nd the cares of life fell from me, fading in the realm of Song.

THE MAID OF BOGOTA.

A TALE FROM COLOMBIAN HISTORY.

BY W. GILMORE SIMMS.

Whenever the several nations of the earth which have achieved their
deliverance from misrule and tyranny shall point, as they each may, to
the fair women who have taken active part in the cause of liberty, and
by their smiles and services have contributed in no measured degree to
the great objects of national defence and deliverance, it will be with
a becoming and just pride only that the Colombians shall point to
their virgin martyr, commonly known among them as La Pola, the Maid of
Bogota. With the history of their struggle for freedom her story will
always be intimately associated; her tragical fate, due solely to the
cause of her country, being linked with all the touching interest of
the most romantic adventure. Her spirit seemed to be woven of the
finest materials. She was gentle, exquisitively sensitive, and capable
of the most true and tender attachments. Her mind was one of rarest
endowments, touched to the finest issues of eloquence, and gifted with
all the powers of the improvisatrice, while her courage and patriotism
seem to have been cast in those heroic moulds of antiquity from which
came the Cornelias and Deborahs of famous memory. Well had it been for
her country had the glorious model which she bestowed upon her people
been held in becoming homage by the race with which her destiny was
cast--a race masculine only in exterior, and wanting wholly in that
necessary strength of soul which, rising to the due appreciation of
the blessings of national freedom, is equally prepared to make, for
its attainment, every necessary sacrifice of self; and yet our heroine
was but a child in years--a lovely, tender, feeble creature, scarcely
fifteen years of age. But the soul grows rapidly to maturity in some
countries, and in the case of women, it is always great in its youth,
if greatness is ever destined to be its possession.

Dona Apolenaria Zalabariata--better known by the name of La Pola--was
a young girl, the daughter of a good family of Bogota, who was
distinguished at an early period, as well for her great gifts of
beauty as of intellect. She was but a child when Bolivar first
commenced his struggles with the Spanish authorities, with the
ostensible object of freeing his country from their oppressive
tyrannies. It is not within our province to discuss the merits