In song, where fame as yet hath left no sign
Beyond the sound whose charm is half divine;
Which leaves no record to the sceptic eye,
But yields young history all to harmony;
A boy Achilles, with the centaur's lyre
In hand, to teach him to surpass his sire.
For one long-cherish'd ballad's simple stave,
Rung from the rock, or mingled with the wave,
Or from the bubbling streamlet's grassy side,
Or gathering mountain echoes as they glide,
Hath greater power o'er cach true heart and ear,
Than all the columns Conquest's minions rear ;
Invites, when hieroglyphics are a theme
For sages' labours or the student's dream;
Attracts, when History's volumes are a toil,
The first, the freshest bud of Feeling's soil.
Such was this rude rhyme-rhyme is of the rude-
But such inspired the Norseman's solitude,
Who came and conquer'd; such, wherever rise
Lands which no foes destroy or civilise,
Exist

and what can our accomplish'd art

-

Of verse do more than reach the awaken'd heart?

VI.

And sweetly now those untaught melodies

Broke the luxurious silence of the skies,
The sweet siesta of a summer day,
The tropic afternoon of Toobonai,

When every flower was bloom, and air was balm,
And the first breath began to stir the palm,
The first yet voiceless wind to urge the wave
All gently to refresh the thirsty cave,
Where sat the songstress with the stranger boy,
Who taught her passion's desolating joy,
Too powerful over every heart, but most
O'er those who know not how it may be lost;
O'er those who, burning in the new-born fire,
Like martyrs revel in their funeral pyre,
With such devotion to their ecstasy,
That life knows no such rapture as to die :
And die they do; for earthly life has nought

Match'd with that burst of nature, even in thought, And all our dreams of better life above

But close in one eternal gush of love.

VII.

There sat the gentle savage of the wild,

In growth a woman, though in years a child,
As childhood dates within our colder clime,
Where nought is ripen'd rapidly save crime;
The infant of an infant world, as pure
From nature-lovely, warm, and premature;
Dusky like night, but night with all her stars ;
Or cavern sparkling with its native spars;
With eyes that were a language and a spell,
A form like Aphrodite's in her shell,
With all her loves around her on the deep,
Voluptuous as the first approach of sleep;

[George Stewart." He was," says Bligh," a young man of creditable parents in the Orkneys; at which place, on the return of the Resolution from the South Seas, in 1780, we received so many civilities, that, on that account only, I I should gladly have taken him with me; but, independent of this recommendation, he was a seaman, and had always borne a good character."]

* The" ship of the desert" is the Oriental figure for the camel or dromedary; and they deserve the metaphor well, — the former for his endurance, the latter for his swiftness.

The sun-born blood suffused her neck, and threw
O'er her clear nut-brown skin a lucid hue,
Like coral reddening through the darken'd wave,
Which draws the diver to the crimson cave.
Such was this daughter of the southern seas,
Herself a billow in her energies,

To bear the bark of others' happiness,
Nor feel a sorrow till their joy grew less :
Her wild and warm yet faithful bosom knew
No joy like what it gave; her hopes ne'er drew
Aught from experience, that chill touchstone, whose
Sad proof reduces all things from their hues :
She fear'd no ill, because she knew it not,

Or what she knew was soon too soon- - forgot :
Her smiles and tears had pass'd, as light winds pass
O'er lakes to ruffle, not destroy, their glass,

Whose depths unsearch'd, and fountains from the hill,
Restore their surface, in itself so still,

Until the earthquake tear the naiad's cave,
Root up the spring, and trample on the wave,
And crush the living waters to a mass,

The amphibious desert of the dank morass !
And must their fate be hers? The eternal change

But grasps humanity with quicker range;
And they who fall but fall as worlds will fall,
To rise, if just, a spirit o'er them all.

VIII.

And who is he? the blue-eyed northern child 1
Of isles more known to man, but scarce less wild;
The fair-hair'd offspring of the Hebrides,
Where roars the Pentland with its whirling seas;
Rock'd in his cradle by the roaring wind,
The tempest-born in body and in mind,
His young eyes opening on the ocean-foam,
Had from that moment deem'd the deep his home,
The giant comrade of his pensive moods,
The sharer of his craggy solitudes,

The only Mentor of his youth, where'er

His bark was borne; the sport of wave and air;
A careless thing, who placed his choice in chance,
Nursed by the legends of his land's romance;
Eager to hope, but not less firm to bear,
Acquainted with all feelings save despair.
Placed in the Arab's clime, he would have been
As bold a rover as the sands have seen,
And braved their thirst with as enduring lip
As Ishmael, wafted on his desert-ship;
Fix'd upon Chili's shore, a proud cacique;
On Hellas' mountains, a rebellious Greek;
Born in a tent, perhaps a Tamerlane;
Bred to a throne, perhaps unfit to.reign.
For the same soul that rends its path to sway,
If rear'd to such, can find no further prey
Beyond itself, and must retrace its way 3
Plunging for pleasure into pain: the same
Spirit which made a Nero, Rome's worst shame,
A humbler state and discipline of heart,
Had form'd his glorious namesake's counterpart;

3

"Lucullus, when frugality could charm,

4

Had roasted turnips in the Sabine farm."- POPE. The consul Nero, who made the unequalled march which deceived Hannibal, and defeated Asdrubal; thereby accom. plishing an achievement almost unrivalled in military annals. The first intelligence of his return, to Hannibal, was the sight of Asdrubal's head thrown into his camp. When Hannibal saw this, he exclaimed with a sigh, that "Rome would now be the mistress of the world." And yet to this victory of Nero's it might be owing that his imperial namesake reigned

But grant his vices, grant them all his own, How small their theatre without a throne !

IX.

Thou smilest; these comparisons seem high
To those who scan all things with dazzled eye;
Link'd with the unknown name of one whose doom
Has nought to do with glory or with Rome,
With Chili, Hellas, or with Araby;

Thou smilest? - Smile; 'tis better thus than sigh;
Yet such he might have been; he was a man,

A soaring spirit, ever in the van,

A patriot hero or despotic chief,

To form a nation's glory or its grief,

Born under auspices which makes us more
Or less than we delight to ponder o'er.
But these are visions; say, what was he here?
A blooming boy, a truant mutineer:

The fair-hair'd Torquil, free as ocean's spray,
The husband of the bride of Toobɔnai.

Topp'd with tall trees, which, loftier than the palm,
Seem'd rooted in the deep amidst its calm :
But when the winds awaken'd, shot forth wings
Broad as the cloud along the horizon flings,
And sway'd the waves, like cities of the sea,
Making the very billows look less free;
She, with her paddling oar and dancing prow,
Shot through the surf, like reindeer through the snow,
Swift-gliding o'er the breaker's whitening edge,
Light as a nereid in her ocean sledge,
And gazed and wonder'd at the giant hulk,
Which heaved from wave to wave its trampling bulk:
The anchor dropp'd; it lay along the deep,
Like a huge lion in the sun asleep,

While round it swarm'd the proas' flitting chain,
Like summer bees that hum around his mane.

XI.

The white man landed! — need the rest be told?
The New World stretch'd its dusk hand to the Old;
Each was to each a marvel, and the tie
Of wonder warm'd to better sympathy.
Kind was the welcome of the sun-born sires,
And kinder still their daughters' gentler fires.
Their union grew: the children of the storm
Found beauty link'd with many a dusky form;
While these in turn admired the paler glow,
Which seem'd so white in climes that knew no snow.
The chase, the race, the liberty to roam,
The soil where every cottage show'd a home;

at all. But the infamy of the one has eclipsed the glory of the other. When the name of "Nero" is heard, who thinks of the consul? But such are human things!

When very young, about eight years of age, after an attack of the scarlet fever at Aberdeen, I was removed by medical advice into the Highlands. Here I passed occasionally some summers, and from this period I date my love of moun

The sea-spread net, the lightly-launch'd canoe,
Which stemm'd the studded archipelago,
O'er whose blue bosom rose the starry isles;
The healthy slumber, earn'd by sportive toils;
The palm, the loftiest dryad of the woods,
Within whose bosom infant Bacchus broods,
While eagles scarce build higher than the crest
Which shadows o'er the vineyard in her breast;
The cava feast, the yam, the cocoa's root,
Which bears at once the cup, and milk, and fruit;
The bread-tree, which, without the ploughshare, yields
The unreap'd harvest of unfurrow'd fields,
And bakes its unadulterated loaves
Without a furnace in unpurchased groves,
And flings off famine from its fertile breast,
A priceless market for the gathering guest;
These, with the luxuries of seas and woods,
The airy joys of social solitudes,
Tamed each rude wanderer to the sympathies
Of those who were more happy, if less wise,
Did more than Europe's discipline had done,
And civilised Civilisation's son !

XII.

Of these, and there was many a willing pair,
Neuha and Torquil were not the least fair:
Both children of the isles, though distant far;
Both born beneath a sea-presiding star;
Both nourish'd amidst nature's native scenes,
Loved to the last, whatever intervenes
Between us and our childhood's sympathy,
Which still reverts to what first caught the eye.
He who first met the Highlands' swelling blue
Will love each peak that shows a kindred hue,
Hail in each crag a friend's familiar face,
And clasp the mountain in his mind's embrace.
Long have I roam'd through lands which are not mine,
Adored the Alp, and loved the Apennine,
Revered Parnassus, and beheld the steep
Jove's Ida and Olympus crown the deep:
But 't was not all long ages' lore, nor all
Their nature held me in their thrilling thrall;
The infant rapture still survived the boy,
And Loch-na-gar with Ida look'd o'er Troy, 1
Mix'd Celtic memories with the Phrygian mount,
And Highland linns with Castalie's clear fount.
Forgive me, Homer's universal shade!
Forgive me, Phoebus! that my fancy stray'd;
The north and nature taught me to adore
Your scenes sublime, from those beloved before.

XIII.

The love which maketh all things fond and fair,
The youth which makes one rainbow of the air,
The dangers past, that make even man enjoy
The pause in which he ceases to destroy,
The mutual beauty, which the sternest feel
Strike to their hearts like lightning to the steel,
United the half savage and the whole,
The maid and boy, in one absorbing soul.
No more the thundering memory of the fight
Wrapp'd his wean'd bosom in its dark delight;

tainous countries. I can never forget the effect, a few years afterwards, in England, of the only thing I had long seen, even in miniature, of a mountain, in the Malvern Hills. After I returned to Cheltenham, I used to watch them every afternoon, at sunset, with a sensation which I cannot describe. This was boyish enough; but I was then only thirteen years of age, and it was in the holidays.

No more the irksome restlessness of rest Disturb'd him like the eagle in her nest, Whose whetted beak and far-pervading eye Darts for a victim over all the sky:

His heart was tamed to that voluptuous state,
At once Elysian and effeminate,

Which leaves no laurels o'er the hero's urn ; —

These wither when for aught save blood they burn;
Yet when their ashes in their nook are laid,
Doth not the myrtle leave as sweet a shade?
Had Cæsar known but Cleopatra's kiss,

Rome had been free, the world had not been his.
And what have Cæsar's deeds and Cæsar's faine
Done for the earth? We feel them in our shame :
The gory sanction of his glory stains

The rust which tyrants cherish on our chains.
Though Glory, Nature, Reason, Freedom, bid
Roused millions do what single Brutus did -
Sweep these mere mock-birds of the despot's song
From the tall bough where they have perch'd so long,--
Still are we hawk'd at by such mousing owls,
And take for falcons those ignoble fowls,
When but a word of freedom would dispel
These bugbears, as their terrors show too well.

XIV.

Rapt in the fond forgetfulness of life,
Neuha, the South Sea girl, was all a wife,
With no distracting world to call her off
From love; with no society to scoff

At the new transient flame: no babbling crowd
Of coxcombry in admiration loud,
Or with adulterous whisper to alloy
Her duty, and her glory, and her joy:
With faith and feelings naked as her form,
She stood as stands a rainbow in a storm,
Changing its hues with bright variety,
But still expanding lovelier o'er the sky,
Howe'er its arch may swell, its colours move,
The cloud-compelling harbinger of love.

XV.

Here, in this grotto of the wave-worn shore,
They pass'd the tropic's red meridian o'er;
Nor long the hours - they never paused o'er time,
Unbroken by the clock's funereal chime,
Which deals the daily pittance of our span,
And points and mocks with iron laugh at man.
What deem'd they of the future or the past?
The present, like a tyrant, held them fast:
Their hour-glass was the sea-sand, and the tide,
Like her smooth billow, saw their moments glide;
Their clock the sun, in his unbounded tow'r;
They reckon'd not, whose day was but an hour;

1 The now well-known story of the loves of the nightingale and rose need not be more than alluded to, being sufficiently familiar to the Western as to the Eastern reader.

If the reader will apply to his ear the sea-shell on his chimney-piece, he will be aware of what is alluded to. If the text should appear obscure, he will find in " Gebir " the same idea better expressed in two lines. The poem I never read, but have heard the lines quoted by a more recondite reader -who seems to be of a different opinion from the editor of the Quarterly Review, who qualified it, in his answer to the Cri. tical Reviewer of his Juvenal, as trash of the worst and most insane description. It is to Mr. Landor, the author of " Gebir," so qualified, and of some Latin poems, which vie with Martial or Catullus in obscenity, that the immaculate Mr. Southey addresses his declamation against impurity! [Mr. Landor's lines above alluded to are —

"For I have often seen her with both hands
Shake a dry crocodile of equal height,

And listen to the shells within the scales,

The nightingale, their only vesper-bell,
Sung sweetly to the rose the day's farewell; 1
The broad sun set, but not with lingering sweep.
As in the north he mellows o'er the deep;

But fiery, full, and fierce, as if he left
The world for ever, earth of light bereft,
Plunged with red forehead down along the wave,
As dives a hero headlong to his grave.
Then rose they, looking first along the skies,
And then for light into each other's eyes,
Wondering that summer show'd so brief a sun,
And asking if indeed the day were done.
XVI.

And let not this seem strange: the devotee
Lives not in earth, but in his ecstasy;
Around him days and worlds are heedless driven,
His soul is gone before his dust to heaven.
Is love less potent? No his path is trod,
Alike uplifted gloriously to God;

Or link'd to all we know of heaven below,
The other better self, whose joy or woe
Is more than ours; the all-absorbing flame
Which, kindled by another, grows the same,
Wrapt in one blaze; the pure, yet funeral pile,
Where gentle hearts, like Bramins, sit and smile.
How often we forget all time, when lone,
Admiring Nature's universal throne,

Her woods, her wilds, her waters, the intense
Reply of hers to our intelligence !

Live not the stars and mountains? Are the wave
Without a spirit? Are the dropping caves
Without a feeling in their silent tears?
No, no; they woo and clasp us to their spheres,
Dissolve this clog and clod of clay before
Its hour, and merge our soul in the great shore.
Strip off this fond and false identity! -
Who thinks of self, when gazing on the sky?
And who, though gazing lower, ever thought,
In the young moments ere the heart is taught
Time's lesson, of man's baseness or his own?
All nature is his realm, and love his throne.
XVII.

Neuha arose, and Torquil: twilight's hour
Came sad and softly to their rocky bower,
Which, kindling by degrees its dewy spars,
Echoed their dim light to the mustering stars.
Slowly the pair, partaking nature's calm,
Sought out their cottage, built beneath the palm;
Now smiling and now silent, as the scene;
Lovely as Love -the spirit! - when serene.
The Ocean scarce spoke louder with his swell,
Than breathes his mimic murmurer in the shell, 2

And fancy there was life, and yet apply
The jagged jaws wide open to the car."

In the "Excursion" of Wordsworth occurs the following exquisite passage:

"I have seen

A curious child, applying to his ear

The convolutions of a smooth-lipp'd shell,
To which, in silence hush'd, his very soul
Listen'd intensely, and his countenance soon
Brighten'd with joy, for murmuring from within
Were heard sonorous cadences! whereby,
To his belief, the monitor express'd
Mysterious union with its native sea.
Even such a shell the universe itself
Is to the ear of faith; and doth impart
Authentic tidings of invisible things:
Of ebb and flow, and ever.during power;
And central peace subsisting at the heart
Of endless agitation."]

But here the herald of the self-same mouth
Came breathing o'er the aromatic south,
Not like a "bed of violets" on the gale,
But such as wafts its cloud o'er grog or ale,

Borne from a short frail pipe, which yet had blown
Its gentle odours over either zone,

And, puff'd where'er winds rise or waters roll,
Had wafted smoke from Portsmouth to the Pole,
Opposed its vapour as the lightning flash'd,
And reek'd, 'midst mountain-billows unabash'd,
To olus a constant sacrifice,

Through every change of all the varying skies.
And what was he who bore it? I may err,
But deem him sailor or philosopher. 1
Sublime tobacco! which from east to west
Cheers the tar's labour or the Turkman's rest;
Which on the Moslem's ottoman divides
His hours, and rivals opium and his brides;
Magnificent in Stamboul, but less grand,
Though not less loved, in Wapping or the Strand;
Divine in hookas, glorious in a pipe,

When tipp'd with amber, mellow, rich, and ripe;
Like other charmers, wooing the caress
More dazzlingly when daring in full dress;
Yet thy true lovers more admire by far
Thy naked beauties- Give me a cigar!?

XX.

Through the approaching darkness of the wood A human figure broke the solitude,

1 Hobbes, the father of Locke's and other philosophy, was an inveterate smoker.- even to pipes beyond computation. 2" We talked of change of manners (1773). Dr. Johnson observed, that our drinking less than our ancestors was owing to the change from ale to wine. I remember,' said he, when all the decent people in Lichfield got drunk every night, and were not the worse thought of Smoking has gone out. To be sure, it is a shocking thing, blowing smoke out of our mouths into other people's mouths, eyes, and noses, and having the same thing done to us. Yet I cannot account, why a thing which requires so little exertion, and yet preserves the

Fantastically, it may be, array'd,

A seaman in a savage masquerade;
Such as appears to rise out from the deep
When o'er the line the merry vessels sweep,
And the rough saturnalia of the tar

Flock o'er the deck, in Neptune's borrow'd car; 3
And, pleased, the god of ocean sees his name
Revive once more, though but in mimic game
Of his true sons, who riot in the breeze
Undreamt of in his native Cyclades.
Still the old god delights, from out the main,
To snatch some glimpses of his ancient reign.
Our sailor's jacket, though in ragged trim,
His constant pipe, which never yet burn'd dim,
His foremast air, and somewhat rolling gait,
Like his dear vessel, spoke his former state;
But then a sort of kerchief round his head,
Not over-tightly bound, nor nicely spread;
And, 'stead of trousers (ah! too early torn!
For even the mildest woods will have their thorn)
A curious sort of somewhat scanty mat
Now served for inexpressibles and hat;
His naked feet and neck, and sunburnt face,
Perchance might suit alike with either race.
His arms were all his own, our Europe's growth,
Which two worlds bless for civilising both;
The musket swung behind his shoulders broad,
And somewhat stoop'd by his marine abode,
But brawny as the boar's; and hung beneath,
His cutlass droop'd, unconscious of a sheath,
Or lost or worn away; his pistols were
Link'd to his belt, a matrimonial pair-
(Let not this metaphor appear a scoff,
Though one miss'd fire, the other would go off);
These, with a bayonet, not so free from rust
As when the arm-chest held its brighter trust,
Completed his accoutrements, as Night
Survey'd him in his garb heteroclite.

XXI.

"What cheer, Ben Bunting?" cried (when in full view

Our new acquaintance) Torquil. "Aught of new?" "Ey, ey!" quoth Ben, "not new, but news enow; A strange sail in the offing."-"Sail! and how? What! could you make her out? It cannot be ; I've seen no rag of canvass on the sea." "Belike," said Ben, "you might not from the bay, But from the bluff-head, where I watch'd to-day,

I saw her in the doldrums; for the wind Was light and baffling."—"When the sun declined Where lay she? had she anchor'd ? "—" No, but still She bore down on us, till the wind grew still." "Her flag?"—"I had no glass: but fore and aft, Egad! she seem'd a wicked-looking craft." "Arm'd?"—"I expect so; - sent on the look-out: 'Tis time, belike, to put our helm about." "About? Whate 'er may have us now in chase, We'll make no running fight, for that were base;

mind from total vacuity, should have gone ont.'"-BOSWELL. As an item in the history of manners, it may be observed, that drinking to excess has diminished greatly in the memory even of those who can remember forty or fifty years. The taste for smoking, however, has revived, probably from the military habits of Europe during the French wars; but, instead of the sober sedentary pipe, the ambulatory cigar is now chietty used. CROKER, 1830.]

3 This rough but jovial ceremony, used in crossing the line, has been so often and so well described, that it need not be more than alluded to.

all hands

To quarters. They are furbishing the stands
Of arms; and we have got some guns to bear,

And scaled them. You are wanted."-"That's but fair;

And if it were not, mine is not the soul

To leave my comrades helpless on the shoal.
My Neuha! ah! and must my fate pursue
Not me alone, but one so sweet and true?
But whatsoe 'er betide, ah, Neuha! now
Unman me not; the hour will not allow
A tear; I am thine whatever intervenes !
"Right," quoth Ben, "that will do for the marines."

The Island.

CANTO THE THIRD.

I.

THE fight was o'er; the flashing through the gloom,
Which robes the cannon as he wings a tomb,
Had ceased; and sulphury vapours upward driven
Had left the earth, and but polluted heaven:
The rattling roar which rung in every volley
Had left the echoes to their melancholy;

No more they shriek'd their horror, boom for boom;
The strife was done, the vanquish'd had their doom;
The mutineers were crush'd, dispersed, or ta'en,
Or lived to deem the happiest were the slain.
Few, few escaped, and these were hunted o'er
The isle they loved beyond their native shore.
No further home was theirs, it seem'd, on earth,
Once renegades to that which gave them birth;
Track'd like wild beasts, like them they sought the
wild,

As to a mother's bosom flies the child;
But vainly wolves and lions seek their den,
And still more vainly men escape from men.

II.

Beneath a rock whose jutting base protrudes
Far over ocean in his fiercest moods,
When scaling his enormous crag the wave

Is hurl'd down headlong, like the foremost brave,
And falls back on the foaming crowd behind,
Which fight beneath the banners of the wind,
But now at rest, a little remnant drew
Together, bleeding, thirsty, faint, and few;
But still their weapons in their hands, and still
With something of the pride of former will,
As men not all unused to meditate,

And strive much more than wonder at their fate.
Their present lot was what they had foreseen,
And dared as what was likely to have been:

"That will do for the marines, but the sailors won't believe it," is an old saying; and one of the few fragments of former jealousies which still survive (in jest only) between these gallant services.

Archidamus, king of Sparta, and son of Agesilaus, when

Might still be miss'd amidst the world of waves,
Had wean'd their thoughts in part from what they saw
And felt, the vengeance of their country's law.
Their sea-green isle, their guilt-won paradise,
No more could shield their virtue or their vice:
Their better feelings, if such were, were thrown
Back on themselves, their sins remain'd alone.
Proscribed even in their second country, they
Were lost; in vain the world before them lay;
All outlets seem'd secured. Their new allies
Had fought and bled in mutual sacrifice;
But what avail'd the club and spear, and arm
Of Hercules, against the sulphury charm,
The magic of the thunder, which destroy'd
The warrior ere his strength could be employ'd ?
Dug, like a spreading pestilence, the grave
No less of human bravery than the brave! 2
Their own scant numbers acted all the few
Against the many oft will dare and do:
But though the choice seems native to die free,
Even Greece can boast but one Thermopylæ,
Till now, when she has forged her broken chain
Back to a sword, and dies and lives again!

III.

Beside the jutting rock the few appear'd,
Like the last remnant of the red-deer's herd;
Their eyes were feverish, and their aspect worn,
But still the hunter's blood was on their horn,
A little stream came tumbling from the height,
And straggling into ocean as it might,
Its bounding crystal frolick'd in the ray,
And gush'd from cliff to crag with saltless spray;
Close on the wild, wide ocean, yet as pure
And fresh as innocence, and more secure,
Its silver torrent glitter'd o'er the deep,
As the shy chamois' eye o'erlooks the steep,
While far below the vast and sullen swell
Of ocean's alpine azure rose and fell.

To this young spring they rush'd, -all feelings first
Absorb'd in passion's and in nature's thirst,-
Drank as they do who drink their last, and threw
Their arms aside to revel in its dew;

[stains

Cool'd their scorch'd throats, and wash'd the gory From wounds whose only bandage might be chains; Then, when their drought was quench'd, look'd sadly

round,

As wondering how so many still were found
Alive and fetterless :- but silent all,
Each sought his fellow's eyes, as if to call
On him for language which his lips denied,

As though their voices with their cause had died.
IV.

Stern, and aloof a little from the rest,
Stood Christian, with his arms across his chest.
The ruddy, reckless, dauntless hue once spread
Along his cheek was livid now as lead;
His light-brown locks, so graceful in their flow,
Now rose like startled vipers o'er his brow.

he saw a machine invented for the casting of stones and darts, exclaimed, that it was the "grave of valour." The same story has been told of some knights on the first application of gunpowder; but the original anecdote is in Plutarch.