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They receive a favourable answer from the princess, and take flight.

Thus the egg-born to the maiden spake, O lord of many peasants! Back then flew they to Nishadha, and to Nala told it all.'

Love has the same effect on maidens in east and west.

Full of thought she sat dejected, pale her melancholy cheeks;
Damajanti sat and yielded all her soul to sighs of grief;
Silent gazing on the heavens, miserable to behold;

Wan was all her soft complexion with her spirit's inward sorrows;
Nor in sleep, nor gentle converse, nor in banquets found she joy,
Night nor day she could not slumber; Woe, O woe! she wept and said.'

As in ancient Greece, or as in feudal romance, the kings of all the earth, and all the chiefs or warriors who aspire to the hand of this blameless Helen of the East, are summoned to a solemn assemblage, called the Swayambara, or self-election, where the princess is to designate the favoured suitor by throwing a wreathe of flowers round his neck. The roads to the court of Vidarbha are crowded with rajahs and kings; and groan beneath the weight of steeds, and cars, and elephants. Nala, of course, is among the first; but on his way he encounters four formidable and unexpected rivals, Indra the god of the firmament, Agni the god of fire, Varuna the god of the waters, Yama the god of the infernal regions. They declare that they have descended from heaven to seek the hand of the lovely Damajanti, and they adjure the enamoured Nala, by his piety and dutiful allegiance to the gods, to undertake the ungracious task of bearing their message of love to the fair. Nala remonstrates, but piety triumphs over passion. He is suddenly, by the divine aid, transported into the bower of the princess.

There he saw Vidarbha's maiden, girt with all her virgin bands,
Bright in beauty, full of softness, worthy of her noble blood;
Every limb in round proportion, slender sides and lovely eyes;
Even the moon's soft gleam despising, in her own o'erpowering
brightness;

As he gazed, his love grew warmer to the softly smiling maid,
Yet to keep his truth, his duty, all his passion he suppressed.'

He delivers the message of the gods, but the maiden, in this delicate situation, permits her candour to prevail over her bashfulness, and declares that, even in the presence of the gods, she shall select the noble Nala. But a new difficulty arises; the assembly is met at the Swayambara, all the royal suitors are in array, and Damajanti discovers, to her dismay, five Nalas; for each of the deities had assumed the form, the features, the dress of the king of Nishadha. She addresses the deities in a supplicating hymn.

VOL. XLV. NO. LXXXIX

• With

With her words and with her spirit, uttered she her humble prayer, Folding both her hands and trembling, to the gods the maiden spake.' The gods are moved with compassion, they stand confessed, pure (literally sine sudore), with eyes that do not close, with chaplets of celestial amaranth, their feet not touching the ground, their bodies casting no shadow. The form of the mortal Nala is distinguished by the opposite of all these celestial attributes. He is not free from the dust and heat of earth, his feet press the ground, his body casts a shadow.

'Modestly the large-eyed maiden lifted up his garment's hem,

Round his shoulders threw she lightly the bright zone of radiant flowers.'

The assembly breaks up amid the applause of the gods, and the jealous lamentations of the unsuccessful suitors.

The nuptials are celebrated; Nala and his bride are blessed with two children; Nala is the model of all virtue; beloved by his subjects, pious to the gods, a diligent reader of the four Vedas, even of the fifth-he at length performs the Aswameda, the celebrated sacrifice of the horse, the height of Indian

devotion.

But the course of true love never doth run smooth.' The gods on their return from the Swayambara had met the fierce and vindictive Kali and another Deity, who, enraged to find themselves too late, and jealous of the success of Nala, swore deep and eternal vengeance. But evil spirits have no power over the blameless; offence must be committed before they can possess themselves of the soul of man. In unlucky hour Nala is guilty of a nameless act of impurity in the omission of a certain ablution; the demon Kali at once enters into him, his understanding is perverted, his disposition changed, and one lingering virtue, the love of Damajanti, alone remains. He plays at dice with his unnatural brother Pushkara-loses his wealth, palaces, provinces, his kingdom, his very clothes. Damajanti had fortunately seized an opportunity of sending her children, under the care of the chief charioteer (the master of the horse), to her father's court. What stake remains to the ruined gambler? none but Damajanti herself. The brother proposes the hazard; but the demoniac has not yet lost that last holy affection. They are driven together into the wilderness-with but one garment between them, for a bird flew away with the only one Nala had retained, mocking the spendthrift gambler-and proscribed by an edict, which makes it. a capital crime to afford them any succour, or to receive them under any roof. Nala persuades his miserable wife to abandon him to his fate, and retire to her father's court. It is our fault if we have entirely marred the exquisite pathos of her reply.

Truly all my heart is breaking, and my sinking members fail, When, O king, thy desperate counsel, once I think on, once again. Robbed of kingdom, robbed of riches, naked, worn with thirst and

hunger,

Shall I leave thee in the forest, shall I wander from thee far? When thou, sad and famine-stricken, thinkest of thy former bliss In the wild wood, O my husband, I will soothe thy weariness. Like a wife is no physician, in a state so sad as thine, Medicine none is like her kindness-Nala, speak I not the truth?' Nala promises that they shall not part; but the evil spirit within him strives to overpower this last virtue. The frantic man determines to abandon her while she is sleeping; he cuts off part of the single garment they possess, and leaves her half naked, and lying on the hard earth. Once he turns back to take a parting look— "Yet his cruel heart relenting, to the cabin turns he back: On the slumbering Damajanti gazing, sadly wept the king: Thou, that sun or wind hath never roughly visited, my lov'd one, On the hard earth in a cabin sleep'st, with no protecting friend. When she sees her severed garment, she, that ever smiled so sweetly, Will not all her senses fail her, loveliest, how will 't fare with her? How will❜t fare with Bhima's daughter, lonely, by her lord abandoned, Wandering in the savage forest, where wild beasts and serpents dwell?' He entreats the protection of all the gods and genii, but rests his chief trust in a still surer safeguard.

Noblest, may they all protect thee, best of all thy virtue guard thee.' The classical reader will not fail to call to mind the Ariadne of Catullus; the English, the Una of Spenser, or the lady in Comus. My sister is not so defenceless left

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As you imagine; she has a hidden strength
Which you remember not.'

The strength of Damajanti, through which she is enabled

To trace huge forests, and unharboured heaths,
Infamous hills, and sandy perilous wilds,'

is her deep, and ardent, and self-regardless love for her faithless husband.

Damajanti woke-the beauteous, in the wild wood, full of dread, When she did not see her husband, overpowered with grief and pain. Loud she shriek'd in her first anguish-Where art thou, Nishardha's king?

Mighty king! my sole protector! Ah! my lord, desert'st thou me ?
Oh! I'm lost, undone for ever; helpless in the wild wood left.
Faithful once to every duty, wert thou, king, and true in word;
True in word art thou, to leave me, slumbering in the forest thus ?
Couldst thou then depart, forsaking thy weak, faithful, once-loved wife,
Her that never sinned against thee, now, alas! so sinned against?
O, I fear, thou famous conqueror, shew thee to me, oh, my lord;

C 2

Yes,

Yes, I see thee-there I see thee-there thou art, Nishardha's king.
In the straw why thus conceal thee? why no answer? speak, my lord
Wherefore now, like one forsworn, thus sternly stayest thou aloof!?
When I come beseeching to thee, wilt thou not console nor cheer me?
For myself I will not sorrow, not for aught to me befalls.
Thou art all alone, my husband; I will only mourn for thee.
How will 't fare with thee, my Nala, thirsting, famished, faint with
hunger,

At eve on some hard root reposing, and no more beholding me?'

Her adventures are as strange and various as ever happened to errant damsel in romance. She is in danger from a terrible serpent, is saved by a huntsman, only to fall into more peril from his unhallowed desires: she prays for divine succour, and proves, that though not absolutely secure, that

Through the sacred rays of chastity

No savage fierce, bandit, or mountaineer,
Will dare to soil her virgin purity,'-

yet she may still safely walk in unblenched' majesty-for the lustful huntsman falls dead at her feet.

Indian poetry animates all nature, and, like the Greek, peoples it, if not with the same graceful forms, with a conscious and intelligent spirit. The desolate wife approaches a sacred mountain— To the mountain then, the holy, rich in many a lofty cliff, To the heavens in splendour rising, many-hued, the heart exalting, Full within of precious metal, rich with many a glowing gem, Rising o'er the spreading forest, like a barrier high and strong; Lions, elephants, and tigers there, and bears and wild boars range, And of many birds the voices sweetly sound o'er all its cliffs.'

She addresses the Genius of the mountain

Oh! thou holy, honoured mountain, heaven-ward rising, widely famed,

Refuge of the helpless, noble; hail, thou pillar of the earth!
Reverent I approach and hail thee-I, the daughter of a king.

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Oh, all-honoured prince of mountains! with thy hundred soaring peaks,

Hast thou haply seen my Nala, wandering in the savage woods? Why repliest thou not, oh mountain! nor consol'st me with thy voice? Her in anguish thine own daughter-her so lone, so full of dread.' She then descends into a quiet valley, inhabited by a fraternity of Sanyasis, Gymnosophists or hermits, who are clothed in the bark of trees. In amazement at her beauty they worship her as a divinity.

Fear not thou, oh blessed spirit! Speak, oh thou! of form so beauteous; who art thou, and what thy purpose?

As

As thy noble form we gaze on, as we gaze on thy bright eyes,
In amaze we stand and wonder; freely breathe, and wail no more.
Of the wood art thou the goddess? or the mountain-goddess thou?
Or the river-nymph, the beauteous? Blessed spirit, speak the truth.'

Her next adventure is more animating and picturesque. She encounters a caravan of travelling merchants, who, in the same manner, are inclined to adore her as a celestial being, and gladly admit her into their cavalcade. The conclusion of this scene is so characteristic, that we cannot omit it. At nightfall the tents. are pitched by a beautiful stream, covered with the lotus flower. When the midnight came all noiseless-came in silence deep and still,

Weary slept the band of merchants. Lo! a herd of elephants

Came to drink the mountain river, oozing moisture from their temples. When the caravan they gazed on, the tame elephants they scented. Forward ran they, wild and furious, tossing fierce their murtherous trunks.

Irresistible the onset of the rushing ponderous beasts:

As the peak from some high mountain, thundering rolls into the valley. Strewn was all the way before them with the boughs, the limbs of

trees.

On they crash'd to where the travellers slumber'd by the lotus lake.
Trampled down without a struggle, helpless on the earth they lay.
Woe, O woe! shriek'd out the merchants; wildly some began to fly,
In the forest thickets plunging; some stood gasping, blind with dread.
With their tusks, their trunks, their feet, beat them down the ele-
phants.

Many saw their camels dying, mingled with the men on foot,
And in frantic tumult rushing, fiercely struck each other dead.
Many, miserably shrieking, cast them down upon the earth;
Many climbed the trees in anguish, or plunged deep beneath the

waves.

Such, so fearful was the tumult, the three worlds seemed all appalled. ""Tis a fire that burns and blazes; save ye, fly ye for your lives! Lo! your precious pearls ye trample: take them up;-why fly so fast? Save them 'tis a common venture: fear ye not I would deceive." To each other cried the merchants, and in shrieking anguish scattered.'

The calamity is ascribed to the presence of the ill-fated queen. She is forced to fly, and at length reaches a hospitable city, where, though half naked, worn with toil, and withered with sorrow, she is adored for her beauty as she passes through the streets, and is received with the greatest kindness by the mother of the king.

The adventures of Nala are not less strange and stirring. He has an encounter with an enchanted serpent, an incident of which we find, more than once, almost the exact parallel in the Teutonic

ballads.