vation as well as to the highest; and has thus, beyond all other writers, received in return a tribute of sympathy and admiration from the universal spirit of humanity....

The romance, however, which he threw so carelessly from him, and which, I am persuaded, he regarded rather as a bold effort to break up the absurd taste of his time for the fancies of chivalry than as anything of more serious import, has been established by an uninterrupted and, it may be said, an unquestioned success ever since, both as the oldest classical specimen of romantic fiction, and as one of the most remarkable monuments of modern genius. But, though this may be enough to fill the measure of human fame and glory, it is not all to which Cervantes is entitled; for, if we would do him the justice that would. have been most welcome to his own spirit, and even if we would ourselves fully comprehend and enjoy the whole of his Don Quixote, we should, as we read it, bear in mind that this delightful romance was not the result of a youthful exuberance of feeling and a happy external condition, nor composed in his best years, when the spirits of its author were light and his hopes high; but that—with all its unquenchable and irresistible humor, with its bright views of the world, and its cheerful trust in goodness and virtue-it was written in his old age, at the conclusion of a life nearly every step of which had been marked with disappointed expectations, disheartening struggles, and sore calamities; that he began it in a prison, and that it was finished when he felt the hand of death pressing heavy and cold upon his heart. If this be remembered as we read, we may feel, as we ought to feel, what admiration and reverence are due not only to the living power of Don Quixote, but to the character and genius of Cervantes; if it be forgotten or underrated, we shall fail in regard to both.

KIT CARSON'S RIDE.

JOAQUIN MILLER.

[Cincinnatus Heine Miller, who has adopted the nom-de-plume above given, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1842. His life, however, is identified with the Far West, and his poetry is the embodiment in verse of the unconventional pioneer life. He accompanied Walker in his buccaneering invasion of Honduras in 1860, and his poetical description of this expedition has many beautiful and highly-animated passages. The poem which we quote below seems full of the spirit of the wild West, and the terrors of a prairie-fire could not be more graphically delineated.]

WE lay in the grasses and the sunburnt clover
That spread on the ground like a great brown cover
Northward and southward, and west and away

To the Brazos, to where our lodges lay,
One broad and unbroken sea of brown,
Awaiting the curtains of night to come down
To cover us over and conceal our flight
With my brown bride, won from an Indian town
That lay in the rear the full ride of a night.

We lay low in the grass on the broad plain levels,
Old Revels and I, and my stolen brown bride;
And the heavens of blue and the harvest of brown
And beautiful clover were welded as one,

To the right and the left, in the light of the sun.

Forty full miles, if a foot, to ride,

Forty full miles, if a foot, and the devils

Of red Comanches are hot on the track

When once they strike it. Let the sun go down
Soon, very soon," muttered bearded old Revels,
As he peered at the sun, lying low on his back,

Holding fast to his lasso. Then he jerked at his steed, And he sprang to his feet, and glanced swiftly around, And then dropped, as if shot, with his ear to the ground; Then again to his feet, and to me, to my bride,

While his eyes were like fire, his face like a shroud,

His form like a king, and his beard like a cloud,

And his voice loud and shrill, as if blown from a reed,—

"Pull, pull in your lassos, and bridle to steed,

And speed you, if ever for life you would speed,
And ride for your lives, for your lives you must ride!
For the plain is aflame, the prairie on fire,
And feet of wild horses hard flying before
I hear like a sea breaking high on the shore,
While the buffalo come like a surge of the sea,
Driven far by the flame, driving fast on us three,
As a hurricane comes, crushing palms in his ire."

We drew in the lassos, seized saddle and rein,

Threw them on, sinched them on, sinched them over again,
And again drew the girth, cast aside the macheers,
Cut away tapidaros, loosed the sash from its fold,
Cast aside the catenas red-spangled with gold,
And gold-mounted Colt's, the companions of years,
Cast the silken serapes to the wind in a breath,
And so bared to the skin sprang all haste to the horse,-
As bare as when born, as when new from the hand
Of God,-without word, or one word of command;
Turned head to the Brazos in a red race with death,
Turned head to the Brazos with a breath in the hair
Blowing hot from a king leaving death in his course;
Turned head to the Brazos with a sound in the air
Like the rush of an army, and a flash in the eye
Of a red wall of fire reaching up to the sky,
Stretching fierce in pursuit of a black rolling sea

Rushing fast upon us, as the wind sweeping free
And afar from the desert blew hollow and hoarse.

Not a word, not a wail from a lip was let fall,
Not a kiss from my bride, not a look nor low call
Of love-note or courage; but on o'er the plain
So steady and still, leaning low to the mane,

With the heel to the flank and the hand to the rein, Rode we on, rode we three, rode we nose and gray nose, Reaching long, breathing loud, as a creviced wind blows: Yet we broke not a whisper, we breathed not a prayer, There was work to be done, there was death in the air, And the chance was as one to a thousand for all.

Gray nose to gray nose, and each steady mustang
Stretched neck and stretched nerve till the arid earth rang,
And the foam from the flank and the croup and the neck
Flew around like the spray on a storm-driven deck.
Twenty miles!... thirty miles . . . a dim distant speck ...
Then a long reaching line, and the Brazos in sight,
And I rose in my seat with a shout of delight.
I stood in my stirrup and looked to my right,—

But Revels was gone; I glanced by my shoulder

And saw his horse stagger; I saw his head drooping
Hard down on his breast, and his naked breast stooping
Low down to the mane, as so swifter and bolder
Ran reaching out for us the red-footed fire.

To right and to left the black buffalo came,

A terrible surf on a red sea of flame

Rushing on in the rear, reaching high, reaching higher.
And he rode neck to neck to a buffalo bull,

The monarch of millions, with shaggy mane full
Of smoke and of dust, and it shook with desire
Of battle, with rage and with bellowings loud

And unearthly, and up through its lowering cloud
Came the flash of his eyes like a half-hidden fire,

While his keen crooked horns, through the storm of his

mane,

Like black lances lifted and lifted again;

And I looked but this once, for the fire licked through, And he fell and was lost, as we rode two and two.

I looked to my left then,-and nose, neck, and shoulder
Sank slowly, sank surely, till back to my thighs;
And up through the black blowing veil of her hair
Did beam full in mine her two marvellous eyes,
With a longing and love, yet a look of despair
And of pity for me, as she felt the smoke fold her,
And flames reaching far for her glorious hair.
Her sinking steed faltered, his eager eyes fell
To and fro and unsteady, and all the neck's swell
Did subside and recede, and the nerves fall as dead.
Then she saw sturdy Paché still lorded his head,
With a look of delight; for nor courage nor bribe,
Nor naught but my bride, could have brought him to me.
For he was her father's, and at South Santafee

Had once won a whole herd, sweeping everything down
In a race where the world came to run for the crown.
And so when I won the true heart of my bride-
My neighbor's and deadliest enemy's child,
And child of the kingly war-chief of his tribe—
She brought me this steed to the border the night

She met Revels and me in her perilous flight

From the lodge of the chief to the North Brazos side; And said, so half guessing of ill as she smiled,

As if jesting, that I, and I only, should ride

The fleet-footed Paché, so if kin should pursue
I should surely escape without other ado