Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scan source: Vol. I from Harvard College Library
https://books.google.com/books?id=NxQ0LzIgW1UC
2. The diphthongs ae and oe are represented by
[ae] and [oe] respectively.
ATTILA.
A ROMANCE.
BY THE AUTHOR OF
"THE GIPSY," "ONE IN A THOUSAND," &c, &c.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, 82 CLIFF-STREET.
1838.
TO
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR, ESQ.,
THIS BOOK,
AS A FEEBLE TESTIMONY OF STRONG PERSONAL REGARD
AND SINCERE ADMIRATION,
IS DEDICATED, BY HIS FRIEND,
G. P. R. JAMES.
ADVERTISEMENT.
In giving this book to the public I have but little to explain. The
reader who takes it up may expect to find something respecting the
Princess Honoria. He will, however, find nothing. All that we know of
her history is uninteresting, except to those who love to dwell upon
the pruriencies of a degraded state of society: all that we know of
her character is disgusting to such as love purity and dignity of
mind. It would be tedious to the reader to explain why the author has
thought fit to alter several names of the persons acting prominent
parts in the story of Attila. In so doing he has consulted principally
his own ear; and in a few other deviations which he has made from the
course of that great monarch's history, he has consulted his own
convenience. In regard, however, to the change which he has
represented as taking place in the demeanour of Attila, his
abandonment of the simple habits which at first distinguished him, and
his dereliction from the calm equanimity which he displayed in his
early intercourse with the Romans, the author believes that he is
justified by the records of history as well as the course of nature.
He is inclined to think, also, that if, in regard to the facts of
Attila's death, we could display the chameleon truth, in the broad
light of day, without any of the shades and hues with which time and
circumstances have surrounded her, we should find her colour such as
he has represented it; but this, of course, must ever remain in doubt.
A T T I L A.
CHAPTER I.
A LANDSCAPE IN DALMATIA.
Music was in the air, and loveliness was spread out over the earth as
a mantle.
There was a voice of many waters--the bland musical tone of mountain
streams singing as they wend their way over the smooth round pebbles
of their hilly bed towards the sea. And the song of life, too, was
heard from every field, and every glade, and every valley; the
trilling of innumerable birds, the hum of insect myriads, the lowing
of distant cattle, winding down from the uplands to pen or fold, the
plaintive, subdued bleating of the patient sheep, the merry voice of
the light-hearted herd as he led home his flock from the hills, after
a long warm southern day in the maturity of spring. Manifold sweet
sounds--all blended into one happy harmony, softened by distance,
rendered more melodious to the heart by associations felt but not
defined, and made more touching by the soft evening hour--filled the
whole air, and spread a calm, bright, contemplative charm over the
listening senses.
The eye, too, could find the same delight as the ear, equal in depth,
similar in character; for though sweet April had sunk in the warm arms
of May, still, even in that land of the bright south, the reign of
summer had not yet begun: not a leaf, not a flower, not a blade of
grass had lost a hue under the beams of the sun, and many a balmy and
refreshing shower, during a long and humid spring, had nourished the
verdure and enlivened the bloom.
From the high round knoll upon the left, crowned with the five tall
cypresses which perhaps flourished as seedlings on that spot in the
young and palmy days of Greece, might be seen that unrivalled view
which has never yet found eye to gaze on it uncharmed--that view
which, of all prospects in the world, has greatest power, when
suddenly beheld, to make the heart beat fast, and the breath come
thick with mingled feelings of wonder and delight. On one side, at
about a mile's distance, where the ground sloped gently down towards
the sea, rose the palace of Diocletian, vast and extensive, massy
without being heavy, and equally sublime from its beauty and its
dimensions. Clear, upon the bright back-ground of the evening sky, cut
the graceful lines of the architecture; and, though a sudden break in
the outline of the frieze, with the massy form of a fallen capital
rolled forward before the steps of the magnificent portico which
fronted the sea, told that the busy, unceasing, unsparing hand of
man's great enemy had already laid upon that splendid building the
crumbling touch of ruin; yet, as, it then stood, with the setting sun
behind it, and the deep blue shadows of the evening involving all the
minute parts of the side that met the eye, the effects of decay even
added to the beauty of the object, by making the straight lines of the
architecture at once contrast and harmonize with the graceful
irregularities of nature whereby it was surrounded. Several groups of
old and stately trees, too, still more diversified the prospect on
that side; and through the pillars of the portico might be caught the
glistening line of the bright sea where it met and mingled with the
sky.
Behind, and to the right hand, stretching far away to the north, rose
mountain upon mountain, in all the fanciful forms and positions into
which those earth-born giants cast themselves in Greece, and over them
all was thrown that lustrous purple which in those lands well deserves
the name of the "magic light of evening."
Between the knoll of cypresses, however, and those far hills robed in
their golden splendour, lay a wide tract of country, gently sloping
upward in a thousand sweeping lines, with here and there an abrupt
rock or insulated mound suddenly towering above the rest, while
scattered clumps of tall old trees, rich rounded masses of forest,
villas, farms, vineyards, and olive grounds, filled up the intervening
space; and had all been as it seemed--had all those farms been
tenanted, had none of those villas been in ruins--would have presented
a scene of prosperity such as the world has never known but once.
Still decay had made no very great progress; still the land was richly
cultivated; still the population, though not dense, was sufficient;
and as the eye ran along the innumerable little promontories and
headlands of the bay, might be seen, rising up above some slight
irregularities of the ground, a part of the buildings of the small but
prosperous town of Salona. Close by the side of that knoll of
cypresses, breaking impetuously from a bank above, dashed on the
bright and sparkling Hyader; now fretting and foaming with the large
rocks amid which a part of its course was bound; now prattling
playfully with the motley pebbles which in other parts strewed its
bed; now dashing like a fierce steed all in foam where it leaped
over the crag into the sunshine; and then, where its clear blue
waters spread out uninterrupted under the cool shadow of a hill,
seeming--like time to a young and happy heart--to stand still in calm
and peaceful enjoyment, even while it was flowing away as quickly as
ever.
The eye that followed the Hyader down its course--and there was an eye
that did so--rested on the bright and glowing west, and on the
fairest, the most entrancing object of all that magic scene; for
there, stretched out beneath the setting sun, lay the gleaming waters
of the Adriatic, studded all along its shores with a thousand purple
islands which rose out of that golden sea like gems.
The air was calm and tranquil; the sky, the unrivalled deep blue sky,
which hangs over that most lovely sea, was without a cloud, varying
with one soft and equable declension from the intense purple zenith to
the warm rosy hues that glowed in the far west. The sea, also, was
smooth and peaceful, and would have seemed unbroken by a wave, had not
here and there a sudden bending line of light darted over the bosom of
the waters, and told that they were moved in the evening light by the
breath of the breeze.
Thus appeared the whole scene, when, from the opposite side of the
bay, a white sail was seen to glide forward, as if coming from Salona
towards the palace of Diocletian, or the little village of Aspalathus.
Slowly and peacefully it moved along, giving one more image of calm
and tranquil enjoyment; and while it steered upon its way, four sweet
voices, sometimes joined in chorus by several deeper tones, broke
forth from the mound of cypresses, singing:--
A HYMN TO THE SETTING SUN.
I.
"Slow, slow, mighty wanderer, sink to thy rest,
Thy course of beneficence done;
As glorious go down to thy Thetis' warm breast
As when thy bright race was begun.
For all thou hast done
Since thy rising, oh sun!
May thou and thy Maker be bless'd!
Thou hast scatter'd the night from thy broad golden way,
Thou hast given us thy light through a long happy day,
Thou hast roused up the birds, thou hast waken'd the flowers.
To chant on thy path, and to perfume the hours--
Then slow, mighty wanderer, sink to thy rest,
And rise again beautiful, blessing, and bless'd!
II.
"Slow, slow, mighty wanderer, sink to thy rest,
Yet pause but a moment to shed
One warm look of love on the earth's dewy breast.
Ere the starr'd curtain fall round thy bed,
And to promise the time,
When, awaking sublime,
Thou shall rush all refresh'd from thy rest.
Warm hopes drop like dews from thy life-giving hand,
Teaching hearts closed in darkness like flowers to expand;
Dreams wake into joys when first touch'd by thy light,
As glow the dim waves of the sea at thy sight--
Then slow, mighty wanderer, sink to thy rest,
And rise again beautiful, blessing, and bless'd!
III.
"Slow, slow, mighty wanderer, sink to thy rest,
Prolonging the sweet evening hour;
Then robe again soon in the morn's golden vest,
To go forth in thy beauty and power.
Yet pause on thy way,
To the full height of day,
For thy rising and setting are bless'd!
When thou com'st after darkness to gladden our eyes,
Or departest in glory, in glory to rise,
May hope and may prayer still be woke by thy rays,
And thy going be mark'd by thanksgiving and praise![1]
Then slow, mighty wanderer, sink to thy rest,
And rise again beautiful, blessing, and bless'd!"
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[Footnote 1: It may not, perhaps, be unnecessary to remind the reader
that Christianity, though established in both the eastern and western
empires, was still far from universal; and even in the minds of its
most enthusiastic votaries was strangely mingled with the picturesque
superstitions of a former creed; so that the same man was often a
Christian in belief, who was pagan in many of his habits and almost
all his familiar expressions.]
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