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THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE

Of Literature, Art, and Science.

Vol. II.      NEW YORK, JANUARY 1, 1851.       No. II.


Transcriber's note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes
moved to the end of the article.




[Illustration]

EDMUND BURKE.


Edmund Burke is the most illustrious name in the political history of
England. The exploits of Marlborough are forgotten, as Wellington's will
be, while the wisdom and genius of Burke live in the memory, and form a
portion of the virtue and intelligence of the British nation and the
British race. The reflection of this superior power and permanence of
moral grandeur over that which, at best, is but a vulgar renown,
justifies the most sanguine expectations of humanity.

It may be said of Burke, as it was said by him of another, that "his
mind was generous, open, sincere; his manners plain, simple, and noble;
rejecting all sorts of duplicity and disguise, as useless to his
designs, and odious to his nature. His understanding was comprehensive,
steady, and vigorous, made for the practical business of the state....
His knowledge, in all things which concerned his duty was profound....
He was not more respectable on the public scene, than amiable in private
life.... A husband and a father, the kindest, gentlest, most indulgent,
he was every thing in his family, except what he gave up to his
country.... An ornament and blessing to the age in which he lived, his
memory will continue to be beneficial to mankind, by holding forth an
example of pure and unaffected virtue, most worthy of imitation, to the
latest posterity."

In the last of a series of articles by Mrs. S. C. Hall, entitled
"Pilgrimages to English Shrines," and published in the London _Art
Journal_, we have an account of a visit to the residences and to the
grave of Burke, which we reproduce in the following pages, with its
interesting illustrations.


THE GRAVE OF EDMUND BURKE.

It has been said that we are inclined to over-value great men when their
graves have been long green, or their monuments gray above them, but we
believe it is only then we estimate them as they deserve. Prejudice and
falsehood have no enduring vitality, and posterity is generally anxious
to render justice to the mighty dead; we dwell upon their actions,--we
quote their sentiments and opinions,--we class them amongst our
household gods--and keep their memories green within the sanctuary of
our HOMES; we read to our children and friends the written treasures
bequeathed to us by the genius and independence of the great statesmen
and orators--the men of literature and science--who "_have been_." We
adorn our minds with the poetry of the past, and value it, as well we
may, as far superior to that of the present: we sometimes, by the aid of
imagination--one of the highest of God's gifts--bring great men before
us: we hear the deep-toned voices and see the flashing eyes of some,
who, it may be, taught kings their duty, or quelled the tumults of a
factious people: we listen to the lay of the minstrel, or the orator's
addresses to the assembly, and our pulses throb and our eyes moisten as
the eloquence flows--first, as a gentle river, until gaining strength in
its progress, it sweeps onwards like a torrent, overcoming all that
sought to impede its progress. What a happy power this is!--what a
glorious triumph over time!--recalling or creating at will!--peopling
our small chamber with the demigods of history; viewing them enshrined
in their perfections, untainted by the world; hearing their exalted
sentiments; knowing them as we know a noble statue or a beautiful
picture, without the taint of age or feebleness, or the mildew of decay.

If these sweet wakening dreams were more frequent, we should be happier;
yes, and better than we are; we should be shamed out of much
baseness--for nothing so purifies and exalts the soul as the actual or
imaginary companionship of the pure and exalted; no man who purposed to
create a noble picture would choose an imperfect model; no one who seeks
virtue and cherishes honor and honorable things, will endure the
degradation of ignoble persons or ignoble thoughts; no one ever achieved
a great purpose who did not plant his standard on high ground.

A little before the commencement of the present century, England was
rich in orators, and poets, and men of letters; the times were favorable
to such--events called them forth--and there was still a lingering
chivalric feeling in our island which the utilitarian principles or
tastes of the present period would now treat with neglect, if not
contempt.

The progress of the French Revolution agitated Europe; and men wondered
if the young Corsican would ever dare to wield the sceptre wrenched from
the grasp of a murdered king; people were continually on the watch for
fresh events; great stakes were played for all over Europe, and those
who desired change were full of hope. It was an age to create great men.

Let us then indulge in visions of those, who, in more recent times than
we have yet touched upon,--save in one or two PILGRIMAGES,--illumed the
later days of the last century; and, brightest and purest of the galaxy
was the orator, EDMUND BURKE. Ireland, which gave him birth, may well be
proud of the high-souled and high-gifted man, who united in himself all
the great qualities which command attention in the senate and the world,
and all the domestic virtues that sanctify home; grasping a knowledge of
all things, and yet having that sweet sympathy with the small things of
life, which at once bestows and secures happiness, and, in the end,
popularity.

EDMUND BURKE was born on Arran Quay, Dublin, January the 1st, 1730; his
father was an attorney: the name, we believe, was originally spelt
Bourke.

The great grandfather of Edmund inherited some property in that county
which has produced so many men of talent--the county of Cork; the family
resided in the neighborhood of Castletown Roche, four or five miles from
Doneraile, five or six miles from Mallow--now a railroad station--and
nearly the same distance from the ruins of Kilcolman Castle, whose every
mouldering stone is hallowed by the memory of the poet Spenser and his
dear friend, "the Shepherd of the Ocean," Sir Walter Raleigh. There can
be little doubt that Edmund--a portion of whose young life was passed in
this beautiful locality--imbibed much thought, as well as much poetry,
from the sacred memories which here accompanied him during his
wanderings.

Nothing so thoroughly awakens the sympathy of the young as the imaginary
presence of the good and great amid the scenes where their most glorious
works were accomplished; the associations connected with Kilcolman are
so mingled, that their contemplation produces a variety of
emotions--admiration for the poem which was created within its
walls--contemplation of the "glorious two" who there spent so much time
together in harmony and sweet companionship, despite the storms which
ravaged the country; then the awful catastrophe, the burning of the
castle, and the loss of Spenser's child in the flames, still talked of
in the neighborhood, were certain to make a deep impression on the
imagination of a boy whose delicate health prevented his rushing into
the amusements and society of children of his own age. There are plenty
of crones in every village, and one at least in every gentleman's house
to watch "the master's children" and pour legendary lore into their
willing ears, accompanied by snatches of song and fairy tale. All these
were certain to seize upon such an imagination as that of Burke, and lay
the foundation of much of that high-souled mental poetry--one of his
great characteristics; indeed, the circumstances of his youth were
highly favorable to his peculiar temperament--his delicate constitution
rendered him naturally susceptible of the beautiful; and the locality of
the Blackwater, and the time-honored ruins of Kilcolman, with its
history and traditions, nursed, as they were, by the holy quiet of a
country life, had ample time to sink into his soul and germinate the
fruitage which, in after years, attained such rich perfection.

An old schoolmaster, of the name of O'Halloran, was his first teacher;
he "played at learning" at the school, long since in ruins; and the
Dominie used to boast that "no matter how great Master Edmund (God bless
him) was, HE was the first who ever put a Latin grammar into his hands."

Edmund was one of a numerous family; his mother, who had been a Miss
Nagle,[1] having had fourteen or fifteen children, all of whom died
young, except four,--one sister and three brothers: the sister, Mrs.
French, was brought up in the faith of her mother, who was a rigid Roman
Catholic, while the sons were trained in the father's belief. This,
happily, created no unkindness between them, for not only were they an
affectionate and a united family, but perfectly charitable in their
opinions, each of the other's creed. As the future statesman grew older,
it was considered wise to remove him to Dublin for better instruction,
and he was placed at a school in Smithfield kept by a Mr. James
Fitzgerald; but, fortunately for his strength of body and mind, the
reputation of an academy in the lovely valley of Ballitore, founded in
the midst of a colony of Quakers, by a member of that most benevolent
and intelligent society--the well-known Abraham Shackleton--was
spreading far and wide; and there the three young Burkes were sent in
1741, Edmund being then twelve years old.

He was considered not so much brilliant, as of steady application. Here,
too, he was remarkable for quick comprehension, and great strength of
memory; indications which drew forth at first the commendation, and as
his powers unfolded, the warm regard of his master; under whose paternal
care the improvement of his health kept pace with that of his intellect,
and the grateful pupil never forgot his obligations: a truly noble mind
is prone to exaggerate kindnesses received, and never detracts from
their value; it is only the low and the narrow-minded who underrate the
benefits they have been blessed with at any period of their lives.

In 1743 he entered Trinity College, Dublin, as a pensioner. He gained
fair honors during his residence there, but, like Johnson, Swift,
Goldsmith, and other eminent men, he did not distinguish himself so as
to lead to any speculation as to his after greatness, although his
elders said he was more anxious to acquire knowledge than to display
it;--a valuable testimony. His domestic life was so pure, his
friendships were so firm, his habits so completely those of a well-bred,
well-born IRISH GENTLEMAN--mingling, as only Irish gentlemen can do, the
suavity of the French with the dignity of English manners--that there is
little to write about, or speculate upon, beyond his public words and
deeds.

Like most young men of his time, his first oratory was exercised at a
club, and his first efforts as a politician were made in 1749, previous
to his quitting the Dublin University, in some letters against Mr. Henry
Brooke, the author of "Gustavus Vasa." His determination was the bar,
and his entry at the Middle Temple bears date April 23, 1747. His
youthful impressions of England and its capital are recorded in graceful
language in his letters to those friends whom he never lost, but by
death; one passage is as applicable to the present as to the past. "I
don't find that genius, the 'rath primrose which forsaken dies,' is
patronized by any of the nobility, so that writers of the first talents
are left to the capricious patronage of the public."

It was the taste of his time to desire, if not solicit patronage. In our
opinion literature is degraded by _patronage_, while it is honored by
the friendship of the good and great. Nothing is so loathsome in the
history of letters as the debased dedications which men of mind some
years ago laid at the feet of the so-styled "patron!" Literature in our
days has only to assert its own dignity, to be true and faithful to the
right, to avoid ribaldry, and preserve a noble and brave independence;
and then its importance to the state, as the minister of good, must be
acknowledged. It is only when forgetful of great purposes and great
power, that literature is open to be forgotten or sneered at. Still the
indifference an Englishman feels towards genius, even while enjoying its
fruits, was likely enough to check and chill the enthusiasm of Burke,
and drive him to much mystery as to his early literary engagements. One
of his observations made during his first visit to Westminster Abbey,
while hopes and ambitions quickened his throbbing pulse, and he might
have been pardoned for wishing for a resting-place in the grand
mausoleum of England, is remarkable, as showing how little he changed,
and how completely the youth

    "Was father to the man."

"Yet after all, do you know that I would rather sleep in the southern
corner of a country church-yard than in the tomb of the Capulets? I
should like, however, that my dust should mingle with kindred dust; the
good old expression, 'family burying-grounds,' has something pleasant in
it, at least to me."

This was his last, as it seems to have been his first desire; and it has
found an echo in many a richly dowered heart.

"Lay me," said Allan Cunningham, "where the daisies can grow on my
grave;" and it is well known that Moore--

    "The poet of all circles,"--

and, as a poor Irishman once rendered it--

    "The _darlint_ of his own,"


has frequently expressed a desire to be buried at Sloperton beside his
children.

The future orator found the law, as a profession, alien to his habits
and feelings, for at the expiration of the usual term he was not even
called to the bar. Some say he desired the professorship of logic at the
University of Glasgow, and even stood the contest; but this has been
disputed, and if he was rejected, it is matter of congratulation, that
his talents and time were not confined to so narrow a sphere. At that
period his mind was occupied by his theories on the Sublime and
Beautiful, which were finally condensed and published in the shape of
that essay which roused the world to admiration.

Mr. Prior says, and with every show of reason, "that Mr. Burke's
ambition of being distinguished in literature, seems to have been one of
his earliest, as it was one of his latest, passions." His first avowed
work was "The Vindication of Natural Society;" but he wrote a great deal
anonymously; and the essay on "The Sublime and Beautiful," triumphant as
it was, must have caused him great anxiety; he began it before he was
nineteen, and kept it by him for seven years before it was published--a
valuable lesson to those who rush into print and mistake the desire for
celebrity, for the power which bestows immortality.

The literature which is pursued chiefly in solitude, is always the best
sort: society, which cheers and animates men in most employments, is an
impediment to an author if really warmed by true genius, and impelled by
a sacred love of truth not to fritter away his thoughts or be tempted to
insincerity.

The genius and noble mind of Burke constituted him a high priest of
literature; the lighter, and it might be the more pleasurable enjoyments
of existence, could not be tasted without interfering with his pursuits;
but he knew his duty to his God, to the world, and to himself, and the
responsibility alone was sufficiently weighty to bend a delicate frame,
even when there was no necessity for laboring to live--but where an
object is to be attained, principles put forth or combated, God or man
to be served, the necessity for exertion always exists, and the great
soul must go forth on its mission.

That sooner or later this strife, or love, or duty--pursued
bravely--must tell upon all who even covet and enjoy their labor, the
experience of the past has recorded; and Edmund Burke, even at that
early period of life, was ordered to try the effects of a visit to Bath
and Bristol, then the principal resort of the invalids of the United
Kingdom.

At Bath he exchanged one malady for another, for he became attached to
Miss Nugent, the daughter of his physician, and in a very little time
formed what, in a worldly point of view, would be considered an
imprudent marriage, but which secured the happiness of his future life;
she was a Roman Catholic; but, however unfortunate dissenting creeds are
in many instances, in this it never disturbed the harmony of their
affection.

She was a woman exactly calculated to create happiness; possessing
accomplishments, goodness of heart, sweetness of disposition and
manners, veneration for talent, a hopeful spirit to allay her husband's
anxieties, wisdom and love to meet his ruffled temper, and tenderness to
subdue it--qualities which made him frequently declare "that every care
vanished the moment he sheltered beneath his own roof."

Edmund Burke became a husband, and also continued a lover--and once
presented to his ladylove, on the anniversary of their marriage, his
idea of "a perfect wife."[2]

For a considerable time after his marriage Burke toiled as a literary
man, living at Battersea or in town, now writing, it is believed,
jointly with his brother Richard and his cousin William a work on the
"European Settlements in America," in two volumes, which, according to
tradition, brought him, or them, only fifty pounds! then planning and
commencing an abridgment of the "History of England."

Struggling, it may be with difficulties brought on by his generous
nature, and which his father's allowance of two hundred a year, and his
own industry and perseverance could hardly overcome, the birth of a son
was an additional stimulant to exertion, and, in conjunction with
Dodsley, he established the _Annual Register_. This work he never
acknowledged, but his best biographers have no doubt of his having
brought forth and nurtured this useful publication. A hundred pounds a
volume seems to have been the sum paid for this labor; and Burke's
receipts for the money were at one time in the possession of Mr. Upcott.

Long before he obtained a seat in Parliament he won the esteem of Doctor
Johnson, who bore noble testimony to his virtue and talent, and what he
especially admired, and called, his "affluence of conversation."

For a time he went to Ireland as private secretary to Mr. Hamilton,
distinguished from all others of his name as "single-speech Hamilton;"
but disagreeing with this person, he nobly threw up a pension of three
hundred a year, because of the unreasonable and derogatory claims made
upon his gratitude by Hamilton, who had procured it for him.

While in Dublin he made acquaintance with the genius of the painter
Barry, and though his own means were limited, he persuaded him to come
to England, and received him in his house in Queen Anne-street, where he
soon procured him employment; he already numbered Mr., afterwards Sir
Joshua, Reynolds amongst his friends; and his correspondence with Barry
might almost be considered a young painter's manual, so full is it of
the better parts of taste, wisdom, and knowledge.

Mr. Burke was then on the threshold of Parliament, Lord Verney arranging
for his _début_ as member for Wendover, in Buckinghamshire, under the
Rockingham administration; another star was added to the galaxy of that
brilliant assembly, and if we had space it could not be devoted to a
better purpose than to trace his glorious career in the senate; but that
is before all who read the history of the period, and we prefer to
follow his footsteps in the under current of private life.

He was too successful to escape the poisoned arrows of envy, or the
misrepresentations of the disappointed. Certain persons exclaimed
against his want of consistency, and gave as a reason that at one
period he commanded the spirit of liberty with which the French
Revolution commenced, and after a time turned away in horror and disgust
from a people who made murder a pastime, and converted Paris into a
shambles for human flesh.

But nothing could permanently obscure the fame of the eloquent Irishman,
he continued to act with such worthiness, that, despite his schism with
Charles James Fox, "the people" did him the justice to believe, that in
his public conduct, he had no one view but the public good.

He outlived calumny, uniting unto genius diligence, and unto diligence
patience, and unto patience enthusiasm, and to these, deep-hearted
enthusiasm, with a knowledge, not only, it would seem, of all things,
but of such ready application, that in illustration or argument his
resources were boundless; the wisdom of the Ancients was as familiar to
him as the improved state of modern politics, science, and laws; the
metaphysics and logic of the Schools were to him as household words, and
his memory was gemmed with whatever was most valuable in poetry,
history, and the arts.

[Illustration: GREGORIES.]

After much toil, and the lapse of some time, he purchased a domain in
Buckinghamshire, called "Gregories;" there, whenever his public duties
gave him leisure, he enjoyed the repose so necessary to an overtaxed
brain; and from Gregories some of his most interesting letters are
dated.[3] Those addressed to the painter Barry, _whom his liberality
sent to and supported in Rome_, are, as we have said, replete with art
and wisdom; and the delicacy of both him and his excellent brother
Richard, while entreating the rough-hewn genius to prosecute his studies
and give them pleasure by his improvement, are additional proofs of the
beautiful union of the brothers, and of their _oneness_ of purpose and
determination that Barry should never be cramped by want of means.[4]

After the purchase of Gregories[5] Mr. Burke had no settled town-house,
merely occupying one for the season. In one of his letters to Barry, he
tells him to direct to Charles-street, St. James's Square; he writes
also from Fludyer-street, Westminster, and from Gerrard-street, Soho;
but traces of his "whereabouts" are next to impossible to find. Barry
was not the only artist who profited by Edmund Burke's liberality.
Barret, the landscape-painter, had fallen into difficulties, and the
fact coming to the orator's ears during his short tenure in power, he
bestowed upon him a place in Chelsea Hospital, which he enjoyed during
the remainder of his life.

Indeed, this great man's noble love of Art was part and parcel of
himself; it was no affectation, and it led to genuine sympathy with, not
only the artist's triumphs, but his difficulties. He found time, amid
all his occupations, to write letters to the irritable Barry, and if the
painter had followed their counsel, he would have secured his peace and
prosperity; but it was far otherwise: his conduct, both in Rome and
after his return to England, gave his friend just cause of offence;
though, like all others who offended the magnanimous Burke, he was soon
forgiven.

He never forgot his Irish friends, or the necessities of those who lived
on the family estate; the expansive generosity of his nature did not
prevent his attending to the minor comforts of his dependants, and his
letters "home" frequently breathe a most loving and careful spirit, that
the sorrows of the poor might be ameliorated, and their wants relieved.

We ought to have mentioned before that Mr. and Mrs. Burke's marriage was
only blessed by two sons; one died in childhood, the eldest grew up a
young man of the warmest affections, and blessed with a considerable
share of talent; to his parents he was every thing they could desire;
towards his mother he exhibited the tenderness and devotion of a
daughter, and his demeanor to his father was that of an obedient son,
and most faithful friend; at intervals he enjoyed with them the pleasure
they experienced in receiving guests of the highest consideration;
amongst them the eccentric Madame de Genlis, who put their politeness to
the test by the exercise of her peculiarities, and horrified the meek
and amiable Sir Joshua Reynolds by the assumption of talents she did not
possess.

The publication of his reflections on the French Revolution, which,
perhaps, never would have seen the light but for the rupture with Mr.
Sheridan, which caused his opinions to be misunderstood, brought down
the applause of Europe on a head then wearying of public life.

But, perhaps, a tribute Burke valued more than any, remembering the
adage--an adage which, unhappily, especially applies to Ireland--"no man
is a prophet in his own country," was, that on a motion of the provost
of Trinity College, Dublin, in 1790, the honorary degree of LL.D. was
conferred upon him in full convocation, and an address afterwards
presented in a gold box, to express the University's sense of his
services. When he replied to this distinguished compliment, his town
residence was in "Duke-street, St. James."

His term of life--over-tasked as it was--might have been extended to a
much longer period, but that his deeply affectionate nature, as time
passed on, experienced several of those shocks inseparable from even
moderate length of days; many of his friends died; among others, his
sister and his brother; but still the wife of his bosom and his son were
with him--that son whose talents he rated as superior to his own, whom
he had consulted for some years on almost every subject, whether of a
public or a private nature, that occurred, and very frequently preferred
his judgment to his own. This beloved son had attained the age of
thirty-four, when he was seized with rapid consumption. When the malady
was recognized and acknowledged, his father took him to Brompton, then,
as now, considered the best air for those affected with this cruel
malady. "Cromwell House," chosen as their temporary residence, is
standing still, though there is little doubt the rage for extending
London through this once sequestered and rural suburb, will soon raze it
to the ground, as it has done others of equal interest.

[Illustration: CROMWELL HOUSE.]

We have always regarded "Cromwell House," as it is called, with
veneration. In our earliest acquaintance with a neighborhood, in which
we lived so long and still love so well, this giant dwelling, staring
with its whited walls and balconied roof over the tangled gardens which
seemed to cut it off from all communication with the world, was
associated with our "Hero Worship" of Oliver Cromwell. We were told he
had lived there (what neighborhood has not its "Cromwell House?")--that
the ghastly old place had private staircases and subterranean
passages--some underground communication with Kensington--that there
were doors in the walls, and out of the walls; and, that if not careful
you might be precipitated through trap-doors into some unfathomable
abyss, and encounter the ghost of old Oliver himself. These tales
operated upon our imagination in the usual way; and many and many a
moonlight evening, while wandering in those green lanes--now obliterated
by Onslow and Thurloe Squares--and listening to the nightingales, have
we watched the huge shadows cast by that solitary and melancholy-looking
house, and, as we have said, associated it with the stern and grand
Protector of England. Upon closer investigation, how grieved we have
often been to discover the truth, for it destroyed not only our castles
in the air, but their inhabitants; we found that Oliver never resided
there, but that his son, Richard, had, and was a rate payer to the
parish of Kensington for some time. To this lonely sombre house Mr. and
Mrs. Burke and their son removed, in the hope that the soft mild air of
this salubrious neighborhood might restore his failing strength; the
consciousness of his being in danger was something too terrible for them
to think of. He had just received a new appointment--an appointment
suited to his tastes and expectations; he must take possession of it in
a little time. He was their child, their friend, their treasure, their
all! Surely God would spare him to close their eyes. How could death and
he meet together? They entreated him of God, by prayer, and
supplication, and tears that flowed until their eyes were dry and their
eyelids parched--but all in vain. The man, in his prime of manhood, was
stricken down; we transcribe, from an article in the _Quarterly Review_,
on "Fontenelle's Signs of Death," the brief account of his last moments:

"Burke's son, upon whom his father has conferred something of his own
celebrity, heard his parents sobbing in another room at the prospect of
an event they knew to be inevitable. He rose from his bed, joined his
illustrious father, and endeavored to engage him in a cheerful
conversation. Burke continued silent, choked with grief. His son again
made an effort to console him. 'I am under no terror,' he said; 'I feel
myself better and in spirits, and yet my heart flutters, I know not why.
Pray, talk to me, sir! talk of religion; talk of morality; talk, if you
will, of indifferent subjects.' Here a noise attracted his notice, and
he exclaimed, 'Does it rain?--No; it is the rustling of the wind through
the trees.' The whistling of the wind and the waving of the trees
brought Milton's majestic lines to his mind, and he repeated them with
uncommon grace and effect:

    'His praise, ye winds, that from four quarters blow,
    Breathe soft or loud; and wave your tops, ye pines,
    With every plant, in sign of worship wave!'

A second time he took up the sublime and melodious strain, and,
accompanying the action to the word, waved his own hand in token of
worship, and sank into the arms of his father--a corpse. Not a sensation
told him that in an instant he would stand in the presence of the
Creator to whom his body was bent in homage, and whose praises still
resounded from his lips."

The account which all the biographies of Burke give of the effect this
bereavement produced upon his parents is most fearful even to read; what
must it have been to witness? His mother seems to have regained her
self-possession sooner than his father. In one of his letters to the
late Baron Smith, he writes--"So heavy a calamity has fallen upon me as
to disable me from business, and disqualifies me for repose. The
existence I have--_I do not know that I can call life_. * * Good nights
to you--I never have any." And again--"The life which has been so
embittered cannot long endure. The grave will soon close over me, and my
dejections." To Lord Auckland he writes--"For myself, or for my family
(alas! I have none), I have nothing to hope or to fear in this world."
And again in another letter--"The storm has gone over me, and I lie like
one of those old oaks which the late hurricane has scattered about me. I
am stripped of all my honors, I lie prostrate on the earth; I am alone,
I have none to meet my enemies in the gate. I greatly deceive myself, if
in this hard season of life, I would give a peck of refuse wheat for all
that is called fame and honor in the world."

There is some thing in the "wail" and character of these laments that
recalls the mournful Psalms of David; like the Psalmist he endeavored to
be comforted, but it was by an effort. His political career was shrouded
for ever--the _motive_ to his great exertions was destroyed--but his
mind, wrecked as it had been, could not remain inactive. In 1795 his
_private_ reply to Mr. Smith's letter, requesting his opinion of the
expediency of and necessity for Catholic Emancipation, got into public
circulation; and in that singular document, though he did not enter into
the details of the question with as much minuteness as he would
previously have done, he pleaded for the removal of the whole of the
disabilities of the Roman Catholic body. From time to time he put forth
a small work on some popular question. He originated several plans for
benefiting the poor in his own neighborhood. He had a windmill in his
park for the purpose of supplying the poor with cheap bread, which bread
was served at his own table; and, as if clinging to the memory of the
youth of his son, he formed a plan for the establishment of an emigrant
school at Penn, where the children of those who had perished by the
guillotine or the sword amid the French convulsions, could be received,
supported, and educated. He made a generous appeal to government for the
benefit of these children, which was as generously responded to. The
house appropriated to this humane purpose had been inhabited by Burke's
old friend, General Haviland; and after his death several emigré French
priests sheltered within its walls. Until his last fatal illness Mr.
Burke watched over the establishment with the solicitude of a friend and
the tenderness of a father. The Lords of the Treasury allowed fifty
pounds per month for its sustenance: the Marquis of Buckingham made them
a present of a brass cannon and a stand of colors. When the Bourbons
were restored in 1814 they relieved the government from this charge, and
the institution was dissolved in 1820; in 1822 "Tyler's Green House," as
it was called, was sold in lots, pulled down, and carried away; thus,
Burke's own dwelling being destroyed by fire, and this building,
sanctified by his sympathy and goodness, razed to the ground, little
remains to mark the locality of places where all the distinguished men
of the age congregated around "the Burkes," and where Edmund, almost to
the last, extended hospitalities, coveted and appreciated by all who had
any pretensions to be considered as distinguished either by talent or
fortune.

It has frequently struck us as strange, the morbid avidity with which
the world seizes upon the slightest evidence of abstraction in great
men, to declare that their minds are fading, or impoverished: the public
gapes for every trifle calculated to prove that the palsied fingers can
no longer grasp the intellectual sceptre, and that the well-worn and
hard-earned bays are as a crown of thorns to the pulseless brow. It was,
in those days whispered in London that the great orator had become
imbecile immediately after the publication of his "_Letter to a Noble
Lord_;" and that he wandered about his park kissing his cows and horses.

A noble friend went immediately to Beaconsfield to ascertain the truth,
and was delighted to find Mr. Burke anxious to read him passages from "A
Regicide Peace," which he was then writing; after a little delicate
manoeuvring on his part, to ascertain the truth, Mr. Burke told him a
touching incident which proved the origin of this calumny on his
intellectual powers.

An old horse, a great favorite of his son's, and his constant companion,
when both were full of life and health, had been turned out at the death
of his master, to take his run of the park for the remainder of his
life, at ease, with strict injunctions to the servants that he should
neither be ridden, nor molested by any one. While musing one day,
loitering along, Mr. Burke perceived this worn-out old servant come
close up to him, and at length, after some moments spent in viewing his
person, followed by seeming recollection and confidence, he deliberately
rested his head upon his bosom. The singularity of the action itself,
the remembrance of his dead son, its late master, who occupied so much
of his thoughts at all times, and the apparent attachment, tenderness
and intelligence of the creature towards him--as if it could sympathize
with his inward sorrow--rushing at once into his mind, totally
overpowered his firmness, and throwing his arms over its neck, he wept
long and loudly.

But though his lucid and beautiful mind, however agonized, remained
unclouded to the last, and his affections glowed towards his old friends
as warmly as ever, his bodily health was failing fast; one of the last
letters he ever dictated was to Mary Leadbeater, the daughter of his old
friend and master, Shackleton; this lady was subsequently well known in
Ireland as the author of "Cottage Dialogues." The first literary
attempt, we believe, made towards the improvement of the lower order of
Irish, was by her faithful and earnest pen; to this letter,
congratulating her on the birth of a son, is a PS. where the invalid
says:--"I have been at Bath these four months to no purpose, and am
therefore to be removed to my own house at Beaconsfield to-morrow, _to
be nearer to a habitation more permanent, humbly_ and fearfully hoping
that my better part may find a better mansion!"

It would seem as if he anticipated the hour of his passing away. He sent
sweet messages of loving-kindness to all his friends, entreating and
exchanging pardons; recapitulated his motives of action on various
political emergencies; gave directions as to his funeral, and then
listened with attention to some serious papers of Addison on religious
subjects and on the immortality of the soul. His attendants after this
were in the act of removing him to his bed, when indistinctly invoking a
blessing on all around him, he sunk down and expired on the 9th of July,
1797, in the sixty-eighth year of his age.

"His end," said his friend Doctor Lawrence, "was suited to the simple
greatness of mind which he displayed through life; every way unaffected,
without levity, without ostentation, full of natural grace and dignity,
he appeared neither to wish nor to dread, but patiently and placidly to
await the appointed hour of his dissolution."

[Illustration: THE TOMB OF EDMUND BURKE.]

It was almost impossible to people, in fancy, the tattered and neglected
churchyard of Beaconsfield as it now is--with those who swelled the
funeral pomp of the greatest ornament of the British senate; to imagine
the titled pall-bearers, where the swine were tumbling over graves, and
rooting at headstones. Seldom, perhaps never, in England, had we seen a
churchyard so little cared for as that, where the tomb of Waller[6]
renders the surrounding disorder "in a sacred place" more conspicuous by
its lofty pretension, and where the church is regarded as the mausoleum
of Edmund Burke.[7] Surely the "decency of churchyards" ought to be
enforced, if those to whom they should be sacred trusts, neglect or
forget their duty. That the churchyard of Beaconsfield, which has long
been considered "a shrine," should be suffered to remain in the state in
which we saw it, is a disgrace not only to the town, but to England; it
was differently cared for during Burke's lifetime, and though, like that
of the revered Queen Dowager, his Will expressed a disinclination to
posthumous honors, and unnecessary expense, never were mourners more
sincere--never did there arise to the blue vault of heaven the incense
of greater, and more deep-felt sorrow, than from the multitude who
assembled in and around the church, while the mortal remains of Edmund
Burke were placed in the same vault with his son and brother.

The tablet to his memory, placed on the wall of the south aisle of the
church, records his last resting-place with the relatives just named; as
well as the fact of the same grave containing the body of his "entirely
beloved and incomparable wife," who died in 1812, at the age of 76.

Deeply do we deplore that the dwelling where he enjoyed so much that
renders life happy, and suffered what sanctifies and prepares us for a
better world, exists no longer; but his name is incorporated with our
history, and adds another to the list of the great men who have been
called into life and received their first and best impressions in
Ireland; and if Ireland had given nothing to her more prosperous sister
than the extraordinary men of the past and present century, she merits
her gratitude for the gifts which bestow so much honor and glory on the
United Kingdoms.

Mrs. Burke, previous to her death, sold the mansion to her neighbor, Mr.
John Du Pré, of Wilton Park. Mrs. Haviland, Mr. Burke's niece, lived
with her to the last, though she did not receive the portion of her
fortune to which she was considered entitled. Her son, Thomas Haviland
Burke, grand-nephew of Edmund, became the lineal representative of the
family; but the library, and all the tokens of respect and admiration
which he received from the good, and from the whole world, went with the
property to _Mrs. Burke's_ nephew, Mr. Nugent. Some of the sculpture
which ornamented the house now graces the British Museum.

The mansion was burnt on the 23d of April, 1813. The ground where it
stood is unequal; and some of the park wall remains, and fine old trees
still flourish, beneath whose shade we picture the meeting between the
mourning father and the favorite horse of his lost son.

There is a full-length portrait of Edmund Burke in the Examination Hall
of the Dublin University. All such portraits should be copied, and
preserved in our own Houses of Parliament, a meet honor to the dead, and
a stimulant to the living to "go and do likewise." It hardly realizes,
however, the _ideal_ of Burke; perhaps no portrait could. What Miss
Edgeworth called the "ground-plan of the face" is there; but we must
imagine the varying expression, the light of the bright quick eyes, the
eloquence of the unclosed lips, the storm which could gather
thunder-clouds on the well-formed brow; but we have far exceeded our
limits without exhausting our subject, and, with Dr. Parr, still would
speak of Burke:

"Of Burke, by whose sweetness Athens herself would have been soothed,
with whose amplitude and exuberance she would have been enraptured and
on whose lips that prolific mother of genius and science would have
adored, confessed--the Goddess of Persuasion."

Alas! we have lingered long at his shrine, and yet our praise is not
half spoken.

--[The notes and drawings for this paper were contributed by F. W.
Fairhold, of the Society of Antiquaries.]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Sylvanus Spenser, the eldest son of the Poet Spenser, married Ellen
Nagle, eldest daughter of David Nagle, Esq., ancestor of the lady, who
was mother to Edmund Burke.

[2] This as a picture is outlined with so delicate a pencil, and colored
with such mingled purity and richness of tone, that we transcribe a few
passages, as much in honor of the man who could write, as the woman who
could inspire such praise:--

"The character of ----

"She is handsome, but it is beauty not arising from features, from
complexion, or from shape. She has all three in a high degree, but it is
not by these she touches a heart; it is all that sweetness of temper,
benevolence, innocence, and sensibility, which a face can express, that
forms her beauty. She has a face that just raises your attention at
first sight; it grows on you every moment, and you wonder it did no more
than raise your attention at first.

"Her eyes have a mild light, but they awe when she pleases; they command
like a good man out of office, not by authority, but by virtue.

"Her stature is not tall, she is not made to be the admiration of every
body, but the happiness of one.

"She has all the firmness that does not exclude delicacy--she has all
the softness that does not imply weakness. * *

"Her voice is a soft, low, music, not formed to rule in public
assemblies, but to charm those who can distinguish a company from a
crowd: it has this advantage--_you must come close to her to hear it_.

"To describe her body, describes her mind; one is the transcript of the
other; her understanding is not shown in the variety of matters it
exerts itself on, but in the goodness of the choice she makes.

"She does not display it so much in saying or doing striking things, as
in avoiding such as she ought _not_ to say or do."

       *       *       *       *       *

"No persons of so few years can know the world better; no person was
ever less corrupted by the knowledge.

"Her politeness flows rather from a natural disposition to oblige, than
from any rules on that subject, and therefore never fails to strike
those who understand good breeding, and those who do not."

       *       *       *       *       *

"She has a steady and firm mind, _which takes no more from the solidity
of the female character, than the solidity of marble does from its
polish and lustre_. She has such virtues as make us value the truly
great of our own sex. She has all the winning graces that make us love
even the faults we see in the weak and beautiful in hers."

[3] Our cut exhibits all that now remains of Gregories--a few walls and
a portion of the old stables. Mrs. Burke, before her death, sold the
mansion to her neighbor, Mr. John Du Pré, of Wilton Park. It was
destroyed by fire soon afterwards.

[4] During Barry's five years' residence abroad he earned nothing for
himself, and received no supplies save from Edmund and Richard Burke.

[5] Mr. Prior says in his admirable Life of Burke--"How the money to
effect this purchase was procured has given rise to many surmises and
reports; a considerable portion was his own, the bequest of his father
and elder brother. The Marquis of Rockingham offered the loan of the
amount required to complete the purchase; the Marquis was under
obligations to him publicly, and privately for some attention paid to
the business of his large estates in Ireland. Less disinterested men
would have settled the matter otherwise--the one by quartering his
friend, the other, by being quartered, on the public purse. To the honor
of both, a different course was pursued."

[6] Waller was a resident in this vicinity, in which his landed property
chiefly lay. He lived in the family mansion named Well's Court, a
property still in the possession of his descendants. His tomb is a table
monument of white marble, upon which rises a pyramid, resting on skulls
with bat's wings; it is a peculiar but picturesque addition to the
churchyard, and, from its situation close to the walk, attracts much
attention.

[7] Our engraving exhibits his simple tablet, as seen from the central
aisle of the church, immediately in front of the pew in which Burke and
his family always sat.




POEMS BY S. G. GOODRICH[8]


For the last twenty years the name of Mr. Goodrich has been very
constantly associated with American literature. He commenced as a
publisher, in Boston, and was among the first to encourage by liberal
copyrights, and to make attractive by elegant editions, the works of
American authors. One of his earliest undertakings was a collection of
the novels of Charles Brockden Brown, with a memoir of that author, by
his widow, with whom he shared the profits. In 1828 he began "The
Token," an annual literary souvenir, which he edited and published
fourteen years. In this appeared the first fruits of the genius of
Cheney, who has long been acknowledged the master of American engravers;
and the first poems and prose writings of Longfellow, Willis, Mellen,
Mrs. Osgood, Mrs. Child, Mrs. Sigourney, and other eminent authors. In
"The Token" also were printed his own earlier lyrical pieces. The work
was of the first rank in its class, and in England as well as in this
country it was uniformly praised.

In 1831 an anonymous romance was published by Marsh & Capen, of Boston.
It was attributed by some to Willis, and by others to Mrs. Child, then
Miss Francis. It illustrated a fine and peculiar genius, but was soon
forgotten. Mr. Goodrich appreciated its merits, and applied to the
publishers for the name of the author, that he might engage him as a
contributor to "The Token." They declined to disclose his secret, but
offered to forward a letter to him. Mr. Goodrich wrote one, and received
an answer signed by NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, many of whose best productions,
as "Sights from a Steeple," "Sketches under an Umbrella," "The Prophetic
Pictures," "Canterbury Pilgrims," &c., appeared in this annual. In 1839,
Mr. Goodrich suggested to Mr. Hawthorne the publication of a collection
of his tales, surrendering his copyrights to several of them for this
purpose; but so little were the extraordinary qualities of this
admirable author then understood, that the publishers would not venture
upon such an experiment without an assurance against loss, which Mr.
Goodrich, as his friend, therefore gave. The public judgment will be
entitled to little respect, if the copyright of the works of Hawthorne
be not hereafter a most ample fortune.

Mr. Goodrich soon abandoned the business of publishing, and, though
still editing "The Token," devoted his attention chiefly to the writing
of that series of educational works, known as _Peter Parley's_, which
has spread his fame over the world. The whole number of these volumes is
about sixty. Among them are treatises upon a great variety of subjects,
and they are remarkable for simplicity of style and felicity of
illustration. Mr. Goodrich has accomplished a complete and important
revolution in juvenile reading, substituting truth and nature for
grotesque fiction in the materials and processes of instruction, and
his method has been largely imitated, at home and abroad. In England
many authors and publishers have disgraced the literary profession by
works under the name of "Parley," with which he has had nothing to do,
and which have none of his wise and genial spirit.

Besides his writings under this pseudonym, Mr. Goodrich has produced
several works of a more ambitious character, which have been eminently
popular. Among them is a series entitled "The Cabinet Library,"
embracing histories, biographies, and essays in science; "Universal
Geography," in an octavo volume of one thousand pages; and a "History of
all Nations," in two large octavos, in which he has displayed such
research, analysis, and generalization, as should insure for him an
honorable rank among historians. We cannot better illustrate his
popularity than by stating the fact, that more than four hundred
thousand volumes of his various productions are now annually sold in
this country and Europe. No living writer is, therefore, as much read,
and in the United States hardly a citizen now makes his first appearance
at the polls, or a bride at the altar, to whose education he has not in
a large degree contributed. For twenty years he has preserved the
confidence of parents and teachers of every variety of condition and
opinion, by the indefectible morality and strong practical sense, which
are universally understood and approved.

Like many other eminent persons, Mr. Goodrich lets sought occasional
relaxation from the main pursuits of his life in poetry, and the volume
before us contains some forty illustrations of his abilities, as a
worshipper of the muse whose temples are most thronged, but who is most
coy and most chary of her inspiration. They have for the most part been
previously printed in "The Token," or in literary journals, but a few
are now published the first time. In typographical and pictorial
elegance the book is unique. It is an exhibition of the success of the
first attempt to rival the London and Paris publishers in woodcut
embellishment and general beauty of execution.

That Mr. Goodrich possesses the poetical faculty in an eminent degree,
no one has doubted who has read his fine lines "To Lake Superior:"

[Illustration]

    Father of Lakes! thy waters bend,
      Beyond the eagle's utmost view,
    When, throned in heaven, he sees thee send
      Back to the sky its world of blue.

    Boundless and deep the forests weave
      Their twilight shade thy borders o'er,
    And threatening cliffs, like giants, heave
      Their rugged forms along thy shore.

    Nor can the light canoes, that glide
      Across thy breast like things of air,
    Chase from thy lone and level tide,
      The spell of stillness deepening there.

    Yet round this waste of wood and wave,
      Unheard, unseen, a spirit lives,
    That, breathing o'er each rock and cave,
      To all, a wild, strange aspect gives.

    The thunder-riven oak, that flings
      Its grisly arms athwart the sky,
    A sudden, startling image brings
      To the lone traveller's kindled eye.

    The gnarled and braided boughs that show
      Their dim forms in the forest shade,
    Like wrestling serpents seem, and throw
      Fantastic horrors through the glade.

    The very echoes round this shore,
      Have caught a strange and gibbering tone,
    For they have told the war-whoop o'er,
      Till the wild chorus is their own.

    Wave of the wilderness, adieu--
      Adieu, ye rocks, ye wilds, ye woods!
    Roll on, thou Element of blue,
      And fill these awful solitudes!

    Thou hast no tale to tell of man.
      God is thy theme. Ye sounding caves,
    Whisper of Him, whose mighty plan,
      Deems as a bubble all your waves!

The "Birth Night of the Humming Birds" has been declared by the London
_Athenæum_ equal to Dr. Drake's "Culprit Fay," and it may be regarded as
in its way the best specimen of Mr. Goodrich's talents. It is too long
to be quoted in these paragraphs. In descriptions of nature he is
uniformly successful, presenting his picture with force and
distractness.

There are many examples of this in one of his longest poems, "The
Mississippi," in which the traditions that cluster around the Father of
Waters, and the advances of civility along his borders, are graphically
presented. The river is described as rising.

[Illustration]

    "Far in the west, where snow-capt mountain's rise,
      Like marble shafts beneath heaven's stooping dome,
    And sunset's charming curtain drapes the skies
      As if Enchantment there would build her home.

The bard laments that

            "though these scenes are fair
    As fabled Arcady, the sylph and fay,
      And all their gentle kindred, shun the air,
    Where car and steamer make their stormy way;"

Yet trusts that in a future time,

    "Perchance some Cooper's magic art may wake
      The sleeping legends of this mighty vale,
    And twine fond memories round the lawn and lake,
      Where Warrior fought or Lover told his tale.

In the volume are several allegorical pieces of much merit, of which the
most noticeable are the "Two Windmills," "The Bubble Chase," and "The
Rainbow Bridge." Several smaller poems are distinguished for a quaint
simplicity, reminding us of the old masters of English verse; and
others, for refined sentiment, as the "Old Oak," of which the key-note
is in the lines,

    Here is the grassy knoll I used to seek
      At summer noon, beneath the spreading shade,
    And watch the flowers that stooped, with glowing cheek,
      To meet the romping ripples as they played.

[Illustration]

The longest of Mr. Goodrich's poems is "The Outcast." It was first
published many years ago, and it appears now with the improvements
suggested by reflection and criticism. Its fault is, a certain
_intensity_, but it has noble passages, betraying a careful study and
profound appreciation of the subtler operations of the mind,
particularly, when, in its most excited action, it is influenced by the
observation of nature.

The volume will take its place in the cabinets of our choice literature,
and will be prized the more for the fact that by selecting American
themes for his most elaborate compositions, Mr. Goodrich has made
literature subservient to the purposes of patriotism.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] _Poems: by S. G. Goodrich._ New York, G. P. Putnam. [The
designs--about forty--are by Mr. Billings, the engravings by Bobbett &
Edmonds, Lossing & Barrett, Hartwell, and others, and the printing by
Mr. John F. Trow.]




[Illustration]

RICHARD B. KIMBALL.


The author of "_St. Leger_" was by that admirable work placed in the
leading rank of the new generation of American writers. The appearance
in the _Knickerbocker_ for the present month, of the commencement of a
sequel to "St. Leger," makes it a fit occasion for some notice of his
life and genius.

Mr. Kimball is by inheritance of the first class of New-England men,
numbering in his family a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a
President of the Continental Congress, and several other persons
honorably distinguished in affairs. He is a native of Lebanon, in New
Hampshire, where his father is still living--the centre of a circle
bound to him by their respect for every public and private virtue.
Though he had completed his preparatory studies before he was eleven
years of age, he did not enter college until he was nearly thirteen.
Four years after, in 1834, he graduated at Dartmouth, and upon devoting
one year to the study of the law, he went abroad; travelled in England,
Scotland, and Germany; and resided some time in Paris, where he attended
the lectures of Majendie, Broussais, and Louis, in medicine, and those
of the elder Dupin, and Coulanges, in law. Returning, he entered upon
the practice of the law, at Waterford, in this state, but soon removed
to New-York, where a year's devotion to his profession made him familiar
with its routine. In 1842 he went a second time to Europe, renewing the
associations of his travel and student-life in Great Britain and on the
continent. Since, for seven years, he has been an industrious and
successful lawyer in New-York.

Although but few works are known to be from the pen of Mr. Kimball, he
has been a voluminous author. The vigorous and polished style of his
avowed compositions, is never attained but by long practice. He has
been, we believe, a contributor to every volume of the _Knickerbocker_
published since 1842. He printed in that excellent magazine his
"Reminiscences of an Old Man," "The Young Englishman," and the
successive chapters of "St. Leger, or the Threads of Life." This last
work was published by Putnam, and by Bentley in London, about one year
ago, and it passed rapidly through two English and three American
editions. It was not raised into an ephemeral popularity, as so many
works of fiction easily are, for their lightness, by careless applauses;
it arrested the attention of the wisest critics; commanded their study,
and received their verdict of approval as a book of learning and
reflection in the anatomy of human life.

Mr. Kimball had been eminent in his class at college for a love of Greek
literature, and he studied the Roman also with reverent attention. It
was his distinction that he had thoroughly acquainted himself with the
philosophy of the ancients. At a later day he was attracted by the
speculation of the Germans, and a mastery of their language enabled him
to enter fully into the spirit of Spinosa, Kant, and Fichte, as he did
into that of the finer intelligences, Göethe and Richter, and pervading
he found the passion to know Whence are we? What are we? Whither do we
go? In "St. Leger," a mind predisposed to superstition by some vague
prophecies respecting the destiny of his family--a mind inquisitive,
quick, and earnest, but subject to occasional melancholy, as the
inherited spell obtains a mastery of the reason--is exposed to the
influences of a various study, and startling experiences, all conceived
with a profound knowledge of human nature, and displayed with consummate
art; having a metaphysical if not a strictly dramatic unity; and
conducting by the subtlest processes, to the determination of these
questions, and the flowering of a high and genial character; as
Professor Tayler Lewis expresses it, "at rest, deriving substantial
enjoyment from the present, because satisfied with respect to the
ultimate, and perfect, and absolute."[9]

Aside from its qualities as a delineation of a deep inner experience,
"St. Leger" has very great merits as a specimen of popular romantic
fiction. The varied characters are admirably drawn, and are individual,
distinct, and effectively contrasted. The incidents are all shaped and
combined with remarkable skill; and, as the _Athenaeum_ observes, "Here,
there, everywhere, the author gives evidence of passionate and romantic
power." In some of the episodes, as in that of Wolfgang Hegewisch, for
example, in which are illustrated the tendency of a desperate philosophy
and hopeless skepticism, we have that sort of mastery of the feelings,
that chaining of the intensest interest, which distinguishes the most
wonderful compositions of Poe, or the German Hoffman, or Zschokke in his
"Walpurgis Night;" and every incident in the book tends with directest
certainty to the fulfilment of its main design.

The only other work of which Mr. Kimball is the acknowledged author, is
"Cuba and the Cubans;" a volume illustrative of the history, and social,
political, and economical condition of the island of Cuba, written
during the excitement occasioned by its invasion from the United States,
in 1849, and exhibiting a degree of research, and a judicial fairness of
statement and argument, which characterizes no other production upon
this subject. As it was generally admitted to be the most reliable,
complete, and altogether important work, upon points commanding the
attention of several nations, its circulation was very large; but it was
produced for a temporary purpose, and it will be recalled to popularity
only by a renewal of the inevitable controversies which await the
political relations of the Antilles.

"A Story of Calais," in the following pages, is an example of Mr.
Kimball's success as a tale writer. Though less remarkable than passages
in "St. Leger," it will vindicate his right to a place among the chief
creators of such literature among us.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] The Inner-Life, a Review of St. Leger, by Professor Tayler Lewis,
LL. D., &c.




THE BISHOP OF JAMAICA.


Among the distinguished strangers who visited the United States during
the last season, no one has left a more favorable impression upon
American society than the thoroughly accomplished scholar and highbred
gentleman, the Bishop of Jamaica. We propose a brief sketch of his
history:

AUBREY GEORGE SPENCER, D.D. and D.C.L., was born in London on the 12th
of February, 1795, and is the eldest son of the late Hon. William
Spencer, the poet, whose father, Lord Charles Spencer, was a son of
Charles the second Duke of Marlborough, and grandson of John Churchill,
the illustrious hero of Ramillies and Blenheim. His Christian names were
given by the Dukes of St. Albans and Marlborough, who were his great
uncles and godfathers. His mother was Susan Jennison, a countess of the
Holy Roman Empire, and a lady of singular beauty and accomplishments, to
whom Mr. William Spencer was married at the court of Hesse Darmstadt, in
1791. Aubrey Spencer and his younger brother George (subsequently Bishop
of Madras,) received the rudiments of learning at the Abbey School of
St. Albans, whence the former was soon removed to the seminary of the
celebrated Grecian, D. Burme, of Greenwich, and the latter to the
Charter house. For some time previous to his matriculation at Magdalen
Hall, Oxford, Mr. Aubrey Spencer was the private pupil of Mr. Mitchell,
the very learned translator of Aristophanes. At the house of his father
in Curzon street, at Melbourne House in Chiswick, Blenheim, and
Woolbeednig, Hallowell Hill, (the seat of the Countess Dowager Spencer,)
he was in frequent and familiar intercourse with many of the most
distinguished contemporary statesmen, philosophers, and other men of
letters; and in this society his own literary and conversational talents
obtained an early celebrity, and commended him to the regard and
friendship of Mr. Rogers, Mr. Campbell, Lord Byron, Mr. Hallam, Lord
Dudley, Mr. Coutts, Mr. Wordsworth, Mr. Francis, Mr. Homer, Thomas
Moore, Mr. Southey, Lady Caroline Lamb, Mr. Crabb, and many other
authors, with some of whom he still maintains a correspondence, while
some have fallen asleep.

With the society of the county of Oxford, and with that of the
University, he was equally popular. In the early part of the year 1818,
he took leave of his College, on being ordained deacon, and entered on a
charge of the parish of Great Oakering, in the diocese of London. From
this, which is a very unhealthy part of Essex, he removed at the end of
the year to Bannam, Norfolk, where he became the neighbor and frequent
guest of the Earl of Albemarle and the Bishop of Norwich. In March,
1819, he was admitted a priest, and soon after gave up the brilliant
society in which he had hitherto lived, and devoted himself to the
Church in the Colonies, where, for a quarter of a century, he has filled
a distinguished part as archdeacon and bishop.

His first visit to the Bermudas was undertaken for the recovery of his
health, to which a colder climate has always been hostile; and when, in
the year 1825, these islands were attached to the diocese of Nova
Scotia, he was, at the instance of the late Primate, appointed to them
as Archdeacon and Ecclesiastical Commissary to the Bishop of the see.
Here he may be said to have created the Ecclesiastical Establishment
which, under his conciliatory influence, has so rapidly and largely
increased; and with it he soon associated the revival of Bishop
Berkeley's Classical Academy, and a system of general instruction, of
which a chain of schoolhouses, from either extremity of the island, are
the abiding monuments.

From his connection with the Bishop of Nova Scotia, the visits of
Archdeacon Spencer to that colony were frequent, and many of the
inhabitants both of that province and of New Brunswick retain a lively
impression of his abilities, as they were illustrated in his preaching
and in the practice of the other duties of his profession and position.

In July, 1839, Dr. Spencer was consecrated by the venerable Archbishop
of Canterbury, on the nomination of the crown, to the new see of
Newfoundland, retaining still episcopal jurisdiction over the isles of
Bermuda, under the extension of the Colonial Episcopate, which relieved
the indefatigable Bishop of Nova Scotia of a large portion of his cares.
The new Bishop was enabled, by the aid of the Society for the Promotion
of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, to quadruple the number of his clergy
within four years, and to consecrate more than twenty additional
churches within the same period. A very grateful sense of the Bishop's
exertions, and of the prosperous results of his unceasing labor, was
manifested in the several addresses presented to his lordship on his
subsequent translation to the diocese of Jamaica, by the clergy and
laity of Newfoundland and Bermuda.

In a paper which only purports to be a biographical notice of one who is
still living, it is not desirable to do more than briefly advert to the
principal topics and dates of a history which may hereafter be
advantageously amplified and filled up. The real progress of the
established church in Newfoundland at this period, would be best
gathered from the Bishop's letters to the government and the religious
societies, and to the clergy under his jurisdiction, but to these
documents it is not likely that any biographer will have unreserved
access during the life of his lordship.

On the decease of Bishop Lipscombe, in April, 1843, Bishop Spencer was
translated, under circumstances peculiarly indicative of the high
opinion which was had of his ability by the Queen's ministers and the
heads of the English church, to the see of Jamaica, one of the most
important connected with the crown. He quitted his old diocese, as the
papers of the day amply testify, with the respect of all denominations
of Christians. A national ship, the Hermes, was appointed to convey him
and his family and suite to Jamaica, where he arrived in the first week
of November, having made the land on the auspicious festival of All
Saints.

The sermon delivered by him at his installation, in the cathedral at
Spanish Town, was published at the request of the Speaker of the House
of Assembly, while the Earl of Elgin, the Governor-General, in his
speech to the Legislature, "congratulated the inhabitants of Jamaica on
the appointment of a prelate of such approved talents and piety to that
see." At every point of the Bishop's visitation, which he commenced by a
convention of eighty clergymen, at Spanish Town, he was met by
congratulatory addresses from the vestries, and other corporate bodies,
declaratory of their confidence in his projected measures, and of their
desire to aid him in the extension of the church. In consonance with his
views the local Legislature passed an act increasing the number of
island curates, and providing higher salaries for their support, while
at the same time, they granted three thousand pounds as a first
instalment to the Church Society, which had been organized by him, and
to which the Governor-General contributed the annual sum of one hundred
pounds.

On his visit to England in 1845 and in the beginning of 1846, he was
continually employed in preaching in aid of various charities, and in
assisting at public meetings which had for their object the promotion of
Christianity by the servants of the church. At the weekly meetings of
the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, in London, he was a
constant attendant; and the increase of the funds of that association,
and the conciliation to it of many powerful supporters, are result of
measures which may be traced to his projection and tact. In his reply to
an address from the clergy, on his return from a recent visitation,
published at length in the last annual report of the parent Society for
the Propagation of the Gospel, will be found the clearest exposition of
the existing state and future prospects of the church in Jamaica; and a
charge addressed by his lordship to the clergy of the Bahamas, on the
subject of a difficult and embarrassing question, for the adjustment of
which the Bishop received the thanks of the Queen's government and of
the local Executive, is full of valuable information on the condition,
principles and progress of the colonial establishment. In closing the
last session of the Bahamas Legislature, Governor Gregory declared in
his speech, with reference to this matter, that he considered the
arrival of the Bishop in the island, at that juncture, as a convincing
proof of the interposition of a special Providence in the conduct of
human affairs.

In 1822, the Bishop was married to Eliza, the daughter of John Musson,
Esq., and the sister of a former friend at the University. He has had
one son, now deceased, and has three daughters.

As a man of letters, Bishop Spencer is entitled to a very honorable
position. As a scholar and as a critic, he has evinced such abilities
as, fitly devoted, would have secured fame; as a poet and essayist, he
has unusual grace and elegance; and a collection of the various
compositions with which he has relieved the monotony and arduous labors
of his professional and official career, would vindicate his title to be
classed with those prelates who have been most eminent in the literary
world.

The following poems, from autographs of Bishop Spencer, we believe are
first given to the public in the _International_.

"HE GIVETH HIS BELOVED SLEEP."

    I tread the church-yard's path alone,
    Unseen to shed the gushing tear:
    I read on many a mould'ring stone
    Fond records of the good and dear.
    My soul is well-nigh faint with fear,
    Where doubting many went to weep;
    And yet what sweet repose is here--
      "He giveth His beloved sleep!"

    The world has but a feverish rest,
    To weary pilgrims sometimes given,
    When pleasure's cup has lost its zest,
    And glory's hard-earned crown is riven.
    Here, softer than the dews of even
    Fall peaceful on the slumbering deep,
    Asleep to earth, awake to heaven--
      "He giveth His beloved sleep."

    Yes, on the grave's hard pillows rise
    No cankering cares, no dreams of woe;
    On earth we close our aching eyes,
    And heavenward all our visions grow.
    The airs of Eden round us flow,
    And in their balm our slumbers steep.
    God calls His chosen home, and so
      "He giveth His beloved sleep."

    Ah! vainly could the human voice,
    In this dull world of sin and folly,
    Tell how the sainted dead rejoice
    In those high realms where joy is holy--
    Where no dim shade of melancholy
    Beclouds the rest which angels keep,
    Where, peace and bliss united wholly
      "He giveth His beloved sleep."

    If on that brow so fair, so young,
    Affliction trace an early furrow,
    If Hope's too dear, delusive tongue
    Has broke its promise of to-morrow,
    Seek not the world again, to borrow
    The deathful print its votaries reap.
    Man gives his loved ones pain and sorrow,
      God "giveth His beloved sleep."

       *       *       *       *       *


LINES WRITTEN ON WITNESSING A CONFIRMATION, IN BERMUDA, IN 1826.

    Veil'd in robes of snowy whiteness,
      Filled with love and sacred fear,
    Forms of beauty, eyes of brightness,
      At the altar's foot appear.

    There with hearts oppressed with feeling
      What their dying Saviour felt;
    At His throne of mercy kneeling
      Where their pious parents knelt,

    Many a youth, and many a maiden
      Meekly and devoutly bow,
    And from worldly cares unladen
      Ratify a Christian's vow.

    Hark! what voice subdued and holy
      In that deep and tender tone,
    Prays upon those suppliants lonely
      Christ's eternal benison!

    God! who call'st them to inherit
      Joys no mortal tongue can speak,
    Guide them with thy gracious Spirit
      Through the storms that round them break.

    When thou seest these children straying
      From the way thy word imparts,
    Then, thine anger yet delaying,
      Renovate their faltering hearts.

    If provoked by strong temptation
      From thy paths again they swerve,
    If in prideful elevation
      They forget the God they serve,

    Then by timely, mild correction,
      Lead them, wheresoe'er they roam,
    Fan the embers of affection
      For their Father and their Home.

       *       *       *       *       *


MIDNIGHT.

    Midnight is on the earth:
      Flowers that in darkness bloom,
    Their odorous life pour forth
          Beneath the gloom.
    O'er palace and o'er stall
      Her sable curtain spread,
    Mantles within its pall
          The living dead!

    Midnight is on the sea:
      A soft and still repose
    Steals o'er the untroubled lea
          That darkly glows.
    Hushed in their ocean caves
      The winds their sleep prolong,
    Or mourn along the waves
          In dreamlike song.

    Midnight is in the Heaven:
      The planets of the air
    To her as vassals given,
      Wander and worship there.
    No sound comes from her throne,
      Piled in those lofty skies,
    Calmly she broods upon
      Her own deep mysteries.

    Yet in her silence deep,
      There breathes a language fraught
    With spell to wake and keep
      The energies of thought;
    And on her awful brow
      Strange characters appear,
    The portraitures to show
      Of the advancing year.

    Night is a fearful book,
      And in her darkling skies
    Did Seers and Magi look,
      Searching earth's destinies.
    But oh! had I the power
      To ancient science given,
    I would not use this hour
          To rifle Heaven.

    The night is Memory's sphere,
      In light and shadow cast;
    In her dim disk appear
          The last--the past.
    The lov'd ones of our youth
      Hasten'd to life's last bourne;
    Dear to the heart's deep truth,
          Will they return?

    Ask of the phantoms pale
      That haunt the hollow sky,
    Ask of the fitful gale
      That mourns and passes by,
    Invoke the spirits' home,
      Unsearchable, unseen--
    Where do the wanderers roam?
      Are they as they have been?

    Silence is on the land,
      No voice comes from the sea,
    No spell can reach thy strand,
      Thou dim Eternity!
    Fled like the cloudy rack
      With morning's early breath,
    What night shall bring them back?
      The night that brings us death!

       *       *       *       *       *


STETE SUPER VIAS ANTIGUAS.

    My heart lies buried with the past,
      'Mid scenes where fleeting memory strays
    And time its darkening shadows cast
      O'er all the marks of by-gone days;
    I look in vain for ancient ways--
      The olden paths are worn and gone;
    No friend that trod them here delays,
      I pass benighted and alone.
    Yet in this mist of life and mind,
      Which ever dark and darker grows,
    There is one living lamp enshrin'd,
      Whose ray in deathless lustre glows.
    That star-like light my God bestows
      To break the deep sepulchral gloom;
    Its beams Eternity disclose,
      And show the garden round the tomb.




ENCOURAGEMENT OF LITERATURE.


In the concluding volume of the Life of Southey, just published by the
Harpers, is a letter from the poet in answer to one by Lord Brougham, on
the subject of the encouragement of literature by government. "Your
first question," writes Southey, "is, whether Letters would gain by the
more avowed and active encouragement of the Government?

"There are literary works of national importance which can only be
performed by co-operative labor, and will never be undertaken by that
spirit of trade which at present preponderates in literature. The
formation of an English Etymological Dictionary is one of those works;
others might be mentioned; and in this way literature might gain much by
receiving national encouragement; _but Government would gain a great
deal more by bestowing it. Revolutionary governments understand this: I
should be glad if I could believe that our legitimate one would learn it
before it is too late. I am addressing one who is a statesman as well as
a man of letters, and who is well aware that the time is come in which
governments can no more stand without pens to support them than without
bayonets._ They must soon know, if they do not already know it, that the
volunteers as well as the mercenaries of both professions, who are not
already enlisted in this service, will enlist themselves against it; and
I am afraid they have a better hold upon the soldier than upon the
penman; because the former has, in the spirit of his profession and in
the sense of military honor, something which not unfrequently supplies
the want of any higher principle; and I know not that any substitute is
to be found among the gentlemen of the press.

"But neediness, my Lord, makes men dangerous members of society, quite
as often as affluence makes them worthless ones. I am of opinion that
many persons who become bad subjects because they are necessitous,
because 'the world is not their friend, nor the world's law,' might be
kept virtuous (or, at least, withheld from mischief) by being made
happy, by early encouragement, by holding out to them a reasonable hope
of obtaining, in good time, an honorable station and a competent income,
as the reward of literary pursuits, when followed with ability and
diligence, and recommended by good conduct.

"My Lord, you are now on the Conservative side. Minor differences of
opinion are infinitely insignificant at this time, when in truth there
are but two parties in this kingdom--the Revolutionists and the
Loyalists; those who would destroy the constitution, and those who would
defend it, I can have no predilections for the present administration;
they have raised the devil who is now raging through the land: but, in
their present position, it is their business to lay him if they can; and
so far as their measures may be directed to that end, I heartily say,
God speed them! _If schemes like yours for the encouragement of letters,
have never entered into their wishes, there can be no place for them at
present in their intentions._ Government can have no leisure now for
attending to any thing but its own and our preservation; and the time
seems not far distant when the cares of war and expenditure will come
upon it once more with their all-engrossing importance. But when better
times shall arrive (whoever may live to see them), it will be worthy the
consideration of any government whether the institution of an Academy,
with salaries for its members (in the nature of literary or lay
benefices), might not be the means of retaining in _its_ interests, as
connected with their own, a certain number of influential men of
letters, who should hold those benefices, and a much greater number of
aspirants who would look to them in their turn. A yearly grant of ten
thousand pounds would endow ten such appointments of five hundred pounds
each for the elder class, and twenty-five of two hundred pounds each for
younger men; the latter eligible, of course, and preferably, but not
necessarily, to be elected to the higher benefices, as those fell
vacant, and as they should have improved themselves.

"The good proposed by this, as a political measure, is not that of
retaining such persons to act as pamphleteers and journalists, but that
of preventing them from becoming such, in hostility to the established
order of things; and of giving men of letters, as a class, something to
look for beyond the precarious gains of literature; thereby inducing in
them a desire to support the existing institutions of their country, on
the stability of which their own welfare would depend.

"Your Lordship's second question,--in what way the encouragement of
Government could most safely and beneficially be given,--is, in the
main, answered by what has been said upon the first. I do not enter into
any details of the proposed institution, for that would be to think of
fitting up a castle in the air. Nor is it worth while to examine how far
such an institution might be perverted. Abuses there would be, as in the
disposal of all preferments, civil, military, or ecclesiastical; but
there would be a more obvious check upon them; and where they occurred
they would be less injurious in their consequences than they are in the
state, the army and navy, or the church.

"With regard to prizes, methinks they are better left to schools and
colleges. Honors are worth something to scientific men, because they are
conferred upon such men in other countries; at home there are precedents
for them in Newton and Davy, and the physicians and surgeons have them.
In my judgment, men of letters are better without them, unless they are
rich enough to bequeath to their family a good estate with the bloody
hand, and sufficiently men of the world to think such distinctions
appropriate. For myself, if we had a Guelphic order, I should choose to
remain a Ghibelline.

"I have written thus fully and frankly, not dreaming that your proposal
is likely to be matured and carried into effect, but in the spirit of
good will, and as addressing one by whom there is no danger that I can
be misunderstood. _One thing alone I ask from the legislature, and in
the name of justice,--that the injurious law of copyright should be
repealed, and that the family of an author should not be deprived of
their just and natural rights in his works when his permanent reputation
is established._ This I ask with the earnestness of a man who is
conscious that he has labored for posterity."

The publication of this letter, and of the correspondence between
Southey and Sir Robert Peel, in which the poet declines being knighted,
on account of his poverty--a correspondence eminently honorable to the
late Prime Minister, has occasioned an eloquent letter from Walter
Savage Landor to Lord Brougham on the same subject.




CLASSICAL NOVELS.


The _Edinburgh Review_ rebukes the daring of those uneducated
story-tellers who profane by their intrusion the holy lands, the sacred
names, and golden ages of art. We have acceptable specimens of the
"classical novel" by Dr. Croly, Lockhart, Bulwer, and Collins (the
author of "Antonini"), and in this country by Mrs. Child and William
Ware; but nineteen of every twenty who have attempted such compositions
have failed entirely. The Edinburgh Reviewer, after showing that the
writers whom he arraigns have merely parodied the exterior life of our
own time, proceeds--

"It is not uncommon to excuse such deviations from historical propriety
by saying, that if the mere accidents have been neglected, the essential
humanity has been only more fully realized: and those who quarrel with
the neglect are stigmatized as pedants having no eyes except for the
external. We think, however, that it will be found, in most cases where
the plea is set up, that the humanity for which the sacrifice has been
made is equally external with that which has been disregarded, and much
more commonplace and conventional; being in fact, only the outer life of
existing society. We are met, of course, by the triumphant answer that
Shakspeare wrote Roman plays with a very slender knowledge of the
classics. It would be sufficient to reply, that we are speaking of cases
where ignorance of antiquity is not counterbalanced by any very
exuberant or profound knowledge of human nature. Possibly posterity may
have to deal with another myriad-minded dramatist whose poverty is
better than other men's riches; but it must not be rashly presumed that
he is likely to appear at all; or, if at all, with the same deficiency
of learning which was not unnatural three hundred years back. Meanwhile,
it is a perverse and pernicious paradox to maintain that Shakspeare's
consummate genius was in any way connected with his 'little Latin and
less Greek,' or that he might not have portrayed the Romans yet more
successfully if he had known more about them. Believing this, we are not
presuming, as the same absurd reasoning would have it, to set up
ourselves against him. We do not say that any other man in his age or
our own, however great his command of learning, could possibly mend
those plays by touching them; but we say that Shakspeare himself, with
increased knowledge, might have made them yet more perfect. It is easy
to oppose inspiration to scholastic culture; to coin antitheses between
nature and art; and to say that Shakspeare's Romans are more ideally
true than Niebuhr's. There is some truth in all this; but it is not to
the purpose. A poet like Burns may have really known more of classical
life than a critic like Blair; nay, it may be that if Keats or Tennyson
had been a senior medallist at Cambridge, they would not have produced
any thing not only so beautiful but so purely Greek as _Endymion_ or
_Oenone_. In what we were just saying we were thinking of the very
highest minds. And, when we recollect how gracefully Milton could walk
under the weight of his immense learning, we need not fear that the
Alantean shoulders of Shakspeare would have been oppressed by a similar
load. The knowledge of antiquity may operate on the recipient so as to
produce mere bookishness and intellectual sophistication; but in itself
it is a real and legitimate part of all knowledge, a portion of that
truth with which poets are conversant, a lesson set in other schools
than those where man is teacher. We know not what were Shakspeare's
feelings with respect to his own deficiencies; but we cannot believe
that the same modesty which besought his friend to chide with Fortune,
'the guilty goddess of his harmful deeds,' would have shrunk from
confessing want of knowledge as an evil to be lamented, at the same time
that it was imputed to want of opportunity. If he was self-centred, it
was in his strength, not in his weakness. His eulogists may show the
greatness of their faith in him by doubting whether he could have
assimilated the learning which obstructs Ben Jonson's _Catiline_ and
_Sejanus_; but we have no proofs that he thought so meanly of himself or
of that which he happened not to possess. On the contrary, it may be
argued, from the diligent use which he has made of such information as
he had, that he would gladly have taken advantage of more. Arnold, in
his Roman History, has noted the poet's perception of historical truth
in a matter where it might well have been overlooked; and future critics
may perhaps spend their time more profitably in discovering other
indications of a like vigilant industry than in laboring to prove that
the absence of so servile a virtue has been conducive to his preëminence
as a creative artist."




SLIDING SCALE OF THE INCONSOLABLES.


The editor of _The Albion_ thus christens, while he translates, the
following lively narrative, culled from the varied columns of the
_Courrier des Etats Unis_. The malicious writer dates from Paris; but
for such experiences our own city would probably be quite as prolific a
hunting-field.

       *       *       *       *       *

How rapid is the progress of oblivion with respect to those who are no
more! How many a quadrille shall we see this winter, exclusively made up
from the ranks of inconsolable widows! Widows of this order exist only
in the literature of the tombstone. In the world, and after the lapse of
a certain period, there is but one sort of widows inconsolable--those
who refuse to be comforted, because they can't get married again!

One of our most distinguished sculptors was summoned, a short time
since, to the house of a young lady, connected by birth with a family of
the highest grade in the aristocracy of wealth, and united in marriage
to the heir of a title illustrious in the military annals of the empire.
The union, formed under the happiest auspices, had been, alas! of short
duration. Death, unpitying death, had ruptured it, by prematurely
carrying off the young husband. The sculptor was summoned by the widow.
He traversed the apartments, silent and deserted, until he was
introduced into a bedroom, and found himself in presence of a lady,
young and beautiful, but habited in the deepest mourning, and with a
face furrowed by tears. "You are aware," said she, with a painful
effort, and a voice half choked by sobs, "you are aware of the blow
which I have received?" The artist bowed, with an air of respectful
condolence. "Sir," continued the widow, "I am anxious to have a funeral
monument erected in honor of the husband whom I have lost." The artist
bowed again. "I wish that the monument should be superb, worthy of the
man whose loss I weep, proportioned to the unending grief into which his
loss has plunged me. I care not what it costs. I am rich, and I will
willingly sacrifice all my fortune to do honor to the memory of an
adored husband. I must have a temple--with columns--in marble--and in
the middle--on a pedestal--his statue."

"I will do my best to fulfil your wishes, madam," replied the artist;
"but I had not the honor of acquaintance with the deceased, and a
likeness of him is indispensable for the due execution of my work.
Without doubt, you have his portrait?"

The widow raised her arm and pointed despairingly to a splendid likeness
painted by Amaury Duval.

"A most admirable picture!" observed the artist, "and the painter's name
is a sufficient guarantee for its striking resemblance to the original."

"Those are his very features, sir; it is himself. It wants but life. Ah!
would that I could restore it to him at the cost of all my blood!"

"I will have this portrait carried to my studio, madam, and I promise
you that the marble shall reproduce it exactly."

The widow, at these words, sprung up, and at a single bound throwing
herself towards the picture, with arms stretched out as though to defend
it, exclaimed, "Take away this portrait! carry off my only consolation!
my sole remaining comfort! never! never!"

"But madam, you will only be deprived of it for a short time, and--"

"Not an hour! not a minute! could I exist without his beloved image!
Look you, sir, I have had it placed here, in my own room, that my eyes
might be fastened upon it, without ceasing, and through my tears. His
portrait shall never leave this spot one single instant, and in
contemplating _that_ will I pass the remainder of a miserable and
sorrowful existence."

"In that case, madam, you will be compelled to permit me to take a copy
of it. But do not be uneasy--I shall not have occasion to trouble your
solitude for any length of time: one sketch--one sitting will suffice."

The widow agreed to this arrangement; she only insisted that the artist
should come back the following day. She wanted him to set to work on the
instant, so great was her longing to see the mausoleum erected. The
sculptor, however, remarked that he had another work to finish first.
This difficulty she sought to overcome by means of money.

"Impossible!" replied the artist, "I have given my word; but do not
distress yourself; I will apply to it so diligently, that the monument
shall be finished in as short a time as any other sculptor would
require, who could apply himself to it forthwith."

"You see my distress," said the widow; "you can make allowance for my
impatience. Be speedy, then, and above all, be lavish of magnificence.
Spare no expense; only let me have a masterpiece."

Several letters echoed these injunctions, during the few days
immediately following the interview. At the expiration of three months
the artist called again. He found the widow still in weeds, but a little
less pallid, and a little more coquettishly dressed in her mourning
garb. "Madam," said he, "I am entirely at your service."

"Ah! at last; this is fortunate," replied the widow, with a gracious
smile.

"I have made my design, but I still want one sitting for the likeness.
Will you permit me to go into your bedroom?"

"Into my bedroom? For what?"

"To look at the portrait again."

"Oh! yes; have the goodness to walk into the drawing-room; you will find
it there, now."

"Ah!"

"Yes; it hangs better there; it is better lighted in the drawing-room
than in my own room."

"Would you like, madam, to look at the design for the monument?"

"With pleasure. Oh! what a size! What profusion of decorations! Why, it
is a palace, sir, this tomb!"

"Did you not tell me, madam, that nothing could be too magnificent? I
have not considered the expense; and, by the way, here is a memorandum
of what the monument will cost you."

"Oh, heavens!" exclaimed the widow, after having cast an eye over the
total adding up. "Why, this is enormous!"

"You begged me to spare no expense."

"Yes, no doubt, I desire to do things properly, but not exactly to make
a fool of myself."

"This, at present, you see, is only a design; and there is time yet to
cut it down."

"Well, then, suppose we were to leave out the temple, and the columns,
and all the architectural part, and content ourselves with the statue?
It seems to me that this would be very appropriate."

"Certainly it would."

"So let it be, then--just the statue, alone."

Shortly after this second visit, the sculptor fell desperately ill. He
was compelled to give up work; but, on returning from a tour in Italy,
prescribed by his physician, he presented himself once more before the
widow, who was then in the tenth month of her mourning. He found, this
time, a few roses among the cypress, and some smiling colors playing
over half-shaded grounds. He brought with him a little model of his
statue, done in plaster, and offering in miniature the idea of what his
work was to be. "What do you think of the likeness?" he inquired of the
widow.

"It seems to me a little flattered; my husband was all very well, no
doubt; but you are making him an Apollo!"

"Really? well, then, I can correct my work by the portrait."

"Don't take the trouble--a little more, or a little less like, what does
it matter?"

"Excuse me, but I am particular about likenesses."

"If you absolutely must--"

"It is in the drawing-room, yonder, is it not? I'll go in there."

"It is not there any longer," replied the widow, ringing the bell.

"Baptiste," said she to the servant who came in, "bring down the
portrait of your master."

"The portrait that you sent up to the garret last week, madam?"

"Yes."

At this moment the door opened, and a young man of distinguished air
entered; his manners were easy and familiar; he kissed the fair widow's
hand, and tenderly inquired after her health. "Who in the world is this
good man in plaster?" asked he, pointing with his finger to the
statuette, which the artist had placed upon the mantel-piece.

"It is the model of a statue for my husband's tomb."

"You are having a statue of him made? The devil! It's very majestic!"

"Do you think so?"

"It is only great men who are thus cut out of marble, and at full
length; it seems to me, too, that the deceased was a very ordinary
personage."

"In fact, his bust would be sufficient."

"Just as you please, madam," said the sculptor.

"Well, let it be a bust, then; that's determined!"

Two months later, the artist, carrying home the bust, encountered on the
stairs a merry party. The widow, giving her hand to the elegant dandy
who had caused the statue of the deceased to be cut down, was on her way
to the mayor's office, where she was about to take a second oath of
conjugal fidelity. If the bust had not been completed, it would
willingly have been dispensed with. When, some time later, the artist
called for his money, there was an outcry about the price; and it
required very little less than a threat of legal proceedings, before the
widow, consoled and remarried, concluded by resigning herself to pay for
this funeral homage, reduced as it was, to the memory of her departed
husband.




A NEW SERIES OF TALES BY MISS MARTINEAU.


There is scarcely in English literature a collection of tales by a
simple writer that are better adapted for the instruction of the masses,
than HARRIET MARTINEAU'S _Illustrations of Political Economy_. Without
believing her a very profound philosopher, we are inclined to think
these works could be remembered longer than any of her other writings.
The pleasure and instruction we derived from them were recalled by the
announcement in the London _Leader_ that she is to contribute a new
series of stories for the people, to that journal. We copy the first of
them.


THE OLD GOVERNESS.

The afternoon was come when the Morells must go on board. They were
going to Canada at last, after having talked about it for several years.
There were so many children, that it was with much difficulty they had
got on for some years past; and there was no prospect for the lads at
home. They had, with extreme difficulty, paid their way: and they had,
to a certain extent, educated the children. That, however, was Miss
Smith's doing.

"We shall always feel, every one of us," said Mrs. Morell, with tears,
to the elderly homely governess, "that we are under the deepest
obligations to you. But for you, the children would have grown up
without any education at all. And, for the greatest service you or any
one could possibly render us, we have never been able to give you your
due,--even as regards the mere money."

"I can only say again," replied the governess, "that you do not look at
the whole of the case. You have given me a home, when it is no easy
matter for such as I am to earn one, with my old-womanish ways and my
old-fashioned knowledge."

"I will not hear any disparagement of your ways and your knowledge,"
interrupted Mrs. Morell. "They have been every thing to my children: and
if you could have gone with us...."

This, however, they all knew to be out of the question. It was not only
that Miss Smith was between fifty and sixty, too old to go so far, with
little prospect of comfort at the end of the journey; but she was at
present disabled for much usefulness by the state of her right hand. It
had been hurt by an accident a long time before, and it did not get
well. The surgeon had always said it would be a long case; and she had
no use whatever of the hand in the mean time. Yet she would not part
with the baby till the last moment. She carried him on the left arm, and
stood on the wharf with him--the mother at her side--till all the rest
were on board, and Mr. Morell came for his wife. It was no grand steamer
they were going in, but a humble vessel belonging to the port, which
would carry them cheap.

"Now, my love," said the husband. "Now, Miss Smith," taking the child
from her. "Words cannot tell...."

And if words could have told, the tongue could not have uttered them. It
was little, too, that his wife could say.

"Write to us. Be sure you write. We shall write as soon as we arrive.
Write to us."

Miss Smith glanced at the hand. She said only one word, "Farewell!" but
she said it cheerfully.

The steam-tug was in a hurry, and down the river they went. She had one
more appointment to keep with them. She was to wave her handkerchief
from the rocks by the fort; and the children were to let her try whether
she could see their little handkerchiefs. So she walked quickly over the
common to the fort, and sat down on the beach at the top of the rocks.

It was very well that she had something to do. But the plan did not
altogether answer. By the time the vessel crossed the bar it was nearly
dark, and she was not quite sure, among three, which it was, and she did
not suppose the children could see her handkerchief. She waved it,
however, according to promise. How little they knew how wet it was!

Then there was the walk home. It was familiar, yet very strange. When
she was a child her parents used to bring her here, in the summer time,
for sea air and bathing. The haven and the old gray bathing houses, and
the fort, and the lighthouse, and the old priory ruins crowning the
rocks, were all familiar to her; but the port had so grown up that all
else was strange. And how strange now was life to her! Her parents gone,
many years back, and her two sisters since; and now, the Morells! She
had never had any money to lose, and the retired way in which the
Morells lived had prevented her knowing any body out of their house. She
had not a relation nor a friend, nor even an acquaintance, in England.
The Morells had not been uneasy about her. They left her a little money,
and had so high an opinion of her that they did not doubt her being
abundantly employed, whenever her hand should get well. They had lived
too much to themselves to know that her French, learned during the war,
when nobody in England could pronounce French, would not do in these
days, nor that her trilling, old-fashioned style of playing on the
piano, which they thought so beautiful, would be laughed at now in any
boarding school; and that her elegant needleworks were quite out of
fashion; and that there were new ways of teaching even reading,
spelling, and writing.

She knew these things, and cautioned herself against discontent with the
progress of society, because she happened to be left alone behind. She
suspected, too, that the hand would not get well. The thing that she was
most certain of was, that she must not rack her brain with fears and
speculations as to what was to become of her. Her business was to wait
till she could find something to do, or learn what she was to suffer.
She thought she had better wait here. There was no call to any other
place. This was more familiar and more pleasant to her than any
other--the Morells' cottage being far away, and out of the question--and
here she could live with the utmost possible cheapness. So here she
staid.

The hand got well, as far as the pain was concerned, sooner than she had
expected. But it was in a different way from what she had expected. It
was left wholly useless. And, though the time was not long, it had
wrought as time does. It had worn out her clothes; it had emptied her
little purse. It had carried away every thing she had in the world but
the very few clothes she had on. She had been verging towards the
resolution she now took for three or four weeks. She took it finally
while sitting on the bench near the fort. It was in the dusk; for her
gown, though she had done her best to mend it with her left hand, was in
no condition to show by daylight. She was alone in the dusk, rather
hungry and very cold. The sea was dashing surlily upon the rocks below,
and there was too much mist to let any stars shine upon her. It was all
dreary enough; yet she was not very miserable, for her mind was made up.
She had made up her mind to go into the work-Pouse the next day. While
she was thinking calmly about it a fife began to play a sort of jig in
the yard of the fort behind her. Her heart heaved to her throat and the
tears gushed from her eyes. In this same spot, fifty years before, she
had heard what seemed to her the same fife. Her father was then sitting
on the grass, and she was between his knees, helping to tassel the tail
of a little kite they were going to fly; and, when the merry fife had
struck up, her father had snatched up her gay Harlequin that lay within
reach, and made him shake his legs and arms to the music. She heard her
own laugh again now, through that long course of fifty years, and in the
midst of these tears.

All that night she pondered her purpose: and the more she considered,
the more sure she was that it was right. "I might," thought she, "get
maintained by charity, no doubt: I might call on any of the clergymen of
this place, and the rich people. Or I might walk into the shops and tell
my story, and I dare say the people would give me food and clothes. And,
if it was a temporary distress, I would do so. I should think it right
to ask for help, if I had any prospect of work or independence in any
way. But I have none: and this, I am convinced, points out my duty.
Hopeless cases like mine are those which public charity--legal
charity--is intended to meet. My father little dreamed of this, to be
sure; and the Morells little dream of it at this moment. But when do our
parents and friends, when do we ourselves, dream of what our lot is
really to turn out? Those old notions have nothing to do, if we could
but think so, with the event. Nor has my disgust any thing to do with my
duty. The plain fact is, that I am growing old--that I am nearly
helpless--that I am cold and hungry, and nearly naked--that I have no
friends within reach, and no prospect whatever. I am, therefore, an
object for public charity, and I will ask for what is my due. I am
afraid of what I may find in the workhouse;--the vicious people, the
dirty people, the diseased people,--and, I suppose, not one among them
who can give me any companionship whatever.

"It is dreadful; but it can't be helped. And the worse the case is about
my companions--my fellow-paupers--(for I must learn to bear the
word)--the greater are the chances of my finding something to do for
them;--something which may prevent my feeling myself utterly useless in
the world. This is not being wholly without prospect, after all. I
suppose nobody ever is. If it were not so cold now, I could sleep upon
mine."

It was too cold for sleep; and when, in the morning, she offered her old
shawl in payment for her bed, assuring the poor old woman who let it
that she should not want the shawl, because she was going to have other
clothes, the woman shook her head sorrowfully,--her lodger looked so wan
and chilled. She had no fear that there was any thought of suicide in
the case. No one could look in Miss Smith's sensible face, and hear her
steady, cheerful voice, and suppose that she would do any thing wild or
impatient.

"Who is that woman with a book in her hand?" inquired the visiting
Commissioner, some months afterwards, of the governor of the workhouse.
The governor could only say she was a single woman of the name of Smith,
who had no use of her right hand. As to who she was, he could tell no
more than this; but his wife had sometimes mentioned her as a different
sort of person from those they generally saw there. She could not only
read, but she read very well: and she read a great deal aloud to the old
people, and in the infirmary. She talked unlike the rest, too. She said
little; but her language was good, and always correct. She could not do
much on account of her infirmity: but she was always willing to do what
could be done with one hand; and she must have been very handy when she
had the use of both.

"I should have thought her eyes had been too weak for much reading,"
observed the Commissioner. "Has the medical officer attended to her?"

The governor called his wife: and the wife called a pauper woman who was
told the question. This woman said that it was not exactly a case for
the doctor. Nobody that shed so many tears could have good eyes. Ah! the
governor might be surprised; because Smith seemed so brisk in the
daytime, and cheered the old people so much. But she made up for it at
night. Many and many a time she cried the night through.

"How do you know?" asked the Commissioner.

"I sleep in the next bed, sir. I can't say she disturbs any body; for
she is very quiet. But if any thing keeps me awake I hear her sobbing.
And you need but feel her pillow in the morning. It is wet almost
through."

"And does that happen often?"

"Yes, sir. Many a time when she has turned her back,--gone into the
infirmary, or been reading to the old people,--I have got her pillow and
dried it. And I have seen her do it herself, with a smile on her face
all the time."

The Commissioner walked away. Before he left the place, the woman Smith
was beckoned out by the governor. She went with a beating heart, with
some wild idea in her head that the Morells had sent, that some friends
had turned up. While still in the passage, however, she said to herself
that she might as well look to see her parents risen from the dead.

The Commissioner had, indeed, nothing to tell. He wanted to ask. He did
ask, as much as his delicacy would allow. But he learned nothing;
except, indeed, what he ought to have considered the most important
thing, the state of her mind about being there. About that, she was
frank enough. She said over again to him what she had said to herself,
about this being the right place for one in her circumstances. She
considered that it would be an abuse of private charity for her to be
maintained in idleness at an expense which might set forward in life
some person in a less hopeless position.

"You speak cheerfully, as if you were in earnest," said the
Commissioner.

"Of course, I am in earnest," she replied.

And cheerful she remained throughout the conversation. Only once the
Commissioner saw her eyes filled and a quiver on her lips. He did not
know it; but he had unconsciously called her "Madam."

Would she prefer the children's department of the House? There was no
doubt that she could teach them much. Would she change her quarters? No.
She was too old now for that. She should not be a good companion now for
children; and they would be too much for her. Unless she was wanted--

By no means. She should be where she preferred to be.

She preferred to be where she was. The Commissioner's lady soon after
dropped in, and managed to engage Smith in conversation. But there was
no result; because Smith did not choose that there should be. Perhaps
she was more in the infirmary; and had oftener a warm seat by the fire,
and was spoken to with more deference. But this might be solely owing to
the way she made with the people by her own acts and manners. The
invalids and the infirm grew so fond of her that they poured out to her
all their complaints. She was favored with the knowledge of every
painful sensation as it passed, and every uneasy thought as it arose.

"I never thought to die in such a place as this," groaned old Johnny
Jacks.

"I wonder at that," said his old wife; "for you never took any care to
provide yourself a better--to say nothing of me." And she went on to
tell how Johnny had idled and drank his life away, and brought her here
at last. Much of Johnny's idling and drinking having been connected with
electioneering in an abominably venal city, he was a great talker on
politics, and the state was made responsible for all his troubles. He
said it was a shame that any body should die in a workhouse; he appealed
to his neighbor Smith, who was warming his broth, whether it was not so?

"Which is best?" she answered; "being here, or on a common, or the
sea-sands? Because," she added, "there was a time when old people like
us were left to die wherever they fell. There are countries now where
old people die so. I should not like that."

"You don't mean to say that you or any one likes being here?"

"Oh, no; I don't mean to say that. But things are better than they were
once: and they may be better again."

"I shall not live to see that," groaned Johnny.

"No; nor I. But it is something to think of."

"D---- it," said Johnny, "I am not the better for any good that does not
happen to me, nor to any body I know."

"Are not you?" said neighbor Smith. "Well, now, I am."

And so she was to the end. She died in that infirmary, and not very long
after. When the Morells' letter came, it was plain that they had enough
to do to take care of themselves. So she did not let them know,--in her
reply, written by the hands of the schoolmaster,--where she was. The
letter was so cheerful that they are probably far from suspecting, at
this moment, how she died and was buried. As "from the abundance of the
heart the mouth speaketh," there was so much in her letter as rather
surprised them about her hope and expectation that the time would come
when hearty work in the vigorous season of life should secure its easy
close; and when a greater variety of employment should be opened to
women. There was more of this kind of speculation and less news and
detail of facts than they would have liked. But it was a household event
to have a letter from Miss Smith; and the very little children,
forgetting the wide sea they had passed, began shouting for Miss Smith
to come to them just (as it happened) when her ear was closing to every
human voice.




ON THE ATTEMPTS TO DISCOVER THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE.


There are some peculiarities of style in the following performance,
which is by no means devoid of eloquence, and which derives a certain
interest from the efforts now being made to discover the fate of Sir
John Franklin. The author is GEORGE STOVIN VENABLES, LL. D., of Jesus
College, Cambridge.


THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE.

    "And now there came both mist and snow,
    And it grew wondrous cold;
    And ice, mast high, came floating by,
    As green as emerald.
    And through the drifts and snowy clifts
    Did send a dismal sheen:
    Nor shape of men, nor beasts we ken--
    The ice was all between--
    The ice was here, the ice was there--
    The ice was all around:
    It crack'd and growl'd, and roar'd and howl'd,
    Like noises in a swound."

        COLERIDGE. _Rime of the Ancient Mariner._

The secret wonders of the gloomy North bid proud defiance, in their
solitude, to man's triumphant daring. Who shall pierce the ancient
prison-house where Nature's might, in mightier chains of adamantine
frost, lies fettered, since Creation? Who shall live where promontories
huge, of pilèd ice, like monstrous fragments of primeval worlds tossed
on the surge of Chaos, over the waves rear their triumphant heads, and
laugh to scorn the undreaded kinghood of the lordly sea?

A fearful challenge! yet the charmèd spell, which summons man to high
discovery, is ever vocal in the outward world, though they alone may
hear it, who have hearts responsive to its tone. The gale of spring,
breathing sweet balm over the western waters, called forth that gifted
old adventurer[10] to seek the perfumes of spice-laden winds, far in the
Indian Isles. Yea, there is power in Nature's solemn music. All have
heard the sighs of Winter in the middle air, and seen the skirts of his
cloud-woven robe lingering upon the misty mountain-top: but years
rolled on, ere man might understand the mystic invitation of that call
to seek the Monarch in his Arctic home.

At length that call is answered. Daringly yon gallant ship, towards the
Polar Star, walks the untrodden pathways of old Ocean, leaving the
haunts of man. Even now, the bounds are passed where silently the Boreal
Morn[11] folds and unfolds, in swiftest interchange, her silver robe of
alternating light over the midnight Heaven. There is a change in every
sight and sound. White glaciers clash on the tormented waves, in fierce
career waving eternally, and hoary whales, with musical din[12] booming
along the deep, breathe forth in giant chorus, wondrously, the welcome
of the Spirit of the North.

Joy to the brave! That old phantasmal veil which checked the view of dim
antiquity, shrinks from their eagle glance, while fabled hills and
regions of impenetrable ice fade in the blue expanse of mighty
bays[13]--now spread the bosom of the expectant sail unto the Eastern
breeze, and while the prow furrows the yielding waters, image forth high
dreams of lofty hope--the joyous bound of billows gushing between parted
shores, where Asia's rocky brow for ever frowns on the opposing
continent. And, borne on spirit-plumed wings, let fancy soar far from
that sunless clime, to the warm South, where soft skies slumber through
the cloudless noon, o'er the gold palaces of fair Cathay.

Why pause ye in mid ocean? Still the sail swells to the voiceful breeze;
the high mast bends with hideous creak, and every separate rib in the
huge fabric quivers. Yet the ship on the unmoved waters motionless
struggles, as one, who in a feverish dream nervelessly fleeing o'er a
haunted waste, strives horribly to shun some fiendish shape, with
straining sinews, and convulsive gasp, and faint limbs, magic-stricken.
There is rest, dismal and dreary, on the silent sea: most dismal quiet:
for the viewless might of the keen frost-wind[14] crisps the curling
waves, binding their motion with a clankless chain along the far
horizon. Fruitlessly the imprisoned vessel writhes, until the gale,
lulled in the embrace of evening, leaves its prey, to share the torpor
of the lifeless waste, till earth awaken from her half-year's sleep.

Yet, in those daring hearts, the cheerless voice of boding Fear or dull
Despondency can find no answering tone, whether the storm, round the
snow-rampart[15] howling, interweaves his solemn moans with the
rejoicing shouts of the glad theatre,[16] or simple strains of homely
music leave that warm recess--vibrating far into the tremulous air.
Here, even here are pleasures; those stray[17] forms of joy, which
Nature spreads throughout the world, that he who seeks may find them.
When the Sun, uprising from his long and gloomy trance, beams through
the clearer air, how beautiful, in some obscurest dell[18] of that lone
land, led by the music of an unseen river to see fair flowers, with
light-awakened buds, salute the spring tide. Happily, they smile in the
midst of nakedness, like sweet memories of laughing infancy, beaming
around the desolation of an aged heart.

Oh, that the might of Man's majestic will were self-sufficing! that the
meaner chains which bind him to this dark, material world, before the
lightning glance of Enterprise might fade, as those Philistian bonds,
that fell from him of Zorah. Back--in sorrow back--the ocean-wanderers
turn the unwilling prow; for Nature may not yield, and all is lost, save
gloomy thoughts of unrequited toil in the storm-beaten deep; and
phantasies of gorgeous dreams, for ever desolate; and hopes, which were,
and will not be again.

Yet if the race of Man, as some have deemed[19], form but one mighty
Being, who doth live, yea with intenser life, while kingly Death benumbs
each separate atom with the touch of his pale sceptre--one unchanging
ocean of everchanging waves--one deathless heaven of clouds, which to
their graves roll ceaselessly: if it be so, not vainly have long years
sent forth their heralds on the trackless deep, where high endeavors of
exalted will which in themselves find no accomplishment, shall build at
length perfection. Peacefully he[20] sleeps, who erst beheld the rifted
shores of Greenland "glister in the sun, like gold:" and that deserted
chief[21] whose angry moan once mingled wildly with the screaming winds
and the hoarse gurgle of ingulfing waves, is unremembered now. But high
Emprise died not with them. Have not our latter days beheld, with awe,
the ice-borne Muscovite[22] ride the fierce billows of the Polar Sea?
Has not the Northern hunter seen the flag of England, o'er her floating
palaces, unfurled in his dominions crystalline? And who shall mourn,
while, in the mystic race, from hand to hand still moves the unquenched
torch, that none have reached the goal? Not suddenly doth the sweet
warmth of universal life, from brumal caves advancing, interfuse the
vast abysmal air, or penetrate the deep heart of the frost-entranced
Earth. Gentle, and in its very gentleness invincible, it moves, though
ruthlessly stern Winter calls his rallied armies on, and snow-blasts
violate the joyous prime. So is it, with the silent victories of Man's
enduring spirit: we have seen Winter and Spring; and shall we not behold
the full rejoicing of the complete year?

The hour shall come, nor shall the longing heart in that dark interval
be all unblest with glance prophetic. Though no meteor shape glare from
the speaking sky, no sheeted ghost wander dim-moving in the weird
midnight, with such forshadowings true as ever wait on him who, with a
calm and reverend eye, hath viewed the mysteries of things, and dared to
image forth the future from the past--bind on the mystic robe, and from
the brow of Hope's enchanted hill look boldly forth upon the coming
ages. Saw ye not white fog-wreaths floating through the cold gray dawn
over ice-laden billows, as they roll through yon rock-cinctured chasm? A
dusky shape looms through the hazy atmosphere, and sails, as of some
struggling bark that wearily breasts the opposing strength of angry
waves,[23] float with a fitful motion to and fro. Still on and on--a
breath-suspending sight of pale Solicitude, and fearful hope--and hark!
the triple crash of Britain's joy, the magical music of her wild hurra,
peals with a sound of mighty exultation through the aerial depths. The
cloven mist unwraps its folded canopy, and lo! the blue Pacific,
boundlessly outspread, far glitters in the silvery light of morn.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] Columbus.

[11] The phenomenon which is commonly called Aurora Borealis, is in high
latitudes frequently seen to the south.

[12] On entering the Arctic Circle, the musical sounds of the white
whales is first heard.

[13] Modern discoverers have frequently found an open passage in
latitudes, where chains of hills were laid down in the old charts.

[14] The effect of the change of temperature at the beginning of winter
is almost instantaneous, as young ice at the thickness of half an inch
will stop a large vessel in full sail.

[15] Captain Parry found considerable advantage from raising a wall of
snow round the ship, in its winter station.

[16] The theatrical amusements, which were introduced during the stay of
the Fury and Hecla at Melvile Island, are well known.

[17] Alluding to the following lines of Mr. Wordsworth:--

    ----"Pleasure is spread throughout the earth,
    In stray gifts, to be claim'd by whoever shall find."


[18] The beautiful effect of these Arctic Oases is described in the
account of Captain Parry's second voyage.

[19] See the speech attributed by Socrates to Diotima in the Banquet of
Plato.

[20] Sir Martin Frobisher, who in 1577 anchored on the Western coast of
Greenland, reported that in that country "the stones be altogether
sparkled, and glister in the sun like gold."

[21] Hudson.

[22] Baron Wrangle.




RECOLLECTIONS OF PAGANINI.


The "Leaves from the Portfolio of a Manager," in the December _Dublin
University Magazine_, disclose a number of interesting facts connected
with Prynne's "Histriomastix," Milton's "Samson Agonistes," Hannah
More's "Tragedies," Ireland's "Shakspeare Forgeries," and not a few very
startling disclosures respecting the extraordinary emoluments of first
class performers, from Roscius down to Jenny Lind. From this portion of
our Manager's Portfolio we select the amusing recollections of Paganini
in Ireland, twenty years ago:

"Catalani, Pasta, Sontag, Malibran, Grisi, Taglioni, Rubini, Mario,
Tamburini, Lablache, _cum multis aliis_, have received their thousands,
and tens of thousands: but, until the Jenny Lind mania left every thing
else at an immeasurable distance, Paganini obtained larger sums than had
ever before been received in modern times. He came with a prodigious
flourish of trumpets, a vast continental reputation, and a few personal
legends of the most exciting character. It was said that he had killed
his wife in a fit of jealousy, and made fiddlestrings of her intestines;
and that the devil had composed a sonata for him in a dream, as he
formerly did for Tartini. When you looked at him, you thought all this,
and more, very likely to be true. His talent was almost supernatural,
while his 'get up,' and 'mise en scene,' were original and unearthly,
such as those who saw him will never forget, and those who did not can
with difficulty conceive. The individual and his performance were
equally unlike anything that had ever been exhibited before. No picture
or description can convey an adequate idea of his entrance and his exit.
To walk simply on and off the stage appears a commonplace operation
enough, but Paganini did this in a manner peculiar to himself, which
baffled all imitation. While I am writing of it, his first appearance in
Dublin, at the great Musical Festival of 1830, presents itself to 'my
mind's eye,' as an event of yesterday. When he placed himself in
position to commence, the crowded audience were hushed into a deathlike
silence. His black habiliments; his pale, attenuated visage, powerfully
expressive; his long, silky, raven tresses, and the flash of his dark
eye, as he shook them back over his shoulders; his thin, transparent
fingers, unusually long; the mode in which he grasped his bow, and the
tremendous length to which he drew it; and, climax of all, his sudden
manner of placing both bow and instrument under his arm, while he threw
his hands behind him, elevated his head, his features almost distorted
with a smile of ecstasy, and his very hair instinct with life, at the
conclusion of an unparalleled fantasia! And there he stood, immovable
and triumphant, while the theatre rang again with peals on peals of
applause, and shouts of the wildest enthusiasm! None who witnessed this
will ever forget it, nor are they likely again to see the same effect
produced by mere mortal agency.

"The _one_ string feat I always considered unworthy this great master of
his art. It has been done by fifty others, and is at best but an
imperfect exhibition on a perfect instrument; a mere piece of
charlatanerie, or theatrical 'gag,' to use a professional term,
sufficiently intelligible. There have been, and _are_, mighty musicians
on the violin. Spagnoletti, De Beriot, Ole Bull (who according to some
plays without any string at all), Sivori, Joachim, Ernst, Levey, &c.
&c., are all in the list of great players; but there never was more than
one Paganini; he is unique and unapproachable.

"In Dublin, in 1830, Paganini saved the Musical Festival, which would
have failed but for his individual attraction, although supported by an
army of talent in every department. All was done in first-rate style,
not to be surpassed. There were Braham, Madame Stockhausen, H. Phillips,
De Begnis, &c. &c., Sir G. Smart for conductor, Cramer, Mori, and T.
Cooke for leaders, Lindley, Nicholson, Anfossi, Lidel Hermann, Pigott,
and above ninety musicians in the orchestra, and more than one hundred
and twenty singers in the chorus. The festival was held in the
Theatre-Royal, then, as now, the only building in Dublin capable of
accommodating the vast number which alone could render such a
speculation remunerative. The theatre can hold two thousand six hundred
persons, all of whom may see and hear, whether in the boxes, pit, or
galleries. The arrangement was, to have oratorios kept distinct on
certain mornings, and miscellaneous concerts on the evenings of other
days. The concerts were crushers, but the first oratorio was decidedly a
break down. The committee became alarmed; the expenses were enormous,
and heavy liabilities stared them in the face. There was no time to be
lost, and at the second oratorio, duly announced, there stood Paganini,
in front of the orchestra, violin in hand, on an advanced platform,
overhanging the pit, not unlike orator Henley's tub, as immortalized by
the poet. Between the acts of the Messiah and the Creation, he fiddled
'the Witches at the Great Walnut Tree of Benevento,' with other equally
appropriate interpolations, to the ecstatic delight of applauding
thousands, who cared not a pin for Hadyn or Handel, but came to hear
Paganini alone; and to the no small scandal of the select few, who
thought the episode a little on the north side of consistency. But the
money was thereby forthcoming, every body was paid, the committee
escaped without damage, and a hazardous speculation, undertaken by a few
spirited individuals, was wound up with deserved success.

"When the festival was over, the town empty, and a cannon-ball might
have fired down Sackville-street, without doing much injury, Paganini
was engaged by himself for a series of five performances in the theatre.
For this he received £1,143. His dividend on the first night's receipts
amounted to £330 (_horresco referens_)! without a shilling of outlay
incurred on his part. He had the lion's share with a vengeance, as the
manager cleared with difficulty £200. The terms he demanded and obtained
were a clear two-thirds of each night's receipts, twenty-five guineas
per night for the services of two auxiliaries, worth about as many
shillings, the full value allowed for every free ticket, and an express
stipulation that if he required a rehearsal on a dark morning, when
extra light might be indispensable, the expense of candles should not
fall on him--a contingency which by no possible contrivance could
involve a responsibility exceeding five or six shillings."

FOOTNOTES:

[23] A current is supposed to flow constantly from the Pacific through
the North-West Passage into the Atlantic.




A PEASANT DUCHESS.


The _Stamford Mercury_ gives an interesting account of the life and
fortunes of a young woman of that neighborhood who rose to a high
station by means of her personal attractions, and, after a checkered
life, died in Italy a few weeks ago. She was the daughter of John Peele,
a small farmer at Corringham, near Gainsborough, who eked out a somewhat
declining livelihood by dealing in horses, &c., having previously been
in better circumstances. Being an only daughter, and aware that she
possessed no small share of rustic charms, she resolved to try her
fortune in a higher sphere. She became a dressmaker in Gainsborough, and
resided subsequently in Hull, and it is said as housemaid in a good
family in London, where her attractions obtained for her the attentions
of a person of rank, to whom she afterwards averred she was married; and
she from that time occupied a position where her fortunes led her into
contact with some of the highest classes. A few years afterwards she
astonished her former companions by appearing with her carriage and
livery servants in the character of _chère amie_ to Mr. Fauntleroy, then
a flourishing banker in London. The riches of the banker were of a
doubtful character, however; some time afterward she was convicted of
forgery, and paid the penalty with his life. Affected by the ruin, but
not participating in the crime of Fauntleroy, she struggled bravely with
fate, and generally maintained a fair appearance in society both in
London and Paris. She shortly reappeared in her native county as Duchess
of Palata. At this time the fortunes of her family had reduced them to
be the occupants of a small cottage at Morton, and age rendering her
father incapable of active exertion, he filled the humble office of
rural postman. To her honor it should be recorded that she enabled her
parents to pass the remainder of their days in comfort. Six or seven
years ago she again visited her native place, a widow, his grace the
Duke of Palata having paid the debt of nature. Her mother she left at
Morton, paid the last duties to her father (somewhat ostentatiously),
and volunteered her assistance to promote the advancement of her female
relatives. Again, however, "a change came o'er the spirit of her dream;"
and some three or four years ago the public journals announced her
marriage to the son of an Irish clergyman of good family. In this
character, accompanied by her niece as _femme de chambre_, but not by
her husband, she once more visited Gainsborough and the scenes of her
youth; after making her mother an allowance, she again departed for
Italy, in good health; but death, which spares neither rank nor
character, has closed the "last scene of all, in this strange eventful
history."

       *       *       *       *       *

The author of the "Nibelungenlied" is unknown, and, whether it be the
work of one poet, of two, or twenty, is still a matter of doubt, among
German critics. That the Nibelungenlied has been extensively
interpolated, is, I believe, agreed on all hands; we may conclude as
much, from having reason to believe that it was handed down for some
time (how long, nobody knows for certain), by oral tradition, and what
effect such a state of things may have on popular poetry, we may readily
collect from what Bishop Percy and Sir Walter Scott have told us of the
variations in the old ballads of England and Scotland. Lachmann
attributes it to the thirteenth century.




Original Correspondence.


    PARIS, DEC. 2, 1850.

FROM time immemorial, no one knows why (for the legends which recount
her history leave it doubtful whether she performed on any instrument),
St. Cecilia has been chosen by musicians as their patron saint; and the
musicians of Paris, on the approach of winter, always celebrate a mass,
in music, to her honor, and for the benefit of the distressed members of
their body. Not that they entertain any exaggerated idea of the
consoling powers of the musical art, or hope to relieve the positive
sufferings of poverty and destitution by any combination of sounds, no
matter how harmonious; but this festival being held in the church of St.
Eustache, the largest in Paris, and all lovers of music being so eager
to gain admission, that the immense aisles of this grand old pile (which
will contain five thousand persons), are always crowded to overflowing
on these occasions, every one paying a franc for his admission: the sum
thus gained, together with the collections taken up in the middle of the
service, by the committee of ladies chosen for that purpose (who go
round among the crowd, preceded by the beadle, and followed by two or
three attendant gentlemen, carrying a little embroidered bag of a
particular shape, used for that purpose, in which they receive the
contributions of the benevolent), constitute a fund, from which many an
unfortunate or superannuated brother of the tuneful craft obtains
relief.

This vast building, with its lofty arches, is admirably calculated for
the performance of grand religious compositions; the effect of the music
being enhanced by the aspect of the building, and the accessories of
sculpture, painting, and carving, which render this church one of the
richest in the capital.

To obtain places on any occasion of the kind, it is necessary to go an
hour or two in advance; and the gradual filling of the aisles is one of
the most curious scenes which a stranger can contemplate. As there are
no pews, each person, on entering, helps himself or herself to a chair,
which he holds aloft over the heads of his already seated neighbors, as
he slowly forces his way onward through their serried ranks, until he
espies some unappropriated gap into which he can insinuate his chair and
himself; the police and the beadles always taking care to keep a little
pathway, just large enough to squeeze through, open all through the
outer aisle that runs round the church. For the unfortunate people who
form the walls of this pathway, the process of filling is a severe
infliction; the uninterrupted stream of in-comers, forcing their way
along with a ruthless disregard of the shoulders of those between whom
they pass, is really, (especially when the in-comer happens to be a very
stout man, or a very fat lady, enveloped in an unusual quantity of
drapery,) almost overpowering. Every now and then the beadle comes
along, rapping his silver-headed cane on the pavement, and crying, "Way,
there! keep out of the path!" and escorting a party of privileged
individuals for whom seats have been reserved; and, as the beadle is
always tall and stout, and always forces his way through in defiance of
apparent impossibilities, a chorus of murmurs accompanies his progress.
The beadle is a very grand personage, and his appearance sufficiently
indicates this fact. He wears a cocked hat, covered with silver lace,
and decorated with nodding white plumes; a scarf of crimson velvet,
stiff with embroidery in silver thread, covers the upper part of his
person; black velvet smalls, fastened at the knee with silver buckles,
white silk stockings and gloves, and enormous buckles in his polished
shoes, complete his attire. He wears a massive silver chain round his
neck; and a sword hangs at his side to strike terror into the hearts of
all beholders. Besides the grand beadle, there are several minor ones,
dressed in black, but wearing heavy silver chains; _gens d'armes_ also
are always present, and often soldiers, who mount guard, musket in hand,
at all the doorways, and on the steps of the chancel.

When these sapient guardians of the peace perceive that as many have
been admitted as can possibly be squeezed into the building, they shut
the doors; and the process of distribution goes on until the mass is
equalized throughout the edifice; a task of no small difficulty, as the
portions of the building contiguous to the doors are always densely
packed at an early period, so that the greater number have to pass
through these crowded centres to gain the remoter parts of the church.
Meantime people chat, and look about them, amusing themselves as they
best can; and the sonorous edifice echoes with the footsteps of the
moving mass. But at length the noise subsides; the "organ utters its
voices," and a hush, intense, unbroken, falls on the vast assembly. The
glorious music peals through the vaulted aisles, and swells upward to
the arching roof, pervading every nook and corner of the fane; and so
perfect is the stillness that one would think the winged notes the only
living things within its precincts.

On Friday last this annual solemnity was celebrated as usual at St.
Eustache; the mass, composed by Adam, a very noble and beautiful
composition, was admirably executed by a choir of two hundred and fifty
singers, and a band of one hundred musicians, including the whole
orchestra of the _Opera Comique_, and the best performers from the
Italian opera. The solos were sung by Mesdames Grimm and Couraud, and by
Bassine and Chapuis, the latter being one of the best tenors in the
city. Some of the quartettes, with accompaniments of harps and wind
instruments, were indescribably beautiful.

The Archbishop of Paris made an elegant little address, in which he
spoke of art in Pagan and in Christian days, and of its mission in the
present; and winding up with an appeal to the liberality of his hearers
on behalf of the charitable idea which had prompted this performance.
The Archbishop is a man of mild and grave countenance, but his dress was
very inharmonious. He wore a surplice of very rich lace, a cape of
violet silk, and a scarf richly embroidered in gold, which was all very
pretty, but his arms and hands were encased in sleeves, finished with
gloves, of scarlet cloth, which showed through the lace sleeves of the
surplice, and gave the hands a very frightful appearance. He wore a
little round cap on the top of his head, a golden crucifix on his bosom,
and an enormous gold ring on his right hand. He spoke very slowly,
screaming rather than speaking, in order to make himself heard in the
distant parts of the building. The service lasted two hours, and yielded
several thousand francs.

The Duchess of Narbonne, famed for her benevolence, was so desirous to
aid on this occasion, that though unable, on account of her great age,
to go among the crowd _making the guest_, as it is termed, she held a
bag at one of the great doors, adding to the sum she thus received, a
thousand francs as her own contribution, and a hundred francs for her
chair, for which the ordinary price is two sous.

The musicians are not alone in their preparations for winter. The
shopkeepers are just beginning the periodic display which betokens the
coming on of the holidays: and conspicuous among the novelties whose
appearance thus indicate the approach of Christmas, is a new style of
porcelain, of English invention, which imitates with great success the
antique marble vases, pitchers, &c., of classic days. Many of these
objects are of great beauty; the creamy hue of the ware itself, slightly
translucent, the graceful simplicity of their forms, and the delicate
mouldings of classical designs in bass-relief with which they are
adorned, producing an admirable effect, highly creditable to English
taste.

While modern art is thus successfully emulating the symmetrical
achievements of ancient times, a relic of great interest, recalling the
romantic age of Spanish history, has just been unexpectedly brought to
light. Some workmen, employed in making repairs in the Guildhall of
Burgos, in Spain, have recently discovered the tomb of the Cid, so
renowned in ancient story; a tomb whose very existence was unknown. An
old chest, long considered as mere rubbish, and on which stood the
antique chair from which, in other days, the Counts of Castille gave
judgment, having been opened through the curiosity of these workmen, was
found to contain the remains of Don Rodrigo Campeador, and his wife
Chimena, immortalized in ancient legend, in the verses of Guilhen de
Castro, of Corneille, and in our own days, in the graceful writings of
Mrs. Hemans. The remains of the renowned hero and his beautiful spouse
are to be removed to the church of San Gadeo, where a suitable monument
will be erected to their memory.

The following incident, connected with the two prevailing manias of the
day, lapdogs and balloon-ascensions, is just now amusing the gay circles
of this gossiping capital.

It seems that Madame de N., the accomplished and beautiful wife of a
triple millionaire of the quartier St. Honore, equally renowned for the
charms of her wit, and for the intensity of her passion for the barking
pets so dear to Parisian hearts, had taken a violent fancy (shared by
half Paris) to a certain tiny gray spaniel, the property of one of the
most admired of the innumerable representatives of Albion at this time
here congregated, the beautiful and distinguished Lady R., whose
intimacy was assiduously cultivated by Madame de N., all for the love of
the little gray spaniel.

Sylphide, the spaniel in question, was in sooth well calculated to make
havoc in hearts susceptible to canine charms. Her glossy fur, combed,
bathed, and perfumed every day with the utmost care, was of the most
delicate mouse-color, and softer than silk; her lustrous eyes sparkled
like jewels, and her expressive face, with the delicate drooping ears
that adorned her graceful head, were the realization of the most ideal
dream of little-doggish beauty; her tail was perfection; her slender
legs, in their light electric movements, hardly touched the ground; and
the dainty way in which she raised her charming little paws from the
sidewalk, when, by some rare chance (attired in her newest paletot of
the finest merino, lined with wadded silk, and trimmed with a rich
braid, her neck encircled with a silver collar, whose burnished chain
was attached to her mistress's waist), she honored the sidewalk with
their pressure, was so irresistibly bewitching, that all the fair round
arms of Paris opened spontaneously at the sight, as though to offer a
nestling-place to the little beauty, and raise her from a contact
unworthy of so peerless a creature.

Any price, no matter how exorbitant, that could have been asked for this
little paragon, Madame de N. would very gladly have paid; but,
unhappily, Sylphide was not to be sold: Lady R. was very fond of her,
and never seemed to understand the various hints thrown out from time to
time, with the utmost tact and delicacy, but still quite intelligibly,
by Madame de N.; and all that the latter could do was to bring her
utmost power of petting to bear on the subject of her adoration,
trusting to some unlooked-for stroke of good fortune to aid her in the
accomplishment of her heart's desire.

Sylphide was excessively fond of sugar-plums (in which she was a great
connoisseur), and also of fresh _brioche_, crumbs of which she would
eat, in the most charming manner, from the snowy hand of her admiring
friend; and as the _bonbonnière_ of Madame de N. was always well
supplied with her favorite dainties, Sylphide, who, on her side, was not
ungrateful, soon contracted a lively affection for Madame de N. and her
bonbonnière.

Such was the position of affairs, when an incident occurred which
produced a total estrangement between the two ladies. M. de S., a
gentleman well known in the diplomatic circles, whom Madame de N. had
long numbered among her conquests, fascinated by the charms of the fair
islander, deserted his brilliant countrywoman, and ranged himself among
the satellites of her rival. And by a curious coincidence, at the very
time that M. de S. quitted thus abruptly the orbit of Madame de N., the
Prince of ----, who had hitherto been one of the brightest luminaries in
the train of Lady R., left her ladyship to lay his homage at the feet of
the charming Parisian. But the acquisition of the Prince seems to have
failed to console the latter for the loss of a knight who had so long
worn her colors; and the defection of M. de S. drew from her an
expression of resentment towards her rival, which the mutual friend to
whom these angry feelings had been confided, lost no time in repeating
to the object of her displeasure. But Lady R., so far from being
affected by the indignation of Madame de N., merely replied, with a
careless shrug of her handsome shoulders, "_Mais, ma chère_, she has
really nothing to complain of; all the world knows that '_exchange is no
robbery_!'"

At this time a magnificent bracelet, the latest achievement of the
wonder-working _atèliers_ of Froment & Meurice, had been the object of
Lady R.'s most violent desire; but her lord, who was subject to
occasional attacks of a malady not uncommon to the husbands of beautiful
and fashionable ladies, was just then suffering from an attack of
jealousy so acute, that, to the despair of Lady R., he utterly refused
to gratify her desire to become the possessor of this costly ornament;
and the lady, after having vainly called to her aid all the force of her
address, and all the charms of her eloquence, found herself obliged,
though with a heavy heart, to renounce the idea of its acquisition.

Lady R.'s desire for this bracelet, and its disappointment, were no
secret to Madame de N.; and on learning, from the gossiping confidant,
the response made by her rival to her complaint, a sudden thought darted
through her mind. "_Chère amie_," said she to the confidant, "I beg you
to say to her ladyship, that, since such is her opinion, I hold her to
the acceptance of the consequences of her maxim."

The confidant lost no time in delivering this message, to which Lady R.,
thinking only of her host of admirers, laughingly replied, that Madame
de N. was quite at liberty to make any practical application of the
principle that she pleased.

Within two hours from the reception of this challenge, the beautiful
bracelet, inclosed in an elegant case, on whose lid the initials of Lady
R., surrounded by her crest, were engraved in letters of gold, had
passed from the jeweller's show-rooms to the boudoir of Madame de N.,
who thenceforth, by means of an espionage that followed every movement
of her rival, kept her constantly in view. At length the tournament, to
be followed by the balloon-ascension (held a week or two ago in the
Champ de Mars), was announced to the great delight of the
spectacle-loving public; and having learned that the fair Englishwoman
was to be present in an open carriage, Madame de N. determined to avail
herself of this occasion to execute her scheme.

Accordingly on the appointed day, the bracelet, in its elegant case,
being placed in the carriage beside her, and the coachman duly
instructed in the part he was to play, Madame de N., holding in her hand
her _bonbonnière_, supplied with fresh crumbs of the most delicate
_brioche_, followed, at short distance, the carriage of her rival to the
Champ de Mars, and took her stand just in the rear of her ladyship's
phaeton.

Lady R. was in excellent spirits, receiving the homage of a crowd of
attendant cavaliers; Sylphide, to the unspeakable joy of Madame de N.,
being seated on the front seat nearest her carriage.

Madame de N. waited patiently through the various evolutions of the
gorgeous scene; and, at its close, when the great balloon of M. Poitevin
rose majestically from the field, surrounded by its graceful band of
nymphs that seemed to float, self-sustained, in the air, their silver
wands and wreaths of flowers shining in the light of the setting sun,
when all eyes followed the aëronauts, and deafening acclamations rent
the air, in less time than we take in recounting the movement, the
carriage of Madame de N. advanced to the side of Lady R.'s; Sylphide,
attracted by the well-known _bonbonnière_, leapt lightly into the
outstretched arms of her friend; and Madame de N. depositing the morocco
case on the very spot Sylphide had quitted, bowed gracefully to her
rival, and drove rapidly away, before Lady R. had had time to comprehend
what was passing.

Great was her ladyship's amazement, as may well be supposed; and great,
for the first few moments, was also her indignation; but the mystery was
soon explained; for, in opening the case, which occupied Sylphide's
vacant place, and which was unmistakably intended for her, she perceived
the rich bracelet she had so much wished for, and beside it, the card of
Madame de N., on which was written, in pencil, these words, which
contained the key of the enigma, "_Exchange is no robbery_."

A hearty laugh, which she tried in vain to repress, broke from the lips
of the fair lady; much to the astonishment of the gentlemen who had
witnessed the scene, and to whom, notwithstanding their eager inquiries,
Lady R. very naturally declined giving any explanation of the affair.

I shall observe your instructions, to keep you advised of whatever
occurs here in the middle of the world.

    STELLA.




_Authors and Books_.


The German book trade has, for some months, been fairly overwhelmed with
books upon Hungary. We notice among the latest, "Flowers from Hungarian
Battlefields," a collection of novelettes, with scenes drawn from real
life in the late war, by Sajó, one of the most popular writers of
Hungary. The stories are spirited and vivid. "Confessions of a
Civilian," and "Confessions of a Soldier," are two books, of which the
last named has been for some time before the public, and has excited
attention by the thoroughness of its absolutist tendencies. The Civilian
is the opposite of the Soldier, being a liberal of the first stamp. Both
these writers, however, oppose the present Austrian ministry. A German
translation of Horwath's "History of the Hungarians" is coming out at
Pesth in numbers, and is welcomed by the German critics. This is
regarded by the most competent judges as an excellent work. "János the
Hero," a Romance of Hungarian Peasant Life, by Alexander Petöfy, one of
the most popular Magyar writers, is spoken of as a most successful
delineation of national peculiarities. "The Revolution and the Jews in
Hungary," is an interesting chapter out of the history of the Hungarian
Jews, by J. Eichorn. The fidelity of the Hebrews to the cause
represented by Kossuth and his associates, and defended by the entire
nation, is as well known as the extortions with which the butcher Haynau
attempted to punish their patriotism. _Rerum Hungaricum Monumenta_ is
the last work of the lamented antiquarian Eudlicher, and is designed to
open to the literary world the authentic sources of early Hungarian
history. It is, in short, a most valuable collection of ancient
documents relating to the origin of the Magyars, their first settlement
in Hungary, and their history under the native princes of the race of
Arpad. One of the best results of this work will be the provocation of
other savans to similar investigations, which cannot fail to throw light
on many obscure historical questions.

       *       *       *       *       *

A very interesting work has just made its appearance at Leipsic, giving
an intimate though by no means flattering account of the condition of
the POLISH POPULATION IN GALLICIA. The peculiarities of this race of
people are described as wild barbarism combined with elegant politeness,
dreamy melancholy, and practical cunning. The author was in Gallicia
before the peasants' insurrection in 1846. He narrates a variety of the
most striking scenes, which though highly colored are apparently true in
the main. Among other things he gives an account of a dinner-party to
which he was invited, at the house of a nobleman. The house stood in the
midst of a scattered mass of outbuildings, none of which bore the
slightest appearance of neatness, order, or comfort. Every thing, in
fact, has the appearance of neglect and decay. Many of the walls are
supported by props to prevent them from tumbling. Around the doors the
slightest rain produces a disgusting morass, while the general aspect of
the whole reminds the beholder of Attila's wooden palace in Pannonia,
where he heaped up the booty of a world, and received the ambassadors of
Rome. When the writer reached the door, he found his host with some
other gentlemen waiting to receive him. The company was numerous, and
all, especially the ladies, expensively dressed, in the last Parisian
fashion, with abundant jewelry and ornaments. The saloon in which they
were received was large but low, the walls covered with dirty paper, the
floor of rough boards, the furniture of all sorts and sizes, and nowhere
a trace of art or refined taste. The conversation was carried on in
French, and the ladies exhibited a thorough acquaintance with Paris
matters, notabilities, and gossip generally. At the table the drinking
was almost incredible, and the topic of conversation, the emancipation
of Poland. Every word was aimed at the conversion of the German guest.
The hard treatment of the serfs was spoken of as necessary, as they must
be kept in complete subjection in order to be made useful in the great
work. The festivity grew more and more ardent, till at last one of the
gentlemen took a shoe off from a lady's foot, filled it with wine, and
after drinking from it himself, passed it to the others, so that all
could pledge the ladies from such a cup. The next morning the stranger
saw by chance a sight of another kind, as he was taking a walk. Behind a
wall a man lay on the earth; another held fast his head, and a third his
feet, while a fourth stood over him with a whip, laying on with all his
might. The lord stood by in his dressing-gown, smoking a long pipe, and
coolly directing the procedure. The guest turned away from the
spectacle, but was told by his servant that this was the tenth man who
had undergone the same punishment that morning. The offence was, that
they had not begun work at sunrise. Of course a peasantry so treated
could have no affection for their masters. All the work was done in the
worst manner, while the lord was plundered in every way by his servants.
Of the supplies for the family, more than half were regularly stolen,
there being no supervision in the household. The extravagance of the
masters was boundless, and when they got out of money they resorted to
the Jews, who had the whole commerce of the country in their hands,
besides having mortgages on most of the estates.

This is the merest outline of a small portion of the book. It renders
more intelligible the atrocities which took place in the insurrection of
1846, and which the Austrian Government permitted, if they did not
foment.

       *       *       *       *       *

One of the most remarkable philologists and travellers of the present
day is the Hungarian Professor REGULY, a man as yet little known out of
his own country and northern Europe. He has devoted himself a good deal
to the exposition of the affinities between the Magyar and the Finnish
languages, and his labors have impelled a number of learned Hungarians
to the same study. In the year 1839 he left his country, and passed ten
years in the north of Asia and Europe, mostly among the Finnish tribes
of the Moguls, Ostiacks, Tsheremisses, Nordwins, &c., making himself
familiar with their manners, customs, dialects, songs, and traditions,
in order to attain a thorough personal acquaintance therewith. He also
spent a long period in Kasan and St. Petersburgh, studying the other
languages of Central Asia. His adventures during this time were, as may
be supposed, remarkable. He suffered not only the privations and
exposures inseparable from such an undertaking, but was also poorly
supplied with money, and often in the greatest distress from that cause.
Nothing but scientific enthusiasm carried him through, till he became
acquainted with some Russian savans, and a Russian Councillor named
Balugyanszky, who were of great assistance to him. He left his home a
vigorous young man, and comes back broken down in strength and health.
His investigations have related not only to philology, but to geography
and ethnography. He has penetrated farther into the north of Asia than
any previous traveller. On his return, at St. Petersburgh, he prepared,
at the special request of the Geographical Society, a vast map of
Northern Asia along the Ural Mountains, between 58 and 70 deg. north
latitude, and 72 and 80 deg. east longitude, giving about five hundred
localities. This map is made on the largest scale, containing sixteen
large quarto sheets. The _St. Petersburgh Gazette_ says of it, that it
has proved Reguly to be the discoverer of a vast territory for Russia.
He is now at Pesth, engaged in preparing for publication the fruits of
his ten years' absence from home. He will treat of the languages of the
European and Asiatic Finnish tribes, their grammar and vocabularies,
with constant regard to the analogies of the Magyar tongue. By way of
introduction he will first publish a special work, containing his
philosophical views on the organism of language. After these
philological treatises he will print a series of ethnographic works on
the various races among which he has lived, with collections of their
songs and traditions, and finally a detailed narrative of his travels,
with a condensed account of their scientific results. The conclusion of
his philological studies is briefly, that the Central-Asiatic, or as it
might be called, the Ural-Altaic group of languages, is divided into six
branches or families, namely, the language of the Mandshu Tartars, the
Mongols, the Turkish-Tartar tribes, the Samoyedes, the Fins, and the
Magyars. These families have however no nearer relation to each other
than the individual tongues of the Indo-European group, as the Indian,
the Romanic, German, Celtic, Slavic, and Persian languages. Still he
regards the Magyar and Finnic languages as having greater mutual
affinities than the others, though not to such a degree that one of
these races of men can be supposed to be derived from the other. He
rather supposes all of the races whose languages form the
Central-Asiatic group to have sprung from an original race, which was
probably Scythian.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Austrian government has just set on foot an enterprise which
promises to be of use to both Literature and Science. The plan is, to
prepare and publish at the expense of the Imperial Treasury, a great
work on the ethnography of the Empire, and all savans, teachers,
artists, poets, of every race, are invited to furnish materials. It is
designed to give a complete account of the origin, history, manners,
language, character and condition of each of the many tribes and peoples
included under the Austrian sceptre. This will be combined of course
with descriptions of the country, scenery, climate, soil, minerals, and
natural and industrial productions of each region. It is supposed that
the whole will be completed in eight big volumes. It will be accompanied
by a vast ethnographic map, which is now being prepared with great
energy under the superintendence of the Minister of Commerce.

       *       *       *       *       *

KARL GUTZKOW is one of the most prolific and popular novel and
playwrights now living in Germany. As to his last work, _Die Ritter vom
Geiste_ (The Knights of the Spirit), of which only the first volume has
been published, the critics entertain the most contradictory opinions.
Some exclaim at its great length, which indeed is rather terrific: there
are to be nine books, and the first occupies the whole of the first
volume. Others are charmed with the skill with which the details of the
work are wrought up, and the great variety of persons who figure in the
story. The author has certainly laid out all his strength in this book,
which is designed to reproduce the present age in all the contradictions
of its doctrines and the complexity of its tendencies. But instead of
seizing these in some central and vital point, and setting them forth in
a work whose very simplicity would conceal its depth from most readers,
Gutzkow has adopted the easier and more clumsy method of multiplying his
characters and complicating the actions of his drama. Thus it is hardly
possible for it not to be tedious and a failure. But we can speak of it
more fairly when it is farther advanced.

       *       *       *       *       *

Dr. NEANDER'S Library is advertised for sale by auction at Berlin, but
our correspondent thinks it will be saved from the hammer by a private
subscription, which will secure it to the University.

       *       *       *       *       *

KARL SIMROCK has just brought out at Frankfort a new collection of
GERMAN POPULAR SONGS, not obsolete or artistic poems, but such as still
live among the people, and are familiar to every class. "Among
_Volkslieder_," he says in his preface, "I include only such as have
proceeded directly from the people, and still bear the tokens of their
origin, in their unsophisticated form, and simple, hearty language. The
pieces of cultivated poets which have found access and become loved with
the people, are reserved for a future collection of favorite German
songs. The distinction here hinted at between the people's songs and
popular songs is not generally understood. All previous collections have
confused the two, and some even have not a single production of the
people. For example, _Des Knaben Wunderhorn_, whose great merit must be
recognized, contains antique poems which by no means issued from among
the people." In another place he says: "The songs here collected and
arranged have been newly written down, literally from the mouths of the
people; and where they could not be procured in this way, have been
corrected by comparison of all earlier versions. So that as they here
stand, they are in a sort my own property." The work is spoken of by
competent critics as perfectly successful. We believe that Simrock, who
is perhaps better qualified for the undertaking than any other man in
Germany, intends in a future edition to publish the melodies of the
songs along with the words.

       *       *       *       *       *

Belgian Literature is a standing joke with the authors of Paris, and not
without reason, for the majority of the books printed by the publishers
of Belgium, are pirated from their French neighbors. There is, however,
such a thing as a Belgian literature, though it is not very extensive,
and one of its chief ornaments is Professor BORGNEL, of Liege, best
known as the author of a _Historie des Belges à la fin du dix-huilième
Siècle_, published some six years since, to which he is about to bring
out an addition, carrying the history back to the beginning of the same
century. He has also been occupied for several years with the history of
the Flemish Provinces, under the domination of the Spaniards, and has a
work on that subject in preparation. The Introduction to it appeared not
long since among the Memoirs of the Brussels Academy, where it is
entitled: _Philippe I. et la Belgique_. In treating a subject which the
masterly pen of Schiller has already rendered familiar to the world,
Prof. Borgnel does not attempt to imitate the ardent and splendid
eloquence of that great poet and historian; Borgnel's merits are
distinctness in his outlines, remarkable clearness of arrangement,
perfect impartiality towards individuals and parties, and conscientious
use of materials. Of these he has had a greater variety, including many
manuscripts not before brought to light, than any previous writer.

       *       *       *       *       *

Among the new books announced in London is _Notes on North America,
Agricultural, Social, and Economical_, by J. F. W. Johnston, author of
"Lectures on Agricultural Chemistry." We may anticipate something of
value from a man of his studies and well earned reputation. Professor
Johnston passed the greater portion of his time, while in America, in
the British Provinces. He had been led to believe that they offered the
most interesting field for his professional observation. When he came
into New-England, New-York and Pennsylvania, he was continually
surprised at the perfection and the success of our agriculture. He
regretted only, that the mistake into which he had been led by British
travellers, had detained him from the United States until the period of
his absence from home was nearly expired. Professor Johnston's lectures
in New-York were given under singular disadvantages, but the too small
audiences who heard them were pleased and instructed. All who became
acquainted with him were impressed with a belief of his candor and his
talents. We hope to see immediately an edition of his book in this
country.

       *       *       *       *       *

In Geissen, Prof. LIEBIG, has published a Review of the Progress of
Chemistry, Mineralogy, and Geology, in the year 1849. He has been
assisted in its preparation by Professor Kopp and several other savans
connected with the University at Giessen. It is marked by his usual
completeness, breadth of scope, and exhaustive treatment of each
particular subject. Liebig is now engaged in preparing a new series of
Chemical Letters, which will be specially devoted to the growth of this
science, in connection with the history of mental progress in general.
Professor Knobel, of the same University, has also issued a work on the
Genealogies of the Book of Genesis, which excites remark by the
thoroughness of its historical investigations. Leopold Schmid's last
work is on the Spirit of Catholicism, and also highly spoken of by both
Catholic and Protestant writers. This author holds a high rank in the
Catholic literature of Germany, and has been chosen Bishop of Mayence.
Professor Hillebrand is occupied with a revision of his highly esteemed
History of German national literature since Lessing. There seems to be
no reason to fear that Giessen is doing less than its share toward
keeping the ocean of German books up at a high-water mark.

       *       *       *       *       *

BERANGER, the veteran _chansonier_, is now occupying himself in writing
biographies, anecdotes, criticisms, &c., of the public men with whom, in
the course of his long career, he has been in contact. It is five years
since he announced his intention of giving such a work to the public,
and he thinks it will possess great historical value, while of his
songs, which alone will convey his name to the last ages in which the
language of France is spoken, he thinks but "indifferently well."

       *       *       *       *       *

The house, at Paris, in which EUGENE SUE laid some of the most exciting
scenes of his "Wandering Jew," has lately been advertised for sale, and
has been visited by crowds of curious loungers. It is known as the Hotel
Serilly, and is situated at No. 5 Rue Neuve Saint François, in the
quarter called the Marais. At the time the "Wandering Jew" was
published, the street was often filled by groups of gazers at the
strange old edifice, which had been so exactly described by the
romancer, that no one could mistake it. Some even ventured to knock at
the door and seek further information. They were received by a
mysterious and taciturn old Hebrew, who looked as if he himself had
charge of the great Rennepeal treasure, and three-quarters of the
visitors went away convinced that they had seen the veritable Samuel
himself. Now that the whole house has been thrown open to the public,
there have been found under it vast sub-cellars extending under the
large garden in the rear, and in these cellars are seven wells,
partially filled up, but with walls of careful masonry, and other
indications that they were of great depth and great utility. The opinion
was at once set on foot by the explorers, that the millions of the
treasure had been concealed in one of these wells. The fact is, that the
house formerly belonged to a Protestant family which suffered extreme
persecution after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and which
doubtless found the subterranean passages extremely convenient. In the
year 1791, it was inhabited by the revolutionist Carnot.

       *       *       *       *       *

The COUNT DE TOCQUEVILLE, a relative of the author of "Democracy in
America," has just published a historical work on the Reign of Louis
XVI. The writer, an old man almost sinking into the grave, enjoys the
advantage of having himself witnessed and even shared in a part of the
events he describes. He was intimate with Malasherbes, and personally
devoted to the unfortunate Louis. Of his ability as a writer, a former
work on the Reign of Louis XV. furnished proofs which are repeated in
the present volume. Of course he does full justice to the amiable
personal qualities of Marie Antoinette and her husband, without doing
injustice to their faults. But he shows that after all what was charged
upon them as political crime, was but the consequence of long-standing
causes, over which they had no control, or even of measures of reform to
which with the best intentions, they had given their consent. In
speaking of the mission of Franklin at the French Court, M. de
Tocqueville gives some interesting details. "At Paris," he says, "the
zeal for the cause of the insurgents constantly increased. The women who
exercised a great influence in the reign of Louis XVI., became
passionate supporters of the Americans, and made aiding them a question
of honor. The simple manners of their envoys,--their hair without
powder, their citizens' dress, pleased by a sort of piquant novelty. All
who approached Franklin were charmed by his wit. In him people venerated
the founder of the liberty of a great nation, and even grew enthusiastic
in behalf of that liberty." M. de Tocqueville shows however that the
prime minister Maurepas only feared the Americans because he was
embarrassed in his position, and thought to relieve himself by making
war with England. But as there was no good reason for making such a war,
the honesty of the King revolted at it. M. de Vergennes also said in the
Council, that England would be much more weakened by a long war with her
colonies, than by their loss. "But how," repeated all the women, "can we
help embracing the cause of a people which sends us ambassadors without
powder, and with shoe-strings, instead of buckles?" So weighty a reason
turned the balance, and the war was declared. That war finished the ruin
of the French monarchy, not only by inspiring the officers and soldiers
sent to the United States with new ideas, but also by completing the
exhaustion of its finances. With regard to the Revolution in which Louis
XVI. lost his head, it is enough praise for our historian, that while he
inclines always to the monarchical side, he is not altogether unjust to
the popular virtues which shone with such rare brilliancy amid the gloom
of that epoch.

       *       *       *       *       *

The great work of J. G. AUDUBON and the Rev. Dr. BACHMAN, upon the
"Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America," is much praised by those
persons in Europe whose praise is of most value. The _Athenaeum_ remarks
that, hitherto, the mammalia of America have been known chiefly through
descriptions by zoologists, in the Transactions of European Societies,
and that no systematic attempt has been made to bring together into one
connected view the very varied forms of animal life presented by this
great continent, while these authors have not only used the materials
which were at hand in the works of others, but have themselves observed
with great diligence the habits of many of the creatures which they have
described. "Their work is creditable to the United States, where a large
number of subscribers have induced the authors to undertake it,--and a
most valuable addition to our general natural-history literature." The
geographical range within which the animals described in these pages are
found is not that of the government of the United States merely; it
comprehends Russian and British America, in fact, all the country which
lies north of the tropics in the New World.

       *       *       *       *       *

At the last MICHAELMAS BOOK FAIR at Leipsic, the Catalogue contained the
titles of 5,023 new works published in Germany since Easter. This is
from twelve to fifteen hundred more than at any fair since the
Revolution of 1848. A great number of these books are large and of
remarkable merit, being in some sort, the accumulation of the more
profound scientific labors of the past two years.

       *       *       *       *       *

The BARONESS VON BECK has just published in London two volumes of
"Personal Adventures" in the Hungarian war. She is herself a Hungarian,
and she saw her husband fall while cheering his men to defend a
barricade at Vienna. In this book Kossuth is her hero, her prophet, her
demigod; and she sacrifices all other celebrities without compunction at
the altar of his greatness. Dembinsky she treats with manifest
injustice; Georgey comes out on her pages as a very Mephistopheles.
Klapka himself does not escape without animadversion. But without
adopting her opinions, either of the man she blames or the subject she
discusses, it cannot be denied that she has great cleverness, and a
wonderful power of exciting and interesting the reader.

       *       *       *       *       *

A valuable scientific periodical is the _Geographisches Jahrbuch_ for
the Communication of all the more important New Investigations, edited
by the distinguished BERGHAUS, and published by Perthes of Gotha. The
last number has an article by the editor on the system of "Mountains and
Rivers of Africa," which differs altogether from what is laid down in
the present maps. The author lays down the river Nile as flowing from
the N'Yassi, and as connected with a great number of rivers in Dar Fur,
Waday, and Fertil, with relation to which only the vaguest views have
hitherto been entertained. The article shows, too, that the newly
discovered lake N'Gami, in Southern Africa, has been long known under
the name of Nampur. The same number of the _Jahrbuch_ also contains an
article from the pen of the late lamented ALBERT GALLATIN, on the
climate of North America. This article was written in English, and was
translated into German for the _Jahrbuch_.

       *       *       *       *       *

BERGHAUS has also lately issued a complete work of the highest interest,
especially now that so much attention is every where paid to
Ethnographic studies. Its title is _Grundlinien der Ethnographie_
(Outlines of Ethnography). It is in two parts, and contains a universal
tabular description of all the races of the globe, arranged
ethnographically and geographically, and according to languages and
dialects, with a comparative view of their manners, customs, and habits.
No person who undertakes to investigate the origin of the human family
and the mutual relations of its different members, can afford to be
without this work. Published in Stuttgart.

       *       *       *       *       *

BERTHOLD AUERBACH has just brought out a little volume of tales, which
we may well infer from his previous performances are charmingly replete
with grace, good humor, and a keen perception of whatever is peculiar to
his subject. The title of the book is _Deutsche Abende_ (German
Evenings). It contains three stories: "Nice People," "What is
Happiness?" and "The Son of the Forester." Published at Mannheim.

       *       *       *       *       *

BARON STERNBERG, a dilettante book-maker of Germany, who generally
resides at Berlin, has just added a new romance, or rather the beginning
of one, to his previous publications. It bears the promising, if not
pretentious title, of _The German Gil Blas_ (published at Bremen), and
claims to be comic, as a matter of course. As a whole, the book is a
failure. Though there are passages here and there which may be read with
satisfaction, there is not enough unity and connection between the
different parts, and the humor is generally but a thin potation. It must
be said, however, that the absence of continuous interest is the fault
of most comic novels, as well as poems. Even the matchless works of Jean
Paul grow tedious by the endeavor to read much of them at a time, a fact
which may be ascribed to the sentimentality and mere fantastics with
which the kernels of his wit are overburdened. It is certain that no
German humorous work can be compared with those great originals in that
kind, Gil Blas and Don Quixote, or even with the much inferior works of
Smollett and Dickens. Baron Sternberg's last effort forms no exception
to this remark, and there is little hope that the second and concluding
volume, whose appearance in Germany ought to be made by this time, will
prove superior to the first. His "Royalists," an anti-democratic novel,
which he had the courage to publish in the chaos of 1848, and which
excited much attention, and a great deal of severe criticism, was far
better.

       *       *       *       *       *

"THE NEW FAITH SOUGHT IN ART," is the title of an anonymous little book
lately issued at Paris, which, though not of great value, has more
poetic originality of thought than is often found in printed pages. The
author thinks that the time has gone by in which the subjects of art
could properly be sought in the lives of saints and legends of the
Church, and wishes to substitute for them the lives of artists and
celebrated inventors, who have sprung from the bosom of the people. With
this writer, every thing is democratic and popular. For him the people
is alone King, and worthy of all honor. "Nothing," he says in one place,
"is truer than the song of Beethoven. It is the song of life, the voice
of truth, an infallible voice, which will create a world, and cause the
old false world to crumble. Born of the people, the people sing in him,
although they know him not." In painting, the heroes of the author are
Ruysdael, Rembrandt, Claude-Lorraine, and Paul Potter.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Poet FREILIGRATH has received orders to leave the village of Bilk,
in the neighborhood of Dusseldorf; where he was residing, and to quit
the Prussian territories. He will probably go back to England, where he
passed some time in a counting-house or perhaps come to the United
States, where he has several friends, to whom he has written of such an
event as possible.

       *       *       *       *       *

In AFRICAN DISCOVERY greater advances have been made in the last two
years than before since the journeys of the brothers Lander. We
mentioned in the last _International_ that the American traveller, Dr.
W. Mathews, had been heard of at Vienna, and we now learn that he has
been very successful in the five years of his adventure in the northern
and central parts of the continent. Letters received in Berlin from Drs.
Barth and Overweg, contain information of their having accomplished the
journey across the Great Desert, or Sahara, and of their arrival near
the frontiers of the kingdom of Air or Asben, (Air is the modern
Tuarick, and Asben the ancient Sudan name), the most powerful in that
part of Africa after Bornou, and never explored by Europeans. On the
24th of August--the date of their last letter--they were at Taradshit, a
small place in about 20° 30' N. latitude, and 9° 20' longitude E. of
Greenwich. Among their discoveries are some of peculiar interest, one of
which is of several curious and very ancient sculptures, apparently of
Egyptian origin. The King of Prussia has, at the instance of the
Chevalier Bunsen and Baron Alexander von Humboldt, augmented the funds
of the two travellers by a grant of 1,000 thalers.

While Richardson, Barth and Overweg have penetrated the _terra
incognita_ of the north, Dr. Krapf and the Rev. Mr. Rebmann have
explored the region described on the common maps as the "Great Southern
Sahara," and found it to be fertile, healthy, abounding in mountains,
valleys and rivers, and inhabited by a race altogether superior to that
which occupies the Atlantic coast. Mr. Mansfield Parkyns is endeavoring
to cross the country southward from the Nile to the river Gambia; Mr.
Charles Johnson is travelling in Abysinnia; Baron von Müller is
conducting an expedition up the White Nile; and the American
missionaries and colonists are gradually extending their knowledge over
the various settlements on the eastern coast of the continent.

       *       *       *       *       *

THE PRUSSIAN EXPEDITION TO EGYPT, _Denkmaeler aus Ægypten und Æthiopien
nach den Zeichnungen der von Sr. Majestat dem Könige von Preussen
Friedrich Wilhelm IV. nach diesen Ländern gesendeten, und in den Jahren
1842-45, ausgefuhrten wissenschaftlichen Expedition: Herausgegeben von
Dr. R. Lepsius_; published at the expense and under the guarantee of the
Prussian Government, will be completed in eighty parts, or eight hundred
plates. Most of the plates are printed with tints, and many in the
colors of the originals. This work forms a necessary completion of the
celebrated work of the French Expedition under Napoleon. Parts I. to X.
are now advertised as ready for subscribers, in London, at three dollars
and a half each.

       *       *       *       *       *

A NEW WORK ON AFRICA, by H. C. Grund, is advertised at Berlin.

       *       *       *       *       *

Almanacs for popular use, offer a means much used in France for the
propagation of political, social and religious doctrines. Every sect and
party issues its Almanac, and some issue several, crammed to the brim
with the peculiar notions whose dissemination is wished for. One of the
most successful for the year 1851, is the _Almanach des Opprimés_ (The
Almanac of the Oppressed). In fact, it is aimed wholly at the Society of
Jesuits, whose history it exposes in the blackest colors. It begins with
the early life of Loyola, depicts his debaucheries, his ambition, the
religious mechanism invented by his enthusiastic and fanatical genius,
the flexibility of his morality, and goes on to give an account of the
intrigues and crimes of his successors in various countries and times,
with an analysis of their books, their missions and their miracles.
Another of these publications is called the _Almanach du Peuple_,
containing a very great variety of articles of substantial value. Among
the contributors are, F. Arago, Quinet, Charras, Carnot, Girardin,
George Sand, Pierre Leroux, Dumil Aeur, E. Lithe, Mazzini, and other
republicans distinguished in the political, literary and scientific
world. This Almanac had the honor last year of being seized by the
Government, but on trial before a jury it was acquitted of the charge
against it, of being dangerous to society, and provoking citizens to
hate the republic and despise the authorities.

       *       *       *       *       *

A critic in the _Allegemeine Zeitung_, in noticing "Ottomar, a Romance
from the Present Time," the last novel from the pen of Madame Von
Zöllner, takes occasion to give some hard hits at women's novels in
general. "It always must and always will be a failure," he says, "when a
woman attempts to form a just conception of masculine character, and to
put her conception into language. Female writers always comb out
smoothly the flaxen hair of their heroes, and dress them up in the
frockcoat of innocence. They go into raptures over a sort of green
enthusiasm, and a romantic fantasticality of virtue, such as we godless
fellows are not guilty of possessing; and in this way they turn out
automatons which resemble nothing in earth, heaven, or elsewhere." The
critic however admits that Madame Zöllner, who is undoubtedly one of the
best living German novel writers, possesses remarkable and peculiar
merits. No other woman occupies so high a place with the German public,
except it be Fanny Lewald. Madame Zöllner is praised for the pure moral
tone of her writings.

       *       *       *       *       *

One of the most accomplished writers in France--M. DE CORMENIN--and one
of the most _spirituel_ of that _spirituel_ nation, said at Frankfort,
"It is true that it is difficult to abolish war, but it is far more
difficult to abolish death; and yet if people would take the same pains
to avoid the one as they did to escape the other, they would certainly
accomplish their object."

       *       *       *       *       *

One of the most ardent and vigorous writers of Young France, Alphonse
Esquiros, has brought out at Paris a new book called "The History of the
Martyrs of Liberty." The author aims to follow the development of
liberty in humanity; to expose the tie which unites ancient and modern
society in historic solidarity; to determine the transformation of the
doctrines, which, for a century past, have invaded the religious world
under the name of philosophy, political economy, and socialism; to set
forth the fertile sufferings which have brought about that double
triumph of liberty in ideas and in facts, namely Christianity and the
French Revolution; to indicate the questions yet undecided; and to call
to their solution both the miseries of the laboring classes and the
lights of science.

       *       *       *       *       *

Whatever may be said of the more elaborate writings of GEORGE SAND, it
is impossible for the most scrupulous critic to deny or resist the charm
of her smaller works, such as the "Mosaic Workers," the "Devil's Love,"
and "Fadette." To these she has just added another, which is spoken of
with the utmost delight by all who have read it, as a work of remarkable
genius. It is intended for the use of children, and is called "The
History of the veritable Gribonille." The text is accompanied by richly
engraved illustrations, designed by Mr. Maurice Sand, the son, we
believe, of the author. Why will not some American publisher give us a
translation, with the original illustrations?

       *       *       *       *       *

To the already immense literature of the French Revolution, we now have
to signalize another addition, which is worth the attention of those who
are not weary of books relating to that momentous epoch. It is a
"Biography of Camille Desmoulins," by Ed. Fleury--an octavo volume,
lately issued at Paris. The author discusses the history of this famous
pamphleteer and revolutionary rhetorician, as an advocate defends a
client before a jury.

       *       *       *       *       *

THE HISTORY OF THE PRINCIPLES, INSTITUTIONS AND LAWS OF THE FRENCH
REVOLUTION, from 1789 to 1800, is an anti-revolutionary work of
elaborate character, and decided ability, published a few weeks since at
Paris, by an anonymous author, who thinks he can do something toward
getting the world right by rolling back some of its more recent
gyrations.

       *       *       *       *       *

A popular History of the French Revolution, from 1789 to 1799, written
by HIPPOLITE MAGEN, and lately published at Paris, in one volume, is
having a great success among the laboring classes of Paris and other
French cities. It is of course in favor of the Montangards.

       *       *       *       *       *

A valuable manual for students of French history is M. LOUIS TRIPIER'S
collection of French Constitutions, since 1789, with the decrees of the
Provisional Government of 1848. It has just been issued by Cotillon, at
Paris.

       *       *       *       *       *

MIRABEAU, the great revolutionist, is the subject of a new work just
published at Vienna, from the pen of Franz Ernst Pipitz, a native of
that city, but now a teacher at the University of Zurich. It is in great
part the result of original investigations, and in many particulars
departs from the received biographies, while in others it casts a new
light on facts previously known. The critics of Vienna speak in the
highest terms of it, as worthy to be named along with the most brilliant
French productions on the same subject. They are, however, bound to say
the best thing possible for a book by a Viennese author, since they have
but few to rejoice in.

       *       *       *       *       *

THE MEMOIRS OF MASSENA, which have for some time been in course of
publication at Paris, are at last completed, by the issue of the final
volume, which contains the history of the campaign of 1810-11, in
Portugal. No complete account of this campaign has ever before been
published. The book also casts a great deal of light not merely on the
history of the Marshal himself, but on the wars of Napoleon in general.
It is founded on documents left by Massena, which have not before been
published or consulted.

       *       *       *       *       *

M. COUSIN, who, after having exerted a more powerful influence in
philosophy than any of his contemporaries, (though this influence was,
in a large degree, secondary in its character), has recently been almost
forgotten. We see by a paragraph in the _Debats_ that he is collecting
and editing all his various writings upon the subject of education. They
will fill several volumes.

       *       *       *       *       *

Another tribute to the memory of LOUIS PHILIPPE, has just been offered
by M. R. PAIGNON, who has collected and published a volume of the
deceased King's thoughts and opinions on matters of State. This work
exhibits the mental and political history of its subject in the best
light, and has the merit of being arranged with care and fidelity.

       *       *       *       *       *

M. FELIX PIGNORY, of the Commission despatched by the French Government,
in search of the tomb of Godfrey of Bouillon, has returned from Asia,
and reports some curious discoveries relative to the object of the
mission.

       *       *       *       *       *

A new and enlarged edition of ZUINET'S _Genie des Religions_ has
appeared at Paris.

       *       *       *       *       *

THE POLITICAL MAXIMS AND THE PRIVATE THOUGHTS OF FREDERICK THE GREAT is
the title of a curious piece in the last number of _Frazer's Magazine_.
It is unique as a sample of kingcraft; and every line supplies a proof
of the candor, hypocrisy, unscrupulousness, sense of duty, courage,
sensuality, and intellect, of the great Prussian, to whom are partially
due the literary merits or demerits of the paper.

       *       *       *       *       *

The new edition of the POEMS OF ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING, contains
besides many original pieces, her translation of the "Prometheus Bound,"
of Æschylus, never hitherto published, although, as she informs us, once
privately circulated in another and less complete form. It bears no mark
of a woman's hand: it is rugged, massive, and sublime, as befits the
grand old fate drama which the genius of the Greek moulded out of the
immortal agony of the beneficent Titan. From the new poems we select the
following exquisite love sonnets, from a series scarcely inferior to
those in which Shakspeare has given the history of his heart-life:

    "I lift my heavy heart up solemnly,
    As once Electra her sepulchral urn,
    And, looking in thine eyes, I overturn
    The ashes at thy feet. Behold and see
    What a great heap of grief lay hid in me,
    And how the red wild sparkles dimly burn
    Through the ashen grayness. If thy foot in scorn
    Could tread them out to darkness utterly,
    It might be well perhaps. But if instead
    Thou wait beside me for the wind to blow
    The gray dust up, ... those laurels on thine head,
    O my beloved, will not shield thee so,
    That none of all the fires shall scorch and shred
    The hair beneath. Stand further off, then! Go.

    "Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
    Henceforward in thy shadow. Never more
    Alone upon the threshold of my door
    Of individual life, I shall command
    The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
    Serenely in the sunshine as before,
    Without the sense of that which I forbore,
    Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
    Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine
    With pulses that beat double. What I do
    And what I dream include thee, as the wine
    Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
    God for myself, He hears that name of thine,
    And sees within my eyes, the tears of two.

    "Beloved, my beloved, when I think
    That thou wast in the world a year ago,
    What time I sat alone here in the snow,
    And saw no foot-print, heard the silence sink
    No moment at they voice; ... but link by link
    Went courting all my chains, as if that so
    They never could fall off at any blow
    Struck by thy possible hand.... Why, thus I drink
    Of life's great cup of wonder. Wonderful,
    Never to feel thee thrill the day or night
    With personal act or speech,--nor ever call
    Some prescience of thee with the blossoms white
    Thou sawest growing! _Atheists are as dull,
    Who cannot guess God's presence out of sight._

    "First time he kissed me, he but only kissed
    The fingers of this hand wherewith I write,
    And ever since it grew more clear and white;
    How to world greetings ... quick with its 'Oh, list,'
    When the angels speak. A ring of amethyst
    I could not wear there plainer to my sight
    Than that first kiss. The second passed in height
    The first, and sought the forehead, and half-missed,
    Half falling on the hair. O, beyond meed!
    That was the chrism of love, which love's own crown,
    With sanctifying sweetness, did precede.
    The third, upon my lips was folded down,
    In perfect purple state! Since when, indeed,
    I have been proud, and said, 'My love, my own.'"

       *       *       *       *       *

The candidateship between Lord Palmerston and the historian Alison for
the office of Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, resulted in a
majority for the latter, on the gross poll, of 69. As, however, of the
"four nations" into which the students were distributed, each of the
candidates had two, the election should have been decided by the vote of
the present Rector, Mr. Macaulay; but he declines the duty, and would
not go to the university during the contest.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Official Gazette announces that "the Queen has been pleased to
appoint ALFRED TENNYSON, Esq., to be Poet Laureate in ordinary to her
Majesty, in the room of William Wordsworth, Esq., deceased." There have
been poorer poets than Tennyson among the laureates; but this
appointment does not and ought not to give much satisfaction. Mr.
Tennyson had already a pension from the government, and was in no need
of the salary of this office, as one or two others, and as we conceive,
greater poets, are; and it had been hoped that the queen would appoint
to the place the _greatest poet of her own sex_ who has lived in
England--Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

       *       *       *       *       *

The original MS. of "WAVERLEY,"--wholly in the handwriting of Sir Walter
Scott,--the same which was sold in 1831 with the other MSS. of the
series of novels and romances--has been presented to the Advocates'
Library at Edinburgh, by Mr. James Hall, brother of the late Capt. Basil
Hall. Several of the MSS. of Scott are in this country, having been sold
here by Dr. Lardner, soon after his arrival here with Mrs. Heavyside.

       *       *       *       *       *

MR. HORACE MAYHEW, author of the metropolitan "Labor and the Poor"
articles, has ceased to write for the London _Morning Chronicle_, the
conductors of that journal wishing him to suppress, in his reports on
the condition of the working classes, facts opposed to free trade. This
appears to be characteristic of the advocates of that side.

       *       *       *       *       *

D'ISRAELI has published an edition of his father's "Curiosities of
Literature," with a "View of the Character and Writings of the Author."
He is now engaged upon a Life of Lord William Bentinck, which he has
undertaken at the request of the Duke of Portland. We do not think the
author of the "Wondrous Tale of Alroy" will do very well in history.

       *       *       *       *       *

The EARL OF CARLISLE has recently given two lectures before the
Tradesmen's Benevolent Society of Leeds, and the Mechanics' Institute of
the same city, upon the Scenes, Institutions, and Characteristics of the
United States, which he visited when Lord Morpeth.

       *       *       *       *       *

LEIGH HUNT has probably done a foolish thing in again becoming an
editor. He is too old. We have, by the last steamer, "Leigh Hunt's
Journal: a Miscellany for the Cultivation of the Memorable, the
Progressive, and the Beautiful"--certainly a characteristic title.

       *       *       *       *       *

A Posthumous work of JOSEPH BALMAS,--(the celebrated Spanish priest,
whose book on Catholicism and Protestantism has lately been translated,
and published in Baltimore, and who perished prematurely in 1848), has
just been published. It is entitled _Escritos Posthumos, Poesias
Posthumos_, and contains prose and verse on science, literature, and
politics.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Death of the late MRS. BELL MARTIN, at the Union Place Hotel, in
this city, was briefly noticed in the last number of the
_International_. It appears from a statement in the London _Times_ that
the vast estates known as the Connemara property, to which she had
succeeded as the daughter and heiress of the late Mr. Thomas Martin, of
Ballinahinch Castle, in Galway, was among the first brought into the new
"Encumbered Estates Court," and has been for some months advertised for
sale. The Dublin _Evening Mail_ has the following remarks upon the
melancholy history of Mrs. Martin, whose novel of "Julia Howard" must
preserve for her a very distinguished rank among the literary women, of
our time:

     "The vicissitudes of life have seldom produced a sadder or more
     rapid reverse than that by which the fortunes of this excellent
     lady were darkened and overthrown. Born to a noble inheritance
     which extended over a territory far exceeding the domain of
     many a reigning German prince, her name was known throughout
     the United Kingdom as that of "the Irish heiress." Five years
     ago her expectancy was considered to be equivalent, over and
     above all encumbrances and liabilities, to a yearly income of
     5,000_l._ Before two years of the interval had elapsed she
     found herself at the head of her patrimonial estates, without a
     shilling that she could call her own. The failure of the potato
     crop, the famine and pestilence which followed, the scourging
     laws enacted and enforced by an ignorant Legislature to redress
     the calamity, and the claims of money-lenders, swept every inch
     of property from under her feet. Her hopes and her prospects
     were for ever blighted. Her projects for the improvement of the
     wild district over which she had reigned as a sort of native
     sovereign were at an end; and she went forth from the roof of
     her fathers as a wanderer, without a home, and, as it would
     almost appear, without a friend. Never was hard fate less
     deserved; for her untiring and active benevolence had been
     devoted from her childhood to the comfort and relief of those
     who suffered, and her powerful and original mind was
     incessantly employed in devising means of moral and physical
     amelioration in the condition of the tenantry on her father's
     estates. She gave up her whole time to such pursuits, avoiding
     the haunts of fashion and those amusements which might be
     considered suitable to her age and place, that she might
     perform the various duties of physician, almoner,
     schoolmistress, and agricultural instructor. Her almost daily
     habit was to visit the poor and the sick in the remote recesses
     of that wild region, sometimes on foot--more frequently in her
     little boat, well provided with medicaments and food, which she
     impelled by the vigor of her own arm through the lakes which
     stretch along the foot of the mountains. How grievous it is to
     reflect that she should so soon have been driven across the
     ocean in search of a place to lay her head. The American editor
     intimates that the object of her voyage was to collect
     materials for literary works. We have no doubt that such was
     among her projects; for she was a very distinguished writer,
     and would by no means eat the bread of idleness or dependence;
     but there is reason to believe that it was a more stringent
     compulsion which obliged her, at an advanced period of the
     year, and in a peculiarly delicate situation, when even
     peasants remain on shore, to encounter the tedium and perils of
     a voyage in a sailing vessel. We have heard, in fact, from a
     quarter which ought to be correctly informed, that she was
     proceeding to the residence of a near relative of her father,
     with the intention of remaining there till some favorable
     change might come over the color of her life."

       *       *       *       *       *

Our countrywoman, MRS. MOWATT, has revised and partially rewritten her
novels of "The Fortune Hunter," and "Evelyn, or the Heart Unmasked," and
they have just been published in London. The _Athenæum_ says of them:

     "These tales give us a higher idea of Mrs. Mowatt's talents as
     an authoress, than her plays did. Taken in conjunction with
     those dramas, and with the pleasing powers as an actress
     displayed by the lady,--they not only establish a case of more
     than common versatility, but indicate that with labor and
     concentration, so gifted a person might have taken a high
     place, whether on the library shelf or on the stage. In another
     point of view, they are less agreeable. Alas, for those
     primitive souls, who with a perverse constancy may still wish
     to fancy America a vast New-England of simple manners and
     superior morals! The society which Mrs. Mowatt
     describes--whether in 'Evelyn,' which begins with a wedding out
     of Fleecer's boarding-house, or in 'The Fortune Hunter,' which
     opens with table-talk at Delmonico's--is as sophisticated as
     any society under which this wicked old world groans, and which
     our Sir E. Lytton and Mrs. Gore have satirized--or Balzac (to
     shame the French) has "shown up." _Major Pendennis_ himself
     could hardly have produced anything more _blasé_ in tone than
     some of the pictures of 'New-York Society' drawn by this
     American lady,--drawn, moreover, when the lady was young.
     Evelyn is married to a rich man, without her heart having any
     thing to say in the matter,--by a mother who is a superfine
     _Mrs. Falcon_:--and wretched mischief comes of it. Brainard,
     the fortune hunter, is a heartless and cynical illustration
     that a Broadway hunter can be as unblushingly mercenary, and as
     genteelly dishonorable as the veriest old Bond Street hack,
     bred up in the traditions of the Regency, who ever began life
     on nothing and a showy person--continued it on nothing and the
     reputation of fashion--and ended no one cares how or where.
     There are character, smartness and passion in both these
     tales--though a certain looseness of structure and
     incompleteness of style prevent us from being extreme in
     praising them, or from recommending them by quotation,--and
     though, as has been said, the tone and taste of the life which
     they describe must jar on the feelings of those who are
     unwilling to see the decrepitude of elderly civilization coming
     down upon a new country, ere its maturity has been reached--or
     even ere its youth has been sufficiently and steadily trained."

       *       *       *       *       *

MRS. SOUTHWORTH, the authoress of "Retribution," "The Deserted Wife,"
&c., has a new novel in the press of the Appletons, entitled
"Shannondale." Mrs. Southworth is the most popular of our female
novelists, notwithstanding the doubtful morality of her works.

       *       *       *       *       *

CHARLES MACKAY, who, two or three years ago, passed some months in
New-York, and who is known for his very candid and intelligent book upon
the United States, entitled "The Western World," has gone to India, as
an agent of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, for the purpose of
inquiring into the state and prospects of Indian cotton cultivation. Mr.
Mackay has had experience in the collection of statistical information;
he has lived long enough abroad to know that essential differences
sometimes lurk beneath external resemblances in the social arrangements
of two countries, and to be on his guard against the erroneous
inferences to which ignorance of this fact leads. He is naturally acute,
energetic, and cautious. For the difficult task of investigating and
reporting upon the condition of an important branch of industry, and the
circumstances which are likely to promote or retard its progress among a
community so different from the English as that of India, he is probably
as well fitted as any man who could have been selected. The foundation
of the British Indian empire and the establishment of the United States
as an independent nation, were contemporary events. The loss of her
American colonies helped to concentrate the attention and exertions of
England upon her Indian dominions. The progress made by British India
since 1760, in civilization, material wealth, and intelligent
enterprise, is barely perceptible; while the United States have expanded
from a few obscure colonies into a nation second only to Great Britain
in the value and extent of their commercial relations, second to none in
intelligence and successful enterprise. The Anglo-Norman inhabitants of
the "Old Thirteen" provinces have made the valley of the Mississippi,
and the prairies beyond it, which little more than half a century ago
were mere wastes, the thronged abodes of a vigorous and wealthy European
population. They have done this without the aid of the aboriginal
tribes, who have proved irreclaimably addicted to their nomade habits.
The Anglo-Normans who rule British India have had to deal with a country
thickly peopled with races far advanced in civilization, though of a
peculiar character; yet, in every respect, the results of their efforts
lag far behind those visible in America. To place the difference in a
most striking point of view, it is only necessary to contrast the cotton
produce and the mercantile marine of British India with those of the
United States. There is actually a more fully-developed steam navigation
between Panama and California than between Bombay and China. The causes
of these results are plain enough to us, but to the English they are
enigmas. The mission of Mr. Mackay will scarcely end in a revelation of
the truth, that liberty and independence have kept healthy the blood in
the vigorous limbs of the Americans, while trammels and vassalage have
deadened the energies of the Indies; but it may have an important
influence upon the question whether the East India Company's charter
shall be renewed, and it certainly will develop much information
interesting to the cotton-growers of the United States.

       *       *       *       *       *

MR. DE QUINCEY is one of the greatest of the elder race of literary men
now living in Great Britain, and we believe he is in no very affluent
circumstances. The bestowal of a pension by the Government upon Mr.
James Bailey, an editor of the classics, residing at Cambridge, on the
ground of his "literary services," causes _The Leader_ thus to refer to
the author of "The Opium Eater"--

     "Where is Thomas De Quincey's pension? Some may not regard him,
     as we do, the very greatest living master of the English
     language; some may think lightly of those fragmentary works and
     fugitive articles with which he has for more than thirty years
     enriched our literature; but, whatever may be the individual
     estimate of his services, one fact is patent, namely, that you
     cannot mention De Quincey in any circle of the British Islands,
     pretending to literary culture, but his name will sound
     familiar; in most it will awaken responses of gratitude for
     high pleasures bestowed, in none will it arouse indignation of
     high power to base uses. Now, this we call a clear case for
     national beneficence. He has done the state service, and they
     know it; but they will not reward it."

Apropos of pensions: Upon the whole, we have the best exchequer in the
world, and to _soldiers_ we have evinced no special lack of liberality.
To give five hundred dollars a year to Mr. Audubon, R. H. Dana, Moses
Stuart, Edward Robinson, H. R. Schoolcraft, James G. Percival, C. F.
Hoffman, and some half dozen others, would be something toward an
"honorable discharge" of the country's obligations in the premises, and
probably no slight addition to the happiness of men who have added much
to the real glory of the nation, while it would cost less than a
morning's useless debate in Congress. In a recent letter to Lord
Brougham, on a cognate subject, Savage Landor exclaims:

     "Probably the time is not far distant when the arts and
     sciences, and even literary genius, may be deemed no less
     worthy of this distinction than the slaughter of a thousand
     men. But how, in the midst of our vast expenditure, spare so
     prodigious a sum as five hundred a year to six, and three
     hundred a year to six more!"

       *       *       *       *       *

A MR. CHUBB has published in London, in a small volume, a paper which he
read before the Institution of Civil Engineers, on the construction of
locks and keys. It embraces a history of the lock and key from the
earliest ages, illustrated profusely with wood cuts. It forms an
instructive and entertaining essay; but we think Mr. Chubb might have
learned something more of the subject in the lock factories of Newark
and this city.

       *       *       *       *       *

MR. TICKNOR'S History of Spanish Literature has been translated into
German, and is announced for publication by Brockhaus.

       *       *       *       *       *

MR. DICKEN'S "David Copperfield" is at length completed, and Mr. Wiley
has published it in two handsome volumes, profusely illustrated. There
is a variety of opinions among the critics as to its rank among the
works of "Boz"; but it is not contended by any that it evinces a decay
of his extraordinary and peculiar genius. We copy a paragraph which
strikes us as just, from the _Spectator_:

     "This story has less of London life and town-bred character
     than most of its predecessors; but what may thus be gained in
     variety is lost in raciness, breadth, and effect. The peculiar
     classes forced into existence by the hotbed of a great city,
     and owing a part of their gusto to town usage, may be narrow
     enough if compared with general nature, but they are broader
     than the singularities whom Mr. Dickens copies or invents as
     representatives of genteel country life, or human nature in
     general. In the mere style there is frequently an
     improvement--less effort and greater ease, with occasional
     touches of the felicity of Goldsmith; but we should have
     thought the work was likely to be less popular than many of the
     previous tales of Mr. Dickens, as well as rather more open to
     unfavorable criticism. Any prose fiction that is to take rank
     in the first class, must have what in epic poetry is called a
     fable,--some lesson of life embodied in a story that combines
     the utile and the dulce. This fable should not only please the
     reader by its succession of coherent events, and by the variety
     of its persons and fortunes, but should touch by appeals to the
     common kinship of humanity, and teach worldly conduct of
     ethical lessons by particular incidents, as well as by the
     general development. And when this end is attained, whether by
     design or instinct, technical rules are readily forgotten; even
     the great rule of unity of action can be dispensed with. It
     does not appear that Mr. Dickens has the critical training
     necessary to feel the importance of this principle, or a
     knowledge of life sufficiently deep and extensive to enable him
     to embody it unconsciously, as a well-chosen story will always
     compel an author to do. So far as _David Copperfield_ appears
     designed with any other object than as a vehicle for writing a
     number of sketches, it would seem intended to trace the London
     career of an inexperienced young man, with infirmity of
     purpose, a dangerous friend, and no very experienced advisers.
     Any purpose of this kind is only prosecuted by snatches; "the
     theme" is constantly deserted, and matters are introduced that
     have no connection with the hero further than his being present
     at them, or their occurring to his acquaintance. In fact, from
     the time that David Copperfield emerges from boyhood, the
     interest in _his_ adventures ceases, beyond that sort of
     feeling which many readers entertain of wishing to know 'how it
     ends.'"

       *       *       *       *       *

MR. DAVID DUDLEY FIELD, of this city, one of the three commissioners who
prepared the amended Code of the State of New-York, abolishing the
distinction in procedure between law and equity, being in England for a
brief visit, was invited by the leading members of the Law Amendment
Society to give some account of the great changes effected here in the
administration of justice. He complied, and a meeting of the Society was
summoned specially to hear him. The result is much remarked upon in
nearly all the London journals. Mr. Field is a clear headed man, master
of his subject, perspicuous in his rhetoric, and distinct in his
elocution, so that our new constitution was most advantageously
displayed before his learned and critical hearers. The _Spectator_ says
of the subject:

     "The visit of Mr. Dudley Field to England, and his interesting
     statements to the members of our Law Amendment Society, are
     real events in the progress of law reform in this country. The
     injustice which the English people submit to in the revered
     name of Law, and in the sacred but in their case profaned name
     of Equity, is more enormous than the future historian will be
     able remotely to conceive. The keystone of the barbarous Gothic
     portal to Justice in our common-law procedure was struck out
     some twenty years ago, when the logical forms of legal contest
     were reduced to their now moderate number; other heavy blows
     have further undermined the ruin, and almost cleared away
     whatever was feudal in that portion of the edifice; and then
     came the raising of the new and noble portal of the County
     Courts. Still, in all but the most trivial litigation the delay
     and expense are such that justice can only be had at a
     percentage utterly disgraceful to a nation either honest or
     merely clearheaded and commercial. We still preserve a
     diversity of tribunals, to administer laws that ought not to be
     inharmonious; and we are prevented from making the laws
     harmonious by the difficulties of finding tribunals able to
     rule the concord and administer the whole field of law as a
     single empire. In this case, as in a multitude of others, our
     young relations across the Atlantic have done that which we
     only longed to do. In this rivalry of nations, far above all
     other rivalries, they have pushed development of institutions
     which they received from forefathers common to us both, to a
     more rapid perfection than we. Mr. Dudley Field is one of three
     men who framed a constitutional law for the State of New York,
     under which the courts of legal and equitable jurisdiction have
     been successfully merged; the enactment has succeeded in
     practical working; and the spectacle of "Equity swallowing up
     Law" has been so edifying to the citizens of his State, that
     three other States of the Union have resolved to enact, and
     four further States have appointed conferences to deliberate
     upon, a similar procedure. It is impossible--however
     narrow-minded lawyers may object--that what Americans find
     practicable and beneficial should be either impracticable or
     disadvantageous to Englishmen."

       *       *       *       *       *

A second part of the "Historical Collections of Louisiana," by B. F.
French, has been published by Mr. Putnam. It contains some interesting
papers, among which are translations of an original letter of Hernando
de Soto, on the Conquest of Florida, of a brief account of de Soto's
memorable expedition to Florida, from a recently discovered manuscript
by a writer named Biedma, and Hackluyt's translation of the longer
narrative "by a gentleman of Elvas." It is to be followed, we
understand, by a second volume.

       *       *       *       *       *

ELIHU BURRITT is one of those people who are filled with the comfortable
assurance of their own greatness. He seems always to regard the mob of
men as very diminutive creatures, while his introverted glances are
through a lens which reveals a character of qualities and proportions
the most extraordinary. This is unfortunate. It renders Mr. Elihu
Burritt, _par excellence_, the bore of his generation. He is really a
person of very small abilities; of very little information, considering
the opportunities presented by his travels; and the "_learned_
blacksmith" has no learning at all. He had, indeed, an unusual facility
in acquiring words, but he knows nothing of languages; not having in any
a particle of scholarship; of the philosophy, even of his mother tongue,
being as ignorant as the bellows-hand in his smithy at Worcester. But
because of this not uncommon faculty of acquiring words--acquiring them
as Zerah Colburn did a certain mastery of figures, without being able to
comprehend any principle of mathematics--Mr. Everett, or some one else,
advertised him as "learned," and ever since he has neglected his fit
vocation to crowd himself into conspicuous places, all over Christendom;
to blow continually his penny whistle in the ears of the little people
called philanthropists; to speak and write in addresses and letters
immense aggregations of ambitious platitudes, to pontiffs, emperors,
kings, parliaments, etc., respecting their particular affairs, all of
which addresses and letters are as cogent as the barkings sent by a
lap-dog toward the moon, and receive from all sorts of people, except
diminutives and impertinents whose profession is "philanthropy," just
about as much consideration as Dian yields to the fast-yelping cur. It
is all unfortunate, for poor Elihu Burritt will never be persuaded that
he is a subject of derision only, instead of admiration; that men pause
to regard him as a miracle of conceit and assurance rather than as a
prophet; and that his commonplaces about "olive leaves," "calumets,"
"universal brotherhood," "fatherland," etc., have no more influence than
the maudlin rigmarole of the madman whose preternatural force is lost in
senility. It is time for Elihu Burritt to go back to his shop: the world
wants a new fool.

       *       *       *       *       *

JOHN MILLS, remembered by some unfortunate New-Yorkers as John _St.
Hugh_ Mills, has written half a dozen tolerable novels since he went
home, and he is now publishing, in the _United Service Magazine_, a
series of papers illustrative of his American travels, in which he
illustrates his knowledge and veracity by certain anecdotes, which are
described as having occurred on "_the western prairies of Louisiana_."

       *       *       *       *       *

PRESIDENT HITCHCOCK, of Amherst College, who is capable of a very
conclusive treatment of the subject, has in the press of Philips &
Sampson, a work on the connection of Geology and Religion.

       *       *       *       *       *

DR. LATHAM'S very important work on the "Varieties of Man," we are glad
to hear is to be republished by the Appletons. Though much less
voluminous than the work of Pritchard, and therefore less particular
generally in its illustrations, it may be regarded as decidedly the most
masterly and satisfactory production that has yet appeared in ethnology.
The prospect of its republication affords us the more satisfaction,
because the superficial and flippant infidelity of Dr. Robert Knox has
been reproduced here by a respectable publishing house, and widely
diffused. The "Races of Man," by Dr. Knox, is what is called a clever
book; the Yankees might style it "smart;" but it is no more entitled to
consideration as an exhibition of scholarship, intellectual strength, or
fairness, than the rigmarole of the Millerite or the Mormon.

       *       *       *       *       *

THE HOMOEOPATHIC REVIEW AND QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF MEDICAL SCIENCE, is a
new periodical, commencing with the year, of which the general character
is indicated by the title. It is edited by Dr. Marcy, author of "The
Homoeopathic Theory and Practice," one of the most eminent scholars
and successful practitioners of the new school; Dr. Herring, of
Philadelphia, whose name is familiar to the students of German
literature and science, and who was one of the most trusted friends of
Hahnemann; and Dr. Metcalfe, who has been known as an able lawyer and
ingenious critic, and who is regarded as a very accomplished physician.
Under such direction, the Homoeopathic Review can hardly fail of
success. It will certainly, we think, commend the doctrines of the
Hahnemannists to the favorable consideration of all thoughtful readers,
and compel those who have been accustomed to deride the new principles
to a courteous treatment of them. Mr. Radde is the publisher.

       *       *       *       *       *

The cheapness of good books and good editions is one of the wonders of
our time. American publishers have done much toward bringing literature
into the homes of the poor, but the cheap books manufactured in this
country have, for the most part, been badly printed, and in every
respect so wretchedly put together, that they were hardly worth
preserving after a first reading. The English are now competing
vigorously for the popular market here, and mainly, through the house of
Bangs & Brother of this city. Bohn and other great London publishers are
supplying us with well printed, well bound, and excellently illustrated
books, at prices altogether lower than those for which the American
manufacturers have offered or can afford them. To sell such a book as
_Lodge's Portrait Gallery_, in eight volumes, with all its finely
engraved heads, for ten dollars, one must have the world for a market;
and so with the long list of important writings in the compactly but
correctly and elegantly printed volumes of Bohn's Standard Library--the
best and cheapest popular series ever issued in any country.

       *       *       *       *       *

Many very correct writers are very poor authors, and there are abundance
of good books with imperfect rhetoric; yet we have a right to ask some
attention to the details of style in a literary critic. Professor Henry
Reed has a delicate appreciation in poetry, but his remarks are nearly
always marred by verbal infelicities incompatible with a knowledge of
literary art. Thus, within a few pages of his Memoir of Gray, just
published, he says of Jacob Bryant, who has been dead a century, that
"he _has_ recorded;" that "Gray retained a high admiration of Dryden's
poetry, _as_ was strongly expressed," &c.; that an ode published in
1747, "being the first publication _of_ his English verse" (meaning his
first publication in English verse); that Gray could not "break through
the circumspection of so contracted a system of metaphysics _as that of
Locke's_;" that "it is apparent from what Gray _has_ done" (as if Gray
were now living, or present), &c. &c. &c. &c. &c., all through every
thing he publishes. Such things in a professor of mathematics would
attract no attention, but they will be observed in a "Professor of
English Literature."

       *       *       *       *       *

Mr. BANCROFT is not, as we were led by some newspaper to state in the
_International_, engaged in printing his History of the Revolution; and
when he does give it to the press, it is by no means likely that he will
have to leave New-York to find a publisher for it. The History of the
Colonization of America--introductory to the History of the United
States--has secured for Mr. Bancroft a place among the greatest
historians; he has now the assurance that he is writing for other ages;
and he will not endanger his fame, nor fail of the utmost perfection in
his work, for any needless haste. This second part of his History will
probably occupy five volumes; and although the story has been written by
many hands, with more or less fulness and various degrees of justice,
Mr. Bancroft will have studied it from beginning to end in the original
materials, of which his collection is by far the best that has ever been
made. If upon this field any one successfully competes with him for the
historic wreath, he must come after him, and be guided by his light.

       *       *       *       *       *

HENRY R. SCHOOLCRAFT, LL. D., is occupied, as his official duties
permit, in the composition of memoirs of his long and honorably
distinguished life. His great work upon the History and Condition of the
Indians, now in press, and to be published in some half-dozen splendid
quarto volumes by Lippencott, Grambo & Co., of Philadelphia, will
contain the fruits of his observations in that department which he has
made so peculiarly his own, and upon which he will always be the chief
and highest authority; but his personal adventures, and his
reminiscences of his contemporaries, will form the subject of this
additional performance.

       *       *       *       *       *

DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON, the father of the Protestant Episcopal Church in
Connecticut, and the first President of King's College, now Columbia
College, in New-York, was one of the most interesting characters in our
social history. His abilities, learning, activity, and influence,
entitle him to be ranked in the class of Franklin (who was his friend
and correspondent, and who printed, at his press in Philadelphia,
several of his works), as a promoter of the highest civilization in the
colonies. Except the Memoirs of Franklin, we have hitherto had no more
attractive specimen of biography than the book known as Dr. Chandler's
Life of Dr. Johnson. Franklin's Memoirs, it is well known, never came
before the public in the form in which they were written, until a few
years ago, and it has lately been discovered that Dr. Johnson's had
suffered a similar disadvantage. Dr. Johnson amused himself in his old
age by writing recollections of his life and times, which, after his
death, were placed in the hands of Dr. Chandler, who changed them from
the first to the third person, omitted many particulars which he did not
deem it expedient to publish, and added others which the modesty of Dr.
Johnson had not allowed him to write. The book thus made by Dr. Chandler
was printed by his son-in-law, the late Bishop Hobart, who probably was
not aware of its origin. But Dr. Johnson's MS. has now been discovered,
and it will immediately be given to the public, under the supervision of
the Rev. Mr. Pitkin, of Connecticut, who is adding to it many notes and
illustrative documents. It is very much to be regretted that so little
of the extensive correspondence of Dr. Johnson with the chief persons of
his time in the literary and the religious world abroad, has been
preserved; but the book will contain numerous letters by his more
eminent contemporaries which have not appeared elsewhere.

       *       *       *       *       *

Somebody has made the "discovery" that General Charles Lee, of the
revolutionary army, was not unwilling to be considered the author of
"Junius;" and two or three of our contemporaries have been busy with the
subject of the internal and other evidence in the case. These critics
are about as wise as the editor of an evening paper who published one of
the old Washington forgeries, lately, as an important historical
document. It was "characteristic," that the chief wrote so familiarly to
his wife of affairs! In the same way, the history of the _Book of
Mormon_ (originally composed as a religious novel by the Rev. Solomon
Spaulding), appears as a curious and altogether new exposure! We shall
not be surprised if the same journals advise us that Walter Scott wrote
the Waverley Novels.

       *       *       *       *       *

EMILIE GIRARDIN has a new book _L'Abolition de la Misére_, in which he
proposes the entire abolition of suffering. He has "found the
philosopher's stone."

       *       *       *       *       *

Somebody is writing for the _United Service_, "Reminiscences of a Voyage
to Canada," and we have looked into a couple of his chapters to see what
sort of stuff, respecting America, is thus submitted to the officers of
her Majesty's Army and Navy. The style of a fellow who talks of his
"fellow countrymen" (not meaning, as the words do, persons who live with
him in rural neighborhoods), is scarcely deserving of criticism; but the
silliness of the falsehoods of this latest English traveller among us,
may be referred to as illustrating the causes of the common prejudices
in England against the United States. After describing his arrival at
the Tremont House, in Boston, he says:

     "A clerk [meaning our old friend Parker], dressed in the height
     of fashion, presided at the bar [meaning the office] at which
     we applied for rooms, wherein to perform our duties of the
     toilet. The one to which I was directed contained several beds
     without curtains, from which the occupants had evidently but a
     short time previously taken their departure. This was however a
     matter of indifference, as I imagined the apartment would have
     been entirely at my own disposal. In the course of a few
     minutes however, the door was opened, and in walked an
     individual, who, depositing a small carpet bag on the floor,
     commenced operations of a similar nature to those I myself was
     engaged in--not a word was at first exchanged between us; he
     eyed me critically, I returned the compliment, till at length I
     was favored with 'Stranger, I guess you are from Europe' (a
     strong accent on the last syllable), immediately followed by
     questions as to where I was going, what was my business, &c.
     This was somewhat amusing, so I informed my gentleman I was
     journeying to New-York, whereupon he told me I should see an
     'almighty fine city.' His curiosity being next attracted by my
     portmanteau, which was lying open on a chair, he strode up and
     peered into it most attentively. Thinking I might as well
     follow his example, I did the same by his carpet bag; whereupon
     giving a grunt of dissatisfaction, he collected his valuables
     and soon after took himself off."

Thirty years ago, the Duke of Saxe Weimar published a western story of a
coachman who said, "I am the gentleman what's to drive you." Our very
original _United Service_ tourist tells of a visit to Mount Auburn, and
adds:

     "Whilst driving back to the hotel I happened to remark, 'That
     is the _man_ who drove us from the steamer in the morning.'
     Upon which 'Jehu' quickly replied, 'I reckon I'm the
     _gentleman_ that drove you.' This information was received on
     our part with all the respect due to the elevated rank of our
     charioteer."

In a paragraph about luggage:

     "The American trunk is a ponderous solid affair made of wood,
     secured with braces of iron, studded with brass or iron nails,
     and usually having the name or initials of the owner, and
     frequently the state of which he is a native, painted on it in
     large white letters. Owing to this custom, the traveller is
     liable to be addressed by any peculiarity appertaining to his
     trunk being affixed thereto. Thus a gentleman passing through
     the states, found himself designated as 'Mr. Air Tight,'
     because this simple term was marked on the outside of a
     tin-box, and no affirmations on his part could induce the
     bystanders to believe to the contrary. They 'reckoned it was on
     his box,' and that was sufficient."

Of the personal appearance of the Americans:

     "To a stranger newly arrived from England, the absence of fresh
     complexions and of bright and cheerful faces among the male
     part of the creation is very striking. They are gaunt, sallow,
     cadaverous looking creatures; their general, far from
     prepossessing, appearance, in no way improved by the habit of
     wearing long, straight hair, combed entirely off the face, the
     bare throat, the never absent 'quid,' and that abominably nasty
     habit of constant expectoration."

And this trash is from one of the most reputable periodicals published
in London--the one of all most especially addressed to _gentlemen_.

In the next number of his "Reminiscences" the author promises a sketch
of the city of New-York, for which his authority will probably be Mrs.
Trolloppe, Mr. Joseph Miller, and the last pick-pocket who went home to
London.

       *       *       *       *       *

The "Peace Congress," in which we have most faith--the only one that is
likely to exert any very desirable influence, is that to assemble next
year in Hyde Park. This will be a display of works rather than one of
words; and _apropos_ of its lingual character, which will show very
conclusively that as yet "all the nations of the earth" are not "as one
people," we find in _The Leader_ this paragraph:

"The Exhibition of 1851, seems to promise a whole literature of its own.
Journals are already established for the record of its proceedings.
Useful information will be at a premium--unless there should happen to
be a "glut;" while in the shape of translations and dialogue-books,
every facility will be offered to foreigners. What a Babel it will be!
How the English ear will be rasped by Slavonic and Teutonic gutturals,
or distended by the breadth of Southern vowels. It will be a marvel if
this incursion of barbarians do not very much affect the purity of our
own tongue, and damage the tender susceptibility of the London ear,
already so delicate that when an actor says--as it _sometimes_
happens--"_Donnar Elvirar_ is coming," the whole audience rises in a
mass to protest against the outrages on taste. We are told the Athenians
were also merciless critics in such matters. Nay, there is a famous
anecdote perpetually cited as an illustration of Athenian delicacy in
matters of pronunciation, that Theophrastus was known to be a foreigner
even by a herbseller. People who wonder at every thing recorded of the
Greeks, will regard us probably as reckless iconoclasts if we break that
by a stone flung from common sense; but really, with the daily
experience of Scotchmen and Irishmen before us, we must say the most
wonderful part of the anecdote is, that it should have been recorded.
Theophrastus came from Lesbos--if we remember rightly--and his
pronunciation, therefore, naturally preserved some of the Lesbian
flavor, as Carlyle's does that of Annandale. Would any critic compliment
the cockney on delicacy of ear because it detects the accent of Carlyle,
or Sheridan Knowles, to be other than its own true London accent? Yet,
this is precisely what critics do with respect to the Athenians."

       *       *       *       *       *

MILTON, BURKE, MAZZINI, and DANIEL WEBSTER, present the most
extraordinary examples of the harmonious and effective combination of
political and literary genius, that have appeared in modern times. There
have been and there are now many politicians who are eminent as authors:
but these are preëminently great in both statesmanship and letters.
Mazzini is now the chief apostle of republicanism in Europe, as Milton
was in the time of the Protector. He devises and executes the schemes
which promise advances of liberty and happiness, and he is equal to the
defence with the pen of every thing he essays in affairs. "Young Italy,"
since it was put down by French bayonets, has had as little quarter from
parasite writers as from patristic governors; but Mazzini has come to
her defence with as vigorous a pen as that with which Milton vindicated
the people of England against the hireling Salmasius, under similar
circumstances. In another part of this number of the _International_, we
have copied from the London _Examiner_ a reviewal of Mazzini's work on
the Italian revolution. We should be glad to see it criticised by Mr.
Walsh also, or by Professor Bowen, in his _North American Review_.

       *       *       *       *       *

Since SIR FRANCIS HEAD went home from Canada, and finished the last
edition of his "Bubbles" and "Travels," and the funny anathema of poor
Mr. William Lyon Mackenzie, in the _Times_, he has been very quiet,
except now and then, when he has given an explosive and amusing paper in
the _Quarterly_. But now he has published a new book, on "The
Defenceless State of Great Britain," in which, the _Examiner_ says "he
has made up for lost time." Says the critic, "It is calculated to rouse
all the old women in the country. Such a fee-fa-fum of a book we never
read. The Duke's letter to Sir John Burgoyne was nothing to it, and it
beats even Lord Ellesmere hollow." The baronet thinks every thing
portends a French invasion, and he advocates the largest "war footing."

       *       *       *       *       *

The REV. DR. BLOOMFIELD, whose edition of the Greek Testament is so well
known in this country, has just published two volumes of additional
Notes, critical, philological, and explanatory, in fulfilment of a
promise made in the third edition of his New Testament, in 1839. This
promise was, that he would make no further change in the notes to the
New Testament, but reserve all additions for a separate supplementary
work. That work, after the direct labor of eleven years, is now
published; forming a companion to all the editions of Bloomfield's Greek
Testament except the first two. The annotations relate to a critical
examination of the readings of the text, with the reasons for that
selected, philological notes on the meaning of words, and exegetical
annotations on the verbal interpretations of passages.

       *       *       *       *       *

MR. COOPER has a new book in press which, in New-York, will produce a
profounder sensation, than any he has yet written. It is entitled "The
Men of Manhattan," and reveals the social condition of the city, past
and present, as it is known only to the author of "The Littlepage
Manuscripts." Mr. Cooper is a thorough New-Yorker; he is intimately
acquainted with all the sources of her past and present and prospective
greatness; and he has watched, with such emotions as none but a
gentleman of the old school can feel, the infusion and gradual diffusion
of those principles of plebeianism and ruffianism, from discontented
improvidence, immigration, and other causes, which threaten to destroy
whatever has justified the wisest pride; and to sink--not raise--all the
mob of people to a common level. He has his whims, and though they have
won for him little popularity, we regret that they are not shared more
largely by the public, which will never appreciate his merits as a
censor, until the best features of our civilization are quite
obliterated.

       *       *       *       *       *

MR. JUDD, the author of "Margaret," an original, indigenous, striking,
and in many respects brilliant New-England story, and of "Philo," a
crude, extravagant, ridiculous mass of versified verbiage, has lately
published (through Phillips & Sampson, of Boston,) a new work entitled
"Richard Edney, or the Governor's Family; a Rus-Urban Tale, simple and
popular, yet cultured and noble, of morals, sentiment and life." It is
worthy of the author of "Margaret." Though it evinces very little of the
constructive faculty, it illustrates in every page a quick and
intelligent observation, a happy talent for characterization, and great
independence in speculation.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mr. C. P. CASTANIS, formerly known in this country as an agreeable
lecturer upon various subjects connected with Modern Greece, has just
published (through Lippencott, Grambo & Co., of Philadelphia), a
narrative of his captivity and escape during the massacre by the Turks
on the Island of Scio, together with various adventures in Greece and
America.

       *       *       *       *       *

MR. E. G. SQUIER, whose large work upon American antiquities, published
by the Smithsonian Institute, made for him a most desirable reputation,
is now engaged in the preparation of an elaborate work upon the remains
of ancient civilization in Central America, to contain the results of
investigations during his recent official residence there.

       *       *       *       *       *

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE'S new work, "The House of Seven Gables," is in the
press of Ticknor, Reed & Fields, of Boston.

       *       *       *       *       *

MISS FENIMORE COOPER, whose beautiful work entitled "Rural Hours in
America" has been so much and so justly applauded, has a new volume in
the press of Putnam.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the new novel of "Olive," republished by the Harpers, (which is much
praised by the London critics), the heroine, who has a lofty, noble
nature, full of poetic feeling and enthusiasm for art, determines to
devote herself to its study, urged on by a desire of liquidating a debt
contracted by her father. _Apropos_ of the purpose of her life, and the
sphere of her sex:

     "She became an artist--not in a week, a month, a year. Art
     exacts of its votaries no less service than a lifetime. But in
     her girl's soul the right chord had been touched, which began
     to vibrate into noble music, the true seed had been sown, which
     day by day grew into a goodly plant. Vanbrugh had said truly,
     that genius is of no sex; and he had said likewise truly, that
     no woman can be an artist--that is, a great artist. The
     hierarchies of the soul's dominion belong only to man, and it
     is right they should. He it was whom God created first, let him
     take pre-eminence. But among those stars of lesser glory, which
     are given to lighten the nations, among sweet-voiced poets,
     earnest prose writers, who, by lofty truth that lies hid
     beneath legend and parable, purify the world, graceful painters
     and beautiful musicians, each brightening their generation with
     serene and holy lustre--among these, let woman shine! But her
     sphere is, and ever must be, bounded; because, however lofty
     her genius may be, it always dwells in a woman's breast.
     Nature, which gave to man the dominion of the intellect, gave
     to her that of the heart and affections. These bind her with
     everlasting links from which she cannot free herself,--nay, she
     would not if she could. Herein man has the advantage. He,
     strong in his might of intellect, can make it his all in all,
     his life's sole aim and guerdon. A Brutus, for that ambition
     which is misnamed patriotism, can trample on all human ties. A
     Michael Angelo can stand alone with his genius, and so go
     sternly down into a desolate old age. But there scarce ever
     lived the woman who would not rather sit meekly by her own
     hearth, with her husband at her side, and her children at her
     knee, than be the crowned Corinne of the Capitol.

     "Thus woman, seeking to strive with man, is made feebler by the
     very spirit of love which in her own sphere is her chiefest
     strength. But sometimes chance, or circumstance, or wrong,
     sealing up her woman's nature, converts her into a
     self-dependant human soul. Instead of life's sweetness, she has
     before her life's greatness. The struggle passed, her genius
     may lift itself upward, expand and grow mighty; never so mighty
     as man's, but still great and glorious. Then, even while she
     walks over the world's rough pathway, heaven's glory may rest
     upon her up-turned brow, and she may become a light unto her
     generation."

       *       *       *       *       *

DAUTZENBERG, a Flemish poet, has issued at Brussels a volume of small
compositions, which, apart from freshness of fancy and beauty of
thought, are remarkable for the correctness and smoothness of their
form. The Flemish tongue is used by him with a lyrical success that
would reflect honor on a writer in the more melodious dialects of
Southern Europe. He has also licked that jaw-cracking tongue so far into
shape, that it serves for regular hexameters.

       *       *       *       *       *

MISS STRICKLAND'S LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND, republished by Lea &
Blanchard of Philadelphia, in ten or twelve volumes, is a work of very
great interest and value, for its illustrations of the higher and
progressive British civilization. Her Lives of the Queens of Scotland,
soon to be issued from the press of the Harpers, resembles generally her
former work, by the success of which it was probably suggested, as much
as by the desirableness of the biographies of the Northern Queens, as
"adjuncts" to the lives of those of England. A good deal of matter was
collected in reference to the later Queens of Scotland during the
biographer's researches for the Queens of England; and this, augmented
by further inquiries among public and private archives, especially among
the muniment-chests of noble Scottish families, forms the materials of
the present undertaking. The "lives" do not begin till the Tudor times,
when the nearer relationship with England imparts a greater interest to
the subject, not only from the closer communication between the courts,
but from the prospects of the Scottish succession to the English crown.

       *       *       *       *       *

JOHN S. DWIGHT, of Boston, has recently delivered an admirable lecture
before the Mercantile Library Association of this city, on "Operatic
Music," illustrated by a critical examination of Rossini's _Don
Giovanni_. Mr. Dwight's rare musical learning and accomplishments, his
exquisite taste in art, and his remarkable felicity of expression, were
displayed to singular advantage in this masterly lecture, and won the
cordial applauses of the most appreciative critics in his large and
highly intelligent audience.

       *       *       *       *       *

A History of the Greek Revolution is soon to be given to the public by
Baron PROKESH OSTEN, who for many years was Austrian ambassador at
Athens, and who now fills the same office at Berlin. Of course his book
will be published at Vienna.

       *       *       *       *       *

A NEW EDITION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF GÖETHE, in thirty volumes (it
would look much better and be far more convenient in fifteen), is
advertised in Berlin. Two volumes are ready, and the whole are to be
issued before the close of 1851.

       *       *       *       *       *

W. G. SIMMS, LL. D., is referred to in the _Southern Literary Gazette_
as having delivered in Charleston lately an elaborate poem entitled "The
City of the Silent," on the occasion of the consecration of a beautiful
rural cemetery near that city.

       *       *       *       *       *

DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES is writing a biographical sketch of the late
Dr. Parkman, to form a part of a work called "The Benefactors of the
Medical School of Harvard University," of which the poet is himself one
of the professors.

       *       *       *       *       *

PIERRE DUPONT, the Parisian Socialist poet, has lately issued a new book
containing six songs that have not before been published. Dupont is as
much a favorite with the people as Beranger, and though he does not
equal the latter in originality of fancy and gayety of spirit, he even
excels him in revolutionary point and enthusiasm. His songs are heard in
every workshop and at every popular banquet, their words and music are
universally familiar, and when the clubs were permitted, each meeting
was opened and closed with a song of Dupont's, the whole audience
joining in the chorus. This was done instinctively and without previous
arrangement. It often happened, too, that after some orator had
delivered an ardent speech, Dupont would appear at the tribune with a
new song which he had composed on the inspiration of the moment. Now
each new political event is sure of a response from this poet; one of
his late productions is the _Chant du Vote_ (vote song), in which he
denounces the attempt of the Government to destroy universal suffrage.
Perhaps his most powerful production is the _Marsellaise of Hunger_; the
hold this has taken on the public may be judged from the fact, that when
at the theatre of the Porte St. Martin a piece was performed, called
_Misery_, founded on incidents in the Irish famine, when the curtain
went down at the end of the first act, the beholders spontaneously set
up this song. So in the same theatre, when the piece representing the
downfall of Rome was performed (this piece afterwards became famous
through its prohibition by the Government), one of the spectators in the
pit began the chorus of Dupont's Soldier's Song:

    "Les peuples sont pour nous des freres
    Et les tyrans des ennemis,"

the whole house joined in, and the performance had to be interrupted
till the song was ended. The _Chant des Transportés_ wherever it is
heard moves the people to tears and indignation. The Peasant's Song
prophecies the time when independent industry shall render the earth
blooming with fertility, and the corn and wine shall "be free as warmth
in summer weather." While the majority of his poems are political and
social, some of them are full of love and appreciation of outward
nature. In one, the Romance of the Poplar, this sentiment is finely
combined with the spirit of liberty.

       *       *       *       *       *

ARAGO'S great work, which was some time since announced in the
_International_, is now nearly complete and will soon be given to the
public. The scientific and literary world of Europe expect it with
impatience. It is said even that Alexander von Humboldt intends to be
its translator into German, but this is not probable. It is also rumored
that the author gives an appendix in which he for the moment abandons
science for politics, in order to pay off some of the attacks he has
suffered from Proudhon. Our own opinion is that he had better stick to
his trade and leave Proudhon alone.

       *       *       *       *       *

CHARLES SUMNER has published (through Ticknor, Reed & Fields of Boston,)
two volumes of his "Orations and Addresses." Mr. Sumner is a scholar of
the finest and rarest capacities and accomplishments. He is of the
school of Everett, but has more earnestness, and consequently more
compactness of expression, and more force. He enters heartily into all
the 'progressive' movements of the day, and is of many the intellectual
leader. His bravery is equal to every emergency into which he may be led
by a search after truth, and to all combats he brings arms of the truest
metal and most exquisite polish. There are in New-England many more
fervid and powerful orators, but we know of none whose orations are
delivered with a more pleasing eloquence. We have not leisure now to
review Mr. Sumner's volumes; but if among our readers there are any who
desire to see displayed the "very form and spirit" of the new age, we
commend them to "The True Grandeur of Nations," and the other
discourses, speeches, and essays, here published.

       *       *       *       *       *

"THE MANHATTANER IN NEW-ORLEANS" is the title of a small volume, from
the press of J. S. Redfield, which was written by an accomplished
New-York lawyer who had resided some time in the Crescent City. It is a
very graphic and delightful picture of the social life of the metropolis
of the South; betraying a quick insight, a genial appreciation of what
is manly, and fairness in regard to every thing. We have had need of
such a book, for hitherto we northerners have generally known less of
our southern neighbors than even Professor Bowen knew of the Hungarians,
before Mrs. Putnam enlightened him. We are sorry that Mr. Hall, to whom
we are indebted for "The Manhattaner in New-Orleans," intimates that it
is the last book for the preparation of which he will ever have
withdrawn his attention from the law.

       *       *       *       *       *

"ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING, MARGARET FULLER D'OSSOLI AND GEORGE SAND,"
is the title of an article in which the characters and genius of these
three remarkable women is discussed, in the last number of _The
Palladium_, a new English monthly.

       *       *       *       *       *

IKE MARVEL'S "Reveries of a Bachelor," (printed by Baker & Scribner),
appears to be the "book of the season." All the critics praise it as one
of the choicest specimens of half-romance and half-essay, that has
appeared in our time. But for ourselves--we have not read it.

       *       *       *       *       *

The subject of "Junius" is again discussed in "Junius and his Works,
Compared with the character and Writings of the Earl of Chesterfield,"
by W. Cramp, just published in London.

       *       *       *       *       *

PARKE GODWIN'S beautiful story of "Vala," suggested by the career of
Jenny Lind, has been issued in a luxurious quarto, by Putnam.




The Fine Arts.


GIFT FROM THE BAVARIAN ARTISTS TO KING LOUIS.--The artists and artisans
of Munich have combined to make to ex-King Louis of Bavaria a gift such
as monarchs have not often received. It consists of a writing-desk and
album. The desk is of oak varnished, adorned with rich carving, and with
locks and the Bavarian arms in gilt bronze enamel. The carving contains
the most charming figures representing the various arts and trades. The
album is bound in crimson velvet, the clasps and ornaments of gilt
bronze. On the outside is a medallion, designed by Widnmann, set in
brilliants, representing King Louis surrounded by artists. A smaller
medallion stands in each corner, one representing architects with plans
and models by Hautman; sculptors and bronze workers with the statue of
Bavaria, by Halbig; historic painters by Esseling; and landscape and
genre painters by Widnmann. Between the two upper medallions is a rich
ornament with the arms of the four tribes of Bavaria in enamel, and the
inscription "Louis I. King of Bavaria:" between the lower medallions is
a similar ornament with "The German Artists, A. D. 1850." All the
ornaments are in the old German style of the fifteenth century. In the
Album are 177 sheets, each containing a contribution from some artist.
The title-page is by Esseling. Kaulbach has a drawing of unusual
freshness and beauty, representing the King calling to new life, at
Rome, the neglected art of Germany. But we have not space to speak of
the works of individual artists in this remarkable collection. It is
enough to say that every distinguished painter and sculptor in Germany
is represented in it.

       *       *       *       *       *

CHARLES EASTLAKE has been chosen _President of the Royal Academy_, and
the Queen has made him a knight. Sir Charles Eastlake is in some
respects a great painter, and he has produced many works which evince
very remarkable talents. Among the few pictures by him which evince
_genius_, is that owned by Mr. Henry Carey Baird, of Philadelphia, of
"Hagar and Ishmael." He has done something in literature, and from his
own account of himself we quote, that, like Haydon, he was born at
Plymouth, a soil congenial to art, for in its environs was also the
birth-place of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Like Rembrandt, Reynolds, and so
many before them, Eastlake showed an early aversion to the Latin
Grammar. He fled the Charter-house school; and a glimpse of Haydon's
picture of "The Dentatus," which was at that period exhibited at
Plymouth, made him a painter. After studying in the Academy two years,
under Fuseli, he produced "The Raising of Jairus's Daughter." This won
him a patron, in Mr. Harman, by whom he was commissioned to make studies
of the miracles of art, at that time collected in the Louvre by
Napoleon. Here also Lawrence, Haydon, Wilkie, and we believe Allston
also, came at this time to study. In the Louvre Eastlake made his first
acquaintance with the wonders of Roman art. But the pleasant task of
copying these old masters was relinquished on the sudden return of
Napoleon from Elba. At a not much later period, the fallen hero became
himself the subject of his pencil. Eastlake made a sketch of the
ex-Emperor as he appeared from the gangway of the Bellerophon, when at
anchor in Plymouth roads, interesting as the last delineation of a noble
visage, then untinged with chagrin. In 1817 and 1819 he visited Italy
and Greece, rather stirring up their living treasures than measuring
antiquity with the inch rule of the archæologist. Nor yet did Eastlake
confine himself to the external forms of art and nature; he then laid
the foundation of that intimate knowledge of the arts, be they called
formative, architectural, plastic, or pictorial, the able elucidation of
which renders his writings so valuable. Thus, whilst all the technical
skill of ancient colorists is found in his style of painting, all the
principles on which Dutch and Venetian masters proceeded are found in
his writings. Those who reflect on the unceasing labors of the Secretary
of the Fine Art Commission, will be rather inclined to believe that the
title of President was alone wanting to render Eastlake the legitimate
leader of art in England. We need only mention his translation of
Göethe's "Theory of Colors," the "Notes to Kugler," and the "Materials
for a History of Oil Painting."

       *       *       *       *       *

NEW PICTURE BY KAULBACH. The King of Bavaria has ordered from Kaulbach a
picture some twenty feet high, to represent the Apotheosis of a Good
Prince. The lucky potentate is to be painted rising from the tomb, and
conducted up to heaven by attending angels, where the Saviour, enthroned
between the cherubim of Power and Justice, receives him with open arms.
The purple mantle and crown, the signs and adornments of earthly might,
sink from the transfigured monarch upon the tomb, around which the Seven
Works of Mercy bear witness for him, while the Seven Deadly Sins lie
under the earth asleep and in chains. The idea of the composition was
suggested by the King. Kaulbach has advanced so far with its execution
that the cartoon is nearly completed.

       *       *       *       *       *

THE ROYAL RUSSIAN PORCELAIN MANUFACTORY, at Berlin, is known over the
world for the elegance and excellence of its productions; most of the
porcelain transparencies which are so common in all countries, and so
much admired, are from this source. An honorary council has just been
named to have the supervision of the artistic department of the
institution. Among its members, are the eminent painter CORNELIUS, the
sculptor RAUCH, and the architect HULER.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mr. HEALEY, according to a letter by Mr. Walsh in the _Journal of
Commerce_, is proceeding rapidly in Paris with his picture of the
American Senate, during the debate so famous for the passages between
Mr. Webster and Col. Hayne. Mr. Healey is said to be a very worthy
person, and it is to be regretted that his skill and genius are not
equal to his morals, in which case we might not despair of his producing
a work not altogether unworthy of this subject. Some accident introduced
Mr. Healey to the late King of the French, who gave him various orders,
the reception of which was so noticed in the journals as to be of the
greatest possible advantage to him. He was suddenly elevated in the
common opinion to the condition of the first rank of artists. But he is
really a painter of very ordinary capacities. We have probably some
hundreds who are very much superior to him. It is impossible to point to
even _one_ portrait by him that is remarkable for any excellence; and
all his fame rests, rather than upon his productions, upon his having
received orders from Louis Philippe. We remember the general surprise
with which groups of his portraits, displayed in the rotunda of the
capitol, were viewed by critics. The "study" of Daniel Webster, upon
whose every feature God has set the visible stamp of greatness, was
among them, and it looked like the prim keeper of the accounts in a
respectable grocery-store. So of all the rest. Men sat to him from
deference to the wishes of the King, but every body felt that he was not
an artist. Accidents and newspapers may confer a transient reputation,
but they can endow no one with abilities; and to espouse the cause of
newspapers against the cause of nature is a grievous wrong, in the end,
to both newspapers and nature.

       *       *       *       *       *

AN ELEGANT work of much value to the students of modern art has lately
appeared at Berlin, under the title of _Rimische Studien_ (Roman
Studies), from the pen of VON KESTNER, a diplomatist by profession. The
author, who by the way is a son of the famous CHARLOTTE, the heroine of
Göethe's "Werther," dwells with the utmost partiality on these German
artists, who have developed their talents by long and intimate
acquaintance with Roman art, and who are now at work in the fatherland.
To the productions of "Cornelius," he devotes a great deal of space. The
special purpose of the work, as the author says in his preface, is to
glorify Germany in the great creations of its artists.

       *       *       *       *       *

THE PHILHARMONIC SOCIETY of Paris, at one of its recent concerts, gave a
piece of original Russian music, called the "Song of the Cherubim," by
BORTNIANSKY, a composer who has written a good deal for the Imperial
Chapel at St. Petersburg. It is a chorus without accompaniment, and is
spoken of by the critics as most original and striking, in fact unlike
any thing familiar to Western or Southern ears. We can easily conceive
of a peculiar style of music being produced from the bosom of the Greek
Church. Those who have heard the melancholy and touching, half-barbaric
music usually employed in its ritual, will not be surprised that out of
it there should arise a quite new order of compositions.

       *       *       *       *       *

THE GÖETHE'S INHERITANCE--an extensive collection of models, engravings,
sculptures, carvings, gems, minerals, fossils, original drawings, &c.,
collected by the great poet,--is to be sold at Weimar, for the benefit
of his heirs, two grandsons. A _catalogue raisonnée_ has been published
by Fromman, at Jena, and it makes a very interesting book. It is
suggested in the _Art-Journal_ for December, that if the collection were
distributed in separate lots, in America, or England, or Germany, the
heirs would realize three or four times as much as they will by a single
sale for the whole, which they have determined upon. Letters upon the
subject may be addressed to Baron Walther Von Goethe, at Vienna.

       *       *       *       *       *

The author of the following remarks on ART-UNIONS, is an eminent artist,
whose name has never been associated with any discussions of these
Institutions, or with any controversies connected with them, and he has
not, we believe, since the foundation of the first Art-Union in America,
had any production of his own in the market.


ART-UNIONS: THEIR TRUE CHARACTER CONSIDERED.

ART-UNIONS, and their management, have recently attracted much attention
in this country, if we may judge from the numerous articles on the
subject which have appeared in some of the most reputable journals. It
is now about ten years since the first Art-Union was established in this
city. Others, in various sections, have followed, and all, whatever
their peculiarities, have been more or less successful in their chief
objects.

Now it is reasonable to suppose, that the result of these ten years'
efforts to promote the cultivation of the Fine Arts among us, should
furnish some evidence of their capabilities for the accomplishment of so
worthy and so great a work. The whole subject of their usefulness
resolves itself into the following queries:

I. Has any person of decided genius, who was unknown, friendless, and in
need, been sought out by them, assisted, encouraged, and at last added
to the effective number of artists who are profitably employed among us?

II. Have those artists who have received the larger share of the
patronage of these institutions, shown by their works a corresponding
advance in the knowledge and love of excellence and truth in art?

III. Have they furnished any peculiar advantages to artists, as a body,
by supplying the means of their improvement, in a free access to books,
casts, pictures, or good engravings?

IV. Do Art-Unions promote the interests and reward the labors of those
who are most eminently deserving?

V. Do they elevate the pursuit of art, in the minds of the people, and
teach them its value, by distributing to them, in return for their
subscriptions, _only_ the best specimens which they can purchase from
the studios of our artists?

VI. Are there a dozen well known artists who will openly testify to a
conviction of their usefulness?

It is believed by many that an affirmative response cannot be given to
these questions; and if not, then the subject of their influence need be
no longer discussed.

It is not my intention, nor my desire, to inquire into the _management_
of these institutions. It is only at the system itself that I wish to
direct the attention of the reader. If it is proved that, as a system,
this is not calculated to elevate and enlarge the sphere of the arts,
but on the contrary, that its tendency is to degrade and stifle all that
is lovely and desirable in their pursuit, then there will be no need of
troubling ourselves with the lower and baser subject of management; for
there is no bad system, which, by any method, can be managed into a good
one, and satisfy the just demands of those whose interests it professes
to hold in its keeping.

Numbers rather than quality seem to govern the Art-Unions in their
purchases of works, that they may give to subscribers a greater number
of _chances_ to draw something for their money, and thus encourage them
to future _patronage_. This is the principle on which all lotteries
live: and when we come to sift the matter to the bottom, we cannot but
acknowledge that Art-Unions are nothing else but lotteries, under
another and more popular name. Both exist ostensibly for the good of
others, who in reality are but the dupes of a most deceitful and vicious
system, against which every good citizen should indignantly turn his
face. It cannot be justly said in defence of Art-Unions, that they spend
more money for art than was ever done in the same period of time, nor
that they have distributed works amongst a class of people who never
thought of giving money for such things before. They must first prove
that this great amount of money which they have collected, has been
spent _judiciously_, for the benefit of deserving and meritorious
artists, and that the works distributed are such as to elevate the
judgment and enlarge the feelings in relation to art, among those who
may have received them.

It is for the interest of lotteries to offer some very large and
valuable prizes at the head of their list, to attract the attention of
the public, and thus to sell their tickets.

Similar means are adopted by Art-Unions to increase their subscription
lists, which show that the system is _managed_ in the most efficient
manner. Those who can look back fifteen and twenty years, will remember
that our country was literally flooded with the bulletin boards of
lotteries, printed in the most gaudy and attractive colors, showing a
brilliant schedule of prizes, and pledging almost certain wealth to all
who would venture their money on the "grand scheme." They will also call
to mind how many a victim there was to this deceptive and depraved
system of legal fraud, until it became so injurious to the public
morals, that Legislatures were forced to hurl the bolts of the law
against them, in all parts of the United States, and so put an end to
their iniquity. Lotteries have been justly prohibited by wise
governments, because they attract men from legitimate pursuits, into the
speculative, uncertain, and, morally, illegitimate pursuit of fortune.
The case is similar in its results to that of Art-Unions. They attract
many from a calling for which their talents have fitted them, into a
sphere so much above their natural powers, that they must in time fall
back, victims to vanity and love of gain, into a lower plane of life
perhaps, than that they once happily occupied. The effect of these
Unions is seen rather in the great number of persons of mediocre
abilities they have _encouraged_ to enter upon the cultivation of art,
than in the bringing forth greater powers and excellence in those whose
undoubted genius is apparent to the world.

It was remarked by Carlyle, that our modern intellect is of the spavined
kind, "all action and no go;" and so it appears to be in regard to the
efforts that are being made to "promote the interests of art," in this
country. Art-Unions have been active enough, for many years, and have
possessed themselves of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and yet it is
"no go;" the interests of art still lie gasping, without much hope of a
change for the better. There is a great display made every year in the
"distribution of prizes," and every means used to gain public
confidence, by holding up the names of the most respectable citizens as
guarantees that nothing under their control can go wrong; and by issuing
bulletins in which is proved, by figures, the flourishing state of the
institution, and consequently of the beautiful arts; yet in spite of all
this, the great mass of common-sense minds and of true lovers of art,
heretics that they are, go away and exclaim, "Well, after all it's 'no
go,' the works distributed are no better than those of last year, and we
are really afraid there are no hopes for the arts in this country, so
long as no other plan is adopted for their improvement."

Some of the petty states in Germany and in southern Europe obtain a
large revenue from lotteries, which are entirely under the control of
the crown, and are hence commonly called "Royal," or "Imperial." The
prizes are comparatively small, but the tickets are fixed at such a very
low sum, say from ten to twenty cents, that they come within the reach
of the poorest inhabitants. The consequence is that nearly all persons
who are ignorant of the scheme which the Government has laid to tax
them, spend more or less every year for lottery tickets. We have known
persons who, under the excitement produced by these plans for rapidly
gaining fortunes, have pawned the last blanket from their beds, to
obtain the means of purchasing a ticket. At every drawing of these
"Imperial" lotteries, there is nothing left undone by Royalty to strike
the people with a sense of their importance, and the honesty with which
they are conducted. In an open square is erected a kind of stage large
enough to be occupied by some twenty persons. Rich canopies of scarlet
and gold overhang it, and above all are figures of Justice, Plenty,
Virtue, &c. &c. The "Royal" band of music is stationed near, and amidst
its enlivening tones, holding in silence many thousands of anxious
hearts, the cortege, preceded by Royalty itself, ascends, and is seated
in the order of its dignity. In front of the throne are placed, upon
pedestals, two large revolving globes half filled with tickets, and by
the side of each stands a page, in magnificent costume, blindfolded.
Then commences the distribution of the prizes, in the usual way, by
drawing numbers from the globes, by the hands of the pages, which are
announced from the throne, and so along to the ears of the most distant
in the multitude. At intervals, the drawing ceases, while most charming
music serves to keep the crowd together, and possibly to drive for the
moment, from many a heart, the pangs of disappointment or despair. Now
there is some excuse for ignorance on this subject, among those poor
people, for there are no means by which they can be enlightened and
warned of the evil. But in this country, where the press is free, and
the means of information abundant, it would be sad to reflect that such
things can, under any name or phrase, long continue unmasked and unshorn
of their power.

There is consolation in the belief, that however prosperous this species
of gaming may be, the time is not far distant when its true character
and tendency will be made manifest; and when the unseen but certain
operations of the moral sense of our people will put an end to its
inglorious career; if not directly, through the action of the laws, yet
indirectly, by withholding the necessary contributions to its further
support.

This parallel between Art-Unions and Lotteries is drawn that the
character of the former may be more readily comprehended by the reader.

In the recent drawing of the American Art-Union there were distributed
_one thousand works of art_, making about one prize to sixteen blanks.
But where did all these "thousand works" come from? and what are they?
Have they all been executed by living American artists? Are they
paintings, or sculptures, or engravings, purchased from the artists who
made them, and who have received an adequate price for them? We know
from their advertisement that _sixty_ of them are "impressions from the
large engravings after Col. Trumbull's pictures of the _Battle of Bunker
Hill_ and the _Death of Montgomery_." Now the purchase of these
engravings from the pictures of a long deceased painter can be of no
possible service to the painters living and laboring among us, nor to
the progress of art in any way. As well might the Art-Union purchase for
distribution sixty copies of Dunlap's History of the Arts of Design, or
of Allston's Lectures on Art, or any object pertaining to the subject
that may be procured at any time of the book or print sellers. It is
true, they must manage to offer a number of small prizes, the best way
they can, that they may in some plausible way meet the expectations of
their very extended lists of subscribers, to which, it seems, they never
attempt to set a limit. Here is another proof that they are mere
speculators upon the labors of artists, and only seek to enlarge their
subscriptions, and usurp a power and control over the great body of
artists, which should never, with their consent, be allowed to any, no
matter how respectable, body of men.

Let us turn to the "_Western Art-Union_." Having but few good prizes to
offer, nothing indeed which would ensure them a large subscription list,
it became necessary to procure some well known production for this
purpose, as a capital prize. The managers therefore negotiated, in a
very quiet manner, with a Mr. Robb, of New Orleans, for one of HIRAM
POWERS'S finest statues, the "_Greek Slave_," then in the possession of
Mr. Robb, and it was accordingly taken to Cincinnati, and placed on
exhibition in the Art-Union, as one of the prizes to be distributed this
year. Handbills were then sent over the United States announcing this
fact. Of course, with such a celebrated work as this, thousands would be
seduced to purchase a ticket, and thus place the _Art-Union_ in a most
flourishing condition, and probably secure to it at least double the sum
which it had paid, or the sculptor had originally received, for the
statue.

Now let us consider this transaction in its true light. The Art-Union
was established solely for the purpose of benefiting artists, protecting
their interests, and increasing the knowledge of art among the people.
From these facts it is evident that neither of these purposes were kept
in view or carried out. Instead of negotiating with the sculptor himself
for one of his works, and giving him a liberal price for it, they never
mentioned the subject to him, but secretly purchased one of another
person--a rich man, who was in nowise whatever connected with the arts.

One would have supposed that even if there were very strong inducements
to such a procedure on the part of this institution, for the sake of
gain, still that a friendly feeling towards the great sculptor, of whom
the Queen City is so proud, and a due regard for his interests and his
fame, would have prevented the consummation of such an act. It can be
no pleasing reflection to Mr. Powers, that a work which many persons in
Europe, as well as in America, would have purchased at any reasonable
price, should, by any movement of his own townsmen, be disposed of at a
public raffle, so that of its final destination he must long remain in
ignorance.

It seems, from what has here been adduced, that Art-Unions have not
proved of service to art or artists, notwithstanding the immense amount
annually collected for this ostensible purpose; but that they are in
reality only lotteries operating under another but less objectionable
name.

If a corporation can be granted by the Legislature, with the privilege
of selling pictures, or statuary, by lottery, every other branch of
industry is as much entitled to such a privilege, or our laws are
onesided and unjust. We would then see distributions of prizes from
every quarter, until the whole mechanical and commercial interests of
the country would be turned into Lotteries or Unions. Following the
example of the Art-Union in this state, we have already advertised a
"_Homestead Art-Union_," the grand prize of which is a "house and lot
situated in Williamsburgh, which cost nearly $5,000." Subscribers are
entitled to "an elegant and valuable engraving, which has heretofore
sold at $7.50, (being $2.50 more than the price of subscription,) and
superior in execution and elegance to any picture distributed in this
manner." It has in its collection for distribution "ninety-nine elegant
and costly oil paintings and engravings, richly framed in ornamental and
plain gilt frames." All the difference between these Unions, seems to be
in the fact that the "Homestead" has limited the number of
tickets--certainly an improvement on the other, so far as the public
interest is concerned. We may expect to hear very soon of _Bread and
Meat Art-Unions_, when the whole community, for a very small outlay, may
live like princes, and snap their fingers at haggard want.

The tendency of these hotbed methods of cultivating an appreciation of
art and of rewarding its professors, has been to discourage artists from
any suitable efforts to provide instruction, upon a liberal scale, to
those who are seeking for it. Indeed it takes from them the power to do
so, by drawing away funds necessary to such an object, which, but for
these grand schemes, would be likely to come into their hands. One has
but to observe the motives which induce persons to subscribe to an
Art-Union, to be convinced that the great majority do so for the sake of
self-aggrandizement, that is, to have a chance of getting the works of
our best artists for a mere tithe of their value, or in the language of
the advertisements, "of obtaining a valuable return, for a small
investment;" as they would buy any other lottery tickets: to make the
most out of their money. But there are many who subscribe from nobler
motives--real lovers of art, whose only object is to lend a helping hand
to its interests, and to show a generous sympathy in the struggles and
self-denying endeavors of all whose souls are so wrapt up in its pursuit
that they scarcely arrive at the knowledge requisite to a charge of
their own pecuniary and worldly affairs. This latter class of
subscribers believe they are gratifying this genuine love of the
beautiful and good, when they give annually their five dollars to an
institution chartered for the express design of protecting and
cherishing the interests of art, and of enlarging the field of its
labors and usefulness among the people. These genuine _patrons_ give,
without a hope or thought of drawing a prize, or receiving in any shape
a return for their subscriptions. Did they reflect upon, or know, that
these funds were worse than misapplied, they would withhold them, and
seek in some other way to make a proper appropriation of them.

We have said that these Art-Unions prevent artists from taking any steps
to provide the means of instruction for those who need and seek it. As
an illustration of this we may mention the present state of the
_National Academy of Design_. It is, and has been for two or three
years, quite prostrate for want of funds; its schools have been closed,
and without assistance it must soon die. A few years ago it was in a
flourishing state, and offered the advantages of study which their fine
collection of casts from the best antique statues, and a small but well
selected and growing library could afford to students. Such have been
the results of Art-Unions upon schools of art everywhere. To be sure the
members of the National Academy are not entirely free from censure in
this matter, for many of them, smitten with the "Union" mania, gave it
their countenance, and even something more substantial, to assist its
infant struggles for popularity, little suspecting, certainly, that they
were lending a club which would sooner or later strike them to the
ground. It may not be out of place here to remark, that it is firmly
believed that the Academy of Design can yet rise up from its ashes, and
overthrow all such schemes as Art-Unions, by placing itself upon a more
liberal and popular footing; and by disclaiming all exclusive titles as
utterly unworthy the ambition of every sensible and right-feeling
artist. Institutions in this country, to be useful, must be placed on a
popular foundation; and to be popular, they must rest upon the broad
republican principle of equal rights and equal privileges to all. Let
the members of the Academy open their doors wide enough to admit all
classes of artisans who desire to study the principles of design--the
basis upon which the beauty and the saleability of their works mainly
depends. There might then, in addition to the sections of Painting and
Sculpture, be added those of Architecture, Ornamental Marble and Stone
Workers, Carvers in Wood and Metal, Gold and Silver Smiths, Cabinet
Makers, and indeed, as many other occupations as chose to unite
themselves, in separate sections, for the purposes of mutual instruction
in the Art of Design. This would at once be practical and popular, and
with such objects in view, the Academy could with very little additional
funds be put into immediate and successful operation, and become a
highly honorable and most useful institution. These are mere
suggestions, thrown out for the consideration of the members of the
Academy and others interested. This is not the proper place to enlarge
upon such a subject.

Artists must learn, if they do not know, how to control their own
affairs, and if they are determined to succeed, they must not think of
trusting their interests to the keeping of those not of their
profession, and entirely uneducated in art, and who consequently cannot
be qualified to discharge so delicate a duty with judgment and fidelity.
It is an old saying, but very applicable to the present instance, that
"if you neglect your own business, you need not expect others to attend
to it for you." Let artists depend more upon private sales of their
works to those who can appreciate them for a just remuneration, than
upon the deceptive offers which chartered schemes may hold out to them.
They will then, by their worth and their artistic merits, build up about
them a solid body of friends and patrons, of whom nothing but death
itself can rob them; and the number of whom time will but increase,
until they may look forward with well-founded hopes to a peaceful and
honorable old age, and a full reward for all their labors. They cannot
justly suppose that permanent success and a distinguished name can be
attained through any other channel than by honesty, and excellence in
their works. Honors and rewards from private sources may be very laggard
in their approach, but they must ultimately come--especially in this
enlightened, progressive, and prosperous country--to those who have
fairly earned them.




Recent Deaths.


Those who have been accustomed to visit the bookstore of Bartlett &
Welford, under the Astor House, during the last half-dozen years, must
have been familiar with the commanding figure and gentle but uneasy
expression of our late excellent friend, the Rev. SERENO E. DWIGHT, D.
D., who died in Philadelphia on the thirtieth of November, in the
sixty-fourth year of his age. Dr. Dwight was born in Greenfield,
Connecticut, in 1786, and was educated at Yale College, where he was
graduated in 1803, being then about seventeen years of age. He became a
tutor in the college, but soon abandoned this occupation to commence the
study of the law at Burlington in Vermont, and in a few years he was
admitted to practice in the highest courts of the country. An early and
ever-increasing predilection, however, led him to the profession of his
father, and upon completing his theological studies he was settled over
the Park-street Congregational church, in Boston, where, he rapidly
acquired the fame of being one of the ablest, most eloquent, and most
useful divines in New-England.

He had contracted a cutaneous disease, from the injudicious use of
calomel, while a tutor in Yale College; and its effects increased so
much now, that his parishioners, who had become quite attached to him,
in 1825 induced him to undertake a voyage to Europe. A year's travel, in
Great Britain, Germany, France, and other countries, failed to restore
his health, and soon after his return to the United States he resigned
his charge of the Park-street church, and undertook the Presidency of
Hamilton College, which in turn he was compelled to surrender, and in
1830 he opened, at New-Haven, an Academy, in which he was assisted by
his wife, a daughter of the late Judge Daggett. The decline of Mrs.
Dwight's health, and other circumstances, induced him to relinquish the
business of teaching; he visited the Southern States, was during several
sessions chaplain to the United States Senate, and, devoting himself to
literature, wrote an elaborate memoir of his great-grandfather, Jonathan
Edwards, and several works of less importance, one of which was "The
Hebrew Wife," written to illustrate the Jewish laws of marriage, and
published in New-York in 1836.

The death of his wife, and increasing physical infirmities, led him to
adopt a habit of the utmost seclusion in New-York, where he passed
nearly all the residue of his life. His last appearance in public was in
the summer of 1848, when he consented to act with Mr. John R. Bartlett
(now the chief of the Mexican Boundary Commission) and the writer of
these paragraphs, as an examiner of one of the departments of the
Rutgers Female Institute. He died suddenly, while upon a visit to
Philadelphia for the purpose of trying the effect of the hydropathic
treatment of his disease, on the 30th of September. In the _Home
Journal_ of December 14, Mr. Willis says of him:--

     "In the death of this excellent man we have lost a friend,
     whose loss to ourself we most sincerely mourn, though the grave
     was, to him, a welcome relief from an insufferable disease,
     that had made life wretched for years. Mr. Dwight was the son
     of Rev. Dr. Dwight, President of Yale College. He became pastor
     of Park-st. church, in Boston, while we attended it in boyhood,
     and it is our pride to record that we were so fortunate as to
     secure his friendship at that time, and to retain it, in
     undiminished warmth and kindness, to the day of his death. Mr.
     Dwight was a man of qualities unusual in his profession. When
     he first came to Boston, in perfect health, he was, in personal
     appearance, the ideal of a high-souled and faultlessly elegant
     gentleman--with more of manly and refined beauty, indeed, than
     we remember to have combined in any other man. He wore these
     winning gifts most unconsciously, being beloved by the humblest
     for his open and accessible simplicity and kindness: and his
     health first gave way under the laborious discharge of his
     parochial duties. He was too severely critical and polished a
     scholar to be either a very eloquent preacher or an easy
     writer, but his sermons were models of purity of style, study,
     and elevated thought, and his pastoral intercourse and counsel
     were too delightful ever to be forgotten by those who enjoyed
     it. Sent to Europe for his health, by his congregation, Mr.
     Dwight was received and followed with a degree of enthusiastic
     and flattering attention which fully confirmed his mark as a
     man, and showed how Nature's noblemen are recognized and
     honored everywhere. He resumed his duties on his return, but
     was soon obliged by illness to relinquish them, and, from that
     time forward, he was never again well. His weakness took the
     shape of a cutaneous disease of the most irritating and
     incurable form, and though he made one or two attempts at
     re-commencing his usefulness, it was sadly in vain. He resided
     secludedly in New-York during the latter years of his life,
     giving to books and scholarship what mind he could withdraw
     from pain, and, even thus, ready always with kindness and
     delightful earnestness, to give counsel or sympathy to those he
     loved. Mr. Dwight was a martyr to that great wrong of our
     country toward all clergymen--to express it by a common saying,
     "the working a free horse to death"--and we have only to look
     at the pale faces, the stooping chests, and the slender frames
     of most of our clerical men, to see how mind, patience,
     attention, needful leisure and more needful sleep, are cruelly
     overdrawn upon, by the service expected of them. But for his
     share of suffering by this exacting system, Mr. Dwight might
     have been, for years to come, the ornament and pride to his
     country which his unequalled combination of fine gifts
     qualified him to be; and we should not mourn, as we now do,
     over his life embittered while it lasted, and sent to the grave
     in what might have been its meridian of usefulness and
     ornament."

       *       *       *       *       *

COUNT BRANDENBURGH, the Prussian Prime Minister, died on the 6th
November at Berlin. He was a natural brother of the late King of
Prussia, being the illegitimate son of the present King's grandfather,
by the Countess Dönhoff Frederichstein, and was acknowledged, educated,
and admitted as such, by the Prussian Royal family, by whom he was
invariably treated as a friend and relative, although not with royal
honors. He was born on the 23d of January, 1792, and had nearly
completed his 59th year. He was educated for the military profession and
entered the service in 1807; his promotion continued regularly, and in
1812 he was a captain on the staff of General Von York, under whom he
saw some service. In 1813 he became major, and in that rank took part in
the numerous actions between the Prussian and the French armies,
including the battles of Leipsic, and Bautzen, Brienne, Laon, and Paris.
At the passage of the Rhine at Caub, Count Brandenburgh was the first
who reached the French bank. For his good conduct at Mokern and
Wartenburg, he received the Iron Cross of the first class. In 1814 he
was made lieutenant-colonel. In 1816 he received the command of the
regiment in which he first entered the service. From 1816 to 1846 he
received various promotions, charges, and decorations. In 1848 he was
made general in command of the 8th army corps. Up to this time he had
taken no part in politics. The London _Times_ says:

     "It was in the midst of those scenes of anarchy and violence
     which, about two years ago, had shaken the Prussian monarchy to
     its foundations--when a furious Assembly, beleaguered and
     intimidated by a more furious mob, had usurped sovereign power
     in the capital, and a democratic constitution was all but
     grafted on the military throne of Frederic the Great,--that we
     remember to have exclaimed, in the wonder and the dread of that
     terrible period, "Will no one save the house of Hohenzollern?"
     The state seemed to be on the brink of a cataract, and even the
     leaders of the popular movement were ignorant of the dark and
     stormy course before them. At that moment, it was announced one
     morning, to the amazement of the Prussians and of Europe, that
     an elderly gentleman, who had never taken any active part in
     politics, but had lived in the most exclusive circles of the
     aristocracy, and the Prussian Guards, was about to enter on the
     task which the boldest men had found beyond their courage, and
     the ablest beyond their capacity. But though he laid small
     claim to skill in political tactics, or experience in the
     administration of affairs, Count Brandenburgh brought to the
     service of his sovereign precisely those plain qualities which
     no one else appeared to possess. He had sense, he had firmness,
     he absolutely contemned the storm of unpopularity which greeted
     his appointment, and he proceeded to conduct the Government
     with full confidence that, although his countrymen were
     peculiarly subject to fits of enthusiasm, they respect nothing
     so much in the long run as a clear will and definite authority.
     After about fifteen months the citizens of Berlin hailed Count
     Brandenburgh as the saviour of his country."

       *       *       *       *       *

GEORGE GRENVILLE, LORD NUGENT, died on the 26th of November at Lillies,
near Aylesbury, aged sixty-one. He was the second son of the Marquis of
Rockingham, and inherited the Irish Barony of Nugent, on the death of
his mother, in 1812. During the same year he was elected M. P. for
Aylesbury, and continued to represent that borough on the Liberal
interest, until 1832, when he was appointed Lord High Commissioner of
the Ionian Isles. He held that office until 1836, when he returned to
England. In 1847 he was re-elected for Aylesbury. He enjoyed a very fair
literary reputation. He was the author of "Lands, Classical and Sacred,"
"Memorials of Hampden," and other interesting productions. In
conjunction with Lady Nugent, he also brought out the popular "Legends
of the Library at Lillies."

       *       *       *       *       *

M. ALEXANDRE FRAGONARD, the eminent French painter and sculptor, died in
October. He was a pupil of David. As a statuary, his great work is the
frontispiece of the old Chamber of Deputies; and, as a painter, he
executed several fine pieces, amongst others a ceiling of the Louvre,
representing Tasso reading his "Jerusalem." His chief works were
engraved in 1840.

       *       *       *       *       *

M. JOSEPH DROZ, a member of the French Institute, died in Paris in
November. The youth of M. Droz was devoted to stormier occupations than
that in which he gathered the laurels now laid upon his grave. For three
years he was a soldier:--for upwards of fifty he has been devoted to
letters and to philosophy. His last escort was composed of the men who
had been his comrades in that latter field,--and over his grave MM.
Guizot and Bartholemy Saint-Hilaire, pronounced eulogies.

       *       *       *       *       *

PROFESSOR SCHORN, died in Augsburgh on the 7th of October, at the
premature age of forty-seven years. In the formation of the Munich
Gallery, he was the most trusted and active emissary, and traversed
considerable portions of Europe, including England and Italy, in search
of those treasures which now enrich this famous gallery. When in London,
his companion was Von Martins, the eminent Brazilian traveller and
naturalist.

       *       *       *       *       *

GUSTAVE SCHWAB, one of the most popular poets of Germany, died at
Stuttgart on the 4th of November, aged fifty-eight. Schwab was the
friend of Uhland. His death was very sudden. On the morning of the day
on which he was summoned, he had entertained a party of his friends at
breakfast, and read to them passages of a translation into German verse,
which he was making of the poetical works of M. de Lamartine.




Spirit of the English Annuals.

NEW TALES BY THACKERAY, BULWER, MRS. HALL, &c.


The holiday souvenirs for the present season are less numerous in
England, as in this country, than in some previous years; but the
_Keepsake_, edited formerly by Lady Blessington, and now by her niece,
Miss Power, is among the few favorite annuals that are continued, and it
is as good as in its best days. We quote several of its chief
attractions, and first


VOLTIGUER:

BY THE AUTHOR OF THE "HISTORY OF PENDENNIS."

There arose out of the last Epsom races a little family perplexity,
whereon the owner of Voltiguer little speculated: and as out of this
apparently trivial circumstance a profound and useful moral may be
drawn, to be applied by the polite reader; and as Epsom Races will
infallibly happen next year, and, I dare say, for many succeeding
generations; perhaps the moral which this brief story points had better
be printed upon Dorling's next "Correct Card," as a warning to future
patrons and patronesses of the turf.

This moral, then--this text of our sermon, is, NEVER----but we will keep
the moral, if you please, for the end of the fable.

It happened, then, that among the parties who were collected on the Hill
to see the race, the carriage of a gentleman, whom we shall call Sir
Joseph Raikes, occupied a commanding position, and attracted a great
deal of attention amongst the gentlemen sportsmen. Those bucks upon the
ground who were not acquainted with the fair occupant of that
carriage--as indeed, how should many thousands of them be?--some being
shabby bucks; some being vulgar bucks; some being hot and unpleasant
bucks, smoking bad cigars, and only staring into Lady Raikes's carriage
by that right which allows one Briton to look at another Briton, and a
cat to look at a king;--of those bucks, I say, who, not knowing Lady
Raikes, yet came and looked at her, there was scarce one that did not
admire her, and envy the lucky rogue her husband. Of those ladies who,
in their walks from their own vehicles, passed her ladyship's, there was
scarce one lady in society who did not say, "is that all?--is that the
beauty you are all talking about so much? She is overrated; she looks
stupid; she is over-dressed; she squints;" and so forth; whilst of the
men who _did_ happen to have the honor of an acquaintance with Lady
Raikes and her husband (and many a man, who had thought Raikes rather
stupid in his bachelor days, was glad enough to know him now), each as
he came to the carriage, and partook of the excellent luncheon provided
there, had the most fascinating grins and ogles for the lady, and the
most triumphant glances for all the rest of the world,--glances which
seemed to say, "Look, you rascals, I know Lady Raikes; you don't know
Lady Raikes. I can drink a glass of champagne to Lady Raikes's health.
What would you give, you dog, to have such a sweet smile from Lady
Raikes? Did you ever see such eyes? did you ever see such a complexion?
did you ever see such a killing pink dress, and such a dear little
delightfully carved ivory parasol?"--Raikes had it carved for her last
year at Baden, when they were on their wedding-trip. It has their coats
of arms and their ciphers intertwined elegantly round the stalk--a J and
a Z; her name is Zuleika; before she was married she was Zuleika
Trotter. Her elder sister, Medora, married Lord T--mn--ddy; her younger,
Haidee, is engaged to the eldest son of the second son of a noble D-ke.
The Trotters are of a good family. Dolly Trotter, Zuleika's brother, was
in the same regiment (and that, I need not say, an extremely heavy one)
with Sir Joseph Raikes.

He did not call himself Joseph then: quite the contrary. Larkyn Raikes,
before his marriage, was one of the wildest and most irregular of our
British youth. Let us not allude--he would blush to hear them--to the
particulars of his past career. He turned away his servant for screwing
up one of the knockers which he had removed during the period of his own
bachelorhood, from an eminent physician's house in Saville Row, on the
housekeeper's door at Larkyn Hall. There are whole hampers of those
knockers stowed away somewhere, and snuff-taking Highlanders, and tin
hats, and black boys,--the trophies of his youth, which Raikes would
like to send back to their owners, did he know them; and when he carried
off these spoils of war he was not always likely to know. When he goes
to the Bayonet and Anchor Club now (and he dined there twice during Lady
Raikes's ... in fine, when there was no dinner at home), the butler
brings him a half-pint of sherry and a large bottle of Seltzer water,
and looks at him with a sigh, and wonders--"Is this Captain Raikes, as
used to breakfast off pale hale at three, to take his regular two
bottles at dinner, and to drink brandy and water in the smoking
billiard-room all night till all was blue?" Yes, it is the same Raikes;
Larkyn no more--riotous no more--brandivorous no longer. He gave away
all his cigars at his marriage; quite unlike Screwby, who also married
the other day, and offered to _sell_ me some. He has not betted at a
race since his father paid his debts and forgave him, just before the
old gentleman died and Raikes came into his kingdom. Upon that
accession, Zuleika Trotter, who looked rather sweetly upon Bob Vincent
before, was so much touched by Sir Joseph Raikes's determination to
reform, that she dismissed Bob and became Lady Raikes.

Dolly Trotter still remains in the Paddington Dragoons; Dolly is still
unmarried; Dolly smokes still; Dolly owes money still. And though his
venerable father, Rear-admiral Sir Ajax Trotter, K.C.B., has paid his
debts many times, and swears if he ever hears of Dolly betting again, he
will disinherit his son, Dolly--the undutiful Dolly--goes on betting
still.

Lady Raikes, then, beamed in the pride of her beauty upon Epsom
race-course, dispensed smiles and luncheon to a host of acquaintances,
and accepted, in return, all the homage and compliments which the young
men paid her. The hearty and jovial Sir Joseph Raikes was not the least
jealous of the admiration which his pretty wife caused; not even of Bob
Vincent, whom he rather pitied for his mishap, poor fellow! (to be sure,
Zuleika spoke of Vincent very scornfully, and treated his pretensions as
absurd); and with whom, meeting him on the course, Raikes shook hands
very cordially, and insisted upon bringing him up to Lady Raikes's
carriage, to take refreshment.

There _could_ have been no foundation for the wicked rumor, that Zuleika
had looked sweetly upon Vincent before Raikes had carried her off. Lady
Raikes received Mr. Vincent with the kindest and frankest smile; shook
hands with him with perfect politeness and indifference, and laughed and
talked so easily with him, that it was impossible there could have been
any previous discomfort between them.

Not very far off from Lady Raikes's carriage, on the hill, there stood a
little black brougham--the quietest and most modest equipage in the
world, and in which there must have been nevertheless something very
attractive, for the young men crowded around this carriage in numbers;
and especially that young reprobate Dolly Trotter was to be seen,
constantly leaning his great elbows on the window, and poking his head
into the carriage. Lady Raikes remarked that, among other gentlemen, her
husband went up and spoke to the little carriage, and when he and Dolly
came back to her, asked who was in the black brougham.

For some time Raikes could not understand which was the brougham she
meant--there was so many broughams. "The black one with the red blinds
was it? Oh, that--that was a very old friend--yes, old Lord Cripplegate,
was in the brougham: he had the gout, and he couldn't walk."

As Raikes made this statement he blushed as red as a geranium; he looked
at Dolly Trotter in an imploring manner, who looked at him, and who
presently went away from his sister's carriage bursting with laughter.
After making the above statement to his wife, Raikes was particularly
polite and attentive to her, and did not leave her side; nor would he
consent to her leaving the carriage. There were all sorts of vulgar
people about: she would be jostled in the crowd: she could not bear the
smell of the cigars--she knew she couldn't (this made Lady Raikes wince
a little): the sticks might knock her darling head off; and so forth.

Raikes is a very accomplished and athletic man, and, as a bachelor,
justly prided himself upon shying at the sticks better than any man in
the army. Perhaps, as he passed the persons engaged in that fascinating
sport, he would have himself liked to join in it; but he declined his
favorite entertainment, and came back faithfully to the side of his
wife.

As Vincent talked at Lady Raikes's side, he alluded to this
accomplishment of her husband. "Your husband has not many
accomplishments," Vincent said (he is a man of rather a sardonic humor),
"but in shying at the sticks he is quite unequalled: he has quite a
genius for it. He ought to have the sticks painted on his carriage, as
the French marshals have their bâtons. Hasn't he brought you a
pincushion or a jack-in-the-box, Lady Raikes? and has he begun to
neglect you so soon? Every father with a little boy at home" (and he
congratulated her ladyship on the birth of that son and heir) "ought
surely to think of him, and bring him a soldier, or a monkey, or a toy
or two."

"Oh, yes," cried Lady Raikes, "her husband must go. He must go and bring
back a soldier, or a monkey, or a dear little jack-in-the-box, for dear
little Dolly at home."

So away Raikes went; indeed nothing loth. He warmed with the noble
sport: he was one of the finest players in England. He went on playing
for a delightful half-hour; (how swiftly, in the blessed amusement, it
passed away!) he reduced several of the sticksters to bankruptcy by his
baculine skill; he returned to the carriage laden with jacks, wooden
apples and soldiers, enough to amuse all the nurseries in Pimlico.

During his absence Lady Raikes, in the most winning manner, had asked
Mr. Vincent for his arm, for a little walk; and did not notice the sneer
with which he said that his arm had always been at her service. She was
not jostled by the crowd inconveniently; she was not offended by the
people smoking (though Raikes was forbidden that amusement); and she
walked up on Mr. Vincent's arm, and somehow found herself close to the
little black brougham, in which sat gouty old Lord Cripplegate.

Gouty old Lord Cripplegate wore a light blue silk dress, a lace mantle
and other gimcracks, a white bonnet with roses, and ringlets as long as
a chancellor's wig, but of the most beautiful black hue. His lordship
had a pair of enormous eyes, that languished in a most killing manner;
and cheeks that were decorated with delicate dimples; and lips of the
color of the richest sealing-wax.

"Who's that?" asked Lady Raikes.

"That," said Mr. Vincent, "is Mrs. Somerset Montmorency."

"Who's Mrs. Somerset Montmorency?" hissed out Zuleika.

"It is possible you have not met her in society, Mrs. Somerset
Montmorency doesn't go much into society," Mr. Vincent said.

"Why did he say it was Lord Cripplegate?"

Vincent, like a fiend, burst out laughing.

"Did Raikes say it was Lord Cripplegate? Well, he ought to know."

"What ought he to know?" asked Zuleika.

"Excuse me, Lady Raikes," said the other, with his constant sneer;
"there are things which people had best not know. There are things which
people had best forget, as your ladyship very well knows. You forget;
why shouldn't Raikes forget? Let by-gones be by-gones. Let's all forget,
Zulei--I beg your pardon. Here comes Raikes. How hot he looks! He has
got a hat full of jack-in-the-boxes. How obedient he has been! He will
not set the Thames on fire--but he's a good fellow. Yes; we'll forget
all: won't we?" And the fiend pulled the tuft under his chin, and gave a
diabolical grin with his sallow face.

Zuleika did not say one word about Lord Cripplegate when Raikes found
her and flung his treasures into her lap. She did not show her anger in
words, but in an ominous, boding silence; during which her eyes might be
seen moving constantly to the little black brougham.

When the Derby was run, and Voltigeur was announced as the winner, Sir
Joseph, who saw the race from the box of his carriage--having his arm
around her ladyship, who stood on the back seat, and thought all men the
greatest hypocrites in creation (and so a man _is_ the greatest
hypocrite of all animals, save one)--Raikes jumped up and gave a
"Hurrah!" which he suddenly checked when his wife asked, with a
deathlike calmness, "And pray, sir, have you been betting upon the race,
that you are so excited?"

"Oh no, my love; of course not. But you know it's a Yorkshire horse, and
I--I'm glad it wins; that's all," Raikes said; in which statement there
was not, I am sorry to say, a word of truth.

Raikes wasn't a betting man any more. He had forsworn it: he would never
bet again. But he had just, in the course of the day, taken the odds in
_one_ little bet; and he had just happened to win. When his wife charged
him with the crime, he was about to avow it. "But no," he thought; "it
will be a surprise for her. I will buy her the necklace she scolded me
about at Lacy and Gimcrack's; it's just the sum. She has been sulky all
day. It's about that she is sulky now. I'll go and have another shy at
the sticks." And he went away, delighting himself with this notion, and
with the idea that at last he could satisfy his adorable little Zuleika.

As Raikes passed Mrs. Somerset Montmorency's brougham, Zuleika remarked
how that lady beckoned to him, and how Raikes went up to her. Though he
did not remain by the carriage two minutes, Zuleika was ready to take an
affidavit that he was there for half an hour; and was saluted by a
satanical grin from Vincent, who by this time had returned to her
carriage side, and was humming a French tune, which says that "_on
revient toujours à ses premi-è-res amours, à se-es premières amours_."

"What is that you are singing? How dare you sing that?" cried Lady
Raikes, with tears.

"It's an old song--you used to sing it," said Mr. Vincent. "By the way,
I congratulate you. Your husband has won six hundred pounds. I heard
Betterton say so, who gave him the odds."

"He is a wretch! He gave me his word of honor that he didn't bet. He is
a gambler--he'll ruin his child! He neglects his wife for that--that
creature! He calls her Lord Crick--crick--ipplegate," sobbed her
ladyship, "Why did I marry him?"

"Why, indeed!" said Mr. Vincent.

As the two were talking, Dolly Trotter, her ladyship's brother, came up
to the carriage; at which, with a scowl on his wicked countenance, and
indulging inwardly in language which I am very glad not to be called
upon to report, Vincent retired, biting his nails, like a traitor, and
exhibiting every sign of ill-humor which the villain of a novel or of a
play is wont to betray.

"Don't have that fellow about you, Zuly," Dolly said to his darling
sister. "He is a bad one. He's no principle: he--he's a gambler, and
every thing that's bad."

"I know others who are gamblers," cried out Zuleika. "I know others who
are every thing that's bad, Adolphus," Lady Raikes exclaimed.

"For heaven's sake, what do you mean?" said Adolphus, becoming red and
looking very much frightened.

"I mean my husband," gasped the lady. "I shall go home to papa. I shall
take my dear little blessed babe with me and go to papa, Adolphus. And
if you had the spirit of a man, you would--you would avenge me, that you
would."

"Against Joe!" said the heavy dragoon; "against Joe, Zuly? Why, hang me
if Joe isn't the greatest twump in Chwistendom. By Jove he is!" said the
big one, shaking his fist; "and if that scoundwel, Vincent, or any other
wascal, has said a word against him, by Jove--"

"Pray stop your horrid oaths and vulgar threats, Adolphus," her ladyship
said.

"I don't know what it is--you've got something against Joe. Something
has put you against him; and if it's Vincent, I'll wring his--"

"Mercy! mercy! Pray cease this language." Lady Raikes said.

"You don't know what a good fellow Joe is," said the dragoon. "The best
twump in England, as _I've_ weason to say, sister: and here he comes
with the horses. God bless the old boy!"

With this, honest Sir Joseph Raikes took his seat in his carriage; and
tried, by artless blandishments, by humility, and by simple
conversation, to coax his wife into good humor; but all his efforts were
unavailing. She would not speak a word during the journey to London; and
when she reached home, rushed up to the nursery and instantly burst into
tears upon the sleeping little Adolphus's pink and lace cradle.

"It's all about that necklace, Mrs. Prince," the good-natured Baronet
explained to the nurse of the son and heir. "I know it's about the
necklace. She rowed me about it all the way down to Epsom; and I can't
give it her now, that's flat. I've _no_ money. I _won't_ go tick, that's
flat; and she ought to be contented with what she has had; oughtn't she,
Prince?"

"Indeed she ought, Sir Joseph; and you're an angel of a man, Sir Joseph;
and so I often tell my lady, Sir Joseph," the nurse said: "and the more
you will spile her, the more she will take on, Sir Joseph."

But if Lady Raikes was angry at not having the necklace, what must have
been her ladyship's feelings when she saw in the box opposite to her at
the Opera, Mrs. Somerset Montmorency, with that very necklace on her
shoulders for which she had pined in vain! How she got it? Who gave it
her? How she came by the money to buy such a trinket? How she dared to
drive about at all in the Park, the audacious wretch! All these were
questions which the infuriate Zuleika put to herself, her confidential
maid, her child's nurse, and two or three of her particular friends; and
of course she determined that there was but one clue to the mystery of
the necklace, which was that her husband had purchased it with the six
hundred pounds which he had won at the Derby, which he denied having won
even to her, which he had spent in this shameful manner. Nothing would
suit her but a return home to her papa--nothing would satisfy her but a
separation from the criminal who had betrayed her. She wept floods of
tears over her neglected boy, and repeatedly asked that as yet
speechless innocent, whether he would remember his mother when her place
was filled by another, and whether her little Adolphus would take care
that no insult was offered to her untimely grave?

The row at home at length grew so unbearable, that Sir Joseph Raikes,
who had never had an explanation since his marriage, and had given into
all his wife's caprices--that Sir Joseph, we say, even with his 'eavenly
temper, he broke out into a passion; and one day after dinner, at which
only his brother-in-law Dolly was present, told his wife that her
tyranny was intolerable, and that it must come to an end.

Dolly said he was "quite wight," and backed up Raikes in every way.

Zuleika said they were a pair of brutes, and that she desired to return
to Sir Ajax.

"Why, what the devil is urging you?" cried the husband; "you drive me
mad, Zuleika."

"Yes; what are you at, Zuleika? You dwive him cwazy," said the brother.

Upon which Zuleika broke out. She briefly stated that her husband was a
liar; that he was a gambler; that he had deceived her about betting at
Epsom, and had given his word to a lie; that he had deceived her about
that--that woman,--and given his word to another lie; and that, with the
fruits of his gambling transactions at Epsom, he had purchased the
diamond necklace, not for her, but for that--that person! That was
all--that was enough. Let her go home and die in Baker Street, in the
room which, she prayed Heaven, she never had quitted! That was her
charge. If Sir Joseph Raikes had any thing to say he had better say it.

Sir Joseph Raikes said, that she had the most confounded jealous temper
that ever a woman was cursed with; that he had been on his knees to her
ever since his marriage, and had spent half his income in administering
to her caprices and extravagancies; that as for these charges, they were
so monstrous, he should not condescend to answer them; and as she chose
to leave her husband and her child, she might go whenever she liked.

Lady Raikes upon this rang the bell, and requested Hickson the butler to
tell Dickson her maid to bring down her bonnet and shawl; and when
Hickson quitted the dining-room, Dolly Trotter began:

"Zuleika," said he, "you are enough to twy the patience of an angel;
and, by Jove, you do! You've got the best fellow for a husband (a sneer
from Zuleika) that ever was bullied by a woman, and you tweat him like a
dawg. When you were ill, you used to make him get up of a night to go to
the doctor's. When you're well, you plague his life out of him. He pays
your milliner's bills, as if you were a duchess, and you have but to ask
for a thing and you get it."

"Oh, yes, I have necklaces!" said Zuleika.

"Confound you, Zuly! had'nt he paid three hundwed and eighty for a new
cawwiage for you the week before? Hadn't he fitted your dwawing-woom
with yellow satin at the beginning of the season? Hadn't he bought you
the pair of ponies you wanted, and gone without a hack himself, and he
gettin' as fat as a porpoise for want of exercise, the poor old boy? And
for that necklace, do you know how it was that you didn't have it, and
that you were very nearly having it, you ungwateful little devil you? It
was _I_ prevented you! He _did_ win six hundwed at the Derby; and he
would have bought your necklace, but he gave me the money. The governor
said he never would pay another play-debt again for me; and bet I would,
like a confounded, gweat, stooped fool: and it was this old Joe--this
dear old twump--who booked up for me, and took me out of the hole, like
the best fellow in the whole world, by Jove! And--and I'll never bet
again, so help me----! And that's why he couldn't tell--and that's why
he wouldn't split on me--and that's why you didn't have your confounded
necklace, which old Cwipplegate bought for Mrs. Montmowency, who's going
to marry her, like a confounded fool for his pains!"

And here the dragoon being blown, took a large glass of claret; and when
Hickson and Dickson came down stairs, they found her ladyship in rather
a theatrical attitude, on her knees, embracing her husband's big hand,
and calling down blessings upon him, and owning that she was a wretch, a
monster, and a fiend.

She was only a jealous, little spoiled fool of a woman; and I am sure
those who read her history have never met with her like, or have ever
plagued their husbands. Certainly they have not, if they are not
married: as, let us hope, they will be.

As for Vincent, he persists in saying that the defence is a fib from
beginning to end, and that the Trotters were agreed to deceive Lady
Raikes. But who hasn't had his best actions misinterpreted by calumny?
And what innocence or good will can disarm jealousy?

       *       *       *       *       *

Very different from THACKARAY is the genial Mrs. S. C. HALL, from whom
we have


EDWARD LAYTON'S REWARD.

"I could not have believed it!" exclaimed Mrs. Pierce Bradshaw. "I could
not have believed it!" she repeated, over and over again; and she fell
into a fit of abstraction.

Her husband, who had been glancing wearily over a magazine, turning leaf
after leaf without reading, or perhaps seeing even the heading of a
page, at length said, "I could!"

"You have large faith, my dear," observed the lady.

"Fortunately for Selina, I had no faith in him," was the reply.

Mrs. Pierce Bradshaw was not an eloquent person; she never troubled her
husband or any one else with many words; so she only murmured, in a
subdued tone, "Fortunately, indeed!"

"What a fellow he was!" said Mr. P. Bradshaw, as he closed the magazine.
"Do you remember how delighted you were with him the evening of the
_tableaux_ at Lady Westrophe's? There was something so elegant and
dignified in his bearing; so much ease and grace of manner; his address
was perfect--the confidence of a well-bred gentleman, subdued almost,
but not quite, into softness by the timidity of youth. This was thrown
into strong relief by the manners of the young men of the family, whose
habits and voices might have entitled them to take the lead, even now,
in the go-a-head school, which then was hardly in existence--at all
events in England."

"You were quite as much taken with him as I was."

"No, my dear, not _quite_. Edward Layton was especially suited for the
society of ladies. His tastes and feelings are--or _were_ at that
time--all sincerely refined; he was full of the impulse of talent, which
he never had strength to bring forth: his thoughts were ever wandering,
and he needed perpetual excitement, particularly the excitement of
beauty and music, to bring them and keep them where he _was_. He was
strongly and strangely moved by excellence of any kind, so that it _was_
excellence; and the only thing I ever heard him express contempt for was
wealth!--yes wealth!"

"I could not have believed it," said Mrs. Pierce Bradshaw again.

"That particular night it was whispered he was engaged to Lelia Medwin.
When she sung, he stood like a young Apollo at her harp, too entranced
to turn over the leaves of music, his eyes overflowing with delight, and
the poor little girl so bewitched by his attentions that she fancied
every whisper a declaration of love."

"Shameful!" said Mrs. Pierce Bradshaw.

"Then her mother showed every one what a lovely sketch he had made of
Lelia's head, adding, that indeed it was too lovely; but then, he was a
_partial_ judge."

"She was a silly woman," observed the lady.

"She would not have been considered so if they had been married,"
replied the gentleman. "Mammas have no mercy on each other in those
delicate manoeuvrings. Well, he waltzed with her always; and bent over
her--willow-fashion; looked with her at the moon; and wrote a sonnet
which she took to herself, for it was addressed 'To mine own dear ----;'
and then when, about eight weeks afterwards, we met him at the
_déjeúner_ at Sally Lodge, he was as entranced with Lizzie Grey's guitar
as he had been with Lelia's harp, sketched her little tiger head for her
grandmamma, waltzed with _her_, bent over _her_ willow-fashion, looked
with her at the moon, and wrote another sonnet, addressed 'To the loved
one.'"

"Such men----" exclaimed Mrs. Pierce Bradshaw. She did not finish the
sentence, but looked as if such men ought to be exterminated. And so
they ought!

"There was so much about him that I liked: his fine talents, good
manners, excellent position in society, added to his good nature,
and----"

"Good fortune," added Mrs. Pierce Bradshaw.

"No, Mary," said her husband, quietly, "I never was a _mammon
worshipper_. This occurred, if you remember, before the yellow
pestilence had so completely subverted London, that the very aristocracy
knelt and worshipped the golden calf; and no blame to the calf to
_receive_ the homage, whatever we may say of those who paid it.

"I did not mean _that_ as a reproof, Pierce," replied his wife, most
truly. "_I_ think it quite natural to like young men of fortune--we
could not get on without them, you know; and it would be very
imprudent--very imprudent, indeed--to invite any young man, however
excellent. When we want to get these young girls, our poor nieces, off,
I declare it is quite melancholy. Jane is becoming _serious_ since she
has grown so thin; and I fear the men will think Belle a blue, she has
so taken to the British Museum. Oh, how I wish people would live, and
bring up, and get off their own daughters! Four marriageable nieces,
with such farthing fortunes, are enough to drive any poor aunt
distracted!"

This was the longest speech Mrs. Bradshaw ever made in her life, and she
sighed deeply at its conclusion.

"You may well sigh!" laughed the gentleman; "for the case seems
hopeless. But I was going to say, that as I knew him better, I was
really going to take the young gentleman a little to task on the score
of his philandering. Lelia was really attached to him, and had refused a
very advantageous offer for his sake; but the very next week, at another
house, I found him enchained by a sparkling widow--correcting her
drawings, paying the homage of intelligent silence and sweet smiles to
her wit, leaning his white-gloved hand upon her chair, and looking in
her eyes with his most bewitching softness. The extent of this
flirtation no one could anticipate; but the sudden appearance of Lady
Di' Johnson effected a total change. She drove four-in-hand, and was a
dead shot--the very antipodes of sentiment. We said her laugh would
drive Edward Layton distracted, and her _cigarette_ be his death. But,
no! the magnificence of her tomboyism caught his fancy. He enshrined her
at once as Diana, bayed the moon with hunting-songs, wrote a sonnet to
the chase, and then, with his own hands, twisted it into a _cigarette_,
with which her ladyship puffed it to the winds of heaven, while
wandering with the Lothario amid a grove of fragrant limes. The miracle
was, that at breakfast the next morning Lady Di' was subdued, voted
driving unfeminine, and asked Edward to take the reins for her after
lunch. You remember we left them there; and I next met him at Killarney,
giving his chestnut locks to the breeze, his arm to the oar, and his
eyes to a lady of blue-stocking celebrity, who, never having had many
lovers, was inclined to make the most of the present one. Circumstances
rendered me acquainted with some facts relating to his 'flirtations,' if
his soft and sentimental ways could be called by such a name. I had seen
poor Lelia at Baden-Baden; and I dare say you can recall what we heard
of another love of his nearer home. Well, I encountered my Hero of
Ladies that very evening, wandering amid the ruined aisles of Mucross
Abbey. I saw that his impressible nature had taken a thoughtful, if not
a religious tone, from the scene. And he commenced the conversation by
declaring, that 'He was a great fool.'"

"Knave, rather," said Mrs. Pierce Bradshaw.

"No," replied her husband; "not a knave, but a singular example of a man
whose feelings and susceptibilities never deepen into
affection--unstable as water--tossed hither and thither for want of
fixed principles, and suffering intensely in his better moods from the
knowledge of the weakness he has not the courage to overcome. I was not
inclined to let him spare himself, and did not contradict his opinion
that he was a 'fool,' but told him he might be what he pleased himself,
as long as he did not make fools of others."

"'I tell every woman I know that I am not a marrying man,' he replied.

"'That,' I said, 'does not signify as long as you act the lover, each
fair one believing you will revoke in her favor.'

"'I give you my honor,' he exclaimed, 'as a man and a gentleman, I never
entertained for twenty-four hours the idea of marrying any woman I ever
knew.'"

"The villain!" exclaimed the lady. "I hope, Pierce, you told him he was
a villain!"

"No; because I knew the uncertainty of his disposition: but I lectured
him fully and honestly, and yet said nothing to him so severe as what he
said of himself. I told him he would certainly be caught in the end by
some unworthy person, and then he would look back with regret and misery
upon the chances he had lost, and the unhappiness he had caused to those
whose only faults had been in believing him true when he was false."

"'Better that,' he answered, 'than marrying when he could not make up
his mind.'

"'Then why play the lover?'

"'He only did so while infatuated--he was certain to find faults where
he imagined perfection.'"

"What assurance!" said Mrs. Pierce Bradshaw.

"'I am sure,' I said, 'Lelia was very charming. Lelia Medwin was an
excellent, amiable little creature, with both good temper and good
sense.'

"'That was it,' he said: 'only fancy the six-foot-one-and-three-quarters
wedded to bare five feet! The absurdity struck me one night as we were
waltzing and whirling past a looking-glass; I was obliged to bend
double, though I never felt it till I saw it.'"

"Really, I have not patience," observed Mrs. Bradshaw. "And so her
feelings were to be trampled upon because she was not tall enough to
please _him_! Why did he not think of that before?"

"'But there was Lizzy Grey, related to half the aristocracy, with a
voice like an angel.'

"'A vixen,' he said, 'though of exquisite beauty--could have torn my
eyes out for the little attention I paid Mrs. Green.'

"'_Little attention!_' I repeated; 'more than little.'

"'Her wit was delicious,' he replied; 'but she was a widow! Only fancy
the horror of being compared with 'My dear first husband!'

"'Then your conquest of Lady Di' Johnson! How badly you behaved to her!'

"'She was magnificent on horseback; and her _cigarette_ as fascinating
as the fan of a Madrid belle, or the _tournure_ of a Parisian lady. They
were her _two points_. But when she relinquished both, I believe in
compliment to _me_, she became even more commonplace than the most
commonplace woman.'"

"The puppy!" muttered the lady: "the dreadful puppy! I could not have
believed it!"

Mr. Bradshaw did not heed the interruption, but continued:

"'And who,' I inquired, 'was the Lady of the Lake? I do not mean of
_this lake_, for I see her reign is already over--your passion expired
with the third chapter of her novel, which I know she read to you by
moonlight--but the fair Lady of Geneva, whose betrothed called you out?'

"'Her father was a sugar-boiler,' was the quiet reply: 'a sugar-boiler,
or something of the kind. What would my aristocratic mother say to that?
Of course I could have had no serious intention _there_. Indeed I never
_had_ a serious intention for a whole week.'

"'But, my dear fellow, when presents are given, and letters written, and
locks of hair and vows exchanged----'

"'No, no!' he exclaimed; '_no_ vows exchanged! I never broke my word to
a woman yet. It was admiration for this or that--respect, esteem,
perhaps a tender bewilderment--mere _brotherly_ love. And in that
particular instance her intended got angry at my civility. I know I was
wrong; and, to confess the truth, I am ashamed of that transaction--it
taught me a lesson; and, but for the confounded vacillation of my taste
and temper, I might perhaps have been a Benedick before this. You may
think it puppyism, if you please; but I am really sorry when I make an
impression, and resolve never to attempt it again: but the next fine
voice, or fine eyes----'

"'Or cigarette,' I suggested; and then I said as much as one man can say
to another, for you know a woman can say much more to a man in the way
of reproof than he would bear from his own sex; but he silenced me very
quickly by regrets and good resolutions. It was after that our little
niece, Selina, made an impression upon him."

"I did not know all you have now told me," expostulated his wife. "I own
I thought it would have been a good match for Selina; and he was
evidently deeply smitten before he knew she was your niece. I managed it
beautifully; but you cut the matter short by offending him."

"There, say no more about it," said the sensible husband; "you thought
your blue-eyed, fair-haired, doll-like favorite, could have enchained a
man who had escaped heart-whole from the toils of the richest and rarest
in the land. It really is fearful to see how women not only tolerate,
but pursue this sort of men. You call them 'villains,' and I know not
what, when you are foiled; but if you succeed, you temper it; they have
been a little wild, to be sure--but then, and then, and then--you really
could not refuse your daughter; and add, "Men _are_ such creatures that
if the world knew but all, _he_ is not worse than others."

"For shame, Pierce! how can you?" said the lady.

"I told him then," continued Mr. Bradshaw, "that he would take '_the
crooked stick at last_;' but that he should not add a tress of Selina's
hair to his collection, to be turned over by _his_ WIFE one of those
days. Of course he was very indignant, and we parted; but I did not
think my prophecy would come true so soon. I have long since given up
speculating how marriages will turn out, for it is quite impossible to
tell. If women could be shut up in a harem, as in the East, a man who
was ashamed of his wife might go into society without her; but for a
refined and well-educated gentleman, as Edward Layton certainly is, to
be united to the _widow_ of a sugar-boiler!--yes, absolutely!--who is an
inch shorter than pretty Lelia and more tiger-headed than Lizzy Grey,
and who declares she hates music, although her dear first husband took
her _h_often to the Hopera--who adds deformity to shortness, talks
loudly of the _h_influence of wealth, and compares the presentations at
the Mansion House, that she has seen, to those at St. James's which she
has not yet seen! Verily, Edward Layton has had _his reward_!"

       *       *       *       *       *

BULWER LYTTON contributes to the "Keepsake" an essay, characteristic of
his earlier rather than of his later style:


THE CONFIRMED VALETUDINARIAN.

Certainly there is truth in the French saying, that there is no ill
without something of good. What state more pitiable to the eye of a man
of robust health than that of the Confirmed Valetudinarian? Indeed,
there is no one who has a more profound pity for himself than your
Valetudinarian; and yet he enjoys two of the most essential requisites
for a happy life; he is never without an object of interest, and he is
perpetually in pursuit of hope.

Our friend Sir George Malsain is a notable case in point: young, well
born, rich, not ill educated, and with some ability, they who knew him
formerly, in what were called his "gay days," were accustomed to call
him "lucky dog," and "enviable fellow." How shallow is the judgment of
mortals! Never was a poor man so bored--nothing interested him. His
constitution seemed so formed for longevity, and his condition so free
from care, that he was likely to have a long time before him:--it is
impossible to say how long that time seemed to him. Fortunately, from
some accidental cause or other, he woke one morning and found himself
ill; and, whether it was the fault of the doctor or himself I cannot
pretend to say, but he never got well again. His ailments became
chronic; he fell into a poor way. From that time life has assumed to him
a new aspect. Always occupied with himself, he is never bored. He may be
sick, sad, suffering, but he has found his object in existence--he lives
to be cured. His mind is fully occupied; his fancy eternally on the
wing. Formerly he had travelled much, but without any pleasure in
movement: he might as well have stayed at home. Now, when he travels, it
is for an end; it is delightful to witness the cheerful alertness with
which he sets about it. He is going down the Rhine;--for its scenery?
Pshaw! he never cared a button about scenery; but he has great hopes of
the waters at Kreuznach. He is going into Egypt;--to see the Pyramids?
Stuff! the climate on the Nile is so good for the mucous membrane! Set
him down at the dullest of dull places, and he himself is never dull.
The duller the place the better; his physician has the more time to
attend to him. When you meet him he smiles on you, and says, poor
fellow, "The doctor assures me that in two years I shall be quite set
up." He has said the same thing the last twenty years, and will say it
the day before his death!...

What a busy, anxious, fidgety creature Ned Worrell was? That iron frame
supported all the business of all society! Every man who wanted any
thing done, asked Ned Worrell to do it. And do it Ned Worrell did! You
remember how feelingly he was wont to sigh,--"Upon my life I'm a perfect
slave." But now Ned Worrell has snapped his chain; obstinate dyspepsia,
and a prolonged nervous debility, have delivered him from the carks and
cares of less privileged mortals. Not Ariel under the bough is more
exempt from humanity than Edward Worrell. He is enjoined to be kept in a
state of perfect repose, free from agitation, and hermetically shut out
from grief. His wife pays his bills, and he is only permitted to see his
banker's accounts when the balance in his favor is more than usually
cheerful. His eldest daughter, an intelligent young lady, reads his
letters, and only presents to him those which are calculated to make a
pleasing impression. Call now on your old friend, on a question of life
and death, to ask his advice, or request his interference--you may as
well call on King Cheops under the Great Pyramid. The whole houseguard
of tender females block the way.

"Mr. Worrell is not to be disturbed on any matter of business whatever,"
they will tell you. "But, my dear ma'am, he is trusted to my marriage
settlement; his signature is necessary to a transfer of my wife's
fortune from those cursed railway shares. To-morrow they will be down at
zero. We shall be ruined!"

"Mr. Worrell is in a sad, nervous way, and can't be disturbed, sir." And
the door is shut in your face!

It was after some such occurrence that I took into earnest consideration
a certain sentiment of Plato's, which I own I had till then considered
very inhuman; for that philosopher is far from being the tender and
sensitive gentleman generally believed in by lovers and young ladies.
Plato, in his "Republic," blames Herodicus (one of the teachers of that
great doctor Hippocrates) for showing to delicate, sickly persons, the
means whereby to prolong their valetudinary existence, as Herodicus
himself (naturally a very rickety fellow) had contrived to do. Plato
accuses this physician of having thereby inflicted a malignant and
wanton injury on those poor persons;--nay, not only an injury on them,
but on all society. "For," argues this stern, broad-shouldered Athenian,
"how can people be virtuous who are always thinking of their own
infirmities?" And therefore he opines, that if a sickly person cannot
wholly recover health and become robust, the sooner he dies the better
for himself and others! The wretch, too, might be base enough to marry,
and have children as ailing as their father, and so injure, _in
perpetuo_, the whole human race. Away with him!

But, upon cool and dispassionate reflection, it seemed to me, angry as I
was with Ned Worrell, that Plato stretched the point a little too far;
and certainly, in the present state of civilization, so sweeping a
condemnation of the sickly would go far towards depopulating Europe.
Celsus, for instance, classes amongst the delicate or sickly the greater
part of the inhabitants of towns, and nearly all literary folks
(_omnesque pene cupidi literarum_). And if we thus made away with the
denizens of the towns, it would be attended with a great many
inconveniencies as to shopping, &c., be decidedly injurious to house
property, and might greatly affect the state of the funds; while,
without literary folks, we should be very dull in our healthy
country-seats, deprived of newspapers, novels, and "The Keepsake."
Wherefore, on the whole, I think Herodicus was right; and that sickly
persons should not only be permitted but encouraged to live as long as
they can.

That proposition granted, if in this attempt to show that your confirmed
Valetudinarian is not so utterly miserable as he is held to be by those
who throw physic to the dogs--and that in some points he may be a
decided gainer by his physical sufferings--I have not wholly
failed--then I say, with the ingenious Author who devoted twenty years
to a work "On the Note of the Nightingale,"--"I have not lived in
vain!"




A STORY WITHOUT A NAME.[24]

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE,

BY G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.

_Continued from Page 44._


CHAPTER VI.

Reader, can you go back for twenty years? You do it every day. You say,
"Twenty years ago I was a boy--twenty years ago I was a youth--twenty
years ago I played at peg-top and at marbles--twenty years ago I
wooed--was loved--I sinned--I suffered!" What is there in twenty years
that should keep us from going back over them? You go on so fast, so
smoothly, so easily on the forward course--why not in retrogression? But
let me tell you: it makes a very great difference whether Hope or Memory
drives the coach.

But let us see what we can do. Twenty years before the period at which
the last chapter broke off, Philip Hastings, now a father of a girl of
fifteen, was a lad standing by the side of his brother's grave. Twenty
years ago Sir John Hastings was the living lord of these fine lands and
broad estates. Twenty years ago he passed, from the mouth of the vault
in which he had laid the clay of the first-born, into the open splendor
of the day, and felt sorrow's desolation in the sunshine. Twenty years
ago, he had been confronted on the church-yard path by a tall old woman,
and challenged with words high and stern, to do her right in regard to a
paltry rood or two of land. Twenty years ago he had given her a harsh,
cold answer, and treated her menaces with impatient scorn.

Do you remember her, reader? Well, if you do, that brings us to the
point I sought to reach in the dull flat expanse of the far past; and we
can stand and look around us for awhile.

That old woman was not one easily to forget or lightly to yield her
resentments. There was something perdurable in them as well as in her
gaunt, sinewy frame. As she stood there menacing him, she wanted but
three years of seventy. She had battled too with many a storm--wind and
weather, suffering and persecution, sorrow and privation, had beat upon
her hard--very hard. They had but served to stiffen and wither and
harden, however. Her corporeal frame, shattered as it seemed, was
destined to outlive many of the young and fair spirit-tabernacles around
it--to pass over, by long years, the ordinary allotted space of human
life; and it seemed as if even misfortune had with her but a preserving
power. It is not wonderful, however, that, while it worked thus upon her
body, it should likewise have stiffened and withered and hardened her
heart.

I am not sure that conscience itself went untouched in this searing
process. It is not clear at all that even her claim upon Sir John
Hastings was not an unjust one; but just or unjust his repulse sunk deep
and festered.

Let us trace her from the church-yard after she met him. She took her
path away from the park and the hamlet, between two cottages, the ragged
boys at the doors of which called her "Old Witch," and spoke about a
broom-stick.

She heeded them little: there were deeper offences rankling at her
heart.

She walked on, across a corn-field and a meadow, and then she came upon
some woodlands, through which a little sandy path wound its way, round
stumps of old trees long cut down, amidst young bushes and saplings just
springing up, and catching the sunshine here and there through the
bright-tinted foliage overhead. Up the hill it went, over the slope on
which the copse was scattered, and then burst forth again on the
opposite side of wood and rise, where the ground fell gently the other
way, looking down upon the richly dressed grounds of Colonel Marshall,
at the distance of some three miles.

Not more than a hundred yards distant was poor man's cottage, with an
old gray thatch which wanted some repairing, and was plentifully covered
with herbs, sending the threads of their roots into the straw. A little
badly cultivated garden, fenced off from the hill-side by a loose stone
wall, surrounded the house, and a gate without hinges gave entrance to
this inclosed space.

The old woman went in and approached the cottage door. When near it she
stopped and listened, lifting one of the flapping ears of her cotton cap
to aid the dull sense of hearing. There were no voices within; but there
was a low sobbing sound issued forth as if some one were in bitter
distress.

"I should not wonder if she were alone," said the old woman; "the
ruffian father is always out; the drudging mother goes about this time
to the town. They will neither stay at home, I wot, to grieve for him
they let too often into that door, nor to comfort her he has left
desolate. But it matters little whether they be in or out. It were
better to talk to her first. I will give her better than
comfort--revenge, if I judge right. They must play their part
afterwards."

Thus communing with herself, she laid her hand upon the latch and opened
the door. In an attitude of unspeakable grief sat immediately before her
a young and exceedingly beautiful girl, of hardly seventeen years of
age. The wheel stood still by her side; the spindle had fallen from her
hands; her head was bowed down as with sorrow she could not bear up
against; and her eyes were dropping tears like rain.

The moment she heard the door open she started, and looked up with fear
upon her face, and strove to dash the tears from her eyes; but the old
woman bespoke her softly, saying, "Good even, my dear; is your mother in
the place?"

"No," replied the girl; "she has gone to sell the lint, and father is
out too. It is very lonely, and I get sad here."

"I do not wonder at it, poor child," said the old woman; "you have had a
heavy loss, my dear, and may well cry. You can't help what is past, you
know; but we can do a good deal for what is to come, if we but take care
and make up our minds in time."

Many and strange were the changes of expression which came upon the poor
girl's face as she heard these few simple words. At first her cheek
glowed hot, as with the burning blush of shame; then she turned pale and
trembled, gazing inquiringly in her visitor's face, as if she would have
asked, "Am I detected?" and then she cast down her eyes again, still
pale as ashes, and the tears rolled forth once more and fell upon her
lap.

The old woman sat down beside her, and talked to her tenderly; but,
alas! very cunningly too. She assumed far greater knowledge than she
possessed. She persuaded the poor girl that there was nothing to conceal
from her; and what neither father nor mother knew, was told that day to
one comparatively a stranger. Still the old woman spoke tenderly--ay,
very tenderly; excused her fault--made light of her fears--gave her
hope--gave her strength. But all the time she concealed her full
purpose. That was to be revealed by degrees. Whatever had been the
girl's errors, she was too innocent to be made a party to a scheme of
fraud and wrong and vengeance at once. All that the woman communicated
was blessed comfort to a bruised and bleeding heart; and the poor girl
leaned her head upon her old companion's shoulder, and, amidst bitter
tears and sobs and sighs, poured out every secret of her heart.

But what is that she says, which makes the old woman start with a look
of triumph?

"Letters!" she exclaimed; "two letters: let me see them, child--let me
see them! Perhaps they may be more valuable than you think."

The girl took them from her bosom, where she kept them as all that she
possessed of one gone that day into the tomb.

The old woman read them with slow eyes, but eager attention; and then
gave them back, saying, "That one you had better destroy as soon as
possible--it tells too much. But this first one keep, as you value your
own welfare--as you value your child's fortune, station, and happiness.
You can do much with this. Why, here are words that may make your father
a proud man. Hark! I hear footsteps coming. Put them up--we must go to
work cautiously, and break the matter to your parents by degrees."

It was the mother of the girl who entered; and she seemed faint and
tired. Well had the old woman called her a drudge, for such she was--a
poor patient household drudge, laboring for a hard, heartless, idle, and
cunning husband, and but too tenderly fond of the poor girl whose beauty
had been a snare to her.

She seemed somewhat surprised to see the old woman there; for they were
of different creeds, and those creeds made wide separation in the days I
speak of. Perhaps she was surprised and grieved to see the traces of
tears and agitation on her daughter's face; but of that she took no
notice; for there were doubts and fears at her heart which she dreaded
to confirm. The girl was more cheerful, however, than she had been for
the last week--not gay, not even calm; but yet there was a look of some
relief.

Often even after her mother's entrance, the tears would gather thick in
her eyes when she thought of the dead; but it was evident that hope had
risen up: that the future was not all darkness and terror. This was a
comfort to her; and she spoke and looked cheerfully. She had sold all
the thread of her and her daughter's spinning, and she had sold it well.
Part she hid in a corner to keep a pittance for bread from her husband's
eyes; part she reserved to give up to him for the purchase of drink: but
while she made all these little arrangements, she looked somewhat
anxiously at the old woman, from time to time, as if she fain would have
asked, "What brought you here?"

The crone was cautious, however, and knew well with whom she had to
deal. She talked in solemn and oracular tones, as if she had possessed
all the secrets of fate, but she told nothing, and when she went away
she said in a low voice but authoritative manner, "Be kind to your
girl--be very kind; for she will bring good luck and fortune to you
all." The next day she laid wait for the husband, found and forced him
to stop and hear her. At first he was impatient, rude, and brutal;
swore, cursed, and called her many and evil names. But soon he listened
eagerly enough: looks of intelligence and eager design passed between
the two, and ere they parted they perfectly understood each other.

The man was then, on more than one day, seen going down to the hall. At
first he was refused admission to Sir John Hastings; for his character
was known. The next day, however, he brought a letter written under his
dictation by his daughter, who had been taught at a charitable school of
old foundation hard by; and this time he was admitted. His conversation
with the Lord of the Manor was long; but no one knew its import. He came
again and again, and was still admitted.

A change came over the cottage and its denizens. The fences were put in
order, the walls were repaired, the thatch renewed, another room or two
was added; plenty reigned within; mother and daughter appeared in
somewhat finer apparel; and money was not wanting.

At the end of some months there was the cry of a young child in the
house. The neighbors were scandalized, and gossips spoke censoriously
even in the father's ears; but he stopped them fiercely, with proud and
mysterious words; boasted aloud of what they had thought his daughter's
shame; and claimed a higher place for her than was willingly yielded to
her companions. Strange rumors got afloat, but ere a twelvemonth had
passed, the father had drank himself to death. His widow and her
daughter and her grandson moved to a better house, and lived at ease on
money none knew the source of, while the cottage, now neat and in good
repair, became the dwelling of the old woman, who had been driven with
scorn from Sir John's presence. Was she satisfied--had she sated
herself? Not yet.


CHAPTER VII.

There was a lady, a very beautiful lady indeed, came to a lonely house,
which seemed to have been tenanted for several years by none but
servants, about three years after the death of Sir John Hastings. That
house stood some miles to the north of the seat of that gentleman, which
now had passed to his son; and it was a fine-looking place, with a
massive sort of solemn brick-and-mortar grandeur about it, which
impressed the mind with a sense of the wealth and long-standing of its
owners.

The plural has slipped from my pen, and perhaps it is right; for the
house looked as if it had had many owners, and all of them had been
rich.

Now, there was but one owner,--the lady who descended from that
lumbering, heavy coach, with the two great leathern wings on each side
of the door. She was dressed in widow's weeds, and she had every right
to wear them. Though two-and-twenty only, she stood there orphan,
heiress, and widow. She had known many changes of condition, but not of
fate, and they did not seem to have affected her much. Of high-born and
proud parentage, she had been an only child for many years before her
parents' death. She had been spoiled, to use a common, but not always
appropriate phrase; for there are some people who cannot be spoiled,
either because the ethereal essence within them is incorruptible, or
because there is no ethereal essence to spoil at all. However, she had
been spoiled very successfully by fate, fortune, and kind friends. She
had never been contradicted in her life; she had never been
disappointed--but once. She had travelled, seen strange countries--which
was rare in those days with women--had enjoyed many things. She had
married a handsome, foolish man, whom she chose--few knew rightly why.
She had lost both her parents not long after; got tired of her husband,
and lost him too, just when the loss could leave little behind but a
decent regret, which she cultivated as a slight stimulant to keep her
mind from stagnating. And now, without husband, child, or parents, she
returned to the house of her childhood, which she had not seen for five
long years.

Is that all her history? No, not exactly all. There is one little
incident which may as well be referred to here. Her parents had entered
into an arrangement for her marriage with a very different man from him
whom she afterwards chose,--Sir Philip Hastings; and foolishly they had
told her of what had been done, before the young man's own assent had
been given. She did not see much of him--certainly not enough to fall in
love with him. She even thought him a strange, moody youth; but yet
there was something in his moodiness and eccentricity which excited her
fancy. The reader knows that he chose for himself; and the lady also
married immediately after.

Thus had passed for her a part of life's pageant; and now she came to
her own native dwelling, to let the rest march by as it might. At first,
as she slowly descended from the carriage, her large, dark, brilliant
eyes were fixed upon the ground. She had looked long at the house as she
was driving towards it, and it seemed to have cast her into a thoughtful
mood. It is hardly possible to enter a house where we have spent many
early years, without finding memory suddenly seize upon the heart and
possess it totally. What a grave it is! What a long line of buried
ancestors may not _the present_ always contemplate there.

Nor are there many received into the tomb worth so much respect as one
dead hour. All else shall live again; lost hours have no resurrection.

There were old servants waiting around, to welcome her, new ones
attending upon her orders; but for a moment or two she noticed no one,
till at length the old housekeeper, who knew her from a babe, spoke out,
saying, "Ah, madam! I do not wonder to see you a little sad on first
coming to the old place again, after all that has happened."

"Ah, indeed, Arnold," replied the lady, "many sad things have happened
since we parted. But how are you, Goody? You look blooming:" and walking
into the house, she heard the reply in the hall.

From the hall, the old housekeeper led her lady through the house, and
mightily did she chatter and gossip by the way. The lady listened nearly
in silence; for Mrs. Arnold was generous in conversation, and spared her
companion all expense of words. At length, however, something she said
seemed to rouse her mistress, and she exclaimed with a somewhat bitter
laugh, "And so the good people declared I was going to be married to Sir
Philip Hastings?"

"_Mr._ Hastings he was then, madam," answered the housekeeper; "to be
sure they did. All the country around talked of it, and the tenants
listened at church to hear the banns proclaimed."

The lady turned very red, and the old woman went on to say, "Old Sir
John seemed quite sure of it; but he reckoned without his host, I
fancy."

"He did indeed," said the lady with an uncheerful smile, and there the
subject dropped for the time. Not long after, however, the lady herself
brought the conversation back to nearly the same point, asked after Sir
Philip's health and manner of living, and how he was liked in the
neighborhood, adding, "He seemed a strange being at the time I saw him,
which was only once or twice--not likely to make a very pleasant
husband, I thought."

"Oh dear, yes, madam, he does," answered Mrs. Arnold, "many a worse, I
can assure you. He is very fond of his lady indeed, and gives up more to
her than one would think. He is a little stern, they say, but very just
and upright; and no libertine fellow, like his brother who was
drowned--which I am sure was a providence, for if he was so bad when he
was young, what would he have been when he was old?"

"Better, perhaps," replied her mistress, with a quiet smile; "but was he
so very wicked? I never heard any evil of him."

"Oh dear me, madam! do not you know?" exclaimed the old woman; and then
came the whole story of the cotter's daughter on the hill, and how she
and her father and old Mother Danby--whom people believed to be a
witch--had persuaded or threatened Sir John Hastings into making rich
people of them.

"Persuaded or threatened Sir John Hastings!" said the lady in a tone of
doubt. "I knew him better than either of his sons; and never did I see a
man so little likely to yield to persuasion or to bow to menace;" and
she fell into a deep fit of musing, which lasted long, while the old
housekeeper rambled on from subject to subject, unlistened to, but very
well content.

Let us dwell a little on the lady, and on her character. There is always
something to interest, something to instruct, in the character of a
woman. It is like many a problem in Euclid, which seems at first sight
as plain and simple as the broad sunshine; but when we come to study it,
we find intricacies beneath which puzzle us mightily to resolve. It is a
fine, curious, delicate, complicated piece of anatomy, a woman's heart.
I have dissected many, and I know the fact. Take and lay that fibre
apart--take care, for heaven's sake! that you do not tear the one next
to it; and be sure you do not dissever the fragments which bind those
most opposite parts together! See, here lies a muscle of keen
sensibility; and there--what is that? A cartilage, hard as a nether
millstone. Look at those light, irritable nerves, quivering at the
slightest touch; and then see those tendons, firm, fixed, and powerful
as the resolution of a martyr. Oh, that wonderful piece of organization!
who can describe it accurately?

I must not pretend to do so; but I will give a slight sketch of the
being before me.

There she stands, somewhat above the usual height, but beautifully
formed, with every line rounded and flowing gracefully into the others.
There is calmness and dignity in the whole air, and in every movement;
but yet there is something very firm, very resolute, very considerate,
in the fall of that small foot upon the carpet. She cannot intend her
foot to stay there for ever; and yet, when she sets it down, one would
be inclined to think she did. Her face is very beautiful--every feature
finely cut--the eyes almost dazzling in their dark brightness. How
chaste, how lovely the fine lines of that mouth. Yet do you see what a
habit she has of keeping the pearly teeth close shut--one pure row
pressed hard against the other. The slight sarcastic quiver of the upper
lip does not escape you; and the expanded nostril and flash of the eye,
contradicted by the fixed motionless mouth.

Such is her outward appearance, such is she too within--though the
complexion there is somewhat darker. Much that, had it been cultivated
and improved, would have blossomed into womanly virtue; a capability of
love, strong, fiery, vehement, changeless--not much tenderness--not much
pity,--no remorse--are there. Pride, of a peculiar character, but
strong, ungovernable, unforgiving, and a power of hate and thirst of
vengeance, which only pride can give, are there likewise. Super-add a
shrewdness--a policy--a cunning--nay, something greater--something
approaching the sublime--a divination, where passion is to be gratified,
that seldom leads astray from the object.

Yes, such is the interior of that fair temple, and yet, how calm, sweet,
and promising it stands.

I have omitted much perhaps; for the human heart is like the caldron of
the witches in Macbeth, and one might go on throwing in ingredients till
the audience became tired of the song. However, what I have said will be
enough for the reader's information; and if we come upon any unexplained
phenomena, I must endeavor to elucidate them hereafter.

Let us suppose the lady's interview with her housekeeper at an end--all
her domestic arrangements made--the house restored to its air of
habitation--visits received and paid. Amongst the earliest visitors were
Sir Philip and Lady Hastings. He came frankly, and in one of his most
happy moods, perfectly ignorant that she had ever been made aware of
there having been a marriage proposed between himself and her; and she
received him and his fair wife with every appearance of cordiality. But
as soon as these visits and all the ceremonies were over, the lady began
to drive much about the country, and to collect every tale and rumor she
could meet with of all the neighboring families. Her closest attention,
however, centred upon those affecting the Hastings' race; and she found
the whole strange story of the cottage girl confirmed, with many another
particular added. She smiled when she heard this--smiled blandly--it
seemed to give her pleasure. She would fain have called upon the girl
and her mother too. She longed to do so, and to draw forth with skill,
of which she possessed no small share, the key secret of the whole. But
her station, her reputation, prevented her from taking a step which she
knew might be noised abroad and create strange comments.

She resolved upon another move, however, which she thought would do as
well. There would be no objection to her visiting her poorer neighbors,
to comfort, to relieve; and she went to the huts of many. At length one
early morning, on a clear autumn day, the carriage was left below on the
high road, and the lady climbed the hill alone towards the cottage,
where the girl and her parents formerly lived. She found the old woman,
who was now its occupant, busily cooking her morning meal; and sitting
down, she entered into conversation with her. At first she could obtain
but little information; the old woman was in a sullen mood, and would
not speak of any thing she did not like. Money was of no avail to unlock
her eloquence.

She had never asked or taken charity, the old woman said, and now she
did not need it.

The lady pondered for a few minutes, considering the character of her
ancient hostess, trying it by her experience and intuition; and thus she
boldly asked her for the whole history of young John Hastings and the
cottage girl.

"Tell me all," she said, "for I wish to know it--I have an interest in
it."

"Ay?" said the old woman, gazing at her, "then you are the pretty lady
Sir Philip was to have married, but would not have her?"

"The same," replied the visitor, and for an instant a bright red spot
arose upon her cheek--a pang like a knife passed through her heart.

That was the price she paid for the gratification of her curiosity. But
it probably was gratified, for she stayed nearly an hour and a half in
the cottage--so long, indeed, that her servants, who were with the
carriage, became alarmed, and one of the footmen walked up the hill. He
met his lady coming down.

"Poor thing," she said, as if speaking of the old woman she had just
left, "her senses wander a little; but she is poor, and has been much
persecuted. I must do what I can for her. Whenever she comes to the
house, see she is admitted."

The old woman did come often, and always had a conference with the lady
of the mansion; but here let us leave them for the present. They may
appear upon the stage again.


CHAPTER VIII.

    "MY DEAR SIR PHILIP:

"I have not seen you or dear Lady Hastings for many months; nor your
sweet Emily either, except at a distance, when one day she passed my
carriage on horseback, sweeping along the hill-side like a gleam of
light. My life is a sad, solitary one here; and I wish my friends would
take more compassion upon me and let me see human faces
oftener--especially faces that I love.

"But I know that you are very inexorable in these respects, and,
sufficient to yourself, cannot readily conceive how a lone woman can
pine for the society of other more loving friends than books or nature.
I must, therefore, attack the only accessible point I know about you,
meaning your compassion, which you never refuse to those who really
require it. Now I do require it greatly; for I am at this present
engaged in business of a very painful and intricate nature, which I
cannot clearly understand, and in which I have no one to advise me but a
country attorney, whose integrity as well as ability I much doubt. To
whom can I apply so well as to you, when I need the counsel and
assistance of a friend, equally kind, disinterested, and clear-headed? I
venture to do so, then, in full confidence, and ask you to ride over as
soon as you can, to give me your advice, or rather to decide for me, in
a matter where a considerable amount of property is at stake, and where
decision is required immediately. I trust when you do come you will stay
all night, as the business is, I fear, of so complicated a nature, that
it may occupy more than one day of your valuable time in the affairs of

    Your faithful and obliged servant,

    CAROLINE HAZLETON."

"Is Mrs. Hazleton's messenger waiting?" asked Sir Philip Hastings, after
having read the letter and mused for a moment.

The servant answered in the affirmative; and his master rejoined, "Tell
him I will not write an answer, as I have some business to attend to;
but I beg he will tell his mistress that I will be with her in three
hours."

Lady Hastings uttered a low-toned exclamation of surprise. She did not
venture to ask any question--indeed she rarely questioned her husband on
any subject; but when any thing excited her wonder, or, as was more
frequently the case, her curiosity, she was accustomed to seek for
satisfaction in a somewhat indirect way, by raising her beautiful
eyebrows with a doubtful sort of smile, or, as in the present instance,
by exclaiming, "Good gracious! Dear me!" or giving voice to some other
little vocative, with a note of interrogation strongly marked after it.

In this case there was more than one feeling at the bottom of her
exclamation. She was surprised; she was curious; and she was, moreover,
in the least degree in the world, jealous. She had her share of
weaknesses, as I have said; and one of them was of a kind less uncommon
than may be supposed. Of her husband's conduct she had no fear--not the
slightest suspicion. Indeed, to have entertained any would have been
impossible--but she could not bear to see him liked, admired, esteemed,
by any woman--mark me, I say by _any woman_; for no one could feel more
triumphant joy than she did when she saw him duly appreciated by men.
She was a great monopolizer: she did not wish one thought of his to be
won away from her by another woman; and a sort of irritable feeling came
upon her even when she saw him seated by any young and pretty girl, and
paying her the common attentions of society. She was too well bred to
display such sensations except by those slight indications, or by a
certain petulance of manner, which he was not close observer enough of
other people's conduct to remark.

Not to dwell too long on such things, Sir Philip Hastings, though
perfectly unconscious of what was going on in her heart, rarely kept her
long in suspense, when he saw any signs of curiosity. He perhaps might
think it a point of Roman virtue to spoil his wife, although she had
very little of the Portia in her character. On the present occasion, he
quietly handed over to her the letter of Mrs. Hazleton; and then
summoned a servant and gave orders for various preparations.

"Had not I and Emily better go with you?" asked Lady Hastings, pointing
out to him the passage in the letter which spoke of the long absence of
all the family.

"Not when I am going on business," replied her husband gravely, and
quitted the room.

An hour after, Philip Hastings was on horseback with a servant carrying
a valise behind him, and riding slowly through the park. The day was far
advanced, and the distance was likely to occupy about an hour and a half
in travelling; but the gentleman had fallen into a reverie, and rode
very slowly. They passed the park gates; they took their way down the
lane by the church and near the parsonage. Here Sir Philip pulled in his
horse suddenly, and ordered the man to ride on and announce that he
would be at Mrs. Hazleton's soon after. He then fastened his horse to a
large hook, put up for the express purpose on most country houses of
that day in England, and walked up to the door. It was ajar, and without
ceremony he walked in, as he was often accustomed to do, and entered the
little study of the rector.

The clergyman himself was not there; but there were two persons in the
room, one a young and somewhat dashing-looking man, one or two and
twenty years of age, exceedingly handsome both in face and figure; the
other personage past the middle age, thin, pale, eager and keen-looking,
in whom Sir Philip instantly recognized a well known, but not very well
reputed attorney, of a country town about twenty miles distant. They had
one of the large parish books before them, and were both bending over it
with great appearance of earnestness.

The step of Sir Philip Hastings roused them, and turning round, the
attorney bowed low, saying, "I give you good day, Sir Philip. I hope I
have the honor of seeing you well."

"Quite so," was the brief reply, and it was followed by an inquiry for
the pastor, who it seemed had gone into another room for some papers
which were required.

In the mean time the younger of the two previous occupants of the room
had been gazing at Sir Philip Hastings with a rude, familiar stare,
which the object of it did not remark; and in another moment the
clergyman himself appeared, carrying a bundle of old letters in his
hand.

He was a heavy, somewhat timid man, the reverse of his predecessor in
all things, but a very good sort of person upon the whole. On seeing the
baronet there, however, something seemed strangely to affect him--a sort
of confused surprise, which, after various stammering efforts, burst
forth as soon as the usual salutation was over, in the words, "Pray, Sir
Philip, did you come by appointment?"

Sir Philip Hastings, as the reader already knows, was a somewhat
unobservant man of what was passing around him in the world. He had his
own deep, stern trains of thought, which he pursued with a passionate
earnestness almost amounting to monomania. The actions, words, and even
looks of those few in whom he took an interest, he could sometimes watch
and comment on in his own mind with intense study. True, he watched
without understanding, and commented wrongly; for he had too little
experience of the motives of others from outward observation, and found
too little sympathy with the general motives of the world, in his own
heart, to judge even those he loved rightly. But the conduct, the looks,
the words of ordinary men, he hardly took the trouble of remarking; and
the good parson's surprise and hesitation, passed like breath upon a
mirror, seen perhaps, but retaining no hold upon his mind for a moment.
Neither did the abrupt question surprise him; nor the quick, angry look
which it called up on the face of the attorney attract his notice; but
he replied quietly to Mr. Dixwell, "I do not remember having made any
appointment with you."

The matter was all well so far; and would have continued well; but the
attorney, a meddling fellow, had nearly spoiled all, by calling the
attention of Philip Hastings more strongly to the strangeness of the
clergyman's question.

"Perhaps," said the man of law, interrupting the baronet in the midst,
"Perhaps Mr. Dixwell thought, Sir Philip, that you came here to speak
with me on the business of the Honorable Mrs. Hazleton. She told me she
would consult you, and I can explain the whole matter to you."

But the clergyman instantly declared that he meant nothing of the kind;
and at the same moment Sir Philip Hastings said, "I beg you will not,
sir. Mrs. Hazleton will explain what she thinks proper to me, herself. I
desire no previous information, as I am now on my way to her. Why my
good friend here should suppose I came by appointment, I cannot tell.
However, I did not; and it does not matter. I only wish, Mr. Dixwell, to
say, that I hear the old woman Danley is ill and dying. She is a papist,
and the foolish people about fancy she is a witch. Little help or
comfort will she obtain from them, even if they do not injure or insult
her. As I shall be absent all night, and perhaps all to-morrow, I will
call at her cottage as I ride over to Mrs. Hazleton's and inquire into
her wants. I will put down on paper, and leave there, what I wish my
people to do for her; but there is one thing which I must request you to
do, namely, to take every means, by exhortation and remonstrance, to
prevent the ignorant peasantry from troubling this poor creature's
death-bed. Her sad errors in matters of faith should only at such a
moment make us feel the greater compassion for her."

Mr. Dixwell thought differently, for though a good man, he was a
fanatic. He did not indeed venture to think of disobeying the injunction
of the great man of the parish--the man who now held both the Hastings
and the Marshal property; but he would fain have detained Sir Philip to
explain and make clear to him the position--as clear as a demonstration
in Euclid to his own mind--that all Roman Catholics ought to be, at the
very least, banished from the country for ever.

But Sir Philip Hastings was not inclined to listen, and although the
good man began the argument in a solemn tone, his visitor, falling into
a fit of thought, walked slowly out of the room, along the passage,
through the door, and mounted his horse, without effectually hearing one
word, though they were many which Mr. Dixwell showered upon him as he
followed.

At his return to his little study, the parson found the young man and
the lawyer, no longer looking at the book, but conversing together very
eagerly, with excited countenances and quick gestures. The moment he
entered, however, they stopped, the young man ending with an oath, for
which the clergyman reproved him on the spot.

"That is very well, Mr. Dixwell," said the attorney, "and my young
friend here will be much the better for some good admonition; and for
sitting under your ministry, as I trust he will, some day soon; but we
must go I fear directly. However, there is one thing I want to say; for
you had nearly spoiled every thing to-day. No person playing at cards--"

"I never touch them," said the parson, with a holy horror in his face.

"Well, others do," said the attorney, "and those who do never show their
hand to their opponent. Now, law is like a game of cards--"

"In which the lawyer is sure to get the odd trick," observed the young
man.

"And we must not have Sir Philip Hastings know one step that we are
taking," continued the lawyer. "If you have conscience, as I am sure you
have, and honor, as I know you have, you will not suffer any thing that
we have asked you, or said to you, to transpire; for then, of course,
Sir Philip would take every means to prevent our obtaining information."

"I do not think it," said the parson.

"And justice and equity would be frustrated," proceeded the attorney,
"which you are bound by your profession to promote. We want nothing but
justice, Mr. Dixwell: justice, I say; and no one can tell what card Sir
Philip may play."

"I will trump it with the knave," said the young man to himself; and
having again cautioned the clergyman to be secret, not without some
obscure menaces of danger to himself, if he failed, the two gentlemen
left him, and hurried down, as fast as they could go, to a small
alehouse in the village, where they had left their horses. In a few
minutes, a well known poacher, whose very frequent habitation was the
jail or the cage, was seen to issue forth from the door of the alehouse,
then to lead a very showy looking horse from the stable, and then to
mount him and take his way over the hill. The poacher had never
possessed a more dignified quadruped than a dog or a donkey in his life;
so that it was evident the horse could not be his. That he was not
engaged in the congenial but dangerous occupation of stealing it, was
clear from the fact of the owner of the beast gazing quietly at him out
of the window while he mounted; and then turning round to the attorney,
who sat at a table hard by, and saying, "he is off, I think."

"Well, let him go," replied the lawyer, "but I do not half like it,
Master John. Every thing in law should be cool and quiet. No
violence--no bustle."

"But this is not a matter of law," replied the younger man, "it is a
matter of safety, you fool. What might come of it, if he were to have a
long canting talk with the old wretch upon her death-bed?"

"Very little," replied the attorney, in a calm well-assured tone, "I
know her well. She is as hard as a flint stone. She always was, and time
has not softened her. Besides, he has no one with him to take
depositions, and if what you say is true, she'll not live till morning."

"But I tell you, she is getting frightened, as she comes near death!"
exclaimed the young man. "She has got all sorts of fancies into her
head; about hell, and purgatory, and the devil knows what; and she spoke
to my mother yesterday about repentance, and atonement, and a pack of
stuff more, and wanted extreme unction, and to confess to a priest. It
would be a fine salve, I fancy, that could patch up the wounds in her
conscience; but if this Philip Hastings were to come to her with his
grave face and solemn tone, and frighten her still more, he would get
any thing out of her he pleased."

"I don't think it," answered the lawyer deliberately; "hate, Master
John, is the longest lived passion I know. It lasts into the grave, as I
have often seen in making good men's wills when they were
dying--sanctified, good men, I say. Why I have seen a man who has spent
half his fortune in charity, and built alms-houses, leave a thoughtless
son, or a runaway daughter, or a plain-spoken nephew, to struggle with
poverty all his life, refusing to forgive him, and comforting himself
with a text or a pretence. No, no; hate is the only possession that goes
out of the world with a man: and this old witch, Danby, hates the whole
race of Hastings with a goodly strength that will not decay as her body
does. Besides Sir Philip is well-nigh as puritanical as his father--a
sort of cross-breed between an English fanatic and an old Roman cynic.
She abominates the very sound of his voice, and nothing would reconcile
her to him but his taking the mass and abjuring the errors of Calvin.
Ha! ha! ha! However, as you have sent the fellow, it cannot be helped.
Only remember I had nothing to do with it if violence follows. That man
is not to be trusted, and I like to keep on the safe side of the law."

"Ay, doubtless, doubtless," answered the youth, somewhat thoughtfully;
"it is your shield; and better stand behind than before it. However, I
don't doubt Tom Cutter in the least. Besides, I only told him to
interrupt them in their talk, and take care they had no private gossip;
to stick there till he was gone, and all that."

"Sir Philip is not a man to bear such interruption," said the attorney,
gravely; "he is as quiet looking as the deep sea on a summer's day; but
there can come storms, I tell you, John, and then woe to those who have
trusted the quiet look."

"Then, if he gets in a passion, and mischief comes of it," replied the
young man, with a laugh, "the fault is his, you know, Shanks."

"True," answered the attorney, meditating, "and perhaps, by a little
clever twisting and turning, we might make something of it if he did,
were there any other person concerned but this Tom Cutter, and we had a
good serviceable witness or two. But this man is such a rogue that his
word is worth nothing; and to thrash him--though the business of the
beadle--would be no discredit to the magistrate. Besides, he is sure to
give the provocation, and one word of Sir Philip's would be worth a
thousand oaths of Tom Cutter's, in any court in the kingdom."

"As to thrashing him, that few can do," replied the youth; "but only
remember, Shanks, that I gave no orders for violence."

"I was not present," replied the attorney, with a grin; "you had better,
by a great deal, trust entirely to me, in these things, Master John. If
you do, I will bring you safely through, depend upon it; but if you do
not, nobody can tell what may come. Here comes Folwell, the sexton. Now
hold your tongue, and let me manage him, sir. You are not acquainted
with these matters."


CHAPTER IX.

Did you ever examine an ant-hill, dear reader? What a wonderful little
cosmos it is--what an epitome of a great city--of the human race! See
how the little fellows run bustling along upon their several
businesses--see how some get out of each other's way, how others jostle,
and others walk over their fellows' heads! But especially mark that
black gentleman, pulling hard to drag along a fat beetle's leg and
thigh, three times as large as his own body. He cannot get it on, do
what he will; and yet he tugs away, thinking it a very fine haunch
indeed. He does not perceive, what is nevertheless the fact, that there
are two others of his own race pulling at the other end, and thus
frustrating all his efforts.

And thus it is with you, and me, and every one in the wide world. We
work blindly, unknowing the favoring or counteracting causes that are
constantly going on around us, to facilitate or impede our endeavors.
The wish to look into futurity is vain, irrational, almost impious; but
what a service would it be to any man if he could but get a sight into
Fate's great workshop, and see only that part in which the events are on
the anvil that affect our own proceedings. Still, even if we did, we
might not understand the machinery after all, and only burn or pinch our
fingers in trying to put pieces together which fate did not intend to
fit.

In the mean time--that is to say while the attorney and his companion
were talking together at the alehouse--Sir Philip Hastings rode quietly
up the hill to the cottage I have before described, and therefore shall
not describe again, merely noticing that it now presented an appearance
of neatness and repair which it had not before possessed. He tied his
horse to the palings, walked slowly up the little path, gazing right and
left at the cabbages and carrots on either side, and then without
ceremony went in.

The cottage had two tenants at this time, the invalid old woman, and
another, well-nigh as old but less decrepit, who had been engaged to
attend upon her in her sickness. How she got the money to pay her no one
knew, for her middle life and the first stage of old age had been marked
by poverty and distress; but somehow money seems to have a natural
affinity for old age. It grows upon old people, I think, like corns; and
certainly she never wanted money now.

There she was, lying in her bed, a miserable object indeed to see. She
was like a woman made of fungus--not of that smooth, putty-like, fleshy
fungus which grows in dank places, but of the rough, rugged, brown,
carunculated sort which rises upon old stumps of trees and dry-rot
gate-posts. Teeth had departed nearly a quarter of a century before, and
the aquiline features had become more hooked and beaky for their loss;
but the eyes had now lost their keen fire, and were dull and filmy.

The attorney was quite right. Hate was the last thing to go out in the
ashes where the spark of life itself lingered but faintly. At first she
could not see who it was entered the cottage; for the sight now reached
but a short distance from her own face. But the sound of his voice, as
he inquired of the other old woman how she was going on, at once showed
her who it was, and hate at least roused "the dull cold ear of death."

For a moment or two she lay muttering sounds which seemed to have no
meaning; but at length she said, distinctly enough, "Is that Philip
Hastings?"

"Yes, my poor woman," said the baronet; "is there any thing I can do for
you?"

"Come nearer, come nearer," she replied, "I cannot see you plainly."

"I am close to you, nevertheless," he answered. "I am touching the bed
on which you lie."

"Let me feel you," continued she--"give me your hand."

He did as she asked him; and holding by his hand, she made a great
struggle to raise herself in bed; but she could not, and lay exhausted
for a minute before she spoke again.

At length, however, she raised her voice louder and shriller than
before--"May a curse rest upon this hand and upon that head!" she
exclaimed; "may the hand work its own evil, and the head its own
destruction! May the child of your love poison your peace, and make you
a scoff, and a by-word, and a shame! May the wife of your bosom perish
by----"

But Sir Philip Hastings withdrew his hand suddenly, and an unwonted
flush came upon his cheek.

"For shame!" he said, in a low stern tone, "for shame!"

The next moment, however, he recovered himself perfectly; and turning to
the nurse he added, "Poor wretch! my presence only seems to excite evil
feelings which should long have passed away, and are not fit counsellors
for the hour of death. If there be any thing which can tend to her
bodily comfort that the hall can supply, send up for it. The servants
have orders. Would that any thing could be done for her spiritual
comfort; for this state is terrible to witness."

"She often asks for a priest, your worship," said the nurse. "Perhaps if
she could see one she might think better before she died."

"Alas, I doubt it," replied the visitor; "but at all events we cannot
afford her that relief. No such person can be found here."

"I don't know, Sir Philip," said the old woman, with a good deal of
hesitation; "they do say that at Carrington, there is--there is what
they call a seminary."

"You do not mean a papist college!" exclaimed the baronet, with
unfeigned surprise and consternation.

"Oh, dear, no sir," replied the nurse, "only a gentleman--a seminary--a
seminary priest, I think they call it; a papist certainly; but they say
he is a very good gentleman, all but that."

Sir Philip mused for a minute or two, and then turned to the door,
saying, "Methinks it is hard that a dying woman cannot have the
consolations of the rites of her own faith--mummery though they be. As a
magistrate, my good woman, I can give no authority in this business. You
must do as you think fit. I myself know of no priest in this
neighborhood, or I should be bound to cause his apprehension. I shall
take no notice of your word, however, and as to the rest, you must, as I
have said, act as you think fit. I did not make the laws, and I may
think them cruel. Did I make them, I would not attempt to shackle the
conscience of any one. Farewell," and passing through the door, he
remounted his horse and rode away.

It was in the early autumn time of the year, and the scene was
peculiarly lovely. I have given a slight description of it before, but I
must pause and dwell upon it once more, even as Sir Philip Hastings
paused and dwelt upon its loveliness at that moment, although he had
seen and watched it a thousand times before. He was not very impressible
by fine scenery. Like the sages of Laputa, his eyes were more frequently
turned inwards than outwards; but there was something in that landscape
which struck a chord in his heart, that is sure to vibrate easily in the
heart of every one of his countrymen.

It was peculiarly English--I might say singularly English; for I have
never seen any thing of exactly the same character anywhere else but in
Old England--except indeed in New England, where I know not whether it
be from the country having assimilated itself to the people, or from the
people having chosen the country from the resemblance to their own
paternal dwelling place, many a scene strikes the eye which brings back
to the wandering Englishman all the old, dear feelings of his native
land, and for a moment he may well forget that the broad Atlantic rolls
between him and the home of his youth.

But let me return to my picture. Sir Philip Hastings sat upon his
horse's back, very nearly at the summit of the long range of hills which
bisected the county in which he dwelt. I have described, in mentioning
his park, the sandy character of the soil on the opposite slope of the
rise; but here higher up, and little trodden by pulverizing feet, the
sandstone rock itself occasionally broke out in rugged maps,
diversifying the softer characteristics of the scene. Wide, and far
away, on either hand, the eye could wander along the range, catching
first upon some bold mass of hill, or craggy piece of ground, assuming
almost the character of a cliff, seen in hard and sharp distinctness,
with its plume of trees and coronet of yellow gorse, and then,
proceeding onward to wave after wave, the sight rested upon the various
projecting points, each softer and softer as they receded, like the
memories of early days, till the last lines of the wide sweep left the
mind doubtful whether they were forms of earth or clouds, or merely
fancy.

Such was the scene on either hand, but straightforward it was very
different, but still quite English. Were you ever, reader, borne to the
top of a very high wave in a small boat, and did you ever, looking down
the watery mountain, mark how the steep descent, into the depth below,
was checkered by smaller waves, and these waves again by ripples? Such
was the character of the view beneath the feet of the spectator. There
was a gradual, easy descent from the highest point of the whole county
down to a river-nurtured valley, not unbroken, but with lesser and
lesser waves of earth, varying the aspect of the scene. These waves
again were marked out, first by scattered and somewhat stunted trees,
then by large oaks and chestnuts, not undiversified by the white and
gleaming bark of the graceful birch. A massive group of birches here and
there was seen; a scattered cottage, too, with its pale bluish wreath of
smoke curling up over the tree-tops. Then, on the lower slope of all,
came hedgerows of elms, with bright, green rolls of verdant turf
between; the spires of churches; the roofs and white walls of many sorts
of man's dwelling-places, and gleams of a bright river, with two or
three arches of a bridge. Beyond that again appeared a rich wide
valley--I might almost have called it a plain, all in gay confusion,
with fields, and houses, and villages, and trees, and streams, and
towns, mixed altogether in exquisite disorder, and tinted with all the
variety of colors and shades that belong to autumn and to sunset.

Down the descent, the eye of Sir Philip Hastings could trace several
roads and paths, every step of which he knew, like daily habits. There
was one, a bridle-way from a town about sixteen miles distant, which,
climbing the hills almost at its outset, swept along the whole range,
about midway between the summit and the valley. Another, by which he had
come, and along which he intended to proceed, traversed the crest of the
hills ere it reached the cottage, and then descended with a wavy line
into the valley, crossing the bridle-path I have mentioned. A wider
path--indeed it might be called a road, though it was not a
turnpike--came over the hills from the left, and with all those easy
graceful turns which Englishmen so much love in their highways, and
Frenchmen so greatly abhor, descended likewise into the valley, to the
small market-town, glimpses of which might be caught over the tops of
the trees. As the baronet sat there on horseback, and looked around,
more than one living object met his eye. To say nothing of some sheep
wandering along the uninclosed part of the hill, now stopping to nibble
the short grass, now trotting forward for a sweeter bite,--not to notice
the oxen in the pastures below, there was a large cart slowly winding
its way along an open part of the road, about half a mile distant, and
upon the bridle-path which I have mentioned, the figure of a single
horseman was seen, riding quietly and easily along, with a sauntering
sort of air, which gave the beholder at once the notion that he was what
Sterne would have called a "picturesque traveller," and was enjoying the
prospect as he went.

On the road that came over the hill from the left, was another rider of
very different demeanor, going along at a rattling pace, and apparently
somewhat careless of his horse's knees.

The glance which Sir Philip Hastings gave to either of them was but
slight and hasty. His eyes were fixed upon the scene before him,
feeling, rather than understanding, its beauties, while he commented in
his mind, after his own peculiar fashion. I need not trace the
procession of thought through his brain. It ended, however, with the
half uttered words,

"Strange, that such a land should have produced so many scoundrels,
tyrants, and knaves!"

He then slowly urged his horse forward, down the side of the hill, soon
reached some tall trees, where the inclosures and hedgerows commenced,
and was approaching the point at which the road he was travelling,
crossed the bridle-path, when he heard some loud, and as it seemed to
him, angry words, between two persons he could not see.

"I will soon teach you that;" cried a loud, coarse tongue, adding an
exceedingly blasphemous oath, which I will spare the reader.

"My good friend," replied another milder voice, "I neither desire to be
taught any thing, just now, nor would you be the teacher I should chose,
if I did, though perchance, in case of need, I might give you a lesson,
which would be of some service to you."

Sir Philip rode on, and the next words he heard were spoken by the first
voice, to the following effect; "Curse me, if I would not try that, only
my man might get off in the mean time; and I have other business in hand
than yours. Otherwise I would give you such a licking in two minutes,
you would be puzzled to find a white spot on your skin for the next
month."

"Two minutes would not detain you long," replied the calmer voice, "and,
as I have never had such a beating, I should like to see, first, whether
you could give it, and secondly, what it would be like."

"Upon my soul, you are cool!" exclaimed the first speaker with another
oath.

"Perfectly," replied the second; and, at the same moment, Sir Philip
Hastings emerged from among the trees, at the point where the two roads
crossed, and where the two speakers were face to face before his eyes.

The one, who was in truth the sauntering traveller whom he has seen
wending along the bridle-path, was a tall, good-looking young man, of
three or four and twenty years of age. In the other, the Baronet had no
difficulty in recognizing at once, Tom Cutter, the notorious poacher and
bruiser, whom he had more than once had the satisfaction of committing
to jail. To see him mounted on a very fine powerful horse, was a matter
of no slight surprise to Sir Philip; but, naturally concluding that he
had stolen it, and was making off with his prize for sale to the
neighboring town, he rode forward and put himself right in the way,
determined to stop him.

"Ay, ay! Here is my man!" cried Tom Cutter, as soon as he saw him. "I
will settle with him first, and then for you, my friend."

"No, no, to an old proverb, first come must be first served," replied
the traveller, pushing his horse forward a few steps.

"Keep the peace, in the King's name!" exclaimed Sir Philip Hastings. "I,
as a magistrate, charge you, sir, to assist me in apprehending this
man!--Thomas Cutter, get off that horse!"

The only reply was a coarse and violent expletive, and a blow with a
thick heavy stick, aimed right at Sir Philip's head. The magistrate put
up his arm, which received the blow, and was nearly fractured by it; but
at the same moment, the younger traveller spurred forward his horse upon
the ruffian, and with one sweep of his arm struck him to the ground.

Tom Cutter was upon his feet again in a moment. He was accustomed to
hard blows, and like the immortal hero of Butler, could almost tell the
quality of the stick he was beat withal. He was not long in discovering,
therefore, that the fist which struck him was of no ordinary weight, and
was directed with skill as well as with vigor; but he was accustomed to
make it his boast, that he had never taken a licking "from any man,"
which vanity caused him at once to risk such another blow, in the hope
of having his revenge.

Rushing upon the young stranger then, stick in hand, he prepared to
knock him from his horse; for the other appeared to have no defensive
arms, but a slight hazel twig, pulled from a hedge.

"He will jump off the other side of his horse," thought Tom Cutter; "and
then, if he do, I'll contrive to knock the nag over upon him. I know
that trick, well enough."

But the stranger disappointed him. Instead of opposing the horse between
him and his assailant, he sprung with one bound out of the saddle, on
the side next to the ruffian himself, caught the uplifted stick with one
hand, and seized the collar of the bruiser's coat with the other.

Tom Cutter began to suspect he had made a mistake; but, knowing that at
such close quarters the stick would avail him little, and that strength
of thews and sinews would avail him much, he dropped the cudgel, and
grappled with the stranger in return.

It was all the work of a moment. Sir Philip Hastings had no time to
interfere. There was a momentary struggle, developing the fine
proportions and great strength and skill of the wrestlers; and then, Tom
Cutter lay on his back upon the ground. The next instant, the victor put
his foot upon his chest, and kept the ruffian forcibly down,
notwithstanding all is exclamations of "Curse me, that isn't fair! When
you give a man a fall, let him get up again!"

"If he is a fair fighter, I do," replied the other; "but when he plays
pirate, I don't--" Then turning to Sir Philip Hastings, who had by this
time dismounted, he said, "What is to be done with this fellow, sir? It
seems he came here for the express purpose of assaulting you, for he
began his impertinence, with asking if you had passed, giving a very
accurate description of your person, and swearing you should find every
dog would have his day."

"His offence towards myself," replied the Baronet, "I will pass over,
for it seems to me, he has been punished enough in his own way; but I
suspect he has stolen this horse. He is a man of notoriously bad
character, who can never have obtained such an animal by honest means."

"No, I didn't steal him, I vow and swear," cried the ruffian, in a
piteous tone; for bullies are almost always cravens; "he was lent to me
by Johny Groves--some call him another name; but that don't signify.--He
lent him to me, to come up here, to stop your gab with the old woman,
Mother Danty; and mayhap to give you a good basting into the bargain.
But I didn't steal the horse no how; and there he is, running away over
the hill-side, and I shall never catch him; for this cursed fellow has
well nigh broken my back."

"Served you quite right, my friend," replied the stranger, still keeping
him tightly down with his foot. "How came you to use a cudgel to a man
who had none? Take my advice, another time, and know your man before you
meddle with him."

In the mean time Sir Philip Hastings had fallen into a profound reverie,
only repeating to himself the words "John Groves." Now the train of
thought which was awakened in his mind, though not quite new, was
unpleasant to him; for the time when he first became familiar with that
name was immediately subsequent to the opening of his father's will, in
which had been found a clause ordering the payment of a considerable sum
of money to some very respectable trustees, for the purpose of
purchasing an annuity in favor of one John Groves, then a minor.

There had been something about the clause altogether which the son and
heir of Sir John Hastings could not understand, and did not like.
However, the will enjoined him generally to make no inquiry whatsoever
into the motives of any of the bequests, and with his usual stern
rigidity in what he conceived right, he had not only asked no questions,
but had stopped bluntly one of the trustees, who was about to enter
into some explanations. The money was paid according to directions
received, and he had never heard the name of John Groves from that
moment till it issued from the lips of the ruffian upon the present
occasion.

"What the man says may be true," said Sir Philip Hastings, at length;
"there is a person of the name he mentions. I know not how I can have
offended him. It may be as well to let him rise and catch his horse if
he can; but remember, Master Cutter, my eye is upon you; two competent
witnesses have seen you in possession of that horse, and if you attempt
to sell him, you will hang for it."

"I know better than to do that," said the bruiser, rising stiffly from
the ground as the stranger withdrew his foot; "but I can tell you, Sir
Philip, others have their eyes upon you, so you had better look to
yourself. You hold your head mightily top high, just now: but it may
chance to come down."

Sir Philip Hastings did not condescend to reply, even by a look; but
turning to the stranger, as if the man's words had never reached his
ear, he said, "I think we had better ride on, sir. You seem to be going
my way. Night is falling fast, and in this part of the country two is
sometimes a safer number to travel with than one."

The other bowed his head gravely, and remounting their horses they
proceeded on the way before them, while Tom Cutter, after giving up some
five minutes to the condemnation of the eyes, limbs, blood, and soul of
himself and several other persons, proceeded to catch the horse which he
had been riding as fast as he could. But the task proved a difficult
one.

TO BE CONTINUED.

FOOTNOTES:

[24] Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by G. P. R.
James, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States
for the Southern District of New York.




CYPRUS AND THE LIFE LED THERE.


"Eidolon, or the Trial of a Soul, and other Poems," is the title of a
new volume of verses from the press of Pickering, written by WALTER R.
CASSELS, a student of the school of Shelley, and Keats, and Tennyson,
and Browning. A favorable specimen of his abilities is offered in the
following description of Cyprus:

      Amid it riseth Olympus,
      Stately and grand as the throne of the gods,
    And the island sleeps 'neath its shadow
    Like a fair babe 'neath the care of its father.
      Streams clear as the diamond
      Evermore wander around it,
    Like the vein'd tide through our members,
    Quick with the blessings of beauty,
    And health and verdurous pleasure,
        Filling with yellow sheaves
    And plenty the bosom of Ceres;
    Calling forth flowers from the slumbering earth,
      Like thoughts from the dream of a poet,
    Till the island throughout is a garden,
    The child and the plaything of summer.

    "In luscious clusters the fruit hangs
    In the sunshine, melting away
      From swetness to sweetness;
    The grapes clustering 'mid leaves,
    That give their bright hue to the eye
      Like the setting of rubies;
    The nectarines and pomegranates
      Glowing with crimson ripeness,
    And the orange trees with their blossoms
    Yielding sweet odor to every breeze,
        As the incense flows from the censer.

    "The air is languid with pleasure and love,
    Lulling the senses to dreams Elysian,
      Making life seem a glorious trance,
      Full of bright visions of heaven,
      Safe from the touch of reality,
      Toil none--woe none--pain,
    Wild and illusive as sleep-revelations.
    Time to be poured like wine from a chalice
        Sparking and joyous for aye,
      Drain'd amid mirth and music,
        The brows circled with ivy,
      And the goblets at last like a gift
        Thrust in the bossom of slumber.

        "Thus are the people of Cyprus;
    Young men and old making holiday,
        Decking them daintily forth
        In robes of Sidonian purple;
    The maidens all beauteous, but wanton,
        Foolishly flinging youth's gifts,
      Its jewels--its richest adornment,
      Like dross on the altar of pleasure;
        Letting the worm of mortality
      Eat out their hearts till they bear
      Only the semblance of angels."




THE COUNT MONTE-LEONE,

OR, THE SPY IN SOCIETY.[25]


TRANSLATED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE FROM THE FRENCH OF H.
DE ST. GEORGES.

_Continued from page 60._


BOOK THIRD.

We left young Rovero in despair, yielding to the stupefaction which
overpowered him, just as the singer leaned over his bed to be assured
that he was asleep. La Felina looked at him for some time in silence,
with pity in her eyes. "Why does he love me?" said she; "what have I
done? why should this poor lad love one who scarcely knew him?"

Rovero moved. "Heavens! is the effect of the narcotic over? Will he
awaken?"

"Felina!" murmured Taddeo.

"My name ever on his lips and in his heart. Yes! I was right in avoiding
another interview: this letter tells all." She took a paper from her
bosom. "But if he resist my prayer, if he shrink from the duty imposed
on him by honor and humanity! He alone can accomplish it--all my hope is
in him!"

She approached the table, and by the pale moonlight looked at the flask
of Massa wine. A single glass had been taken from it. "_One glass!_"
said she, "_only one glass?_ His sleep cannot be long. This torpor will
terminate before any one enters his cell. But Lippiani the turnkey is
devoted to me, and will see nothing."

Drawing near the bed she took out of her fine hair a long gold pin, with
which to fasten the letter on his pillow, so that his eyes would rest on
it when he awoke. While Felina's face was near Rovero's as she put the
letter beneath his head, her warm breath hung on his lips; they pressed
hers, and, terrified, she sprang from his side.

The prisoner dreamed of happiness, and doubted not that his fancy was
realized. Whether this kiss had overcome his torpor, or whether, as La
Felina thought, the narcotic had been taken in such small quantity that
it had produced but a slight effect, Taddeo tossed on his bed. The
singer, terrified at these signs, which were the precursors of his
awakening, disappeared by the secret passages through which she had
entered. An hour rolled by before Taddeo could triumph over his sleep.
His heavy eyes shut together in spite of himself, and his eyelashes
rested on each other. All sensation was lost in general lassitude. In
the first disorder of his mind, he asked himself if he had not again
dreamed of the appearance of La Felina. Had he not seen her approaching
his bed just as he sunk to sleep, he would have been sure of it. He
shuddered at the thought that he had lost the opportunity so anxiously
expected. At last he recovered his strength, and attempted to rise. As
he did so, his hand touched La Felina's letter on the pillow. When he
drew out the diamond-headed pin which fastened it, he no longer doubted
that he had actually seen her. Having been unable to rouse him, she had
written to him. He felt angry with himself. He would have given ten
years of his life to regain that one lost hour. He went to the tall
window of the chapel to invoke a single ray of the moon to enable him to
read the lines which had been traced by the hand of the woman he
worshipped. This consolation was denied him. The moon was hidden by
clouds, and the completest obscurity pervaded the prison. What Taddeo
suffered during the time till day, which it seemed to him would never
dawn, may be fancied, but not described. His fate was in his own hands,
yet it was unknown. Ardently clasping to his heart and to his lips the
perfumed paper on which Felina had written, his heart became
intoxicated. He passionately kissed the sheet on which the singer had
left her words, and a sad presentiment of misfortune took possession of
him. He almost feared the coming of day, the light of which would reveal
to him his fate.

Day dawned, at first feeble, then brighter, and still brighter, and
finally brilliant and clear. He opened the letter, and his eyes glanced
over it with tender earnestness. A livid pallor overcast his features, a
nervous tremor shook him. The lines traced by La Felina he could not
read; and overcome by despair, he sank to his seat. The keeper entered.
"Signor," said he to Taddeo, "the person who visited you three days ago
asks permission to see you again."

"Who is he?" said Taddeo--his voice choked with grief.

"The Marquis de Maulear."

The name recalled to the prisoner his mother and Aminta. This memory
soothed his wounded heart. "My mother, my sister," thought he; "but for
their tenderness what now would be my life! Show the Marquis in."

While the keeper was absent, he hurried to the bed, examined it
anxiously as if in search for something which had escaped his
observation. Seizing the letter, he read anxiously the last lines,
approached the bed, and discovered the mysterious deposit La Felina had
placed under the pillow. He took it and concealed it carefully in his
clothing; and with an accent which betrayed the contest in his crushed
heart, he said aloud, as if he wished some one to hear him, "You judged
me correctly, Felina; misfortune will not make me unjust; I will do what
you ask!"

A cry of joy echoed beneath the vault of the old chapel. Taddeo turned.
The cry had penetrated his heart. But he was alone. Just then Henri de
Maulear entered.

"Yesterday evening, Signor Rovero, confiding your promise, I informed
the minister that, consulting with prudent reflections, you would accept
the pardon offered by the King. You are free, and can now accompany me."

"Let us hurry to my mother, Monsieur," said Taddeo, casting one last
look on the chapel walls, which had shut up so much sorrow, happiness
and torment. He followed the Marquis. An hour afterwards two gentlemen
on noble English steeds--the best the stables of the Marquis
afforded--rode toward Sorrento. One of these riders, Rovero, was
melancholy, so that even the French amiability of the Marquis could not
divert him from gloomy meditations. Ever and anon a smile hung on his
lips, till chased away by some painful memory. The Marquis de Maulear,
satisfied that Taddeo concealed a secret from him, avoided any allusion
to it, with the delicacy and good taste which above all things fears
indiscretion. He feigned to attribute to the reserve of a new
acquaintance his companion's coldness and absence of mind. For his own
part, delighted at being able to restore this prodigal son to the
parental roof, anxious to see her whom he loved (to whom, relying on
Taddeo's promise, he had gone the evening before to announce her
brother's return), he could scarcely repress his delight.

"Signor," said he to Taddeo, at a moment when the state of the road
forced them to slacken their pace, "we have arranged all: we have left
the festivities and pleasures of Naples, and have nothing to say of your
suffering and captivity."

"Not one word, Monsieur, if you please, either of what I have passed
through, or of the sufferings of my friends."

"I think your mother and sister know nothing of what you have undergone.
Had they, their suffering and alarm would have been great. But do not
flatter yourself that the arrest of Count Monte-Leone is unknown to
them. One of the Neapolitan papers informed them yesterday of that fact;
and I do not hide from you, that in my presence, your mother deplored
your unfortunate intimacy with one so adventurous and rash."

"And what said Aminta?" asked Rovero anxiously, as if struck by a
thought, which hitherto had escaped him.

"Signorina said nothing," observed Maulear, with an air of surprise;
"and he heard the news with the most perfect indifference."

"To him she is unchanged," murmured Rovero.

Low as was the tone in which this was uttered, Maulear heard it, and
could not repress the question, which he put with great anxiety, "To
whom is the Signorina always the same?"

"To him--to the Count," said Taddeo. "I confide to you almost a family
secret. Count Monte-Leone deeply loves my sister. He never told me so,
but it is the case. If he be restored to liberty, as his friends hope,
it will be a good match for Aminta."

Every word of Rovero fell like a drop of boiling oil on the heart of
Maulear.

"My father," said Taddeo, "left us but a moderate fortune. Perhaps some
day we may be rich--richer than the Monte-Leone--for we are the only
heirs of the Roman Cardinal Justiniani, my mother's brother, who, as
eldest son, inherited all the property of my maternal grandfather. As
yet, however, our fortune in small, though sufficient for my tastes and
ideas. But my mother and sister have other notions; and the marriage of
Aminta and Count Monte-Leone would assure her a magnificent and
brilliant portion."

"But if your sister does not love Count Monte-Leone?"

"Her refusal would make two persons unhappy; first the Count of
Monte-Leone, and in the second place----"

"And in the second place?" said Maulear.

"Myself."

"Yourself!" said Maulear, with surprise; "Are you intent on their
marriage?"

"Yes," replied Taddeo, with emotion; "now, all my happiness depends on
it."

Maulear was amazed at these singular words. Scarcely had they been
uttered, when Taddeo spurred his horse sharply, and rode toward the
house of his mother, which he saw a few hundred yards distant. Henri
followed him, troubled, and for the first time, with a care-marked brow,
paused at Aminta's door. A fond mother clasped her son to her bosom,
with that pleasure which a mother only knows. Aminta, entirely recovered
from her accident, kissed her brother affectionately.

"My son," said Madame Rovero to Taddeo, as she clasped the hand of
Maulear, "beyond all doubt the Marquis has told you what we owe him."

"The Marquis has only told me how devoted he was to you."

"Well," said Aminta, "I will be less discreet." With exquisite grace she
told Taddeo all that had passed.

"Ah, Monsieur," said he, opening his arms to the Marquis, "I would I
could find some dearer name than friend to give you."

Aminta blushed, and looked down. Maulear saw the motion, and a gentle
hope stole over him. The name which Taddeo could not think of, perhaps,
suggested itself to Aminta. It was the name Maulear was so anxious to
give Rovero.

Aminta's brother wished to see the courageous child who had so
heroically sacrificed himself for her. All followed Signora Rovero to
the room of the invalid. He was better. The great inflammation of his
face had disappeared, and his eyes had returned to their orbits.
Apparently he was rapidly recovering; but the cruel prediction of the
physician seemed about to be verified: _He will live, but will never
speak again_. Only harsh and broken sounds escaped the invalid's lips.

Aminta, who had become Scorpione's nurse as soon as she was able to
leave her room, had already learned to discriminate between the
modulations of his voice. A kind of mute groan called her to him; a hiss
expressed pain or impatience; but when his violent and almost savage
nature was excited, a terrible bellowing was heard, and the bravest
heart might quail at the inhuman sound. Tonio was asleep when the
visitors entered his room, but he awoke, and without seeming surprised
at the curious faces that surrounded his bed, looked at them earnestly.

He first recognized Taddeo, and a contraction of his lips, which, bent
from their deformity, might have been called a smile, testified his
pleasure at the visit. Aminta's presence always produced a strange
effect on Scorpione, which his inability to speak enhanced. His eyes, of
pale green, became suddenly lighted up with a peculiar and gentle
languor, which was so tender that they seemed almost attractive. This
singular magnetism had a novel effect on the invalid. But his brow soon
became contracted; a violent storm seemed to agitate his heart; and the
hissing was heard.

"What is the matter?" asked Taddeo. Aminta said she did not know. He had
perhaps some new suffering, or something put him out of humor. Following
the direction of Tonio's eyes, she saw they rested sparkling and bright
on those of Maulear. Aminta quailed, and Henri, who saw her tremble,
hurried to sustain her. He thought the strength of the young
convalescent needed this aid. But at the moment when the girl accepted
the arm of Maulear, Scorpione rose and uttered the horrible cry by which
he expressed his impotent fury. All shuddered as they heard him. Aminta
let go Maulear's arm, and quickly sought, by gesture and words, to
soothe the Cretin, as she would appease an angry child. He became
soothed at once, and Signora Rovero left him, followed by Taddeo,
Maulear, and Aminta; but Aminta did not take Maulear's arm.


II. A NIGHT AT SORRENTO.

A feeling of uneasiness had suddenly taken possession of Maulear while
in the presence of Aminta and Tonio. But he had not remarked the smile
of happiness which played on the features of the invalid when Aminta,
with the most natural air in the world, took the arm of her mother
instead of his own.

"Signor," said Aminta's mother to the Marquis, as they went into the
hall, "do not suffer this festival in honor of the return of my son to
be celebrated without your presence. Share our family meal, and be
satisfied that in doing so you will gratify us all."

The offer delighted Maulear, and time flew by with the rapidity love
only confers on it when passed in the presence of loved ones.

About dinner time two strangers came to the villa, the Count Brignoli
and his son. The Count was an old minister of war of Murat, and had been
a colleague of Taddeo's father. He was one of the best friends of
Rovero's widow and daughter. A country neighbor, he often visited them.
His son Gaetano had been educated and brought up with Aminta, and a
close friendship had been the consequence. Gaetano was twenty years of
age, and his features bore the imprint of masculine and impressive
Neapolitan beauty, deficient neither in the dark locks nor black though
somewhat glassy eye, which is as it were the ordinary seal of the
countenances of the men of the south.

The arrival of these visitors displeased Maulear. The beauty of Gaetano
struck him unpleasantly. The intimacy between Aminta and the young man,
though thus explained, wounded him. During the whole day he fancied that
he discovered a thousand of those little trifles which a lover treasures
up so carefully, and also that Aminta seemed happy in his presence. His
anxiety had begun to pass away, when a new circumstance revived it.
Aminta, who was a perfect musician, went to the piano, and sang some of
those charming canzonets which are so sweet and touching, like the
flowers of this country of melody. The voice of Aminta found an echo in
the heart of Maulear, and his ecstasy was at its height, when Gaetano
joined her and sang the charming duo from Romeo é Julietta, the
_chef-d'oeuvre_ of Zingarelli. The jealous Maulear, as he heard this
passionate music, could not believe that art alone inspired the singer.
He trembled when he thought, that as Julietta loved Romeo, Aminta might
adore Gaetano.

Unable to repress the agitation which took possession of him, Maulear
left the saloon at the end of the duo, to superintend the preparations
for his departure. The night was dark, and pale lightning shot through
the sky, foreboding a storm. The Marquis could not repress his
mortification. The voices of Aminta and the young Italian, blended
together, followed him wherever he went "People," thought he, "only sing
thus when they are linked together by love. Art alone cannot give so
passionate an expression to their tones. Indeed, what sentiment can be
more natural? Educated together, always near each other, their affection
cannot but have grown up with them, so that now they perceive the effect
without being aware of the cause. They love each other because they were
born to do so, as birds mate in the spring because it is the season of
love. The spring of Gaetano and Aminta is come. How can I, a stranger to
this young girl, hope to please her? Her real preserver was not I, but
the unfortunate Tonio. Her gratitude to me then must be very feeble.
Besides, does gratitude lead to love?"

As he indulged in these painful reflections, his eyes became fixed on
the skies, already damascened with black clouds. He strode rapidly
across the court of the villa until he saw in front of him Gaetano
Brignoli. Maulear could not repress a sentiment of anger at seeing him,
and one of those emotions inconsiderately indulged in, and which
reflection often punishes, though too late, took possession of him.

"Signor," said he to the young man, "you love the Signorina Aminta
Rovero." Gaetano, surprised at the sudden rencontre in the dark, and yet
more amazed at the excited tone of the Marquis, looked at him, and in
his dark black eyes shone neither anger nor indignation, but only
astonishment at the question.

"I have the honor to ask you," said Maulear, now become more calm,
having more command of himself, and blushing at his first uncivil
question, "if you do not (and it is very natural) feel a deep and tender
affection for your childhood's friend, the Signorina Aminta Rovero?"

"If I love Aminta?" replied Gaetano. "Ah! Monsieur, who would not love
her! Do you know a more beautiful girl in Naples? Do you know any one
more cultivated and refined than she?"

"Certainly not," said the Marquis, with a voice of half-stifled emotion.

"She is my childhood's friend, the companion of my sports. With her I
received my first lessons in music. The divine art I adore. You all know
we accord, exactly. I often sing false, my teacher tells me, but she
never does."

To hear one the heart loves and adores, spoken of with qualification and
familiarity by a stranger, is often an acute pain to a lover, so acute,
that even the familiarity of a brother with a sister often causes
distress to certain minds. Some jealous souls think this a robbery of
friendship, and a profanation of their idol.

Maulear, wounded that the cherished name of Aminta should be so
cavalierly treated by Gaetano, replied with ill-disguised temper,

"I understand, Signor, that there is nothing false, even musically
speaking, in the sentiments expressed by you to Signora Rovero. Perhaps
this is an exception to your usual habits, as your professor says. But
were he to find fault with the correctness of your tones, he could not
censure the sincerity of the passion breathed through them."

"Is not that true?" said Gaetano, really flattered at Maulear's
compliment. "It is exalted, distinct, and intense. It is of a good
school, and of the lofty style of Tacchinardi."

"Ah! Signor," replied Maulear impatiently, "you know as well as I do,
that no artist, however skilful and great, can express love as lovers
do."

"The fact is," continued Gaetano, "that Zingarelli must have loved some
Julietta, when he wrote his Romeo."

"And you," answered Maulear, "must adore Signorina Aminta, to play so
well the part of Romeo!"

"Certainly," said Gaetano, smiling; "and I know very few tenors in San
Carlo who sing that _duo_ as I do. All must confess that there is no
Julietta like her."

Maulear was amazed, and could make no reply. The young man either was
sincere, and had not understood him, or he had affected not to do so,
assuming the remarks of his companion to refer to the singer, and not to
the lover. He positively refused to become Maulear's confidant, and by
his adroitness and tact made himself understood. The result of all this
was, that Maulear remained in a cruel state of doubt in relation to the
sentiments Gaetano entertained for Aminta, and, what was yet more
painful, in relation to those of Aminta for Gaetano.

"Excuse me, Marquis," said the young man to Maulear, "our conversation
is so unexpected, that I, in my surprise, forgot a commission with which
I was charged by Signora Rovero. I sought you to inform you of it, when
our conversation was diverted to something else. Signora Rovero,
fancying that you were superintending the preparations for your
departure, wishes you to postpone them until to-morrow, as the night is
dark and the road difficult and dangerous. Look," said he, "at these
large drops of rain, which are the avant-couriers of a violent storm."

"Indeed," said Maulear, "I will then accompany you to the ladies."

When they returned to the room, they found Signora Rovero talking with
the Count Brignoli, and Taddeo, with his head on his hand, lost in sad
meditation. Leaning on the back of his chair, was the poetic figure of
Aminta. Her long black curls fell over her brother's brow, and when he
looked up to see what it was that hung over him, she leaned her face
towards his until their lips met.

"Brother," said she, "I closed your eyes on purpose that I might hide
what I see in them."

"What do you see there, my dear sister?"

"I see," said she, "by their sadness and languor, that my brother has
three pieces of a heart. Two he keeps for my mother and myself, but the
third--"

"Is for none," said Taddeo, rising.

"Very well, very well, Monsieur," said Aminta, piqued. "No one asks you
for your secret. We take an interest only in those we love--and I love
you no more."

"My good sister," said Taddeo, clasping her hands with emotion, "love
me, love me better than ever, for I have more need of your affection."
Aminta threw herself in his arms.

"What is all that?" said their mother, looking around.

"A family drama," said Gaetano, who had just come in with Maulear.

"Yes, Gaetano," said Signora Rovero, "and a happy scene of that drama;
for I know of no family more fortunate than mine."

Aminta drew near to Maulear, and her manner was so kind, and she paid
such attention to her guest, that Maulear felt his uneasiness pass away
and his confidence return. Just then the storm burst in all its fury.
The wind whistled violently among the tall trees of the park. Signora
Rovero kept her three guests. A night passed beneath the same roof with
Aminta, gratified every wish of the Marquis, and promised him an
opportunity on the next day to declare himself to the Rose of Sorrento,
and confirm or dissipate his jealous doubts.

Signora Rovero wished to discharge every duty of hospitality to her
guest, and escorted him herself to the room he was to occupy. "This
room," said she to Maulear, "was long occupied by my dear daughter; but
after the death of her father we altered our arrangements, and Aminta is
now in my own room. Since that time it has been occupied by our young
friend Gaetano Brignoli. I have to-night placed him elsewhere, to be
able to give you the best room."

Maulear quivered with joy at the idea of occupying the room in which she
he adored had slept, and it was with a kind of veneration that he took
possession of it. The room was on the first story, in the right wing of
the villa, and looked on a terrace covered with flowers, and
communicating with all the rooms of the first floor. It was possible to
reach, in two ways, the rooms of the first story--from the interior of
the building, and from the exterior by this elegant terrace. But Maulear
did not observe that night the situation of his room.

The early days of March having been colder than those of February, after
a strange season, which well-nigh had deposed winter from its throne,
and the injury Aminta had received not having permitted her to leave her
room, during his previous visits the Marquis had not examined the
residence of Signora Rovero. The terrace on which his window opened was
therefore completely unknown to him.

For about two hours after Maulear had been conducted to the old room of
Aminta by Signora Rovero, he was so agitated by the events of the
evening that he could not consent to seek repose. Love, hope, and
jealousy, disputed for the possession of his heart. Seated in a vast
arm-chair, near the hearth, the fire on which flickered faintly, the
eyes of Maulear were mechanically directed to one of the windows of his
room, by the beating of the rain against it. All at once he saw, or
thought he saw, a white figure on the other side of the window pause for
a few instants, as if it sought to enter his room. Maulear fancied
himself under the influence of a dream. He rubbed his eyes, to be sure
that he was awake, and that his sight did not deceive him. He hurried
towards the window and opened it hastily. But as he moved, and his steps
were heard, the nocturnal visitor disappeared, and Maulear lost sight of
it amid the shadows of night. For a moment he thought it some aerial
being, flitting through space, and coming, like the _djinns_ of the
East, to watch by night over the faithful believer. But his poetry gave
way to material evidence, and the sight of the terrace, of whose
existence he had had no suspicion, proved that the _djinn_ was really a
human being, who for some unknown motive had wandered across it, and was
by no means so unreal as he had supposed. The idea of crime and theft
occurred to him. He was about to follow the person who fled, when he saw
on the terrace, before his window, an object which he immediately picked
up, and examined by the light of his lamp. It was a veil of white lace,
at that time the ordinary dress of Neapolitan women, a vaporous cloud in
which they framed their features, the relic of a fashion imported from
France, and made illustrious by the pencil of our Irabey, the great
portrayer of the grace and beauty of the empire.

"It is beyond doubt some love-scrape," thought Maulear, "interrupted by
my occupying this bedroom; and the heroine of the adventure, having come
to the window to ascertain whether or not I slept, has fled, losing a
portion of her drapery, like a frightened sheep running through thorns."
When, however, he had examined the veil more closely, Maulear observed
its elegance and richness, and began to think which of the inmates of
the villa was likely to wear such a one. Was this the headdress of a
chambermaid? If not, who else but Aminta could wear it, unless indeed
her mother did? Lost in conjectures, the Marquis was roused by hearing a
door in the same corridor on which his room was, open. He listened. Two
persons spoke in a low tone; and walking with such precaution that it
was evident they had no disposition to be overheard. Such an occurrence,
in a house usually so silent and calm, excited Maulear's curiosity so
much, that he resolved to know who the mysterious personages were.

Silently leaving his room, he went down the long corridor through which
those he wished to follow had preceded him. A faint light from a dark
lantern, borne by one of the strangers, fell on the path in front of
them, and was a guide to Maulear. Thus they descended the principal
staircase of the villa, crossed the ground floor, and entered the front
court. A puff of wind just then put out the lantern, as the person who
bore it was attempting to brighten its flame.

"Fool!" said one of the two men to his companion. "How can I saddle my
horse now?"

"It is already saddled," said the other.

"Then I have nothing to do but mount!"

"And you will not have occasion to use the spur," said the man with the
lantern, "for he is wild, from having been three weeks in his stable."
As the two speakers thus communed, they entered the second courtyard of
the villa. Maulear had followed them thither, hidden in the deep shadow.
A horse, ready saddled, was waiting there. One of the two men sprang
lightly into the saddle, and the other, as he opened a gate into the
fields, through which the horseman rode, said, in a voice full of fear,
"May God protect you in this terrible midnight storm, Signor Taddeo.
Beware of the road down the ravine, and be careful whom you meet."


III.--THE AVOWAL.

Maulear, uneasy and disturbed by what he had seen, returned to his room.
What could induce Taddeo thus to leave his mother's house, alone, at
midnight, and in a storm? Could it be that, so recently liberated, he
was about to begin again that life of plot and sedition which already
had cost him his liberty? A deep interest united Maulear to Taddeo. The
love he felt toward the sister, made him devoted to the brother, and the
new dangers which might befall the young man seriously affected Maulear.
The night passed away without his being able to sleep. In addition to
fear on account of Taddeo, his heart was yet agitated by the emotions of
the previous day; but above all, he thought of the woman who had stood
at his window, and whose appearance he could not forget. A terrible idea
then occurred to him. The room he occupied had been that of Gaetano
Brignoli. Had this young girl, apparently so pure and modest, had the
White Rose of Sorrento, any secret amour or intrigue? The young man who
had seen the companion of her infancy might know of it. Could this
charming flower be already scorched by the hot breath of passion?
Maulear reproached himself as with a crime, for the mental profanation
of his divinity.

The morning meal assembled together all the family and guests. Taddeo
participated in it as naturally as if he had passed the whole night in
the villa, and not a word was said of his nocturnal expedition. He was
not so melancholy and moody as he had been on the previous night, and a
careful observer might have marked on his features the satisfaction
following the performance of a painful duty. The Brignoli bade adieu to
Signora Rovero immediately after breakfast, and returned to their villa.
Maulear was delighted at their departure.

"Marquis," said Taddeo, "permit me to treat you as a friend, and ask a
favor of you--a favor that will require you to renounce the brilliant
saloons of Naples, whose chief ornaments are the _attachés_ of the
French embassy, to lead for a time a retired country-life with my mother
and sister?"

"If that be the favor you ask of me," said Maulear with joy, "you confer
one on me. I accept your proposition with gratitude."

"What are you thinking of, brother? How can you propose such an exile to
the Marquis? Our life in the country is so sad and melancholy; what can
we offer him as a compensation for the amusements he would sacrifice?"

"Where would be the merit of the service, unless its performance cost
some sacrifice?" said Taddeo. "In one word, this is the state of
affairs. An obligation, my honor imposes on me, requires me for at least
a week to be absent from Sorrento. The trial of Count Monte-Leone will
begin in a few days, and I must be present at it. It is said," added he,
with hesitation and a significant glance at the Marquis, "that the
Count's partisans will on that occasion be active. His enemies too are
numerous, and as he is known to have come to this house, I cannot feel
satisfied unless some courageous and energetic man replaces me, and
deigns to watch over the two dear beings I am forced to leave. This,
Marquis, is what I expect from you."

"My heart, my arm, my life, are all at the ladies' disposal. You may
rely on me."

Aminta looked down, for the first consecration made by Maulear was
evidently intended for her. Taddeo did not remark it, and clasped with
gratitude the hand of his new friend. Signora Rovero, terrified at the
idea of losing her son again, looked sadly at him.

"I do not know what is going on," said she with emotion, and with that
instinct which reveals to a mother the danger of a beloved son. "I
shudder, however, Taddeo, when I see you surrounded by danger. You do
not like the government, I know, for by the fall of Murat a brilliant
career was closed before you, for your father was one of his greatest
favorites. But in your father's name I, your mother, his widow, whose
hope and support you are, beseech you not to expose the life which does
not belong to you alone. Remember, my child, your sister and myself have
no other support in life than yourself, and that my weak and failing
existence could not withstand your loss."

Taddeo grew pale, for the association with which he was affiliated might
expose him to all the dangers of which his mother was apprehensive. He
concealed his agitation by caresses and iterations of love, mentally
resolving to turn aside in time from his sad career, as if those who
involve themselves in perdition can pause in the rapid descent down the
declivity to sorrow and death, whither the sturdiest champions are
hurried to be entombed in the grave they have dug for themselves.

"You will go then to Naples?" said Signora Rovero to her son. "God grant
that Monte-Leone recover his liberty, since he is your friend! But,
Taddeo, do not trust to his adventurous mind; he is a hurricane,
enveloping all in his path. Heaven grant he may not bear you away with
him."

This conversation on this subject, so painful to the mother and annoying
to the son, ended here.

"Will you deign, Signorina," said the Marquis to Aminta, "to accept me
as a guest for a few days?"

"Certainly, if you are not afraid of our retreat. Besides," added she,
with a smile, "_one must have suffered as much as Leonora's lover, not
to be happy in the paradise of Sorrento_."

Maulear remembered the words he had written on the wall of Tasso's
house. But before he could express his astonishment and joy, Aminta was
gone. Just then it was announced to Maulear, that his horse waited him
at the gate of the park.

"We will accompany you thither (my sister and I)," said Taddeo.

Signora Rovero called Aminta to her, and added: "The air is keen, my
child: cover your head with your lace veil. It becomes you."

Maulear turned quickly toward Aminta with his mind full of fear and
surprise--

"I am afraid I have lost my veil. I looked for it this morning, but
could not find it." Aminta seemed annoyed. Her emotion was perceived at
once by Maulear, who said to himself: "What mystery is this? why conceal
it from me?" The coincidence of a veil being found by him, and of Aminta
having lost one, made him keenly anxious: he was terrified, confounded,
and so excited, that he could scarcely speak to Taddeo and Aminta as he
crossed the park with them.

"Remember," said Rovero to him, "that my mother and sister will expect
you here in a few days."

"In a few days," said Aminta, giving the Marquis her sweetest smile.

"In a few days," replied Maulear, as he mounted his horse, and cast on
the young girl a look of doubting love. He then galloped off, and soon
disappeared in the long road to Sorrento.

When he returned to Naples, the whole city was busy with the approaching
trial of Monte-Leone, who was so beloved by one portion of the community
and so unpopular with the other. The nobility of the two Sicilies
deplored the errors of the Count, and regretted that one of the most
illustrious of the great names of Naples should embrace and defend so
plebeian a cause; one in their eyes so utterly without interest as that
of popular rights. But it was wounded at the idea that a peer should die
by the hand of the executioner. The old leaven of independence, innate
in all the aristocracies of Europe; the feudal aspirations which Louis
XI. and Richelieu had so completely annihilated and subdued in France,
yet germinated in the minds of the nobles of Naples. They loved the king
because he maintained their privileges, and had re-established the
rights of their birth. They would have revolted had he touched them.
From pride of birth they would have applauded the execution of a
plebeian conspirator, but were prepared to cry out _en masse_ against
that of Monte-Leone, because he was one of themselves.

The people looked on the illustrious prisoner as a defender of their
rights, and sympathized with him. To sharpen this sympathy, the adepts
of the Italian _vente_ everywhere represented their chief as a martyr to
his love of the people, and a victim of monarchy. Most injurious charges
were everywhere circulated against Fernando IV. It was said that he had
inherited the hatred of Carlos III. to the Monte-Leoni, and sought to
follow out on the son the vengeance to which the father had fallen a
victim. Nothing was omitted that could stimulate the favor of the
superstitious and impressionable people of Naples. The same executioner,
block and axe, which had been used at the father's death, by a strange
fatality, would come in play again at the murder of the son. The
imprisonment of the son at the Castle _Del Uovo_, where the father had
died, gave something of plausibility to this story. But what most
excited public curiosity was the strange incident which had taken place
at _Torre-del-Greco_. All were impatient for its explanation. The double
and impossible presence of the Count at the house of Stenio Salvatori,
and within the fifty locks of the Castle _Del Uovo_, his contest with
his enemy, the wound he was accused of having given him, his ubiquity at
the same hour in different places, produced a thousand incredible
versions, a thousand bets on this wonderful fact, unrivalled in the
judicial annals of Naples.

The name of Monte-Leone was so closely and intimately linked with the
destiny of the Marquis de Maulear, with his friendship to Taddeo, and
his love of Aminta, that he partook of the general interest inspired by
the Count, and as a man of honor hoped for acquittal, notwithstanding
the influence it might exert on his happiness.

To lose confidence in one we love, is the greatest agony possible. The
four days, therefore, which separated him from Aminta, were four
centuries to Maulear. Like the majority of rich young men of our times,
yielding at an early age to _liaisons_, he had formed an erroneous and
unjust opinion of women in general. The withered myrtles he had often
gathered, the passing amours in which almost all the men of his rank,
fortune and appearance indulge, had distorted his mind in relation to a
sex, the least respectable portion of which alone he was acquainted
with. But the young Marquis had exalted sentiments, and his high spirit
turned aside from vulgar, common pleasures. His first loves, or not to
profane that word, his first indulgences, had for their object those
women who lead astray an ardent mind or passionate natures; those women
who, betrayed into marriage, seek elsewhere a recompense for their
misfortunes or the deceptions practised upon them, and fancy they can
find it in the inexperience and youth of young men, whom chance throws
in their way. The latter proudly, and at first eagerly, accepting their
conquests, soon discover, that often they are not heroes. They become
themselves the accomplices of the criminal devices, the studied
falsehoods, employed by married women to abuse those on whom they
depend. In either case they see each other insensibly change, and in
spite of themselves conceive an aversion to those pleasures, even in
sharing which they blush. The idol becomes a mere woman, and the hero of
these adventures fancies himself right in estimating all women by a few
exceptions, and becomes an atheist in love because he has sacrificed to
false gods.

This deplorable theory had taken possession of Maulear. His naturally
pure sentiments, the poetry of his heart, had been dissipated in
ephemeral indulgences. The Countess of Grandmesnil, the guardian of the
young man, fearing lest a serious passion should contravene his father's
views,--encouraged him in his _liaisons_, or at least she did nothing to
induce him to abandon them. Under this sad opinion, which is
unfortunately too common in our days, that female virtue is but a name,
and that the most prudent only need opportunity to go astray, Maulear
came to Naples, where we must say much success in gallantry fortified
his faith in these detestable principles.

His meeting with one so pure as Aminta had wrought a complete change in
his ideas. He saw woman under a new aspect, as we dream of her at
twenty, when the young soul first awakes. He suffered intensely when
suspicion gnawed at his heart. "What," said he, yet under the influence
of the pernicious theories of his youth, "not one woman worthy of
respect! Even this young girl, apparently so modest and pure, unworthy
the confidence I reposed in her." The recollection of the chaste and
maidenly appearance of Aminta soon put such ideas to flight, and Maulear
thenceforth had but one idea, but one desire. He sought to clear up the
strange mystery of his nocturnal vision, and extricate himself from his
cruel perplexity.

On the day appointed for his return to Sorrento, as the clock struck
ten, he stopped his horse at the garden gate where four days before he
had left Aminta. The gate was open. He entered the orange grove which
lay between it and the house. A secret hope told him he would find
Aminta there. He was not mistaken. She sat beneath a rustic porch, which
served as a portal to the prettiest cottage imaginable. This building,
constructed of the slightest material, had windows closed with
gayly-covered verandahs, and served to shelter walkers from the heat of
the summer's sun. It was Aminta's favorite retreat, and thither she came
in the morning to paint her sisters, the white Bengal roses, the red
cactus and the graceful clematides, which surrounded her charming
retreat. There in the evening, pensive and reflective, the young girl
suffered her glance to stray over the vast horizon of the sea gilded by
the sun's expiring rays. On the day we speak of, Maulear found her
reading, or rather seeming to read, for her book rested on her knee, her
ivory brow supported by her hand. Her eyes, lifted up to heaven, seemed
to ask the realization of some gentle dream inspired doubtless by the
author. Perhaps the nature of the dream might have been devised by the
book--Tasso's Divine Poem! Maulear glided rather than walked to her, so
fearful was he of destroying the beautiful tableau presented to him by
chance. Then he paused some moments behind a screen of leaves, and
looked at the beautiful dreamer, in mute but passionate adoration. As he
scanned her girlish form, becoming intoxicated with her modest charms,
Maulear blushed at his suspicions, and resolved to abandon them. God did
not make such angels for men to distrust, and Aminta, beautiful as the
heavenly beings, must be pure and spiritual as they.

He left his concealment, and approached Aminta. She moved when she saw
him, for he had surprised her in a dream. The dreams of young girls are
treasures to be concealed from the profane in the most profound
sanctuary of the heart. Aminta advanced a step or two towards Maulear,
thus testifying her wish to return to the villa. But the Marquis, afraid
of losing this favorable opportunity to see her for a short time alone,
begged her to be seated, and took his place beside her, making, as an
excuse, an allusion to the fatigue of riding rapidly from Naples to
Sorrento.

Aminta sat down, but with an embarrassment which Maulear could not but
see. "You have kept your promise, Signor," said she, seeking to disguise
her trouble by speaking first.

"How could I not keep my promise?" said Maulear. "It was to see you
again."

"We know what such devotion must cost you," Aminta replied, speaking
aloud, as if her words were not intended only for Maulear. "Both my
mother and myself are very grateful to you."

"Signorina," said Maulear, with an effort, for he was afraid of wasting
in commonplaces moments in which every word he uttered had a priceless
value, "I did not think, as I wrote on the wall of Tasso's house the
simple lines you deigned to read and remember, that I thus wrote out my
horoscope, and divined the happiness fate marked out for me at
Sorrento."

"Happiness?" said Aminta, and she trembled as she spoke. "You must refer
to the service you have rendered me."

"I speak," said Maulear, unable to restrain himself, "of a new and
strange feeling to me, full of pleasure and pain, of hope and fear. I
speak of a love, which will be the pride and joy of my existence, if it
be shared; which will bring despair and torment, if she who inspires it
rejects it."

"Pray be silent," said Aminta, rising and looking with fear around her.

"Ah, you have understood me," said Maulear, attributing to his
confession Aminta'a emotion.

The young girl was silent. Her eyes turned towards the door of the hut,
as if she feared some one would open it.

"What I say here, Signorina, with nought near me but the passing cloud
and flying bird, I wish to repeat to those who love you--before your
mother and brother, whom I would look on as my own. It is for you to
tell me whether I shall speak to them or be silent."

Just then a faint noise was heard in the summer-house.

Maulear did not perceive it, for Aminta, more and more disturbed by the
mysterious noise, had suffered the Marquis to take her hand, and the
latter, interpreting this favor as his heart wished, fell on his knees
before the young girl, who, overcome with emotion, sat down.

"Aminta," said he, passionately, "since the first day I saw you, my
soul, my life, have been your own. If you but will it, your life shall
be my own--my own, to make every hour of your life one of joy and
pleasure--mine, in adoring you as we do the saints in heaven."

Maulear, with his eyes fixed on Aminta's, sought an echo to the
outpourings of his soul. His lips were on Aminta's hand, when, between
the young girl and himself, he saw a hideous head, made yet more horrid
by the agony it expressed. Aminta suddenly withdrew, and Maulear
experienced that terror of which the bravest are sensible when they
tread on a reptile.

"Scorpione!" said the Marquis.

This name, on the lips of the Marquis at such a time, made such an
impression, that a stream of blood, mingled with white froth, burst from
his lips, and fell at Aminta's feet.

"Help, Signor!" said she to Maulear, "help, I pray you, for this
unfortunate man! This is the first time he has gone out since that cruel
day. See, he dies!"

"What is the meaning of all this?" said Maulear to himself, as he
hurried towards the villa. "Twice my being with Aminta has exercised
the same effect on this unfortunate being. Can she love him? Can he be
jealous?"


IV. THE GRAND JUDGE.

The trial of Count Monte-Leone, which had been so anxiously looked for,
and had given rise to so many disputes about the curious story which
occupied both the high and low of Naples, was about to begin.

The Duke of Palma had not been able to make good his promise to the
prisoner, and bring him promptly before his judges. The incident at
_Torre-del-Greco_ made a new inquiry necessary, and the examinations,
researches, and inquiries of every kind it led to daily, retarded the
trial, much to the regret of the king and his minister of police, who
were aware of the extent to which the public imagination was excited,
and feared its consequences. Monte-Leone began to feel grave
apprehensions in relation to the dangerous game he had played. On the
evening of his excursion, faithful to his word, the Count had presented
himself again to the keeper of the Castle del Uovo in the costume in
which he had left it, and the pious wicket-keeper, when he saw the false
assistant jailer, who had gone out on the previous evening, return with
a trembling and uncertain step, read a long lecture on intemperance and
the results of drunkenness, deplorable faults, especially to be
regretted in one of his profession, where, added the turnkey proudly,
one needs morality, reason, and vigilance especially, to unravel the
plots of the prisoners confided to him, and to triumph over their
detestable _mania for liberty_.

When Pietro on that evening, palpitating as he was with fear, saw
Monte-Leone, whom he waited for at the postern of the castle, return,
his joy was so great that he was ready to clasp the Count's neck. The
latter was not much flattered by his transports.

"Well," said the head-jailer, "you are a noble and true gentleman. A
scoundrel in your place would have escaped, and put his keeper in
trouble. You are of a good race, of a noble and generous blood, you have
paid me well, and have been unwilling to hang the father of a family.
Now," added he, "do not let us talk together, or even look at each
other. Our looks may be watched and interpreted."

From that time Pietro became more brutal, more savage and stern than
ever. The visit of the minister of police justly enough increased the
terror of the jailer. He had from public rumor heard of the terrible
episode at _Torre-del-Greco_, though he did not precisely understand the
motives of the prisoner. He was aware that he had become an accomplice
of his crime, and shuddered more and more at its probable results.
Whenever, therefore, the Count sought to ask him any question, Pietro
exhibited such terror, and his countenance was so complete a picture of
fright, that Monte-Leone at last ceased to speak to him. No news from
without, nothing enlightened the Count in relation to the consequences
of his daring conduct, and for the first time he despaired of the
result. One morning his door opened as usual at meal time; but instead
of withdrawing, the keeper approached Monte-Leone kindly, his ugly face,
on account of the complaisance which lit it up, seeming yet more horrid.
He said:

"Excellence, the great day approaches, and we must arrange some little
details about which the High Court will no doubt be ill-mannerly enough
to question us!"

"You can speak then," replied Monte-Leone, with surprise.

"To-day is not yesterday. Then and ever since your escape, my gossip,
the Headsman, who lives up there as you know, distrusts me. I learn from
his assistant, who is a friend of mine, that the story of the cell
undermined by the sea has made him fancy I wish to deprive him of his
perquisites. I know that while he waters his flowers on the platform he
keeps an eye and ear open for all that passes here. Besides, he would
not be at all sorry to obtain my place for his first assistant--a
promising lad who becomes his son-in-law to-day."

"Ah!" said Monte-Leone, "the executioner's daughter is to be married."

"A love match. He wished to postpone the wedding until after _your
affaire_, as he calls it, for on such cases he always has large
perquisites, and would be able largely to increase the bride's portion.
The young girl, however, was in love, and was unwilling to wait for you.
The worthy father then determined to make her happy, and I have just
seen all the party set out for the church of Santa-Lucia. The
executioner, his wife, the bride, and the little executioners, all in
their best garb. The procession was so imposing, they might have been
taken for a family of turnkeys. Lest, however, the people should disturb
the ceremony by a volley of stones, they set out early, at five o'clock.
As, therefore, we have no inquisitive neighbors, I am come to have an
understanding with your excellency, in order that I may not be
compromised in the trial."

"So be it!" said the Count, "let us have an understanding. In the first
place, have they any suspicions?"

"Of whom?"

"Of you to be sure, for unless I have wings and flew out of the window
to _Torre-del-Greco_, no one but you can have opened the prison gate to
me."

"That is true, then," said Pietro, "you went to _Torre-del-Greco_ to
stab Stenio Salvatori. I really would not have believed it, for it seems
that twenty thousand piasters is too large a sum for the pleasure of a
poniard thrust--in the arm too! After all, though, we Neapolitans regard
nothing valuable compared with revenge!"

"It matters little to you whether it was for revenge or another purpose.
All I wish is, for you alone to know that I was away for twelve hours.
As neither you or I will mention it, I am at ease."

"You are right in the main, your Excellency. But we have placed our
heads in the balance, and I am determined yours shall not outweigh mine.
The hand of justice weighs heavily, especially on the poor. It would be
very bad if now, when I am prepared to live happily and pleasantly on
the proceeds of our little operation, I were called on to dangle at the
end of a rope, to the great delight of the dealers in ice-water and
macaroni, whom the people of Naples on that day would enrich. Few would
miss the entertainment which would be given at my expense."

"What makes you fear this?" asked the Count.

"One idea. They might take it into their heads to examine separately all
the inhabitants of the castle. First your Excellency, as its principal
guest, then your humble servant, the gate-keeper, and even my assistant
Crespo. If all did not tell the same story the Grand Judge would see
some trick."

"You think so?" said the Count, moodily.

"I know so," said Pietro. "The Grand Judge, as the child's story-book
says of ogres, loves fresh meat, and would see a spot on the brow of an
angel. Now, I am not exactly an angel--and if he saw a spot, your
excellency's head might be safe, but for want of a chicken he might
twist my neck. The jailer would be the victim, and my friend the
executioner would have to do with me. I know him. He would be
enthusiastic in the operation, to make a vacancy in my place. He is
bound up in his family."

For an instant the Count had not heard the jailer. One single name
inspired him with the greatest terror, for it recalled one of the
participators in his escape. This man held in his own hands his own and
his accomplice's escape. Pietro had not foreseen all. This assistant,
the character and dress of whom he had assumed, this Crespo, this mole,
would be summoned before the magistrate. The keeper had seen and spoken
to him, had opened the gate of the castle to suffer him to pass out, or
at least fancied he had. What then would the man say? With great
emotion, then, Monte-Leone said,

"The danger does not come from the place you apprehend. One witness,
however, may ruin all."

"Of whom do you speak?" said Pietro, trembling.

"Of Crespo," said the Count.

"Ah--what have you to fear of Crespo?"

"Have you gained him over?"

"No. I was spared the trouble. At this moment the poor fellow is
probably in the other world."

"Have you killed him?" said the Count, with terror.

"For what does your excellency take me? One may yield to the prayers of
a prisoner, and secure a fortune by permitting him a few hours'
exercise, yet be no murderer. If Crespo dies, it is in consequence of
his unfortunate passion."

"Was he in love?"

"No. He was fond of water-rats."

"Horrible appetite."

"Not at all," said the jailer. "Crespo says the animal is very savory,
especially when fat as those in the ditches of the castle are. The
waters bear hither all the offal of Naples, and the rats live like
canons."

"And Crespo eats them?"

"He has a passion for game of that kind, and does nothing but hunt them.
He makes some very ingenious traps to catch them with. I do not molest
him, because the taste is so innocent, and besides, saves me the expense
of several cats."

"But how came that passion to endanger Crespo's life?"

"Ah--one is not always lucky. Perhaps the last rats Crespo ate, had
feasted on arsenic--rats are so whimsical. The poor devil, perhaps, was
poisoned in that manner. Rather an expensive taste. Unfortunately, the
lesson will do him no good."

After this touching funeral oration, the jailer took out a blue and torn
handkerchief, and dried his eyes. The Count shuddered at this story. He
understood the atrocious plan adopted by Pietro to get rid of a
dangerous witness, and forgetful of his own safety, said,

"Perhaps, if you hurry for a physician, the poor man may yet be saved."

"Bah! do you think the Governor would let one of his officers die
without assistance? The doctor, however, was too late; and when I came
hither, Crespo was dying."

Notwithstanding his firmness, the horror of Monte-Leone at the wretch
was so great that he hastened to terminate the conversation. The quasi
complicity in a crime committed in cold blood, and with premeditation;
was odious to him.

"Do not fear lest my examination should compromise you. I will be
prudent. Now, one word more, or if you please to consider it so, one
favor more--when will I be tried?"

"In two days. To-night they will come to take you to _Castello Capuano_,
where the supreme court will meet."

Pietro left, and Monte-Leone relapsed into a profound reverie. The drama
was about to begin. What the Count hitherto had done, was as it were but
a prelude, an exposition, or rather a skilful introduction. On the eve
of the event he did not quail, but like a sagacious tactician asked
himself if he had been guilty of no neglect, if he had taken advantage
of all the circumstances. One thing alone made him uneasy. When he
returned to the Etruscan villa, to assume the clothes of the
assistant-jailer, he saw with terror that he had lost the great emerald,
the _chef-d'oeuvre_ of Benvenuto, the family ring, so long celebrated
and so well known. He readily enough fancied that it had been lost
during his rapid flight, and did not suspect that it had fallen into the
hands of his enemies. Reassured on this point, he waited patiently for
the hour when, as the jailer said, they would come to take him to
_Castello Capuano_. It came at last, and Monte-Leone was glad of it, for
it seemed to bring him nearer to liberty. It was about midnight when the
Governor came to the Count's cell, accompanied by the worthy jailer and
several officers.

"Excellency," said he to Monte-Leone, "I have an order from the Duke of
Palma, minister of police, to take you to _Castello Capuano_, to be
tried."

"I am ready to obey the orders of the Duke," said Monte-Leone, "late as
the hour and bad as the weather are. But, Signor, the Duke treats me
like those curious monsters, who travel by night to avoid the anxious
eyes of the public, and to enhance the profits received from their
exhibition."

"Signor, the Duke of Palma," said the Governor, piqued by this irony in
relation to his patron, "has a more exalted object than exciting or
allaying the curiosity of the people of Naples. He wishes to prevent any
demonstration of your numerous partisans in your favor. Such conduct
would certainly injure your cause."

The sarcasm of the Count had made the Governor say too much. He had
revealed to Monte-Leone the interest he had excited, and the efforts
which might be made to save him. To a man like Monte-Leone nothing was
lost, and like a skilful geometer, he knew how to take advantage of the
errors of his adversary.

"Let us go, Signor," said Monte-Leone to the Governor. "I am impatient
to make an acquaintance with the new castle which the king honors me
with. Let me change once or twice again, and I will be able to publish a
statistical account of all the dungeons in the kingdom, for the
information of his majesty's beloved subjects."

An hour after this scene the Count was in a room of _Castello Capuano_,
appropriated to the reception of great and distinguished criminals to be
tried by the high court.

On the next day, a man of cold and ascetic air waited on Monte-Leone.
This person was Felippo San Angelo, the ogre of whom Pietro had spoken,
the terror of all criminals, the Grand Judge of Naples. If the _morale_
of the Judge had been calumniated by Pietro, his physique bore a strong
analogy to that of certain beasts of prey to which carnivorous appetite
is attributed. His nose was hooked like an eagle's, his brow was
prominent, oblong and bald, his lips were thin and fixed as if he had
never smiled, his body was long and attenuated, and he never met the
glance of those with whom he spoke.

"Signor," said the Grand Judge, "I am come to announce to you, as the
law requires, that you will appear before the court on the day after
to-morrow. You will be allowed to choose an advocate, and, as Grand
Judge of the Kingdom, I come to invite you to do so."

"I am deeply sensible of your Excellency's consideration," said
Monte-Leone, "but I must say, the first act of your _justice_ is
_unjust_. If my enemies have had two months to prepare their accusation,
it is cruel to allow me but two days to prepare my defence."

"This is the provision of the laws which regulate at Naples the special
courts, like the one which is to try you, Signor Comte. I do not make
the law, but only administer it."

"But, Excellency, a man of your character should not administer an
unjust law; nothing should compel him to do so."

"Signor," said the Grand Judge, much annoyed at finding himself
unexpectedly drawn into such a discussion, "the legislator gives us the
text of law, we find the interpretation. Your judges, the chief of whom
I am, have carefully studied them, and if we have assumed on our honor
and conscience their application, it is because we think them just. We
do not permit the accused to contest their forms. When a man is
unfortunately brought before a court, he must submit."

"I do, Excellency," said Monte-Leone, "I will even court their severity,
and will not take advantage of the very short time allowed me to choose
a defender. For humanity's sake alone I address you as I do. It seems to
me, however, that it is necessary that I should know, in the first
place, of what I am accused; and I wait until it please your Excellency
to tell me."

"You are charged, Signor, with two capital crimes. First, of having, on
the night of the 20th December, 1815, conspired against the security of
the state, near the ruins of Pompeii, where you presided over a secret
society, the object of which is the overthrow of royalty. You are, in
the second place, accused of having attempted to assassinate Stenio
Salvatori, of _Torre-del-Greco_, to avenge yourself on account of his
testimony."

"Is this all?" asked Monte-Leone.

"It is, Signor," said the Grand Judge; "I think such charges are
important enough to induce you to remember that you must now choose your
counsel."

"You are right, Signor," said Monte-Leone. "For such a cause a skilful
advocate is required, one who shall be able to impress your heart with
the conviction of my innocence, for on his word depends my life or
death."

"Find such a one, then, Signor," said the Grand Judge. "Believe me,
however, the most eloquent advocate has less influence over a
conscientious judge than the facts of the case, the light which
illumines them, and which it is their duty to make brilliant in our
eyes, rather than seek an opportunity to display their fluency and their
political opinions, or, worse yet, to produce public or private
scandal--"

"You are right, Signor, but the person who will speak in my behalf is
neither eloquent nor skilful, yet the most famous pleas, the most
powerful defences of Naples, will not produce so much effect as the
words of that man."

"You, Signor, alone," said the Grand Judge, "can choose your defender.
But let me know his name--"

"That can only be revealed at the trial."

"But you do not know, Signor, you thus deprive yourself of a precious
right to all who are accused, secured them by law, the right of
communicating with their defenders."

"That right I waive. The man who will defend me will know his grave
mission only when called on in the face of the supreme tribunal to
fulfil it."

The Grand Judge looked with amazement at Monte-Leone. "Why, Signor,
cannot he be informed of his grave duty?"

"God forbid he should!"

"Why?"

"Because in that case I would lose my cause." The Count laughed.

"Act then, Signor, as you please. Strange and whimsical as your conduct
is, I have no authority to speak of its advantages and disadvantages."

He bowed to Monte-Leone and withdrew.

"He is mad," said he, as he was leaving _Castello Capuano_.

"He is a fool," said Monte-Leone, as the Grand Judge left. "He did not
understand that one defends himself from the effects of a crime
committed, but not when no crime has been committed."


V.--THE TRIAL.

The appointed day came at last, and all Naples assumed a strange and
unusual air. One subject of interest took possession of all the city,
one idea occupied it, and from the Senator to the Lazzarone all had one
name on their lips. Monte-Leone, Count Monte-Leone.

"Monte-Leone, the people's friend," said some.

"Monte-Leone, the conspirator," said others.

"Monte-Leone, the assassin of Stenio Salvatori," said the enemies of the
Count.

"Monte-Leone, the victim of Fernando," said the enemies of the King.

As all this was going on around the prison, calm and thoughtful
Monte-Leone waited for the hour of trial.

_Castello Capuano_, usually called la Vicaria, had been for several
centuries the palace of the Kings and Viceroys, until Pedro de Toledo
abandoned for a more splendid palace, that of the existing Kings, and
devoted la Vicaria or _Castello Capuano_ to the civil and criminal
courts of the realm. Nothing can be more sad and melancholy than the
portion of the palace in which the prisons are. As if to enhance this
appearance, the outside of the prison was hung with iron cages, in which
were the heads and hands of persons who had been executed. These relics
of humanity, long before dried up, and the skeletons of which alone
remained, rattled in the night wind horribly, and filled with
superstitious terror the minds of belated travellers returning through
the _Porta Capuano_, from which the Castle took its name, to Naples.

La Vicaria was then from an early hour in the morning besieged by a
numerous crowd, awaiting the opening of its gates to rush into the hall
of audience. The doors were opened. The hall was instantly occupied by a
crowd of curious persons, who everywhere in Europe are attracted by
criminal trials. It is a matter of surprise that in France women, and
especially those of rank, are attracted in numbers sufficient sometimes
to form a majority of the audience. But the reason is, that women are
nervous and impressionable, and that they constantly require excitement.
They are not often careful in the selection of these emotions, provided
there are violent shocks, revulsions of feeling, terror, hope, surprise.
Such are the fruits of criminal trials. The head of the prisoner becomes
a shuttlecock between the advocate and magistrate. The varied chances of
such a scene offer great and real interest, effacing all the fictions of
tragedy. There, far more than on the stage, women take delight in the
dark dramas, and are the first to resent the terrible effect of the
denouements.

The beautiful women of Naples did not fail to add to the interest of the
representation of this drama, the hero of which possessed the admiration
of all and the good graces of many. Some of the upper seats were
occupied by women of high rank, who did not dare to show themselves
publicly at this strange spectacle, and came, like beggars, to enjoy a
scene which they would be ashamed to have acknowledged. Places, too, had
been reserved for the patrician women, near the bench of the judges and
advocates. These cold, careless creatures, attracted by mere curiosity,
were not the most numerous of the agitated crowd. The private friends of
the Count, his partisans, the members of the society of which he was the
chief, formed an imposing mass agitated by the most tumultuous
sentiments. Two hearts beat violently, and, though in different places,
a skilful clock-maker would have declared that one was not faster than
the other by a single second. These two hearts were full of the same
object, desired the same thing, pursued the same end. One sentiment
united both, and they were equally tortured by hope and fear.

One of these was a woman dressed in black, and having a half disclosed,
fresh and beautiful face. A fine and delicately gloved hand was placed
upon her heart as if to restrain its pulsations. Her other hand, from
time to time, was passed beneath her veil, to bear to her lips an
exquisitely embroidered and perfumed handkerchief. She sat alone on one
of the remote benches. For a long time she remained motionless, but
suddenly seeming anxious to avoid observation, she approached, as
nearly as possible, the front of the recess in which the bench on which
she had been sitting was placed. She then cast a quick, anxious glance
on the crowd which filled every portion of the court-room, returned, and
became again motionless, and apparently calm as she had been before.

The other actor in this silent scene, was a young man with a pale and
agitated countenance, which betrayed the anxiety of his mind, and the
deep interest he took in the events of the day. Yet not to the place
reserved for the judges, nor the doors through which the prisoner would
be led, did he look. Suspiciously examining every bench in the hall,
perceiving (so to speak) the mass of spectators, the long lines of which
rose one above another, he examined the most remote, even, without
perceiving what he was evidently so anxious to find. At last, by a
sudden start, he attracted the attention of those near him,--a
half-stifled cry burst from his lips; he had perceived the lonely woman
on the remote bench.

"Do you know that lady?" said a young man who sat upon the advocates'
bench.

"I know her?" said he, "not at all."

"Excuse me, you seemed surprised when you saw her."

"The fact was, I had not remarked those seats; they are real opera
boxes."

"Look again, Signor, the lady amuses herself strangely."

"I see nothing, sir," said the pale young man, who still kept his eyes
fixed upon the lady.

"Three times," said the first speaker, "she has placed her hand upon her
hair, as if she would point out to somebody a diamond pin which shines
amid her jetty locks like a star in a stormy sky."

"You think so?"

"I am sure of it, it is a signal--and see, she has taken her pin from
her hair, and is imploring. Ah! sir, what a pretty Venus hand. One kiss
on her hand, and I would die content!"

"To be sure," said the other mechanically, and without knowing what he
said.

"It is some intrigue," said the gossiper, "the women of our country go
everywhere, to the church, to the court, and to the theatre. It would be
odd if it were the judge's wife. They who always condemn others,
sometimes must atone for it."

"Speak lower, Signor, speak lower; you may compromise her."

"True, true, but by St. Januarius, see what she is about now;" he spoke
lower.

"What!" said the young man.

"She has placed her finger upon her pin, and looks this way, as if she
was interrogating you."

"You are mistaken; besides, how can you see under a veil which way she
looks?"

"There is no doubt about it, it is intended for us, and she wishes to
speak either to you or to me."

Looking towards the person of whom they spoke, for the purpose of giving
more force to his asseveration, he was amazed to see her white hand
holding the diamond pin to her lips. The scene we have been so long
describing had taken place in a few seconds. Prompt as was the reply of
the young man to the interrogatory of the woman, his companion had
perceived it. The latter being a man of good taste, and perfectly expert
in the telegraphs of love, was persuaded that he had interfered in some
love affair, and hastened to say to the hero of the adventure,

"Do not be afraid, sir, I have seen nothing. Well-bred people, such as
you and I are, never speak of secrets we thus become acquainted
with--and I am ready to maintain with my lip and with my sword, that you
have not the slightest acquaintance with the lady there."

"Thank you, sir," said the young man; "your conduct proves you to be a
gentleman."

Just then all the assemblage became full of eager expectation at the
entrance of the High Court, preceded by the President.

"The court is opened--produce the prisoner," said the Grand Judge.

The agitation became stronger. Women stood up in their chairs, men
climbed up on the banisters, and others, vexed at not being able to see,
protested against the appropriation of seats by the legs and boots of
those in front of them. The disorder was quickly put an end to by the
imperious voice of the Grand Judge, who threatened to have the hall
cleared if order were not at once restored, and the respect due to the
court maintained. All became immediately quiet; the audience sat down,
those in the rear ceased to complain, and many an eye was fixed on Count
Monte-Leone.

The Count sat in the lofty seat reserved for him, an arm-chair replaced
the stool used by vulgar criminals. The respect due to rank and birth
was religiously observed in this aristocratic tribunal. The noble, if
found guilty, was certainly sentenced to death, as the merest
commoner--the form of trial, though, always exhibited respect for
illustrious names, which was most gratifying to the people. The fact
was, at that time people believed in social superiority, had faith in
their God, king and nobles, and though they demanded that their nobles
should be punished, did not expect them to die like common people; the
difference was the difference between the rope and the sabre. That very
difference, however, between the two deaths--the terrible theatrical
effect of the latter, made a great impression on the masses.

The public accuser arose, and pronounced an eloquent harangue against
Monte-Leone, as guilty of two crimes, the nature of which the Grand
Judge had already described to him in prison.

First crime: Conspiracy against the State, in having presided at the
secret _venta_ of Pompeia, as chief of a society, having for its object
the overturning of the monarchy.

TO BE CONTINUED.

FOOTNOTES:

[25] Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by Stringer
& Townsend, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United
States for the Southern District of New-York.




From Graham's Magazine.

BALLAD OF JESSIE CAROL.

BY ALICE CAREY.


              I.

    At her window, Jessie Carol,
      As the twilight dew distils,
    Pushes back her heavy tresses,
      Listening toward the northern hills.
    "I am happy, very happy,
      None so much as I am blest;
    None of all the many maidens
      In the Valley of the West,"
    Softly to herself she whispered;
      Paused she then again to hear
    If the step of Allen Archer,
      That she waited for, were near.
    "Ah, he knows I love him fondly!--
      I have never told him so!--
    Heart of mine be not so heavy,
      He will come to-night, I know."

    Brightly is the full moon filling
      All the withered woods with light,
    "He has not forgotten surely--
      It was later yesternight!"
    Shadows interlock with shadows--
      Says the maiden, "Woe is me!"
    In the blue the eve-star trembles
      Like a lily in the sea.
    Yet a good hour later sounded,--
      But the northern woodlands sway!--
    Quick a white hand from her casement
      Thrust the heavy vines away.
    Like the wings of restless swallows
      That a moment brush the dew,
    And again are up and upward,
      Till we lose them in the blue,
    Were the thoughts of Jessie Carol,--
      For a moment dim with pain,
    Then with pleasant waves of sunshine,
      On the hills of hope again.
    "Selfish am I, weak and selfish,"
      Said she, "thus to sit and sigh;
    Other friends and other pleasures
      Claim his leisure well as I.
    Haply, care or bitter sorrow
      'Tis that keeps him from my side,
    Else he surely would have hasted
      Hither at the twilight tide.
    Yet, sometimes I can but marvel
      That his lips have never said,
    When we talked about the future,
      Then, or then, we shall be wed!
    Much I fear me that my nature
      Cannot measure half his pride,
    And perchance he would not wed me
      Though I pined of love and died.
    To the aims of his ambition
      I would bring nor wealth nor fame.
    Well, there is a quiet valley
      Where we both shall sleep the same!"
    So, more eves than I can number,
      Now despairing, and now blest,
    Watched the gentle Jessie Carol
      From the Valley of the West.


              II.

    Down along the dismal woodland
      Blew October's yellow leaves,
    And the day had waned and faded,
      To the saddest of all eves.
    Poison rods of scarlet berries
      Still were standing here and there,
    But the clover blooms were faded,
      And the orchard boughs were bare.
    From the stubble fields the cattle
      Winding homeward, playful, slow,
    With their slender horns of silver
      Pushed each other to and fro.
    Suddenly the hound upspringing
      From his sheltering kennel, whined,
    As the voice of Jessie Carol
      Backward drifted on the wind,
    Backward drifted from a pathway
      Sloping down the upland wild,
    Where she walked with Allan Archer,
      Light of spirit as a child!
    All her young heart wild with rapture
      And the bliss that made it beat--
    Not the golden wells of Hybla
      Held a treasure half so sweet!
    But as oft the shifting rose-cloud,
      In the sunset light that lies,
    Mournful makes us, feeling only
      How much farther are the skies,--
    So the mantling of her blushes,
      And the trembling of her heart,
    'Neath his steadfast eyes but made her
      Feel how far they were apart.

    "Allan," said she, "I will tell you
      Of a vision that I had--
    All the livelong night I dreamed it,
      And it made me very sad.
    We were walking slowly, seaward,
      In the twilight--you and I--
    Through a break of clearest azure
      Shone the moon--as now--on high;
    Though I nothing said to vex you,
      O'er your forehead came a frown,
    And I strove, but could not soothe you--
      Something kept my full heart down;
    When, before us, stood a lady
      In the moonlight's pearly beam,
    Very tall and proud and stately--
      (Allan, this was in my dream!--)
    Looking down, I thought, upon me,
      Half in pity, half in scorn,
    Till my soul grew sick with wishing
      That I never had been born.
    'Cover me from woe and madness!'
      Cried I to the ocean flood,
    As she locked her milk-white fingers
      In between us where we stood,--
    All her flood of midnight tresses
      Softly gathered from their flow,
    By her crown of bridal beauty,
      Paler than the winter snow.
    Striking then my hands together,
      O'er the tumult of my breast,--
    All the beauty waned and faded
      From the Valley of the West!"

    In the beard of Allan Archer
      Twisted then his fingers white,
    As he said, "My gentle Jessie,
      You must not be sad to-night;
    You must not be sad, my Jessie--
      You are over kind and good,
    And I fain would make you happy,
      Very happy--if I could!"
    Oft he kissed her cheek and forehead,
      Called her darling oft, but said,
    Never, that he loved her fondly,
      Or that ever they should wed;
    But that he was grieved that shadows
      Should have chilled so dear a heart;
    That the time foretold so often
      Then was come--and they must part!
    Shook her bosom then with passion,
      Hot her forehead burned with pain,
    But her lips said only, "Allan,
      Will you ever come again?"
    And he answered, lightly dallying
      With her tresses all the while,
    Life had not a star to guide him
      Like the beauty of her smile;
    And that when the corn was ripened
      And the vintage harvest prest,
    She would see him home returning
      To the Valley of the West.

    When the moon had veiled her splendor,
      And went lessening down the blue,
    And along the eastern hill-tops
      Burned the morning in the dew,
    They had parted--each one feeling
      That their lives had separate ends;
    They had parted--neither happy--
      Less than lovers--more than friends.
    For as Jessie mused in silence,
      She remembered that he said,
    Never, that he loved her fondly,
      Or that ever they should wed.

    'Twas full many a nameless meaning
      My poor words can never say,
    Felt without the need of utterance,
      That had won her heart away.

    O the days were weary! weary!
      And the eves were dull and long,
    With the cricket's chirp of sorrow,
      And the owlet's mournful song.
    But in slumber oft she started
      In the still and lonesome nights,
    Hearing but the traveller's footstep
      Hurrying toward the village lights.

    So, moaned by the dreary winter--
      All her household tasks fulfilled--
    Till beneath the last year's rafters
      Came the swallows back to build.
    Meadow-pinks, like flakes of crimson,
      Over all the valleys lay,
    And again were oxen ploughing
      Up and down the hills all day.
    Thus the dim days dawned and faded
      To the maid, forsaken, lorn,
    Till the freshening breeze of summer
      Shook the tassels of the corn.
    Ever now within her chamber
      All night long the lamp-light shines,
    But no white hand from her casement
      Pushes back the heavy vines.
    On her cheek a fire was feeding,
      And her hand transparent grew--
    Ah, the faithless Allan Archer!
      More than she had dreamed was true.

    No complaint was ever uttered,
      Only to herself she sighed,--
    As she read of wretched poets
      Who had pined of love and died.
    Once she crushed the sudden crying
      From her trembling lips away,
    When they said the vintage harvest
      Had been gathered in that day
    Often, when they kissed her, smiled she,
      Saying that it soothed her pain,
    And that they must not be saddened--
      She would soon be well again!
    Thus nor hoping nor yet fearing,
      Meekly bore she all her pain.
    Till the red leaves of the autumn
      Withered from the woods again;
    Till the bird had hushed its singing
      In the silvery sycamore,
    And the nest was left unsheltered
      In the lilac by the door;
    Saying, still, that she was happy--
      None so much as she was blest--
    None, of all the many maidens
      In the Valley of the West.


              III.

    Down the heath and o'er the moorland
      Blows the wild gust high and higher,
    Suddenly the maiden pauses
      Spinning at the cabin fire,
    And quick from her taper fingers
      Falls away the flaxen thread,
    As some neighbor entering, whispers,
      "Jessie Carol lieth dead."
    Then, as pressing close her forehead
      To the window-pane, she sees
    Two stout men together digging
      Underneath the church-yard trees.
    And she asks in kindest accents,
      "Was she happy when she died?"--
    Sobbing all the while to see them
      Void the heavy earth aside;
    Or, upon their mattocks leaning,
      Through their fingers numb to blow,
    For the wintry air is chilly,
      And the grave-mounds white with snow;
    And the neighbor answers softly,
      "Do not, dear one, do not cry:
    At the break of day she asked us
      If we thought that she must die;
    And when I had told her, sadly,
      That I feared it would be so,
    Smiled she, saying, ''Twill be weary
      Digging in the churchyard snow!'
    'Earth,' I said, 'was very dreary--
      That its paths at best were rough;
    And she whispered, she was ready,
      That her life was long enough.
    So she lay serene and silent,
      Till the wind, that wildly drove,
    Soothed her from her mortal sorrow,
      Like the lullaby of love."
    Thus they talked, while one that loved her
      Smoothed her tresses dark and long,
    Wrapped her white shroud down, and simply
      Wove her sorrow to this song:


              IV.

    Sweetly sleeps she: pain and passion
      Burn no longer on her brow--
    Weary watchers, ye may leave her--
      She will never need you now!
    While the wild spring bloomed and faded,
      Till the autumn came and passed,
    Calmly, patiently, she waited--
      Rest has come to her at last!
    Never have the blessed angels,
      As they walked with her apart,
    Kept pale Sorrow's battling armies
      Half so softly from her heart
    Therefore, think not, ye that loved her,
      Of the pallor hushed and dread,
    Where the winds, like heavy mourners,
      Cry about her lonesome bed,
    But of white hands softly reaching
      As the shadow o'er her fell,
    Downward from the golden bastion
      Of the eternal citadel.




[From "The Memorial," just published by Putnam.]

A STORY OF CALAIS.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "ST. LEGER."


Some years ago, I was detained unexpectedly in Calais for an entire
week. It was with difficulty I could occupy the time. For a while my
chief resource was to inspect the different faces which daily presented
themselves at the Hotel de Meurice, where one could see every variety of
features belonging to every country, age, sex, and condition. I grew
tired of this presently, for I had been on the continent a considerable
period, and had seen the human species under as many different phases as
could well be imagined. Therefore, when the third day brought with it
one of those disagreeable storms peculiar to the coast--half drizzle,
half sleet and rain--it found me weary of the amusement of attending on
new arrivals and departures, and of the nameless petty doings by which
time, in a bustling hotel, is attempted to be frittered away. A misty,
dreary, damp, offensive day! An out-and-out tempest, a thorough
right-down drenching rain, would have been in agreeable contrast with
the previous hot, dusty, sunny weather; but this--it seemed absolutely
intolerable! I was, besides, in no particular condition to be pleased. I
was neither setting out upon a tour, nor returning from one, but had
been interrupted in my progress and forced to stand still at this most
uninteresting spot. I came down, and with a bad grace, to order
breakfast.

"Garçon, Café--oeufs a la coque--biftek--rotie--vite!"

I was about repeating this in a louder tone, for the waiter seemed
engrossed with something more important than attending to my wants, when
I heard a quiet voice behind me--

"Garçon, Café--oeufs a la coque--biftek--rotie--vite!"

I turned angrily upon the speaker, doubtful of the design of this
repetition of my order.

The reader will perceive that my breakfast was a substantial one;
indeed, such a breakfast as an American, who had not so far lost himself
in "European society" as to forget his appetite, would be very likely to
call for. The idea that I was watched, doubtless made me a little
suspicious, or sensitive, or irritable; at any rate, I turned, as I have
said, angrily upon the speaker. He was a slightly made, elderly man, at
least fifty, with pleasant features, a calm appearance, and quiet
manners--a person evidently at home with the world. I recollected at the
same moment, that the stranger had been at the hotel ever since my
arrival there, although I had not, from his unobtrusive habit, given him
more than a passing notice. His appearance at once dispelled the frown
which I had brought to bear upon him; but when he answered my stare with
a respectful yet half familiar bow, I could have sworn that it came
from an old acquaintance. I need not say that I returned the salutation
cordially. At the same time my new friend rose, came towards me, and
held out his hand.

"I am quite sure," he said, "that you are an American--perhaps a New
Englander; _I_ am both; why, then, should not countrymen beguile an
unpleasant day in company? Excuse me--I did hear your order just now,
and as it suited my own taste, I proposed to myself that we should
breakfast together;--we may trust to François; he has been here, to my
knowledge, more than twenty years, and pleases every body."

I pressed the hand of my new acquaintance--acknowledged myself to be
from New Hampshire--gave my name, and received in return--"Philip
Belcher."

We sat down to the same table, and very soon François appeared with a
well-served breakfast.

"Pray," said I, "what _can_ one do to relieve the monotony of this
intolerable place? If the country about were agreeable--nay, if it were
bearable! but as it is, I repeat, what is to be done?"

"Done!" said Mr. Belcher, rather sharply, "a hundred things! Put on your
Mackintosh and overshoes; come with me to the Courtgain, and see the
fishermen putting to sea, their boats towed out by their wives and
daughters; a sight, I will be bound, you have not beheld, although you
may have coursed Europe over, and been at Calais half a dozen times."

Mr. Belcher proceeded in this vein, detailing many things that could be
seen to advantage even in Calais; but as he suggested nothing which
interested me so much as he himself did, I had the boldness to tell him
so, and that my curiosity was excited to know more of him.

"There is nothing in my history that can amuse a stranger; indeed, it is
without incident or marvel. To be sure, I am alone in the world, but I
have never been afflicted, or suffered misfortune, within my
recollection. My parents died when I was very young; my father and
mother were both only children; a small property which the former left
was carefully invested, and faithfully nursed during my minority, by a
scrupulous and honest lawyer, in no way connected with us, but whom my
father named as executor in his will, and my guardian. Ill health
prevented my getting on at school. I can't say that I was an invalid,
but my constitution was delicate and my temperament nervous. I tried to
make some progress in the study of a profession, under my excellent
guardian, but was forced to give it up as too trying to my nerves. The
excitement of a court-room I could not endure for a day, much less for a
lifetime. Before I was twenty-five, my income had so much increased that
I could afford to travel. I have gained in this way my health, which,
however, would become impaired should I return to a sedentary life; so,
as a matter of necessity, I have wandered about the world. You see my
story is soon told."

I found Mr. Belcher was not in the habit of talking about himself, and I
liked him the better for it. Without pressing for a more particular
account, I led the conversation to treat of the different countries he
had visited, referring, by the way, to some principal objects of
attraction. Here I touched an idiosyncrasy of my new friend.

"I never formed," he said, "any distinct 'plan' of travel. I never 'did'
Paris in eight days, nor the gallery of the Louvre in half an hour, as
they have been done by an acquaintance. I never opened a guide-book in
my life; I never employed a _commissionere_, a _valet_, a _courier_, a
_cicerone_, or a _dragoman_. My pleasure has been to let the
remarkable--the beautiful--the interesting--burst upon me without
introduction, and I have found my account in it. I have quitted the Val
d'Arno, turned off from the Lake of Como, passed to the wrong side of
Lake Leman and its romantic castles, pursuing my way, regardless of
these well-worn attractions, while I beheld rarer--at least familiar
scenes--and enjoyed with zest what was fresh and unhackneyed. No
everlasting 'route'--no mercenary and dishonest landlords--no troops of
travellers, travelling that they may become 'travelled'--but in place of
all this, I saw every thing naturally--the country in its
simplicity--the inhabitants in their simplicity--while, I trust, I have
preserved my own simplicity. Indeed, I rather prefer what your tourist
calls an 'uninteresting region.'"

"For that reason," I remarked, pleasantly, "you have come here to Calais
to spend a few weeks; you must enjoy the barren sand-plain which extends
all the way from this to St. Omer. How picturesque are those pollards
scattered along the road, with here and there a superannuated windmill,
looking like an ogre with three arms and no legs: then, to relieve the
dreariness of the place, you have multitudes of miserable cabins,
grouped into more miserable villages, to say nothing of the chateaux of
dingy red, in which painters of the brick-dust school so much delight.
Really, Mr. Belcher, you will have a capital field here!"

My new acquaintance shook his head a little seriously, as if deprecating
further pleasantry.

"You are like the rest of them, I fear," he remarked, "a surface
traveller; at least you will force me to believe so if you go on in this
way. But come," he continued, "the storm threatens to last the morning;
if you wish, I will help to make away with part of it, by recounting a
little adventure which happened to me hard by those very pollards, which
you are pleased to abuse so freely."

It is needless to add that I joyfully assented to the proposal, and was
soon seated in Mr. Belcher's room before a cheerful fire--for he had
managed even in Calais to procure one--when he commenced as follows:

"I think it was during the first season I was on the continent, that I
visited St. Omer. After spending a day or two in that place, I concluded
to walk to Calais, and set out one morning accordingly.

"The weather was fine; but after I had been a few hours on the road, the
wind began to blow directly in my face, and soon enveloped me in a cloud
of sand from which there seemed no escape, and which threatened actually
to suffocate me. To avoid this I left the highway, but keeping what I
supposed to be in the general direction of the road, I struck out into
the adjacent fields. There was nothing for a considerable distance to
repay me for this _detour_, except that I thus was rid of the sand. The
country was barren and uninteresting, the cottages little better than
hovels, and the whole scene uninviting. But I pushed on, not a whit
discouraged; indeed my spirits rose as the prospect darkened, and like a
valiant general invading a country for the purpose of conquering a
peace, I resolved in some way to force an adventure before I reached
Calais. I trudged along for hours, stopping occasionally for a draught
of sour wine and a bit of bread. I made no inquiry about the main road,
for I preferred to know nothing of it. In this way I proceeded, until it
was almost night, when I spied, some half a mile distant, a cluster of
trees surrounding a small tenement. I turned at once toward the spot,
and coming up to it, found a cottage not differing in size or structure
from those I had seen on the way, except that it appeared even more
antiquated. It was, however, in perfect repair, and finely shaded by a
variety of handsome trees, and flanked on one side by a neat garden. The
door stood open and I entered. There was no one in the room. I called,
but received no answer. I strayed out into the garden and walked through
it. At the lower end was a small inclosure covered over at the top as if
to protect it from the weather, and fenced on each side with open
wire-work, looking through which, I beheld a small grave, overspread
with mosses, and strewed with fresh-gathered white flowers. It bore no
name or inscription, except the following simple but pathetic line;

    "Enfant cherie, avec toi mes beaux jours sont passes.--1794."

Surprised by the appearance of fresh flowers upon a tomb which had been
so long closed over its occupant, I turned, hoping to find some
explanation of the mystery, in what I might see elsewhere, But there was
nothing near to attract one's attention, nor was any person within
sight.

"After taking a glance around, I returned to the cottage, and walking
in, sat down to wait the arrival of the occupants. In a few minutes, I
heard voices from the side of the house opposite the garden, and soon
two persons, of the peasant class, evidently husband and wife, came in.
The man was strong and robust, with the erect form and martial
appearance acquired only by military service, and which the weight of
nearly sixty years had not seemed to impair. His countenance was frank
and manly, and his step firm. The woman appeared a few years younger,
while the air of happy contentment which beamed in her face, put the
ordinary encroachments of time at defiance. Altogether, I had never seen
a couple so fitted to challenge observation and interest. They both
stopped short on seeing me.

"I hastened to explain my situation, as that of a belated traveller,
attracted by the sight of the cottage; and told them I was both hungry
and tired, and desirous of the hospitality of their roof. I was made
welcome at once.

"Louis Herbois, for that was his name, gave me a bluff, soldierly
greeting, while Agathe, his wife, smiled her acquiescence. Supper was
soon laid; I ate with a sharpened appetite, which evidently charmed my
host, who encouraged me at intervals, as I began to flag.

"Supper concluded, I was glad to accept the offer of a bed--for I was
exhausted with fatigue.

"I had been so engrossed with the repast, that curiosity was for the
time suspended, and it was not again in action until I had said
good-night to my entertainers, and found myself in the room where I was
to sleep. This was an apartment of moderate size; the furniture was old
and common, but neither dilapidated nor out of order; the bed was neatly
covered; around the room were scattered several books of interest, and
in one corner was a neat writing-desk, of antiquated appearance, with
silver mounting, and handsomely inlaid; while some small articles of
considerable value placed on a table in another corner, indicated at
least occasional denizens very different from the peasant and his wife.
Yet this could not be a rural resort for any family belonging to the
town. There were but two other apartments in the house, and these were
occupied. Nevertheless, I reasoned, these things can never have been
brought here by the worthy people I have seen; and then--the little
grave in the garden? who has watched the tomb for so many years,
preserving the moss so green and the flowers so fresh--cherishing an
affection which has triumphed over time? How intense, how sacred, how
strange must be such devotion! I decided that some persons besides my
host were concerned, in some way, in the history of the little dwelling,
and with this conclusion I retired; and so, being fatigued by my day's
travel, I soon fell asleep.

"I awoke about sunrise. Going to the window, I put aside the curtain,
and looked out into the garden. Louis Herbois and his wife were there,
renewing the garlands with fresh flowers, and watering the moss which
was spread over the grave. It must be their own child, thought I, and
yet--no--I will step out and ask them, and put an end to the mystery. I
met the good people coming in: they inquired if I had rested well, and
said that breakfast would soon be ready. 'You do not forget your little
one,' I said to the old fellow, at the same time pointing towards the
inclosure. 'Monsieur mistakes,' replied he, crossing himself devoutly.
'Some dear friend, I suppose?' He looked at me earnestly: '_On voit
bien, Monsieur, que vous etes un homme comme il faut._ After you have
breakfasted, you shall hear the story. 'Ah, there is then a story,' said
I to myself, as I followed Louis Herbois into the cottage, where Agathe
had preceded us, and sat down to an excellent breakfast. When it was
concluded I asked for the promised narration. 'Let me see,' said Louis,
'Agathe, how long have we been married?' Agathe, matron as she was,
actually blushed at the question, yet answered readily, without stopping
to compute the time. 'Yes; true; very well;' resumed Louis. 'You must
know, Monsieur, that my father was a soldier, and enrolled me, at an
early age, in the same company with himself. Having been detailed, soon
after, on service to one of the provinces, I was so severely wounded
that I was thought to be permanently unfitted for duty, and was
honorably dismissed with a life pension. Owing to the care and skill of
a famous surgeon who attended me, and whom I was fortunate enough to
interest, I was at last cured of my wounds, and very soon after I
wandered away here, for no better reason, I believe, than that Agathe
was in the neighborhood; for we had known each other from the time we
were children. Very soon she and I were married, and we took this little
place, and were as blessed as possible.

"'In the mean time, great changes were going on at Paris. The revolution
had begun, and soon swept every thing before it. But it did not matter
with us. We rose with the birds, and went to rest with the sun, and no
two could have been happier: am I not right, Agathe?' The old lady put
her hand affectionately upon the shoulder of her husband, but said
nothing. 'And we have never ceased being happy: we are always happy, are
we not Agathe?' The tears stood in Agathe's eyes, and Louis Herbois went
on. 'Well, the revolution was nothing to me, they were mad with it, and
killed the king, and slew each other, until our dear Paris became a
bedlam--still, as I said, it was nothing to me. To be sure, I went
occasionally to Calais, where I heard a new language in every body's
mouth, and much talk of _Les hommes suspects, Mandats d'arrets_, with
shouts of _Abas les aristocrates_, and _Vive la Republique_--but I did
not trouble myself about any of it; Agathe and I worked together in the
field, and in the garden, and in the house--always together--always
happy. One morning we went out to prune our vines, the door of the house
was open, just as you found it yesterday; why should we ever shut the
door? we were honest, and feared nobody; we stood--Agathe here on this
side holding the vine; I, with my knife, on the other side, bending over
to lop a sprout from it; when down came two young people--lad and
lass--upon us, as fast as they could run; out of breath--agitated--and
as frightened as two wood-pigeons. The young man flew to me, and
catching hold of my arm begged me, _pour l'amour de Dieu_, to secrete
his wife somewhere--anywhere--out of the reach of the _gens-d'armes_,
who were pursuing them. I felt in ill-humor, for I had cut my finger
just then; besides, I did not relish the mention of the _gens-d'armes_,
so I replied plainly, that I would have nothing to do with persons who
were _suspects_. Why should I thrust my own neck into the trap? they had
better go about their business, and not trouble poor people. Bah! such a
speech was not like Louis Herbois! but out it came, Heaven knows how,
and no sooner had I finished than up runs the young creature, and
seizing my moustache she cries, "My brave fellow, hie away, and crop off
all this; none but _men_ have a right to it; God grant you were not born
in France; no Frenchman could give such an answer to a man imploring
protection for his wife. Look at my husband--did he ask aid for himself?
Do you think he would turn you off in this way, had you sought his
assistance to save _her_?" pointing to Agathe, who stood trembling all
the while like an aspen. "Ah! you have made a mistake, I see you repent,
be quick; what will you do with us?" And she held me tight by the
moustache until I should answer, while the husband stared upon me in a
sort of breathless agony. I took another look at the little creature,
while she kept fast hold of me, and saw that she was----_eh bien_! I see
you understand me,' said Louis, interrupting himself, as he glanced
towards his wife. 'My heart knocked loud enough, believe me, and there
the dear little thing stood, her hand, as I was telling you, clenched
fast in my moustache--ha! ha! ha!--and looking so full into my eyes,
with her own clear bright blue gazers. "_Mon Dieu--mon Dieu!_ Agathe we
must help these _pauvres enfans_." "You _are_ a Frenchman--I thought
so," cried the little one, letting go my moustache and clapping her
hands. "Oh! hasten, hasten, or we are lost!" "All in good time," said I,
"for--" "No no," interrupted she, "they are almost upon us: in a moment
we may be captured, and then Albert, oh, Albert, what will become of
you?" So saying, she threw her arms about her husband, and clung to him
as if nothing should part them. "_Voilà bien les femmes_; to the devil
with my caution; come with me, and I will put you in a place where the
whole Directory shall not find you, unless they pull my cottage down
stone by stone." I hurried them to the house, and hid them in a private
closet which, following out my soldier-like propensities, I had
constructed in one end of the room, in a marvellously curious way. Not a
soul but Agathe knew of it, and I disliked to give up the secret, but I
hurried the young people in, and arranged the place, and went back to
the vines and cut away harder than ever. In two minutes, up rode three
dragoons with drawn swords, as fine looking troopers as one would ask
for. I saw them reconnoitre the cottage, then spying me, they came
towards us at a gallop. "What have you done with the Comte and Comtesse
de Choissy?" said the leading horseman. "You had better hold your
tongue," I retorted, "than be clattering away at random. What the devil
do I know of the Comte and Comtesse de Choissy, as you call them?"
"Look, you," said the dragoon, laying his hand on my shoulder; "the
persons for whom I seek, are escaped prisoners; they were seen to come
in the direction of this cottage; our captain watched them with his
glass, and he swears they are here." "And look you, Monsieur Cavalier, I
am an old soldier, as you see, if scars and hard service can prove one,
and it seems to me you should take an old soldier's word. I have said
all I have to say; there is my house, the doors are open--look for
yourself: come Agathe, we must finish our morning's work." So saying, I
set at the vines harder than ever. I looked neither one way nor the
other, but kept clipping, clipping, thus standing between the dragoons
and poor Agathe, who was frightened terribly, although she tried to seem
as busy as I. The rider who was spokesman, stared for a minute without
saying a word, and then broke out into a loud laugh. "An old soldier
indeed!--a regular piece of steel! one has but to point a flint at you,
and the sparks fly." He turned to his men: "Our captain was mistaken,
evidently; this is a _bon camarade_; we may trust to him. We will take a
turn through the cottage and push forward." With that he bid me good
morning, and after looking around the house the party made off.

"'"Well, Agathe, what's to be done now?" said I, when the dragoons were
fairly out of sight. "We have made a fine business of it." "Ah, Louis,"
said she, "let us not think of the danger; we have saved two innocent
lives, for innocent I know they are: what if we _have_ perilled our own?
Heaven will reward us." Nothing more was said, though we both thought a
great deal, but we kept at our work as if nothing had happened. It was a
long time before I dared let the fugitives come from their hiding-place;
for I was afraid of that cursed glass of _Monsieur le Capitaine_. When I
did open it I found my prisoners nearly dead with suspense. We held a
council as to the best means for their concealment--for who would have
had the heart to turn the young people adrift?--and it was finally
settled that the comte and his wife should dress as peasants, and take
what other means were necessary to alter their appearance, that they
might pass as such without suspicion. This was no sooner resolved than
carried out. Agathe was as busy as a bee, and in a few minutes had a
dress ready for Victorine--we were to call her by her first name--who
was now as lively as a creature could be, running about the room,
looking into the glass, and making fun of her husband, who had in the
mean time pulled on some of my clothes. After this, the young comte
explained to me that his father had died a short time before, leaving
him his title and immense estates, which, however, should he die
childless, would pass to an uncle, a man unscrupulous and of bad
reputation. This uncle was among the most conspicuous of the
revolutionists. Through his agency the Comte de Choissy and his young
wife, with whom he had been but a twelvemonth united, were arrested, and
shortly after sentenced to death. They escaped from prison and the
guillotine by the aid of a faithful domestic, and were almost at Calais
when they discovered that they were pursued. By leaving the road and
sending the carriage forward, they managed to gain the few moments which
saved them. Their principal fear now was from the wicked designs of the
uncle, for the Directory had too much on their hands to hunt out escaped
prisoners who were not specially obnoxious. For some days the young
people did not stir from the house, but were ever ready to resort to
their hiding-place on the first alarm. There were, however, no signs of
the _gens-d'armes_ in the neighborhood. I went to Calais in a little
while, and found, after much trouble, the old servant who was in the
carriage when the comte and his wife deserted it. He had been permitted
to pass on without being molested, so alert were the soldiers in pursuit
of the fugitives; and he had brought the few effects which he could get
together for his master on leaving Paris to a safe place; and to prevent
suspicion, he himself had taken service with a respectable _traiteur_.
By degrees, I managed to bring off every thing belonging to my guests,
and we fitted up the little room in which you passed the night, as
comfortably as possible, without having it excite remark from any one
casually entering it. "Albert" was industrious, aiding me at my work, no
matter what I was doing, and "Victorine," too, insisted upon helping my
wife in whatever she did, here, there, and everywhere, the liveliest,
the merriest, the most innocent creature I ever set eyes upon. But for
all that, one could see that time hung heavy on the comte. He became
thoughtful and _triste_, and like every man out of his proper place, he
was restless and uneasy. Not so the dear wife: she declared she had
never been so happy, that she had her Albert all to herself: wanted
nothing more: if she but knew how to requite _us_, she would not wish
the estates back again--she would live where she was, forever. Then her
husband would throw his arms around her, and call her by endearing
names, which would make the little thing look so serious, but at the
same time so calm and satisfied and angel-like, that it seemed as if the
divine soul of the Holy Virgin had taken possession of her, as she
turned her eyes up to her husband and met his, looking lovingly
down....'

"Here Louis Herbois stopped, and felt for his handkerchief, and blew his
nose until the walls resounded, and wiped his eyes as if trying to
remove something that was in them, and proceeded--

"'Any one to have seen her at different times would have sworn I had two
little women for guests instead of one: so full of fun and mischief and
all sorts of pranks; so lively, running hither and yon, teasing me,
amusing Agathe, rallying her husband; but on the occasions I mention, so
subdued, so thoughtful so--different from her other self: _Ciel!_ she
had all our hearts.

"'Several months passed, much in the same manner. The comte by degrees
gained courage, and often ventured away from the house. Twice he had
been to the town, but his wife was in such terror during his absence,
that he promised her he would not venture again. He continued meanwhile
moody and ill at ease; it would be madness to leave his place of
concealment; this he knew well enough; still he could not bring himself
to be patient. Do not think, Monsieur, that the Comte de Choissy failed
to love his wife just as ever: that was not it at all. A man is a man
the world about; the comte felt as any body would feel who finds himself
rusting away like an old musket, which has been tossed aside into some
miserable cock-loft. I had seen the world and knew how it was with him.
But what could be done? In Paris things were getting worse and worse. At
first we had _le Côté Gauche; les Montagnards; les Jacobines_: then came
_les Patriotes de '93_; and after that, _les Patriotes par excellence_,
who were succeeded by _les Patriotes plus patriotes que les patriotes_:
and then the devil was let loose in mad earnest; for what with _les
Bonnets-Rouges, les Enragés, les Terroristes, les Beveurs de Sang_, and
_les Chevaliers du Poignard_, Paris was converted into a more fitting
abode for Satan than his old-fashioned country residence down below.
_Pardon Monsieur!_ I am getting warm; but it always stirs my blood when
I recall those days. I see, too, I am getting from my story. Well: I
tried to comfort the comte with such scraps of philosophy as I had
picked up in my campaigns--for in the army, you must know, one learns
many a good maxim--but I did little by that. The sweet young comtesse
was the only one who could make him cheerful, and smile, and laugh, and
seem happy in a natural way, for he loved her as tenderly as a man ever
loved; besides, the comtesse had now a stronger claim than ever upon her
husband. I fancy I can see her sitting _there_, her face bent over,
employing her needle upon certain diminutive articles, whose use it is
very easy to understand. Do you know, when she was at work on _these_,
that she was serious--never playful--_always_ serious; wearing the same
expression as when she received from her husband a tender word? No:
nothing could make her merry then. I used to sit and wonder how the
self-same person could become so changed all in one minute. How the
comte loved to look at her! his eyes were upon her wherever she was; not
a word she spoke, not a step she took, not a motion of hers escaped him.
Well, the time came at last, and by the blessing of God and the Holy
Virgin, as beautiful a child as the world ever welcomed, was placed by
my Agathe in the arms of the comtesse. Perhaps,' added Louis Herbois, in
a lower voice, while speech seemed for the instant difficult, 'perhaps I
have remembered this the better, because God willed it that we ourselves
should be childless. When Agathe took the infant and laid it in the
mother's bosom, the latter regarded it for a moment with an expression
of intense fondness; then, raising her eyes to her husband, who stood
over her, she laughed for joy.

"'Mother and daughter prospered apace. The little girl became the pet of
the house; we all quarelled for her; but each had to submit in turn. How
intelligent! what speaking eyes! what knowing looks! what innocently
mischievous ways! mother and child! I wish you could have seen them. I
soon marked a striking change: the young comtesse was now never herself
a child. A gentle dignity distinguished her--new-born, it would
seem--but natural. I am making my story a long one, but I could talk to
you the whole day in this way. So, the months passed on--and the
revolution did not abate; and the comte was sick at heart, and the
comtesse was, as ever, cheerful, content, happy, and the little one
could stand alone by a chair and call out to us all, wherever we were.
The comte, notwithstanding his promise, could not resist his desire to
learn more of what was going on than I could inform him of. I seldom
went away, for when hawks are abroad, it is well to look after the
brood: and as I had nothing to gain, and every thing to lose, by
venturing out, I thought it best to stay at home. The comte, on the
contrary, was anxious to know every thing. He had made several visits to
Calais, first obtaining his wife's consent, although the agony she
suffered seemed to fill his heart with remorse; this, however, was soon
smothered by his renewed and unconquerable restlessness. One morning he
was pleading with her for leave to go again, answering her expressions
of fear with the fact that he had been often already without danger.
"There is always a first time," said my Agathe, who was in the room.
"And there is always a last time, too," said I, happening to enter at
that moment. I did not know what they were talking about, and the words
came out quite at random. The comtesse turned pale. "Albert," she said,
"content yourself with your Victorine and our babe: go not away from
us." The infant was standing by its mother's knee, and without
understanding what was said, she repeated, "Papa--not go. The comte
hesitated: "What a foreboding company--croakers every one of you--away
with such presentiments of evil. Go I will, to show you how foolish you
have all been;" and with that he snatched a kiss from his wife and the
little one, and started off. The former called to him twice, "Albert,
Albert!" and the baby in imitation, with its little voice said, "Papa,
papa!" but the comte did not hear those precious tones of wife or child,
and in a few minutes he was out of sight. I cannot say what was the
matter with me; my spirit was troubled; the comtesse looked so
desponding, and Agathe so _triste_, that I knew not what to do with
myself. I did nothing for an hour, then I spoke to Agathe: "Wife, I am
going across to the town." She said, "Ah, Louis, I almost wish you would
go. See how the comtesse suffers. I am sure I shall feel easier myself."
Then I told her to say nothing of where I had gone, and away I went. It
did not take me long, for it seemed as if I ought to hasten. I got into
the town, and having walked along till I came to the Rue de Paris, I was
about turning down it when I saw a small concourse of people on the
opposite corner; I crossed over and beheld the Comte de Choissy in the
custody of four _gens-d'armes_, and surrounded by a number of
"citizens." My first impulse was to rush to his assistance, but I
reflected in time, and contented myself with joining the crowd. One of
the soldiers had gone for a carriage, and the remainder were questioning
him; the comte, however, would make no reply, except, "You have me
prisoner, I have nothing to say, do what you will." I waited quietly for
an opportunity of showing myself to him, but he did not look toward me.
Presently I said to the man next me, "Neighbor, you crowd something too
hard for good fellowship." The comte started a very little at the sound
of my voice, but he did not immediately look up. Shortly he raised his
head and fixed his eyes on me for an instant only, and then turned them
upon others of the company with a look as indifferent as if he were a
mere spectator. What a courageous dog! by Heaven, he never changed an
iota, nor showed the slightest possible mark of recognition; still, I
knew well enough he did recognize me, but I got no sign of it, neither
did he look towards me again. Soon the carriage came up and he was
hurried in by the _gens-d'armes_, and off they drove! I made some
inquiries, and found that the comte was known, and that they were taking
him to Paris.

"'It seems that he had been observed by a spy of the uncle during one of
his visits to the town, and although he was not tracked to his home--for
he was always very cautious in his movements--yet a strict watch was
kept for his next appearance. I went to see the old domestic, but he
knew not so much as I. My steps were next turned homeward. What a walk
that was for me? How could I enter my house the bearer of such tidings!
"_Bon Dieu! ah, bon Dieu_," I exclaimed, "_ayez pitie!_" and I stopped
under a hedge and got down on my knees and said a prayer, and then I
began crying like a child. I said my prayer again, and walked slowly on;
then I saw the house, and Agathe in the garden, and the comtesse with
the little one standing in the door--looking--looking. I came
up--"Albert--where is Albert? where is my husband?" I made no answer.
"Tell me," she said, almost fiercely, taking hold of my arm. I opened my
mouth and essayed to speak, but although my lips moved I did not get out
a syllable. I thought I might whisper it, so I tried to do so, but I
could not whisper! The comtesse shrieked, the child began to cry, and
Agathe came running in. "Come with me," said I to my wife, and I went
into our chamber and told her the whole, and bid her go to the comtesse
and tell the truth, for I could not. My dear Agathe went out half dead.
I sat still in my chamber; presently the door opened, and the comtesse
stood on the threshold. Her eyes were lighted up with fire, her
countenance was terribly agitated, her whole frame trembled: "And you
are the wretch base enough to let him be carried off to be butchered
before your eyes without lifting voice or hand against it, without
interposing one word--one look, one thought! Cowardly recreant!" she
screamed, and fell back in the arms of my wife in violent convulsions;
the infant looked on with wondering eyes and followed us as we laid the
comtesse on the bed, and then put her little hand on her mother's cheek,
and said softly, "Mamma." In a few minutes the comtesse began to
recover. She opened her eyes with an expression of intense pain, gave a
glance at Agathe and me, and then observing her child, she took it, and
pressed it to her breast and sobbed. Shortly she spoke to me, and oh,
with what a mournful voice and look: "Louis, forgive me; I said I knew
not what; I was beside myself. You have never merited aught from me but
gratitude; will you forgive me?" I cried as if I were a baby. Agathe too
went on so that I feared she could never be reconciled to the dreadful
calamity--for myself, I was well nigh mad. I could but commend the
comtesse to the Great God and hasten out of her sight. Five wretched and
wearisome days were spent. The character of the comtesse meantime
displayed itself. Instead of sinking under the weight of this sorrowful
event, she summoned resolution to endure it. She was devoted to her
child; she assumed a cheerful air when caressing it; she even tried to
busy herself in her ordinary occupations; but I could not be deceived, I
knew the iron had entered her soul. All these heroic signs were only
evidences of what she really suffered. Did I not watch her closely? and
when the comtesse, folding her infant to her breast, raised her eyes to
heaven as if in gratitude that it was left to her, I fancied there was
an expression which seemed to say, "Why were not _all_ taken?" The
little one, unconscious of its loss, would talk in intervals about
"papa;" and when the mother, pained by the innocent prattle, grew sad
of countenance, the child would creep into her lap, and putting its
slender fingers upon her eyes, her lips, and over her face, would say,
"Am I not good, mamma? I am not naughty; I am good, mamma."

"'Five days were passed in this way; on the morning of the sixth, we
were startled by the comtesse, who, in manifest terror came to us
holding her child, which was screaming as if suffering acute pain: its
eyes were bloodshot and gleamed with an unnatural brilliancy, its pulse
rapid, and head so hot that it almost burned me to feel of it. Presently
it became quiet for a few minutes, but soon the screams were renewed.
Alas! what could we do? Agathe and I tried every thing that occurred to
us, but to no purpose: the pains in the head became so intense that the
poor thing would shriek as if some one was piercing her with a knife,
then she would lay in a lethargy, and again start and scream until
exhausted. Not for a moment did the comtesse allow her darling to be out
of her arms. For two days and two nights she neither took rest nor food;
absorbed wholly in her child's sufferings, she would not for a moment be
diverted from them. Agathe too watched night and day. On the third night
the child appeared much easier, and the comtesse bade Agathe go and get
some rest. She came and laid down for a little time and at last fell
asleep; when she awoke it was daylight; she knocked at the door of the
comtesse--all was still;--she opened it and went in. The comtesse,
exhausted by long watching, had fallen asleep in her chair, with her
little girl in her arms. The child had sunk into a dull lethargic state
never to be broken. Alas! Monsieur--alas! the little one was dead!
Agathe ran and called me. I came in. What a spectacle!... Which of us
should arouse the unhappy comtesse? or should we disturb her? Were it
not better gently to withdraw the dead child and leave the mother to her
_repose_? We thought so. I stepped forward, but courage failed me. I did
not dare furtively to abstract the precious burden from the jealous arms
which even in slumber were clasped tightly around it. Oh! my God!...
While we were standing the comtesse opened her eyes: her first motion
was to draw the child closer to her heart--then to look at us--then at
the little one. She saw the whole. She had endured so much that this
last stroke scarcely added to her wretchedness. She allowed me to take
the child, and Agathe to conduct her to the couch and assist her upon
it. She had held out to the point of absolute exhaustion, and when once
she had yielded she was unable to recall her strength. She remained in
her bed quite passive, while Agathe nursed her without intermission. I
dug a little grave in the garden yonder, and Agathe and I laid the child
in it. The mother shed no tears; when from her bed she saw us carry it
away she looked mournfully on, and as we went out she whispered, "_Mes
beaux jours sont passés_." Soon the grave was filled up and flowers
scattered over it, and we came back to the cottage. As I drew near her
room I beheld the comtesse at the window, supporting herself by a chair,
regarding the grave with an earnest longing gaze which I cannot bear to
recall. As I passed, her eye met mine,--such a look of quiet enduring
anguish, which combined in one expression a world of untold agonies! Oh!
I never could endure a second look like that. I rushed into the house:
Agathe was already in. I called to her to come to me, for I could not
enter _that_ room again. "Wife," I said, "I am going to Paris. Do not
say one word. God will protect us. Comfort the comtesse. Agathe, if I
_never_ return, remember--it is on a holy errand--adieu." I was off
before Agathe could reply. I ran till I came to the main road, there I
was forced to sit down and rest. At last I saw a wagoner going forward;
part of the way I rode with him, and a part I found a faster conveyance.
At night I walked by myself.

"'I had a cousin in Paris, Maurice Herbois, with whom in old times I had
been on companionable terms. He was a smith, and had done well at the
trade until the revolution broke out, since then I had heard nothing
from him. He was a shrewd fellow, and I thought he would be likely to
keep near the top of the wheel. But I had a perilous time after getting
into Paris before I could find him. I learned as many of the _canaille_
watchwords by heart as I could. I thought they would serve me if I was
questioned; but my dangers thickened, until I was at last laid hold of,
for not giving satisfactory answers, as _un homme sans aveu_, and was on
the point of being conveyed to a _maison d'arret_, when I mentioned the
name of Maurice Herbois as a person who could speak in my favor. "What,"
said one, "_le Citoyen Herbois_?" "The very same," said I, "and little
thanks will you get from him for slandering his cousin with a charge of
_incivisme_." There was a general shout at this, and off we hurried to
find Maurice. I had answered nothing of whence I came or where I was
going, which was the reason I had at length got into trouble. I knew
Maurice to be a true fellow, revolution or no revolution, and so
determined to hold my peace till I should meet him. I found that he had
been rapidly advanced by the tide of affairs, which had set him forward
whether he would or no. Indeed Maurice was no insignificant fellow at
any rate. The noise of the men who carried me along, soon brought him
out. I spoke first: "Maurice, my dear cousin, I am glad to find you; but
before we can shake hands, you must first certify my--loyalty," I was
about to say, but bit my tongue, and got out "_civisme_." "My friends,"
said Maurice, "this is my cousin Louis Herbois, once a valiant soldier,
now a brave and incorruptible _citoyen_. He is trustworthy; he comes to
visit me; I vouch for him." This was so satisfactory, that we were
greeted with huzzas, and then I went in with Maurice. I need not tell
you how much passed between us. In short, we talked till our tongues
were tired. I found my cousin as I expected, true as a piece of his own
steel. He had been carried along, in spite of himself, in the course of
revolution, and had become a great man as the best chance of saving his
head. I told him my whole story, and the object of my visit. "A
fruitless errand, Louis," said he; "I know the case; and where personal
malice is added to the ordinary motive for prosecution, there is no
escape. Poor fellow, I wish I could help him; but the uncle, he is in
power: ah! there is no help for it." Suddenly a new thought struck him.
"Louis, did you come by the Hotel de Ville?" "Yes." "What was going on?"
"I looked neither right nor left; I don't know." "Well, what did you
hear?" "I heard a cry of _Vive Tallien!_ with strange noises, and
shouts, and yells; and somebody said that the National Guards were
disbanding, and had forsaken Robespierre; and the people were
surrounding the Hotel de Ville." "Then, _Dieu merci_, there is hope. You
are in the nick of time; let us out. If Robespierre falls, you may
rescue the comte. He is in the Rue St. Martin; in the same prison is
Madame de Fontenay, the _friend_ of Tallien, whom Robespierre has
incarcerated. The former will proceed thither as soon as Robespierre is
disposed of, to free _Madame_; there will be confusion and much tumult.
I know the keeper: I must be cautious; but I will discover where the
comte and the lady are secured. Then I will leave you with the jailer;
the crisis cannot be delayed another day. Wait till you hear them
coming, then shout _Vive Tallien!_ run about, dance around like a crazy
man--hasten the jailer to release _Madame_, and do _you_ manage to
rescue the comte--then be off instantly; don't come here again; strike
into the country while the confusion prevails. Come; let us go this
minute." And I did go. I found Maurice's introduction potent with the
keeper, and what was better, I found the keeper to be an old companion
in arms, who had belonged to the same company with me. We embraced; we
were like two brothers; nothing could have happened better. I learned
from him all I cared to know. I staid hour after hour; just as I was in
despair at the delay, I heard the expected advance. I found my
fellow-soldier understood what it meant. I began to shout _Vive
Tallien!_ as loud as I could cry. In a fit of enthusiasm I snatched the
keys from the hands of the keeper, as if to liberate the lady, while my
comrade opened the doors to the company. I hied first to the comte's
room. In one instant the door was unlocked. "Quick!" I whispered;
"follow me--do as I do. Shout, huzza; jump this way and that--but stick
close to me." In another minute I had unbolted the door of Madame de
Fontenay, making as much noise as I could get from my lungs--the comte
keeping very good time to my music. So, while we were shouting _Vive
Tallien!_ at the top of our voices, Tallien himself rushed in with a
large party. I took the opportunity to gain the street, and without so
much as thanking my comrade for his attentions, I glided into an
unfrequented lane, the comte at my heels; and I did not stop, nor look
around, nor speak, till I found myself under cover of an old windmill
near St. Denis, where I used to play when I was a boy. There I came to a
halt, and seizing the comte in my arms, I embraced him a thousand times.
I look some provisions from my pouch, which my cousin had provided, and
bade him eat, for we should stand in need of food. We then proceeded,
avoiding the main road, and getting a ride whenever we could, but never
wasting a moment--not a moment. I told the comte what had happened, and
that he must hasten if he would see his wife alive. At last we came near
our house. The comte could scarcely contain himself; he ran before me: I
could not keep up with him. How my heart was filled with
foreboding!--how I dreaded to come nearer!--but apprehension was soon at
an end. There was my little cottage, and in the doorway, leaning for
support against the side, stood the comtesse, gazing on vacancy--the
picture of despair and desolation. At the sight of her husband, she
threw out her hands and tried to advance: she was too feeble, and would
have fallen had he not the same moment folded her in his arms.

"'_Bien Monsieur!_' continued Louis Herbois, after clearing his voice,
'the worst of the story is told. The comtesse was gradually restored to
health, and the comte was content to remain quietly with us till the
storm swept past; but the lady never recovered the bright spirits which
she before displayed, and the comte himself could never speak of the
little one whom he kissed for the last time on that fatal morning,
without the deepest emotion. It seems to have been destined that this
should be their only affliction. The uncle was beheaded in one of the
sudden changes of parties the succeeding year, and in due time the comte
regained his estates. Sons and daughters were born to them, and their
family have grown up in unbroken numbers. The comte and comtesse can
scarcely yet be called old, their health and vigor remain, and they
enjoy still those blessings which a kind Providence is pleased to bestow
on the most favored. But the Comtesse de Choissy will never forget the
child which lies _there_. Twice a year, accompanied by the comte, she
visits the cottage. She lays with her own hands fresh flowers over the
little grave, and waters the moss which overspreads it; and the tears
stand in her eyes when she looks upon the spot where we buried her
_first-born_. We have engaged that every morning we will renew the
flowers, and preserve the mosses always green. It is a holy office,
consecrated by holy feelings. Ah! life is a strange business: we may not
be always serious, we cannot be always gay. God grant, Monsieur, that in
heaven we may all be happy!'

"I have given you the whole story," said Mr. Belcher, after a short
pause; "but look, the sun is out; let us go to the Courtgain."




[From Fraser's Magazine.]

LIFE AT A WATERING-PLACE.

OLDPORT SPRINGS.

BY CHARLES ASTOR BRISTED.


"Hold on a minute," said Harry, as they were about to take the stage,
after a very fair three-o'clock dinner at Constantinople (the
Occidental, not the Oriental city of that name); "there goes an
acquaintance of ours whom you must know. He has arrived by the Westfield
train, doubtless."

Away sped Benson after the acquaintance, arm-in-arm with whom he shortly
returned, and, with all the exultation of an American who has brought
two lions into the same cage, introduced M. le Vicomte Vincent Le Roi to
the honorable Edward Ashburner.

Ashburner was rather puzzled at Le Roi, whose personal appearance did
not in any way answer, either to his originally conceived idea of a
Frenchman, or to the live specimens he had thus far met with. The
Vicomte looked more like an Englishman, or perhaps like the very best
kind of Irishman. He was a middle-sized man, of thirty or thereabout,
with brown hair and a florid complexion; and very quietly dressed, his
clothes being neither obtrusively new nor cut with any ultra-artistic
pretension. Except his wearing a moustache and (of course) not speaking
English, there was nothing continental about his outward man, or the
first impression he gave of himself. Fortunately, he was also bound for
the Springs, so that Ashburner would have abundant opportunity to study
his character, if so disposed.

The stage in which our tourists were to embark was not unlike a French
diligence, except that it had but one compartment instead of three; in
which compartment there were three seats, and on each seat more or less
room for three persons, and two more could sit with the driver. All the
baggage was carried on the top. The springs were made like
coach-springs, or C-springs, as they are always called in America (just
as in England a pilot-coat is called a P-jacket), only they were upright
and perpendicular to the axletree instead of curving; and the leathern
belts connected with them, on which the carriage swung, were of the
thickest and toughest description. As the party, with the addition of Le
Roi, amounted to eight, Benson managed, by a little extra expenditure of
tin and trouble, to secure the whole of one vehicle, and for the still
greater accommodation of the ladies and child, the gentlemen were to sit
on the box two at a time by turns. Benson's first object was to get hold
of the reins, for which end he began immediately to talk around the
driver about things in general. From the price of horses they diverged
to the prospects of various kinds of business, and thence slap into the
politics of the country. The driver was a stubborn Locofoco, and Benson
did not disdain to enter into an elaborate argument with him. Ashburner,
who then occupied the other box-seat, was astonished at the man's
statistical knowledge, the variety of information he possessed upon
local topics, and his accurate acquaintance with the government and
institutions of his country. It occurred to him to prompt Benson,
through the convenient medium of French, to sound him about England and
European politics. This Harry did, not immediately, lest he might
suspect the purport of their conversational interlude, but by a
dexterous approach to the point after sufficient preliminary; and it
then appeared that he had lumped "the despotic powers of the old world"
in a heap together, and supposed the Queen of England to be on a par
with the Czar of Russia as regarded her personal authority and
privileges. However, when Benson set him right as to the difference
between a limited and an absolute monarchy, he took the information in
very good part, listened to it attentively, and evidently made a mental
note of it for future reference.

The four-horse team was a good strong one, but the stage with its load
heavy enough, and the roads, after the recent storm, still heavier,
besides being a succession of hills. The best they could do was to make
six miles an hour, and they would not have made three but for a method
of travelling down-hill, entirely foreign to European ideas on the
subject. When they arrived at the summit there was no talk of putting on
the drag, nor any drag to put on, but away the horses went, first at a
rapid trot, and soon at full gallop; by which means the equipage
acquired sufficient momentum to carry it part of the way up the next
hill before the animals relapsed into the slow walk which the steepness
of the ascent imposed upon them. Indeed this part of the route would
have been a very tedious one (for the country about was almost entirely
devoid of interest), had it not been for Le Roi, who came out in great
force. He laughed at every thing and with every body; told stories, and
good ones, continuously, and only ceased telling stories to break forth
into song. In fine, he amused the ladies so much, that when he took his
turn on the box they missed him immediately, and sent Benson outside
again on the first opportunity; whereat the Vicomte, being very much
flattered, waxed livelier and merrier than ever, and kept up a constant
fire of jest and ditty. As to Ashburner, who had a great liking for
fresh air, and an equal horror of a small child in a stage-coach, he
remained outside the whole time; for which the fair passengers set him
down as an insensible youth, who did not know how to appreciate good
company; until the evening becoming somewhat chilly by comparison with
the very hot day they had undergone, both he and Harry took refuge in
the interior, and a very jolly party they all made.

While they were outside together, Benson had been giving Ashburner some
details about Le Roi--in fact, a succinct biography of him; for be it
noted, that every New-Yorker is able to produce off-hand a minute
history of every person, native or foreign, at all known in society: for
which ability he is indebted partly to the inquisitive habits of the
people, partly to their communicative disposition, partly to their
remarkable memory of small particulars, and partly to a fine imagination
and power of invention, which must be experienced to be fully
appreciated. Benson, we say, had been, telling his friend the story of
his other friend or acquaintance; how he was of good family and no
fortune; how he had written three novels and three thousand or more
_feuilletons_; how he had travelled into some out-of-the-way part of
Poland, where no one had ever been before or since, and about which he
was, therefore, at liberty to say what he pleased; how, besides his
literary capabilities, such as they were, he played, and sang, and
danced, and sketched--all very well for an amateur; how he was
altogether a very agreeable and entertaining man, and, as such, was
supposed to have been sent out by a sort of mutual-benefit
subscription-club, which existed at Paris for the purpose of marrying
its members to heiresses in different countries. Ashburner had once
heard rumors of such a club in Germany, but was never able to obtain any
authentic details concerning it, or to determine whether it was any
thing more than a traveller's traditionary legend. Even Benson was at
fault here, and, indeed, he seemed rather to tell the club part of the
story as a good joke, than to believe it seriously himself.

As they approached the termination of their journey, their talk
naturally turned more and more on the Springs. The Vicomte was in
possession of the latest advices thence; the arrivals and expected
arrivals, and the price-current of stock: that is, of marriageable young
gentlemen, and all other matters of gossip; how the whole family of the
Robinsons was there in full force, with an unlimited amount of Parisian
millinery; how Gerard Ludlow was driving four-in-hand, and Lowenberg had
given his wife no end of jewelry; how Mrs. Harrison, who ought not to
have been (not being of our set), nevertheless _was_ the great lioness
of the season; how Miss Thompson, the belle expectant, had renounced the
Springs altogether, and shut herself up at home somewhere among the
mountains--all for unrequited love of Hamilton White, as was charitably
reported; last, but not least, how Tom Edwards had invented six new
figures for the German cotillon. Ashburner did not at first altogether
understand the introduction of this personage into such good company,
supposing from his familiar abbreviation and Terpsichorean attributes
that he must be the fashionable dancing-master of Oldport, or perhaps of
New-York; but he was speedily given to understand that, on the contrary,
Mr. Edwards was a gay bachelor of good family and large fortune, who, in
addition to gambling, intriguing, and other pleasant little
propensities, had an insatiable passion for the dance, and was
accustomed to rotate morning, noon, and night, whenever he was not
gambling, &c. as aforesaid. "And," continued Benson, "I'll lay you any
bet you please, that the first thing we see on arriving at our hotel,
will be Tom Edwards dancing the polka; unless, indeed, he happen to be
dancing the Redowa."

"Very likely," said Mrs. Benson, "seeing we shall arrive there at ten
o'clock, and this is a ball-night."

Both Harry and his wife were right; they arrived at half-past ten, just
as the ball was getting into full swing. On the large portico in front
of the large hotel opened a large room, with large windows down to the
floor,--the dining-room of the establishment, now cleared for dancing
purposes. All the idlers of Oldport, male and female, black and white,
congregated at these windows and thronged the portico; and almost into
the very midst of this crowd our party was shot, baggage and all. While
Ashburner was looking out of a confused heap of people and luggage, he
heard one of the assistant loafers say to another, "Look at Mr.
Edwards!" Profiting by the information not originally intended for him,
he followed the direction of the speaker's nose, and beheld a little
showily-dressed man flying down the room with a large showily-dressed
woman, going the _poursuite_ of the Redowa at a terrific rate. So that,
literally, the first thing he saw in Oldport was Tom Edwards dancing.
But there was no opportunity to make a further study of this, "one of
the most remarkable men among us," for the party had to look up their
night quarters. Benson had dispatched in advance to Mr. Grabster,
proprietor of the Bath Hotel at Oldport Springs, a very particular
letter, stating the number of his party, the time he meant to be there,
and the number of rooms he wanted, and had also sent his horses on
ahead; but though the animals had arrived safe and found stable-room,
there was no preparation for their master. Ashburner, at the request of
the ladies, followed Benson into the office (for the Bath Hotel being,
nominally at least, the first house in the place, had its bar-room and
office separate), and found Harry in earnest expostulation with a
magnificently-dressed individual, whom he took for Mr. Grabster himself,
but who turned out to be only that high and mighty gentleman's head
book-keeper. The letter had been dispatched so long beforehand that,
even at the rate of American country posts, it ought to have
arrived, but no one knew any thing about it. Both the young men
suspected--uncharitably, perhaps, but not altogether unnaturally--that
Mr. Grabster and his aids, finding a prospect of a full season, had not
thought it worth their while to trouble themselves about the
application, or to keep any rooms. Ashburner suggested trying another
hotel, but the roads were muddy, and vehicles scarce at that time of
night, so that altogether there seemed a strong probability of their
being compelled to "camp out" on the portico. But it was not in Benson
"to give it up so." He possessed, as we have already hinted, that
faculty so alarmingly common in his country, which polite people call
oratory, and vulgar ones the "gift of the gab;" and he was not the man
to throw away the opportunity of turning any of his gifts to account.
Warming with his subject, he poured out upon the gorgeously-attired Mr.
Black such a flood of conciliatory and expostulatory eloquence, that
that gentleman absolutely contrived to find some accommodation for them.
The ladies, child, and servants were huddled together into one tolerably
large room, in the third story. Benson had a sort of corner-cupboard in
the fourth, that might, perhaps, have accommodated a mouse with a small
family; and to Ashburner and Le Roi were assigned two small chambers in
the fifth. As to the baggage, that was all piled up in the office, with
the exception of a few indispensable articles. Supper was out of the
question, there being no room to eat it in because of the dancers. The
ladies did not want supper; they only regretted not being able to unpack
their trunks, and dress for the ball then and there going on; their eyes
lighted up at the sound of the music, and their little feet began to
beat the floor incontinently. The gentlemen took a drink all round by
way of substitute for something more solid. Ashburner had mounted to his
dormitory--no small journey--and was sitting on his bed, wishing he had
some contrivance for pulling off all his clothes at once without the
trouble of removing them piece by piece, when he heard in the passage
the voice of Le Roi, _quantum mutatus ab illo_! The Vicomte had sworn up
all his own language, and was displaying a knowledge of English
expletives that quite surprised his fellow-traveller. On investigation,
the cause of his wrath proved to be this: a semi-civilized Irish waiter
had shown him to No. 296, in accordance with Mr. Black's directions. But
Mr. Black, in the multiplicity of his affairs, had forgotten that No.
296 was already tenanted, to wit, by a Western traveller, who did,
indeed, intend to quit it by an early stage next morning, but had not
the least idea of giving up his quarters before that time; and
accordingly, as if from a presentiment that some attempt would be made
to dislodge him, had, in addition to the ordinary not very strong
fastenings of the door, so barricaded it with trunks and furniture, that
it could have stood a considerable amount of siege. The waiter had gone
off, leaving Le Roi to shift for himself. Bells were scarce in the upper
stories of the Bath Hotel, nor was there any light throughout the long
corridor, except the one tallow candle which his useless guide had
deposited on the floor. Utterly upset at the idea of having to tramp
down four pair of stairs and back again in search of accommodation, the
unlucky Gaul was seeking a momentary relief in the manner above stated,
when Ashburner came to the rescue. His bed happened to be rather a large
one--so large, comparatively, that it was a mystery how it had ever
found its way into the little room, the four walls of which seemed to
have grown or been built up around it; and this bed he instantly
proposed to share with Le Roi for the night. The Frenchman _mercied_,
and couldn't think of such a thing for five minutes, edging into the
room and pulling off his coat and boots all the time; then he gave a
glorious exemplification of _cessanta causa_, for all his rage vanished
in a moment, and he was the same exuberantly good-natured and profusely
loquacious man that he had been all day. On he streamed in a perpetual
flow of talk long after both were in bed, until Ashburner began to feel
as a man might to whom some fairy had given a magical instrument, which
discoursed sweet music at first, but could never be made to stop
playing. And when at length the Vicomte, having lighted on the subject
of women, poured out an infinity of adventures with ladies of all
countries, of all which stories Vincent Le Roi was, of course, the hero,
his fellow-traveller, unable to help being disgusted at his vanity and
levity, turned round to the wall, and without considering whether he was
acting in accordance with _bienseance_, fell fast asleep in the midst of
one of the most thrilling narratives.

When Ashburner awoke next morning, the first thing he was conscious of
was Le Roi talking. It required very little exercise of the imagination
to suppose that he had been going on uninterruptedly all night.
Afterwards he became aware of a considerable disturbance, evidently
originating in the lower story of the house, but sufficiently audible
all over it, which he put down to the account of numerous new arrivals.
By the time they had completed their toilettes (which did not take very
long, for the room being just under the roof, was of a heat that made it
desirable for them to evacuate it as soon as possible), Benson made his
appearance. He had obtained possession of his baggage, and arrayed
himself in the extreme of summer costume:--a white grass-cloth coat,
about the consistency of blotting-paper, so transparent that the lilac
pattern of his check shirt was distinctly visible through the arms of
it; white duck vest, white drilled trousers, long-napped white hat, a
speckled cravat to match his shirt, and highly varnished shoes, with red
and white striped silk stockings,--altogether very fresh and
innocent-looking. He came to show them the principal spring, which was
not far from the hotel--just a pleasant walk before breakfast, though
it was not likely they would meet many people so early, on account of
last night's ball.

"I am afraid your quarters were not very comfortable," said Harry, as
the three strolled arm-in-arm down a sufficiently sandy road; "but we
shall have better rooms before dinner to-day."

"The house must be very full," Ashburner remarked; "and were there not a
great many arrivals this morning? From the noise I heard, I thought at
least fifty people had come."

"No; I glanced at the book, and there were not a dozen names on it.
Hallo!" and Benson swore roundly in Spanish, apparently forgetting that
his friend understood that language.

Ashburner looked up, and saw meeting them a large Frenchman and a small
Irish boy. The Frenchman had an immense quantity of hair of all sorts on
his face, nearly hiding his features, which, as what was visible of them
had a particularly villainous air, was about the best thing he could
have done to them; and on his head he carried a something of felt, which
indisputably proved the proposition that matter may exist without form.
The Irish youth sported a well-meant, but not very successful attempt at
a moustache, and a black cloth cap pitched on one side of his head. In
other respects, they were attired in the usual costume of an American
snob; that is to say, a dress-coat and full suit of black at seven in
the morning. Ashburner noticed that Benson spit ostentatiously while
passing them; and after passing he swore again, this time in downright
English.

Le Roi had seen in his acquaintance with European watering-places, a
goodly amount of scamps and blacklegs, and Ashburner was not without
some experience of the sort, so that they were not disposed to be
curious about one blackguard more or less in a place of the kind; but
these two fellows had such a look of unmitigated rascality, that both
the foreigners glanced inquiringly at their friend, and were both on the
point of asking him some questions, when he anticipated their desire.

"God forgive me for swearing, but it is too provoking to meet these
loafers in respectable quarters. The ancients used to think their
journey spoiled if they met an unclean animal on starting, and I feel as
if my whole stay here would go wrong after meeting these animals the
first thing in the first morning."

"_Mais qu'est ce qu'ils sont donc, ces vaut-riens?_" asked Le Roi.

"The Frenchman is a deported convict, who is doing us the honor to serve
out his time here; the Irishman is a refugee, I believe. They have come
here to report for _The Sewer_."

They cooled their virtuous indignation in the spring, and were
returning.

"Hallo, Benson! Hallo! I thought that was you!" shouted somebody, a
quarter of a mile off, from the hotel steps.

"Ah," said Harry, "I understand now why you heard so much noise this
morning. Bird Simpson has arrived."

Mr. Simpson, popularly known as "the bird" (_why_ no one could tell
exactly, but people often get such names attached to them for some
inexplicable reason), came on a half-run to meet them. He was a tall,
showy, and rather handsome, though not particularly graceful man; very
flashily got up in a blue cutaway with gilt buttons, wide blue stripes
down the sides of his white trousers, a check shirt of enormous crimson
pattern, and a red and white cravat; no waistcoat, and wide embroidered
braces, the work of some lady friend. He seemed to have dressed himself
on the principle of the tricolor, and to have carried it out in his
face--his cheeks being very red, his eyes very blue, and his hair very
white. After having pump-handled Benson's arm for some time, he made an
attack on Le Roi, whom he just knew by name, and inquired if he had just
come _de l'autre côte_, meaning the other side of the Atlantic,
according to a common New-York idiom; but the Vicomte not unnaturally
took it to mean from the other side of the road, and gave a
corresponding answer in English as felicitous as Mr. Simpson's French.
Then he digressed upon Ashburner, whom he saw to be an Englishman, in so
pointed a manner, that Benson was obliged to introduce them; and the
introduction was followed by an invitation on Simpson's part to the
company to take a drink, which they did, somewhat to the consternation
of the Frenchman, who knew not what to make of iced brandy and mint
before breakfast. Then Simpson, having primed himself for the morning
meal, set about procuring it, and his departure visibly relieved Benson,
who was clearly not proud of his acquaintance. Le Roi also went after
his breakfast, taking care to get as far as possible from the corner of
the room where Simpson was.

"There," said Benson, "is a very fair specimen of 'second set.' He is B,
No. 1, rather a great man in his own circle, and imports French goods.
To hear him talk about French actresses and eating-houses, you would
think him a ten-years' resident of that city, instead of having been
there perhaps four times in his life, a week each time. But you know we
Americans have a wonderful faculty of seeing a great deal in a little
time. Just so with Italy; he was there two months, and professes to know
all about the country and the people. But he doesn't know the set abroad
or at home. Sometimes you meet him at a ball, where he does his duty
about supper time; but you will never see him dancing with, or talking
to, the ladies who are 'of us.' Nevertheless, they will avail themselves
of his services sometimes, when they want to buy silks at wholesale
prices, or to have something smuggled for them; for he is the
best-natured man in the world. And, after all, he is not more given to
scandal than the exquisites, and is a great deal honester and truer.
Once I caught a fever out on the north-eastern boundary, and had not a
friend with me, or any means of getting help. This man nursed me like a
brother, and put himself to no end of trouble for me until we could
fetch Carl on. I would certainly rather have been under such an
obligation to some other men I know than to Simpson; but having
incurred it, I do not think it can be justly paid off with a
'glad-to-know-you-when-I'm-at-Bath-again' acquaintance; and I feel bound
to be civil to him, though he does bother me immensely at times with his
free-and-easy habits,--walking into my parlor with his hat on and cigar
in his mouth; chaffing me or my wife in language about as elegant as an
omnibus driver's; or pawing ladies about in a way that he takes for
gallantry. Talking of ladies, I wish mine would show themselves for
breakfast. Ah, here are two men you must know; they are good types of
two classes of our beaux--the considerably French and the slightly
English--the former class the more numerous, you are probably aware. Mr.
White, Mr. Ashburner--Mr. Ashburner, Mr. Sumner."

Hamilton White was a tall, handsome man, some few years on the wrong
side of thirty, broader-shouldered and deeper-chested than the ordinary
American model, elaborately but very quietly dressed, without any
jewelry or showy patterns. There was something very Parisian in his
get-up and manner, yet you would never take him for a Frenchman, still
less for a Frenchified-Englishman. But he had the look of a man who had
lived in a gay capital, and quite fast enough for his years: his fine
hair was beginning to go on the top of his head, and his face wanted
freshness and color. His manner, slightly reserved at first, rapidly
warmed into animation, and his large dark eyes gave double expression to
whatever he said. His very smallest talk was immensely impressive. He
would tell a stranger that he was happy to make his acquaintance with an
air that implied all the Spaniard's _mi casa a la disposicion de usted_,
and meant about as much; and when you saw him from the _parquet_ of the
Opera talking to some young lady in the boxes, you would have imagined
that he was making a dead set at her, when in fact he was only uttering
some ordinary meteorological observation. Apart from his knack of
looking and talking sentiment, he had no strongly-marked taste or hobby:
danced respectably, but not often; knew enough about horses to pick out
a good one when he wanted a mount for a riding-party; drank good wine
habitually, without being pedantic about the different brands of it; and
read enough of the current literature of the day to be able to keep up a
conversation if he fell among a literary circle. He was not a marrying
man, partly because his income, sufficient to provide him with all
bachelor luxuries, was not large enough to support a wife handsomely;
partly because that a man should tie himself to one woman for life was a
thing he could not conceive, much less practice: but he very much
affected the society of the softer sex, and was continually amusing
himself with some young girl or young wife. He rather preferred the
latter--it was less compromising; still he had no objection to victimize
an innocent _débutante_, and leave her more or less broken-hearted. (It
must be observed, however, for the credit of American young ladies, that
they are not addicted to dying of this complaint, so often fatal in
novels; many of Hamilton's victims had recovered and grown absolutely
fat upon it, and married very successfully.) Wherever there was a
_fiancée_, or a probable _fiancée_, or a married belle with an uxorious
husband,--in short, wherever he could make himself look dangerous and
another man jealous or foolish, he came out particularly strong; at the
same time, being adroit and not over belligerent, he always contrived to
stop or get out of the way in time if the other party showed open signs
of displeasure.

Frank Sumner was rather shorter than White, rather younger, and rather
more dressed. He had the same broad shoulders, which in America, where
most of the beaux are either tall and thin or short and thin, find favor
with the ladies; just as blondes create a sensation in southern
countries, because they are so seldom seen. In almost all other
particulars, the two men were totally unlike, and Sumner might have
passed for an English gentleman put into French clothes. He was reserved
in his conversation, and marked in the expression of his likes and
dislikes. With no more intention of marrying than White, he took care
never to make love to any woman, and if any woman made love to him, he
gave her no encouragement. He was not richer than White, not so
good-looking, and certainly not so clever, but more respected and more
influential; for the solid and trustworthy parts of his character,
backed by a bull-dog courage and an utter imperturbability, got the
better in the long run of the other's more brilliant qualities.

Some of these things Ashburner observed for himself, some of them Benson
told him after White and Sumner, who did _not_ ask the stranger to take
a drink, had passed on. He had noticed that the latter's manner, though
perfectly civil, was very cold compared with the _empressement_ which
the former had exhibited.

"He doesn't like your countrymen," said Harry, "and nothing can vex him
more than to be told, what is literally the truth, that he resembles an
Englishman in many respects. I believe it is about the only thing that
_can_ vex him. What an immovable man it is! I have seen a woman throw a
lighted cigar into his face, and another cut off one end of his
moustache (that was when we were both younger, and used to see some
queer scenes abroad), and a servant drop half a tureen of soup over him,
and none of these things stirred him. Once at Naples, I recollect, he
set our chimney on fire. Such a time we had of it; every one in the
house tumbling into our room, from the _piccolo_, with no coat and half
a pair of pants, to the proprietor in his dressing-gown and
spectacles--women calling on the Virgin, men running after water--and
there sat Frank, absolutely radiating off so much coolness, that he
imparted a portion of it to me, and we sat through the scene as quietly
as if they had only been laying the cloth for dinner. A rum pair they
must have thought us! The day before we had astonished the waiter by
lighting brandy over a pudding. I suppose we left them under the
impression that the Anglo-Saxons had a propensity to set fire to every
thing they came in contact with."

"It is very odd that so many of your people should be afraid of
resembling us, and take the French type for imitation in preference to
the English. The original feeling of gratitude to France for having
assisted you in the war of independence, does not seem sufficient to
account for it."

"Certainly not; for that feeling would naturally diminish in succeeding
generations, whereas the Gallicism of our people is on the increase,--in
fact its origin is of comparatively recent date. But we really _are_
more like the French in some senses. Politically the American is very
Anglo-Saxon. So he is morally; but socially, so far as you can separate
society from morals, he is very French. The Englishman's first idea of
his duty in society is non-interference; the Frenchman's and American's,
amusement. An Englishman does not think it his business to endeavor to
amuse the company in which he happens to be; an Englishwoman does not
think it her duty to make any attempt to entertain a man who is
introduced to her. A Frenchman will rather talk trash, _knowing that he
is talking trash_, than remain silent and let others remain silent. So
will an American. But an Englishman, unless he is sure of saying
something to the point, will hold his tongue. The imperturbable
self-possession of the English gentleman is generally understood by us,
any more than it is by the French. His minding his own business is
attributed to selfish indifference. The picture that half our people
form of an Englishman is, a heavy, awkward man, very badly dressed,
courageous, and full of learning; but devoid of all the arts and graces
of life, and caring for nobody but himself. It is a great pity that
there is not a better understanding; but, unfortunately, the best
Englishmen who come here seldom stay long enough to be appreciated, and
the best Americans who go to England seldom stay there long enough to
appreciate the country. Whenever an American chances to stay some years
among you, he ends by liking England very much; but it is very seldom
that he has any provocation, unless compelled by business, to stay some
years, for acquaintances are harder to make in London than in any other
city, while it has less resources for a man without acquaintances than
any other city--besides being so dear. But here come the ladies at last;
now for breakfast."

Breakfast was the best managed meal at the Bath Hotel. The _table
d'hôte_ began at half past seven, but fresh relays of rolls and eggs,
ham, chops, and steaks, were always to be obtained until half-past ten
or eleven by those who had interest with the waiters. After breakfast
the company went to work promenading. There was a very wide hall running
through the hotel, and up and down this, and up and down the two
broadest sides of the portico, all the world walked--"our set" being
conspicuous from the elegance of their morning costume. One side of the
portico was devoted to the gentlemen and their cigars, and there
Ashburner and Benson took a turn, leaving with the ladies Le Roi and a
small beau or two who had joined them. Suddenly Benson pressed his
friend's arm.

"Here comes _really_ 'one of the most remarkable men'--the very god of
the dance; behold Tom Edwards!"

Ashburner beheld a little man, about five feet and a half high. If he
could have stood on his bushy black beard it would have lifted him full
three inches higher. Besides this beard he cherished a small moustache,
very elaborately curling-tongsed at the ends into the shape of half a
lyre. Otherwise he had not much hair on his head, but what he had was
very carefully brushed. His features were delicate, and not without
intelligence, but terribly worn by dissipation. To look at his figure,
you would take him for a boy of nineteen; to look at his face, for a man
of thirty: he was, probably, about half way between the two ages. Every
thing about him was wonderfully neat: a white coat and hat like
Benson's; cream-colored waistcoat and pearl-colored trousers;
miraculously small feet in resplendent boots, looking more like a doll's
extremities than a man's; a fresh kid glove on one of his little hands,
and on the other a sapphire ring, so large that Ashburner wondered how
the little man could carry it, and thought that he should, like
Juvenal's dandies, have kept a lighter article for summer wear. Then he
had a watch-chain of great balls of blue enamel, with about two pounds
of chatelaine charms dependent therefrom; and delicate little enamelled
studs, with sleeve-buttons to match. Altogether he was a wonderful lion,
considering his size. Even Benson had not the courage to stop and
introduce his friend until he passed the great dancer more than once, in
silent admiration, and with a respectful bow.

And as they passed he detailed to Ashburner, with his usual biographical
accuracy, the history of Tom Edwards, which he had begun in the
stage-coach. Tom had been left in his infancy with a fortune and without
a father, to be brought up by relatives who had an unlucky preference of
Parisian to American life. Under their auspices and those of other
Mentors, whom he found in that gay capital, his progress was so rapid,
that at a very early age he was known as the banker of two or three
distinguished _lorettes_, and the pet pupil of the renowned Cellarius.
Indeed, he had lived so much in the society of that gentleman and his
dancing girls, that he took the latter for his standard of female
society, and had a tendency to behave to all womankind as he behaved to
them. To married ladies he talked slightly refined _double-entendre_: to
young ladies he found it safest to say very little, his business and
pleasure being to dance with them; if they did not dance, he gave them
up for uncivilized beings, and troubled himself no further about them.
Of old people of either sex he took no further notice than to order them
out of the way when they impeded the polkers, or dance bodily over them
when they disobeyed. Still it must be said, in justice to him, that
dancing was not his sole and all-absorbing pursuit. Having an active
turn of mind and body, he found leisure for many other profitable
amusements. He was fond of that noble animal, the horse, gambled
habitually, ate and drank luxuriously,--in short, burned his candle at a
good many ends: but the dance was, though not his sole, certainly his
favorite passion; and he was never supremely happy but when he had all
the chairs in the house arranged in a circle, and all the boys and women
of "our set" going around them in the German cotillon, from noon to
midnight at a (so-called) _matinée_, or from midnight to daybreak at a
ball.

"And now," said Benson, "I think my cousin Gerard must be up by this
time; he and Edwards are generally the last to come down to breakfast.
Perhaps we shall find him at the ten-pin alley; I see the ladies are
moving that way."

To the ten-pin alley they went. Down stairs, men were playing, coat off
and cigar in mouth; while others waited their turn, with feet
distributed in various directions. Above, all was decorum; the second
story being appropriated to the ladies and their cavaliers. And very
fond of the game the ladies were, for it afforded them an opportunity of
showing off a handsome arm, and sometimes a neat ankle. Gerard was not
there; they had to wait some time for alleys: altogether Benson was a
little bored, and whispered to his friend that he meant to console
himself by making a little sensation.

"By your play?" asked Ashburner.

"No, but by taking off my coat."

"Why, really, considering the material of your coat, I think it might as
well be on as off. Surely you can't find it an impediment?"

"No, but I mean to take it off for fun,--just to give the people here
something to talk about; they talk so much about so little. They will be
saying all over by to-morrow that Mr. Benson was in the ladies' room
half undressed."

After an hour's rolling they turned hotelwards again, and as they did so
a very spicy phaeton, with gray wheelers and black leaders, drove up to
the door. A tall, handsome man, handed out a rather pretty and very
showily-dressed little woman; and Ashburner recognized Gerard Ludlow.

It was not the first time he had seen Gerard. They had travelled half
over Greece together, having accidentally fallen upon the same route. As
the Honorable Edward had all the national fear of compromising himself,
and Gerard was as proud and reserved as any Englishman, they went on
together for days without speaking, although the only Anglo-Saxons of
the party. At last, Ludlow having capsized, horse and all, on a
particularly bad road, Ashburner took the liberty of helping to pick him
up, and then they became very good friends. Gerard was at that time in
the full flush of youth and beauty, and the lion of the Italian capital
which he had made his headquarters, where it was currently reported that
a certain very desirable countess had made desperate love to him, and
that a rich nobleman (for there are _some_ rich noblemen still left on
the continent) had tried very hard to get the handsome foreigner for a
son-in-law. Knowing this and some other similar stories about him,
Ashburner was a little curious to see Mrs. Ludlow, and confessed himself
somewhat disappointed in her; he found her rather pretty, and certainly
not stupid; lively and agreeable in her manners, like most of her
countrywomen; but by no means remarkably distinguished either for beauty
or wit. Benson explained to him that his cousin "had married for tin."

"But Ludlow always talked of his father as a rich man, and his family as
a small one. I should have supposed money about the last thing he would
have married for."

"Yes, he had prospects of the best; but he wanted ready money and a
settled income. He was on a small allowance; he knew the only way to get
a handsome one was to marry, and that the more money his wife brought,
the more his father would come down with. So as Miss Hammersley had
eight thousand a year, old Ludlow trebled it; and Gerard may build as
many phaetons as he likes. I don't mean to say that the match is an
uncongenial one--they have many tastes alike; but I do mean to say that
love had nothing to do with it."

"Well, I used to think that in your unsophisticated Republican country,
people married out of pure love; but now it looks as if the
fashionables, at least, marry for money about as often as we do."

"They don't marry for any thing else," replied Benson, using one of the
slang phrases of the day.[26]

While the two friends were gossiping, Sumner and Le Roi had carried off
the ladies; and an assemblage of juvenile beaux and young girls, and
some few of the younger married women, had extemporized a dance in the
largest of the public parlors, which they kept up till two o'clock, and
then vanished--to dress, as it appeared, for the three o'clock dinner.
Benson's party had obtained their apartments at last,--a parlor and two
bedrooms for the ladies on the first floor, and chambers for the three
men in the second story, of a recently built wing, popularly known as
"the Colony," where most of the gay bachelors, and not a few of the
young married men, slept. At dinner the ladies presented themselves as
much dressed as they could be without being _décolletées_; and the men
had doffed their grass-cloth or linen garments, and put on dress-coats,
or, at least, black coats. Ashburner was a good-looking young man
enough, and had sufficient vanity to take notice, in the course of the
morning, that he was an object of attention; at dinner many looks were
directed towards him, but with an expression of disappointment which he
did not exactly understand at the time, but afterwards learned the
reason of from his friend. Though making no pretensions to the title of
exquisite, he happened to have a very neat shooting-jacket,
unexceptionable in material and fit; and "our set," having approved of
this, were curious to see what sort of costume he would display at
dinner. When, therefore, he came to table,

    Avec les mêmes bas et la même cravate,

and the shooting-jacket unchanged, they were visibly disappointed.
Benson, to keep him in countenance, had retained his white coat, on the
plea of its being most wanted then, as they were in the hottest part of
the day, which excuse did not enable him to escape some hints from his
sister-in-law, and a direct scolding from his wife.

Our Englishman thought the dinner hardly worth so much dressing for. The
dishes, so far as he had an opportunity of judging, were tolerably
cooked; but their number was not at all proportionate to that of the
guests; in short, it was a decided case of short commons, and the
waiters were scarce to match. There were but two parties well attended
to. One was the family of an old gentleman from the South, who was part
owner of the building, and who, besides this advantage, enjoyed the
privilege of letting his daughter monopolize the piano of the public
parlor half the day, to sing Italian _arias_ shockingly out of tune,
much to the disgust of the boarders generally, and especially of the
dancing set, who were continually wanting the instrument themselves for
polking purposes. The other was----the reporters of _The Sewer_; who had
a choice collection of dishes and waiters always at their command. To be
sure they had their end of the table to themselves, too, for not a
person sat within three chairs of them on either side; but this they, no
doubt, accepted as a complimentary acknowledgment of their formidable
reputation. Every one else was famished. The married women grumbled, and
scolded their husbands--those convenient scapegoats of all
responsibility; the young ladies tried to look very sentimental, and
above all such vulgar anxiety as that of meat and drink, but only
succeeded in looking very cross; the men swore in various dialects at
the waiters whenever they could catch them flying, and the waiters being
used to it didn't mind it; and Ashburner, as a recollection of a former
conversation flitted across his mind, could not help letting off a _tu
quoque_ at his friend.

"I say, Benson," quoth he, "is this one of the hotels that are so much
better than ours, and that our people ought to take a lesson from?"

Harry looked half-a-dozen bowie-knives at him. Besides the natural
irritation produced by hunger, his wife and sister-in-law had been
whipping him over each other's shoulders for the last half-hour, and now
this last remark made him ready to boil over. For a few seconds his face
wore an expression positively dangerous, but in another moment the
ridiculous side of the case struck him. With a good-humored laugh he
called for some wine--the only thing one was sure to get, as it was an
extra, and a pretty expensive one, too, on the hills--and they drowned
their hunger in a bumper of tolerable champagne.

The fact was, that the Bath Hotel had been a most excellent house three
or four summers previous, and the "enterprising and gentlemanly"
landlord (to borrow an American penny-a-liner's phrase) having made a
fortune, as he deserved, had sold out his lease, with the good-will and
fixtures of the establishment, to Mr. Grabster. The latter gentleman was
originally a respectable farmer and market-gardener in the vicinity of
Oldport; and having acquired by his business a fair sum of money, was
looking about for some speculation in which to invest it. He commenced
his new profession with tolerably good intentions, but having as much
idea of keeping a hotel as he had of steering a frigate, and finding a
balance against him at the end of the first season from sheer
mismanagement, he had been endeavoring ever since to make up for it by
screwing his guests in every way. People naturally began to complain.
Two courses were open to him--to improve his living, or to tip an editor
to puff him. He deemed the latter course the cheaper, and bought _The
Sewer_, which, while uttering the most fulsome adulation of every thing
connected with the Bath Hotel, frightened the discontented into silence
through dread of its abuse. Ludlow, and some of the other exclusives,
had, in the beginning of the present season, contrived a remedy, which,
for the time, was perfectly successful. They held a private interview
with the cook, and made up a weekly contribution for him, on condition
of their having the best of every thing, and enough of it, for dinner;
and the waiters were similarly retained. For a time this worked to a
marvel, and the subscribers were as well fed as they could desire. But
the other guests began to make an outcry against the aristocracy and
exclusiveness of private dishes on a public table, and the servants soon
hit upon a compromise of their own, which was to take the money without
rendering the _quid pro quo_. This, of course, soon put an end to the
payments, and things were on the old starvation footing again.

After dinner, every body who had horses rode or drove. The roads about
Oldport were heavy and sandy, and terrible work the dust made with the
ladies' fine dresses and the gentlemen's fine coats.

"Rather different from the drives about Baden-Baden," said Benson.

"Yes; but I suppose we must console ourselves on moral grounds, and
remember, that there we owe the beautiful promenades to the
gambling-table, while here we are without the roads, and also without
the play."

"Ah, but isn't there play here! only all _sub rosâ_. Wait a while, and
you'll find out."

And Ashburner did find out before many nights, when the footsteps and
oaths of the young gamblers returning at four in the morning to their
rooms in the "Colony," woke him out of his first sleep. After the drive,
tea--still at the _table-d'hôte_--and after tea, dressing for the ball,
which this night was at the Bellevue House, appropriately so called from
commanding a fine view of nothing. As the Bellevue was not a fashionable
hotel (although the guests were sufficiently fed there), some of the
exclusive ladies had hesitated about "assisting" on the occasion; but
the temptation of a dance was too strong to be resisted, and they all
ultimately went. Le Roi accompanied the Bensons in the all-accommodating
Rockaway. The Bellevue had a "colony," too, in the second story of which
was the ballroom. As they ascended the stairs, the lively notes of _La
Polka Sempiternelle, composée par Josef Bungel, et dédiée à M. T.
Edwards_, reached their ears; and hardly were they over the threshold
when Edwards himself hopped up before them, and without other preface or
salutation than a familiar nod, threw his arm round Mrs. Benson's waist,
and swung her off in the dance; while Sumner, who had simultaneously
presented himself to Miss Vanderlyn, took similar possession of her.

"Do you dance?"

"No, I thank you."

While Benson asked the question, Le Roi dived at a girl and whirled her
away: almost before Ashburner had answered it, his friend shot away from
him, making point at a young married lady in the distance; and his bow
of recognition ended in the back-step of the polka, as the two went off
together at a killing pace. In five seconds from the time of entrance,
Ashburner was left standing alone at one end of the room, and his
companions were twirling at the other. For so habituated were the
dancers to their fascinating exercise, that they were always ready to go
at the word, like trained horses. And certainly the dancing was
beautiful. He had never seen gentlemen move so gracefully and
dexterously in a crowded room as these young Americans did. Le Roi and
Röwenberg, who, by virtue of their respective nationalities, were bound
to be good dancers, looked positively awkward alongside of the natives.
As to the ladies, they glided, and swam, and realized all the
so-often-talked-of-and-seldom-seen "poetry of motion." Indeed Ashburner
thought they did it too well. He thought of Catiline's friend,
commemorated by Sallust, who "danced better than became a modest woman."
He thought some of their displays were a little operatic, and that he
had seen something like them at certain balls in Paris--_not_ the balls
of the Faubourg St. Germain. He thought that the historian's aphorism
might be extended to the male part of the company,--and that they danced
better than became intelligent men. He thought--but as he prudently kept
thoughts to himself, and as some of his foreign prejudice may have been
at the bottom of them, we will not stop to record them all. By and by
there was a quadrille for the benefit of the million, during which the
exclusives rested, and Ashburner had full opportunity of observing them.
The first thing that struck him was the extreme youth of the whole set,
and more especially of the masculine portion of it. Old men there were
none. The old women, that is to say, the mammas and aunts, were stuck
into corners out of the way, and no one took any notice of them.
Hamilton White was quite an old beau by comparison--almost
superannuated. Sumner would have been nearly off the books but for his
very superior dancing. Even Benson seemed a middle-aged man compared
with the majority of "our set," who averaged between boys of seventeen
and young men of twenty-four. And the more juvenile the youth, the
larger and stiffer was his white tie. Some of these neck-fastenings were
terrific to behold, standing out a foot on each side of the wearer. All
the Joinvilles that Ashburner had ever seen, on all the gents in London
or elsewhere, faded into insignificance before these portentous cravats.
He could not help making some observations on this fashion to Benson, as
he encountered him promenading with a fair _polkiste_.

"Did you ever notice the whiffletrees of my team-trotting wagon, how
they extend on each side beyond the hubs of the wheels? They serve for
feelers in a tight place: wherever you clear your whiffletrees, you can
clear your wheels; and these cravats are built on the same
principle--wherever you clear your tie, you can clear your partner."

By one in the morning the democracy of the ballroom had had enough of
four hours' dancing and looking on. "Our set" was left in full
possession of the floor. Forthwith they seized upon all the chairs, and
the interminable German cotillon commenced. It lasted two hours--and how
much longer Ashburner could not tell. When he went away at three, the
dancers looked very deliquescent, but gave no symptoms of flagging. And
so ended his first day's experience of an American watering-place.

FOOTNOTES:

[26] This is the strongest American (slang) way of putting an
affirmation; and, probably, the strongest instance of it on record is
that of a Bowery boy, who, when asked by a clergyman, "Wilt thou have
this woman?" replied, "I won't have any one else."




[From the Dublin University Magazine.]

THE MYSTIC VIAL:

OR,

THE LAST DEMOISELLE DE CHARREBOURG.

_Continued from page 75._


PART II.

VI.--THE MINIATURE.

Lucille had not, therefore, gained by her marriage the position to which
her ambition aspired. She had made several ineffectual efforts to
dissolve the spell of isolation which seemed to seclude the intercourse
of the Chateau des Anges from all human ken and visitation as absolutely
as the palace of a merman. With the exception, however, of a few visits
from the great ladies who resided in the neighborhood, no casual beams
from the brilliant world of rank and fashion without penetrated the
dismal shadows of her gorgeous abode.

She was dissatisfied, angry, and resolved upon the earliest fitting
occasion to rebel against the selfish tyranny which consigned her to
solitude and monotony.

She had hitherto gained nothing by those little expedients, hints, and
even entreaties, which are sometimes found so effectual in like cases.
The old fermier-general was just as smiling and as promising as the
Chateau des Anges itself, but, alas! as absolutely impenetrable. An iron
will encountered and repressed all her shifts and struggles. She chafed
and coaxed alike in vain. Whether the bird sang or fluttered, the bars
of her cage were immovable.

Under these circumstances, no very cordial feelings began to animate the
fiery girl respecting her resolute and reserved old helpmate.

Meanwhile the humble cottage in the park of Charrebourg was deserted,
and permitted to fall to decay, for the old visconte, and even
Marguerite, had been removed to the establishment at Des Anges, and so,
in process of time, the little walks were overgrown with grass, the
fences spread and straggled, dark green plants clambered to the roof,
and weeds showed themselves over the tiled vestibule and even ventured
into the inner chambers. Thus time and nature, in mournful alliance,
began their obliterating work. But there were some plants and flowers
which grew outside what had been for so long Mademoiselle Lucille de
Charrebourg's window. They had been the objects of her care, and
Gabriel!--sweet but sorrowful remembrance!--had been, in those happy
times, privileged to tend them for her. Poor Gabriel was now desolate
indeed, but he pleased himself with dressing those flowers, and
watering, and weeding them day by day, just as if she were there; and he
would then sit on the bank that bounded the bowling-green, and watch the
desolate casement where he used so often to see that face that too
probably was never more to beam on him. And thus hours would glide away,
and, young as he was, he came to live chiefly in the past.

And generally when he rose, and with an effort, and many a backward
look, lingeringly departed, he would strengthen his sinking heart with
some such reflection as this:--

"She did not love the fermier-general--it was the visconte who made her
marry him. This Monsieur Le Prun--what was he at first but a
roturier--no better than myself--and made his own money--fortune may yet
befriend me also. I have energies, and resolution, and courage, for her
sake, to dare ten thousand deaths. I'll not despair. And then the old
fellow can't live _very_ long--a few years--and so who knows yet what
may befall?"

There was one beautiful rose which grew close to the window, and which
Lucille herself had planted, and this tree Gabriel came gradually to
regard as connected by some sweet and silent sympathy with the features
and feelings of its mistress. When it drooped, she, he thought, was sick
or in sorrow; when, on the contrary, it was covered with blossoms and
fresh leaves, she was full of smiles and health; when a rough gust tore
its slender sprays, some vexation and disappointment had fretted her;
and when again it put forth new buds and sprouts, these were forgotten,
and time had gathered round her new hopes and delights. Thus this tree
became to him an object of strangely tender interest, and he cherished
the fancy that, in tending and guarding it, he was protecting the
fortunes and the happiness of poor Lucille.

Meanwhile, as a sort of beginning of that great fortune that awaited
him, he obtained employment as an under-gardener at the Chateau de
Charrebourg, which had just been let to a wealthy noble, whose millions
had elevated him (like Monsieur le Prun) from the bourgeoisie to his
present rank.

But we must return to the Chateau des Anges. Lucille's apartments were
situated at a side of the chateau overlooking a small court
communicating with the greater one at the front of the building; and
this narrow area was bounded by a lofty wall, which separated the other
pleasure-grounds from the park.

It was night; Lucille and her gentle companion, Julie, had been chatting
together, as young-lady friends will do, most confidentially. The little
maiden had detailed all her sadness and alarms. Her married companion
had been fluent and indignant upon her wrongs and disappointments. Each
felt a sort of relief, and drawn as it were into a securer intimacy, by
the absence of Monsieur le Prun, who was that night necessarily absent
upon business.

The conversation had now shifted to Julie's engagement.

"And so, I suppose, I must marry him. Is it not a cruel tyranny to
compel one who desires nothing but to live and die among good
Christians, in the quiet of a convent, to marry a person whom she does
not or cannot love?"

"Yes, Julie, so it seems; but you may yet be happier so married, than
leading the life you long for. Remember, Julie, he is not a man who has
outlived the warmth, and tenderness, and trust of youth. He is still
capable of a generous passion, and capable of inspiring one. There is no
grief like the tyranny of one whom law and not love has made your
master."

As they conversed, some cases of Lucille's lay open on the table before
her companion, who had been amusing herself in girlish fashion by the
varied splendor and exquisite taste of the jewelry they contained.

"This brooch," she said, taking up a miniature in enamel, representing
some youthful tradition of Monsieur le Prun's person, set round with
diamonds, "is set very like mine, but I hate to look at it."

"It represents, then----"

"The Marquis. Yes."

"The world calls him handsome, I am told."

"Yes, but somehow, if he be so, I can't perceive it; he does not please
me."

"Well, then, bring me the miniature, and I will pronounce between you
and the world."

With a melancholy smile Julie ran to her own apartment, hard by, and in
a few minutes returned. With curiosity all alive, Lucille took the
brooch and looked at it.

"Well, what say you?" asked Julie, who stood behind her chair, gazing at
the trinket over her shoulder. Lucille was silent, although nearly a
minute had elapsed.

"He certainly has the noble air," she continued; but still Lucille
offered no criticism.

On a sudden she put down the miniature sharply on the table, and said,
abruptly, "It is time to go to rest; let us go to bed."

She rose and turned full round on Julie as she spoke. Her face was pale
as death, and her eyes looked large and gleaming. Her gaze was almost
wild.

"Are you ill?" said Julie, frightened, and taking her hand, which was
quite cold.

"O, no, no," said Lucille quickly, with a smile that made her pallor and
her dilated stare more shocking. "No, no, no--tired, vexed, heart-sick
of the world and of my fate."

Julie, though shocked and horrified, thought she had never seen Lucille
look so handsome before. She was an apparition terrible, yet beautiful
as a lost angel.

"You are, after all, right," she said suddenly. "I--I believe I _am_
ill."

The windows of the apartment descended to the floor, and opened upon a
balcony. She pushed the casement apart, and stood in the open air. Julie
had hurried to her assistance, fearing she knew not what, and stood
close by her. Never was scene so fitted to soothe the sick brain, and
charm the senses with its sad and sweet repose. The pure moon, high in
the deep blue of the heavens, shed over long rows of shimmering steps,
and urns, and marble images--over undulating woodlands, and sheets of
embowered and sleeping water, and distant hills, a mournful and airy
splendor.

It seemed as though nature were doing homage to so much beauty. The old
forest wafted from his broad bosom a long hushed sigh as she came forth;
the moon looked down on her with a serene, sad smile; and the spirits of
the night-breeze sported with her tresses, and kissed her pale lips and
forehead.

At least five minutes passed in silence. Lucille, on a sudden, said--

"So, at the end of a year you will be married?"

It seemed to Julie that the countenance that was turned upon her gleamed
with an expression of hatred which froze her. But the moonlight is
uncertain, and may play wild freaks with the character of an excited
face.

"Yes, dear Lucille; alas! yes," she answered, in a tone that was almost
deprecatory.

"Well, well, I am better now," she said, after a second interval. "My
head, Julie--my poor head!"

"Have you a pain there, dear Lucille?"

"Yes, yes, it's all there," she said, abstractedly; and, returning, she
kissed her gentle companion, bade her good night, and was alone.

Julie was strangely perplexed by the scene which had just occurred. She
could account for it upon no theory but the supposition that some
flickering vein of insanity was shooting athwart her reason, and as
suddenly disappeared. As soon as she was partially composed, she kneeled
down at the bedside, and prayed long and fervently; and for far the
greater part of the time poor Lucille was the sole theme of her
supplications. At last she lay down, and composed herself to sleep.
Spite of the unpleasant images with which her mind was filled, slumber
ere long overpowered her. But these painful impressions made teasing and
fantastic shapes to themselves. Her pillow was haunted, and strange
dreams troubled her slumbering senses. From one of these visions she
awoke with a start, and found herself sitting upright in her bed, with
her heart beating fast with terror. A burst of passionate wailing from
Lucille's apartments thrilled her with a sort of terror at the same
moment. In hushed uncertainty she listened for a repetition of the
sound; but in vain. She was prompted to go and try whether she needed
any help or comfort; but something again withheld her; and, after
another interval of somewhat excited reflection, she once more gradually
fell asleep. Again, however, hateful visions tormented her. She dreamed
that a phantom, said to have haunted the chateau for ages, and known by
the familiar title of "La Belle Colombe," was pursuing her from chamber
to chamber, dressed in her accustomed shroud of white; and had at last
succeeded in chasing her into a chamber from which there was no second
door of escape--when she awoke with a start; and, behold! there was a
light in the room, and a female form, dressed in white, standing between
the bedside and the door. For some moments she fancied that she saw but
the continuation of her dream, and awaited the further movements of the
figure with the fascination of terror. But gradually her senses reported
more truly, and she perceived that the figure in white was indeed
Lucille--pale, haggard; while with one she held the candlestick, with
the other she motioned slowly towards the bed, which she was approaching
with breathless caution, upon tiptoe. With an effort Julie succeeded in
calling her by name, almost expecting as she did so to see the whole
apparition vanish into air.

"Awake, awake; how softly you breathe, Julie!" said Lucille, drawing
close to the bedside, and drawing the curtains.

"Yes, dear Lucille; can I do any thing for you?"

"No, no--nothing but----"

"How do you feel now?--are you better?"

"Yes, better than I desire to be."

"But why are you here, dear Lucille? Has any thing--_frightened_ you?"

"Ha! then you heard it, did you?"

"Heard it? What?"

"Why, how long have you been awake--did you--did you hear
music--singing?"

"No, no; but in truth, dear Lucille, I thought I heard you weeping."

"O, nonsense; who minds a girl's weeping. But you heard nothing else?"

"No, indeed."

Lucille appeared greatly relieved by this assurance. She stooped over
her and kissed her; and it was not until her face was thus brought near
that Julie could perceive how worn and wan with weeping it was.

"I have been dreaming, then; yes, yes, I suspected as much--_dreaming_,"
she said; and, as she reached her own room, she muttered--

"Well, God be thanked, she did _not_ hear it. But what can it mean? What
madness and crime can have conjured up these sounds? What can it mean
but guilt, danger, and despair?"


VII.--THE DEVIL'S COACH.

It seemed to Julie that Lucille was moody and abstracted next morning.
Sometimes for a few moments she talked and smiled as before, but this
was fitfully, and with an effort. She appeared like one brooding over
some wrong that had taken possession of her thoughts, or some dark and
angry scheme which engrossed her imagination. She soon left Julie and
retired to her own apartments.

When Monsieur Le Prun returned, some time after noon, not finding his
young wife in her usual chamber, he went up stairs to wish her good day
in her own suite of rooms.

He was surprised at the sullen and stormy countenance with which she
greeted him. She had not yet ventured to rebel against his authority,
although she had frequently hinted her remonstrances and wrongs. But
there was now a darkness charged with thunder on her brow, and the
fermier-general began seriously (in nautical phrase) to look out for
squalls.

"Good-day, my pretty wife."

"Good-day, sir."

"Are you well to-day?"

"No."

"Hey? that's a pity; what ails you, my charming little wife?"

"Solitude."

"Solitude! pooh, pooh! why, there is Julie."

"Julie has her _young_ lover to think of."

"And when you weary of her," he continued, resolved not to perceive the
slight but malicious emphasis, "you have got your own sweet thoughts to
retire upon."

"My thoughts are ill company, sir."

"Well, as it seems to me, the pretty child is out of temper to-day," he
said, with evident chagrin.

"Perhaps I am--it is natural--I should be a fool were I otherwise."

"Par bleu! what new calamity is this?" he asked, with a smile and a
shrug.

"Nothing new, sir."

"Well, what _old_ calamity?"

The past night had wrought a change in Lucille; and, little as she had
ever liked M. Le Prun, she now felt a positive hatred of him, and she
answered with a gloomy sort of recklessness--

"Sir, I am a prisoner."

"Tut, tut! pretty rogue."

"Yes, a prisoner; _your_ prisoner."

"A prisoner on parole, perhaps; but provided, pretty captive, you don't
desert me, you may wander where you will."

"Pshaw! that is nonsense," she said sharply.

"Nonsense!" he repeated, testily; "it is no such thing, madame; you have
the handsomest equipages in France. Pray, when did I refuse you
carriages, or horses, or free egress from this place? par bleu! or lock
the gates, madame? Treated as you are, how _can_ you call yourself a
prisoner?"

"What advantage in carriages, and horses, and open gates, when we are
surrounded by a desert?"

"A desert? what do you mean?"

"There is not a soul to speak to."

"Not a soul--why, you are jesting; pray, is the Marquise de Pompignaud
nobody? is the Conte de la Perriere nobody?"

"_Worse_ than nobody, monsieur: I should prefer a desert to a wilderness
haunted by such creatures."

"_Sacre!_ what does the child want?"

"What every wife in France commands--society, sir."

"Well, I say you have got it: independently of your immediate domestic
circle, you have a neighborhood such as ought to satisfy any reasonable
person. There are persons fully as well descended as yourself, and
others nearly as rich as I am, all within easy visiting distance."

"The rich are all plebeians, and the nobles are all poor; there is and
can be in a group so incongruous no cordiality, no gayety, no splendor;
in a word, no such society as the last descendant of the Charrebourgs
may reasonably aspire to."

"It is fully as numerous and respectable, notwithstanding, as the
society which the last descendant of the Charrebourgs enjoyed in the
ancestral park where first I had the honor of making her acquaintance."

"Yes; but not such as with my birth and beauty I might and _must_ have
commanded, sir."

"Well, what do you expect? These people won't give fêtes."

"Bring me to Paris, sir; I wish to take my place among the noble
society, where I may meet my equals; and at court, where I may, like all
my ancestry, see my sovereign. Here, sir, my days fly by in melancholy
isolation; I am kept but to amuse your leisure; this, sir, is not
indulgence--it is selfish and tyrannical."

Monsieur Le Prun looked angrier and uglier than ever she had seen him
before. His eyes looked more black and prominent, and his face a great
deal paler. But he did not trust himself with an immediate answer; and
his features, as if in the effort to restrain the retort his anger
prompted, underwent several grotesque and somewhat ghastly contortions.

His handsome wife, meanwhile, sat sullen and defiant, daring, rather
than deprecating, the menaced explosion of his wrath.

Their matrimonial bickerings, however, were not so soon to reach their
climax. Monsieur Le Prun contrived to maintain a silent
self-command--thrust his hands into his pockets, walked to the window
humming an air, and after a few moments' pause, turned abruptly and left
the room.

Near the stair-head he met old Marguerite on her way to Lucille's
apartments. He signed to her to follow him, and entered a chamber there.
She perceived the unmistakable traces of angry excitement in his
face--always sinister in an old man, but in one so powerful, and about
whom she had heard so many dark rumors, full of vague terrors. As soon
as he had closed the door, he said to her--

"I hope they make you comfortable here, Marguerite?"

"Yes, sir, very comfortable," she replied, with a low courtesy, and
trembling a good deal.

"Well, Marguerite, I suppose you would wish to make a suitable return.
Now, some vile miscreant meddler, who has got the ear of your young
mistress, has been endeavoring to make her unhappy in her present
secluded situation--I think I could place my hand upon the culprit; but
at all events, do _you_ lose no opportunity henceforward of cheering
her, and reconciling your young mistress, to this most suitable
residence."

It was perfectly plain from his looks, that Monsieur Le Prun suspected
_her_ of being the "meddler" in question; but before she could muster
presence of mind to attempt her exculpation, he was gone. The interview
was like an ugly, flitting dream. His angry face and menacing croak had
scared her senses but for a moment; the apparition had vanished, and,
with a heart still beating fast, she went stealthily on her way.

Now Julie perceived that a change had taken place in Lucille--she was
anxious and excited, and appeared morbidly and passionately eager to
share in those amusements which before she had desired with comparative
moderation.

"Julie, I _will_ mix in the world; I _will_ meet people and associate
with my equals--I am resolved upon it. If Monsieur Le Prun persists in
refusing my reasonable wishes, it will perchance be the worse for
himself."

Such sentences she used to utter amidst blushes and pallor, and with a
fire and agitation that painfully perplexed her gentle, but now somewhat
estranged, little companion.

Her conduct, too, became eccentric and capricious; sometimes she
appeared sullen and reserved--sometimes, at moments, as if animated with
a positive hatred of her unoffending companion. Then, again, she would
relent, and, in an agony of compunction, entreat her to be reconciled.

It happened, not unfrequently, that business compelled Monsieur Le Prun
to pass the night from home. Upon one of these occasions Lucille had
gone early to her bed, and old Marguerite, at her special desire, sat
beside her.

"Well, Marguerite," said her young mistress, "I am going to exact the
fulfilment of a promise you made me long ago, when first you came home,
and before you became afraid of Monsieur Le Prun. You told me, then,
that you knew some stories of him--come, what are they?"

"Hey dear, bless the pretty child!--did I though?"

"Yes, yes, Marguerite; and you must tell them now--I say you _must_--I
_will_ have them. Nay, don't be afraid; I'll not tell them again, and
nobody can overhear us here."

"But, my pretty pet, these stories----"

"Then there _are_ stories--see, you can't deny it any longer; tell them,
tell them to me all."

"Why, they are nothing but a pack of nonsense. You would laugh at me. It
is only about monsieur's father, and the wonderful coach they say he
left to his son."

"Well, be it what it may, let me have it."

"Well, then, my pretty bird, you shall have it as they told it to
myself."

She looked into the next apartment, and having satisfied herself that
it was vacant, and shut the door of communication, she prepared for her
narrative.

We have clipped the redundancies and mended the inaccuracies of honest
Marguerite's phraseology; but the substance and arrangement of the story
is recorded precisely as she gave it herself.

"Monsieur's father, they say, began with a very little money, madame,
and he made it more by--by--in short, by _usury_; I beg pardon, but they
say so, madame; and so finding as he grew old that he had a great deal
of gold, and wishing to have some one of his own flesh and blood to
leave it to, when he should be dead and buried, he bethought him of
getting a wife. He must have been a shrewd man, I need not tell you, to
have made so much money, so he was determined not to make his choice
without due consideration. Now there was a farmer near them, who had a
pretty and innocent daughter, and after much cautious inquiry and
patient study of her character, old money-bags resolved that she was
excellently suited for his purpose."

"She was young and pretty, and he old and ugly, but rich; well, what
followed?"

"Why, she, poor thing, did not want to marry him at all; for though he
was rich, he had a very ill name in the country, and she was afraid of
him; but her father urged her, and the old man himself spoke her fair,
and between them they overpowered her fears and scruples, and so she was
married."

"Poor thing!" said Lucille, unconsciously.

"Well, madame, he married, and brought her home to his desolate old
house, and there, they say, he treated her harshly; and, indeed he might
there safely use her as he pleased, for there was not another house for
a great way round to be seen: and nobody but his own creatures and
dependents, who, they said, were just as bad as himself, could hear her
cries, or witness his barbarities."

Lucille sat up in the bed, and listened with increased interest.

"Poor thing! it was there, in the midst of sufferings and cruelties,
that she gave birth to a child, who is now Monsieur Le Prun, the great
fermier-general; but her health, and indeed her heart, was broken; and,
some rumor having reached her relations, that she was sick and unhappy,
a cousin of hers, who, they said, was in love with her in their early
days, brought the village physician with him to see her, though it was
full three leagues and a half away."

"The cousin loved her; poor fellow, he was true," said Lucille, with a
blush of interest.

"Ay, so they say; but Monsieur Le Prun, who was a jealous curmudgeon,
would not admit him; but he did allow the physician to see her (himself
standing by), because he was always glad to have the use of any body's
skill for nothing--which, more than any love he bore his poor wife, was
the reason of his letting him prescribe for her. Well, of course, she
could not send any message to her friends, nor tell how she was treated,
for old Le Prun was at her bedside; but the physician saw that she was
ill, and he said to the old miser--'Your wife can't walk, and she must
have air; let her drive every day in your coach.' 'I have no such
thing,' said old Le Prun. 'But you are rich,' said the physician, 'you
can afford to buy one; and it is your duty to do so for your wife, who
will die else.' 'Let her die, then, for me--the devil may send her a
coach to ride in, as they say he sent me my money; but I'll not waste my
gold on any such follies.' So the physician went away, disappointed and
disgusted, and her poor cousin was not able to effect any good on her
behalf; but it seems the words of Monsieur Le Prun did not fall quite to
the ground--they were heard in the quarter to where they were directed.
That evening closed in clouds, and before twelve o'clock at night, they
say, there came on such another thunder-storm as never was heard in the
neighborhood, before or since. Nothing but thunder, roaring and
crashing, peal upon peal, till the old house shook and trembled to its
very base; and the blue lightning glared at every window, and split
along the pavement in streams of livid fire; and all this time the rain
was beating straight down in an incessant and furious deluge."

"And so, I suppose, the devil came in the midst of the tempest, and took
him away bodily in a flash of lightning?"

"No, no, my pretty bird, not so fast. There was an old negro servant of
his, a fellow just as wicked as himself, who was sitting in the kitchen,
cursing the rain that was battering in huge drops down the chimney, and
putting out the wood at which he was warming his shins, when, in the
midst of the dreadful hubbub of the tempest, what should he hear but the
rush of a great equipage, and wheels and horses clattering over the
pavement, amidst the shouts of men and the sound of horns. Up jumped the
black, and, listening, he heard a loud voice shouting through the storm,
as if to summon some one to the door. Though they say he was a
courageous old sinner, his heart failed him, for such sounds had not
visited the old house within the memory of man in the day time, much
less in the dead of night; and, instead of going to the door, he hurried
away to the chamber where old Le Prun was cowering, screwed up in the
middle of a great old fauteuil, and more frightened at the tempest than
he would have cared to confess. So he told him of the sounds he had just
heard, and he and his master mounted together to a small room in a gable
over the hall-door, and from the casement of this they commanded a view
of the paved court in front. It was so dark, however, that they could
see nothing; and the thunder still echoing in loud explosions, and the
rain battering at the windows, prevented their distinctly hearing the
words which the voice was shouting outside. 'Shall we open the casement
and ask him what they want?' said the old negro. 'Let it alone,' said
his old master, shoving his arm back again, with a curse. At the same
moment a vivid flash of lightning, or rather several in almost
continuous succession, shed for some seconds a blue, pulsating
illumination over the scene, and then they saw before their eyes a
coach, with a team of horses and outriders, in the style of a royal
equipage, drawn up before the hall door; and all the postillions and
outriders were sitting motionless, with their whips pointing to the
house, as if they were signing to the inhabitants to come out: and some
one was looking from the window, and cried, in a tone like the shriek of
the wind--'The coach that Monsieur Le Prun ordered this morning.' In the
quivering blue light the whole thing looked like a smoky shadow, and was
swallowed in darkness in a moment. Then came the bellowing
thunder-burst, and a wild scream of winds rushed whooping, and sighing,
and hissing through the tree-tops, and died away in the unknown
distance. The two old sinners, master and man, crept away from the
window, and stumbled their way back again to the chamber which Monsieur
Le Prun had occupied before, and which, being in the rear of the house,
and most remote from the sight that had scared them, was preferred by
them to any other. In the morning a coach, of first-rate workmanship in
all respects, was standing in front of the hall door, just where they
had seen it on the night before, but no sign of horse, rider, or owner.
For several days it remained in the same position, no one caring to
touch it; but at the end of that time, having grown accustomed to its
presence, and gradually less and less in awe of it, they lodged it in
the coach-house; and so, after a considerable time, the old usurer's
instincts prevailed, and he resolved to make trial of the vehicle, with
a view to sell it in Paris. At first the horses snorted, and reared, and
shyed, when they were attempted to be harnessed to it, but in a little
while they too became reconciled to it, and Monsieur Le Prun made an
experimental trip in it himself. Whatever passed upon that occasion, it
certainly determined him against parting with it. And, it was said,
whenever he was thenceforward in doubt about any purchase, or meditating
any important financial _coup_, he invariably took a solitary drive in
this preternaturally-acquired vehicle; and, in the course of that drive,
his doubts, whatever they may have been, were invariably resolved, and
some lucky purchase or successful operation upon 'Change was sure to
follow. It was said that upon these occasions Monsieur Le Prun was
always heard to converse with some companion in the coach; and the
driver once avowed that, having been delayed by an accident on the road,
as the darkness came on, he distinctly saw two shadowy outriders
spurring duly in their van, and never lost sight of them until, with
hair standing on end, and bathed in a cold sweat, he drew up in the
court before his master's house."

"And what happened to old Le Prun?"

"When they returned from one of their drives, taken, Heaven bless us!
for the purpose of consulting the Evil One, so to speak, face to face,
they found old Le Prun quite dead, sitting back in his wonted attitude,
and with his arm slung in the embroidered strap."

"And what has become of the wonderful coach?"

"That I have never heard; but they say that Monsieur Le Prun, the
fermier-general, has it in one of his houses, either in the country or
in Paris, and that, whenever he wants to consult the familiar demon of
the family, he takes a drive in it alone; and this, they say, has been
the cause of his great successes and his enormous fortune."

"I should like to ride in that coach myself," said Lucille.

"Heaven and all the saints forbid!"

"I want to know my destiny, Marguerite. Were I sure that all my days
were to pass as at present, I would rather die than live."

"Oh, but sure my pretty bird would not ask her fortune of--of--"

"Yes, of any one--of any spirit, good or evil, that could tell it. I am
weary of my life, Marguerite. I would rather beg or work with my
liberty, and the friends I like, than see my days glide by in this dull,
wealthy house, without interest, or hope, or--or _love_."

"But never desire, while you live, my child, the visits of the Evil One.
Once asked for, it is said he never refuses them."

"Say you so? then I invite him with all my heart," she said, with a
bitter pleasantry; "he can't be a great deal worse than the society I
have sometimes had to share; and, if he discloses the futurity that
awaits me, he will have been the most instructive companion that fortune
ever lent me."

"Chut! madame, listen."

"What is the matter, Marguerite?"

"Did not you hear?"

"What?--whom?"

"There--there again; blessed Virgin shield us!"

"Psha! Marguerite; it is nothing but the moths flying against the
window-panes; I have heard that little tapping a hundred times."

"Well, well, maybe so; but say your prayers, my dear, and ask
forgiveness for your foolish words."

"No, Marguerite; for in truth I do wish my fortune were read to me, and
care not by whom."

"Hey, what's that? Chut! in Heaven's name hold thy mad tongue," she
cried, in the irritation of panic; "surely _that_ is no moth. May the
saints guard your bed, my child. You heard it, did you not?"

"Hum--yes--there was a sound."

"I should think so, par bleu! something a size or two larger than a
moth, too."

"It was a spray of one of the plants swung by the breeze against the
window."

"Ma foi! it was no such thing, my sweet pet; no, no, something with a
pair of wings fluttered up against it."

Had the old woman, in her trepidation, had leisure to study the
countenance of her young mistress, she would have perceived that her
cheeks were flushed with crimson. But she was too busy with her medley
of prayers and protestations, and too fully preoccupied with the idea of
an unearthly visitation.

"Well, well, Marguerite, be it as you say; I'll not dispute the point;
but leave me now; I'm tired, and would sleep. Good night."

After the old woman had withdrawn some minutes, Lucille rose from her
bed. She had only been partially undressed; and throwing on her
dressing-gown, and putting her little ivory feet into her slippers, she
glided to her chamber-door, which she secured, and then cautiously, and
almost fearfully, stepped to the window, which she pushed open, and
stood upon the balcony.

With a beating heart, and a cheek that momentarily changed color, she
looked all along the edges of the court, and over the tall plants, and
under the shadow of the lofty jessamine-covered wall. She listened with
breathless and excited suspense--she waited for some minutes; but,
having watched and listened in vain, she pressed her hand on her heart,
and, with a deep and trembling sigh, turned back again. It was at this
moment she saw something white, no bigger than a playing-card, lie at
her feet. She picked it up, entered her room, and trembling violently,
closed the window again, and was alone.


VIII.--THE ORDEAL.

The next morning came with sunshine, and the merry carols of all the
sylvan choirs. It would have meetly ushered in a day of rejoicing; but
joy seemed to have bid an eternal adieu to the luxurious solitudes of
the Chateau des Anges.

Julie that morning remarked that Lucille remained unusually late in her
own rooms. Fearing that she might be ill, she ventured to visit her in
her apartments. It was past twelve o'clock when she knocked at her door.
There was no answer; and she knocked repeatedly, but without success. At
last she opened the door, but Lucille was not as usual in that room. She
walked through it, and the apartment beyond it, without seeing her; but
in her dressing-room, which lay beyond that again, she found her.

She was sitting in a loose morning-robe; her head was supported by her
hand, and the open sleeve of heavy silk had fallen back from her white
round arm. An open letter lay upon the table under her gaze. She had
evidently been weeping, and was so absorbed either in her own
reflections or the contents of the letter, that she did not perceive the
entrance of Julie.

The visitor paused; but feeling that every moment of her undiscovered
presence added to the awkwardness of her situation, she called Lucille
by name.

At the sound of her name she started from her seat, and stood, pale as
death, with all her dark hair shaken wildly about her shoulders, and her
eyes gleaming with a malign terror upon the intruder. At the same moment
she had clutched the letter, and continued to crumple it in her hand
with a spasmodic eagerness.

Julie was almost as much confounded as Lucille. Both were silent for a
time.

"I beg your pardon, dear Lucille; I fear my unperceived intrusion
startled you."

"Yes, yes; I suppose I am nervous. I am not well. Oh, God! you did
startle me very much."

To do her justice, she looked terrified; every vestige of color had fled
from her face, even from her lips, and her eyes continued gleaming
wildly and fixedly on her.

"Why did you come, then--what do you want of me?" she said, at last,
excitedly, and even angrily.

"I came to ask how you are, Lucille--I feared you were ill."

"I--I ill? You know I was _not_ ill," she said hurriedly and
impatiently, and either forgetting or despising her own excuse of but a
moment before. "You came--you came for a _purpose_, Julie--yes, yes--do
not deny it--there is perfidy enough already."

"You wrong me, Lucille; I told you the simple truth--why should I
deceive you?"

"Why--why? Because the world is full of deceit, full of falsehood and
treason--they are every where, every where."

She turned away, and Julie perceived that she was weeping.

She was pained and puzzled--nay, she was crossed every moment by the
horrid fear that Lucille's mind was unsettled. Her strange agitation
seemed otherwise unaccountable.

"Lucille--dear Lucille--surely you will not be angry with your poor
little friend--surely you believe Julie."

She looked at her for a moment, and said--

"Yes, Julie, I do believe you;" and so saying, she kissed her. "But--but
I am utterly, and I fear irremediably miserable."

"But what is the cause of your wretchedness, my dear Lucille?"

"This place--this solitude oppresses me; I cannot endure the isolation
to which I am unnaturally and tyrannically condemned. Oh, Julie! there
are circumstances, secrets, miseries, I dare not tell you; fate is
weaving round me a net, to all eyes but my own invisible. But why do you
look at me with those strange glances? Do not believe that I am
_guilty_, because I am miserable--do not dare to touch me with such a
thought."

She stamped her little foot furiously on the floor at these words,
while her cheek and eye kindled with excitement. It speedily subsided,
however, into a deep and sullen gloom, and she continued--

"I scarce know myself, Julie, what I am, or what I may be; but my heart
is as full of tumult, of suffering, of hatred, as hell itself. I will at
least be free--my captivity in this magician's prison shall terminate--I
_will_ not endure it. It shall end soon, one way or another--I will
liberate myself."

Lucille spoke with something more than passion--it was fierceness; and
her gentle companion was filled with vague alarms. She had, as feeble
natures often have, an instinctive appreciation of the superior energy
and daring of her more fiery companion, and knew that she would, too
probably, take some violent and irreparable step in furtherance of her
resolution. It was, therefore, with feelings of anxiety and fear that
she left her to the solitary influence of her own angry and excited
thoughts.

Monsieur Le Prun did not arrive till night. As he and the Count de
Blassemare rolled homeward, side by side in his carriage, under the
uncertain moonlight, between the lordly rows of forest-trees that, like
files of gloomy Titans, kept perennial guard along the approaches of the
chateau, or, as Lucille has not unaptly styled it, "the magician's
prison," they talked pretty much as follows:

"Le Prun, my good friend, you are jealous--jealous, by all the imps in
true love's purgatory," said Blassemare.

"Not jealous, but cautious."

"A nice distinction."

"Why, when one has reached our time of life----"

"_Ours!_ you might be my father."

"Well, I can't deny it, for nobody knows _how_ old you are. But at my
years a man with a young wife must exercise precaution. _Par bleu!_ we
are neither of us fools, and I need not tell you that."

"Why, yes, we have had our experiences--I as a spectator--you as----"

"Of course--therefore this threatened irruption of frivolity and vice--"

"Say of youth and beauty; the other qualities--frivolity and vice--may
coexist with age and ugliness, and, therefore, harmlessly."

"Well, what you will, it does not please me. But, under existing
circumstances, with my application pending, you know it was impossible
to deny the marchioness her whim."

"Of course; and so for a single night the Chateau des Anges becomes a
fairy palace. Well, what harm--you can't apprehend that a single _fête_,
however gay and spirited, will--_ruin_ you."

"Why, no; after all, it is, as you say, but a single _fête_, and then
extinguish the lights, and lock the doors, and so the Chateau des Anges
becomes as sober as before."

"And I wager a hundred crowns you will tell Madame Le Prun that you have
given this _fête_ entirely on _her_ account."

"I thought of that," he replied, with a grin; "but it would not be
wise."

"Why so?"

"Because it would make a precedent."

"And will you never again indulge her fancy for society?"

"By ---- my good friend, _never_. She fancies she has a great deal of
spirit, and will contrive to rule me; but she does not know Etienne Le
Prun--she does not know him--I will treat her like what she is--a
child."

"And she will treat you, perhaps, like----"

"Like what?"

"Like what you are--a bridegroom of seventy."

"If she dares. Ay, Blassemare, I have just as little trust as you in
what conventionality calls the _virtue_ of the sex. I rely upon my own
strong will--the discipline I can put in force, and their salutary
fears."

There was here a pause of more than a minute in the dialogue; each
appeared to have enough to think of, and the carriage was driving nearly
at a gallop under the funereal shadow of the dense and lofty trees. With
a fierce start, Monsieur Le Prun cried, suddenly--

"What do you mean?"

"_I?_--nothing."

"Why do you say _that_?"

"What?"

"You said--Bluebeard."

"Hey?"

"Ay!--what the devil did you mean by that?"

"Upon my soul, I said no such thing," said Blassemare, with a hollow,
satirical laugh.

Monsieur Le Prun glanced over his shoulder once or twice, and then
hummed to himself for a time.

"Seriously," he repeated, "did you not call me by that name?"

"_I!_--no; I always call things by their name, and yours is gray."

"Hem!--what is he driving in this shadow for? Tell him to keep in the
moonlight--one would think he wanted to break our necks."

Monsieur Le Prun, it was evident, had become fidgety and fanciful.

A few minutes' rapid driving brought the carriage to the hall-door of
the chateau, and its wealthy, but, perhaps, after all, not very much to
be envied, master conducted his familiar imp, Blassemare, into a saloon,
where supper awaited them.

"I don't myself understand these things, Blassemare, but you will be my
stage-manager, and get up the spectacle in the best style."

"Why, yes. I don't see why I should not lend a hand, that is to say, if
nothing happens to call me away," said Blassemare, who delighted in such
affairs, but liked a little importance also.

"How soon is it to take place?"

"She said in about three weeks."

"Ha! very good."

And the Count de Blassemare was instantaneously translated, in spirit,
among feu d'artifice, water-works, arches, colored lamps, bands, and all
the other splendors and delectations of an elaborate fête.

"I remember," said Le Prun, abruptly dispelling these happy and gorgeous
visions with his harsh tones, "when I was at school, reading about
Socrates and those invisible demons that were always hovering at his
ears; it was devilish odd, Blassemare. But to be sure those were
good-natured devils; ay, that is true, and meant him no harm."

"By my faith, I forget all about it; but what the devil connection have
these demons, blue, black, or red, with your fête?"

"I sometimes think, Blassemare, you are a worse fellow than I am, for
you have no qualms of conscience."

"No qualms of stomach, no fumes of indigestion; as for conscience, it is
an infirmity of which we both stand equally acquitted."

"I did not speak of it in a good sense," said Le Prun, gloomily; "it may
be remorse or superstition, but I fancy the man who has none of it is
already dead, and under his coffin-lid, so far as his spiritual chances
are concerned."

"Faith, it is a treat, Le Prun, to hear you talk religion. When do you
mean to take orders? I should so like to see you, my buck, in a cassock
and cowl begging meal, and telling your beads, and calling yourself
brother Ambrose."

"I have not good enough in me for that," he replied, in a tone which
might be earnest, or might be a sneer; "besides, I dare say that the
grand _melange_ of rapture and diablerie they call religion is
altogether true; but _par bleu!_ my good fellow, there is something more
than this life--agencies, subtler and more powerful mayhap than those
our senses are commonly cognizant of. I say I have had experience of
this truth, and of them. You laugh! and I suppose will laugh on, until
that irresistible old gentleman-usher, DEATH, presents you to other
realities face to face."

"Well, so be it. If they have faces, I suppose they have mouths, and can
laugh, and chat, and so, egad I'll make the best of them; it is one
comfort, we shall all understand religion then, and need not plague our
heads about it any further. But, in the mean time, suppose we have a
game of piquet."

"Agreed! call for cards, and, by the time you have got them, I will
return."

Le Prun took a candle, and opening a door which led through a passage to
a back stair communicating with Lucille's apartments, he directed his
steps thither for the purpose of announcing his arrival, and
ascertaining at the same time the state of his wife's temper.

He tapped at the door, and, having received permission to enter, did so
to the manifest surprise of the occupants of the chamber, who had
expected to see one of the servants.

Julie, who was in the very middle of a story about the Marquis de
Secqville, her intended husband, (to which Lucille was listening, as she
leaned pensively back in her rich fauteuil, with downcast eyes,)
suspended her narrative.

"Well, sir?"

"Well, madame?"

Such was the curt and menacing greeting exchanged between the
fermier-general and his wife.

"You appear dissatisfied," he said, after an interval, and having taken
a chair.

"I _am_ so."

"This is tiresome, _ma femme_."

"Yes, insupportably; _this_, and every thing else that passes here."

"It appears to me, you are somewhat hard to please."

"Quite the reverse. I ask but to mix in human society."

"You have society enough, madame."

"I have absolutely none, sir."

"I can't say what society you enjoyed in the Parc de Charrebourg,
madame," he began, in an obvious vein of sarcasm. And as he did so, he
thought he observed her eyes averted, and her color brighten for a
moment. He did not suffer this observation to interrupt him, but he laid
it up in the charnel of his evil remembrances, and continued: "I don't
know, I say, what society you there enjoyed. It may have been very
considerable, or it may have been very limited: it was possibly very
dull, or possibly very delightful, madame. But if you _had_ any society
there _whatever_, it was private, secret; it was neither seen nor
suspected, madame, and, therefore, you must excuse me if I can't see
what sacrifice, in point of society, you have made in exchanging your
_cottage_ in the Parc de Charrebourg for a residence in the Chateau des
Anges."

"Sir, I _have_ made sacrifices--I have lost my liberty, and gained you."

"I see, my pretty wife, it will be necessary that you and I should
understand one another," he said, tranquilly, but with a gloom upon his
countenance that momentarily grew darker and darker.

"That is precisely what I desire," replied his undaunted helpmate.

"Leave us, Julie," said the fermier-general, with a forced calmness.

Julie threw an imploring glance at Lucille as she left the room, for she
held her uncle in secret dread. As she glided through the door her last
look revealed them seated at the little table; he--ugly: black, and
venomous; she--beautiful, and glittering in gay colors. It was like a
summer fly basking unconsciously within the pounce of a brown and
bloated spider.

"Depend upon it, madame, this will never do," he began.

"Never, sir," she repeated emphatically.

"Be silent, and listen as becomes you," he almost shouted, with a sudden
and incontrollable explosion of rage, while the blood mounted to his
discolored visage. "Don't fancy, madame, that I am doting, or that you
can manage me with your saucy coquetry or sulky insolence. I have a
will of my own, madame, under which, by Heaven, I'll force yours to
bend, were it fifty times as stubborn as ever woman's was yet. You shall
obey--you shall submit. If you will not practise your duty cheerfully,
you shall learn it in privation and tears; but one way or another, I'll
bring you to act, and to speak, and to _think_ as I please, or I'm not
your husband."

"Well, sir, try it: and in the mean time, I expect----"

"What do you expect?" he thundered.

"I expect to receive a counterpart of this," she said, with deliberate
emphasis, holding the magic vial steadily before his eyes.

For a second or two, the talisman appeared powerless, but only for so
long. On a sudden his gaze contracted--he became fascinated,
petrified--his face darkened, as if a tide of molten lead were projected
through every vessel--and a heavy dew of agony stood in beads upon his
puckered forehead. With all this horror was mingled a fury, if possible,
more frightful still; every fibre of his face was quivering; the hand
that was clenched and drawn back, as if it held a weapon to be hurled
into her heart, was quivering too; his mouth seemed gasping in vain for
words or voice; he resembled the malignant and tortured victim of a
satanic possession; and this frightful dumb apparition was imperceptibly
drawing nearer and nearer to her.

A sudden revulsion broke the horrid spell of which he was the slave;
like one awaking from a nightmare, conscience-stricken, he uttered a
trembling groan of agony, and with one hand upon his breast, the other
clutched upon his forehead, he hurried, speechless, like a despairing,
detected criminal, from the room.


IX.--THE UNTOLD SECRET.

Julie, who had heard high words as she traversed the apartments which
lay _en suite_, paused in the lobby at the stair-head--a sort of _oeil
de boeuf_, to which several corridors converged, and with a lofty
lantern-dome above, from which swung a cluster of rose-colored lamps.

Here she sat down upon a sofa, ill at ease on account of the scene which
was then going on so near her; and, in the midst of her reverie, raising
her eyes suddenly, she saw Monsieur Le Prun, the thick carpets rendering
his tread perfectly noiseless, gliding by her with a countenance guilty
and terrible beyond any thing that fancy had ever seen.

Without appearing to see her, like a spectre from the grave he came,
passed, and vanished, leaving her frozen with horror, as if she had
beheld a phantom from the dead and damned.

With steps winged with hideous alarm she sped through the intervening
chambers to that in which she had left Lucille.

She was standing with an ashy smile of triumph on her face, and in her
hand was still mechanically grasped the queer little vial with its four
spires of gold.

Monsieur Le Prun had recovered his self-possession to a certain extent
by the time he reached the apartment where he had left Blassemare. But
that observant gentleman did not fail to perceive, at a glance, that
something had occurred to agitate his patron profoundly.

"Egad," he thought, "I should not be surprised if the girl were taken at
disadvantage by his abrupt visit, and that the venerable Adonis saw
something to justify his jealousy. A husband has no right to surprise
his wife. Le Prun," he continued carelessly aloud, "I wonder why Nature,
who has been so bounteous to the sex, has not furnished husbands, like
certain snakes, with rattles to their tails, to give involuntary warning
of their approach."

Le Prun poured out a glass of cold water and drank it. Blassemare
observed, as he did so, that his hand trembled violently. The
fermier-general was silent, and his flippant Mercury did not care just
then to hazard any experiment upon his temper.

"Blassemare!" he exclaimed, abruptly arresting his glass, and eyeing his
companion with a sort of brutal rage, "I ought to run you through the
body, sir, where you stand, for your accursed perfidy."

"What! _me?_--by my soul, sir, I don't understand you," he replied, at
once offended and amazed. "Why the devil should you murder me?"

"You have broken your word with me!"

"In what respect?"

"Exactly where it was most vitally needful to keep it, sir."

"Deuce take me if I know what you mean."

"You do--you _do_--a thousand curses! You _must_ know it."

"But hang me if I do."

"You have suffered that _calumny_ to reach her ears."

"What calumny?"

"She must have seen her."

"_Her!_--whom?"

"She must have spoken with her."

"Do say, plainly, what it _is_ all about?"

"About that--that d---- woman; there, is _that_ intelligible? She is at
large, sir, in spite of all I've said--in spite of all you undertook,
sir; and she has been filling my wife's ears with those hell-born lies
that have been whispered to _you_, sir, and which it was your business
to have suppressed and extinguished. By ----, Blassemare, you deserve my
curses and my vengeance."

As he concluded, he struck the glass upon the table with a force that
shivered it to pieces.

"Monsieur le Prun," said Blassemare, coolly, "I deprecate no man's
vengeance, and fear no man's sword; but whatever be the ground of your
present convictions, it is utterly fallacious. The person in question
has never stirred abroad--you mean the _sister_ of course--since your
marriage, except under close and trustworthy attendance; and the
other--_that_ you know is out of the question."

"There has been mismanagement somewhere, or else some new device of
infernal malice; I say the thing has been misconducted, with the same
cursed blundering that has always attended that affair; and I would
rather my wife were in her coffin than have seen what I have seen
to-night."

"What! in her coffin!" echoed Blassemare, with a sort of fiendish
satire.

"Ay, sir, in her coffin!" said Le Prun, with a black defiance which made
Blassemare shrug his shoulders and become silent.

The chill and the smell of death seemed to him to have come with these
words into the room. But he would not on any account have betrayed his
sensations; on the contrary, he pointed gayly to the cards, and looked a
smiling interrogatory towards the fermier. But that excellent gentleman
was in no mood for picquet. He declined the challenge gloomily and
peremptorily.

"_Ma foi!_ you suffer trifles to plague you strangely," said Blassemare,
as they parted for the night. "What on earth does it signify after all?
Thwart a woman, and she will strive to vex you--there's nothing new in
that; why should not Madame Le Prun share the pretty weaknesses of her
sex? On the other hand, indulge her, and she will flatter as much as she
teased before. You are too sensitive, too fond, and, therefore,
exaggerate trifles. Good night."

Monsieur Le Prun withdrew, and Blassemare muttered--

"Remorseless old criminal! I shall keep my eye close upon you, and if I
see any sign of the sort----"

He set his teeth together, smiled resolutely and threateningly, and
nodded his head twice or thrice in the direction of the door through
which the fermier-general had just disappeared.

The violent explosion we have just described was not followed by any
very decisive results. The fermier-general and his wife had not been
upon very pleasant terms for some time previous to the scene which had
so fearfully agitated the millionaire; and, whatever may have been the
immediate promptings of his anger, his temper had cooled down
sufficiently, before the morning, to enable him to carry the matter off,
like a man of the world, with a tolerable grace. Whatever change for the
worse had taken place in his feelings towards his wife, he was able to
suppress the manifestation of it: but, as we have said, their relations
had of late been by no means cordial, and Monsieur Le Prun did not think
it necessary to affect any warmer sentiment toward his wife, nor any
abatement of the sinister estrangement which had been gradually growing
between them.

Meanwhile the preparations for the _fête_ proceeded at the Chateau des
Anges upon a scale worthy of the rarity of the occasion and the vastness
of the proprietor's fortune.

All these were carried on by Blassemare, who indulged his gallantry by
consulting the beautiful young wife of the fermier-general upon every
detail of the tasteful and magnificent arrangements as they proceeded.

Monsieur Le Prun had a special object in gratifying the great lady who
had insisted upon this sacrifice. Blassemare had, therefore, a _carte
blanche_ in the matter. There were to be musicians from Paris, bands of
winged instruments among the trees, galleys and singers upon the waters,
illuminated marquees and fanciful grottoes, feu d'artifice, and colored
lamps of every dye, in unimaginable profusion, theatricals, gaming,
feasting, dancing--in a word, every imaginable species of gayety,
revelry, and splendor.

As these grand projects began to unfold themselves, Lucille's ill-temper
began to abate. Her interest was awakened, and at last she became
pleased, astonished, and even delighted.

Now at length she hoped that the long-cherished object of her wishes was
about to be supplied, and that she was indeed to emerge from her
chrysalis state, and enjoy, among the sweets and gayeties of life, the
glittering freedom for which she felt herself so fitted, and had so long
sighed in vain; and which, moreover, as the reader may have suspected,
she desired also in furtherance of certain secret and cherished
aspirations.

Monsieur de Blassemare found his æsthetic and festive confidences most
encouragingly received by the handsome and imperious Madame Le Prun. The
subject of his consultations delighted her; and knowing well the close
relation in which he stood with her husband, she perhaps thought it no
such bad policy to secure him, by a little civility, in her interest.
She little imagined, perhaps, engrossed as she was with other images, to
what aspiring hopes she was thus unconsciously introducing the Sieur de
Blassemare. That gentleman was proud of his _bonnes fortunes_; and the
rapid chemistry of his vanity instantaneously transmuted the lightest
show of good-humor, in a handsome woman, into the faint but
irrepressible evidences of a warmer sentiment of preference.

Perfectly convinced of the reality of the _penchant_ he believed himself
to have inspired, you may be sure the lively scoundrel was not a little
flattered at his imaginary conquest. He debated, therefore, in his
self-complacent reveries, whether he should take prompt advantage of the
weakness of his victim, or pique her by the malice of suspense. He chose
the latter tactique, and, with a happy self-esteem, reserved the
transports of his confession to reward the longings and agitations of a
protracted probationary ordeal.

Thus Blassemare was in his glory, superintending the preparations for a
_fête_, which left him nothing in prodigality and magnificence to
desire; enjoying, at the same time, the delightful consciousness of
having placed, without an effort, the prettiest woman in France at his
feet, and the _piquant_ sense, beside, of his little treason against old
Le Prun.

Thus matters proceeded; but, strange to say, while the evening for which
all these preparations were being made was still more than a week
distant, Madame Le Prun, whose impatience of even that brief delay had
been unspeakable, on a sudden lost all her interest in the affair. Such,
alas! is the volatility, the caprice, of women. The object for sake of
which she had led poor Le Prun a dog's life for so long, was now
presented to her, and she turned from it with indifference, if not with
disgust. This would, indeed, have been very provoking to Le Prun
himself, had he been just then upon speaking terms with his wife; but
not happening to be so, and being in no mood to talk about her further
to his gay familiar, Blassemare, he was wholly ignorant of those
feminine fluctuations of interest and of liking which Blassemare himself
did not fully comprehend. The change was so abrupt as to excite his
surprise. Her apathy, too, was unaccompanied by ill-temper, and was
obviously so genuine, that he could hardly believe it affected merely to
pique him. We are disposed to think there was a powerful, but
mysterious, cause at work in this change.

It was just about this time that one night, Julie, having sat up rather
later than usual, and intending to bid Lucille good night, if she were
still awake, entered her suite of apartments, and approached her
dressing-room door. She heard her rush across the floor, as she did so,
and, with a face of terror, she emerged from the door and stood before
it, as if to bar ingress to the room.

Julie was disconcerted and agitated by this apparition; and Lucille was
evidently, from whatever cause, greatly terrified. The two girls
confronted one another with pale and troubled looks. Lucille was white
with fear, and, alas! as it seemed to her companion, with the agitation
of guilt. Julie looked at her all aghast.

"Good night, Julie, good night," she whispered, hurriedly.

"Good night," answered she; "I fear I have interrupted--I mean, startled
you."

"Good night, good night," repeated Lucille.

As Julie retreated across the lobby, she was overtaken by Lucille, who
placed her hand upon her shoulder.

"Julie, will you hate me if I tell you all?" she said, in great
agitation, as she hurried with her into her apartment.

"_Hate_ you, Lucille! How could I hate my dear friend and companion?"

"Friend, O yes, _friend_; what a friend I have proved to you!"

"Come, come, you must not let yourself be excited; you know you are my
friend, my _only_ friend and confidante, and you know I love you."

Lucille covered her face with her hands and sobbed or shuddered
violently. Julie embraced and kissed her tenderly; but, in the midst of
these caresses, her unhappy friend threw her arms about her neck, and,
looking earnestly in her face for a few seconds, drew her passionately
to her heart and kissed her, murmuring as she did so--

"No, no; she never could forgive me."

And, so saying, she mournfully betook herself away, leaving Julie a prey
to all manner of vague and perplexing alarms.

Whatever was the cause of Lucille's profound mental agitation, it was an
impenetrable mystery to Julie. Blassemare obviously did not know what to
make of it; and as the fête drew near without eliciting any
corresponding interest on her part, Julie, who had observed with
pleasure the delight with which at first she had anticipated the event,
was dismayed and astonished at the change. As often as she had
endeavored to recall her to the topic so strangely approached, and
inexplicably recoiled from, upon the occasion we have just described,
Lucille repulsed her curiosity, or at least evaded it with entire and
impenetrable secrecy. Finding, therefore, that the subject was obviously
distasteful to her, she forbore to return to it, and contented herself
with recording the broken conversation of the night in question among
the other unexplained mysteries of her life.

"Well, Lucille," she said to her one day, as they were walking upon the
terrace together, and interrupting by the remark a long and gloomy
silence, "you do not seem to enjoy the prospect of the gay night which
my uncle has prepared, now that it approaches, half so much as you did
in the distance."

"Enjoy it? no, no."

"But you longed for such an occasion."

"Perhaps, Julie, I had reasons; perhaps it was not all caprice."

"But do you not still enjoy the prospect? surely it has not lost all its
charms?"

"I say, Julie, I had reasons--that is, perhaps I had--for wishing it. I
have none now."

"Well, but it seems to me it positively depresses you. Surely, if it
were merely indifferent, it need not distress you."

"Ah, Julie, Julie, we are strange creatures; we know not ourselves,
neither our strength nor our weakness, our good nor our evil, until time
and combinations solve the problem, and show us the sad truth."

"It seems to me," said Julie, with a gentle smile, "you take a wondrous
moral tone in treating of a ball, my pretty sage; and, notwithstanding
all you say, I suspect you like a fête as well as most young women."

"Julie, when I tell you honestly I hate it--that I would gladly be
hidden in the roof or the cellar of the loneliest tower in the chateau
upon that evening, you will cease to suspect me of so poor a
dissimulation. Honestly, then, and sadly, these crowded festivities, I
expected but a short time since with so much delight, are now not only
indifferent to me, but repulsive. I no longer wish to meet and mix with
people; the idea, on the contrary, depresses, nay, even terrifies me."

"Lucille, you are hiding something from me."

"_Hiding!_--no, nothing--that is, nothing but my own thoughts, the
images of my reflections; nothing, dear Julie, that it would not render
you unhappy to hear. Why should I throw upon your mind the gloom and
shadows of my own?"

"But perhaps your troubles are fantastic and unreal; and, were you to
confide in me, I might convince you that they are so."

"Julie, they are real."

"So thinks every body who is haunted by chimeras."

"These are none. Oh, Julie! would I could tell you all. The agony of the
relation would be in some sort recompensed by having one human being to
tell my thoughts to. But it cannot be; it is quite, quite impossible."

"This impossibility is also one of the imagination."

"No, no, Julie; the effort to repose this confidence would destroy _all_
confidence between us. I have said enough--let us speak of other
matters. My innermost grief, be it what it may, I must endure alone.
Julie, it is a hard condition; but I must and will--alone."

Here they were interrupted by Blassemare, who gayly joined them, with a
prayer that they would resolve a momentous difficulty, by deciding upon
the best site for one of his principal batteries of fireworks; and so,
with little good-will, they surrendered themselves for a quarter of an
hour to the guidance and the light sarcastic conversation of the master
of the revels, with whom for the present we shall leave them.


X.--THE FÊTE.

At length the eventful night arrived--a beautiful, still, star-lit
night. You may fancy the splendor of the more than royal festivities.
What a magnificent levee of gayety, rank, and beauty! What unexampled
illuminations!--what fantastic and inexhaustible ingenuity of
pyrotechnics! How the gorgeous suites of salons laughed with the
brilliant crowd! How the terraces, arched and lined with soft-colored
lamps, re-echoed with gay laughter or murmured flatteries! What an
atmosphere it was of rosy hues, of music, and ceaseless hum of human
enjoyment! For miles around, the wandering peasants beheld the wide,
misty, prismatic circle that overarched the enchanted ground, and heard
the silver harmonies and drumming thunders of the orchestras floating
over the woods, and filling the void darkness with sounds of unseen
festivities. In such a scene all are in good-humor--all wear their best
looks. Each finds his appropriate amusement. The elegant gamester
discovers his cards and his companions; the garrulous find listeners;
the gossip retails, and imbibes, from a hundred sources, all the current
scandal; vanity finds incense--beauty adoration; the young make love, or
dance, or in groups give their spirits play in pleasantries, and
raillery, and peals of animated laughter; their elders listen to the
music, or watch the cards, or in a calmer fashion converse; while all,
each according to his own peculiar taste, find whatever pleases their
palate best. Whatever is rarest, most fantastic--things only dreamed
of--the epicurean connoisseur has only to invoke, and, at a touch of the
magic wand of Mammon, it is there before him. Wines, too,--what-not,
est-est, tokay, and all the rest, flowing from the inexhaustible tap of
the same Mephistopheles, with his golden gimlet. All the demons of
luxury riot there, and at your nod ransack the earth for a flavor or a
flask; and place it before you, almost before your wish is uttered. It
is, indeed, the Mahomet's paradise of all true believers in the stomach,
and worshippers of Bacchus. Thus in a realized dream all eddies on in a
delicious intoxication, and each is at once the recipient of enjoyment
and the dispenser of good-humor, imbibing through every sense enchanted
fare, reflecting smiles, and radiating hilarity. Each, indeed, becomes,
as it were, a single glowing particle in the genial and brilliant mass,
and tends to keep alive the general fire, from which he derives and to
which returns at once light and geniality. It is admitted that he who
has discovered the grand arcanum, and has the philosopher's stone in his
waistcoat-pocket, is, so to speak, _ex officio_, a magician. But M. Le
Prun had no need of any such discoveries. He had the gold itself, and
was, therefore, a ready-made magician, and as such was worshipped
accordingly with an oriental fanaticism.

Monsieur le Prun had, like other favorites of fortune in the latter days
of the monarchy, purchased his patent of noblesse. Every body knew that
he was a _parvenu_; and rumor, as she is wont in such cases, had adorned
his early history with so many myths and portents, that Niebuhr himself
could hardly have distinguished between the fable and the truth. It was
said and believed that he was a foundling--a Gipsy's son, a wandering
beggar, a tinker. Others had seen him in rags, selling pencils at the
steps between the Pont-Neuf and the Pont-au-Change. Others, again,
maintained that he had for years filled the canine office of guide to an
old blind mendicant, whose beat was about the Rue de Bauboug; and were
even furnished with a number of pleasant anecdotes about his hardships
and adroitness, while in this somewhat undignified position. Indeed, the
varieties of positions though which good Mother Gossip sent him were
such, and so interminable, that a relation of half of them would alone
make a library of fiction. But fortune had consecrated this mean and
smutty urchin. He stood now worshipped in the awful glory of his
millions, pedestalled on his money-bags, gilded from head to heel; and
what could the proudest noblesse upon earth do but forget and forgive
the rags and hunger of his infancy, and come together, from the east and
from the west, to drink of the cup of his enchantments, and cry, "Long
live King Solomon in all his glory?"

"She is beautiful as a divinity," exclaimed the gallant old Marquess de
Fauteuil, who had just completed an admiring survey of the fair Madame
le Prun.

"Pretty--yes; but she has the manners of a _petite moine_," said the
Duchess de la Cominade, an old flame of the marquis, who, in spite of
her marriage and her mistakes, conceived her claims upon his devotions
unabated.

"And her little gossip, too, Le Prun's niece, is a charming creature--an
exquisitely contrived contrast. By my word, this place deserves its
name--is it not truly the Chateau des Anges?"

"Who is that young person whom Le Prun is leading towards them? He is
the only man I have seen to-night whose dress is perfect; and he looks
like a hero of romance."

"That?--eh? Why that is the Marquis de Secqville."

"What! the horrid man who enslaves us all? I have not seen him for
years--how very handsome he is!"

"Yes; and I fancy that melancholy air assists him very much in
vanquishing the gentle sex. I once had a little vein of that myself."

"So you had," murmured the duchess, with a tender smile of memory, and a
little sigh. "But is it not a madness of poor Le Prun to present that
terrible man to his handsome young wife?"

"He is to marry the niece--the affair is concluded. Poor little thing!
she looks so frightened; see--a little fluttered pigeon of Venus--it
becomes her very much."

Meanwhile Le Prun and the marquis were approaching Lucille and Julie,
who were seated together close to a window which opened to the floor,
and admitted the soft summer air, charged with such sounds and perfumes
as might have hovered among the evergreen groves of Calypso's island.

"He is coming," said Julie, "he is coming with my uncle."

"Who?" asked Lucille, looking coldly on the advancing figures.

"My--my fiancé, the Marquis de Secqville," whispered Julie, in trembling
haste, blushing, and dropping her eyes.

"Oh, then, I must observe him carefully," said Lucille, with an arch
smile.

"Do, and tell me honestly what you think of him."

"Ha! little rogue, I see you are not quite so indifferent as you
pretend."

"My _heart_ is indifferent--but--but he is very handsome--don't you
think so?"

"Hush! here he is."

"I have the happiness, madame, to present Monsieur le Marquis de
Secqville, with whom, as you are aware, we are about to have the honor
of being nearly allied."

So said Monsieur le Prun, with a smile of conjugal affection, which may,
or may not, have been genuine.

"I was not until now aware of the full extent of the honor and the
happiness involved in that alliance," said the marquis, with a glance of
respectful admiration.

Madame le Prun acknowledged this little speech with a slight bow, and a
cold and haughty smile.

"You have been in the south lately?"

"Yes, madame, with my regiment at Avignon."

"So he says," interrupted the fermier-general, with a cunning leer; "but
his colonel swears he never saw him there."

"Then either you or your colonel must be wrong," said Madame le Prun,
drily.

"No, no, madame; but Monsieur le Prun likes a jest at my expense."

"Not at all," said Le Prun, laughing; "I protest D'Artois, his colonel,
vows he has not seen him for six months at least."

"They are in a conspiracy to quiz me."

"Then you _were_ at Avignon?"

"No such thing, I tell you; the fellow was about some mischief--ha! ha!
ha!"

"He is resolved to laugh at me."

"Yes, yes, I say he is a mischievous fellow--the most dangerous dog in
France; and so shy that, by my word, it requires a shrewd fellow like
myself to discover his rogueries."

"And so he deserves not only _all_ my sins, but a great deal more."

"Stay--here is the Visconte de Charrebourg. Visconte, this is the
Marquis de Secqville, my future nephew."

The old visconte looked closely and dubiously for a moment in the young
man's face. The marquis, on the contrary, seemed to have some little
difficulty in suppressing a smile.

"But that I know I have not had the honor of meeting you before, I
should----but no doubt it is a family likeness. I knew your father when
he was about your age, and a very handsome fellow, by my faith. Is his
brother, the Conte de Cresseron, still living?"

The old gentleman drew the marquis away before he had had time to pay
his devoirs to Julie, who had shrunk at his approach into the
background, and left the little group to themselves.

"What do you think of him?" whispered Julie, resuming her place by
Lucille.

"He is pretty well."

"Monsieur le Marquis is a handsome man," said Blassemare, who at that
moment joined them; and, addressing Lucille, "You have seen him before?"

"_I?_--no. He has just been presented to me for the first time."

"And you think him----"

"Rather handsome--indeed, _decidedly_ handsome; but, somehow, his
melancholy spoils him. But I forgot, Julie--I ask your pardon, my
pretty niece, for criticising your hero. Remember, however, I admit his
beauty, though I can't admire him."

There is no truth of which we have been reminded with such unnecessary
reiteration, as the pretty obvious fact that every human enjoyment must,
sooner or later, come to an end. The _fête_ at the Chateau des Anges had
no exemption from this law of nature and necessity. Musicians, cooks,
artists, and artisans of all sorts, gradually disappeared. At length the
last equipage whirled down the great avenue, and a stillness and void,
more mournful from the immediate contrast, supervened.

The windows were closed--the yawning servants betook themselves to their
beds, and the angel of sleep waved his downy wings over the old chateau.
The genius of Blassemare was of that electric sort which is not easily
unexcited. He could no more have slept than he could have transformed
himself into one of the stone Tritons of the fountain by which in the
moonlight he now stood alone. Blassemare had had a magnificent triumph;
so well-contrived an entertainment had never, perhaps, been known
before; and, like certain great generals, he felt desirous to visit the
field of his victory after the heat of action was over.

Monsieur Le Prun was also wide awake and astir from other causes. No
vein of Blassemare's excitement--not even jealousy, nor conscience, nor
any mental malady--kept him waking. The cause of his vigilance was,
simply, his late supper and an indigestion.

Now it happened that both these worthies were walking unconsciously
almost side by side--Le Prun along the summit, and Blassemare along the
base, of the beautiful terrace which stretched in front of the windows
of the chateau.

There was a little receding court which lay in front of Madame Le Prun's
windows, which were furnished with a heavy stone balcony. On the side
opposite was a high wall, which divided the pleasure-grounds from the
wild, wooded park that lay immediately beyond, and in this was a door
with a private key and a spring lock.

Now it happened that both Monsieur Le Prun and the Sieur de Blassemare,
as they approached this point, amid the fumes of expiring lamps and the
wreck of fireworks, heard certain sounds of an unexpected sort. These
were, in fact, human voices, conversing in earnest but suppressed
tones--so low, indeed, that were it not for the breathless stillness of
the night they would have been unheard.

"Sacre!" muttered Le Prun, looking up like a toothless old panther.

"Ma foi! what's this?" whispered Blassemare, whose jealousy was also
alarmed.

The sounds continued--the eavesdroppers quickened their paces. Le Prun
was, however, unfortunately a little asthmatic, as sometimes happens to
bridegrooms of a certain age, and, spite of all his efforts to hold it
in, he could not contain a burst of coughing.

Its effect was magical. There supervened an instantaneous silence,
followed by the dropping of a heavy body upon the ground, as it seemed,
under Madame Le Prun's windows. The descent was, however, unfortunately
made; a dog, evidently hurt, raised a frightful yelping, making the
night additionally hideous. Blassemare hurried up the steps, and at the
top encountered Le Prun, running and panting, with his sword drawn.
There was a sound, as of hastily closing the casement above the
balcony--a light gleamed from it for an instant, and was
extinguished--and, at the same moment, they beheld the dim figure of a
man hurrying across the court, and darting through the opposite door,
which shut with a crash behind him.

"Thieves! robbers!" shouted Le Prun, dashing at the door.

"Robbers! thieves!" cried a shrill voice of alarm from Madame Le Prun's
casement.

"Horns! antlers!" halloed Blassemare.

"Robbers! robbers!"

"Thieves! thieves!"

The lady screamed, Le Prun bawled, Blassemare laughed.

"He is gone, however," said the latter, as soon as the explosion had a
little subsided. "Suppose we get the key, madame. Please throw us yours
from the window. I promise to pink the burglar through the body.
Quick--quick!"

"Ay, ay," thundered Le Prun, "the key! the key!"

Madame Le Prun was too much excited to get it in an instant. She ran
here, and flew there--she screamed and rummaged. Le Prun stormed. A key
was at last thrown out, amid prayers and imprecations. How
provoking!--it was a wrong one. Another effort--a new burst of
execration from Le Prun--another fit of laughter from Blassemare--more
screaming and pressing from the window--and all accompanied by the
sustained yelping of the injured lap-dog.

"Here it is--this must be it," and another key clangs and jingles on the
ground.

"Yes, this time it is the right key." The door flies open--Le Prun
rushes puffing among the bushes. Blassemare sees something drop
glittering to the ground as the door opens--a button and a little rag of
velvet; he says nothing, but pockets it, and joins the moonlight chase.

It is all in vain. Le Prun, perspiring and purple, his passion as
swollen as his veins, knowing not what to think, but fearing every
thing, staggered back, silent and exhausted; Blassemare also silent--no
longer laughing--abstracted, walks with knit brows, and compressed lips,
beside him.

"Of course," said Blassemare, "you have the fullest reliance upon the
honor of your wife?"

Monsieur Le Prun growled an inarticulate curse or two, and Blassemare
whistled a minuet.

"Come, my dear Le Prun," he resumed, "let us be frank; you are uneasy."

"About what?"

"Madame Le Prun."

"She is not injured?"

"No, but----"

"Ah, she's in league with the thieves, may be?" said Le Prun, with an
agitated sneer.

"Precisely so," answered Blassemare, with a cold laugh.

"I know what you think, and I know what _I_ think," replied Le Prun,
with suppressed fury.

His suspicions were all awake; he was bursting with rage, and looked
truly infernal.

"On the faith of a gentleman," said Blassemare, with a changed tone, "I
cannot be said to _think_ any thing about the affair. I have my doubts,
but that is all. We men are naturally suspicious; but, after all, there
are such things as thieves and housebreakers."

Le Prun said nothing, but looked black and icy as the north wind.

"At all events," said Blassemare, "we men of the world know how to deal
with affairs of this sort; so long as any uncertainty exists, put
ostensibly the best possible construction upon it. Thus much is due to
one's dignity in the eyes of the public; and in private we may prosecute
inquiries unsuspected, and with the greater likelihood of success."

"I know the world as well as you, Blassemare. I'm sick of your tone of
superiority and advice. I know when to respect and when to defy the
world. A man can no more make a fortune without tact than he can lose
one without folly."

"Well, well," said Blassemare, who was used to an occasional rebuff, and
regarded a gruff word from his principal no more than he did the buzz of
a beetle, "I know all that very well; but you, robust fellows, with
millions at your back, are less likely to respect those subtle and
delicate influences which sometimes, notwithstanding, carry mischief
with them, than we poor, sensitive valetudinarians, without a guinea in
our pockets; and if you will permit me, I will, when I return to-day,
sift the matter for you. I understand woman; it is an art in itself,
though not, perhaps, a very high one. A careless conversation with
Madame Le Prun will let me further into the mystery, than a year spent
in accumulating circumstantial evidence. You may rely on the result."

The fermier-general uttered something between a growl and a grunt, which
might or might not convey assent; and, waving Blassemare towards the
house, walked along the terrace alone; and sat himself down upon the
steps at the further end.

The mental torpor which supervenes under sudden disasters was not, in
the case of the fermier-general, without its dreamy groups of ugly
images in prospect. As the light broke, and the darkness began to melt
eastward into soft crimson mists and streaks of amber, Monsieur Le Prun
rose stiffly from his hard, cold seat, and, with the slow step of a man
irresolute and oppressed with profound wrath and mortification, began to
return homeward.

"Robbers!--thieves!" he muttered bitterly. "How glibly the traitress
echoed the cry! The rascal Blassemare gave the true alarm--she did not
echo _that_. D---- her, and d----him! Robbers, indeed! Thieves!--very
like. I know what they came a thieving for. Upon her balcony--talking in
murmurs--the candle extinguished in such a devil of a hurry--the ready
cry of 'Thieves'--the spring door open for his flight--and the long
delay to find the key. Bah! what proofs are wanting?"

He heard just at this point a cracked voice singing a gay love verse
from an open window. He knew the voice; every association connected with
the performance and the performer jarred upon his nerves.

It was indeed the Visconte de Charrebourg, some of whose early gayety
had returned with his good fortune. He had, such was the pride of his
rich son-in-law, a little household of his own, and kept his state and
his own exorbitantly early hours in a suite of rooms assigned him,
through one of whose windows, arrayed in a velvet cap and gown of
brocade, he was rivalling the lark and greeting the rising sun, and,
while sipping his chocolate in the intervals, moved, with the nimble
irregularity of idle and active-minded age, about his apartment.

"Well, sir, a pleasant affair this!" cried a harsh voice, interrupting
his cheery occupation; and on looking round he saw the purple and
sinister face of the fermier-general looming through the window.

"What affair?" asked the visconte, in unfeigned astonishment, for he had
been quite certain that his worthy son-in-law was quietly in his bed.

"Your daughter's conduct."

"What of her?"

"Just this--she is a ----!" and, with the term of outrage, Le Prun
uttered a forced laugh of fury.

"I cannot have heard you aright: be kind enough to repeat that."

There was a certain air of pomp and menace in this little speech, which
drove Le Prun beyond all patience. He repeated the imputation in
language still grosser. This was an insult which the ancient blood of
the Charrebourgs could not tolerate, and the visconte taunted him with
the honor which one of his house had done him in mingling their pure
blood with that of a "roturier." Then came the obvious retort, "beggar,"
and even "trickster," retaliated by a torrent of scarcely articulate
scorn and execration, and an appeal to the sword, which, with brutal
contempt, (while at the same time, nevertheless, he recoiled
instinctively a foot or two from the window,) the wealthy plebeian
retorted by threatening to arrest him for the sums he had advanced. Le
Prun had the best of it; he left the outraged visconte quivering and
shrieking like an old woman in a frenzy. It was some comfort to have
wrapt another in the hell-fire that tormented himself.




[From the Examiner.]

MAZZINI ON ITALY.


We may--we do differ from Mazzini in many of his political views, and in
our estimate of what may be the wisest policy for Italian liberals in
existing circumstances. We think that he seeks to impart to politics a
mathematical precision of which they are not susceptible, and does not
sufficiently regard a principle the correctness of which has been
admitted by himself, that the fact of a thing being true in principle
cannot give the right of suddenly enthroning it in practice. But his
errors are all on the large and generous side. He is too apt to
attribute to society the precise convictions and spirit he feels within
himself, and so to expect impossibilities, by impossible means. But
there is a power of reasoning in Mazzini, an unsullied moral purity, a
chivalrous veracity and frankness, an utter abnegation of self, and a
courage that has stood the severest trials, which command not only
respect but veneration. He belongs to the martyr age of Italian
liberalism, and possesses himself the highest qualities of the martyr.

His declared object in publishing the small volume[27] before us is to
correct public opinion in England as to the Italian movement in which he
took part. But it is a statement of principles rather than a narrative
of details. It is always dignified in tone, often singularly eloquent,
and substantially it contains little which would be likely to draw forth
an expression of willing disagreement from any well-educated,
high-minded, liberal Englishman.

Mr. Mazzini thus declares his reasons

     WHY THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD BE REPUBLICAN.

     The Italian tradition is eminently republican. In England, the
     aristocratic element has a powerful influence, because it has a
     history: well or ill, it _has_ organized society: it has
     created a power, snatched from royalty, by conquering
     guarantees for the rights of the subject; it has founded in
     part the wealth and the influence of England abroad. The
     monarchical element has still great influence over the
     tendencies of France, because it also claims an important page
     in the national history; it has produced a Charlemagne, a Louis
     XI., a Napoleon; it has contributed to found the unity of
     France; it has shared with the communes the risks and the
     honors of the struggle against feudalism; it has surrounded the
     national banner with a halo of military glory. What is the
     history of the monarchy and of the aristocracy of Italy? What
     prominent part have they played in the national development?
     What vital element have they supplied to Italian strength, or
     to the unification of the future existence of Italy? The
     history of our royalty in fact commences with the dominion of
     Charles V., with the downfall of our liberties; it is
     identified with servitude and dismemberment; it is written on a
     foreign page, in the cabinets of France, of Austria, and of
     Spain. Nearly all of them the issue of foreign families,
     viceroys of one or other of the great powers, our kings do not
     offer the example of a single individual redeeming by brilliant
     personal qualities the vice of subalternity, to which his
     position condemned him; not a single one who has ever evinced
     any grand national aspiration. Around them in the obscurity of
     their courts, gather idle or retrograde courtiers, men who call
     themselves _noble_, but who have never been able to constitute
     an aristocracy. An aristocracy is a compact independent body,
     representing in itself an idea, and from one extremity of the
     country to another, governed, more or less, by one and the same
     inspiration: our nobles have lived upon the crumbs of royal
     favor, and if on some rare occasions they have ventured to
     place themselves in opposition to the monarch, it has not been
     in the cause of the nation, but of the foreigner, or of
     clerical absolutism. The nobility can never be regarded as an
     historical element: it has furnished some fortunate
     _Condottieri_, powerful even to tyranny, in some isolated town;
     it has knelt at the feet of the foreign emperors who have
     passed the Alps or crossed the sea. The original stock being
     nearly everywhere extinct, the races have become degenerated
     amidst corruption and ignorance. The descendants of our noble
     families at Genoa, at Naples, at Venice, and at Rome, are, for
     the most part specimens of absolute intellectual nullity.
     Almost every thing that has worked its difficult way in art, in
     literature, or in political activity, is plebeian.

     In Italy the initiative of progress has always belonged to the
     people, to the democratic element. It is through her communes
     that she has acquired all she has ever had of liberty: through
     her workmen in wool or silk, through her merchants of Genoa,
     Florence, Venice, and Pisa, that she has acquired her wealth;
     through her artists, plebeian and republican, from Giotto to
     Michael Angelo, that she has acquired her renown; through her
     navigators,--plebeian,--that she has given a world to humanity;
     through her Popes--sons of the people even they--that until the
     twelfth century she aided in the emancipation of the weak, and
     sent forth a word of unity to humanity. All her memories of
     insurrection against the foreigner are memories of the people:
     all that has made the greatness of our towns, dates almost
     always from a republican epoch: the educational book, the only
     book read by the inhabitant of the Alps or the Transteverin who
     can read, is an abridgment of the history of the Ancient Roman
     Republic. This is the reason why the same men who have so long
     been accused of coldness, and who had in fact witnessed with
     indifference the aristocratic and royal revolutions of 1820 and
     1821, arose with enthusiasm and with a true power of
     self-sacrifice at the cry of _St. Mark and the Republic, God
     and the People_! These words contained for them a guarantee.
     They awoke in them, even unconsciously to themselves, the
     all-powerful echo of a living past, a confused recollection of
     glory, of strength, of conscience, and of dignity.

     With such elements how would it be possible to found a monarchy
     surrounded with an aristocracy? How can one speak of a balance
     of powers, where there are but two forces--foreign absolutism,
     and the people? How could one organize a constitutional
     monarchy where the aristocracy is without a past, and where
     royalty inspires neither affection nor respect?

It will surprise many candid readers to find Mr. Mazzini repeatedly
declaring in this book that the republican, or, as he calls it, the
national party, are not responsible for the disunion, which, at a time
when the whole nation was armed against the foreigners and might have
driven them from the country, turned its forces against its own
citizens. He gives proof that his own advice was for union till the day
of victory, and _not till then_ for discussion as to what party should
reap its fruits. Whether to monarch, or to people, he affirms that he
was ready to submit; he asserts repeatedly that it was only after having
been betrayed that the national party set up for themselves; and he
expresses his belief that even now, when a union of princes has been
seen to be impossible, the leadership of a single prince would be
accepted by all, supposing such a fitting leader could be found. He thus
describes

     THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AND THEIR DETRACTORS.

     They have said, and they say again, without taking advantage of
     the favorable position in which events have placed them:--Let
     the nation arise; let her make herself mistress of her own
     territory; then, the victory once gained, let her freely decide
     who shall reap the fruits. Monarch or People, we will submit
     ourselves to the power she herself shall organize. Is it
     possible that so moderate and rational a proposition should be
     the object of such false interpretations, in a country which
     reveres the idea of right and of self-government? Is it
     possible that its leaders should be the object of so much
     calumny?

     It is time that these calumnies should cease. It matters little
     to us, who act as our conscience dictates, without troubling
     ourselves as to the personal result; and to whom faith and
     exile have given the habit of looking higher than the praise or
     blame of this earth. But it should be recognized as most
     important by all who believe that political questions agitated
     by whole nations, are questions eminently religious. For
     religion, to all those who see more in it than the mere
     materialism of forms and formulæ, is not only a thought of
     heaven, but the impulse which seeks to apply that thought, as
     far as possible to government on earth, our rule of action for
     the good of all, and for the moral development of humanity.
     Politics then are like religion--sacred; and all good men are
     bound to see them morally respected. Every question has a right
     to serious, calm, and honest discussion. Calumny should be the
     weapon of those only who have to defend not ideas, but crimes.

     It is immoral to say to men who have preached clemency
     throughout the whole of their political career, who have
     initiated their rule by the abolition of capital punishment,
     who, when in power, never signed a single sentence of exile
     against those who had persecuted them, nor even against the
     known enemies of their principle.--"You are the sanguinary
     organizers of _terror_, men of vengeance and of cruelty." It is
     immoral to ascribe to them views which they never had, and to
     choose to forget that they have, through the medium of the
     press here and elsewhere, attracted and refuted those
     communistic systems and exclusive solutions which tend to
     suppress rather than to transform the elements of society; and
     to say to them, "_You are communists, you desire to abolish
     property_." It is immoral to accuse of irreligion and impiety
     men who have devoted their whole lives to the endeavor to
     reconcile the religious idea, betrayed and disinherited by the
     very men who pretend to be its official defenders, with the
     National movement. It is immoral to insinuate accusations of
     personal interest and of pillage, against men who have serenely
     endured the sufferings of poverty, and whose life, accessible
     to all, has never betrayed either cupidity or the desire of
     luxury. It is immoral continually to proclaim, as the act of a
     whole party, the death of a statesman killed by an unknown
     hand, under the influence of the irritation produced by his own
     acts and by the attacks of another political party, many months
     before the Republican party recommenced its activity.

Mr. Mazzini charges no direct treachery against Carlo Alberto. He
declares him to have been himself the victim of the weakness which
caused others as well as himself so much loss and misery. For the
impossible political project of a Kingdom of the North he was content to
surrender the grand reality of a United People which fate had placed
within his hands.


CHARLES ALBERT.

Genius, love, and faith were wanting in Charles Albert. Of the first,
which reveals itself by a life entirely, logically, and resolutely
devoted to a great idea, the career of Charles Albert does not offer the
least trace; the second was stifled in him by the continual mistrust of
men and things, which was awakened by the remembrance of an unhappy
past; the last was denied him by his uncertain character, wavering
always between good and evil, between _to do_ and _not to do_, between
daring and not daring. In his youth, a thought, not of virtue, but of
Italian ambition--the ambition however which may be profitable to
nations--had passed through his soul like lightning; but he recoiled in
affright, and the remembrance of this one brilliant moment of his youth
presented itself hourly to him, and tortured him like the incessant
throbbing of an old wound, instead of acting upon him as an excitement
to a new life. Between the risk of losing, if he failed, the crown of
his little kingdom, and the fear of the liberty which the people, after
having fought for him, would claim for themselves, he went hesitating
on, with this spectre before his eyes, stumbling at every step, without
energy to confront these dangers, without the will or power to
comprehend that to become King of Italy he must first of all forget that
he was King of Piedmont. Despotic from rooted instinct, liberal from
self-love, and from a presentiment of the future, he submitted
alternately to the government of Jesuits, and to that of men of
progress. A fatal disunion between thought and action, between the
conception and the faculty of execution, showed itself in every act.
Most of those who endeavored to place him at the head of the enterprise,
were forced to agree to this view of his character. Some of those
intimate with him went so far as to whisper that he was threatened with
lunacy. He was the Hamlet of Monarchy.

A characteristic passage of the volume has relation to


LAMARTINE'S VIEWS OF ITALIAN INDEPENDENCE.

The war between the two principles was general in Europe--the enthusiasm
excited by the movements in Italy, especially the Lombard insurrection
and the prodigies of the five days, was immense; and Italy could, had
she willed it and known how, have drawn thence sufficient force to
counterbalance all the strength of hostile reaction. But to do this, it
was necessary, whatever the mean policy of the _Moderates_ might fear,
to give to the movement a character so audaciously national as to alarm
our enemies, and to offer the most powerful element of support to our
friends. Both felt the time was ripe, and began to believe that Italy
would be but _Italy_, and not _the Kingdom of the North_. I remember the
consoling words Lamartine addressed to me, at his house, on the eve of
my departure for Italy, and in presence, amongst others, of Alfred de
Vigny, and of the same Forbin Janson whom I was afterwards to meet
preaching the papal restoration, and getting up various petty
conspiracies and ridiculous intrigues at Rome.

"The hour has struck for you," said the minister, "and I am so firmly
convinced of it, that the first words with which I have charged Monsieur
d'Harcourt for the Pope are these; _Holy Father, you know that you ought
to be the President of the Italian Republic_." But Monsieur d'Harcourt
had quite other things to say to the Pope, on the part of that faction
which involved Lamartine in its snares whilst he imagined that he could
control it. For myself I attached no importance, except as a symptom, to
these words of Lamartine, a man of impulse and of noble instincts, but
unstable in belief, without energy for a fixed purpose, and without real
knowledge of men and things. He was indeed the echo of a tendency
all-powerful, in those moments of excitement, upon the French mind; and
every re-awakening nationality, every political programme, which, if not
absolutely republican, was like that, at least, of the Italian
constituent, would have compelled the support of the most hesitating
government in France.

From great things great things are born. The _dwarfish_ conception of
the _Moderates_ froze up all souls, and imposed an utter change of
politics upon France. The ITALIAN PEOPLE was an ally more than
sufficiently powerful to preserve the Republic from all danger of a
foreign war; a _Kingdom of the North_, in the hands of princes little to
be relied upon, and hostile, by long tradition, to the Republicans of
France, did but add a dangerous element to the league of kings. The
French nation became silent, and left its government free to exist
without any foreign policy, and to leave the destinies of the republic
to the impenetrable future.

The incidents described in most detail are those immediately preceding
and following the fatal surrender of Milan; and it is impossible not to
be struck by the contrast of the royal and the republican party,
assuming the statement to be in all respects correct. But passing this
ignominious period, there ought to be small difference of opinion in a
free and educated country as to where the right lay in the subsequent
Roman struggle. What sensible or honest Protestant would not sympathize
with the indignant eloquence of this earnest Italian protesting against
the flimsy oratory of a Jesuit Frenchman?


MAZZINI TO MONTALEMBERT.

"You base your argument upon the void; you discuss that which was, not
that which is. The Papacy is dead, choked in blood and mire; dead,
because it has betrayed its own mission of protection to the weak
against the oppressor; dead, because for three centuries and a half it
has prostituted itself with princes; dead, because in the name of
egotism and before the palaces of all the corrupt, hypocritical, and
skeptical governments, it has for the second time crucified Christ;
dead, because it has uttered words of faith which it did not itself
believe; dead, because it has denied human liberty and the dignity of
our immortal souls; dead, because it has condemned science in Galileo,
philosophy in Giordano Bruno, religious aspiration in John Huss and
Jerome of Prague, political life by an anathema against the rights of
the people, civil life by Jesuitism, the terrors of the inquisition, and
the example of corruption, the life of the family by confession
converted into a system of espionage, and by division introduced between
father and son, brother and brother, husband and wife; dead, for the
princes, by the treaty of Westphalia; dead, for the peoples, with
Gregory XI., in 1378, and with the commencement of the schism; dead, for
Italy, since 1530, when Clement VII. and Charles V., the Pope and the
Emperor, signed an infamous compact, and extinguished, at Florence, the
dying liberties of Italy, as to-day you have attempted to extinguish her
rising liberties in Rome; dead, because the people has risen, because
Pius IX. has fled, because the multitude curses him, because those very
men who for fifteen years have made war upon the priests, in the name of
Voltaire, now hypocritically defend them, because you and yours defend
them, with intolerance and by force of arms, and declare that the Papacy
and liberty cannot live side by side? You ask Victor Hugo to point out
to you an idea which has been worshipped for eighteen centuries. It is
that idea which you have declared irreconcilable with the Papacy, and
which was breathed into humanity by God; the idea which has withdrawn
from Catholicism the half of the Christian world, the idea which has
snatched from you Lammennais and the flower of the intellects of Europe,
the idea of Christ, that pure, holy, and sacred liberty which you
invoked for Poland some years back, which Italy invokes for herself
to-day, under the form, and with the guarantee of nationality, and which
you cannot pretend to be good for one country and bad for another,
unless you believe it a part of religion to create a pariah people in
the bosom of humanity."

Very admirably, too, and nobly written, are Mr. Mazzini's later remarks
on the republican and anti-papal administration of Rome, and the
coldness it met with in England and elsewhere. We must admit that it is
hard for a people to struggle, suffer, and bleed alone, yet hold
themselves in this temperate attitude. It is _not_ generous, as Mr.
Mazzini too truly complains, in a nation having the enjoyment and the
consciousness of liberty herself, to wait until the hour of victory has
sounded for another nation before she stretches out a sister's hand
towards her.


WHAT THE REPUBLICANS DID AND ENGLAND MIGHT HAVE DONE.

I affirm that with the exception of Ancona, where the triumvirate were
obliged energetically to repress certain criminal acts of political
vengeance, the republican cause was never sullied by the slightest
excess; that no censorship was assumed over the press before the siege,
and that no occasion arose for exercising it during the siege. Not a
single condemnation to death or exile bore witness to a severity which
it would have been our right to have exercised, but which the perfect
unanimity which reigned amongst all the elements of the state rendered
useless. I affirm that, except in the case of three or four priests, who
had been guilty of firing upon our combatants, and who were killed by
the people during the last days of the siege, not a single act of
personal violence was committed by any fraction of the population
against another, and that if ever there was a city presenting the
spectacle of a band of brothers pursuing a common end, and bound
together by the same faith, it was Rome under the republican rule. The
city was inhabited by foreigners from all parts of the world, by the
consular agents, by many of your countrymen; let any one of them arise
and under the guarantee of his own signature deny, if he can, the truth
of what I say. Terror now reigns in Rome; the prisons are choked with
men who have been arrested and detained without trial; fifty priests are
confined in the castle of St. Angelo, whose only crime consists in their
having lent their services in our hospitals; the citizens, the best
known for their moderation, are exiled; the army is almost entirely
dissolved, the city disarmed, and the "factious" sent away even to the
last man; and yet France dares not consult in legal manner the will of
the populations, but re-establishes the papal authority by military
decree. I do not believe that since the dismemberment of Poland there
has been committed a more atrocious injustice, a more gross violation of
the eternal right which God has implanted in the peoples, that of
appreciating and defining for themselves their own life, and governing
themselves in accordance with their own appreciation of it. And I cannot
believe that it is well for you or for Europe that such things can be
accomplished in the eyes of the world, without one nation arising out of
its immobility to protest in the name of universal justice. This is to
enthrone brute force, where, by the power of reason, God alone should
reign; it is to substitute the sword and poniard for law--to decree a
ferocious war without limit of time or means between oppressors rendered
suspicious by their fears, and the oppressed abandoned to the instincts
of reaction and isolation. Let Europe ponder upon these things. For if
the light of human morality becomes but a little more obscured, in that
darkness there will arise a strife that will make those who come after
us shudder with dread.

The balance of power in Europe is destroyed. It consisted formerly in
the support given to the smaller states by the great powers: now they
are abandoned. France in Italy, Russia in Hungary, Prussia in Germany, a
little later perhaps in Switzerland; these are now the masters of the
continent. England is thus made a nullity; the "celsa sedet in Eolus in
arce," which Canning delighted to quote, to express the moderating
function which he wished to reserve for his country, is now a
meaningless phrase. Let not your preachers of the theory of material
interests, your speculators upon extended markets deceive themselves;
there is history to teach them that political influence and commercial
influence are closely bound together. Political sympathies hold the key
of the markets; the tariff of the Roman Republic will appear to you, if
you study it, to be a declaration of sympathy towards England to which
your government did not think it necessary to respond.

       *       *       *       *       *

And yet, above the question of right, above the question of political
interest, both of which were of a nature to excite early the attention
of England, there is, as I have said, another question being agitated at
Rome of a very different kind of importance, and which ought to have
aroused all those who believe in the vital principle of religious
reformation--it is that of liberty of conscience. The religious question
which broods at the root of all political questions showed itself there
great and visible in all its European importance. The Pope at Gaeta was
the theory of absolute infallible authority exiled from Rome for ever;
and exiled from Rome was to be exiled from the world. The abolition of
the temporal power evidently drew with it, in the minds of all those who
understood the secret of the papal authority, the emancipation of men's
minds from the spiritual authority. The principle of liberty and of free
consent, elevated by the Constituent Assembly into a living active
right, tended rapidly to destroy the absolutist dogma which from Rome
aims more than ever to enchain the universe. The high aristocracy of the
Roman Catholic clergy well know the impossibility of retaining the soul
in darkness, in the midst of light inundating the intelligence of men;
for this reason they carried off their Pope to Gaeta; for this reason
they now refuse all compromise. They know that any compromise would be
fatal to them; that they must re-enter as conquerors, or not at all. And
in the same way that the aristocracy of the clergy felt this
inseparability of the two powers, the French government, in its present
reactionary march, has felt that the keystone of despotism is at
Rome--that the ruin of the spiritual authority of the middle ages would
be the ruin of its own projects--and that the only method of securing to
it a few more years of existence was to rebuild for it a temporal
domination.

England has understood nothing of this. She has not understood what
there was of sublime and prophetic in this cry of emancipation, in this
protestation in favor of human liberty, issuing from the very heart of
ancient Rome, in the face of the Vatican. She has not felt that the
struggle in Rome was to cut the Gordian knot of moral servitude against
which she has long and vainly opposed her Bible Societies, her Christian
and Evangelical Alliances; and that there was being opened, had she but
extended a sisterly hand to the movement, a mighty pathway for the human
mind. She has not understood that one bold word, "respect for the
liberty of thought," opposed to the hypocritical language of the French
government, would have been sufficient to have inaugurated the era of a
new religious policy, and to have conquered for herself a decisive
ascendency upon the continent.

The writer of such passages as these may nevertheless be of good heart.
Though we may not think him exactly qualified to conduct to a successful
issue practical political movements in the existing state of Italian
society, we think him qualified for something far higher and nobler.
Like Knox and Wicliffe, Huss and Luther, Mr. Mazzini is no maker of
ephemeral arrangements and compromises; but like them he is the
uncompromising asserter of principles, and the creator of a national
sentiment, that will in time give law to the makers of such
arrangements. Looking to the yet weak and timid condition of public
opinion in Italy--looking to the narrow provincial views which still
hamper general society--above all, looking to the limited power of its
princes and prelates, and to the imbecile and demoralized characters of
its Pio Nonos and Antonellis, we must confess that we see no hope of any
immediate political settlement, the attainment of which need make it
worth while for Mr. Mazzini to compromise or abandon for a moment his
most extreme political opinions. Nothing is to be accomplished at
present; and he is therefore more usefully employed in rallying his
party by fervent reiteration of his principles, and in forming a pure
and elevated public sentiment alike by his precepts and his example.

How masterly is this sketch of the career of


PIO NONO.

A Pope arose, by his tendencies, his progressive instincts and his love
of popularity, an exception to the Popes of later times: to whom
Providence, as if to teach mankind the absolute powerlessness of the
institution, opened, in the love and in the illusions of the people, the
path to a new life. So great is the fascination exercised by great
memories--so great is the power of ancient customs--so feverish, in
these multitudes who are said to be agitated by the breath of anarchy,
is the desire for authority as the guide and sanction of their progress,
that a word of pardon and tolerance from the Pope's lips sufficed to
gather round him, in an enthusiasm and intoxication of affection,
friends and enemies, believers and unbelievers, the ignorant and the men
of thought. One long cry, the cry of millions ready to make themselves
martyrs or conquerors at his nod, saluted him as their father and
benefactor, the regenerator of the Catholic faith and of humanity. The
experience of three ages and the inexorable logic of ideas, were at once
forgotten; writers, powerful by their intellect and doctrines, until
then dreaded as adversaries, employed themselves in founding around that
_One_ man systems destined to prepare for him the way to a splendid
initiative. The many advocates of liberty of conscience, weary of the
spectacle of anarchy revealed by the Protestant sects, remained in
doubt. The few believers in the future church remained silent and
thoughtful. It might be that history had decided too rashly, it might be
amongst the secrets of Providence that an institution, which had for ten
centuries at least given life and movement to Europe, should rise again,
reconciled with the life and movement of humanity, from its own tomb.
The minds of the whole civilized world hung, troubled and excited, upon
the _word_ which was to issue from the Vatican.

And where now is Pius IX.?

In the camp of the enemy: irrevocably disjoined from the progressive
destinies of humanity; irrevocably adverse to the desires, to the
aspirations which agitate his people and the people of believers. The
experiment is complete. The abyss between Papacy and the world is
hollowed out. No earthly power can fill it up.

Impelled by the impulses of his heart to seek for popularity and
affection, but drawn on by the all-powerful logic of the principle that
he represents, to the severity of absolute dictatorship; seduced by the
universal movement of men's minds, by living examples in other
countries, by the spirit of the age, to feel, to understand the sacred
words of progress, of people, of free brotherhood, but incapable of
making himself their interpreter; fearful of the consequences, and
trembling like one who feels himself insecure, lest he should see the
people, raised to a new consciousness of its own faculties and of its
own rights, question the authority of the pontificate--Pius IX.
vacillated contemptibly between the two paths presented to him, muttered
words of emancipation, which he neither knew how nor intended to make
good, and promises of country and independence to Italy which his
followers betrayed by conspiring with Austria. Then, struck with sudden
terror, he fled before the multitudes who cried aloud to him _courage;_
he sheltered himself under the protection of a Prince whom he
despised--the executioner of his subjects; he imbibed his tendencies,
and in order to revenge himself for the quiet with which Rome, provoked
in vain to a civil war, was organizing a new government, he solicited
foreign aid; and he who had, from a horror of bloodshed, shortly before
endeavored to withdraw Roman assistance from the Lombard struggle,
agreed that French, Austrian, Neapolitan, and Spanish bayonets should
rebuild his throne. He now wanders amidst the fallacies of secret
protocols, the servant of his protectors, the servant of all except of
duty and of the wish of those who hoped in him, turning to the frontiers
of Rome and yet not expecting to re-enter there, and as if kept back by
the phantoms of the slain. The Louis XVI. of Papacy, he has destroyed it
for ever. The cannon ball of his allies discharged against the Vatican,
gave the last blow to the institution.

Whilst these things were happening, a Prince was pursuing in the north
of our peninsula a similar course, accompanied by the same hopes, by the
same illusions and delusions of the people. He was saluted by the title
of the _Sword of Italy_. The choicest spirits from all parts pointed out
to him Austria and the Alps, and suspended, in order to make the last
trial of monarchy, the propagandism of their most cherished ideas. He
was preceded by the encouragement of all Europe, and followed by a
numerous and valiant army. Where died Charles Albert?

Thus has Providence shown to our people, desirous of the right, but
lukewarm in faith and too credulous in the illusions of the old world,
the powerlessness of monarchy to insure the safety of Italy, and the
irreconcilability of papacy with the free progress of humanity. The
dualism of the middle ages is henceforward a mere form without life or
soul; the Guelph and Ghibelline insignia are now those of the tomb.
Neither Pope, nor King! God and the people only shall henceforth
disclose to us the regions of the future.

       *       *       *       *       *

Future times--nay the present will do ample justice to Mazzini, as well
as to Pio Nono. In the first will be frankly recognized one of those
iron men who are able to beard tyranny and profligacy even while they
stand alone, the apostles of reformation, the originators and heralds of
after change. In the other--but the words just quoted anticipate as it
seems to us, and in no ungenerous spirit, the verdict and language of
history.

FOOTNOTES:

[27] Royalty and Republicanism in Italy; or Notes and Documents relating
to the Lombard Insurrection, and to the Royal War of 1848. By Joseph
Mazzini. Charles Gilpin.




[From the Keepsake for 1851.]

THE MOTHER'S LAST SONG.

BY BARRY CORNWALL.


    Sleep!--the ghostly winds are blowing;
    No moon's abroad; no star is glowing;
    The river is deep, and the tide is flowing
    To the land where you and I are going!
         We are going afar,
         Beyond moon or star,
         To the land where the sinless angels are!

    I lost my heart to your heartless sire;
    ('Twas melted away by his looks of fire;)
    Forgot my God, and my father's ire,
    All for the sake of a man's desire:--
         But now we'll go
         Where the waters flow,
         And make us a bed where none shall know.

    The world is cruel; the world's untrue;
    Our foes are many; our friends are few;
    No work, no bread, however we sue!
    What is there left for us to do--
         But fly--fly,
         From the cruel sky,
         And hide in the deepest deeps--and die!




[From the Ladies' Companion.]

A DRIVE ABOUT MY NEIGHBORHOOD IN 1850.

BY MARY RUSSEL MITFORD.


If there be one thing more than another in the nice balance of tastes
and prejudices (for I do not speak here of principles) which incline us
now to the elegance of Charles, now to the strength of Cromwell,--which
disgust us alternately with the license of the Cavaliers and the
fanaticism of the Roundheads; it would be the melancholy ruin of
cast-down castles and plundered shrines, that meet our eyes all over our
fair land, and nowhere in greater profusion than in this district, lying
as it does in the very midst of some of the most celebrated battles of
the Civil Wars. To say nothing of the siege of Reading, which more even
than the vandalism of the Reformation completed the destruction of that
noble abbey, the third in rank and size in England, with its magnificent
church, its cloisters, and its halls, covering thirty acres of
buildings,--and such buildings! within the outer courts;--to say nothing
of that most reckless barbarity just at our door--we in our little
village of Aberleigh lie between Basting-House to the south, whose
desperately defended walls offer little more now than a mere site,--and
Donnington to the west, where the ruined Gatehouse upon the hill alone
remains of that strong fortress, which overlooked the well-contested
field of Newbury,--and Chalgrove to the north, where the reaper, as he
binds his sheaf, still pauses to tell you the very place where Hampden
fell; every spot has a history! Look at a wooden spire, and your
companion shakes his head, and says that it has been so ever since the
Cavaliers were blown up in the church tower! Ask the history of a
crumbling wall, and the answer is pretty sure to be, Cromwell! That his
Highness the Lord Protector did leave what an accomplished friend of
mine calls "his peculiar impressions" upon a great many places in our
neighborhood is pretty certain; on so many, that there is no actual or
authentic catalogue of all; and in some cases there is nothing but
general tradition, and the nature of the "impressions" in question, to
vouch for the fact of their destruction at that period.

Amongst these, one of the edifices that must have been best worth
preserving, and is even now most interesting to see, is the grand old
castellated mansion, which in the reign of Elizabeth belonged to one of
her favorite courtiers, and was known as Master Comptroller's House, at
Grays.

The very road to it is singularly interesting. Passing through the town,
which increases in growth every day, until one wonders when and where it
will stop, and looking with ever fresh admiration at the beautiful
lacework window of the old Friary, which I long to see preserved in the
fitliest manner, by forming again the chief ornament of a church, and
then driving under the arch of the Great Western Railway, and feeling
the strange vibration of some monster train passing over our heads,--a
proceeding which never fails to make my pony show off his choicest airs
and graces, pricking up his pretty ears, tossing his slender head,
dancing upon four feet, and sometimes rearing upon two,--we arrive at
the long, low, picturesque old bridge, the oldest of all the bridges
that cross the Thames, so narrow that no two vehicles can pass at once,
and that over every pier triangular spaces have been devised for the
safety of foot passengers. On the centre arch is a fisherman's hut,
occupying the place once filled by a friar's cell, and covering a still
existing chapel, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, now put to secular
uses--a dairy or a cellar.

A little way down the river is one of the beautiful islands of the
Thames, now a smooth and verdant meadow, edged round with old willow
pollards calmly reflected in the bright, clear waters, but giving back
in the twelfth century a far different scene. Here was fought a wager of
battle between Robert de Montford, appellant, and Henry de Essex,
hereditary Standard-bearer of the kings of England, defendant, by
command, and in the presence of Henry the Second. The story is told very
minutely and graphically by Stowe. Robert de Montford at length struck
down his adversary, "who fell," says the old historian, "after receiving
many wounds; and the King, at the request of several noblemen, his
relations, gave permission to the monks to inter the body, commanding
that no further violence should be offered to it. The monks took up the
vanquished knight, and carried him into the abbey, where he revived.
When he recovered from his wounds, he was received into the community,
and assumed the habit of the order, his lands being forfeited to the
King." I have always thought that this story would afford excellent
scope to some great novelist, who might give a fair and accurate picture
of monastic life, and, indeed, of the monastic orders, as landlords,
neighbors, teachers, priests, without any mixture of controversial
theology, or inventing any predecessors of Luther or Wicliffe. How we
should have liked to have heard all about "The Monastery," about the
"Abbot" and Father Eustace, untroubled by Henry Warden or John Knox!
From the moment that they appear, our comfort in the book vanishes, just
as completely as that of the good easy Abbot Boniface himself. There we
are in the middle of vexed questions, with the beautiful pile of Melrose
threatening every moment to fall about our ears!

Our business now, however, is to get over the bridge, which after the
excitement of one dispute with a pugnacious carrier, and another with a
saucy groom, whose caracoling horse had well nigh leaped over the
parapets on either side; after some backing of other carriages, and some
danger of being forced back to our own, we at last achieve, and enter
unscathed, the pleasant village of Caversham.

To the left, through a highly ornamented lodge, lies the road to the
ancient seat of the Blounts, another house made famous by Pope, where
the fair ladies of his love, the sisters Martha and Teresa, lived and
died. A fine old place it is; and a picturesque road leads to it,
winding through a tract called the Warren, between the high
chalk-cliffs, clothed with trees of all varieties, that for so many
miles fence in the northern side of the Thames, and the lordly river
itself, now concealed by tall elms, now open and shining in the full
light of the summer sun. There is not such a flower bank in Oxfordshire
as Caversham Warren.

Our way, however, leads straight on. A few miles further, and a turn to
the right conducts us to one of the grand old village churches, which
give so much of character to English landscape. A large and beautiful
pile it is. The tower half clothed with ivy, standing with its charming
vicarage and its pretty vicarage-garden on a high eminence, overhanging
one of the finest bends of the great river. A woody lane leads from the
church to the bottom of the chalk-cliff, one side of which stands out
from the road below, like a promontory, surmounted by the laurel hedges
and flowery arbors of the vicarage-garden, and crested by a noble cedar
of Lebanon. This is Shiplake church, famed far and near for its
magnificent oak carving, and the rich painted glass of its windows,
collected, long before such adornments were fashionable, by the fine
taste of the late vicar, and therefore filled with the very choicest
specimens of mediæval art, chiefly obtained from the remains of the
celebrated Abbey of St. Bertin, near St. Omers, sacked during the first
French Revolution. In this church Alfred Tennyson was married. Blessings
be upon him! I never saw the great Poet in my life, but thousands who
never may have seen him either, but who owe to his poetry the purest and
richest intellectual enjoyment, will echo and re-echo the benison.

A little way farther, and a turn to the left leads to another spot
consecrated by genius,--Woodcot, where Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton passed
the earlier years of his married life, and wrote several of his most
powerful novels. I have always thought that the scenery of Paul Clifford
caught some of its tone from that wild and beautiful country, for wild
and beautiful it is. The terrace in the grounds commands a most
extensive prospect; and beneath a clump of trees on the common behind
the house, is the only spot where on a clear day Windsor may be seen on
one side, and Oxford on the other,--looking almost like the domes, and
towers, and pinnacles that sometimes appear in the clouds--a fairy
picture that the next breeze may waft away! This beautiful residence
stands so high, that one of its former possessors, Admiral Fraser
(grandfather to that dear friend of mine who is the present owner),
could discover Woodcot Clump from the mast of his own ship at Spithead,
a distance of sixty miles.

Wyfold's Court, another pretty place a little farther on, which also
belonged once to a most dear friend, possesses the finest Wych-elms in
England. Artists come from far and near to paint these stately trees,
whose down-dropping branches and magnificent height are at once so
graceful and so rich. They are said always to indicate ecclesiastical
possession, but no trace of such dependency is to be found in the
title-deeds, or in the tenure by which in feudal times the lands were
held,--that of presenting a rose to the King, should he pass by a
certain road on a May-day.

And now we approach Rotherfield Grays,--its bowery lanes, its wild
rugged commons, and its vast beech woods, from the edge of which
projects every here and there a huge cherry-tree, looking, in the
blossoming springtime, as if carved in ivory, so exquisite is the
whiteness, casting upon the ferny-turf underneath showers of snowy
petals that blanch the very ground, and diffusing around an almond-like
odor, that mingles with the springing thyme and the flowering gorse, and
loads the very air with heavy balm.

Exquisite is the pleasantness of these beech woods, where the light is
green from the silky verdure of the young leaves, and where the mossy
wood-paths are embroidered with thousands of flowers, from the earliest
violet and primrose, the wood-anemone, the wood-sorrel, the daffodil,
and the wild hyacinth of spring, to the wood-vetch, the woodroof, the
campanulas, and the orchises of summer;--for all the English orchises
are here: that which so curiously imitates the dead oak leaf, that again
which imitates the human figure; the commonest but most pretty bee
orchis, and the parallel ones which are called after the spider, the
frog, and the fly. Strange freak of nature this, in a lower order of
creation, to mimic her own handyworks in a higher!--to mimic even our
human mimicry!--for that which is called the man orchis is most like the
imitation of a human figure that a child might cut from colored paper.
Strange, strange mimicry! but full of variety, full of beauty, full of
odor. Of all the fragrant blossoms that haunt the woods, I know none so
exquisite as that night-scented orchis which is called indifferently,
the butterfly or the lily of the valley. Another glory of these woods,
an autumnal glory, is the whole fungus tribe, various and innumerable as
the mosses; from the sober drab-colored fungi, spotted with white, which
so much resemble a sea-egg, to those whose deep and gorgeous hues would
shame the tinting of an Indian shell. Truffles, too, are found beneath
the earth; and above it are deposited huge masses of the strange
compound called in modern geological phrase Agglomerate. Flint and
coral, and gravel, and attrited pebbles enter into the combination of
this extraordinary natural conglomeration, which no steel, however
hardened, can separate, and which seems to have been imitated very
successfully by the old builders in their cements and the substances
used in the filling up of their grandest structures, as may be seen in
the layers which unite the enormous slabs of granite in the Roman walls
at Silchester, as well as in the works of the old monkish architects at
Reading Abbey. Another beauty of this country is to be found in the
fields,--now of the deep-red clover, with its shining crimson tops, now
of the gay and brilliant saintfoin (the holy hay), the bright pink of
whose flowery spikes gives to the ground the look of a bed of roses.

And now we reach the gate that admits us down a steep descent to the
Rectory-house, a large substantial mansion, covered with Banksia roses,
and finely placed upon a natural terrace,--a fertile valley below, and
its own woods and orchard-trees above.

My friend the rector, raciest of men, is an Oxford divine of the old
school; a ripe scholar; one who has travelled wide and far, and is
learned in the tongues, the manners, and the literature of many nations;
but who is himself English to the backbone in person, thought, and
feeling. Orthodox is he, no doubt. Nowhere are church and schools, and
parish visitings, better cared for; but he has a knack of attending also
to the creature comforts of all about him, of calling beef and blankets
in aid of his precepts, which has a wonderful effect in promoting their
efficacy. Mansion and man are large alike, and alike overflowing with
hospitality and kindliness. His original and poignant conversation is so
joyous and good-humored, the making every body happy is so evidently his
predominant taste, that the pungency only adds to the flavor of his
talk, and never casts a moment's shade over its sunny heartiness.

Right opposite the Rectory terrace, framed like a picture by the rarest
and stateliest trees, stands the object of my pilgrimage, Grays' Court,
a comparatively modern house, erected amongst the remains of a vast old
castellated mansion, belonging first to the noble family of Gray, who
gave their name not merely to the manor, but to the district; then to
the house of Knollys; and latterly to the Stapletons, two venerable
ladies of that name being its present possessors.

All my life I had heard of Grays' Court; of the rich yet wild country in
which it is placed; of the park so finely undulated, and so profusely
covered by magnificent timber; of the huge old towers which seem to
guard and sentinel the present house; of the far extended walls, whose
foundations may yet be traced, in dry seasons, among the turf of the
lawn; of the traditions which assign the demolition of those ancient
walls to the wars of the Commonwealth; and of the strange absence of all
documentary evidence upon the subject.

Another cause for my strong desire to see this interesting place, is to
be found in its association with one of those historical personages in
whom I have always taken the warmest interest. Lord Essex (whose mother
was the famous Lettice Knollys, who had had for her second husband
another of Queen Elizabeth's favorites, Robert Dudley, Earl of
Leicester), when confined in London, a prey to the tyranny of Elizabeth,
petitioned, in one of those eloquent letters to the Virgin Queen which
will always remain amongst the earliest and finest specimens of English
prose, to be allowed to repair, for the benefit of his health, "to
Master Comptroller's house at Grays." Ah! we can fancy, when looking
over this lovely valley, with its woods, its verdure, its sweep of
hills, its feeling of the near river, we can well fancy how the
poet-heart of the great Earl must have longed to leave the trial, the
turmoil, the jangling, the treachery, the weary fears, the bitter
humiliations of his London captivity, and to taste once more the sweet
air, the pleasant sights, the calmness and the quiet of the country.
Hope and comfort must have come with the thought. One of the prettiest
pictures that I know, is an extract from a contemporary letter, in the
first volume of Mr. Craik's most interesting book, the "Romance of the
Peerage," telling of the Earl and Countess, during one of the daily
visits that she was at one time permitted to pay him when he was a
prisoner in Essex House, walking together in the garden, "now he, now
she, reading one to the other." The whole taste and feeling of the man,
the daily habit of his life, is shown in this little circumstance. And
this is the brave soldier who, when examined before the Privy Council, a
council composed of open enemies and treacherous friends, had been kept
nearly all the day kneeling at the bottom of the table. Tyranny drove
him into madness, and then exacted the full penalty of the wild acts
which that madness prompted. But Essex was a man in advance of his age;
the companion as well as the patron of poets; the protector of papist
and puritan; the fearless asserter of liberty of conscience! He deserved
a truer friend than Bacon, a more merciful judge than Elizabeth.

To the house of Knollys belongs another interesting association, that
strangest of genealogical romances, the great case of the Banbury
peerage. The cause was decided (if decided it can be called even now) by
evidence found in the parish register of Rotherfield Grays.

The place has yet another attraction in its difficulty of access; the
excellent ladies of the Court admitting few beyond their own immediate
connections and nearest friends. One class, to be sure, finds its way
there as if by instinct--the poor, who, as the birds of the air detect
the grain under the surface in the newly sown ground, are sure to find
out the soil where charity lies germinating. Few excepting these
constant visitors are admitted. But, besides the powerful introduction
of our mutual friend the rector, a nephew of theirs, and his most sweet
and interesting wife, had for some time inhabited the house which had
been the home of my own youth, so that my name was not strange to them;
and they had the kindness to allow me to walk over their beautiful
grounds and gardens, to see their charming Swiss dairy, with its marbles
and its china, and, above all, to satisfy my curiosity by looking over
the towers which still remain of the old castle,--piles whose prodigious
thickness of wall and distance from each other give token of the immense
extent and importance of the place. It is said to have been built round
two courts. Alnwick and Windsor rose to my thoughts as I contemplated
these gigantic remains, and calculated the space that the original
edifice must have covered. One of these towers is still occupied by the
well of the castle, a well three hundred feet deep, which supplies the
family with water. It will give some idea of the scale of the old
mansion, to say that the wheel by which the water is raised, is
twenty-five feet in diameter. Two donkeys are employed in the operation.
One donkey suffices for the parallel but much smaller well at
Carisbrook, where the animal is so accustomed to be put in for the mere
purpose of exhibiting the way in which the water is raised to the
visitors who go to look at the poor king's last prison, that he just
makes the one turn necessary to show the working of the machine, and
then stops of his own accord. The donkeys at Grays, kept for use and not
for show, have not had a similar opportunity of displaying their
sagacity.

One cannot look at the place without a feeling of adaptedness. It is the
very spot for a stronghold of the Cavaliers: a spot where Lovelace and
Montrose might each have fought and each have sung, defending it to the
last loaf of bread and the last charge of powder, and yielding at last
to the irresistible force of Cromwell's cannonade.




[From the Keepsake for 1851.]

STANZAS.


    Come not, when I am dead,
      To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave,
    To trample round my fallen head,
      And vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst not save.
    There let the wind sweep, and the plover cry;
          But go thou by.

    Child, if it were thine error or thy crime
      I care no longer, being all unblest;
    Wed whom thou wilt; but I am sick of time,
      And I desire to rest.
    Pass on, weak heart, and leave me where I lie.
          Go by--go by!

    ALFRED TENNYSON.




[From Blackwood's Magazine.]

MY NOVEL:

OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.

BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON.

_Continued from page 120._


BOOK II.--CHAPTER VII.

In spite of all his Machiavellian wisdom, Dr. Riccabocca had been foiled
in his attempt to seduce Leonard Fairfield into his service, even though
he succeeded in partially winning over the widow to his views. For to
her he represented the worldly advantages of the thing. Lenny would
learn to be fit for more than a day-laborer; he would learn gardening,
in all its branches--rise some day to be a head gardener. "And," said
Riccabocca, "I will take care of his book learning, and teach him
whatever he has a head for."

"He has a head for every thing," said the widow.

"Then," said the wise man, "every thing shall go into it."

The widow was certainly dazzled; for, as we have seen, she highly prized
scholarly distinction, and she knew that the parson looked upon
Riccabocca as a wondrous learned man. But still, Riccabocca was said to
be a Papist, and suspected to be a conjuror. Her scruples on both these
points, the Italian, who was an adept in the art of talking over the
fair sex, would no doubt have dissipated, if there had been any use in
it; but Lenny put a dead stop to all negotiations. He had taken a mortal
dislike to Riccabocca; he was very much frightened by him--and the
spectacles, the pipe, the cloak, the long hair, and the red umbrella;
and said so sturdily, in reply to every overture, "Please, sir, I'd
rather not; I'd rather stay along with mother"--that Riccabocca was
forced to suspend all further experiments in his Machiavellian
diplomacy. He was not at all cast down, however, by his first failure;
on the contrary, he was one of those men whom opposition stimulates. And
what before had been but a suggestion of prudence, became an object of
desire. Plenty of other lads might no doubt be had, on as reasonable
terms as Lenny Fairfield; but the moment Lenny presumed to baffle the
Italian's designs upon him, the special acquisition of Lenny became of
paramount importance in the eyes of Signor Riccabocca.

Jackeymo, however, lost all his interest in the traps, snares, and gins
which his master proposed to lay for Leonard Fairfield, in the more
immediate surprise that awaited him on learning that Dr. Riccabocca had
accepted an invitation to pass a few days at the Hall.

"There will be no one there but the family," said Riccabocca. "Poor
Giacomo, a little chat in the servants' hall will do you good: and the
squire's beef is more nourishing, after all, than the sticklebacks and
minnows. It will lengthen your life."

"The Padrone jests," said Jackeymo, statelily, "as if any one could
starve in his service."

"Um," said Riccabocca. "At least, faithful friend, you have tried that
experiment as far as human nature will permit;" and he extended his hand
to his fellow-exile with that familiarity which exists between servant
and master in the usages of the continent. Jackeymo bent low, and a tear
fell upon the hand he kissed.

"_Cospetto!_" said Dr. Riccabocca, "a thousand mock pearls do not make
up the cost of a single true one! The tears of women, we know their
worth; but the tear of an honest man--fie, Giacomo!--at least I can
never repay you this! Go and see to our wardrobe."

So far as his master's wardrobe was concerned, that order was pleasing
to Jackeymo; for the Doctor had in his drawers suits which Jackeymo
pronounced to be as good as new, though many a long year had passed
since they left the tailor's hands. But when Jackeymo came to examine
the state of his own clothing department, his face grew considerably
longer. It was not that he was without other clothes than those on his
back--quantity was there, but the quality! Mournfully he gazed on two
suits, complete in the three separate members of which man's raiments
are composed: the one suit extended at length upon his bed, like a
veteran stretched by pious hands after death; the other brought
piecemeal to the invidious light--the _torso_ placed upon a chair, the
limbs dangling down from Jackeymo's melancholy arm. No bodies long
exposed at the Morgue could evince less sign of resuscitation than those
respectable defuncts. For, indeed, Jackeymo had been less thrifty of his
apparel--more _profusus sui_--than his master. In the earliest days of
their exile, he preserved the decorous habit of dressing for dinner--it
was a respect due to the Padrone--and that habit had lasted till the two
habits on which it necessarily depended had evinced the first symptoms
of decay; then the evening clothes had been taken into morning wear, in
which hard service they had breathed their last.

The Doctor, notwithstanding his general philosophical abstraction from
such household details, had more than once said, rather in pity to
Jackeymo, than with an eye to that respectability which the costume of
the servant reflects on the dignity of the master, "Giacomo, thou
wantest clothes; fit thyself out of mine!"

And Jackeymo had bowed his gratitude, as if the donation had been
accepted; but the fact was, that that same fitting out was easier said
than done. For though--thanks to an existence mainly upon sticklebacks
and minnows--both Jackeymo and Riccabocca at that state which the
longevity of misers proves to be most healthful to the human frame,
viz., skin and bone--yet, the bones contained in the skin of Riccabocca
all took longitudinal directions; while those in the skin of Jackeymo
spread out latitudinally. And you might as well have made the bark of a
Lombardy poplar serve for the trunk of some dwarfed and pollarded oak,
in whose hollow the Babes of the Wood could have slept at their ease, as
have fitted out Jackeymo from the garb of Riccabocca. Moreover, if the
skill of the tailor could have accomplished that undertaking, the
faithful Jackeymo would never have had the heart to avail himself of the
generosity of his master. He had a sort of religious sentiment too,
about those vestments of the Padrone. The ancients, we know, when
escaping from shipwreck, suspended in the votive temple the garments in
which they had struggled through the wave. Jackeymo looked on those
relics of the past with a kindred superstition. "This coat the Padrone
wore on such an occasion. I remember the very evening the Padrone last
put on those pantaloons!" And coat and pantaloons were tenderly dusted,
and carefully restored to their sacred rest.

But now, after all, what was to be done? Jackeymo was much too proud to
exhibit his person, to the eyes of the Squire's butler, in habiliments
discreditable to himself and the Padrone. In the midst of his perplexity
the bell rang, and he went down into the parlor.

Riccabocca was standing on the hearth, under his symbolical
representation of the "Patriæ Exul."

"Giacomo," quoth he, "I have been thinking that thou hast never done
what I told thee, and fitted thyself out from my superfluities. But we
are going now into the great world; visiting once begun, Heaven knows
where it may stop! Go to the nearest town and get thyself clothes.
Things are dear in England. Will this suffice?" And Riccabocca extended
a £5 note.

Jackeymo, we have seen, was more familiar with his master than we formal
English permit our domestics to be with us. But in his familiarity he
was usually respectful. This time, however, respect deserted him.

"The Padrone is mad!" he exclaimed; "he would fling away his whole
fortune if I would let him. Five pounds English, or a hundred and
twenty-six pounds Milanese![28] Santa Maria! Unnatural Father! And what
is to become of the poor Signorina? Is this the way you are to marry her
in the foreign land?"

"Giacomo," said Riccabocca, bowing his head to the storm, "the Signorina
to-morrow; to-day, the honor of the house. Thy small-clothes, Giacomo.
Miserable man, thy small-clothes!"

"It is just," said Jackeymo, recovering himself, and with humility; "and
the Padrone does right to blame me, but not in so cruel a way. It is
just--the Padrone lodges and boards me, and gives me handsome wages, and
he has a right to expect that I should not go in this figure."

"For the board and the lodgment, good," said Riccabocca. "For the
handsome wages, they are the visions of thy fancy!"

"They are no such thing," said Jackeymo, "they are only in arrear. As if
the Padrone could not pay them some day or other--as if I was demeaning
myself by serving a master who did not intend to pay his servants! And
can't I wait? Have I not my savings, too? But be cheered, be cheered;
you shall be contented with me. I have two beautiful suits still. I was
arranging them when you rang for me. You shall see, you shall see."

And Jackeymo hurried from the room, hurried back into his own chamber,
unlocked a little trunk which he kept at his bed head, tossed out a
variety of small articles, and from the deepest depth extracted a
leathern purse. He emptied the contents on the bed. They were chiefly
Italian coins, some five-franc pieces, a silver medallion inclosing a
little image of his patron saint--San Giacomo--one solid English guinea,
and two or three pounds' worth in English silver. Jackeymo put back the
foreign coins, saying prudently, "One will lose on them here;" he seized
the English coins and counted them out. "But are you enough, you
rascals?" quoth he angrily, giving them a good shake. His eye caught
sight of the medallion--he paused; and after eyeing the tiny
representation of the saint with great deliberation, he added, in a
sentence which he must have picked up from the proverbial aphorisms of
his master:

"What's the difference between the enemy who does not hurt me, and the
friend who does not serve me? _Monsignore San Giacomo_, my patron saint,
you are of very little use to me in the leathern bag. But if you help me
to get into a new pair of small-clothes on this important occasion, you
will be a friend indeed. _Alla bisogna, Monsignore_." Then, gravely
kissing the medallion, he thrust it into one pocket, the coins into the
other, made up a bundle of the two defunct suits, and, muttering to
himself, "Beast, miser that I am, to disgrace the Padrone, with all
these savings in his service!" ran down stairs into his pantry, caught
up his hat and stick, and in a few moments more was seen trudging off to
the neighboring town of L----.

Apparently the poor Italian succeeded, for he came back that evening in
time to prepare the thin gruel which made his master's supper, with a
suit of black--a little threadbare, but still highly respectable--two
shirt fronts, and two white cravats. But, out of all this finery,
Jackeymo held the small-clothes in especial veneration; for as they had
cost exactly what the medallion had sold for, so it seemed to him that
San Giacomo had heard his prayer in that quarter to which he had more
exclusively directed the saint's attention. The other habiliments came
to him in the merely human process of sale and barter; the small-clothes
were the personal gratuity of San Giacomo!


CHAPTER VIII.

Life has been subjected to many ingenious comparisons: and if we do not
understand it any better, it is not for want of what is called
"reasoning by illustration." Amongst other resemblances, there are
moments when, to a quiet contemplator, it suggests the image of one of
those rotatory entertainments commonly seen in fairs, and known by the
name of "whirligigs or roundabouts," in which each participator of the
pastime, seated on his hobby, is always apparently in the act of
pursuing some one before him, while he is pursued by some one behind.
Man, and woman too, are naturally animals of chase; the greatest still
finds something to follow, and there is no one too humble not to be an
object of prey to another. Thus, confining our view to the village of
Hazeldean, we behold in this whirligig Dr. Riccabocca spurring his hobby
after Lenny Fairfield; and Miss Jemima, on her decorous side-saddle,
whipping after Dr. Riccabocca. Why, with so long and intimate a
conviction of the villany of our sex, Miss Jemima should resolve upon
giving the male animal one more chance of redeeming itself in her eyes,
I leave to the explanation of those gentlemen who profess to find "their
only books in woman's looks." Perhaps it might be from the
over-tenderness and clemency of Miss Jemima's nature; perhaps it might
be that, as yet, she had only experienced the villany of man born and
reared in those cold northern climates; and in the land of Petrarch and
Romeo, of the citron and myrtle, there was reason to expect that the
native monster would be more amenable to gentle influences, less
obstinately hardened in his iniquities. Without entering farther into
these hypotheses, it is sufficient to say, that on Signor Riccabocca's
appearance in the drawing-room, at Hazeldean, Miss Jemima felt more than
ever rejoiced that she had relaxed in his favor her general hostility to
man. In truth, though Frank saw something quizzical in the old-fashioned
and outlandish cut of the Italian's sober dress; in his long hair, and
the _chapeau bras_, over which he bowed so gracefully, and then pressed
it, as if to his heart, before tucking it under his arm, after the
fashion in which the gizzard reposes under the wing of a roasted pullet;
yet it was impossible that even Frank could deny to Riccabocca that
praise which is due to the air and manner of an unmistakable gentleman.
And certainly as, after dinner, conversation grew more familiar, and the
Parson and Mrs. Dale, who had been invited to meet their friend, did
their best to draw him out, his talk, though sometimes a little too wise
for his listeners, became eminently animated and agreeable. It was the
conversation of a man who, besides the knowledge which is acquired from
books and life, had studied the art which becomes a gentleman--that of
pleasing in polite society. Riccabocca, however, had more than this
art--he had one which is often less innocent,--the art of penetrating
into the weak side of his associates, and of saying the exact thing
which hits it plump in the middle, with the careless air of a random
shot.

The result was, that all were charmed with him; and that even Captain
Barnabas postponed the whist-table for a full hour after the usual
time. The Doctor did not play--he thus became the property of the two
ladies, Miss Jemima and Mrs. Dale.

Seated between the two, in the place rightfully appertaining to Flimsey,
who this time was fairly dislodged, to her great wonder and discontent,
the Doctor was the emblem of true Domestic Felicity, placed between
Friendship and Love.

Friendship, as became her, worked quietly at the embroidered
pocket-handkerchief, and left Love to its more animated operations. "You
must be very lonely at the Casino," said Love, in a sympathizing tone.

"Madam," replied Riccabocca, gallantly, "I shall think so when I leave
you."

Friendship cast a sly glance at Love--Love blushed or looked down on the
carpet, which comes to the same thing. "Yet," began Love again--"yet
solitude, to a feeling heart--"

Riccabocca thought of the note of invitation, and involuntarily buttoned
his coat, as if to protect the individual organ thus alarmingly referred
to.

"Solitude, to a feeling heart, has its charms. It is so hard even for
us, poor ignorant women, to find a congenial companion--but for _you_!"
Love stopped short, as if it had said too much, and smelt confusedly at
its boquet.

Dr. Riccabocca cautiously lowered his spectacles, and darted one glance,
which, with the rapidity and comprehensiveness of lightning, seemed to
envelope and take in it, as it were, the whole inventory of Miss
Jemima's personal attractions. Now, Miss Jemima, as I have before
observed, had a mild and pensive expression of countenance, and she
would have been positively pretty had the mildness looked a little more
alert, and the pensiveness somewhat less lackadaisical. In fact, though
Miss Jemima was constitutionally mild, she was not _de natura_ pensive;
she had too much of the Hazeldean blood in her veins for that sullen and
viscid humor called melancholy, and therefore this assumption of
pensiveness really spoilt her character of features, which only wanted
to be lighted up by a cheerful smile to be extremely prepossessing. The
same remark might apply to the figure, which--thanks to the same
pensiveness--lost all the undulating grace which movement and animation
bestow on the fluent curves of the feminine form. The figure was a good
figure, examined in detail--a little thin, perhaps, but by no means
emaciated--with just and elegant proportions, and naturally light and
flexible. But that same unfortunate pensiveness gave the whole a
character of inertness and languor; and when Miss Jemima reclined on the
sofa, so complete seemed the relaxation of nerve and muscle, that you
would have thought she had lost the use of her limbs. Over her face and
form, thus defrauded of the charms Providence had bestowed on them, Dr.
Riccabocca's eye glanced rapidly; and then moving nearer to Mrs.
Dale--"Defend me" (he stopped a moment, and added,) "from the charge of
not being able to appreciate congenial companionship."

"Oh, I did not say that!" cried Miss Jemima.

"Pardon me," said the Italian, "if I am so dull as to misunderstand you.
One may well lose one's head, at least, in such a neighborhood as this."
He rose as he spoke, and bent over Frank's shoulder to examine some
Views of Italy, which Miss Jemima (with what, if wholly unselfish, would
have been an attention truly delicate) had extracted from the library in
order to gratify the guest.

"Most interesting creature, indeed," sighed Miss Jemima, "but too--too
flattering!"

"Tell me," said Mrs. Dale gravely, "do you think, love, that you could
put off the end of the world a little longer, or must we make haste in
order to be in time?"

"How wicked you are!" said Miss Jemima, turning aside.

Some few minutes afterwards, Mrs. Dale contrived it so that Dr.
Riccabocca and herself were in a farther corner of the room, looking at
a picture said to be by Wouvermans.

_Mrs. Dale._--"She is very amiable, Jemima, is she not?"

_Riccabocca._--"Exceedingly so. Very fine battle-piece!"

_Mrs. Dale._--"So kind-hearted."

_Riccabocca._--"All ladies are. How naturally that warrior makes his
desperate cut at the runaway!"

_Mrs. Dale._--"She is not what is called regularly handsome, but she has
something very winning."

_Riccabocca_, with a smile.--"So winning, that it is strange she is not
won. That gray mare in the foreground stands out very boldly!"

_Mrs. Dale_, distrusting the smile of Riccabocca, and throwing in a more
effective grape charge.--"Not won yet; and it _is_ strange!--she will
have a very pretty fortune."

_Riccabocca._--"Ah!"

_Mrs. Dale._--"Six thousand pounds, I dare say--certainly four."

_Riccabocca_, suppressing a sigh, and with his wonted address.--"If Mrs.
Dale were still single, she would never need a friend to say what her
portion might be; but Miss Jemima is so good that I am quite sure it is
not Miss Jemima's fault that she is still--Miss Jemima!"

The foreigner slipped away as he spoke, and sat himself down beside the
whist-players.

Mrs. Dale was disappointed, but certainly not offended.--"It would be
such a good thing for both," muttered she, almost inaudibly.

"Giacomo," said Riccabocca, as he was undressing, that night, in the
large, comfortable, well-carpeted English bedroom, with that great
English four-posted bed in the recess which seems made to shame folks
out of single-blessedness--"Giacomo, I have had this evening the offer
of probably six thousand pounds--certainly of four thousand."

"_Cosa meravigliosa!_" exclaimed Jackeymo--"miraculous thing!" and he
crossed himself with great fervor. "Six thousand pounds English! why,
that must be a hundred thousand--blockhead that I am!--more than a
hundred and fifty thousand pounds Milanese!" And Jackeymo, who was
considerably enlivened by the Squire's ale, commenced a series of
gesticulations and capers, in the midst of which he stopped and cried,
"But not for nothing?"

"Nothing! no!"

"These mercenary English!--the Government wants to bribe you."

"That's not it."

"The priests want you to turn heretic."

"Worse than that," said the philosopher.

"Worse than that! O Padrone! for shame!"

"Don't be a fool, but pull off my pantaloons--they want me never to wear
_these_ again!"

"Never to wear what!" exclaimed Jackeymo, staring outright at his
master's long legs in their linen drawers--"never to wear--"

"The breeches," said Riccabocca, laconically.

"The barbarians!" faltered Jackeymo.

"My nightcap!--and never to have any comfort in this," said Riccabocca,
drawing the cotton head-gear; "and never to have any sound sleep in
that," pointing to the four-posted bed. "And to be a bondsmen and a
slave," continued Riccabocca, waxing wroth; "and to be wheedled and
purred at, and pawed, and clawed, and scolded, and fondled, and blinded,
and deafened, and bridled, and saddled--bedevilled and--married."

"Married!" said Jackeymo, more dispassionately--"that's very bad,
certainly; but more than a hundred and fifty thousand _lire_, and
perhaps a pretty young lady, and--"

"Pretty young lady!" growled Riccabocca, jumping into bed and drawing
the clothes fiercely over him. "Put out the candle, and get along with
you--do, you villainous old incendiary!"


CHAPTER IX.

It was not many days since the resurrection of those ill-omened stocks,
and it was evident already to an ordinary observer, that something wrong
had got into the village. The peasants wore a sullen expression of
countenance; when the Squire passed, they took off their hats with more
than ordinary formality, but they did not return the same broad smile to
his quick, hearty "Good day, my man." The women peered at him from the
threshold or the casement, but did not, as was their wont (at least the
wont of the prettiest), take occasion to come out to catch his passing
compliment on their own good looks, or their tidy cottages. And the
children, who used to play after work on the site of the old stocks, now
shunned the place, and, indeed, seemed to cease play altogether.

On the other hand, no man likes to build, or rebuild, a great public
work for nothing. Now that the Squire had resuscitated the stocks, and
made them so exceedingly handsome, it was natural that he should wish to
put somebody into them. Moreover, his pride and self-esteem had been
wounded by the Parson's opposition; and it would be a justification to
his own forethought, and a triumph over the Parson's understanding, if
he could satisfactorily and practically establish a proof that the
stocks had not been repaired before they were wanted.

Therefore, unconsciously to himself, there was something about the
Squire more burly, and authoritative, and menacing, than heretofore. Old
Gaffer Solomons observed, "that they had better moind well what they
were about, for that the Squire had a wicked look in the tail of his
eye--just as the dun bull had afore it tossed neighbor Barnes's little
boy."

For two or three days these mute signs of something brewing in the
atmosphere had been rather noticeable than noticed, without any positive
overt act of tyranny on the one hand, or rebellion on the other. But on
the very Saturday night in which Dr. Riccabocca was installed in the
four-posted bed in the chintz chamber, the threatened revolution
commenced. In the dead of that night, personal outrage was committed on
the stocks. And on the Sunday morning, Mr. Stirn, who was the earliest
riser in the parish, perceived, in going to the farmyard, that the knob
of the column that flanked the board had been feloniously broken off;
that the four holes were bunged up with mud; and that some jacobinical
villain had carved, on the very centre of the flourish or scroll work,
"Dam the stoks!" Mr. Stirn was much too vigilant a right-hand man, much
too zealous a friend of law and order, not to regard such proceedings
with horror and alarm. And when the Squire came into his dressing-room
at half-past seven, his butler (who fulfilled also the duties of valet)
informed him with a mysterious air, that Mr. Stirn had something "very
particular to communicate, about a most howdacious midnight 'spiracy and
'sault."

The Squire stared, and bade Mr. Stirn be admitted.

"Well!" cried the Squire, suspending the operation of stropping his
razor.

Mr. Stirn groaned.

"Well, man, what now!"

"I never knowed such a thing in this here parish afore," began Mr.
Stirn, "and I can only 'count for it by s'posing that them foreign
Papishers have been semminating"--

"Been what?"

"Semminating"--

"Dissemminating, you blockhead--disseminating what?"

"Damn the stocks," began Mr. Stirn, plunging right _in medias res_, and
by a fine use of one of the noblest figures of rhetoric.

"Mr. Stirn!" cried the Squire, reddening, "did you say 'Damn the
stocks?'--damn my new handsome pair of stocks!"

"Lord forbid, sir; that's what _they_ say: that's what they have digged
on it with knives and daggers, and they have stuffed mud in its four
holes, and broken the capital of the elewation."

The Squire took the napkin off his shoulder, laid down strop and razor;
he seated himself in his arm-chair majestically, crossed his legs, and,
in a voice that affected tranquillity, said--

"Compose yourself, Stirn; you have a deposition to make, touching an
assault upon--can I trust my senses?--upon my new stocks. Compose
yourself--be calm. NOW! What the devil is come to the parish?"

"Ah, sir, what indeed?" replied Mr. Stirn: and then laying the
forefinger of the right hand on the palm of the left, he narrated the
case.

"And whom do you suspect? Be calm now, don't speak in a passion. You are
a witness, sir--a dispassionate, unprejudiced witness. Zounds and fury!
this is the most insolent, unprovoked, diabolical--but whom do you
suspect, I say?"

Stirn twirled his hat, elevated his eyebrows, jerked his thumb over his
shoulder, and whispered--"I hear as how two Papishers slept at your
honor's last night."

"What, dolt! do you suppose Dr. Rickeybockey got out of his warm bed to
bung up the holes in my new stocks?"

"Noa; he's two cunning to do it himself, but he may have been
semminating. He's mighty thick with Parson Dale, and your honor knows as
how the Parson set his face agin the stocks. Wait a bit, sir--don't fly
at me yet. There be a boy in this here parish"--

"A boy!--ah fool, now you are nearer the mark. The Parson write 'Damn
the stocks,' indeed! What boy do you mean?"

"And that boy be cockered up much by Mister Dale; and the Papishers went
and sat with him and his mother a whole hour t'other day; and that boy
is as deep as a well; and I seed him lurking about the place, and hiding
hisself under the tree the day the stocks was put up--and that ere boy
is Lenny Fairfield."

"Whew," said the Squire, whistling, "you have not your usual senses
about you to-day, man. Lenny Fairfield--pattern boy of the village. Hold
your tongue. I dare say it is not done by any one in the parish, after
all; some good-for-nothing vagrant--that cursed tinker, who goes about
with a very vicious donkey--whom, by the way, I caught picking thistles
out of the very eyes of the old stocks! Shows how the tinker brings up
his donkeys! Well, keep a sharp look-out. To-day is Sunday; worst day of
the week, I'm sorry and ashamed to say, for rows and depredations.
Between the services, and after evening church, there are always idle
fellows from all the neighboring country about, as you know too well.
Depend on it, the real culprits will be found gathering round the
stocks, and will betray themselves: have your eyes, ears, and wits about
you, and I've no doubt we shall come to the rights of the matter before
the day's out. And if we do," added the Squire, "we'll make an example
of the ruffian!"

"In course," said Stirn; "and if we don't find him, we must make an
example all the same. That's where it is, sir. That's why the stock's
ben't respected: they has not had an example yet--we wants an example."

"On my word, I believe that's very true; and the first idle fellow you
catch in any thing wrong we'll clap in, and keep him there for two hours
at least."

"With the biggest pleasure, your honor--that's what it is."

And Mr. Stirn, having now got what he considered a complete and
unconditional authority over all the legs and wrists of Hazeldean
parish, _quoad_ the stocks, took his departure.


CHAPTER X.

"Randal," said Mrs. Leslie, on this memorable Sunday--"Randal, do you
think of going to Mr. Hazeldean's?"

"Yes, ma'am," answered Randal. "Mr. Egerton does not object to it; and
as I do not return to Eaton, I may have no other opportunity of seeing
Frank for some time. I ought not to fail in respect to Mr. Egerton's
natural heir!"

"Gracious me!" cried Mrs. Leslie, who, like many women of her cast and
kind, had a sort of worldliness in her notions, which she never evinced
in her conduct--"gracious me!--natural heir to the old Leslie property!"

"He is Mr. Egerton's nephew, and," added Randal, ingenuously letting out
his thoughts, "I am no relation to Mr. Egerton at all."

"But," said poor Mrs. Leslie, with tears in her eyes, "it would be a
shame in the man, after paying your schooling and sending you to Oxford,
and having you to stay with him in the holidays, if he did not mean any
thing by it."

"Any thing, mother--yes--but not the thing you suppose. No matter. It is
enough that he has armed me for life, and I shall use the weapons as
seems to me best."

Here the dialogue was suspended, by the entrance of the other members of
the family, dressed for church.

"It can't be time for church! No! it can't!" exclaimed Mrs. Leslie. She
was never in time for any thing.

"Last bell ringing," said Mr. Leslie, who, though a slow man, was
methodical and punctual. Mrs. Leslie made a frantic rush at the door,
the Montfydget blood being now in a blaze--whirled up the stairs--gained
her room, tore her best bonnet from the peg, snatched her newest shawl
from the drawers, crushed the bonnet on her head, flung the shawl on her
shoulders, thrust a desperate pin into its folds, in order to conceal a
buttonless yawn in the body of her gown, and then flew back like a
whirlwind. Meanwhile the family were already out of doors, in waiting;
and just as the bell ceased, the procession moved from the shabby house
to the dilapidated church.

The church was a large one, but the congregation was small, and so was
the income of the Parson. It was a lay rectory, and the great tithes had
belonged to the Leslies, but they had been long since sold. The
vicarage, still in their gift, might be worth a little more than £100 a
year. The present incumbent had nothing else to live upon. He was a good
man, and not originally a stupid one; but penury and the anxious cares
for wife and family, combined with what may be called _solitary
confinement_ for the cultivated mind, when, amidst the two-legged
creatures round, it sees no other cultivated mind with which it can
exchange an extra-parochial thought--had lulled him into a lazy
mournfulness, which at times was very like imbecility. His income
allowed him to do no good to the parish, whether in work, trade, or
charity; and thus he had no moral weight with the parishioners beyond
the example of his sinless life and such negative effect as might be
produced by his slumberous exhortations. Therefore his parishioners
troubled him very little; and but for the influence which in hours of
Montfydget activity, Mrs. Leslie exercised over the most tractable--that
is, the children and the aged--not half-a-dozen persons would have known
or cared whether he shut up his church or not.

But our family were seated in state in their old seignorial pew, and Mr.
Dumdrum, with a nasal twang, went lugubriously through the prayers; and
the old people who could sin no more, and the children who had not yet
learned to sin, croaked forth responses that might have come from the
choral frogs in Aristophanes. And there was a long sermon _apropos_ to
nothing which could possibly interest the congregation--being, in fact,
some controversial homily, which Mr. Dumdrum had composed and preached
years before. And when this discourse was over, there was a loud
universal grunt, as if of release and thanksgiving, and a great clatter
of shoes--and the old hobbled, and the young scrambled, to the church
door.

Immediately after church, the Leslie family dined; and, as soon as
dinner was over, Randal set out on his foot journey to Hazeldean Hall.

Delicate and even feeble though his frame, he had the energy and
quickness of movement which belongs to nervous temperaments; and he
tasked the slow stride of a peasant, whom he took to serve him as a
guide for the first two or three miles. Though Randal had not the
gracious open manner with the poor which Frank inherited from his
father, he was still (despite many a secret hypocritical vice, at war
with the character of a gentleman) gentleman enough to have no churlish
pride to his inferiors. He talked little, but he suffered his guide to
talk; and the boor, who was the same whom Frank had accosted, indulged
in eulogistic comments on that young gentleman's pony, from which he
diverged into some compliments on the young gentleman himself. Randal
drew his hat over his brows. There is a wonderful tact and fine breeding
in your agricultural peasant; and though Tom Stowell was but a brutish
specimen of the class, he suddenly perceived that he was giving pain. He
paused, scratched his head, and glancing affectionately towards his
companion, exclaimed--

"But I shall live to see you on a handsomer beastis than that little
pony, Master Randal; and sure I ought, for you be as good a gentleman as
any in the land."

"Thank you," said Randal. "But I like walking better than riding--I am
more used to it."

"Well, and you walk bra'ly--there ben't a better walker in the county.
And very pleasant it is walking; and 'tis a pretty country afore you,
all the way to the Hall."

Randal strode on, as if impatient of these attempts to flatter or to
soothe; and, coming at length into a broader lane, said--"I think I can
find my way now. Many thanks to you, Tom;" and he forced a shilling into
Tom's horny palm. The man took it reluctantly, and a tear started to his
eye. He felt more grateful for that shilling than he had for Frank's
liberal half-crown; and he thought of the poor fallen family, and forgot
his own dire wrestle with the wolf at his door.

He stayed lingering in the lane till the figure of Randal was out of
sight, and then returned slowly. Young Leslie continued to walk on at a
quick pace. With all his intellectual culture, and his restless
aspirations, his breast afforded him no thought so generous, no
sentiment so poetic, as those with which the unlettered clown crept
slouchingly homeward.

As Randal gained a point where several lanes met on a broad piece of
waste land, he began to feel tired, and his step slackened. Just then a
gig emerged from one of these by-roads, and took the same direction as
the pedestrian. The road was rough and hilly, and the driver proceeded
at a foot's-pace; so that the gig and the pedestrian went pretty well
abreast.

"You seem tired, sir," said the driver, a stout young farmer of the
higher class of tenants, and he looked down compassionately on the boy's
pale countenance and weary stride. "Perhaps we are going the same way,
and I can give you a lift?"

It was Randal's habitual policy to make use of every advantage proffered
to him, and he accepted the proposal frankly enough to please the honest
farmer.

"A nice day, sir," said the latter, as Randal sat by his side. "Have you
come far?"

"From Rood Hall."

"Oh, you be young Squire Leslie," said the farmer, more respectfully,
and lifting his hat.

"Yes, my name is Leslie. You know Rood, then?"

"I was brought up on your father's land, sir. You may have heard of
Farmer Bruce?"

_Randal._--"I remember, when I was a little boy, a Mr. Bruce, who
rented, I believe, the best part of our land, and who used to bring us
cakes when he called to see my father. He is a relation of yours?"

_Farmer Bruce._--"He was my uncle. He is dead now, poor man."

_Randal._--"Dead! I am grieved to hear it. He was very kind to us
children. But it is long since he left my father's farm."

_Farmer Bruce_, apologetically.--"I am sure he was very sorry to go.
But, you see, he had an unexpected legacy----"

_Randal._--"And retired from business?"

_Farmer Bruce._--"No. But, having capital, he could afford to pay a good
rent for a real good farm."

_Randal_, bitterly.--"All capital seems to fly from the lands of Rood.
And whose farm did he take?"

_Farmer Bruce._--"He took Hawleigh, under Squire Hazeldean. I rent it
now. We've laid out a power o' money on it. But I don't complain. It
pays well."

_Randal._--"Would the money have paid as well, sunk on my father's
land?"

_Farmer Bruce._--"Perhaps it might, in the long run. But then, sir, we
wanted new premises--barns, and cattle-sheds, and a deal more--which the
landlord should do; but it is not every landlord as can afford that.
Squire Hazeldean's a rich man."

_Randal._--"Ay!"

The road now became pretty good, and the farmer put his horse into a
brisk trot.

"But which way be you going, sir? I don't care for a few miles more or
less, if I can be of service."

"I am going to Hazeldean," said Randal, rousing himself from a reverie.
"Don't let me take you out of your way."

"Oh, Hawleigh Farm is on the other side of the village, so it be quite
my way, sir."

The farmer then, who was really a smart young fellow--one of that race
which the application of capital to land has produced, and which, in
point of education and refinement, are at least on a par with the
squires of a former generation--began to talk about his handsome horse,
about horses in general, about hunting and coursing; he handled all
these subjects with spirit, yet with modesty. Randal pulled his hat
still lower down over his brows, and did not interrupt him till past the
Casino, when, struck by the classic air of the place, and catching a
scent from the orange-trees, the boy asked abruptly--"Whose house is
that?"

"Oh, it belongs to Squire Hazeldean, but it is let or lent to a foreign
Mounseer. They say he is quite the gentleman, but uncommonly poor."

"Poor," said Randal, turning back to gaze on the trim garden, the neat
terrace, the pretty belvidere, and (the door of the house being open)
catching a glimpse of the painted hall within--"poor; the place seems
well kept. What do you call poor, Mr. Bruce?"

The farmer laughed. "Well, that's a home question, sir. But I believe
the Mounseer is as poor as a man can be who makes no debts and does not
actually starve."

"As poor as my father?" asked Randal, openly and abruptly.

"Lord, sir! your father be a very rich man compared to him."

Randal continued to gaze, and his mind's eye conjured up the contrast of
his slovenly, shabby home, with all its neglected appurtenances! No trim
garden at Rood Hall, no scent from odorous orange blossoms. Here poverty
at least was elegant--there, how squalid! He did not comprehend at how
cheap a rate the luxury of the Beautiful can be effected. They now
approached the extremity of the Squire's park pales! and Randal, seeing
a little gate, bade the farmer stop his gig, and descended. The boy
plunged amid the thick oak groves; the farmer went his way blithely, and
his mellow merry whistle came to Randal's moody ear as he glided quick
under the shadow of the trees.

He arrived at the Hall, to find that all the family were at church; and,
according to the patriarchal custom, the church-going family embraced
nearly all the servants. It was therefore an old invalid housemaid who
opened the door to him. She was rather deaf, and seemed so stupid that
Randal did not ask leave to enter and wait for Frank's return. He
therefore said briefly that he would just stroll on the lawn, and call
again when church was over.

The old woman stared, and strove to hear him; meanwhile Randal turned
round abruptly, and sauntered towards the garden side of the handsome
old house.

There was enough to attract any eye in the smooth greensward of the
spacious lawn--in the numerous parterres of varying flowers--in the
venerable grandeur of the two mighty cedars, which threw their still
shadows over the grass--and in the picturesque building, with its
projecting mullions and heavy gables; yet I fear that it was with no
poet's nor painter's eye that this young old man gazed on the scene
before him.

He beheld the evidence of wealth--and the envy of wealth jaundiced his
soul.

Folding his arms on his breast, he stood a while, looking all around him
with closed lips and lowering brow; then he walked slowly on, his eyes
fixed on the ground, and muttered to himself----

"The heir to this property is little better than a dunce; and they tell
me I have talents and learning, and I have taken to my heart the maxim,
'Knowledge is power.' And yet, with all my struggles, will knowledge
ever place me on the same level as that on which this dunce is born? I
don't wonder that the poor should hate the rich. But of all the poor,
who should hate the rich like the pauper gentleman? I suppose Audley
Egerton means me to come into Parliament, and be a Tory like himself.
What! keep things as they are! No; for me not even Democracy, unless
there first come Revolution. I understand the cry of a Marat--'More
blood!' Marat had lived as a poor man, and cultivated science--in the
sight of a prince's palace."

He turned sharply round, and glared vindictively on the poor old hall,
which, though a very comfortable habitation, was certainly no palace;
and with his arms still folded on his breast, he walked backwards, as if
not to lose the view, nor the chain of ideas it conjured up.

"But," he continued to soliloquize--"but of revolution there is no
chance. Yet the same wit and will that would thrive in revolutions
should thrive in this commonplace life. Knowledge is power. Well, then,
shall I have no power to oust this blockhead? Oust him--what from? His
father's halls? Well, but if he were dead, who would be the heir of
Hazeldean? Have I not heard my mother say that I am as near in blood to
this Squire as any one, if he had no children? Oh, but the boy's life is
worth ten of mine! Oust him from what? At least from the thoughts of his
uncle Egerton--an uncle who has never even seen him! That, at least, is
more feasible. 'Make my way in life,' sayest thou, Audley Egerton?
Ay--and to the fortune thou hast robbed from my ancestors.
Simulation--simulation. Lord Bacon allows simulation. Lord Bacon
practised it--and--"

Here the soliloquy came to a sudden end; for as, rapt in his thoughts,
the boy had continued to walk backwards, he had come to the verge where
the lawn slided off into the ditch of the ha-ha--and, just as he was
fortifying himself by the precept and practice of my Lord Bacon, the
ground went from under him, and slap into the ditch went Randal Leslie!

It so happened that the Squire, whose active genius was always at some
repair or improvement, had been but a few days before widening and
sloping off the ditch just in that part, so that the earth was fresh and
damp, and not yet either turfed or flattened down. Thus when Randal,
recovering his first surprise and shock, rose to his feet, he found his
clothes covered with mud; while the rudeness of the fall was evinced by
the fantastic and extraordinary appearance of his hat, which, hollowed
here, bulging there, and crushed out of all recognition generally, was
as little like the hat of a decorous hard-reading young
gentlemen--_protegé_ of the dignified Mr. Audley Egerton--as any hat
picked out of a kennel after some drunken brawl possibly could be.

Randal was dizzy, and stunned, and bruised, and it was some moments
before he took heed of his raiment. When he did so, his spleen was
greatly aggravated. He was still boy enough not to like the idea of
presenting himself to the unknown Squire, and the dandy Frank, in such a
trim: he resolved at once to regain the lane and return home, without
accomplishing the object of his journey; and seeing the footpath right
before him, which led to a gate that he conceived would admit him into
the highway sooner than the path by which he had come, he took it at
once.

It is surprising how little we human creatures heed the warnings of our
good genius. I have no doubt that some benignant power had precipitated
Randal Leslie into the ditch, as a significant hint of the fate of all
who choose what is, now-a-days, by no means an uncommon step in the
march of intellect--viz., the walking backwards, in order to gratify a
vindictive view of one's neighbor's property! I suspect that, before
this century is out, many a fine fellow will thus have found his ha-ha,
and scrambled out of the ditch with a much shabbier coat than he had on
when he fell into it. But Randal did not thank his good genius for
giving him a premonitory tumble;--and I never yet knew a man who did!


CHAPTER XI.

The Squire was greatly ruffled at breakfast that morning. He was too
much of an Englishman to bear insult patiently, and he considered that
he had been personally insulted in the outrage offered to his recent
donation to the parish. His feelings, too, were hurt, as well as his
pride. There was something so ungrateful in the whole thing, just after
he had taken so much pains, not only in the resuscitation, but the
embellishment of the stocks. It was not, however, so rare an occurrence
for the Squire to be ruffled, as to create any remark. Riccabocca,
indeed, as a stranger, and Mrs. Hazeldean, as a wife, had the quick tact
to perceive that the host was glum and the husband snappish; but the one
was too discreet and the other too sensible, to chafe the new sore,
whatever it might be; and shortly after breakfast the Squire retired
into his study, and absented himself from morning service.

In his delightful _Life of Oliver Goldsmith_, Mr. Foster takes care to
touch our hearts by introducing his hero's excuse for not entering the
priesthood. He did not feel himself good enough. Thy Vicar of Wakefield,
poor Goldsmith, was an excellent substitute for thee; and Dr. Primrose,
at least, will be good enough for the world until Miss Jemima's fears
are realized. Now, Squire Hazeldean had a tenderness of conscience much
less reasonable than Goldsmith's. There were occasionally days in which
he did not feel good enough--I don't say for a priest, but even for one
of the congregation--"days in which (said the Squire in his own blunt
way), as I have never in my life met a worse devil than a devil of a
temper, I'll not carry mine into the family pew. He shan't be growling
out hypocritical responses from my poor grandmother's prayer-book." So
the Squire and his demon stayed at home. But the demon was generally
cast out before the day was over; and, on this occasion, when the bell
rang for afternoon service, it may be presumed that the Squire had
reasoned or fretted himself into a proper state of mind; for he was then
seen sallying forth from the porch of his hall, arm-in-arm with his
wife, and at the head of his household. The second service was (as is
commonly the case, in rural districts) more numerously attended than the
first one; and it was our Parson's wont to devote to this service his
most effective discourse.

Parson Dale, though a very fair scholar, had neither the deep theology
nor the archæological learning that distinguish the rising generation of
the clergy. I much doubt if he could have passed what would now be
called a creditable examination in the Fathers; and as for all the nice
formalities in the rubric, he would never have been the man to divide a
congregation or puzzle a bishop. Neither was Parson Dale very erudite in
ecclesiastical architecture. He did not much care whether all the
details in the church were purely gothic or not: crockets and finials,
round arch and pointed arch, were matters, I fear, on which he had never
troubled his head. But one secret Parson Dale did possess, which is
perhaps of equal importance with those subtler mysteries--he knew how to
fill his church! Even at morning service no pews were empty, and at
evening service the church overflowed.

Parson Dale, too, may be considered, now-a-days, to hold but a mean idea
of the spiritual authority of the Church. He had never been known to
dispute on its exact bearing with the State--whether it was incorporated
with the State, or above the State--whether it was antecedent to the
Papacy, or formed from the Papacy, &c., &c. According to his favorite
maxim, _Quieta non movere_ (not to disturb things that are quiet), I
have no doubt that he would have thought that the less discussion is
provoked upon such matters, the better for both church and laity. Nor
had he ever been known to regret the disuse of the ancient custom of
excommunication, nor any other diminution of the powers of the
priesthood, whether minatory or militant; yet for all this, Parson Dale
had a great notion of the sacred privilege of a minister of the
gospel--to advise--to deter--to persuade--to reprove. And it was for the
evening service that he prepared those sermons, which may be called
"sermons that preach _at_ you." He preferred the evening for that
salutary discipline, not only because the congregation was more
numerous, but also because, being a shrewd man in his own innocent way,
he knew that people bear better to be preached at after dinner than
before; that you arrive more insinuatingly at the heart when the stomach
is at peace. There was a genial kindness in Parson Dale's way of
preaching at you. It was done in so imperceptible fatherly a manner,
that you never felt offended. He did it, too, with so much art, that
nobody but your own guilty self knew that you were the sinner he was
exhorting. Yet he did not spare rich nor poor: he preached at the
Squire, and that great fat farmer, Mr. Bullock the church-warden, as
boldly as at Hodge the ploughman, and Scrub the hedger. As for Mr.
Stirn, he had preached at _him_ more often than at any one in the
parish; but Stirn, though he had the sense to know it, never had the
grace to reform. There was, too, in Parson Dale's sermons, something of
that boldness of illustration which would have been scholarly if he had
not made it familiar, and which is found in the discourses of our elder
divines. Like them, he did not scruple, now and then, to introduce an
anecdote from history, or borrow an allusion from some non-scriptural
author, in order to enliven the attention of his audience, or render an
argument more plain. And the good man had an object in this, a little
distinct from, though wholly subordinate to the main purpose of his
discourse. He was a friend to knowledge--but to knowledge accompanied by
religion; and sometimes his references to sources not within the
ordinary reading of his congregation would spirit up some farmer's son,
with an evening's leisure on his hands, to ask the Parson for farther
explanation, and so he lured on to a little solid or graceful
instruction under a safe guide.

Now on the present occasion, the Parson, who had always his eye and
heart on his flock, and who had seen with great grief the realization of
his fears at the revival of the stocks; seen that a spirit of discontent
was already at work amongst the peasants, and that magisterial and
inquisitorial designs were darkening the natural benevolence of the
Squire; seen, in short, the signs of a breach between classes, and the
precursors of the ever inflammable feud between the rich and the poor,
meditated nothing less than a great Political Sermon--a sermon that
should extract from the roots of social truths a healing virtue for the
wound that lay sore, but latent, in the breast of his parish of
Hazeldean:

And thus ran--

_The Political Sermon of Parson Dale._


CHAPTER XII.

     "For every man shall bear his own burden."

     _Galatians_, c. vi., v. 5.

"Brethren, every man has his burden. If God designed our lives to end at
the grave, may we not believe that he would have freed an existence so
brief from the cares and sorrows to which, since the beginning of the
world, mankind has been subjected? Suppose that I am a kind father, and
have a child whom I dearly love, but I know by a divine revelation that
he will die at the age of eight years, surely I should not vex his
infancy by needless preparations for the duties of life. If I am a rich
man, I should not send him from the caresses of his mother to the stern
discipline of school. If I am a poor man, I should not take him with me
to hedge and dig, to scorch in the sun, to freeze in the winter's cold:
why inflict hardships on his childhood, for the purpose of fitting him
for manhood, when I know that he is doomed not to grow into man? But if,
on the other hand, I believe my child is reserved for a more durable
existence, then should I not, out of the very love I bear to him,
prepare his childhood for the struggle of life, according to that
station in which he is born, giving many a toil, many a pain to the
infant, in order to rear and strengthen him for his duties as man? So is
it with our Father that is in heaven. Viewing this life as our infancy,
and the next as our spiritual maturity, where, 'in the ages to come, he
may show the exceeding riches of his grace,' it is in his tenderness, as
in his wisdom, to permit the toil and the pain which, in tasking the
powers and developing the virtues of the soul, prepare it for the
earnest of our inheritance, the 'redemption of the purchased
possession.' Hence it is that every man has his burden. Brethren, if you
believe that God is good, yea, but as tender as a human father, you will
know that your troubles in life are a proof that you are reared for an
eternity. But each man thinks his own burden the hardest to bear: the
poor man groans under his poverty, the rich man under the cares that
multiply with wealth. For, so far from wealth freeing us from trouble,
all the wise men who have written in all ages, have repeated with one
voice the words of the wisest, 'When goods increase, they are increased
that eat them; and what good is there to the owners thereof, saving the
beholding of them with their eyes?' And this is literally true, my
brethren; for, let a man be as rich as was the great King Solomon
himself, unless he lock up all his gold in a chest, it must go abroad to
be divided amongst others; yea, though, like Solomon, he make him great
works--though he build houses and plant vineyards, and make him gardens
and orchards--still the gold that he spends feeds but the mouths he
employs; and Solomon himself could not eat with a better relish than the
poorest mason who builded the house, or the humblest laborer who planted
the vineyard. Therefore, 'when goods increase, they are increased that
eat them.' And this, my brethren, may teach us toleration and compassion
for the rich. We share their riches whether they will or not; we do not
share their cares. The profane history of our own country tells us that
a princess, destined to be the greatest queen that ever sat on this
throne, envied the milk-maid singing; and a profane poet, whose wisdom
was only less than that of the inspired writers, represents the man who
by force and wit had risen to be a king, sighing for the sleep
vouchsafed to the meanest of his subjects--all bearing out the words of
the son of David--'The sleep of the laboring man is sweet, whether he
eat little or much; but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to
sleep.'

"Amongst my brethren now present, there is doubtless some one who has
been poor, and by honest industry has made himself comparatively rich.
Let his heart answer me while I speak: are not the chief cares that now
disturb him to be found in the goods he hath acquired?--has he not both
vexations to his spirit and trials to his virtue, which he knew not when
he went forth to his labor, and took no heed of the morrow? But it is
right, my brethren, that to every station there should be its care--to
every man his burden; for if the poor did not sometimes so far feel
poverty to be a burden as to desire to better their condition, and (to
use the language of the world) 'seek to rise in life,' their most
valuable energies would never be aroused; and we should not witness that
spectacle, which is so common in the land we live in--namely, the
successful struggle of manly labor against adverse fortune--a struggle
in which the triumph of one gives hope to thousands. It is said that
necessity is the mother of invention; and the social blessings which are
now as common to us as air and sunshine, have come from that law of our
nature which makes us aspire towards indefinite improvement, enriches
each successive generation by the labors of the last, and, in free
countries, often lifts the child of the laborer to a place amongst the
rulers of the land. Nay, if necessity is the mother of invention,
poverty is the creator of the arts. If there had been no poverty, and no
sense of poverty, where would have been that which we call the wealth of
a country? Subtract from civilization all that has been produced by the
poor, and what remains?--the state of the savage. Where you now see
laborer and prince, you would see equality indeed--the equality of wild
men. No; not even equality there; for there, brute force becomes
lordship, and woe to the weak! Where you now see some in frieze, some in
purple, you would see nakedness in all. Where stand the palace and the
cot, you would behold but mud huts and caves. As far as the peasant
excels the king among savages, so far does the society exalted and
enriched by the struggles of labor excel the state in which Poverty
feels no disparity, and Toil sighs for no ease. On the other hand, if
the rich were perfectly contented with their wealth, their hearts would
become hardened in the sensual enjoyments it procures. It is that
feeling, by Divine Wisdom implanted in the soul, that there is vanity
and vexation of spirit in the things of Mammon, which still leaves the
rich man sensitive to the instincts of heaven, and teaches him to seek
for happiness in those elevated virtues to which wealth invites
him--namely, protection to the lowly and beneficence to the distressed.

"And this, my brethren, leads me to another view of the vast subject
opened to us by the words of the apostle--'Every man shall bear his own
burden.' The worldly conditions of life are unequal. Why are they
unequal? O my brethren, do you not perceive? Think you that, if it had
been better for our spiritual probation that there should be neither
great nor lowly, rich nor poor, Providence would not so have ordered the
dispensations of the world, and so, by its mysterious but merciful
agencies, have influenced the framework and foundations of society? But
if, from the remotest period of human annals, and in all the numberless
experiments of government which the wit of man has devised, still this
inequality is ever found to exist, may we not suspect that there is
something in the very principles of our nature to which that inequality
is necessary and essential? Ask why this inequality! Why? as well ask
why life is the sphere of duty and the nursery of virtues. For if all
men were equal, if there were no suffering and no ease, no poverty and
no wealth, would you not sweep with one blow the half at least of human
virtues from the world? If there were no penury and no pain, what would
become of fortitude?--what of patience?--what of resignation? If there
were no greatness and no wealth, what would become of benevolence, of
charity, of the blessed human pity, of temperance in the midst of
luxury, of justice in the exercise of power? Carry the question further;
grant all conditions the same--no reverse, no rise and no fall--nothing
to hope for, nothing to fear--what a moral death you would at once
inflict upon all the energies of the soul, and what a link between the
heart of man and the Providence of God would be snapped asunder! If we
could annihilate evil, we should annihilate hope; and hope, my brethren,
is the avenue to faith. If there be 'a time to weep, and a time to
laugh,' it is that he who mourns may turn to eternity for comfort, and
he who rejoices may bless God for the happy hour. Ah! my brethren, were
it possible to annihilate the inequalities of human life, it would be
the banishment of our worthiest virtues, the torpor of our spiritual
natures, the palsy of our mental faculties. The moral world, like the
world without us, derives its health and its beauty from diversity and
contrast.

"'Every man shall bear his own burden.' True; but now turn to an earlier
verse in the same chapter. 'Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil
the law of Christ.' Yes; while Heaven ordains to each his peculiar
suffering, it connects the family of man into one household, by that
feeling which, more perhaps than any other, distinguishes us from the
brute creation--I mean the feeling to which we give the name of
_sympathy_--the feeling for each other! The herd of deer shun the stag
that is marked by the gunner; the flock heedeth not the sheep that
creeps into the shade to die; but man has sorrow and joy not in himself
alone, but in the joy and sorrow of those around him. He who feels only
for himself, abjures his very nature as man; for do we not say of one
who has no tenderness for mankind that he is _inhuman_? and do we not
call him who sorrows with the sorrowful, _humane_?

"Now, brethren, that which especially marked the divine mission of our
Lord, is the direct appeal to this sympathy which distinguishes us from
the brute. He seizes not upon some faculty of genius given but to few,
but upon that ready impulse of heart which is given to us all; and in
saying, 'Love one another,' 'Bear ye one another's burdens,' he elevates
the most delightful of our emotions into the most sacred of his laws.
The lawyer asks our Lord, 'who is my neighbor?' Our Lord replies by the
parable of the Good Samaritan. The priest and the Levite saw the wounded
man that fell among the thieves, and passed by on the other side. That
priest might have been austere in his doctrine, that Levite might have
been learned in the law; but neither to the learning of the Levite, nor
to the doctrine of the priest, does our Saviour even deign to allude. He
cites but the action of the Samaritan, and saith to the lawyer, 'Which
now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbor unto him that fell among
the thieves? And he said, He that showed mercy unto him. Then said Jesus
unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.'

"O shallowness of human judgments! It was enough to be born a Samaritan
in order to be rejected by the priest, and despised by the Levite. Yet
now, what to us the priest and the Levite, of God's chosen race though
they were? They passed from the hearts of men when they passed the
sufferer by the wayside; while this loathed Samaritan, half thrust from
the pale of the Hebrew, becomes of our family, of our kindred; a brother
amongst the brotherhood of Love, so long as Mercy and Affliction shall
meet in the common thoroughfare of Life!

"'Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ!' Think
not, O my brethren, that this applies only to almsgiving--to that relief
of distress which is commonly called charity--to the obvious duty of
devoting, from our superfluities, something that we scarcely miss, to
the wants of a starving brother. No. I appeal to the poorest amongst ye,
if the worst burdens are those of the body--if the kind word and the
tender thought have not often lightened your hearts more than bread
bestowed with a grudge, and charity that humbles you by a frown.
Sympathy is a beneficence at the command of us all,--yea, of the pauper
as of the king; and sympathy is Christ's wealth. Sympathy is
brotherhood. The rich are told to have charity for the poor, and the
poor are enjoined to respect their superiors. Good: I say not to the
contrary. But I say also to the poor, '_In your turn have charity for
the rich_;' and I say to the rich, '_In your turn respect the poor_.'

"'Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.' Thou,
O poor man, envy not nor grudge thy brother his larger portion of
worldly goods. Believe that he hath his sorrows and crosses like
thyself, and perhaps, as more delicately nurtured, he feels them more;
nay, hath he not temptations so great that our Lord hath exclaimed--'How
hardly they that have riches enter into the kingdom of heaven?' And what
are temptations but trials?--what are trials but perils and sorrows?
Think not that you cannot bestow your charity on the rich man, even
while you take your sustenance from his hands. A heathen writer, often
cited by the earliest preachers of the gospel, hath truly
said--'Wherever there is room for a man, there is place for a benefit.'

"And I ask any rich brother amongst you when he hath gone forth to
survey his barns and his granaries, his gardens and orchards, if
suddenly, in the vain pride of his heart, he sees the scowl on the brow
of the laborer--if he deems himself hated in the midst of his wealth--if
he feels that his least faults are treasured up against him with the
hardness of malice, and his plainest benefits received with the
ingratitude of envy--I ask, I say, any rich man, whether straightway all
pleasure in his worldly possessions does not fade from his heart, and
whether he does not feel what a wealth of gladness it is in the power of
the poor man to bestow! For all these things of Mammon pass away; but
there is in the smile of him whom we have served, a something that we
may take with us into heaven. If, then, ye bear one another's burdens,
they who are poor will have mercy on the errors, and compassion for the
griefs of the rich. To all men it was said--yes, to the Lazarus as to
the Dives--'Judge not, that ye be not judged.' But think not, O rich
man, that we preach only to the poor. If it be their duty not to grudge
thee thy substance, it is thine to do all that may sweeten their labor.
Remember, that when our Lord said, 'How hardly shall they that have
riches enter into the kingdom of heaven,' he replied also to them who
asked, 'Who then shall be saved?' 'The things which are impossible with
men are possible with God:' that is, man left to his own temptations
would fail; but strengthened by God, he shall be saved. If thy riches
are the tests of thy trial, so may they also be the instruments of thy
virtues. Prove by thy riches that thou art compassionate and tender,
temperate and benign; and thy riches themselves may become the evidence
at once of thy faith and of thy works.

"We have constantly on our lips the simple precept, 'Do unto others as
ye would be done by.' Why do we fail so often in the practice? Because
we neglect to cultivate that SYMPATHY which nature implants as an
instinct, and the Saviour exalts as a command. If thou wouldst do unto
thy neighbor as thou wouldst be done by, ponder well how thy neighbor
will regard the action thou art about to do to him. Put thyself into his
place. If thou art strong, and he is weak, descend from thy strength,
and enter into his weakness; lay aside thy burden for the while, and
buckle on his own; let thy sight see as through his eyes--thy heart beat
as in his bosom. Do this, and thou wilt often confess that what had
seemed just to thy power will seem harsh to his weakness. For 'as a
zealous man hath not done his duty, when he calls his brother drunkard
and beast,'[29] even so an administrator of the law mistakes his object
if he writes on the grand column of society, only warnings that irritate
the bold, and terrify the timid: and a man will be no more in love with
law than with virtue, 'if he be forced to it with rudeness and
incivilities.' If, then, ye would bear the burden of the lowly, O ye
great--feel not only _for_ them, but _with!_ Watch that your pride does
not chafe them--your power does not wantonly gall. Your worldly inferior
is of the class from which the apostles were chosen--amidst which the
Lord of Creation descended from a throne above the seraphs."

The Parson here paused a moment, and his eye glanced towards the pew
near the pulpit, where sat the magnate of Hazeldean. The Squire was
leaning his chin thoughtfully on his hand, his brow inclined downwards,
and the natural glow of his complexion much heightened.

"But"--resumed the Parson softly, without turning to his book, and
rather as if prompted by the suggestion of the moment--"But he who has
cultivated sympathy commits not these errors, or, if committing them,
hastens to retract. So natural is sympathy to the good man, that he
obeys it mechanically when he suffers his heart to be the monitor of his
conscience. In this sympathy behold the bond between rich and poor! By
this sympathy, whatever our varying worldly lots, they become what they
were meant to be--exercises for the virtues more peculiar to each; and
thus, if in the body each man bear his own burden, yet in the fellowship
of the soul all have common relief in bearing the burdens of each other.
This is the law of Christ--fulfil it, O my flock!"

Here the Parson closed his sermon, and the congregation bowed their
heads.

FOOTNOTES:

[28] By the pounds Milanese, Giacomo means the Milanese lira.




Gleanings from the Journals.


Dr. TURNBULL says in the _Medical Gazette_, "It has struck me that, if
we could discover any substance which could be so applied as to contract
the _iris_, one cause of the effect of shortsightedness would be
remedied. The result, I am happy to say, has been most satisfactory. In
the first instance I applied the extract of ginger, which was rubbed
five or ten times over the whole forehead, with the view of acting upon
the fifth pair of nerves. Afterwards I substituted a concentrated
tincture, of the strength of one part of ginger to two parts of spirits
of wine, decolorated by animal charcoal. In numerous cases this
application has almost doubled the vision."

       *       *       *       *       *

Mr. GEORGE CRUIKSHANK has presided over a temperance meeting at Bristol.
He maintained in his address that if Shakspeare were alive now, he would
be of their society! "In 'Othello,' there was the character of a bad
man, one Iago, who, setting himself to work the ruin of another, begins
by making him drunk, and when it is first offered to him the answer is,
'Not to-night, good Iago. I have very poor and unhappy brains for
drinking. I could well wish courtesy would invent some other custom of
entertainment.' They would re-echo that wish, he was sure; courtesy
might invent a better custom of entertainment than that of
drinking"--(applause). We observe that the meeting gave three cheers for
"The Bottle." A stranger to modern engravings would no doubt consider
this in the last degree inconsistent.

       *       *       *       *       *

We find in the London papers accounts of a Copying Electric Telegraph,
invented by a Mr. Bakewell, who had given lectures upon it at the
Russell Institution. Its object is the transmission of the _handwriting_
of correspondents. Its advantages are, freedom from error, as the
messages transmitted are fac-similes of the originals: authentication of
the communications by the transmission of copies of the handwriting;
increased rapidity, to such an extent that a single wire may be as
effective as ten with the needle telegraph, and consequent economy in
the construction of telegraphic lines of communication. The secrecy of
correspondence would also be maintained in a greater degree by the
copying telegraph, as it would afford peculiar facility for transmitting
messages in cipher, and the telegraph clerks, instead of being compelled
by their duties to read all the messages transmitted, might be forbidden
from perusing any portion but the address. As an additional means of
secrecy, the messages may be transmitted invisibly, by moistening the
paper with diluted muriatic acid alone, the writing being rendered
legible by a solution of prussiate of potass.

       *       *       *       *       *

The "original Mrs. Partington" was a respectable old lady (says _Notes
and Queries_), living at Sidmouth, in Devonshire. Her cottage was on the
beach, and during an awful storm (November, 1824, when some fifty or
sixty ships were wrecked at Plymouth) the sea rose to such a height as
every now and then to invade the old lady's place of domicile; in fact,
almost every wave dashed in at the door. Mrs. Partington, with such help
as she could command, with mops and brooms, as fast as the water entered
the house, mopped it out again; until at length the waves had the
mastery, and the dame was compelled to retire to an upper story of the
house. The first allusion to the circumstance was made by Lord Brougham
in his celebrated speech in the House of Commons on the Reform Bill, in
which he compared the Conservative opposition to the bill to be like the
opposition of "Dame Partington, who endeavored to mop out the waves of
the Atlantic."

       *       *       *       *       *

It is stated that the Neapolitan Government has granted a sum of twenty
thousand ducats for continuing the excavations at Pompeii.

FOOTNOTES:

[29] JEREMY TAYLOR--_Of Christian Prudence_.




Ladies' Fashions for January.


[Illustration]

The evening costumes of the present season are characterized by profuse
trimming. The skirts of the newest dresses, excepting those composed of
very rich materials, are all very fully trimmed. Corsages, whether high
or low, are ornamented in some way or other. Flounces, employed to trim
the skirts of ball dresses, are made somewhat fuller than heretofore.
Even lace flounces, which used to be set on plain, are now gathered up
in slight fulness. To add still more to the appearance of amplitude in
dresses trimmed with lace, some dressmakers edge the skirts with a
fontange of ribbon. With ball dresses of transparent textures, trimmed
with flounces of the same, this fontange of ribbon is frequently placed
at the edge of the slip worn under the dress. Tulle dresses are now
fashionable for ball costume. Some pretty organdy muslins, intended for
very young ladies, have just been introduced. These dresses should be
made with two jupes, simply edged with a broad hem.

Cloth is adopted for morning walking dresses, _redingote_ form, open
down the front, and embroidered in arabesque pattern, in silk braid and
other trimming; the sleeves are worked at bottom, and open, to admit
underneath cambric or muslin sleeves tight at the wrist; the body is
embroidered to match the skirts. With this _redingote_ is worn a
_pardessus_ of the same cloth, embroidered in front and at bottom with
braiding of from two to two and a half inches wide.

[Illustration]

The more showy dresses, and a little _décolletées_, are square in front
(Louis XV. style), the body pointed, the skirt plain, and but few
flounces. The colors are sombre and plain; the materials are velvet,
satin, damask, watered, _antique_, and some plaids, for the theatres and
for half dress. These dresses are always worn with open sleeves, trimmed
with _engageantes_.

Short velvet cloaks, richly embroidered either in satin stitch, silk
braid, or gimp, are in vogue, the preferred colors being burnt-bread and
black. Short velvet cloaks, of the paletot shape, half tight, trimmed
with lace, embroidered entirely in satin stitch, and with narrow
braiding, are also worn.

On mantelets of silk, entirely embroidered velvet ribbon is worn; or
stamped velvet flowers, upon the stuff, produce a very pleasing effect.
The braid used for the arabesque pattern is commonly plain, or has only
a thick cord, and is from half to three quarters of an inch wide.
Walking boots, entirely of leather, are the most fashionable.

In the _Illustrations_ which we give this month:

I. Is a Cap of Alencon lace, with flat bows of ribbon, and lappets of
the same.

II. A Bonnet of pink satin, covered with cut black velvet. A trimming of
black lace encircles the crown. The bonnet may be lined either with pink
satin or with black velvet; and the under trimming consists of small
pink flowers. Strings of pink satin ribbon.

III. _Engageantes_ of India muslin, with two rows of Mechlin lace, one
above the other.

IV. Velvet mantelet, with arabesque in silk braiding, a quarter of an
inch wide, and satin stitch, slightly fitting to the waist; wide
sleeves, and entirely embroidered.

V. (See the group of figures upon the following page.)

(I.) _Evening Costume for a Bride, back view._--The headdress a wreath
of white roses, mingled with orange-blossom. Back hair arranged in
twists, in the style called _noeud d' Apollon_. Across the forehead
may be worn a narrow bandeau of pearls or diamonds. Dress of white crape
over white satin; front of the skirt with bouquets of the same flowers
as those in the wreath. The corsage has a berthe of folds of white
tulle. The sleeves slightly full, and ornamented on the shoulder with
epaulettes of tulle. Necklace, a single row of pearls. (II.) _Costume
for an Evening Party._--Dress of brocade, the ground a dark violet
color, with large bouquets of flowers in a variety of hues.

[Illustration]

A _sortie de bal_ of cerulean blue satin, edged with a broad band of
velvet of the same color, on which a braid is disposed in a zigzag
pattern. The headdress of loops of narrow blue velvet ribbon fixed on
each side of the head. (III.) _Bride's dress suited to the Nuptial
Ceremony._--Robe of white satin; the skirt ornamented with side
trimmings, consisting each of a row of lace, headed by a fronce of white
satin ribbon. This trimming is set on spirally up each side of the
skirt, and is attached at intervals by small bows of white satin ribbon.
The corsage is half high at the back, and is sloped somewhat lower in
front. The front of the corsage is trimmed with rows of lace set on
horizontally. On the neck is worn a chemisette of lace. The sleeves are
finished at the ends with a full trimming of white satin ribbon. The
under-sleeves are loose at the ends, and are edged with two rows of
lace. On each arm a bracelet of gold, one of the serpent pattern, and
the other fastened by a cameo snap. Bridal wreath of orange-blossom and
jasmin. A very large veil of tulle illusion is fixed under the wreath
instead of being thrown over it, as is sometimes customary.