The morning was clothed in dull, leaden clouds; and, flocking from their dwellings, as was their wont, on the seventh day of Passover, in holiday attire, and with composed appearance, every Jewish family sought the synagogue. Divine service commenced, proceeded, and was concluded without interruption. Scarcely, however, had they reached the outer court to return to their homes, than fearful shouts smote the ear, waxing louder, hoarser, more terrible with every passing moment. On came the infuriated crowd, a dark impenetrable phalanx, increasing in every street, and fearfully illumined with blazing torches held aloft; blades gleaming in the red flame; clubs, axes, pitchforks, every weapon that first came to hand. On they came, wrought into yet wilder frenzy, yet deeper thirst for human blood, by their own mad shouts, and the lurid flames that, as they rushed down the Jewish quarter, marked their progress. And how stood their victims? So firm, so motionless in the shadow of their house of prayer, that even the wild mob, when they first beheld them, fell back a moment powerless. Formed in a compact square, woman, children, and tottering age in the centre, youth and manhood stood around, with arms folded and head erect; not a limb, not a muscle moved; not a sound broke forth, even when their fiendish foes poured down and faced them. It was an awful pause; lasting not a minute, yet seeming to be hours; and then, with brandished arms and wilder cries, they rushed on to the work of death.
“Back!” exclaimed a voice not loud nor stern, but so thrillingly distinct and sweet, that it was heard by every individual of both parties, and involuntarily compelled obedience. “Back!—touch not the innocent. Ye have demanded the criminals, BEHOLD THEM! Ye have sworn their lives shall suffice—take them, torture them as ye list; but touch not, on your peril, touch not these!”
Two strangers stood suddenly between the murderers and the victims, as the unknown voice spake, the one in the loveliest bloom of youth, the other in manhood’s prime. With an appalling yell of disappointed malice, hate, and aggravated wrath, the fierce crowd rushed forwards, and closed round the voluntary martyrs. And here we pause, for how may the pen linger on the horrible tortures, the agonizing death inflicted on these noble men; or the horror of the stunned yet liberated Israelites, in being forced by their tormentors to witness the fate of their preservers? Yet no groan escaped the victims, to glut the long pent-up fury of their foes; no word to reveal to their brethren whence they came or who they were, or that they had spoken but to save.
The poet’s prophecy was fulfilled: “Ere spring had changed to summer,” Helon and his faithful Admah had met again, where hope was lost in fulfilment, temporal joy in an eternity of bliss. The summer flowers had twined their clinging tendrils round a lowly tomb of pure white marble in the grave-yard of that old mansion, Helon’s home so long, and half hiding the single word “Admah” with their radiant clusters, whispered in sweet breath to the passing breeze the bliss of a pure spirit, so early freed from the detaining fetters of a broken heart.
To this day the names of the martyrs rest unknown; but the two lamps still kept burning to their memory, in the synagogue of Worms, testify the truth of this fearful tale, and bear witness to a faith, a self-devotedness in scorned and hated Israel, unsurpassed in the annals of the world!
Lucy.
AN AUTUMN WALK
It was a lovely afternoon, in the fall of the year; that season by many deemed the most melancholy of them all. The fallen leaves, the decay of vegetation, the absence of flowers, the trees shorn of their summer glory, are to some such painful emblems of man’s estate, that they shrink in strange and melancholy trembling from the calm and pensive aspect of autumn, as if the death of nature whispered of their own. Yet it is not so. Autumn, even in its sadness, looks beyond the grave, and breathes of immortality. The shorn tree will put on its gala dress again; the withered hedge will send forth the loveliest flowers. Earth, burdened now in seeming with its emblems of decay, in reality derives thence her nourishment and strength, and will spring up again, bright and beautiful, strong and smiling in her reawakened joy. And shall man alone, amid the creation of Omnific love, pass hence for ever? No, oh, no! As a flower to bloom and be cut down, so as a flower will he burst forth again in a lovelier world and never-ending spring.
The day was well suited for such consoling musing; there was a balmy freshness in the air, a clearness in the atmosphere, in the cloudless expanse of azure, stretching above and around; a warmth and glow in the sun, even as he approached the west, unusual to the season. And there was beauty, too, in the landscape; or the fountain of enjoyment which Nature had unsealed in our hearts, bathed the scene in its own bright colouring, as in those exquisite lines of Coleridge:—