while the cavaliers and dames who thronged the saloon might have been taken for the antique figures of Gobelin tapestry suddenly vivified and put in motion.

The banquet, which had been kept back until the arrival of Don Fernando, was now announced; and, such a feast! such unknown dishes and obsolete dainties; with the peacock, that bird of state and ceremony, served up in full plumage, in a golden dish, at the head of the table. And then, as Don Fernando cast his eyes over the glittering board, what a vista of odd heads and head-dresses, of formal bearded dignitaries, and stately dames with castellated locks and towering plumes!

As fate would have it, on the other side of Don Fernando was seated the daughter of the Alcayde. She was arrayed, it is true, in a dress that might have been worn before the flood; but then, she Lad a melting black Andalusian eye, that was perfectly irresistible. Her voice, too, her manner, her movements, all smacked of Andalusia, and showed how female fascination may be transmitted from age to age, and clime to clime, without ever losing its power, or going out of fashion. Those who know the witchery of the sex in that most amorous region of Old Spain, may judge what must have been the fascination to which Don Fernando was exposed when seated beside one of the most captivating of its descendants. He was, as has already been hinted, of an inflammable temperament; with a heart ready to get in a light blaze at every instant. And then, he had been so wearied by pompous tedious old cavaliers, with their formal bows and speeches; is it to be wondered at that he turned with delight to the Alcayde's daughter, all smiles and dimples, and melting looks, and melting accents? Besides, for I wish to give him every excuse in my power, he was in a particularly excitable mood from the novelty of the scene before him, and his head was almost turned with this sudden and complete realization of all his hopes and fancies: and then, in the flurry of the moment he had taken frequent draughts at the wine-cup, presented him at every instant by officious pages, and all the world knows the effect of such draughts in giving potency to female charms. In a word, there is no concealing the matter, the banquet was not half over before Don Fernando was making love outright to the Alcayde's daughter. It was his old habitude, contracted long before his matrimonial engagement. The young lady hung her head coyly; her eye rested upon a ruby heart, sparkling in a ring on the hand of Don Fernando, a parting gage of love from Serafina. A blush crimsoned her very temples. She darted a glance of doubt at the ring, and then at Don Fernando. He read her doubt, and in the giddy intoxication of the moment, drew off the pledge of his affianced bride, and slipped it on the finger of the Alcayde's daughter.

At this moment the banquet broke up. The chamberlain, with his lofty demeanour, and his lack-lustre eyes, stood before him, and announced that the barge was waiting to conduct him back to the caravel. Don Fernando took a formal leave of the Alcayde and his dignitaries, and a tender farewell of the Alcayde's daughter, with a promise to throw himself at her feet on the following day. He was rowed back to his vessel in the same slow and stately manner, to the cadence of the same mournful old ditty. He retired to his cabin, his brain whirling with all that he had seen, and his heart now and

then giving him a twinge as he recollected his temporary infidelity to the beautiful Serafina. He flung himself on his bed, and soon fell into a feverish sleep. His dreams were wild and incoherent. How long he slept he knew not; but, when he awoke he found himself in a strange cabin, with persons around him of whom he had no knowledge. He rubbed his eyes to ascertain whether he were really awake. In reply to his inquiries he was informed that he was on board of a Portuguese ship, bound to Lisbon; having been taken senseless from a wreck drifting about the ocean.

Don Fernando was confounded and perplexed. He retraced every thing distinctly that had happened to him in the Island of the Seven Cities, and until he had retired to rest on board of the caravel. Had his vessel been driven from her anchors, and wrecked during his sleep? The people about him could give him no information on the subject. He talked to them of the Island of the Seven Cities, and of all that had befallen him there. They regarded his words as the ravings of delirium; and, in their honest solicitude administered such rough remedies that he was fain to drop the subject, and observe a cautious taciturnity.

At length they arrived in the Tagus, and anchored before the famous city of Lisbon. Don Fernando sprang joyfully on shore, and hastened to his ancestral mansion. To his surprise it was inhabited by strangers; and, when he asked about his family, no one could give him any information concerning them.

He now sought the mansion of Don Ramiro, for the temporary flame kindled by the bright eyes of the Alcayde's daughter had long since burnt itself out, and his genuine passion for Serafina had revived with all its fervour. He approached the balcony, beneath which he had so often serenaded her. Did his eyes deceive him? No! There was Serafina herself at the balcony. An exclamation of rapture burst from him as he raised his arms towards her. She cast upon him a look of indignation, and, hastily retiring, closed the casement. Could she have heard of his flirtation with the Alcayde's daughter? He would soon dispel every doubt of his constancy. The door was open. He rushed up stairs, and entering the room, threw himself at her feet. She shrank back with affright, and took refuge in the arms of a youthful cavalier.

"What mean you, sir," cried the latter, "by this intrusion?" "What right have you," replied Don Fernando," to ask the question?"

"The right of an affianced suitor!"

Don Fernando started, and turned pale. "Oh, Serafina! Serafina!" cried he in a tone of agony," is this thy plighted constancy?" "Serafina? — what mean you by Serafina? If it be this young lady you intend, her name is Maria."

"Is not this Serafina Alvarez, and is not that her portrait ?" cried Don Fernando, pointing to a picture of his mistress.

"Holy Virgin!" cried the young lady; "he is talking of my great grandmother!"

An explanation ensued,-if that could be called an explanation, which plunged the unfortunate Fernando into tenfold perplexity. If he might believe his eyes he saw before him his beloved Serafina; if he might believe his ears, it was merely her hereditary form and features, perpetuated in the person of her great grandaughter.

His brain began to spin. He sought the office of the Minister of Marine, and made a report of his expedition, and of the Island of the Seven Cities, which he had so fortunately discovered. Nobody knew anything of such an expedition, or such an island. He declared that he had undertaken the enterprise under a formal contract with the Crown, and had received a regular commission, constituting him Adalantado. This must be matter of record; and he insisted loudly that the books of the department should be consulted. The wordy strife at length attracted the attention of an old grey-headed clerk, who sat perched on a high stool, at a high desk, with iron-rimmed spectacles on the top of a thin pinched nose, copying records into an enormous folio. He had wintered and summered in the department for a great part of a century, until he had alinost grown to be a piece of the desk at which he sat; his memory was a mere index of official facts and documents, and his brain was little better than red tape and parchment. After peering down for a time from his lofty perch, and ascertaining the matter in controversy, he put his pen behind his ear, and descended. He remembered to have heard something from his predecessor about an expedition of the kind in question; but then, it had sailed during the reign of Don Ioam II, and he had been dead at least a hundred years. To put the matter beyond dispute, however, the archives of the Torvo do Tombothat sepulchre of old Portuguese documents-were diligently searched, and a record was found of a contract between the Crown and one Fernando de Ulmo, for the discovery of the Island of the Seven Cities, and of a commission secured to him as Adalantado of the country he might discover.

"There!" cried Don Fernando, triumphantly, "there you have proof before your own eyes of what I have said. I am the Fernando de Ulmo specified in that record. I have discovered the Island of the Seven Cities, and am entitled to be Adalantado, according to contract."

The story of Don Fernando had certainly what is pronounced the best of historical foundation, documentary evidence; but, when a man in the bloom of youth talked of events that had taken place above a century previously as having happened to himself, it is no wonder that he was set down for a madman.

The old clerk looked at him from above and below his spectacles, shrugged his shoulders, stroked his chin, re-ascended his lofty stool, took the pen from behind his ear, and resumed his daily and eternal task, copying records into the fiftieth volume of a series of gigantic folios. The other clerks winked at each other shrewdly, and dispersed to their several places, and poor Don Fernando, thus left to himself, flung out of the office, almost driven wild by these repeated perplexities.

In the confusion of his mind he instinctively repaired to the mansion of Alvarez, but it was barred against him. To break the delusion under which the youth apparently laboured, and to convince him that the Serafina about whom he raved was really dead, he was conducted to her tomb. There she lay, a stately matron, cut out in alabaster; and, there lay her husband beside her, a portly cavalier in armour; and there knelt on each side the effigies of a numerous progeny, proving that she had been a fruitful vine. Even the very monument gave proof of the lapse of time, for the hands of her husband

-which were folded as if in prayer-had lost their fingers, and the face of the once lovely Serafina was noseless.

Don Fernando felt a transient glow of indignation at beholding this monumental proof of the inconstancy of his mistress; but, who could expect a mistress to remain constant during a whole century of absence? And, what right had he to rail about constancy, after what had passed between him and the Alcayde's daughter? The unfortunate cavalier performed one pious act of tender devotion; he had the alabaster nose of Serafina restored by a skilful statuary, and then tore himself from the tomb.

He could now no longer doubt the fact that, somehow or other, he had skipped over a whole century during the night he had spent at the Island of the Seven Cities; and, he was now as complete a stranger in his native city, as if he had never been there. A thousand times did he wish himself back to that wonderful island, with its antiquated banquet halls, where he had been so courteously received; and, now that the once young and beautiful Serafina was nothing but a great-grandmother in marble, with generations of descendants, a thousand times would he recall the melting black eyes of the Alcayde's daughter, who, doubtless, like himself was still flourishing in fresh juvenility, and breathe a secret wish that he were seated by her side.

He would at once have set on foot another expedition at his own expense to cruise in search of the sainted island, but his means were exhausted. He endeavoured to rouse others to the enterprise, setting forth the certainty of profitable results, of which his own experience furnished such unquestionable proof. Alas! no one would give faith to his tale; but looked upon it as the feverish dream of a shipwrecked man. He persisted in his efforts; holding forth in all places and all companies, until he became an object of jest and jeer to the light-minded, who mistook his earnest enthusiasm for a proof of insanity; and the very children in the streets bantered him with the title of "The Adalantado of the Seven Cities."

Finding all his efforts in vain in his native city of Lisbon, he took shipping for the Canaries, as being nearer the latitude of his former cruise, and inhabited by people given to nautical adventure. Here he found ready listeners to his story,-for the old pilots and mariners of those parts were notorious island hunters, and devout believers in all the wonders of the seas. Indeed, one and all treated his adventure as a common occurrence, and, turning to each other, with a sagacious nod of the head, observed, "He has been at the island of St. Brandan."

They then went on to inform him of that great marvel and enigma of the ocean; of its repeated appearance to the inhabitants of their islands; and of the many but ineffectual expeditions that had been made in search of it. They took him to a promontory of the island of Palma, from whence the shadowy St. Brandan had oftenest been descried, and they pointed out the very tract in the west where its mountains had been seen.

Don Fernando listened with rapt attention. He had no longer a doubt that this mysterious and fugacious island must be the same with that of the Seven Cities; and that there must be some supernatural influence connected with it, that had operated upon himself, and made the events of a night occupy the space of a century.

VOL. VI.

X

He endeavoured, but in vain, to rouse the islanders to another attempt at discovery; they had given up the phantom island as indeed inaccessible. Fernando, however, was not to be discouraged. The idea wore itself deeper and deeper in his mind, until it became the engrossing subject of his thoughts and object of his being. Every morning he would repair to the promontory of Palma, and sit there throughout the livelong day, in hopes of seeing the fairy mountains of St. Brandan peering above the horizon; every evening he returned to his home, a disappointed man, but ready to resume his post on the following morning.

His assiduity was all in vain. He grew grey in his ineffectual attempt; and was at length found dead at his post. His grave is still shown in the island of Palma, and a cross is erected on the spot where he used to sit and look out upon the sea, in hopes of the reappearance of the enchanted island.

DEAR LADY B

THE HATCHMENT.*

TO THE RIGHT HON. THE COUNTESS OF B

It has been naturally and philosophically observed, that such is the temper of the human mind, that in the midst of the deepest sorrow any accident slightly ludicrous, which would hardly affect us at another time, is apt to throw us into convulsive laughter. So, on the other hand, in our gayest and happiest moments even casual impressions of a melancholy kind, often make themselves far more sensibly felt than if we were passively faring on, in a quiet and unexcited mood. By this I endeavour to account for the following lines, which I beg to inscribe to your ladyship, and which were not merely suggested, but almost extemporarily composed, as I drove home last night from one of those occasions of social and intellectual enjoyment which G- House always affords to those whom good fortune makes its guests. As I hope the verses will explain themselves, I need hardly add, that a gay entertainment at a splendid mansion in Square, where a Hatchment proclaimed the loss of its master or mistress, inspired them. Thursday, July 18th.

Were all that joyousness, without a shade of gloom.

The proper heraldic word for that blazon of arms which is hung upon the mansions of the wealthy or great, when death has removed them from the enjoyments of the world, is Achievement; but I have adopted the popular name, which is now indeed almost, if not quite as correct, as the other.