sion* in the northern States, which, rapt
into moody reveries in those solitary woods, the fierce demon broodingly
foresaw. All these fain would I narrate, but they are not of the Rhine,
and my story will not brook the delay. While thus conversing with the
fiend, noon had crept on, and the sky had become overcast and lowering;
the giant trees waved gustily to and fro, and the low gatherings of
the thunder announced the approaching storm. Then the hunter rose and
stretched his mighty limbs, and seizing his spear, he strode rapidly
into the forest to meet the things of his own tribe that the tempest
wakes from their rugged lair.

* Which has come to pass.--1847.

A sudden recollection broke upon Nymphalin. "Alas, alas!" she cried,
wringing her hands; "what have I done! In journeying hither with thee,
I have forgotten my office. I have neglected my watch over the elements,
and my human charge is at this hour, perhaps, exposed to all the fury of
the storm."

"Cheer thee, my Nymphalin," said the prince, "we will lay the tempest;"
and he waved his sword and muttered the charms which curb the winds and
roll back the marching thunder: but for once the tempest ceased not at
his spells. And now, as the fairies sped along the troubled air, a
pale and beautiful form met them by the way, and the fairies paused and
trembled; for the power of that Shape could vanquish even them. It
was the form of a Female, with golden hair, crowned with a chaplet of
withered leaves; her bosoms, of an exceeding beauty, lay bare to the
wind, and an infant was clasped between them, hushed into a sleep so
still, that neither the roar of the thunder, nor the livid lightning
flashing from cloud to cloud, could even ruffle, much less arouse, the
slumberer. And the face of the female was unutterably calm and sweet
(though with a something of severe); there was no line nor wrinkle in
the hueless brow; care never wrote its defacing characters upon that
everlasting beauty. It knew no sorrow or change; ghostlike and shadowy
floated on that Shape through the abyss of Time, governing the world
with an unquestioned and noiseless sway. And the children of the green
solitudes of the earth, the lovely fairies of my tale, shuddered as they
gazed and recognized--the form of DEATH,--death vindicated.

"And why," said the beautiful Shape, with a voice soft as the last sighs
of a dying babe,--"why trouble ye the air with spells? Mine is the hour
and the empire, and t