CRACO W. ON THE ANNEXATION OF THE ANCIENT CAPITAL AND LAST FREE CITY OF POLAND TO AUSTRIAN DESPOTISM AT THE DICTATION OF THE RUSSIAN CZAR, IN VIOLATION OF THE TREATY OF VIENNA. * The Emperor Leopold and other princes, seized with panic, took to flight, leaving the people exposed to the enemy, and sought refuge in Vienna. "As Sobieski was on his march with his little army, he saw one day an eagle flying by them from the right, and availing himself of the superstition of the Poles, he took the opportunity of encouraging them by interpreting it as a good omen. Thus Sobieski, fifty-four years old, and so weak as to be obliged to be almost lifted on his horse, was the only man whom the emperor could look to for aid. As the Polish army crossed the bridge, they were particularly admired for the fineness of their horses, and general appearance." "Even the stern warrior, Sobieski, shed a tear of joy at receiving the thanks and acclamations of the victims whom he had rescued from destruction. Never," he said, 'did the crown yield me pleasure like this!' The people could not help comparing him with their own disgraceful sovereign, and exclaiming, 'Why is not this man our master ?'"-Fletcher's Poland. + "With difficulty could the stern looks of the emperor's officers check these natural expressions of popular feeling. But Sobieski did not arrogate to himself only the glory of the victory; he went to the cathedral to return thanks, and began to sing the Te Deum himself. A sermon was afterwards delivered, and the preacher, in the taste of that age, chose the following text for the occasion: 'There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.' § "At length Leopold wrung from his lips the word 'gratitude,' for the deliverance of Vienna, at which Sobieski merely remarked, 'Brother, I am glad that I have done you that small service.' The young Polish prince, James, came up at this moment, and his father presented him to Leopold: This is a prince whom I am educating for the service of Christendom.' The emperor merely nodded, though this was the young man whom he had promised to make his sonin-law. One of the Polish palatines, stepping forward to kiss the haughty emperor's foot, Sobieski exclaimed, Come, palatine, no meanness.' The interview was then at an end."-Fletcher's Poland, pp. 127, 128. That high heart roused his victor-bands, Long Europe's bulwark, famed they stood, IX. Free states drew breath 'neath Poland's shield, When Poles no more Heaven's thunders wield, 'Twixt ruthless Tartar Czars combined, X. The Sybil leaves are numbering fast, Loud and more loud that Heaven-rung blast, They rise, they arm-the "Nemesis" Their day of vengeance comes, When faithless Gaul-when Albion falls, "Amidst the roar of artillery, the tears of the female portion of the inhabitants, and the curses of the male, the proclamation was read, by which Cracow is declared to be, for ever, a portion of the Austrian empire. A most stringent oath of fidelity to the emperor is being administered by means of the most atrocious violence; it is the reign of despotic terror; the utmost consternation prevails; the unhappy Cracovians find themselves delivered up bound hand and foot to all the long-suppressed hatred and vengeance of the most cruel, treacherous, and barbarous of governments. Respectable Polish citizens have been already wantonly attacked in the streets, or consigned to dungeons, for daring to pass without showing the required mark of respect towards Austrian sentinels. Domiciliary visits are enforced by its police. The personal liberty and the property of the citizens are threatened with destruction, and their former privileges all abolished. The merchants will be condemned to banishment, while the peasantry of the republic, once the happiest and most contented in the world, will be subjected to a grinding taxation, and to military impressment and rule. Poland does well to weep over her fallen capital-over the walls of her senators-over the fame which enshrines the ashes of her long line of kings and heroes,-where Kosciusko slumbers-where the Deliverer of Vienna and of Europe reposes from his ungrateful labour,-over that temple which the most indifferent cannot enter without feeling that Poland was once glorious and powerful. But her tears should flow the faster for that bold peasantry, so true in war, so gentle and light-hearted in peace; whose simple virtues will excite distrust and aversion in the breasts of masters, skilled in the arts of oppression and corruption. The last hopes of the inhabitants of Cracow are fixed upon Lord -. It is certain that Austria holds her new possession with a trembling and unsteady hand; that final arrangements respecting its government are not to be made until it is known how England will brook the insult which has been cast upon her. Austria is, indeed, in no condition to go to war about Cracow. Her finances are in a desperate state; her troops wretchedly equipped, and neither officers nor troops to be relied upon. The mere rumour of a certain old commodore having received orders to hoist his pennant in the Adriatic, would send the Austrian troops to Podgorze more rapidly than they have ever yet executed the march. To say nothing of honour, justice, and the faith of treaties, England will sustain losses in the way of trade, if the occupation is permitted; all the principal articles imported by Cracow, as cotton goods and hardware, being chiefly of English origin.”—A Correspondent from Cracow-see The Times, 11th of December. NINETEEN HUNDRED AND FORTY-SEVEN PROCUL ESTE PROFANI! A FANTASIA. Stay your rude steps whose throbbing breasts infold For you no Dryads dress the roseate bower, Avaunt then, ye of sordid worshippings, or soul unfanciful! But if I have a fair, pensive, and imaginative reader, who will lend her mind to reveries more wild than ever yet were dreamt of in the world's philosophy, conduct her, Muse of Visions! to some sylvan and sequestered spot, where I may mesmerise her spirit, until, by interfusion of our minds, she shall see and hear all that I myself perceive, however fantastic the apparitions, however supernatural the sounds that may salute her startled senses. Oh, lead her timid steps to yonder glade, There, as meek evening wakes her temperate breeze, Shall charm her soul with blissful prophecies. Nay, over-prudent damsel! withhold not credence from my revelations because they may anticipate an unborn century, and introduce to thee an angel visitant. Still, still, wilt thou scatter golden light from thy ringlets, as thou shakest thy head distrustfully? Then will I address thee in the words of Pope to Belinda: Fairest of mortals, thou distinguish'd care Of thousand bright inhabitants of air! Of airy elves by moonlight shadows seen, The silver token, and the circling green, Of virgins visited by angel powers With golden crowns, and wreaths of heav'nly flowers, And why may I not win to the perusal of my tale some visionary youth who, in the weariness of life's monotonous realities, and the dull turmoil of cities, hath hied to some umbrageous solitude, and throwing himself beside a silver-tongued brook, hath listened to its evening hymn, and the dulcet melody of the wind, plying its Eolian harp amid the leaves, and the softly blended harmonies that warble nature's lullaby as the God of day sinks to his cloud-pavilioned couch, until he hath felt his senses to be slowly spiritualised, and his soul hath been upward rapt, and the ravishing music of the spheres, so falsely deemed a poet's reverie, hath been, to him, a fact auricular? Why not indeed? Since I may evoke, even by describing it, as if it were an echo to my thought. Hist! hark! Hear you not its chimes symphonious as they float away upon the breeze, Jan.-VOL. LXXIX. NO. CCCXIII. I and die to their own hushing requiem?—Oh, how thrilling, how exquisitely sweet, how infinitely More tuneable than lark to shepherd's ear, When corn is green, and hawthorn buds appear; how incalculably more musical than any earthborn sound that ever yet bewitched a poet's ravished ear! Are there not even full-grown men of flesh and blood, whose nimble and fiery spirit, escaping from its corporeal prison, hath spread its wings, and chased the Will-o'-the-whisp o'er sedgy marsh and willowy wild morass, hailing him in the words of Puck How now, spirit, whither wander you? And hearing him reply in aqueous tones— Thorough bush, thorough briar, Thorough flood, thorough fire, Swifter than the moone's sphere. Live there not bearded men, who wandering in some Summer solitude, what time Diana's cresset glimpsed through the silvered clouds, have seen the fairy court On haunted hill, by dale, forest or mead, Dancing their ringlets to the whistling wind. Breathes there an adult wearer of the plaid, who hath not seen Tam O'Shanter in his mad career, scared by the trampling of his phantomsteed, although his hoofs left no print upon the sand, no sound upon the air, and following him with fascinated eye until He past the burks and mickle stone, Where drunken Charlie brake's neck-bone, And thro' the whins, and by the cairn, Where hunters found the murder'd bairn, Where Mungo's mither hang'd hersel. Talk of maidens, youngsters, and adults delighting to revel in the perusal of such phantomry! Why look, behold! Do I not see gray-headed sages of every nation locking themselves in their lonely studies, that they may pore over the page of Goethe, and be haunted by the phantomry that beleaguered Faust, when, under the guidance of Mephistophiles, he shared the wild revels of the Walpurgis night, revealed to him by the ominous light of the ignis fatuus? Lo! how the trees struggle with the hurricane ! The branches are creaking and cracking all, And heavily moaning the trunks complain, And the roots snap and gape as they yield to the strain! In their fall intermingled and hideously clashing, All through one another are splintering and crashing, And along the ravine's wreck-encumber'd abysses, |