afforded him an asylum when his own subjects had turned him out of the palace of his fathers, he invited many of them into Poland, and fixed them in the abbey of Tyniec *, near Cracow. Casimir, having thus deserved well of his generation, made way for his son, Boleslas, after a reign of sixteen years.

The crosier was now laid aside for the sword. Boleslas II. was ready to fight every body's battles, to stretch out a hand to every falling sovereign, even at his own peril. His court became the asylum of unfortunate princes, where they found a king who was both ready and powerful to save. The son of the Duke of Bohemia, the brother of the King of Hungary, and the eldest son of the Duke of Russia, were at one time under his protection, and the claimants of his assistance; nor were their requests disregarded. He reinstated them all on their thrones, and even fought the battles of the Hungarian and Russian monarchs twice over. His benevolence to the latter prince eventually, though not directly, cost him his

crown.

Kiow was the only city which offered any great resistance to the Polish arms. Its opulent citizens defended themselves with a valour proportionate to the importance of their charge. Famine, however, at length reduced them to obedience, and Boleslas, who was as great an admirer of courage as a possessor of it, treated the vanquished, but brave Kio

* This had been founded by Boleslas the Great.

vians with the greatest generosity. So fully, too, did the citizens appreciate his noble spirit, that as he marched through the streets with his troops they greeted him with acclamations, a much more glorious triumph than if thousands and tens of thousands of shackled kings had swollen the pageant of ova

tion.

But Boleslas, when "the Golden Gate" of this city of voluptuousness was once shut on him, heard no more the call of war: wearied with his labours, he in a moment of weakness and lassitude laid his head on the lap of a Delilah, and woke only to find that his strength 66 was gone from him." Kiow was the foster-child of Constantinople and the Eastern Empire. The voluptuous Greeks had made it a store-house of all the luxuries of Asia; here was the noble architecture of Athens festooned with the gaudy tapestry of Lydia, and the rough metal of Russian swords embossed with the polished gold of Ophir and Persia. The hardy natives had plunged into the stream of pleasure with all the zest of novelty, and were tasting of its enjoyments with the unpalled and greedy appetite of healthy and vigorous constitutions.

This was the state of Kiow when it received Bo

leslas with open arms. The generous Pole quaffed the bowl of pleasure which it held out to him with the freedom of unsuspecting and unguarded frankness, and found, when too late, its intoxicating qualities had transformed and degraded all the nobler

energies of his nature.

The king's example was

followed by his troops, and this army of warriors slept away, month after month, on the soft couches of Kiow; and as if they had eaten of the fabled fruit of the lotos-tree, at length forgot that their homes were without masters, their wives without husbands, and their children without fathers.

They had already been absent from Poland, it isaffirmed, seven years, engaged in these various wars and pleasures; and the Polish women, who found that "hope deferred maketh the heart sick,” naturally consoled themselves with what was at hand, and lastly bestowed their favours on their slaves. The example was generally followed; one Penelope, only, was found, Margaret, the wife of Count Nicholas, of Zemboisin. She continued patiently to weave the web of expectation, till her faithless lord should return to his duty. The tidings of this general revolt among the women spread to Kiow, and most of the enraged Poles, cursing Boleslas for being the author of their disgrace by detaining them from home, and without waiting for permission, or while their passion might cool, hurried to Poland, to wreak their ven-geance on their wives and their insolent paramours. They met, however, with a vigorous resistance; for the women, maddened by despair, spurred on their lovers to prove themselves worthy of their favours, and sell their lives dearly, while they did not confine their efforts to mere exhortations, but fought in person, seeking out their faithless husbands, on whom to

vent their rage. But in the heat of this motley battle, another enemy appeared. Boleslas, at the head of the few remaining troops, was come to chastise them all; the women for their infidelity, the slaves for their presumption, and the Poles for their desertion and contempt of martial discipline. Poland was deluged with blood, and deprived of some of its best sons. Many of the women perished, and the rest are said to have been obliged by the king to suckle dogs, as a punishment for the degrading connexion they had formed with their slaves.

But the last scene of the tragedy was yet to come. St. Stanislas, Bishop of Cracow, either being shock`ed at the unchristian slaughter, or making it a pretext for other designs, reproved Boleslas, threatened him with the vengeance of the church, unless he ceased from his bloody work, and even went so far as to refuse him admittance to his church, still called St. Stanislas-Kirche, while he was performing The hasty and provoked king, in a moment of rage, burst into the sanctuary, and murdered the poor prelate at the very altar *.

mass.

The thunders of the Pope now roared over the devoted head of Boleslas; he was accursed, excommunicated, dethroned, and banished. He who had. given away kingdoms found none to bestow on him the poorest pittance, and those who had grown rich on his bounty refused him the meagre alms of a tear.

* St. Stanislas was buried in the cathedral of Cracow, and there is still standing there his superb monument.

Abandoned by men, and denounced as one abhorred by God, he crept away into the forests, whose savage tenants were the only living creatures which were left to afford him an asylum, and make him an inmate of their caverns, At length the poor penitent, brokenhearted, went to pour out the last bitter dregs of the cup of life in a monastery in Carinthia; and he who had wielded a sceptre, and revelled in all the luxuries of Kiow, spent the last few days of his life in preparing lentils and hard bread for the monks, in a miserable kitchen,

The life of Boleslas forms one of the saddest and most striking pictures afforded by the worst vicissitudes of human life. From the almoner of kings to the pensioner of mendicants; from the leader of armies to the menial of a monastery; from the royal voluptuary to the starving beggar; from the palace to the kitchen; how stupendous was his fall! and how stupendous the power which hurled him from the throne! Nor was his moral fall less great. He had set out in life with a heart full of generous feeling; he had a noble spirit; but the bland and seducing smile of the votary of gaiety lured him to its orgies, and corrupted the pure warm blood of a hero's heart. Self-dissatisfaction, added to the violence of his passions, then accelerated his downfall; and the hand which was once stretched forth only to help the weak and assist the poor, was now stained with the blood of a minister of that faith, to which his great namesake and predecessor had devoted all the