"Long after the walls The stern contest was established themselves in the breaches. of Zaragoza fell, the city itself resisted. continued from street to street, and from house to house. In vault and cellar, on balcony and in chamber, the deadly warfare was waged without any intermission. By the slow and sure process of the mine the assailants worked their terrific path, and daily explosions told loudly of their onward way. Meantime the bombardment was fierce and constant, and the fighting incessant. Every house was a post; the crash of falling buildings was continual. While the struggle was yet fierce and alive, came pestilence into those vaults and cellars where the aged, and the women and the children, lay sheltered from the storm of shells. They sickened in vast numbers, and died where they lay. Thus fell Zaragoza, after a resistance of sixty-one days!" It capitulated in February, 1809. Agostina was taken prisoner by the French, and, having caught the infection already so fatal to her countrymen, was placed in the hospital. Not being expected to recover, little attention was paid to her. Feeling herself reviving, however, she disguised her symptoms of convalescence, and soon after effected her escape. She seems to have removed subsequently to Seville, and it was there that Lord Byron saw her, walking sedately upon the Alameda, or Prado, decked with the orders and medals bestowed upon her by the Junta. Nothing is known of her after life. She died in obscurity, in 1857, at the age of 71 years, and was buried with military honors. The stanzas in Childe Harold, in which Byron has commemorated her valor and immortalized her story, are so familiar that we should not quote them here, were it not for the fact that her negligent countrymen have left to foreigners the duty of chronicling her deeds, thus rendering the English poet, as it were, her sole biographer, and perhaps the only author, with the exception of Southey, in whose works her memory will live. The verses, too splendid ever to become hackneyed, are as follows: "Is it for this the Spanish maid, arous'd, "Ye who shall marvel when you hear her tale, Oh! had you known her in her softer hour Mark'd her dark eye that mocks the coal-black veil Heard her light, lively tones in lady's bower- Thin the closed ranks, and lead in Glory's fearful chase. "Her lover sinks-she sheds no ill-tim'd tear; What maid retrieve when man's flush'd hope is lost? Who hang so fiercely on the flying Gaul, Foil'd by a woman's hand before a batter'd wall?” But the memory of the Spanish maid has not been perpetuated in song alone. Wilkie has commemorated her glory upon canvas, and Mr. J. Bell in marble. The fine picture of "The Defence of Saragossa," by the former, painted in 1827, in Madrid, and afterwards engraved, contains, standing in conspicuous positions, the figures both of Palafox and Agostina, and professes to give their portraits. That of the latter, however, is doubtless somewhat idealized. The statue by Mr. Bell, which was exhibited at the British Academy in 1853, represents the heroine standing on the ramparts; a cannon-ball has just killed a priest the ecclesiastics having shared nobly in the defence of the place from whose dying hand she has snatched a crucifix, which she holds up to incite the people to further resistance; in her other hand is a lighted fusee, with which she is about to fire a cannon. At the base of the figure is the spirited answer which she dictated to Palafox-Guerra al cuchillo. To Englishmen alone is the Maid of Saragossa indebted for the preservation of her honorable renown-to Southey, Byron, Wilkie and Bell. The silence of the French is easily explained; the indifference of the Spanish, though it may be accounted for. is nevertheless to be deplored. Researches made at the request of the author of these pages in the libraries of Madrid,1 reveal the singular fact that no authentic record of her history or devotion has been preserved in the Spanish language a fact suggestive to those who may have an opinion yet to form upon the state of Spanish literature and upon the vitality of Spanish patriotism. 'By his Excellency Don Calderon de la Barca, Gayangos, and General San-Roman. ANNE HASSELTINE JUDSON. It is with unfeigned satisfaction that we yield to the dictation of the chronological progression to which our plan confines us, and cross the ocean westward in quest of the next subject for our gallery. True, we have once done so already; but it was at a summons less gratifying than that which now constrains us Having sketched, in rapid succession, the lives of the Assyrian queen, the Roman matron, the Grecian wife; the Spanish sovereign, the French peasant, the English benefactress; the Indian princess, the Scottish martyr, the Spanish heroine; we turn with unaffected pleasure to the inspiring life of the American missionary, whose most affecting story we have now to chronicle, pursuing its wondrous vicissitudes from the school-house of Massachusetts to the jungles of Rangoon. Anne Hasseltine was born in the village of Bradford, Massachusetts, on the 22d of December, 1789. Of her infancy we know nothing, and but little of her youth. At the age when her character began to develop itself, she manifested great activity of mind, a lively and restless disposition, and an eager relish for amusement and recreation. With all this, she was fond of books and was an assiduous student. She was educated at the Academy of her native town. Here she first displayed those |