JUST PUBLISHED.

POE

M M S.

BY CAMILLA TOULMIN.

In Foolscap 8vo. Price, Five Shillings.

WM. S. ORR & CO., AMEN CORNER, PATERNOSTER ROW.

ASTARTE.

Manfred. CAN this be death? there's bloom upon her cheek; But now I see it is no living hue

But a strange hectic-like the unnatural red
Which Autumn plants upon the perish'd leaf.
It is the same! Oh, God, that I should dread
To look upon the same-Astarte !

Astarte! my beloved! speak to me :

Hear me, hear me

I have so much endured-so much endure

Look on me! the grave hath not changed thee more
Than I am changed for thee. Thou lovedst me
Too much, as I loved thee: we were not made
To torture thus each other, though it were
The deadliest sin to love as we have loved.
Say that thou loath'st me not--that I do bear
This punishment for both-that thou wilt be
One of the blessed-and that I shall die;
For hitherto all hateful things conspire
To bind me in existence-in a life
Which makes me shrink from immortality-
A future like the past. I cannot rest.
I know not what I ask, nor what I seek:

I feel but what thou art-and what I am;
And I would hear yet once before I perish

The voice which was my music-Speak to me!
For I have call'd on thee in the still night,

Startled the slumbering birds from the hush'd boughs,
And woke the mountain wolves, and made the caves
Acquainted with thy vainly echoed name,

Which answer'd me-many things answer'd me-
Spirits and men: but thou wert silent all.
Yet speak to me! I have outwatch'd the stars,
And gaz'd o'er heaven in vain in search of thee.
Speak to me! I have wander'd o'er the earth,
And never found thy likeness—Speak to me !
Look on the fiends around-they feel for me:
I fear them not, and feel for thee alone-
Speak to me! though it be in wrath; but say—
I reck not what-but let me hear thee once-
This once-once more!

Phantom of Astarte. Manfred!

Viewed externally, this abbey is a grand and imposing feature in the landscape, and never fails to inspire the stranger with feelings of awe and admiration. Its lofty square tower meets the eye of the traveller at every approach to the ancient Verulam, and conjures up a host of names and events that have made a figure in history during the long lapse of centuries.

St. Alban's Abbey is unquestionably the most re- | walls, that the architect of the abbey church found markable specimen of brickwork in the country. Its no less suitable to his purpose than abundant in lofty and ponderous walls, with their deep-rooted quantity. foundations which grapple with the earth, and uphold their vast weight with undiminished strength, are alone sufficient to have exhausted the ruins of Verulam; and, unless they were actually so employed, it may be inquired by what means the Roman city has been so completely exterminated, that there remains scarcely a vestige to mark the situa- | tion it once occupied? It is, therefore, very probable that the material of which this grand example of Norman architecture was composed was chosen from the ruins of the neighbouring town, which must have presented a vast accumulation of broken

THE ABBEY

The abbey is cruciform, 600 feet in length, and consists of a nave, two aisles, choir, presbytery, lady chapel, and two transepts, with a large square tower rising from the intersection.

Among the monuments is one, said by Pentant and others to be that of Elfwald, a Northumbrian king, killed in 788; but its style appears to be that of the thirteenth century. And on an altar-tomb is the figure of an armed knight, cross-legged, with a shield of arms, identifying him as one of the baronial family of Umfraville, though supposed by some to be that of the Duke of Somerset, executed at Hexham. Near a spot called St. Mary's Chare, are some remains of the ancient church, founded by Wilfrid, A.D.678, and dedicated to the virgin.

Wilfrid, Bishop of York, founder of the church of is a shrine or oratory, in the decorated English style, Ripon, having obtained from Ethelreda, wife of exquisitely ornamented, supposed to have been Egfrid, King of Northumberland, a grant of the erected for Prior Richard, of Hexham, to whom also town, and a large district adjoining, called Hexham is attributed a recumbent figure on an altar-tomb shire, there founded a monastery, and erected a adjacent. church at the Hextoldesham, or Halgustad of the Saxons. In A.D. 678, Wilfrid, being rejected from his see, that province was divided; Hexham was erected into a see, over which Ihumbert was consecrated by Theodore, which remained under a succession of bishops for more than a century, when, being united with Lindisfarne, it eventually became a portion of the see of Durham. Tilford, the last bishop, was expelled from his bishopric by the Danes A.D. 821, who, fifty years afterwards, destroyed the monastery and plundered the town. In 1112, the monastery was restored for Augustine canons, under the second Archbishop of York, and Hexham, together with Holme, appropriated to the endowment of a prebendal stall to the cathedral of York, which was rebuilt by the same prelate, termed its fifth founder, in a manner more magnificent than before.

The church-part of the conventual church of the monastery, erected on the side of the ancient cathedral-is a noble, uniform structure, in various styles of English architecture, a tower rising from the centre. The nave, burnt by the Scots in 1296, has not been rebuilt. The choir is separated from the transepts by a screen of wood, richly carved in the lower part, and ornamented in the upper with an allegorical painting of the "Dance of death." On the south side of the communion table, lighted by an east window of fine tracery, is a gallery of oak, beautifully carved, beneath which are four stalls, enriched with tabernacle work; and on the north side

A number of Saxon coins were found in the churchyard of Hexham in 1832, in a part called the "Campy hill." They were chiefly Saxon coins of the Northum berland kings, Eanred, Etheldred, and Redulf, and of the Bishops of York, Eanbald, and Vigmund. There were about 8,000.

John, Prior of Hexham, in the twelfth century wrote the history of the reign of Henry II.; and his successor, Richard of Hexham, was the author of several historical works. Joseph Richardson, the dramatist, who died in 1803, was a native of Hexham, and John Tweddell, who greatly distinguished himself as a classical scholar and antiquary, was born in 1769, at Threepwood, near this place.

The illustration presents the appearance of the chapel as proposed to be restored, which is now very much dilapidated, and which, until recently, was completely obscured from the town by ome unsightly buildings.