On the disappearance of the angel, Arthur ventures to address the spirit of his friend on the question of his present happiness; when he, too, vanishes without reply. When lo! at the king's feet reposed a virgin shape, half woman and half child.' He has found the third, the crowning gift.

'There bright before the iron gates of Death,
Bright in the shadow of the awful Power
Which did as Nature give the human breath,

As Fate mature the germ and nurse the flower

Of earth for heaven-Toil's last and sweetest prize,

The destined Soother lifts her fearless eyes! '-P. 383.

The king wakes from his vision, to find this best gift no dream; but fair reality. He speaks to the maiden; but, with her finger on her lip, she enjoins silence.

'Then from the shade
Gliding, she stood beneath the golden skies;
Fair as the dawn that brighten'd Paradise.
'And Arthur look'd, and saw the dove no more;

Yet by some wild and wondrous glamoury,
Changed to the shape his new companion wore,
His soul the missing Angel seem'd to see;
And, soft and silent as the earlier guide,
The soft eyes thrill, the silent footsteps glide.
'Through paths his yester steps had fail'd to find,
Adown the woodland slope she leads the king,-

And, pausing oft, she turns to look behind,

As oft had turn'd the dove upon the wing;

And oft he question'd, still to find reply

Mute on the lip, but struggling to the eye.'-P. 385.

It is a pretty picture, but we do not think the author will find many sympathisers in this metamorphosis. If a man's wife has once been a bird, there seems no security that she may not relapse into the same form and condition again; he can never be sure of her. But such a conception comes fitly from an author who, in a previous work, has made its leading character marry an idiot:—a girl so universally acknowledged as such as to explain why the boys do not follow her in the street. The writer who makes his prose hero happy in so singular a choice, may well espouse his epic hero to a dove, and think he has provided well and adequately for his domestic felicity. But in truth these ideas can only emanate-as in Eastern Fable-from a disparaging notion of the sex: once thoroughly convinced that women have souls in the same sense as men possess them, and these fancies will be as uncongenial to the imagination as they are to the understanding.

The fair transformed, resuming her office of guide, leads Arthur to his followers, and once more taking ship, they sail to

his own dominions, and there they land within sight of Carduel amidst signs of Saxon outrage, seeking a well known convent where Arthur designs to place his maiden treasure, while he proceeds to the defence of his capital. The convent lies in ruins; and roused by the surrounding desolation, Arthur pours out threats of vengeance against Crida, the ravager of his country, which excite in his silent guide an agony of terror he cannot comprehend, being in fact ignorant of what the reader has all along been aware, that Genevieve, the dove, the 'destined soother,' is indeed the daughter of his foe. Meanwhile a

nun emerges from the ruins, who proves to be Arthur's kinswoman, the Abbess. She blesses his return, and conducts them to her hidden underground retreat, by means of which she had eluded Saxon cruelty; there Arthur leaves his charge. We pass over the mystical dreamy trances of the half-awakening visionary maiden, which result at length in her resolution to rejoin her father in the Saxon camp. The Abbess recognising the hand of heaven, suffers her to depart, hanging round her neck a cross at once as sign and safeguard. Here, as throughout the poem, the reader of Sir E. Bulwer's romances must be struck by the recurrence of the old fancies; scenes and images appearing again in a different garb. Genevieve, losing her sense of power to warn and guide, in the resumption of the human form, and with it, human love for Arthur, is only a repetition of Zanoni losing his power to protect Viola, when he abandons himself to human affection for her. To both only remains the

The twelfth and last book is full of stir and incident, of fighting, and critical conjunctions, of war and bloodshed. It takes up the story from the moment of Caradoc's death, which is the turning point of the Cymrian cause. Merlin, after addressing the people in a patriotic speech, dismisses them to the walls, announcing a renewal of the Saxon attack. From Lancelot he then demands a great sacrifice, that he should restore Genevra to her father Harold, his prophetic eye foreseeing an important part for her in approaching events. The knight reluctantly consents, and the maiden is despatched under the guard of the Aleman Convert. After these preparations the scene moves to the Saxon camp, on which a superstitious panic has fallen since Caradoc's victory. This panic the priests make use of as a plea for some of the more barbarous rites of their religion. The Runic Soothsayer is thrown into a trance, in which he reveals that their god Odin demands the sacrifice of a Christian maiden.

'A virgin's loss, aroused the Teuton strife;
A virgin's love hath charm'd the avenger's life;
A virgin's blood alone avert's the doom;'

and announces the speedy coming of the destined victim. In the midst of baleful incantations in which king and priests share, the silence of the temple is disturbed by shouts from without; Crida rises in wrath to rebuke the comers, and is met on the threshold by his fair-haired daughter. Soon his natural joy at the recovery of his beloved and youngest born is turned to anguish by the demands of the priests for their victim. They hail in Genevieve the destined sacrifice. The father pleads that the oracle had desired a Christian maid, and the arch Elder' points to the cross still lying on her breast. The old king calls upon her to cast down and trample on the sacred symbol, but she boldly professes the true faith, and in wrath and despair the old king renounces his child. They bind the trembling victim to the stone of sacrifice and wait with impatience the appointed hour; when their horrid rites are again interrupted by the forcible entrance of Harold, the Saxon Thane, accompanied by his daughter Genevra, who has brought him to the rescue. Harold is a very liberal Pagan; he disputes with the priests, and while professing his belief in Odin will have nothing to do with the bloody rites he enjoins; he rouses the crouching king from his lair to arise and defend his child; but bowed down by superstition, Crida gives her up to death as a Christian and offender of the gods, on which Genevra eagerly professes the same faith. Harold, however, will not listen to theological questions while they should be fighting, and recalling to mind his encounter with King Arthur, declares that for his part he

'Scorns no gods that worthy foes adore.'

He is rebuked by the priest, who threatens to call in the Saxon host to hear and avenge his blasphemies. Harold accepts an appeal to the popular voice, and makes a proposition to the king that he and his men, joined by all who would willingly follow his standard, should renew the assault on Carduel. Let the throne of Cymri be the maiden's ransom. He asks but till noon to complete the conquest, but if refused, he withdraws from the king's cause with all his adherents. None, not even the priests, dare hazard the loss of their champion; the truce is therefore accepted, though the revengeful priests are not less sure of their victim. Harold departs on his enterprise. The king, after one embrace of his child, for which his superstition reproves him, repairs to the watch-tower to witness the combat; while the priest, his companion, surveys from the same height the discontented, fear-stricken multitude gathered in lazy apathy

below, in whom he sees the instruments of his power. They witness the progress of Harold's assault and see him scale the walls, and disappear within the city, a success anything but satisfactory to the bloodthirsty idolater, who

'Paling frown'd upon the sun,

Though the sky deepen'd and the time rush'd on.'

When suddenly from the camp at their feet rose strange cries of wrath, and wonder; and lo! the Saxon fleet moored beyond the distant forest is in flames. This is the work of Arthur, who, with his followers, had lain in ambush awaiting Merlin's appointed signal from the dragon keep of Carduel. While the Saxon camp rouses itself to arms, through the forest hastens the deliverer. They are amazed by shouts of Arthur's name, and at the same moment the conquerors within the city are driven back and dispossessed; the Pale Horse of the Saxons, which had waved triumphant for an hour, once more yielding to the Dragon Standard. At length Harold, still facing the foe, is driven forth from Carduel, to the savage joy of the watchful priest, who from his height witnesses his retreat and the sun passing the meridian. He summons Crida to the sacrifice : but the spirit of patriotism has seized the aged king, he leaves the priest to do his worst; his own place is by the retreating standard; his people are his children. His enthusiasm diffuses a glow amid their discouraged ranks.

'The wide mass quickens with the one strong mind.'

The priest had descended to complete the sacrifice, already the knife gleams over Genevieve, when a shaft sent as by the Fates from invisible hands slays the slayer, and the priest falls bathed in his own blood. While all stand suspended in wonder and terror, wild clamours are heard without. The fane is besieged by a dismayed multitude flying before the victor; Arthur himself-in his own person Victory. Roused by the very extremity of the moment, the idolaters seek for the hand that has slain their chief, when suddenly sprang upon the altarstone a grim fiend-like image. It is the wild Aleman, who as Genevra's escort to the Saxon camp, had heard the rumours of Genevieve's approaching sacrifice. Following unseen in Harold's train, he had concealed himself behind the altar till the moment came to save. Springing from the altar he cut the victim's bonds, and before their vengeance had time to wreak itself, Arthur the deliverer treads the threshold, gleams through the nave a destroying angel,—and now the Silver Shield rests over Genevieve.

The fane soon becomes the last theatre of war. Crida rushes in with all his tributary kings. Arthur, still in ignorance of his relationship to Genevieve, makes his way in wrath to where he stands. The old king's sword, wielded with all his strength shivers before the diamond glaive. The conqueror's foot is on his breast when the maiden springs forward to intercept the descending blow, and declares herself the daughter of his prostrate foe. At this juncture Harold appears :-his of all that host the only undaunted breast. He had assembled and reorganized his broken bands on the brow of a neighbouring hill, and now enters the temple to make honourable terms for the vanquished, and to offer peace. The scene is drawn which there meets his eye: the idol god overthrown amid pools of blood, and the Cross exalted in its place; the captive Teuton kings haughty and in chains; Crida apart and unbound, one hand concealing his face, the other resting on the head of his kneeling child; Genevra by her side, mourning her father's and her country's woe, and Lancelot whispering such comfort as love could dictate the circle of knights; the rigid form of the Aleman, like some uncouth image of the gods he had renounced, and in the midst the hero king, the impersonation of honour and fame. In this assemblage Harold proudly offers his terms-peace, their captives released, and their kings restored; or war while life shall last. Arthur, wise and magnanimous in his triumph, accepts peace from his noble foe, a choice welcome to all, though

'Dark scowl the priests;-with vengeance priestcraft dies!",

Standing by the fallen idol's altar, under the holy rood, Merlin now utters prophetic words of comfort, and foresees the time when the two conflicting races will blend in lasting peace, promising to his countrymen the possession of their mountainous empire while time shall last. To Harold he foretels that from him shall descend a race of Scottish kings, and Lancelot is accepted by the bold heathen as his son-in-law.

King Crida does not yield to the dictates of fate so readily, but the hero condescends to sue, and his heart relents. Arthur pleads

"The pride of kings is in the power to bless,

The kingliest hand is that which gives the most;
Priceless the gift I ask thee to bestow,-

But doubly royal is a generous foe!"

'Then forth-subdued, yet stately, Crida came,

And the last hold in that rude heart was won ;-
"Hero, thy conquest makes no more my shame,

He shares thy glory that can call thee 'Son!'
So may this love-knot bind and bless the lands!
Faltering he spoke, and join'd the plighted hands.