The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Various 5 стр.

The courage of Don Roderick rose with his danger. Throwing off the cumbrous robes of royalty, and descending from his car, he sprang upon his steed Orelia, grasped his lance and buckler, and endeavored to rally his retreating troops. He was surrounded and assailed by a multitude of his own traitorous subjects, but defended himself with wondrous prowess. The enemy thickened around him; his loyal band of cavaliers were slain, bravely fighting in his defence; the last that was seen of the king was in the midst of the enemy, dealing death at every blow.

A complete panic fell upon the Christians; they threw away their arms and fled in all directions. They were pursued with dreadful slaughter, until the darkness of the night rendered it impossible to distinguish friend from foe. Taric then called off his troops from the pursuit, and took possession of the royal camp; and the couch which had been pressed so uneasily on the preceding night by Don Roderick, now yielded sound repose to his conqueror.

On the morning after the battle, the Arab leader, Taric ben Zeyad, rode over the bloody field of the Gaudalete, strewed with the ruins of those splendid armies, which had so lately passed like glorious pageants along the river banks. There Moor and Christian, horseman and horse, lay gashed with hideous wounds; and the river, still red with blood, was filled with the bodies of the slain. The gaunt Arab was as a wolf roaming through the fold he had laid waste. On every side his eye revelled on the ruin of the country, on the wrecks of haughty Spain. There lay the flower of her youthful chivalry, mangled and destroyed, and the strength of her yeomanry prostrated in the dust. The Gothic noble lay confounded with his vassals; the peasant with the prince; all ranks and dignities were mingled in one bloody massacre.

When Taric had surveyed the field, he caused the spoils of the dead and the plunder of the camp to be brought before him. The booty was immense. There were massy chains, and rare jewels of gold; pearls and precious stones; rich silks and brocades, and all other luxurious decorations in which the Gothic nobles had indulged in the latter times of their degeneracy. A vast amount of treasure was likewise found, which had been brought by Roderick for the expenses of the war.

Taric then ordered that the bodies of the Moslem warriors should be interred; as for those of the Christians, they were gathered in heaps, and vast pyres of wood were formed, on which they were consumed. The flames of these pyres rose high in the air, and were seen afar off in the night; and when the Christians beheld them from the neighboring hills they beat their breasts and tore their hair, and lamented over them as over the funeral fires of their country. The carnage of that battle infected the air for two whole months, and bones were seen lying in heaps upon the field for more than forty years; nay, when ages had past and gone, the husbandman, turning up the soil, would still find fragments of Gothic cuirasses and helms, and Moorish scimitars, the relics of that dreadful fight.

For three days the Arabian horseman pursued the flying Christians, hunting them over the face of the country; so that but a scanty number of that mighty host escaped to tell the tale of their disaster.

Taric ben Zeyad considered his victory incomplete so long as the Gothic monarch survived; he proclaimed great rewards, therefore, to whomsoever should bring Roderick to him, dead or alive. A diligent search was accordingly made in every direction, but for a long time in vain; at length a soldier brought to Taric the head of a Christian warrior, on which was a cap decorated with feathers and precious stones. The Arab leader received it as the head of the unfortunate Roderick, and sent it, as a trophy of his victory, to Musa ben Nosier, who, in like manner, transmitted it to the caliph at Damascus. The Spanish historians, however, have always denied its identity.

A mystery has ever hung and ever must continue to hang, over the fate of King Roderick, in that dark and doleful day of Spain. Whether he went down amidst the storm of battle, and atoned for his sins and errors by a patriot grave, or whether he survived to repent of them in hermit exile, must remain matter of conjecture and dispute. The learned Archbishop Rodrigo, who has recorded the events of this disastrous field, affirms that Roderick fell beneath the vengeful blade of the traitor Julian, and thus expiated with his blood his crime against the hapless Florinda; but the archbishop stands alone in his record of the fact. It seems generally admitted that Orelia, the favorite war-horse of Don Roderick, was found entangled in a marsh on the borders of the Gaudalete, with the sandals and mantle and royal insignia of the king lying close by him. The river at this place ran broad and deep, and was encumbered with the dead bodies of warriors and steeds; it has been supposed therefore, that he perished in the stream; but his body was not found within its waters.

When several years had passed away, and mens minds, being restored to some degree of tranquillity, began to occupy themselves about the events of this dismal day, a rumor arose that Roderick had escaped from the carnage on the banks of the Gaudalete, and was still alive. It was said, that having from a rising ground caught a view of the whole field of battle, and seen that the day was lost, and his army flying in all directions, he likewise sought his safety in flight. It is added, that the Arab horsemen, while scouring the mountain in quest of fugitives, found a shepherd arrayed in the royal robes, and brought him before the conqueror, believing him to be the king himself. Count Julian soon dispelled the error. On being questioned, the trembling rustic declared that while tending his sheep in the folds of the mountains, there came a cavalier on a horse wearied and spent and ready to sink beneath the spur; that the cavalier with an authoritative voice and menacing air commanded him to exchange garments with him, and clad himself in his rude garb of sheep-skin, and took his crook and his scrip of provisions, and continued up the rugged defiles of the mountains leading towards Castile, until he was lost to view.

This tradition was fondly cherished by many, who clung to the belief in the existence of their monarch as their main hope for the redemption of Spain. It was even affirmed that he had taken refuge with many of his host, in an island of the Ocean sea, from whence he might yet return, once more to elevate his standard, and battle for the recovery of his throne.

Year after year, however, elapsed and nothing was heard of Don Roderick; yet, like Sebastian of Portugal, and Arthur of England, his name continued to be a rallying point for popular faith, and the mystery of his end to give rise to romantic fables. At length, when generation after generation had sunk into the grave, and near two centuries had passed and gone, traces were said to be discovered that threw a light on the final fortunes of the unfortunate Roderick. At that time, Don Alphonso the Great, King of Leon, had wrested the city of Viseo in Lusitania from the hands of the Moslems. As his soldiers were ranging about the city and its environs, one of them discovered in a field, outside of the walls, a small chapel or hermitage, with a sepulchre in front, on which was inscribed this epitaph in Gothic characters:

It has been believed by many that this was the veritable tomb of the monarch, and that in this hermitage he had finished his days in solitary penance. The warrior, as he contemplated the supposed tomb of the once haughty Roderick, forgot all his faults and errors, and shed a soldiers tear over his memory; but when his thoughts turned to Count Julian, his patriotic indignation broke forth, and with his dagger he inscribed a rude malediction on the stone.

Accursed, said he, be the impious and headlong vengeance of the traitor Julian. He was a murderer of his king; a destroyer of his kindred; a betrayer of his country. May his name be bitter in every mouth, and his memory infamous to all generations.

Here ends the legend of Don Roderick.

LINES

THE DOG-STAR SPIRIT

A DREAM

Upon a certain clear and starry night of unbroken tranquility and peace, in the month of September, in the year of Grace one thousand eight hundred thirty and two; I, John Waters of mans Estate, Gentleman, dreamed a Dream. And lest I might be forced, like the great Babylonian monarch of yore, to say the thing is gone from me, I resolved while a vague remembrance yet rested in my thoughts, to record if possible some lasting memorial of it.

Now, more than one half of the average number of years, assigned by computation to a generation of our race, have, since that point of time, rolled into the rearward hemisphere of Eternity; trials and changes, deep and stern and manifold, have rent and desolated this house not made with hands, and have exercised and broken the spirit that is supposed to be contained within it; yet the slight memorandum, written at that time, lies unchanged before me, and gives evidence of the comparatively impassible duration of inert matter over man; whose home, and whose abiding-place is not of earth!

It is not that I can hope to describe my sensations of that night, in such a manner as to impart them to the contemplative spirit that may read this sketch, and to afford pleasure at all comparable with that which I enjoyed; but I have thought that I might by the recital awaken some gratifying recollections of still higher flittings of the imagination into the regions of unlimited Fancy; where the pleasure has been, as was mine, alike unbounded and pure.

In an Existence like ours, where so much is ideal; where so many things are feared, that never come to pass; hoped for, that are never realized; enjoyed, that are impalpable to sense; where that, which by common convention is called substantial and real, is very far inferior to that which is falsely termed illusory and vain; where life borders on immortality; and the spiritual world so closely overhangs the natural, that it is as difficult to separate them as it is in Switzerland to know which is Alps and which is Heaven;there may oftentimes be much pleasure, perhaps some instruction, in a Dream.

What should we say of dreams, if our eyes could but once have been opened upon the bright intellectual fancies, and anticipations; or upon the spiritual movements, of some of those by the side of whose supine and deserted forms it may have been our privilege to watch; but who, on waking into restored consciousness, remember not what they may have seen, or imagined, or may perhaps have accomplished, in their sleep?

How often, within the compass of our own minds, do we not find thoughts and images that spring from sources that we cannot trace! Have we not more than once been called upon to perform some act of life, important to ourselves, or perchance to others; or been in some incidental circle of friends, or of persons who were strangers until then; or walked upon some lonely path in Europeall for the first time as we suppose, and yet have we not had it irresistibly borne in upon our minds, that we have done all this before! signed the same paper in the same presence! heard the same voices speak the same words! noticed the same faces in the same positions! or recognized the mountains perhaps, and the trees, the landscape, the rocks, the very brook, as acquaintances of old; although the broad Atlantic had never yet been crossed by us beforeexcept in spirit!

Did you never in the day or night dream yourself to be upon some lofty overhanging precipice? did you never in imagination look down over its extreme verge upon the dark coast that skirts the foot of it, so far below you that you only distinguish the Rocks themselves by the white foam of the blue wave that breaks over them? Did you never hold by a bush while you were bending over this awful verge, listening to the low roar of the deep and distant waters, and perceive the Eagle itself soaring mid-way only up the cliffand while you grew chill with the thoughts of depth, and danger, and distance from relief, did you never feel the bush give way and the gravel slide from beneath you, and the whole mass come thundering down from earth to ocean?

One throb is given to madness and in the next you wake and find the body in security although perhaps in pain. Have you been in actual danger? do you believe that you have been? If not, why do you immediately pray to God and bless Him at such moments for his protection and care of you? Is it not that while the body has been quiescent, the excursive Soul has been in spiritual presence on the edge of that beetling and stupendous height?