I have marked by italic letters the most important passage of the above quotation. The view it contains seems to me to have every appearance of truth and justice—and if such should, on maturer investigation, turn out to be the fact, it will certainly confer no small honour on an English scholar to have discovered the key to a mystery, which had long exercised in vain the laborious and profound students of German antiquity.
There are probably several other points on which I ought to have embraced this opportunity of enlarging; but the necessity of preparing for an excursion to foreign countries, in quest of health and strength, that have been for some time sinking, makes me cut short my address upon the present occasion.
Although I had never been in Switzerland, and numerous mistakes must of course have occurred in my attempts to describe the local scenery of that romantic region, I must not conclude without a statement highly gratifying to myself, that the work met with a reception of more than usual cordiality among the descendants of the Alpine heroes whose manners I had ventured to treat of; and I have in particular to express my thanks to the several Swiss gentlemen who have, since the novel was published, enriched my little collection of armour with specimens of the huge weapon that sheared the lances of the Austrian chivalry at Sempach, and was employed with equal success on the bloody days of Granson and Morat. Of the ancient doublehanded espadons of the Switzer, I have, in this way, received, I think, not less than six, in excellent preservation, from as many different individuals, who thus testified their general approbation of these pages. They are not the less interesting, that gigantic swords, of nearly the same pattern and dimensions, were employed, in their conflicts with the bold knights and men-at-arms of England, by Wallace, and the sturdy foot-soldiers who, under his guidance, laid the foundations of Scottish independence.
The reader who wishes to examine with attention the historical events of the period which the novel embraces will find ample means of doing so in the valuable works of Zschokké and M. de Barante—which last author's account of the Dukes of Burgundy is among the most valuable of recent accessions of European literature—and in the new Parisian edition of Froissart, which has not as yet attracted so much attention in this country as it well deserves to do.
W.S.
ANNE OF GEIERSTEIN;
OR,
THE MAIDEN OF THE MIST.
CHAPTER I.
The mists boil up around the glaciers; clouds
Rise curling fast beneath me, white and sulphurous,