444 NOTES OJ-' THE MONTH. 



Him to encounter, rapid as the light, 



Darts a spruce cavalier with headlong speed ; 



His casque, nobility ; his armour, bright 

 Integrity ; and office is his steed. 



His glittering lance, his withering sarcasms blight, 

 And eloquence his terrible jereed, 



And in his hollow deep-set eye there sate 



A look of unextinguishable hate, 



Onward he came careering, and he cast 

 His lance against the giant's brazen head 



Right gallantly, and scathed it as he passed ; 

 Shouted the throng applauding: fierce and red 



Briareus' eye-balls glared ; in volumes vast 

 Writhed his great tail in torture, as he bled, 



While his shilelahs, with a whirlwind's power, 



Fell on the knight's casque in a wooden shower. 



He reels, he falls; away, vain youth, away! 



Trust to the swiftness of thy practised steed. 

 Ho ! to the rescue : in embroidery gay. 



Start the light matadors with ready speed, 

 And round Briareus' open flank they play, 



Watching the moment they may make him bleed- 

 Sudden he turns, nor sword nor cloak avail, 

 Before the wild gyrations of his tail. 



But then in turning, in a way particular, 

 His tail and legs got tangled awkwardly, 



So that he could not keep his perpendicular ; 

 But flounder'd, like a ship struck by a sea. 



The knight beheld th' obstruction thus reticular, 

 And dashed against him with a savage glee, 



A single thrust and lo ! upon the floor 



Erin's Briareus welters in his gore. 



NOTES OF THE MONTH. 



IT must be with unfeigned delight that every lover of humanity 

 must have read the statements which Mr. Stanley afforded to the 

 House, of the success of their measure of Emancipation. Whatever 

 qualms some might have had from having heard old women's stories 

 relating to the obtuseness and doggedness of the Negroes, of 

 intractibility of disposition, and insensibility to kindness, and such 

 like absurdities, which an interested few have vainly endeavoured to 

 propagate, there is not a kinder hearted race under the sun than 

 the Negro, with humane treatment, or more patient under hardship. 

 Their reported incapacity, and inferiority of intellect, we are inclined 

 to treat as idle fables, we are continually hearing their humour 

 quoted with effect. 



