ttage at Morton, and age rendering her
father incapable of active exertion, he filled the humble office of
rural postman. To her honor it should be recorded that she enabled her
parents to pass the remainder of their days in comfort. Six or seven
years ago she again visited her native place, a widow, his grace the
Duke of Palata having paid the debt of nature. Her mother she left at
Morton, paid the last duties to her father (somewhat ostentatiously),
and volunteered her assistance to promote the advancement of her female
relatives. Again, however, "a change came o'er the spirit of her dream;"
and some three or four years ago the public journals announced her
marriage to the son of an Irish clergyman of good family. In this
character, accompanied by her niece as _femme de chambre_, but not by
her husband, she once more visited Gainsborough and the scenes of her
youth; after making her mother an allowance, she again departed for
Italy, in good health; but death, which spares neither rank nor
character, has closed the "last scene of all, in this strange eventful
history."

* * * * *

The author of the "Nibelungenlied" is unknown, and, whether it be the
work of one poet, of two, or twenty, is still a matter of doubt, among
German critics. That the Nibelungenlied has been extensively
interpolated, is, I believe, agreed on all hands; we may conclude as
much, from having reason to believe that it was handed down for some
time (how long, nobody knows for certain), by oral tradition, and what
effect such a state of things may have on popular poetry, we may readily
collect from what Bishop Percy and Sir Walter Scott have told us of the
variations in the old ballads of England and Scotland. Lachmann
attributes it to the thirteenth century.

Original Correspondence.

PARIS, DEC. 2, 1850.

FROM time immemorial, no one knows why (for the legends which recount
her history leave it doubtful whether she performed on any instrument),
St. Cecilia has been chosen by musicians as their patron saint; and the
musicians of Paris, on the approach of winter, always celebrate a mass,
in music, to her honor, and for the benefit of the distressed members of
their body. Not that they entertain any exaggerated idea of the
consoling powers of the musical art, or hope to relieve the positive
sufferings of poverty and destitution by any combination of sounds, no
matter how harmonious; but this festival b