No. 68.]

London Magazine:

A JOURNAL OF ENTERTAINMENT AND INSTRUCTION
FOR GENERAL READING.

FEBRUARY 13, 1847.

BIANCA.-A BALLA D.1

BY JAMES BANDINEL, C.L.K.

Ir was a summer evening, by the deep deep azure sea
Which gently laves, with tideless waves, the shores of Tuscany;
The glorious sun was sinking to the chambers of the west;

The gentle breeze, the rippling seas, were lulling him to rest;
And the heaven was deepest blue above, yet warm with rose below,
Like a holy maiden's deep pure love, heighten'd by passion's glow;

And the clouds that had been white that morn were rob'd in crimson state,
Like they whose youth was sinless, and whose age is good and great.

And a maiden stands upon the strand, and gazes on the sea,
And then she turns towards the land, and looks right wistfully;
She looks towards the mountain, with its stern and stately pride;
She looks towards the fountain, that is sparkling from its side;
She looks upon the shadows, that are coming on apace,

And tell her that the hour is come to seek the trysting place.

"Four weeks have pass'd since last we met-why make this long delay!

And yet my bosom tells me he will surely come to-day;

Yes, though he tarries he will come, come to redeem his plight,

And place the ring upon the hand already his by right;

Yes, though I be a peasant girl of joyous Tuscany,

And he an English gentleman of wealth and high degree!"

Oh she was brilliant as the light, and lovely as the dream,
That glads the youthful poet's sight, who sleeps by haunted stream;
Her dark rich ringlets softly flowed around a dazzling brow;
Her cheek like northern sunset glowed, that melts away in snow.
But how can northern pen pourtray the glory of that eye,
Which shone without a rival even in sunny Tuscany?

Her form surpass'd whate'er the art of sculptor yet hath given,-
Their's is but loveliness of earth, her's too was that of heaven;
For, breathing through its living shrine, her spirit, lustre pure,
Beam'd like some light which brightest gems seem almost to obscure;
It was the soul, the living soul, that matchless form within,
Which shone in its baptismal garb, unsoil'd, undimm'd by sin.

And now another form appears, his face is thin and pale,

His reverend head is white with years, and yet his step is hale,
For he is one of those whose feet have always kept the way
Where none with sin and luxury meet, to steal our strength away;
In truth he was a holy priest, (and zealous for his God,)
Who show'd his flock the way to heaven, by walking on the road;
He stands before the maiden as she seeks the inland way,
And thus in stern, yet gentle tones, he seeks her path to stay :-

"The shadows of the mountain peaks are stealing o'er the bay,
Why hie you to the fountain thus at every closing day?"

"Nay, father, do not stay me now, I will not go again; But this a vow that I have made, and I must not refrain."

“Ah, daughter, vows which maidens make are seldom wise or good,
Except it be a vow to take the veil of maidenhood;

I know thy secret, and I seek to save thee from the fate,
Which waits on lowly maidens woo'd by youths of high estate;
A moment of delirium-an hour of doubt and care-

A life of desolation-and a death-bed of despair.

What though thy form be graceful as the lily in its pride?
What though thy cheek be lovely as the rose that blooms beside?
What though thy heart be fonder than the widow'd cushat dove?
What though thy soul be purer than the stars that shine above?
And thou lookest like a seraph that hath brought good news from high,
And charms us as it plumes its wings to seek its native sky?
What though thy lover kneel to thee, and pledge the solemn vow,
That he will love thee always, child, as well as he does now?
Let not his words, however strong, thy trusting heart decoy;
He loves thee as a plaything, he seeks thee as a toy.
When he has gain'd the all he seeks, he'll leave thee for another;
If conscience or compassion speak, their tones he'll quickly smother.
Beware, my daughter, oh, beware, beware while yet 'tis time,
And follow not the meteor's glare, which lures thee on to crime;

(1) See Illustration on the preceding page.

No guiding lamp, no beacon light, it beckons thee, poor lass,
To stray through sorrow's dreary night, and sink in guilt's morass.
My daughter! oh, my daughter! beware while yet 'tis time;
Hark, how from yonder convent swells the holy vesper chime !
It calls thee with a warning voice to bid the world farewell,
And hide thy yet unsullied head within a prayerful cell."

"Nay, father! holy father! I cannot, cannot stay,
My word is given, my faith is pledged-I must, I must away;
And thou dost wrong both him and me-thou dost, indeed thou dost-
The stranger has- and he deserves-the fulness of my trust."

And she is gone-and he remains to breathe the fervent pray'r,

And call on Heaven to save her from the many tangled snare--

And she has reached the trysting place-but he is not yet there,

And she hath knelt, and offered up a deep, though silent prayer.

But hark! that sound!-she turns her round, with swift and sylphlike grace,

And lifts her hand to shade her eyes, and screen her gentle face ;

On yon hill-side appearing, she sees a cavalcade

The fountain they are nearing,-why does she feel afraid?

Their leader gives the word to halt, and now moves on alone;

"Tis he, she cannot err, 'tis he-her Edgar, still her own.
But no-a lady young and fair remains by Edgar's side;
He speaks to her in tones of love,-"alas! It is his bride."

One piercing shriek Bianca gave; and now her pangs are o'er;
Lifeless and cold, alas, she lies, the perjur'd one before;
The chill of death comes o'er her, that awful, still, still sleep,
Whose secrets none can pierce or guess-dark as th' unfathom'd deep.
And now she wakes, but wakes not as she woke in other years,
To gladness and to sorrow, to smiles, and sighs, and tears;
But still, and shadow-like she feels, whilst o'er her broods a gloom,
As we may well believe, enveils the tenants of the tomb.-
And it must be the Seraph, that watch'd over her on earth,
And now has come to smile upon her mystic Eden birth,
That form of angel loveliness, half human, half divine;
She draws across her bosom the blest Redeemer's sign;

She draws across her breast the sign which tells how JESUS died,
And bids his faithful people think upon the Crucified.-
But see that form approaches, it beckons her be still,
And prints a kiss upon her cheek, nor shadowy nor chill.
Those warm lips move.-What say they?

And the holy father joins them in the bonds of wedded love,
And gladly sheds upon their heads the blessing from above.
Bianca leaves her lowly cot, her deep blue Tuscan sky,

To dwell in ancient British halls, and mix with nobles high;
And noble as the noblest there, and fairest of the fair,

There were few in grace or beauty with Bianca could compare.

Yet though she grac'd both court and hall, and shone amongst the great,
She ne'er forgot the lessons learnt when in her peasant state.---
To the humble she was humble, like a mother to the young,
Or a gentle elder sister to the hearts which grief had wrung.
She was a crutch unto the lame, a staff unto the weak,

A comfort to the sorrowful, a shelter to the meek;
The refuge of the orphan, and the hope of the oppressed;
Defending the defenceless, and relieving the distressed.-

She ne'er forgot that though our God hath fixed by firm decree
To each his lot, his task, his post, his rank, and his degree,
And some are born with Right Divine to honour and to sway,
And others, each in various ranks, to labour and obey;
Still we are all the creatures of ONE ALMIGHTY GOD,
The breathings of ONE SPIRIT, the crumblings of one sod,
The children of ONE FATHER, and the sharers of one blood,
The heirs by full and true descent of Tophet's fiery flood,
Redeem'd by ONE OBLATION, and marshall'd by ONE GUIDE.
Where God and Nature say, "Unite," oh, let not man divide.

ley, how can you let him talk in that manner? There |
is no feeling in the world so natural and so pure as the
love of children, and I never can bear to hear him pre-
tend to despise it; dear little innocent creatures!"
"Dear little innocent creatures!" echoed Owen.
"Yes, there they sit, in their clean pinafores and best
frocks, looking like a row of complete innocents, unable
to give you a rational answer to the simplest question.
And when they warm a little, and begin to play, they
are always hitting their own heads, or kicking your
shins by accident; and, if they are well brought up,
they roar equally at both. Your best-meant schemes
for their amusement are generally humiliating failures,
rendering you ridiculous in the eyes of the bystanders.
You begin to tell them a story, and harangue for five
minutes, and then find they are not listening to you, or
something equally unpleasant. I have myself seen
Peggy steadily going to sleep in a corner for an hour
together, with three hard-hearted urchins at play round
her, not one of whom had the charity to go up and
startle her, though she had shut her eyes only to induce
them to do so. I never gave a child a sugar-plum in
my life, that it did not begin to choke immediately."
"All single men talk in that manner," said Mrs. Al-
vanley, when she had recovered from her laughter;
"wait till you have children of your own."

"Yes, I will wait-very patiently too," answered Owen; "I would much rather have half-a-dozen kittens than those two sweet little Drews that Peggy is so fond of. A kitten is at least pretty, and graceful, and amusing, which a child is not; and you can always take it by the nape of the neck, and drop it into the cellar when you are tired of it a thing which I should like to do in a similar case with a child, if it were not for the tumult which mothers and nurses would be sure to make about it."

"I cannot understand how you can laugh at him, Mrs. Alvanley," said I. "To me it is perfectly shocking. I have heard him say before, that he likes animals better than children, and I never can bear it. It is degrading to think of those dear little immortal souls, and then

"Now, Peggy," interrupted Owen, "what can you know about the size of their immortal souls?"

"Come, don't teaze her so," said Mrs. Alvanley; "and my dear Miss Forde, how can you take everything so entirely au pied de la lettre? You do not understand your brother, yet, after all, he is not so very enigmatical. But it certainly is necessary to comprehend a person's character thoroughly, in order to live happily with him, and so I think it was very well that you two gave up keeping house together."

"And left me at liberty till I should meet with some one who can and does understand me," said Owen, with a bow and smile, which rendered the compliment so broad, as effectually to destroy its point. But don't be wrathful, Peggy, I am only plaguing you. Let us go back to the Kinnairds."

"I had forgotten them," said I. "Who are those Kinnairds?" inquired Mrs. Alvanley. "Frank Kinnaird was a great favourite of my father's," replied Owen. "He was ten years older than myself, or more; and many and many a tip has he given me when I was a schoolboy and he a young man. Poor fellow! He married a great heiress, to pay his debts I believe, for he was imprudent enough. She had a temper which made his house an absolute pandemonium; and he had not been married to her above a twelvemonth, when some distant relation died and left him a hundred thousand pounds-so he need not have sacrificed himself after all. How many years is it since Kinnaird died, Peggy, do you recollect?"

"Six years this summer," returned I, without lifting my eyes from my work. Did I recollect!

"So it is, I declare," said Owen. How time slides away! Well, he left me sole guardian to his children. Mrs. Kinnaird, I forgot to say, had died a year before.

The boy went to college of course, and had a commission in the guards afterwards. He is the very counterpart of his father, in character; but, luckily for him, he had money enough to waste, so I was not forced to interfere with his amusements, and he has now been several years off my hands. The girl was younger. She was taken, at first, by a Scotch aunt, Kinnaird's sister, who lived in the highlands; and, just as I was beginning to think that a young lady of her expectations must necessarily acquire a few more accomplishments than she was likely to get in the region of gray mountains and oat cakes, this aunt very obligingly died, and I ran down there for a month, got some capital grouse-shooting, and brought my fair ward up to a first-rate London establishment to finish her education."

"Was she an engaging girl?" asked I, with irrepressible interest.

"She was rather under fifteen at the time," replied Owen, "and I have Lord Byron's horror of budding misses. Besides, she cried without intermission during the whole month, so that I had really no opportunity of judging of her personal appearance, further than that she was tall of her age, and had a most splendid head of dark brown hair: I remember noticing that particularly."

"I dare say she is well-looking enough to pass for a beauty when seen through the flattering medium of-how many thousand pounds?" observed Mrs. Alvanley.

"Seventy," returned Owen; "a pretty little fortune, is it not? But now comes the difficulty: this young lady is eighteen years old: a woman grown, as you see."

"In her own estimation, doubtless," interposed Mrs. Alvanley; "but most girls are little more than children at eighteen. She must be classed for a few years more among those budding misses of whom you and Lord Byron have so great a horror."

I was inwardly amused as I thought of Mrs. Alvanley's five-and-thirty years. Owen, who was growing rather cross as he found himself so repeatedly interrupted in his approaches to the point he was resolved to carry, answered her by saying in his blandest tones

"Nay, Mrs. Alvanley, would you have me believe that the mind does not attain to maturity till the person has begun to lose its first bloom? Forgive me for differing from you; but, I remember you at eighteen."

The lady was effectually silenced, and quite uncertain whether she had received a compliment or an affront. Owen, who had intended to produce this very effect upon her, went on triumphantly, and finished his history without further disturbance.

Well, as I was observing, Miss Edith Kinnaird,— (it is exactly the name for a heroine of romance)—was eighteen three months ago, and can't be kept at school any longer. My friend, Lady Frances Moore, has undertaken to superintend her debut in the spring, so that trouble is off my hands: but here is October, and what in the name of ingenuity is to be done with her in the interval? Now I appeal to you, Mrs. Alvanley, whether it would not be an extremely pleasant thing for Peggy to pass the next five months in an elegant mansion, surrounded with all the luxuries of life, with no other drawback than the society of a high-born and highly-educated girl, in whom she may be supposed to feel some interest for her father's sake?"

"Were I your sister," replied Mrs. Alvanley, with animation, "I should consider such a suggestion as a very great favour. It is exactly the position I should like; and I also think it is that for which I am best fitted. What say you, Miss Forde?"

A sudden horror here came over Owen, that Mrs. Alvanley was going to propose to take charge of Miss Kinnaird herself. With his characteristic caution, he felt in a moment that such an arrangement might