D.

[3] The idea of the ancient Egyptians, as mentioned by Herodotus, having
    been of the same family as the Negroes, is now completely refuted by
    the inquiries of Cuvier and other naturalists.  The examinations of
    mummies have been highly useful in setting this question at rest.

* * * * *

MORTON BRIDGE.

A BALLAD.

(For the Mirror.)

The remorseless tragedy on which this ballad is founded, took place upwards of a century ago.  In the retired village of Romanby, near Northallerton, Yorkshire, there resided a desperate band of coiners, whose respectability and cunning concealment precluded all possibility of suspicion as to their proceedings.  The victim of their revenge was Mary Ward, the servant of one of those ruffians.  Having obtained an accidental view of some secret apartments appropriated to their treasonable practices, she unguardedly communicated her knowledge to an acquaintance; which reaching her master’s ears, he determined to destroy her.  The most plausible story, time, and means were selected for this purpose.  On a Sunday evening, after sunset, an unknown personage on horseback arrived at her master’s mansion, half equipped, to give colour to his alleged haste, and slated that he was dispatched for Mary, as her mother was dying.  She lingered to ask her master’s permission; but he feigned sleep, and she departed without his leave.  On the table of her room was her Bible, opened at those remarkable words in Job, “They shall seek me in the morning, and shall not find me; and where I am, they shall not come.”  Her home was at the distance of eight miles from Romanby; and Morton bridge, hard by the heath where she was murdered, is the traditionary scene of her nocturnal revisitings.  The author has seen the tree said to have been distorted by her in endeavouring to climb the fence; and has visited the village and bridge, from which his descriptions are accurately taken.  The impression of her re-appearance is only poetically assumed, for there is too much of what Coleridge would term “the divinity of nature” around Morton Bridge, to warrant its association with supernatural mysteries.

  Oh! sights are seen, and sounds are heard,
    On Morton Bridge, at night,
  When to the woods the cheerful birds
    Have ta’en their silent flight.

  When through the mantle of the sky
    No cheering moonbeams delve,
  And the far village clock hath told
   The midnight hour of twelve.

  Then o’er the lonely path is heard
    The sigh of sable trees,
  With deadly moan of suff’ring strife
    Borne on the solemn breeze—­

  For Mary’s spirit wanders there,
    In snowy robe array’d,
  To tell each trembling villager
   Where sleeps the murder’d maid.

  It was a Sabbath’s eve of love,
    When nature seem’d more holy;
  And nought in life was dull, but she
    Whose look was melancholy.