" we have a curious specimen of the style of * On the Patron of England, in a Letter to Lord Willoughby, President of the Antiquarian Society. -Byrom's Poems, vol. i. p. 100, ed. 1772. + Gibbon's Hist. Decline and Fall, c. xxiii. tus of the improbable is set in motion to show off the glory and prowess of the Christian knights. An accomplished critic might, no doubt, find under all this a deep and beautiful moral, just as the Franciscan Walleys did, when he wrote a moral and theological exposition of the Metamorphoses of Ovid. It is, however, evident that the writer, or writers, of the "Seven Champions" had no such intention: they wrote for the amusement of their readers. The legend begins by relating the birth and parentage of the hero: first telling us the origin of the British nation—following the narrative of Geoffry of Monmouth, who, more anxious for the glory of his country than for truth, would induce his readers to derive their origin, as Virgil did the Roman, from the ruins of the Trojan race. "The noble and adventurous Brute, fourth in descent from Eneas, first. conquered the island of Britain, then inhabited with monsters, giants, and a kind of wild people, without any form of government." The monarchy of Britain being established, and civilization introduced by the "noble Brute," our hero was born. Of course, prodigies attended his birth. His mother, the Countess of Coventry, wife of the Lord High Steward of England, dreamed that she had conceived a dragon, which should cause her death. Her lord, disturbed at her dream, went to consult the enchantress Kalyb, who informed him that the son to be born would be a champion bold, of mighty deeds. Before his return the dream was fulfilled the mother died in giving birth to a child, on whose breast was found the image of a dragon, on his left knee a golden garter, and on his right hand a blood-red cross. Soon after Kalyb contrived to steal him, and keep | oration, made in memory of S. George, given him in captivity till he was grown up. Then by Metaphrastes, which concludes thus: having deceived the enchantress, and got possession of her silver wand, he imprisoned her in a rock, set at liberty the six other champions of Christendom, and, encased in magic armor, girt with a magic sword, he sallies forth to seek adventures. Coming to the land of Egypt, he delivers the beauteous Sabra, daughter of the King of Egypt, from the dragon, which he kills after a terrible encounter. We need not follow the romance further. Heylyn conjectures, with all probability, that the slaughter of the dragon, and the deliverance of Sabra, is taken from the story of Perseus and Andromeda, as described by Ovid, Met. lib. iv. 16. "Licebat igitur videre astutissimum Draconem, adversus carnem et sanguinem gloriari solitum, elatumque, et, sese efferentem, a juvene uno illusum, et ita dispectum atque confusum, ut quid ageret non haberet.” Another writer, summing up the acts of S. George, says: "Secundo quod Draconem vicit qui significat Diabolum;" and Hospinian, relating the sufferings of the Martyr, affirms distinctly that his constancy was the occasion of the creation of the legend by Voragine. Such is, briefly, as far as we can trace it, the origin of the legend. That it should soon become popular among people who really believed in the existence of dragons and monsters of that sort, we can easily imagine; how it became so much so in England, we shall show presently. Once established as the patron saint of England, it would naturally happen that every kind of embellishment would follow, and, like Vir The legend, in some form, is as old at least as the thirteenth century, when it was brought into something of its present state by the well-known De Voragine, the author of the "Golden Legend.' From him it seems to have crept into the service-books of the Church; for in the "Hora B. Mariæ, secundum usum Sarum," we have the fol-gil's Fama, "Viresque acquirit cundo." Our lowing hymn, appointed to be sung on S. George's Day : "O Georgi Martyr inclyte On the reformation of the Missals and Breviaries by Pope Clement VII., the story of the dragon was expunged, while the name of S. George was left as one of those "qui cum Christo regnant." In the missal, the introit is from Ps. lxiii. The Collect, "Deus, qui nos beati Georgii martyris tui meritis et intercessione lætificas; concede propitius ut, qui tua per cum beneficia poscimus, dono tuæ gratiæ consequamur. Per." The Epistle, 2 Tim. ii. 8-11, and iii. 10-13. The Gospel, S. John xv. 1-8. The legend arose, perhaps, from a misunderstanding of an encomium or anniversary great poet Spenser was not slow to avail himself of the popular belief, and, in his beautiful allegory of the "Faerie Queene, introduced S. George as Una's knight. Arrived at the Hill of Holinesse," the aged hermit, whose name was "Heavenly Contemplation," discloses to him his birth: "For well I wote thou springst from ancient race Of Saxon kinges, that have with mightie hand, And many bloody battailes fought in place, High reard their royall throne in Britaine land, And vanquisht them, unable to withstand: From thence a Faery thee unweeting reft, There as thou slepst in tender swadling bind, And in an heaped furrow did thee hyde; best became." Then follows the history of his combat with the dragon, and the consequent delivery of Una's parents from captivity. Next we have his betrothal : the Red-cross Knight becomes the pledged husband to true religion, by his |