lages scattered even to the farthest corner of the Island, that these despairing men had kept their word. Windows of houses at the other side of the city of Valetta were shattered into atoms; and when the first dreadful crash had subsided, the shrieks of men in agony reached far and wide through the quiet evening sky, and declared that the authors of this catastrophe had not died unrevenged. When a survey could he made of the extent of this disorder, it was terrible indeed to find what havoc it had caused. The fort ruined and torn into fragments; its walls strewn with corpses, and its fosse streaming with human blood not yet cold.
“The feeling throughout the island was very generally one of commiseration for the poor wretches who had been urged to this conduct by what was considered an almost unnecessary display of austerity on the part of our officers. It was thought that men not inured to military discipline, born, too, under another sky, and accustomed to different habits; should have been handled in the first instance with greater softness and indulgence. It seemed that many of their measures were but the natural and excusable projects of men scarcely yet reclaimed from barbarism, certainly not modelled into the prime pieces of mechanism which older soldiers become. A little clemency then shewn might have soothed the ill-temper they manifested at the sword-and-stick system of the German Adjutant, and prevented the completion of this disaster. But their fate was provoked by measures neither humane nor politic, and the sympathy of the public was greatly on their side.
“The sensations caused by these occurrences were beginning to wear away, and a week had now passed since the event, without changing the popular sentiments on the subject. An old priest was at this period riding home to his cusal in some secluded district of the interior, and the panniers upon which he balanced his legs were furnished in priestly-wise with sundry dainties of fish, flesh, and vegetables, accommodated to his peculiar palate. The old donkey he bestrode marched leisurely along the un-frequented bye-way, and flapped his long ears to disturb the pestilent flies which lived thereon, much, however, to the inconvenience of his master, whose nose received the migratory swarm, and was discomposed much beyond the degree permitted by the usual serenity of the man. But this occasional affliction did not much interfere with the low, solemn piece of psalmody, or what not, that continually issued from his lips with the words of their national song, like a country-dance played upon the organ of Haarlem. Still proceeded he with the memorable
“‘Tén en hobbok jaua calbi,’”
- ↑ “The commencing words of a stanza of the only indigenous song Malta can boast. They may be thus rendered–
“‘I love you in my heart,’
“And proceed with –
“‘But I hate you before the people:
There is no reason to ask me why;
You, darling, know the reason.’
