you shall have your due." He then took up Stahl's sword from the pavement, gave him some blows on the head with it, broke it, and threw the pieces over a wall. Having thus cooled his anger, he left the humbled colonel, and returned to his hotel.

Stahl, as soon as he saw the admiral at a distance, slowly rose, and being severely mauled, with some difficulty crawled to his lodgings. When he reflected on what had passed, it appeared evident that, after such treatment, he could never show his face in the world again: which would, of course, absolutely prevent the farther exercise of his ingenuity. It, however, occurred to him, that, according to certain notions of honour, there was one means to wiping off the disgrace, and that was, a duel.

Colonel Stahl accordingly consulted a couple of his gambling associates; and, the following morning, Tordenskiold received a visit from them. They hypocritically apologised for troubling him so early, but their attachment to an illtreated friend placed them under the disagreeable necessity of demanding of him, in Stahl's name, that satisfaction which persons of his birth and profession were entitled to claim for every affront put on them. They requested him, therefore, to name his time, place, and weapons.

66

Gentlemen," replied Tordenskiold, coldly, "I feel neither inclination, nor call, to draw my sword against a man whose sword I have broken because he is unworthy to wear one, and whom I have chastised as he merits. It is not from fear that I decline this challenge, which I consider as an affront. I have proved to the world, in my naval battles, how little I regard wounds and death, on a proper occasion. Consider yourselves; if a scoundrel fights with all the brave and honorable men in the whole world, does he therefore cease to be a scoundrel?"

Stahl's friends exerted all their sophistical eloquence to shake the admiral's resolution: he firmly persisted in it, and at last requested them to free him from their importunity, and to withdraw. "Your friend," said he, ironically, "will doubtless be in the most painful suspense respecting the success of your visit to me; it is not kind, unnecessarily to leave him in doubt. Your servant, gentlemen!"

Stahl was at first confounded at the ill success of his emis

saries; but as his very existence was at stake, he resolved to leave nothing untried to accomplish his plan.

Tordenskiold was about to leave Hanover the same day, and was preparing for his departure, when he received from Baron Von Goertz such a pressing invitation to dinner, that he could not with any propriety decline it, especially as he had been treated in Hanover with every mark of the highest respect; he therefore accepted the invitation. At table, where many of the nobility were present, the president turned the conversation on the quarrel the precceding day between Tordenskiold and Stahl. He has challenged you," said Baron Goertz, addressing the admiral. To my no small surprise," replied Tordenskiold. 'I should have been surprised if he had Of course you have ac

not," said one of the company. cepted the challenge," said several.

miral.

No," said the ad

The faces of almost all present expressed astonishment, and some of them even contempt. "And why? if I may ask,' said a shrill pert voice, from an emaciated figure at the end of the table. "6 "Why?" the answer is easy; because an honest man must esteem himself too good to fight with a knave." Knave or not," said several, "that is not the question. The laws of honor command not to refuse a challenge, if the challenger does but belong to the privileged caste of those who will not renounce the right of settling their differences by the sword or pistol, in defiance of the laws. He who declines such a challenge always appears in an equivocal light; and it is impossible not to think him a coward. This suspicion, said Tordenskiold, "will hardly fall on me :" and with selfnoble consciousness he added, "but if any one should still doubt, he may come on board my ship, and stand at my side in a battle, when the balls are flying about me.”

All the persons present, with many solemn appeals to their honor, protested that what they had said had not the slightest reference to our hero, but was only spoken generally; and some, who affected to think more philosophically, added, with a shrug, "It is, indeed, a prejudice; no reasonable man will deny this. But who can disregard all prejudices, while we live in a world constituted as ours is? He, who does not go with the stream, passes for singular; and, what is worse, exposes himself to many unpleasant things which he might have avoided."

All the company assented to these thread-bare commonplace arguments, and did not leave Tordenskiold quite at libety to reply to them, as he would otherwise have done. He was clamored down, and Baron Von Goertz took advantage of this favorable moment to appeal to the admiral's magnanimity.

"You certainly did not intend" said the baron, "for ever to ruin Colonel Stahl? your generosity is my guarantee for this. But, as an officer and a nobleman, he is for ever disgraced by you, and excluded from all intercourse with his equals, if you have not the magnanimity to give him the satisfaction usual among gentlemen. I most earnestly beg you to do so. On your determination depends the welfare of a man whose bad character is by no means proved, and whom you perhaps see in too unfavourable a light." The rest of the company joined in the request, and Torkenskiold declared himself ready to yield to the wishes of so many men of rank and consequence. "Be it so. I will exchange shots with

him." 66 Exchange shots!" exclaimed somebody, "that is too dangerous. Why, admiral, will you expose yourself to an unlucky chance? your adversary does not deserve this. The affair may as well be settled with the sword, and with less danger. Stahl will thank his stars if you only repair his honor by accepting his challenge. It is a mere matter of form; a few thrusts, and the affair is settled." Tordenskiold agreed to this also.

Stahl repeated his challenge the following morning; and Tordenskiold, faithful to his word, accepted it. The frontiers of Hildesheim were chosen for the meeting. Tordenskiold was armed with a slight rapier-Stahl with a heavy Swedish sword. The former was not skilled in fencing, but the latter was well practised in it; his profession having often placed him in situations where he was obliged to use it to defend himself from the fury of the victims whom he had plundered. Tordenskiold did not regard either of those disadvantages, since, according to all the assurances that had been given him, he considered the duel to be a mere pretence and show in favor of Stahl.

But Stahl, faithful to his character, thirsted for revenge for his well-merited chastisement; and at the first onset gave his adversary such a dangerous wound, that he expired in a few minutes.

Thus fell in the very flower of his age, in his twenty-ninth year, a noble and brave man, who had rendered his country valuable services, and whose name will always be recorded with honor in history-a bloody victim to a barbarous prejudice, and by the hand of a professed gambler.

By order of the King of Denmark, the admiral's body was conveyed to Copenhagen, and interred with great solemnity.

ELEGY,

BY J. A. SHEA, ESQ. AUTHOR OF RUDEKKI."

"The Blest are the dead."-Manfred.

Oh! where are the beauties that floated
Around me, like beings of light?
Oh! where is the heart that devoted
Its worship to beauty, though bright!
The white sails we've oft been admiring,
When day on their lustre was warm,
And which, when that day was retiring,
Sunk downward in darkness and storm,
Are like to the visions that won me-
For such is the fate they have met-
A deep desolation is on me,

And the day of endearment is set.
How we dream e'en by day's sunny light,
And wake mid the blackness of night!

As in eastern story 'tis written

Of lovers who dreamed by the side
Of beauties, whose magic had smitten
The heart in the spring of its pride;
But who, e'er their dreams could awaken
From the error their frailty had fed,
Were by some dark genii taken,
To linger and die 'mid the dead.
Oh! thus has the spell-tie been broken,
And thus has bright hope been destroy'd,
And I, without relic or token,

Of the heaven I scarce had enjoy'd,
Am a bark 'mid the shrieking commotion
Of the storm-beaten hills of life's ocean.

THE INNOCENT VICTIM.

A TRUE NARRATIVE.

In the neighbourhood of Montremos, a town on the road between Lisbon and Badajos, about a mile from the road, in a hollow, surrounded by cork trees, stands a gloomy and desolated castle, whose frowning walls seem to fit it for the abode of melancholy and guilt.

The history of the owner is so extraordinary, that if I had not heard it from the best authority, in the country where it happened, I should have considered it as the invention of some poet for the fable of a drama.

A Portuguese gentleman, whom I shall name Don Juan, had some years before been brought to trial for poisoning his half-sister by the same father, after having seduced her. The circumstances which made against this gentleman were so strong, and the story was so generally known, that although he spent half his income in acts of charity, nobody ever entered his gates to thank him for his bounty or solicit relief, except one poor father of the Jeronymite convent in Montremos, who was his confessor, and acted as his almoner at discretion.

A charge of so black a nature, involving the crime of incest as well as murder, at length reached the ears of justice, and a commission was sent to Montremos to make inquiry into the case. The supposed criminal made no attempt to escape, but readily attended the summons of the commissioners. On the trial it appeared, from the deposition of witnesses, that Don Juan had lived from his infancy in the family of a rich merchant at Lisbon, who carried on a considerable trade and correspondence in the Brazils. Don Juan being allowed to take this merchant's name, it was generally supposed that he was his natural son; and a clandestine affair of love having been carried on between him and the merchant's daughter Josepha, who was an only child, she became pregnant; that a medicine being administered to her by the hands of Don Juan, she expired a few hours after, with all the symptoms of a person who had taken poison. The mother of the young lady survived her death but a few days, and the father threw himself into a convent of mendicants, making