The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 33, July, 1860. VariousЧитать онлайн книгу.
the royal finger, before it was cold,
He slipped the royal finger-ring.
There might have been in the eye of the law
A something which lawyers would call a flaw
Of title in such a conversion:
But if weak in the law, he was strong in the hand,
And had the "nine points."–He summoned his band,
And ordered before him the archer Bertrand,
Intending a little diversion.
He called the cutter,–no cutter of clothes,
But such as royalty kept for those
Who happened to need correcting,–
And told him that Richard, before he died,
Desired to have a scalpel applied
To the traitor there. With professional pride,
The cutter began dissecting.
Now Bones was born with a genius to flay:
He might have ranked, had he lived to-day,
As a capital taxidermist:
And yet, as he tugged, they heard him say,
Of all the backs that ever lay
Before him in a professional way,
That was of all backs the firmest.
Kind reader, allow me to drop a veil
In pity; I cannot pursue the tale
In the heartless tone of the last strophe.
'Tis done, and again I'll be the same.
They triumphed not, if they felt no shame:
No muscle quivered, no murmur came,
Until the final catastrophe.
The captain jested a moment, then
He waved his hand and bowed to his men
With a single word, "Disbanded,"
And galloped away with three or four
Stout men-at-arms to the nearest shore,
Where a gallant array not long before
With the king in pride had landed.
He coasted around, went up the Rhine,
So famous then for robbers and wine,
So famous now as a ramble.
The wine and the robbers still are there;
But they rob you now with a bill of fare,
And gentlemen bankers "on the square"
Will clean you out, if you gamble.
He built him a Schloss on–something-Stein,
And became the first of as proud a line
As e'er took toll on the river,
When barons, perched in their castles high,
On the valley would keep a watchful eye,
And pounce on travellers with their cry,
"The Rhine-dues! down! deliver!"
And crack their crowns for any delay
In paying down. And that, by the way,
About as correctly as I know,
Is the origin true of an ancient phrase
So frequently heard in modern days,
When a gentleman quite reluctantly pays,–
I mean, "To come down with the rhino."
A LEGEND OF MARYLAND
"AN OWRE TRUE TALE."
The framework of modern history is, for the most part, constructed out of the material supplied by national transactions described in official documents and contemporaneous records. Forms of government and their organic changes, the succession of those who have administered them, their legislation, wars, treaties, and the statistics demonstrating their growth or decline,–these are the elements that furnish the outlines of history. They are the dry timbers of a vast old edifice; they impose a dry study upon the antiquary, and are still more dry to his reader.
But that which makes history the richest of philosophies and the most genial pursuit of humanity is the spirit that is breathed into it by the thoughts and feelings of former generations, interpreted in actions and incidents that disclose the passions, motives, and ambition of men, and open to us a view of the actual life of our forefathers. When we can contemplate the people of a past age employed in their own occupations, observe their habits and manners, comprehend their policy and their methods of pursuing it, our imagination is quick to clothe them with the flesh and blood of human brotherhood and to bring them into full sympathy with our individual nature.
History then becomes a world of living figures,–a theatre that presents to us a majestic drama, varied by alternate scenes of the grandest achievements and the most touching episodes of human existence.
In the composing of this drama the author has need to seek his material in many a tangled thicket as well as in many an open field. Facts accidentally encountered, which singly have but little perceptible significance, are sometimes strangely discovered to illustrate incidents long obscured and incapable of explanation. They are like the lost links of a chain, which, being found, supply the means of giving cohesion and completeness to the heretofore useless fragments. The scholar's experience is full of these reunions of illustrative incidents gathered from regions far apart in space, and often in time. The historian's skill is challenged to its highest task in the effort to draw together those tissues of personal and local adventure which, at first without seeming or suspected dependence, prove, when brought into their proper relationship with each other, to be unerring exponents of events of highest concern.
It is pleasant to fall upon the course of one of these currents of adventure,– to follow a solitary rivulet of tradition, such as by chance we now and then find modestly flowing along through the obscure coverts of time, and to be able to trace its progress to the confluence of other streams,–and finally to see it grow, by the aid of these tributaries, to the proportions of an ample river, which waters the domain of authentic history and bears upon its bosom a clear testimony to the life and character of a people.
The following legend furnishes a striking and attractive exemplification of such a growth, in the unfolding of a romantic passage of Maryland history, of which no annalist has ever given more than an ambiguous and meagre hint. It refers to a deed of bloodshed, of which the only trace that was not obliterated from living rumor so long as a century ago was to be found in a vague and misty relic of an old memory of the provincial period of the State. The facts by which I have been enabled to bring it to the full light of an historical incident, it will be seen in the perusal of this narrative, have successively, and by most curious process of development, risen into view through a series of accidental discoveries, which have all combined, with singular coincidence and adaptation, to furnish an unquestionable chapter of Maryland history, altogether worthy of recital for its intrinsic interest, and still more worthy of preservation for the elements it supplies towards a correct estimate of the troubles which beset the career and formed the character and manners of the forefathers of the State.
CHAPTER I.
TALBOT'S CAVE
It is now many years ago,–long before I had reached manhood,–that, through my intimacy with a friend, then venerable for his years and most attractive to me by his store of historical knowledge, I became acquainted with a tradition touching a strange incident that had reference to a mysterious person connected with a locality on the Susquehanna River near Havre de Grace. In that day the tradition was repeated by a few of the oldest inhabitants who dwelt in the region. I dare say it has now entirely run out of all remembrance amongst their descendants, and that I am, perhaps, the only individual