was arrayed in black, and, with clasped hands, appeared to incline his head towards an invisible object. The other, immovable, covered with a leathern jacket, leaned upon a heavy mass of iron. It was the priest, and the executioner. Hedwige went up the steps, and advanced some paces on the scaffold. She then perceived, through the mist, a man bound to a cross, on a wheel covered with blood. He still lived; his breast heaved with unequal pulsation, and heavy groans escaped from his pale lips, animated by an expression of unspeakable suffering. And she cried aloud, "O, Rodolph!" She had doubted until then!

The dying man, with his eyes, sought the priest, and said to him, with a broken voice, "Remain beside me, and pray, my good father-reason is leaving me. I thought I heard a voice-the voice of my Hedwige-of my own dear wife."

The charitable priest raised his eyes on the young woman; then, bending towards Rodolph, he said"My son, it is she-it is your wife. She is here -she prays for you."

"Take her hence; she cannot support this sight." "Oh, Rodolph! my Rodolph !" cried Hedwige; "I see you once more; but how? My husband, look upon me!"

Her tears fell on the criminal's breast, and she passed her pure hands around his bleeding and broken neck.

He raised himself as much as his bonds would allow him, and regarded her with eyes in which the strongest passions of life contended with the shades of death.

"Hedwige," said he, "my chaste and saintly Hedwige, thou, thou alone couldst follow me here, and regard a murderer with looks of love."

"On the scaffold, as on the throne, you are my master and my lord. I love you; and if the punishment you endure does not expiate your crime, I at least have tears to bewail it."

"Hedwige, what happiness was promised us! What happiness I have sacrificed!"

"That happiness will be attained in heaven. What could earth now offer to us? Let us raise our eyes to the cross; let us pray, Rodolph-let us together pray for the pardon of our sins."

"Our sins! What are thine, my Hedwige? thou who art more pure than the snow upon the Alps!"

"We are alike guilty in the sight of the Almighty; and if I live, it will be to exercise a life of penitence." Thus speaking, she prostrated herself upon the scaffold, and, surmounting the terrible grief collected in her bosom, she prayed with a loud voice. The dying man united his accents, and this alone, in the midst of painful tortures, brought him hope. A fictitious strength, engendered by fever, sustained him; but sometimes a long swoon gave relief to his woes. Then Hedwige, with her veil, wiped off the cold sweat which covered his brow; but even pity itself forbid her from recalling him to life. He

soon revived, however, restored to sense by his sufferings, and his darkened vision immediately sought his wife, who was always standing near him, like a consoling angel. Towards evening, the crowd dispersed; the guards alone remained at the foot of the scaffold; the sky was obscured, and a fine cold rain commenced falling. Hedwige removed her mantle, and spread it over her husband's bare limbs; and then she returned to prayer. Thus passed the night of their reunion-the dark and sombre night -in which the sighs of the expiring man, and the plaintive voice of his wife, alone broke upon the silence. Towards morning, the swoons became more frequent. The dawn arose pale and o'erclouded; and the birds of prey, warned by their instinctand who had not quitted the field of death-recommenced their inauspicious cries. Rodolph looked upon them, soaring in the air like black spots, and said

"They will soon have food. Hedwige, the nightingales sung when I led thee, a happy bride, along the path to Wart. O folly! 0 crime! you have cost me dear! Waves of Reuss-now stained by blood-how happy you once beheld me!"

"My son," said the priest, "think no more of earth."

"I only think of this angel that I leave behind me. But all is dark. Hedwige-where art thou?repeat our Lord's prayer."

She obeyed. When she arrived at these wordsForgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those that trespass against us-Rodolph's voice united with that of his wife; then a slight shudder passed over his face, which was inclined towards Hedwige. All was ended.

Hedwige remained absorbed for a long time; then, rising, she demanded from the priest permission to remove the corpse, in order to give it Christian burial.

"My child," he replied, with tears, "the queen has ordered that the body remain on the wheel, and be left for the birds of prey."

Hedwige bent her head. She pressed a long last kiss on the forehead and on the hands of her husband, and withdrew without proffering a complaint.

The world saw her no more. After a few days, she retired to a convent of Argovia. But her youth had been consumed in a single day; and, even before she had cast aside the novice's veil, she passed hence, murmuring, for the last time, the name of Rodolph.

Agnes of Hungary accomplished her oath. Sixtythree chevaliers perished by the executioner's hand,

Among the victims of Agnes, was a Swiss knight, named Multinen. His son, still a youth, was also condemned to capital punishment; but the spectators, moved by his tender years and beauty, threw themselves at the queen's feet, imploring the young orphan's pardon. Agnes remained inexorable. The successor of Albert, having re cognized the innocence of the house of Multinen, joined to

The form was passing comely, such as those
Which walk with maidens in their dreams of man,
The features strangely classical, yet bland
As moon-beams smiling on the blooms of May.
The eye was like the morning, and the brow
A drift of snow upon the hills of Mind;

Locks such as midnight flings upon the breeze;

A lip too womanish for all but him,
Whose accents fell as soft and pleasantly

As water leaping over mossy rocks.
His salutation had a music in 't;

His smile was like the light of poetry:

A paleness, like a moonlight soft, subdued

The picture of his features-he had been

Too much in books and parchments, and his poesy
Was a great name among his fellow-men.
One thing was lacking: he had never known
The gentle meaning of a woman's love;
And, though whole tomes of wisdom lay within
The boundless compass of his lofty mind-
That spacious grotto, whose stalactites, lit
By Learning's genial torch, outshine the sun-
He never saw the alphabet of hearts!

It came to pass that one, a gentle girl,
His counterpart in beauty-yet, indeed,
More dainty in her graces, inasmuch

As woman's fairness thus exceedeth man's-
It came to pass that she, at evening-time,
When in the heart all tender thoughts are born,
Met in her saunterings the noble youth,
And, seeing, loved him; and, in secret, pledged
The fulness of her vestal heart to his:

It was a budding heart-there would be flowers
Beneath the culture of a careful hand:
She spoke it not save to her spirit's ear,
The angels heard it, and they told it him!
VOL. XLV.-21

CHESTER.

They met and parted often; but before

The Summer kneeled at Autumn's golden throne, And there gave up her sceptre tipped with flowers, Their hearts were plighted: then the student knew How little he was master of before!

It was his first, sweet lesson in the heart

The weak the teacher, and the strong the taught!

As if the violet should teach the oak

The secret of its simple tenderness.

Years passed; no change appeared, save as their souls

Grew unto greater perfectness in love;

They were a proverb, in the mouth of age,
Of the old-time affection, and the young
Were taught to imitate their constancy.
No old wife, crone, or gossip found a flaw
In their sweet intercourse whereat to carp;
But, when they passed, a hundred smiles were lit,
A hundred lips exclaimed, "See how they love!"

A shadow clouds the picture! He had vowed,
In former years, to one who long had been
A partner in his studies and his hopes,
That they, as boon companions, should explore
The wonders and the beauties of that world
Which lies across the prairies of the sea.

It was his boyish longing to behold
The glories of the sister continent;
To stand upon the seven hills of Rome,

To muse upon the soil where Athens was,

To gaze upon the awful Pyramids,
And float upon the bosom of the Rhine.
So boy and passion grew, until at last
The passion was the mightier, and became
A very Titan tugging at his heart!

The parting hour had come, and in its train
More sorrow than his fancy ever dreamed.
He had no words; but, in his mad embrace,
His frantic kiss, there was an eloquence
That rendered language mean and beggarly.
It was the morning then; but when the night
Recalled the stars they oft had gazed upon,
Leagues of the foamy sea were stretched between
The lover and his idol: he had gone!
Hearts bleed when they are sundered; pain is none
Like that which is the handmaid of farewell!
The moss of Time may not obscure the wound,
No refluent waves may wash the sorrow out
It pales the cheek, it dims the gentle eye,
Yet are its deepest traces on the heart!

It happened that, within that distant land,
The youth, by chance-if such a thing there be,
When all things come of God, yet such the form
And manner of our wild and reckless speech--

Beheld a maiden beautiful as heaven.
If there might be a queen of loveliness,
If beauty were a thing of courtly rank,
Then she deserved the sceptre and the crown.
There lay within the fountains of her eye
Such dreams of passing sweetness and desire,
As none could glance upon and be at peace;
Her cheek was like the velvet of the peach,
And in its fairness like the almond bloom:
Her voice was gushing music, and her smile-
Perpetual sunshine on her beauteous lip!-
Would win Misanthropy from all its hate,

And make it fond as childhood; and her hair
Flowed like a river from her Parian brow.
Oh, that so fair a being should arise
Between his eye and that bright image niched
In the cathedral of his manly heart!

I would that here I might disguise the truth;
But that were perjury unto the dead,
Since to the grave he took my honest pledge
To write his secret when he slumbered there.
He loved her, and she knew it; for a word,
Wrung from the madness of his tortured heart,
Revealed its secret: it had broken else.
She likewise loved; and, telling him that love,
She cursed each moment of his coming life,
Sowing, like Cadmus, in his stricken breast,
The dragon-teeth of sorrow, whence arose
A host, full armed, to war against his peace.
Oh, had she dreamed what anguish would attend
The sweet confession of her silent love,
She had from her fair bosom plucked her heart,
And burned her lip to ashes ere it spoke
The fatal word that knelled his happiness
Oh, question not the generous principles
That ruled within the kingdom of his heart!
Say not 'twas sin to cast another's thoughts
Before a stranger's shrine; for man may love
The angels with a heavenly warranty,
And she, tho' mortal, had an angel's face.
Who will uprear a barrier to love?
Who dares essay to stop its dauntless flood,
To tame the fury of its reckless blast,

Or bind its glaring lightnings with a chain?
What bold philosopher will seek to tell
How love is by another love displaced?
Are we the masters of our fickle hearts?
How was it, then, that they were taken first?
And, being once enslaved, it only proves
That they may be enslaved a second time.
All human love is guilty. Search thy breast,
And, if thou findest not some rival there,
I'll write a grand exception to my rule.
Oh, what a struggle in his tortured breast
Raged as the tempest rages, when the stars,
For very terror, shut their radiant eyes!
There was a face that often lifted up,
Its patient orbs, and glanced upon his own;
There was an accent stealing dreamily
Unto his startled ear; and oft he felt
The pressure of a soft, familiar hand,

Which, though he knew nor eye nor hand was there,
Thrilled every nerve, they seemed so palpable.

But Honor was the victor. She, whose eye
Was such a fount of beauty, and whose smile
Was as the sunshine of a day in June,
Was sacrificed on Duty's painful cross.

She gave him commendation, called him just,
Urged him to tear her image from his soul,
And said that, while her heart in silence broke,
In breaking, it should pray for him and his.
That must be goodness, which will seek of Heaven
Its blessings on a rival's hated head!

They parted; but that parting blotted out
The radiance of his soul-the world was changed.
He saw the gay and flowery wheel of Hope
Receding, as he left the blessed land
Sacred unto his heart's divinity;
But, tutoring his heart to hide its griefs,
His lip to keep its secret, he returned,
And met, with manufactured smiles and tears,
Her who, without his love, would be his wife.

The nuptial hour arrived. The aged priest,
Whose lips dropped fatness, joined their hands, and
thought,

Amid his blindness, he had joined their hearts.
Parents and children, maids and white-haired men
Gave smiling gratulations; yet I know
That each particular word fell on his ear
Like clods upon a coffin. While to her
The hour was paradise-to him 'twas hell!

"Tis sad, and yet most true, that, when she placed
Her hand in his, and pressed, with crimsoned lips,
A wife's first kisses on his quivering cheek,
He well-nigh loathed her fondness, tho' he gave
No open token of his heart's disgust.
She never guessed his feelings, tho' at times
She deemed him over-thoughtful-sometimes sad;
Yet had she no suspicion of a change;
For to suspect, to her had been to die.
And though one night, as lovingly she lay
Upon the breast that held his widowed heart,
He, in his dreams, gave incoherent hints
Of some relinquished bliss, and madly pressed
Her trembling lip, and called her by some name
That was a stranger to her wounded ear,
Yet when he woke, and saw her anxious face.
And listened as she told him of his dream,
He did but smile, and call her, playfully,
"Oneirocritic;" and evadingly

Said, Sleep had brought some fancy to his heart.
And she looked up with all a woman's trust,

The clouds rolled back, and heaven was seen again!
A

Thus till the end. His heart had guarded well
Its burning secret, and had long endured
With such a burden on its slender chords.
The hour of its release came on apace,
So wildly wished, so wildly welcomed now:
How altered was he, as he lay and thought
How long was Death in coming! Twas a sight
To pay for only in the coin of tears!

She hung above him with a look that told
How bitter was her bosom's agony,

And shuddered, as she heard the muffled hoofs
Of Death's pale charger in its dread advance,
And knew that, when the fading sun went out,
A double night would come upon her soul;
When suddenly his eye waxed bright, his lips
Moved in the utterance of his life's last word:
She bent to catch the accent; but alas
The tongue was ever silent-Death speaks not!
It was his secret bursting from his heart--
A name that made death lovely-but not hers!

"AMONG the various innovations," continues Strutt, "made in dress by the Normans during the twelfth century, none met with more marked and more deserved disapprobation than that of lengthening the toes of the shoes, and bringing them forward to a sharp point. In the reign of Rufus, this custom was first introduced, and, according to Frederic Vitalis, by a man who had distorted feet, in order to conceal his deformity;" but he adds, "the fashion was no sooner broached than all those who were fond of novelty thought proper to follow it; and the shoes were made by the shoemakers in the form of a scorpion's tail. These shoes were called Pigaciæ, and were adopted by persons of every class, both rich and poor. Soon after, a courtier, whose name was Robert, improved upon the first idea by filling the vacant part of the shoe with tow, and twisting it round in the form of a ram's horn; this ridiculous fashion excited much admiration. It was followed by the greater part of the nobility: and the author, for his happy invention, was honored with the cognomen Conardus, or horned. The long-pointed shoes were vehemently inveighed against by the clergy, and strictly forbidden to be worn by the religious orders. So far as we can judge from the drawings executed in the twelfth century, the fashion of wearing long-pointed shoes did not long maintain its ground. It was, however, afterwards revived, and even carried to a more preposterous extent."

A specimen of the shoes that were worn at this period, and which so excited the ire of the monkish writers, is here given from the seal of Richard, con

stable of Chester in the reign of Stephen; in the original, the knight is on horseback; the stirrup and spur are therefore seen in our cut.

The effigies of the early English sovereigns are generally represented in shoes decorated with bands across, as if in imitation of sandals. They are seldom colored black, as nearly all the examples of earlier shoes in this country are. The shoes of Henry II. are green, with bands of gold. Those of Richard are also striped with gold; and such richly decorated shoes became fashionable among the nobility, and were generally worn by royalty all over

Europe. Thus, when the tomb of Henry the Sixth of Sicily, who died in 1197, was opened in the Cathedral of Palermo, on the feet of the dead monarch were discovered costly shoes, whose upper part was of cloth of old, embroidered with pearls, the sole being of cork, covered with the same cloth of gold. These shoes reached to the ankle, and were fastened with a little button instead of a buckle. His queen, Constance, who died in 1198, had upon her feet shoes also of cloth of gold, which were fastened with leather straps tied in knots, and on the upper part of them were two openings, wrought with embroidery, which showed that they had been once adorned with jewels. Boots ornamented with gold, and embroidered in elegant patterns, at this time became often worn. King John of England orders, in one instance, four pair of women's boots, one of them to be embroidered with circles; and the effigy of the succeeding monarch, Henry III., in Westminster Abbey, is chiefly remarkable for the splendor of the boots he wears; they are crossed all over by golden bands, thus forming a series of diamond-shaped spaces, each one of which is filled with a figure of a lion, the royal arms of England.

The shape of the sole of the shoes, at this time, may be seen from the cut here given of one found in a tomb of the period, and called that of St. Swithin, in Winchester cathedral. The shoe is en

graved in "Gough's Sepulchral Monuments," and the person who discovered it in the tomb thus describes it: he says, "The legs of the wearer were inclosed in leathern boots or gaiters, sewed with neatness; the thread was still to be seen. The soles were small and round, rather worn, and of what would be called an elegant shape at present, pointed at the toe and very narrow, and were made and fitted to each foot. I have sent the pattern of one of the soles, drawn by tracing it with a pencil from the original itself, which I have in my possession." This shoe was ten inches in length from toe to heel, and three inches across the broadest part of the instep. They are as perfectly "right and left" as any boots of the present day; but, as we have already shown, this is a fashion of the most remote antiquity. As these boots are at least as old as the time of John, Shakspeare's description in his

dramatised history of that sovereign, of the tailor, who, eager to acquaint his friend, the smith, of the prodigies the skies had just exhibited, and whom Hubert saw

"Standing in slippers, which his nimble haste

Had falsely thrust upon contrary feet,"

is strictly accurate; yet, half a century ago, this passage was adjudged to be one of the many proofs of Shakspeare's ignorance or carelessness. Dr. Johnson, ignorant himself of the truth in this point, but yet, like all critics, determined to pass his verdict, makes himself supremely absurd by saying, in a note to this passage, with ridiculous solemnity, 'Shakspeare seems to have confounded the man's shoes with his gloves. He that is frighted or hurried may put his hand into the wrong glove, but either shoe will equally admit either foot. The author seems to be disturbed by the disorder which he describes."

In the "Art Union," a journal devoted to the fine arts, are a series of notices of the various forms of boots and shoes in England, by F. W. Fairholt, F. S. A., from which we may borrow the description of the elegant coverings for the feet in use in the reigns of the first three Edwards. Boots buttoned up the leg, or shoes buttoned up the centre, or secured like the Norman shoe in the second figure of the second group given on page 162, were common in the days of Edward I. and II. The splendid reign of the third Edward, says Mr. Fairholt, extending over half a century of national greatness, was remarkable for the variety and luxury, as well as the elegance of its costume; and this may be considered as the most glorious era in the annals of "the gentle craft," as the trade of shoemaking was anciently termed. Shoes and boots of the most sumptuous description are now to be met with in cotemporary paintings, sculptures, and illuminated manuscripts. They remind one of the boots "fretted with gold" and embroidered in circles mentioned by John. The greatest variety of pattern, and the richest contrasts of color, were aimed at by the maker and inventor of shoes at this period.

The boots and shoes worn during the fourteenth century were of peculiar form, and the toes, which were lengthened to a point, turned inward or outward, according to the taste of the wearer. In the reign of Richard II., they became immensely long, so that it was asserted they were chained to the knee of the wearer, in order to allow him to walk about with ease and freedom. It was, of course, only the nobility who could thus inconvenience

themselves, and it might have been adopted by them as a distinction; still very pointed toes were worn

by all who could afford to be fashionable. The cut here given exhibits the sole of a shoe of this period, from an actual specimen in the possession of C. Roach Smith, F. S. A., of England, and was discovered in the neighborhood of Whitefriars, in digging deep under ground into what must have originally been a receptacle for rubbish, among which these old shoes had been thrown, and they are probably the only things of the kind now in existence.

Two specimens of boots of the time of Edward IV. are here given to show their general form at that period. The first is copied from the Royal MS., No. 15, E. 6, and is of black leather, with a long

upturned toe; the top of the boot is of lighter leather, and thus it bears a resemblance to the topboots of a later age, of which it may be considered as the prototype. The, other boot, from a print dated 1515, is more curious; the top of the boot is turned down, and the entire centre opens from the top to the instep, and is drawn together by laces or ties across the leg, so that it bears considerable resemblance in this point to the Cothurnus of the ancients.

Fashion ran, at this time, from one extreme to the other, and the shoes which were at one time so lengthy at the toe as to be inconvenient, now became as absurdly broad, and it was made the subject of sumptuary laws to restrain both extremes. Thus Edward IV. enacted that any shoemaker who made for unprivileged persons-the nobility being exempted-any shoes or boots, the toes of which exceeded two inches in length, should forfeit twenty shillings, one noble to be paid to the king, another to the cordwainers of London, and the third to the chamber of London. This only had the effect of widening the toes, and Paradin says that they were then so very broad as to exceed the measure of a good foot. This continued until the reign of Mary, who, by a proclamation, prohibited their being worn wider at the toe than six inches.

We have here engraved two specimens of these broad-toed shoes of the time of Henry VIII. The first is copied from the monumental effigy of Katharine, the wife of Sir Thomas Babynton, who died 1543, and is buried in Morley church, near Derby.